What readers said about Clinton’s Tales - I just read some more of your writing. You bastard. Its brilliant.. when I read something this good, something that isnt from some prolific alterna-author of some kind, I get excited... it makes me want to run around the city, watching people, doing things, being alive, feeling things... I want an uptown cafe. I want to share that impossible moment with Maureen...I havn’t felt love for a while... but reading that (“The Love that never was”) gave me a taste of how things were. It reminded me of unfulfilled crushes I had on unpopular girls with messy hair in high school. - Alex (a reader).

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Stories of Dread

For Old Times' Sake - In my mind I can already see the dimensions of the cave mouth behind its cover of Patterson’s Curse...

The Hunter of the Shadows - It took us nearly an hour to reel the entire line back under those appalling conditions, only to find nothing at the rope’s end but frozen blood and gore. And, horror of horrors, the last twenty feet of the icy rope covered with a film of blasphemous green slime. I almost laughed out loud, thinking I must still be in the grip of one of my horrid nightmares, the horrid rope so resembled one of the unspeakable appendages which had haunted my fitful sleep. But then the storm sent up yet another ungodly howl and the force of this hellish place blew me clean off my feet. If only, I prayed, if only it was a dream.

Dying Business - “Delivered”,Snider grunted, holstered his gun and whipped out his mobile. Smiling now, Jasmine looked down at Robert’s twitching body. Snider called the company meat wagon, then went home to watch the Weather Channel. Fine, sunny days were when he did his best work, and he was always on the lookout for the next one.

For the Sins of Adam - reads like a perfectly sculpted hybrid of Naked Lunch/anything by Jeff Noon/The Handmaids Tale/Brave New World/some all woman planet flick i saw on SBS 8 years or so back. No matter how that comes across, thats a compliment. - Alex (a reader).

The Horror in the Bookstore - If only I could have been content in my blessed ignorance, I may have resisted the lure of that blasphemous place.

Stories of Love

If - The girl wandered out of the store. She had her grey woollen school jumper tied around her waist. The boy lingered a few seconds by the counter, flipping through a rock magazine before placing it back carefully in its place.

“You’re a lucky man”, the manager said to him. The boy gave a small smile and furrowed his brow. He followed the girl outside.

The Love That Never Was - I know this is a pivotal moment in my life. This situation where I find myself will somehow define my identity. It is a moment, an instance, where the arrow of time no longer exists.

The Girl Next Door - “I know what you mean about Bart”, she said finally. “Most of the time you don’t know what the hell he’s going on about. But occasionally he says something, and you think to yourself, ‘yeah, he’s got something there’. You can’t quite put it into words yourself, but you just know, inside you, that he’s just summed up everything in a few simple words”. She held her hand to her chest, and looked towards the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window. “’The sun has always risen in the east, and always will’”. I nodded, recalling that one from one of his answer sessions. “It’s simple, almost idiotically so”. She turned from the sun back towards me, and for a moment I thought I saw a tear as our eyes met across the table. “It’s my favourite, though”. We couldn’t have held each other’s gaze for more than a second or two, before Maureen looked down at our empty mugs and said she’d get some more coffee. But in that moment I knew love for the first time.

Other stories of Love - Mother's Milk, The Horror in the Bookstore

Stories of Laughter

The Uptown Cafe Felafel Maker - A few moments later any hope I had left sunk completely as the Replacement stepped out carrying a can of whipped cream, which he handed to the Mediterranean, before walking back into “his” kitchen. The Mediterranean held the can up close, obviously as bewildered as everyone else trying to get a decent meal in the Uptown Cafe. After some contemplation he seemed to reach a decision, before holding the can’s nozzle to his open mouth and spraying himself a mouthful. He placed the can on the counter and walked back to his table.

Other stories of Laughter - For the Sins of Adam

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She sits in our loungeroom, perched on the end of an over-stuffed chair which pleads to be slouched in. The constable does not slouch while on duty. Especially while performing a duty such as this. The seams on her navy blue skirt are sharp enough to cut. Her policewoman’s hat sits primly in her lap.

Despite all her training, she is no doubt wondering the same thing as me; how long will she stay? She is not actually doing anything. She is just “being there” . I don’t know if I want her to stay or go. My decision-making apparatus seems to have deserted me.

“Is there anyone I can call for you?” she asks. Her voice is gentle, but still professional. Has she been trained especially these situations? Or is this the burden of the female police officer, while her male partner waits uncomfortably in the patrol car?

“No, thanks”. It is just after 3 a.m. Everyone who needs to be called has been. The others can wait until tomorrow. She smiles grimly, lips pressed together almost painfully. Brow furrowed, a breath let out through her nose like a resigned sigh.

She has been of some help to me. Talking me through the various forms. Death certificate, prelimary arrangements for Marg’s funeral. Driving me home from the hospital. Putting Mary in her basinet when I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking.

“You should try and get some sleep”. I nod. This is her cue, I realise. I stand, she follows. At the door she gives me her card. “If you need anything, anything, please don’t hesitate to call”. She makes her way to the police car parked in the street. I can make out a vaguely male shape in the drivers seat.

I find myself in the kitchen; did I really walk here from the front door? I have no memory of this at all. The kettle begins to hum. I must have turned it on myself. Why is the fridge door open in front of me? Ah, I am on parental auto-pilot. Mary will wake for her feed in an hour or so.

I take a bottle of Marg’s expressed breast milk from the fridge and place it beside the kettle. Holding back a bursting dam of panic in my mind, I write “formula” on the whiteboard hanging next to the phone.

The phone rings as the milk warms. I know it is Mum. I cannot speak to her; what more is there to say? It was a car accident. No, I don’t know who’s fault it was. I don’t care, Mum. She’s gone. She’s gone.

The phone may wake Mary, but I’m still unable to answer it. The milk sprinkled on my wrist is luke warm. I’m neither dead or alive. The phone continues to ring.

It is nearly 4am.

I unscrew the teat and raise the bottle to my lips. I taste a sweetness that memory will never know.

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In the daily course of life my gaze falls briefly across countless faces; watching television, at work, and especially walking down busy streets. Mostly, the anonymous faces of other people leave no lasting impression whatsoever. Logically, I am aware that behind each and every face there lives an individual as complex as myself, made up of countless opinions, emotions and memories. Perhaps even little untruths we sustain to perpetuate who we think we are. Yet as they pass me on the street, I find it difficult to get past the impression that they are little more than bit-players, walk-ons in the gigantic production of my life. My mind cannot cope with the immense concept that behind every face is the star of their very own epic production, all interacting with each other, with me, in countless ways. No, the most these faces ever mean to me is a vague feeling of either attraction or repulsion. And, occasionally, a brief flicker of recognition; hey, didn’t this guy play a part in an earlier scene? Like watching some B-grade “epic”, when you spot the same actor dying on a battlefield in several different scenes of the one movie. But in most instances the connection is rarely made so easily, the feeling being little more than a hint of intuition.

This is how I feel as I encounter a familiar face during my lunch hour. Out of the sea of faces that fills the crowded lunchtime footpaths floats a face that intuition tells me I should recognise, a face of a man about my age. Yes, the untidy mop of sandy hair does seem familiar. Yet I’m not as sure about the features. Of course, this would be because I may not have seen the person for quite a number of years and he’d aged accordingly, no doubt as I have. Now I can feel something rising up in my mind. A memory, a whole series of them, from many years ago. The man’s faded blue eyes lock onto mine and I can see that same intuition tugging on the coat sleeve of his mind as well. And now I know who he is...

High school...maths class...that eternal struggle with linear equations that made me vow never to do a maths problem again as long as I lived...the guy with the sandy hair to whom mathematics was as simple as making toast, who’d helped me study for that exam...who’d come back the following year with a full beard, our school’s first, because he’d become a surfie over the summer...Jason something...did his surname begin with Q?

There’s an uncomfortable moment after recognition when I don’t know whether I should say anything. Perhaps he won’t remember me at all, and I’ll be left awkward and embarrassed. Ican see recognition in his eyes, but still the confidence to speak is not strong. Even if he does remember me, who’s to say he won’t pretend he doesn’t? Perhaps he never actually liked me, or just isn’t the type of person who likes to reminisce and talk of old times. In the instant that our eyes meet and things hang in the balance, I wonder if I’m that type of person. It is that fear of being uncomfortable, of awkwardness, which pervades me again. I picture the two of us sitting down together and talking of the past, laughing about events that took place fifteen years ago, saying whatever happened to so-and-so and what’s-his-name, giving rundowns on what has happened in our lives since school. And finally, when we’ve been over everything, then the inevitable, awkward silence. For we have nothing to say to each other. Our relationship is in the past, not here and now; it is not real. So maybe I should look away and walk on, pretend that Jason Q is still submerged in the swamp of my memory, amongst so many other forgotten faces and happenings.

Yet I do myself proud; perhaps I even surprise myself a little. For even though I fear the awkwardness, the rejection of non-recognition, I hear myself speak up just as we are about to pass each other. Jason? My voice is questioning, yet confident as well, perhaps betraying a hint of excitement, of expectation. I am willing to take a chance here, because I liked Jason Q. I always appreciated the help he gave me in maths; perhaps I would never have passed if not for him. And when he came back after summer with that beard, I may have even admired his individuality.

Darren?, he replies in a tone similar to mine. He smiles and suddenly he’s the kid in my Year 11 Maths class again. Quigley, my mind says, Jason Quigley, and I smile as well. We both stop in the middle of the footpath against the tide of anonymous, meaningless faces, clasp each other’s hand and shake vigorously. The pleasantries we exchange are enthusiastic because we really are pleased to see each other. But before we can really talk, some basic information must be traded. Have you got time? It turns out we are both on our lunch breaks, so we grab a table at the nearest cafe and catch up over sandwiches and coffee.

He is single and I am married although Laura and I are still childless. He works for a marketing firm and still surfs on occasion. I ask him with a hint of mischief what ever happened to his beard. He laughs and tells me the story of how a girlfriend and university made him shave it off because it began to give her a rash after extensive kissing sessions. I’ve been clean-shaven ever since, he tells me.

The time travels so quickly and we both have to get back to our jobs, but we’ve barely talked about so-and-so and what’s-his-name, never mind that time when...so I ask Jason if he’d like to have dinner with Laura and me sometime, and to my relief he responds enthusiastically. We set a date in two evenings time and part with another firm handshake. Yes, it is good to see each other again.



Laura and Jason both get on well, and Laura’s cooking is immaculate as always. Our talk is much more relaxed now, not restricted by having to return to our workplaces for the afternoon. Jason has brought some old photo albums and school magazines that we go through together, bringing back new memories for us both. I discover a long-forgotten story I wrote for the school magazine and Laura is fascinated that I once fancied myself as a writer. She explains to Jason that we met as adults and is always interested in hearing things about my boyhood. She relates to Jason an anecdote my mother told her recently about how on holidays and weekends I would often disappear for hours at a time, and upon my return my mother would question me as to my whereabouts, to which I’d mumble “around”, or “nowhere”. The seemingly bottomless swamp of unrealised memories bubbles urgently in my mind at this, and out of the mire emerges the bush-covered hillside, about half an hour by bicycle outside my old home town. Of the cave mouth I discovered there one day, it’s entrance hidden behind dense layers of Patterson’s Curse. Of crawling into it’s mouth, and finally into the main chamber where you could stand upright quite comfortably. It was my own, secret place, where I would spend hours peering at the scratchings in the walls, fancying they had been carved by aborigines thousands of years ago. I’d planted candles on the cave’s natural ledges and in crude alcoves I’d hacked out of the wall with a tyre iron, and would often sit in the flickering light, content to be there in that secret place.

But I don’t say any of this to Laura or Jason. Although I haven't been to that cave for many years, I still recall everything about it; the exact location, the scratchings on the wall, all the details of the land around its mouth. It is strange how clear some memories are, and how others are totally hidden from me, as if they never happened. And even after all these years, I feel that cave is still my special, secret place. So I only answer Laura’s implied question of where I used to go with a parody of my child-self, “Um...nowhere”. This brings laughter from both of them, and we are back asking each other whatever happened to what’s-his-name...

In one of the old school magazines Jason points out an article to me, saying, hey Darren, do you remember this? Karen Spencer, that girl who just disappeared one year. Did they ever end up finding her? Before I have a chance to reply Laura says she remembers that case, reading about it in the papers and seeing it on the news; fifteen year-old girl just disappearing without a trace. I never knew she went to your school, Darren.

I’d forgotten all about that, I say. I’ve never heard anything more, I guess she never turned up. Laura, intrigued by crime like many people, asks if either of us knew her. Jason shakes his head, saying he knew Karen only by sight and I agree with him. There is silence for a few moments, no doubt we are all thinking of what became of fifteen year-old Karen Spencer.

Darren, you told me once you had a girlfriend in high school named Karen. Did I?, I reply, when did I say that? Oh, years ago, she says. When we first started going out you called me “Karen” a couple of times. Hey, remember a few years ago when you were having those nightmares? You used to call out “Karen!” in your sleep as well.

They both look at me now, not saying anything but waiting for some response. The swampy depths of my mind bubble as if wracked by some sub-terranian disturbance. But no memory of nightmares or of calling Laura by another name. No, I didn’t really know her, I say, but when you’re a kid and something like that happens, I guess sometimes it affects you more than you realise. Jason backs me up here, saying he remembers everyone wondering if someone else would go missing as well, and the parents of all the primary school kids walked their children to school in the morning and were waiting at the gate to pick them up for months afterwards. The whole town was pretty freaked out by it all, he says. Actually, do you remember Ross Clunes, Darren? The kid who ran away from home the next year, and everyone thought whoever got Karen had gotten him, until he turns up in Melbourne a week later with...

And so we talk of more what’s-his-names and so-and-so’s, until the hours gets late and Jason has to head home. He gives me his address and phone number, telling me to keep in contact.

I ring Jason a week later, suggesting we drive out to the old town. Have a look around, make a day of it. For old times’ sake. He agrees cheerfully. Laura is quiet in the car on the way to Jason’s. Actually, she’s been quiet all week. Especially in the mornings when I sometimes catch her staring at me across the breakfast table. She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t have to; her expression says it all. Are you hiding something from me?

I haven't been sleeping well lately.

Once we pick up Jason she is more chatty, and we all get along well together. When we get to the town, we drive past our old homes, schools, wander through the shops and arcades we used to haunt. Laura’s brought a picnic lunch and I suggest we go to a place I know just outside town.

Soon the bush-covered hillside is in sight and its like I’ve never left. In my mind I can already see the dimensions of the cave mouth behind its cover of Patterson’s Curse, and I calculate that we could still all crawl into it with minimal discomfort. My mind bubbles thickly as the image of the cave’s interior presents itself, and I think of that day many years ago when Karen Spencer crawled through the cave mouth to find me in the cavern, the only person ever to find me in my own secret place. I was just sitting there when she came in, not doing anything at all. And as we make our way up the hillside, Jason and Laura wondering where we are going and intrigued as well, I can picture every detail of my cave. Those scratchings on the wall, the candle stubs on the ledges and in the alcoves I fashioned myself, the little hollow in the back of the chamber where Karen Spencer no doubt still lies under an old blanket, the tyre iron that rests beside the interior opening of the cave mouth. It’s all so clear to me now. Memory is a truly amazing thing.

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March 2, 1898: The attentive reader will notice the remnants of torn pages preceding this leave of my journal. Fear not, for my work is not the victim of any conspiratorial censorship, merely some generous editing on my behalf. For the entries I had composed here prior to today were half-hearted jottings, descriptions of daily routines since leaving Punta Arenas a week after New Years’, bound for the Antarctic on board the Nansen ; the first exploratory voyage beyond the Southern Ocean since the ill-fatedMary Swan departed from Puerto Montt 15 years ago, never to return.

Indeed, if one is to be honest, it must be admitted that my half-hearted journal keeping has been more in response to the accepted image of a British officer and gentleman. Due to the nature of my commission, close and regular contact has been necessary with the Norwegian and Belgian men, and thus my time with the other Englishmen on board has been relatively meagre. So when I noticed the regularity of the Englishmen sitting down to scribble in their leather-bound tomes at length (sometimes for hours) after the evening meal, I saw an opportunity to became a contemporary. And to continue in this spirit of honesty, one must admit a craving for the companionship of fellow English gentlemen. I hold nothing against my foreign companions, yet the British blood in my veins would not be denied, and I found myself fishing this small red leather book (a gift from mother on my departure from England) out of my trunk and joining my colleagues in their scribblings. It wasn’t long before I was offered a taste of the ship’s precious supply of brandy or even a rare cigar. Thus, I felt an Englishman again, yet one could not help wondering if my colleagues also filled their journals with the same dreary observations and pedantic details as christened this volume.

But now I have torn out those stupefying pages and started anew, as my colleagues and I truly have something to write of. For the Nansen is trapped in the pack ice and the ship is in uproar.

My three fellow Englishmen place the blame squarely upon the Belgian Captain de Wiencke. No doubt as the ship’s captain, de Wiencke is ultimately responsible for our current predicament, but more to the point are the insinuations that our dear Captain imprisoned us in the ice on purpose , in the quest to Captain the first expedition to winter through the long antarctic night. One can have little doubt that the idea is certainly appealing, especially to the young and adventurous types such as myself and Lt. Caruthers, yet we are all angered at the treacherous manner in which de Wiencke has gone about it. Some of the crew panicked as the ice floes locked in around us, and it took some time for myself to translate to the Belgians and Gaarder, my companion from my previous arctic expedition, to the Norwegians that we had provisions to last us a good three years. The Nansen, a former whaler, was also built to stand up to the batterings of the most relentless of floes and bergs. Indeed, once calm returned after our tiresome translations, I fancied I saw the glint of adventure in some of the men’s eyes. That it was present in Gaarder’s cool Nordic gaze was unquestionable, and the two of us reminisced about our adventures in the North West Passage and discussed the possibilities of the coming winter.

In antiquity, the south was thought to hold a fertile continent containing and abundance of gold, precious stones and other riches. It was not until 1772 when James Cook circumnavigated the globe close enough to the Antarctic circle to discover the icy reality of the south, the confirmation of any land mass hidden behind walls of seemingly impenetrable ice. Not until this century have explorers such as Ross confirmed the existence of numerous islands and the possibility of a peninsula which could be attached to a land mass of continental proportions surrounding the south pole. Will we make the next step forward in overcoming this last great frontier?

March 16: With the passing of each day our prison grows sturdier. Soon after we entered the main body of the ice, it was noted that we were drifting in an south westerly direction. The crows nest was promptly manned, and soon there were several calls of “land-ho!”, which proved to be only the ice bergs which continue to surround us. A convenient storm could well disperse these icy sentinels and open up a channel of escape. This is a possibility we all hope for, for even Caruthers, Gaarder and myself are somewhat less enthusiastic at the prospect of remaining in the ice for the winter after certain developments have became apparent over the past fortnight.

Firstly, there is the drift. Although we hold out the vague hope that a change in direction to the north may lead to freedom, there is the possibility of reefs, rocky shore lines and the formidable land ice, any of which would spell doom for the Nansen and her crew. After two and a half months, already tinned meat is less than appealing, although Cook racks his brains daily to invent new recipes and combinations. The men have begun slaughtering the penguins which populate the floe that surrounds us, although the fishy taste of their flesh is far from appetising. Dr Parsons and Mr Saunders, the botanist, have both recommended the storing of penguin meat to supplement our diets throughout the winter. Yet as the temperatures drop, the penguins seem to number fewer each day. The summer days of midnight suns are well behind us as we see less of the fiery orb in the sky each day. The shortening days are more than noticeable to all on board and accompanied by temperatures already dropping to -20 degrees C overnight, the approach of the unknown antarctic winter has taken on a quiet foreboding.

April 21: At the end of March animal life on the ice floe had all but disappeared; penguins, seals, whales, even petrels seem to be deserting us as the long night grows imminent. Yet the quest for fresh meat still goes on in earnest, as men venture further out onto the floe to hunt down the rare penguin or seal. Through cracks in the ice the men have trawled for sea life, and yesterday they brought up a mass of weird sea creatures the likes of which I have never seen; gelatinous bodies covered with tentacles, probiscuses and other unnameable protrusions. The men took their strange bounty to Cook in the hope he could do something with it, but he only shook his head, muttering something in Belgian which was unfamiliar to my knowledge of the tongue. Mr Saunders, however, took a particular interest in the specimens and has preserved them in ice for further study.

We scarcely get more than two hours daylight now, and if the sky is cloudy during this time all are despondent for the rest of the day. We distract ourselves with the collection of meteorological observations and the daily tasks around the ship. Gaarder and I have been conducting skiing lessons on the floe, which the men take part in more out of want for distractions than enthusiasm. In the evening, talk inevitably turns to wives and sweethearts. There is much longing for the company of the fairer sex, and the men have even taken to passing around letters from their sisters to somewhat satisfy the yearnings of their fellows.

May 2: Tragedy has struck with the disappearance for the hunting party. Seven men set out three days ago on one of the regular hunts for the increasingly-rare animal life and nothing has been seen of them since. We have done our best to search for them, but with scarcely more than an hour’s daylight our efforts have been little more than useless. Gaarder and I agree crevices hidden by thin layers of snow are the most likely culprits. And today a horrendous storm has blown up, with temperatures dropping to -30 degrees C. As I listen to the inhuman howling of the wind outside this fragile retreat of ours, I hold out little hope for those poor souls.

May 25: All hope has been given up for the return of the hunting party. We have entered the long night.

Our days are made up of relentless darkness, broken only by a vague, sickly yellow haze on the northern horizon at noon. When the clouds do break to reveal the moon, the strange light in this part of the world makes it appear greenish and alien. The departure of the sun was followed by a horrendous storm which has spanned the best part of a week, save for eerie periods of absolute stillness and silence which arrive from nowhere and are gone just as quickly. The wind howls relentlessly and all around us the ice groans and crashes as if it were alive. With temperatures approaching -40 degrees C coupled with the howling of the storm, I have found sleep a difficult proposition. And when I do finally drift off, I am plagued by terrifying dreams involving those horrid sea creatures from the trawl. Looking around the rest of the crew, the pale faces and red-rimmed eyes imply that I am not alone in my sleeplessness. Indeed, Dr. Parsons has become concerned with a physical condition he describes as “polar anaemia”; the symptoms including a certain pallidness of the skin, lack of appetite, lack of sleep, swollen joints and puffiness of the eyes. Parsons has prescribed a diet of the fresh penguin meat and at least an hour per day naked at close proximity to a raging fire (the idea being to make up for the lack or sunlight).

June 1: When Caruthers and Dr Parsons awoke me from my fitful sleep with their dreadful news, I half believed I was still dreaming and that green, slimy tentacles would issue forth from their coat sleeves at any moment. But soon the reality of the situation became all too apparent, when my fellow Englishmen informed me of the disappearance of Mr. Saunders.

The botanist had been last sighted the prior evening leaving the ship to take advantage of the unusually calm weather with a leisurely stroll on the floe. He promptly walked out of the illumination of the ship’s lanterns and had not been seen since.

Caruthers, Parsons and myself decided not to include Captain de Wiencke in our deliberations over this most-urgent matter, as according to Dr Parsons the Captain had rarely left his cabin over the past week for a severe bout of polar anaemia. I declared I would immediately lead a search party, for I had by far the greatest skiing expertise of the three of us. I stood to dress for the expedition but was suddenly overcome by a wave of dizziness which caused me to fall back upon by bunk. Dr Parsons performed a quick examination and declared I, too, was suffering from the anaemia. After a brief discussion, with much protest from myself, it was decided that it would be foolhardy for a man in my condition to venture out into the icy darkness. Gaarder, the most experienced skier aboard, would be asked to lead the search party with the company of Dr Parsons in case his medical skills were required.

Imagine my surprise when my old chum, Gaarder, flatly refused to take any part in the search. In his heavily accented English, he told us it would be suicide to venture onto the darkened floe amongst the constantly shifting ice-sheets and unseen crevices. When, in a heated tone, I asked him if he realised that a man’s life was at stake, he replied curtly that “it was the English fool’s fault for wandering out there in the first place”.

Now, Gaarder measures well over 6 ft. and is probably one of the strongest men I have ever met. Needless to say, he showed no effects for the anaemia, either. Yet both Caruthers and Parsons had to hold me back from at least attempting to give the Nordic giant a sound thrashing for his insolence.

“We have no time to argue”, Caruthers said as he pulled me away from the staring Norwegian. He would lead the search instead.

Over the following hour, all of the ship’s rope was gathered together to make one long line which would connect the searchers back to the Nansen. The party set out soon after with Caruthers and Parsons leading, each with lantern in hand, followed by four Belgian sailors in single file carrying the mass of rope between them and feeding it out in their wake. Soon they were in the shadows and the two lanterns became but pinpricks of light before disappearing altogether.

After over two hours the blessedly calm conditions gave way to another horrendous storm. I tugged three times in quick succession on the rope, intending to signal the searchers to return, but found the rope moved easily through my hands as if no one held the other end. Pulling desperately upon the line, the ease of my labour made this all too apparent.

It took us nearly an hour to reel the entire line back under those appalling conditions, only to find nothing at the rope’s end but frozen blood and gore. And, horror of horrors, the last twenty feet of the icy rope covered with a film of blasphemous green slime. I almost laughed out loud, thinking I must still be in the grip of one of my horrid nightmares, the horrid rope so resembled one of the unspeakable appendages which had haunted my fitful sleep. But then the storm sent up yet another ungodly howl and the force of this hellish place blew me clean off my feet. If only, I prayed, if only it was a dream.

June 7: I am convinced. Something stalks us from the icy shadows.

Two nights ago, de Wiencke emerged from his cabin for the first time in weeks, the very image of madness and degradation; face gaunt, eyes protruding and clothes hanging off his skeletal frame like those of a scarecrow. de Wiencke announced to all that sleep was not possible upon the ship and that he intended to sleep upon the ice. He stumbled down onto the floe, pitched his tent and crawled inside.

At breakfast the next day, I must admit that he did look somewhat better. The Captain’s appetite had certainly returned and although his hair had frozen to his head by the night’s temperature of -35 degrees C., he declared that he had had his best night’s sleep in weeks. Despite the madness of it all, this brief glimpse of positive news seemed to cheer up the four remaining Belgian sailors somewhat, and for the first time in days there was conversation at the meal table (no one dared speak of the fate of Parsons, Caruthers and the others; I felt my mind slipping just thinking about that rope). The Belgians were speaking of joining their Captain on the ice that evening (it seemed we were all suffering from a terrible lack of sleep), when Cook stepped in from the kitchen and said “Stay off the ice, keep near the light. Its the only safe place”, before slopping out the gruel and leaving our company before anyone could question his peculiar remark.

So it came to pass that de Wiencke and the remaining Belgians (bar Cook) pitched their tents and spent the evening on the ice. Gaarder and his band of Norwegians dismissed them as madmen. Myself, the only remaining Englishman on board, spent the “day” in my cabin, torn between dozing and a fitful sleep which only brought the horrid nightmares, intermingled with a new blizzard raging outside. At one point in my half-waking state, I fancied I heard something large flopping wetly against the hull, and my mind once again threw up images of the monstrosities which still lay on ice in poor Parsons’ cabin. And when I sat up at my desk to write in this journal, trying to fight off the sleep I had so recently craved, the howling wind almost sounded like a booming voice speaking in an ungodly tongue no sane man would wish to learn.

Finally, I came up on deck to find Gaarder looking down in silence upon the ice. Joining him at the icy rail, I felt no surprise whatsoever to see that the Belgians and their tents were gone.

“It’s almost as if they were never there”, Gaarder said, not taking his eyes off the ice.

We are two weeks into the long winter night, and by my calculations we shall not see the sun until at least mid-July.

June 11: Gaarder and the Norwegians left yesterday. They took off into the darkness on their skis, dragging one of the Nansen ‘s lifeboats behind them on a sledge. Gaarder had calculated our drift over the past two weeks to be in a northerly direction. He and his men would make for open water and then sail for the nearest land, most likely Elephant Island or perhaps even the whaling station on the South Shetlands. Gaarder practically begged me to join them, saying there was no hope for anyone who remained on the ship. I accused him of desertion and suicide in one action, but he only looked at me sadly, knowing I would no accompany him. I wonder if he knew I did not go because I am afraid of venturing into the darkness? His plan is improbable beyond belief, but I believe that if anyone could do it, it would be the burly Norwegian. I silently wished him luck.

“We killed His children, and now he hunts us”, Cook said from behind me. I turned and saw him clutching his lantern close to him. This madman was now my sole companion on this ghost ship. I asked him in a level voice whom he was referring to.

“Can’t say His name. Oh no, mustn’t say His name. All the little penguins ran away because His time was coming. And now all the little men are running away, but it’s too late. Too dark, too late...sometimes you can hear His name on the wind, if you really listen. Do you hear it, sir?”

I will not be hunted any longer. I have my pistol, a harpoon, and an impromptu torch fashioned from a table leg wrapped at one end with oil-soaked rags, and I am going down onto the ice. We shall see whom really hunts the shadows.



How much time has passed? It is impossible to tell. All I know is that it is still dark, and that is all that matters. The wind is howling in all its glory and its words are clear to me now. As I write, I can see my hand is covered by a thin film of frozen green slime, but I mustn’t think on that now. When I have finished this entry, I will not need this torch any longer, only my harpoon. Creeping through the ship, I shall repeat these words over and over, so as not to think about what has become of me, of us all:

Now I shall go and find Cook.

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They would walk home from school together every afternoon. They would detour to the shopping centre and buy a coke or a snack, browse through the shops, muck around. He was sixteen, she was fifteen.

They went into the record shop and flipped through the LPs. He would ask the guy at the counter if some record was in yet. The shop assistant was a happy man in his late ‘30s with thinning, shoulder-length blonde hair. There was a framed picture of him with a famous rock star hung on the wall behind the counter, an indecipherable message and signature scrawled across it in thick black pen. He was actually the manager of the store, and although the kids who came into his store after school rarely bought anything he always looked forward to seeing their uniforms come through his door after 3:30pm. Young people seemed to make him happy. He knew a lot of them shoplifted, but he never really watched them that hard. He preferred contented ignorance.

The girl wandered out of the store. She had her grey woollen school jumper tied around her waist. The boy lingered a few seconds by the counter, flipping through a rock magazine before placing it back carefully in its place.

“You’re a lucky man”, the manager said to him. The boy gave a small smile and furrowed his brow. He followed the girl outside.



The boy and the girl left the shopping centre and began the walk home. It started to rain, and the girl took the jumper from around her waist and tried unsuccessfully to shove it in her school bag, already jammed with books.

“I hate it when anything woollen gets wet”, she said. “It’s that damp smell that gets to me”. The boy took her jumper, folded it neatly and placed it in his bag. Despite the rain, it was still a warm day. His own jumper was balled up in a corner of his bag amongst old cigarette wrappers and inch-long stubs of pencil.

The rain was steady. Others walking down the long residential street crouched under umbrellas or held raincoats over their heads. The boy and the girl just walked, talking and laughing. The air was warm, and as the rain soaked through their clothes both enjoyed the cool wet cotton against their skin. The boy stamped in a puddle, splashing the girl’s bare legs. She yelled with indignation and joy, and splashed him back. There was the sound of steady rain, cars passing on the wet road, and of their laughter. They started chanting “Singing in the Rain” in loud boisterous voices. Two old ladies under grey umbrellas on the other side of the street glared in disapproval.

“I’ve never had so much fun in the rain before” the girl said. The boy splashed her again. They have never really kissed, besides the occasional peck on the cheek. Once while the boy was explaining a maths problem, the girl leaned in close to him, peering closer at the book in his hand, her small breasts pressing against his arm. He’d dared not move, concentrating furiously upon a and b and c and inverse squares. For days afterwards, his could not stop thinking about how soft she was.

They have both gone out of their way to walk this far together, but now comes the point where they must part. They say their usual informal goodbyes. They will see each other at school tomorrow. For years to come, whenever either of them is caught in the rain, they will think of this afternoon.

When the boy got home he found he still had her jumper in his bag. He took it out and studied it, reading her name penned on the tag. He held it close to him, draping the woollen arms around his shoulders in an empty embrace. He imagined her softness pressed against his chest. Inhaling deeply, her scent filled his mind.

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Snider approached them silently from behind the bench, and in one smooth movement took the silenced pistol from inside his jacket, placed it at the base of Robert’s skull and pulled the trigger.

Jasmine was stunned, naturally. Snider was used to this. After about a minute, she turned her blood-speckled face to him and said, “Thank you. He was so happy”.

“Delivered”,Snider grunted, holstered his gun and whipped out his mobile. Smiling now, Jasmine looked down at Robert’s twitching body. Snider called the company meat wagon, then went home to watch the Weather Channel. Fine, sunny days were when he did his best work, and he was always on the lookout for the next one.



Overcast, frequent showers, cold and windy. Snider knew that tomorrow would not be a work day. He pointed his remote at the screen and channel surfed, absently fingering his Quanta amulet with his other hand as the images flashed before him. He stopped for a moment on an idiotic game show and stared blankly at hysterical contestants. The sheer mindlessness of the program seemed to calm Snider’s mind, to stop him at least momentarily thinking about next Wednesday. He leaned back into his armchair and held the amulet up before him. It was in the classical shape of an atom; several particles clumped together in its centre to represent the nucleus, supported by two angled spheres frequented by occasional small diamonds symbolising electrons. Unlike most people’s Quanta amulets, Snider’s was not silver or gold-plated, but solid gold. Needless to say, not everyone had inlaid diamonds, either. The amulet had been presented to him by by Capra himself when Snider had reached the total of 100 deliveries. That had been nearly four years ago. Snider’s deliverance total was now approaching 200, and still no other dispatcher had reached 100.

He contemplated the amulet against the out-of-focus background of the game show for a few moments. Then something occurred to him and he switched back to the weather channel. After a minute or two the 14 day forecast appeared on the screen and Snider studied it with interest, before letting out a dismayed sigh. Rain, hail and gloom for nearly the whole week. Snider almost never delivered unless the sun was shining and the temperature was pleasant. Unless this was the case, Snider could never be totally sure his potential dispatchees were really happy in themselves. Other dispatchers, Snider knew, were not so fussy, and relatives rarely complained these days; after all, who was to say if a dispatchee was truly happy or not at the moment of deliverance? Yet Snider was loathe to cut these corners. He built his reputation on perfection in his work. He was the best. And anyhow, everyone felt happy on nice sunny days, didn’t they?

The next fine day wouldn’t be until Wednesday. That was the day Snider was to meet with Capra.

Flicking the remote aimlessly, Snider mused over the whole induction business. As the day approached, he felt more and more uncomfortable with the whole idea. Could he really be a saint ? Certainly, such a title would not ever be official until years after his death, but even this first step of Induction felt overblown to Snider. After all, was he really anything more than a man who took pride in his work and did it well? Snider did realise that it was not just any old job, he was well aware of the significance of deliverance in the post-Quantum Revelations era. But when you got right down to it, dispatching really was just a job like any other. Certainly, Snider was proud that he was the clear benchmark of his profession, but did that really make him a potential saint ? Capra thought so. But it was the final step of Induction, no doubt a long way down the track, which Snider often found himself thinking of as he lay awake in the small hours of the morning: the signing of his own deliverance waiver.

Snider was stirred out of his thoughts when he came across the Saint Ray channel. He looked at the image of Ray Martin on the screen and thought, This is the kind of company I’ll be joining.

Channel Ray ran old Ray Martin shows non-stop. The Midday Show, A Current Affair, Top Blokes and Superstars, even old 60 Minutes clips; 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And at least twice a day, that episode of A Current Affair was screened. When Ray had interviewed Capra.

Snider was old enough to remember when the segment was originally screened; before the Quantum Revelations, before Ray was a saint. And his memory was good enough to recall that it hadn’t been quite the way Channel Ray was screening it now. Sure, the interview footage with Capra was genuine, but you never saw the segments which lead up to the interview and Ray’s subsequent conversion. The initial A Current Affair investigation into the “weird, religious sect of the Quantum Revelation”; and primarily its figurehead, ex-particle physicist Capra Hoyts. No, the doorstep interviews, the testimonials from disgruntled former members were not celebrated with repeated screenings on Channel Ray. Only that interview.

“Did you know, Ray” said the young Capra on Snider’s TV screen, “ that with quantum physics, science has learnt that subatomic particles such as electrons and positrons can travel backwards in time? Most people probably think this some theoretical oddity. But it is not, Ray. It is not. These particles make up all matter. You and I are made up of these particles. But the most outstanding Quantum Revelation, Ray, is the fact that an electron does not exist at any particular position in space, until someone observes it. Only then can it really exist. This astounding fact; a proven scientific fact, not something I’ve just made up, Ray; can only lead to the realisation that each and everyone of us is the master of our own reality. We control matter. We control the universe “.

Now the scene that was probably the first defining image of the Quantum Revelations: Ray Martin momentarily speechless. The camera lingers over his dumbstruck face (the footage is slowed down courtesy of Channel Ray). Finally the moment passes, Ray refocuses on the auto cue and gets back into character. “What do you say to those who claim you demand huge financial donations from your members, as well as...”

The screen fades to black. Six months pass and we are back on A Current Affair . Ray Martin addresses the camera. His face appears radiant, joyous. His Quanta amulet hangs outside of his shirt.

“Viewers, I speak to you tonight as a new man. Over the last six months we have featured several stories on the visionary Capra Hoyts. I think you’ll agree with me that what he has had to say has been nothing short of extraordinary. Through impartial and objective scientific method, Capra has proven that we shape our own reality. Quantum theory has also demonstrated that the concept of time means nothing to subatomic particles, which are the building blocks of all reality. Capra has also shown us how the theory of relativity demonstrates that time is basically meaningless. Therefore, all that remains is matter and consciousness.

”To be perfectly frank with you all, I have not had the happiest personal life in the past. But who of you really has? Capra has shown me how happiness is purely subject to experience in this illusion of time. Even when one achieves happiness, it is a fragile state which can be fractured by whatever experience lies around the corner.

“Well, viewers, tonight I am a happy man. And I do not intend to let it be shattered. And I can ensure this because I control all matter. I control reality”.

Ray pulls an automatic pistol from inside his jacket, places it in his mouth and pulls the trigger. Fades to black.



The next few weeks were dominated by mass conversions to the Church of Quantum Revelations and mass suicides. It was not long before you could be assaulted in a public place if you questioned the validity of quantum theory. People who spoke disrespectfully of Ray Martin were often beaten to death. When the suicide’s reached plague proportions, Capra spoke on national TV and urged calm, asking people to question if they were truly happy before they went through with the act. Capra also implied that it was likely that a person less than Ray Martin would most likely die with their consciousness in a state of panic and fear, even if they had been happy seconds prior; time, after all, means nothing, reminded Capra. Was that a state of consciousness in which a person would want to spend eternity?

But Capra did not intend to leave his new flock floundering through life as before. Soon the concept of Deliverance was born (“The natural successor to euthanasia”, Capra had called it), a service provided to clients who signed on the dotted line and paid a not-inconsiderable amount. In return, they were guaranteed that would die in a state of peace and happiness, with no inkling of the fear normally associated with death; dispatchers such as Snider made sure of that with their stealthy movements and head shots.



“Saint Wayne”, Snider said to the empty room, trying out the sound of it, the feel of the words on his lips. He flicked through the channels some more, and paused when Capra’s face appeared on the screen once again, this time on grainy video footage. The voice over was a high-pitched, male and indignant.

“Capra Hoyts continues to live in a life of luxury, from the profits of his enterprise of death. Our investigations have uncovered evidence that the Deliverance service repossesses the estate’s of delivered clients who have no immediate family. This enables Hoyts to maintain several luxury mansions all over the world as well as his extravagant lifestyle”.

Snider put aside the remote and picked up his old acoustic guitar. He strummed chords absently as he the screen switched to show the owner of the voice over; a thin, untidy man in his early thirties sitting behind a cheap news desk and speaking directly to the camera. “There are many questions which are not being asked about the man who can rightly claim to be the most prominent spiritual leader in the western world today. Does his theory of Quantum spirituality really make sense, or are we all just going willingly to our deaths, trusting a series of technical theories that most people do not fully understand? And is it not strange that Capra Hoyts is now in his seventies and still gives no indication of giving consent for his own deliverance? If the great Capra believes in what he preaches, then what is he waiting for? This is William Heisenberg reporting”.

The B string broke with a twang. Snider began to unwind it from its peg and thought of when he had first become a dispatcher. The Dying Business, the older dispatchers had called it back then (but never in public, only in locker rooms or the isolation of bars frequented by dispatchers and few others). Snider’s mentor in the service had once said to him, “As long as people are afraid, there will always be work for people with our skills”.

Heisenberg’s program was over, and the screen was filled with the logo of the Community Television Channel; Snider wondered if he had been the only one watching. He switched the TV off and rummaged in a drawer until he found a fresh string. Taking is out of its paper packet, he was reminded of a theory he had once read of that claimed subatomic particles could be in the form of strings which are too thin to see with even the most powerful electron microscope, and the quantum data we perceive are merely the sound waves these vibrating strings produce, thus explaining the wave function of electrons. Snider put his guitar aside and held the new string up to the light.

The beginning of the induction was a private, informal affair. It involved meeting with Capra at his official headquarters.

Snider handed over his gun at the security gate and stood still as the guard passed the metal detector over him, beeping only over his amulet. Security was tight here, not so much in response to any physical threat to Capra, but rather to keep over-exhuberent devotees out whom often attempted “self-deliverence” in the presence of the great Capra. This procedure was not unexpected by Snider, nor did it bother him in the least. Walking down the path towards the great mansion, the glorious sun shining on his face, Snider slipped his amulet over his head. He held the chain in both fists and tugged it experimentally. The nylon guitar string woven through the tiny gold links bit into his hands.

No, Snider would not need his gun on this wonderfully fine, peace-inspiring day. After all, he was the best.

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I know this is a pivotal moment in my life. This situation where I find myself will somehow define my identity. It is a moment, an instance, where the arrow of time no longer exists. Standing here alone, with nothing but plush red carpet and mirrored walls for company, I can see the past that has brought me here, as well as my future that results from this moment. The muffled soundtrack from behind the closed doors across the foyer means nothing. I am left to deal with causality, fate and destiny. I look back behind me, to when I first met Sophie-

-in a school drama workshop two years ago. Almost immediately I could see she was different from anyone else I had ever met before. Her personality so wild and alive, her remarks shrewd and cutting, brimming with an intelligence far beyond her fifteen years. And the way she threw herself into the improvisations, playing the most outlandish characters, it was obvious she never cared for what anyone thought of her. I knew Sophie was a free spirit, and already I was in love with her.

We did some skits together and over time created these two stupid characters who spoke in ridiculously upper class voices and called each other “darling!”. This is how I crept my way into her life. Whenever we saw each other we would fall into our characters and chat away, much to the amusement of those around us. When was it that we first started conversing in our normal voices? I know it took me some time; I had more faith in my fictional character than I had in myself.

Then my life became the roller coaster of peaks and troughs lived by one who loves from afar. The most important detail of my existence was how many classes I shared with Sophie that day. My routine would be planned around these precious hour-long periods; I would always arrive at the classroom as early as possible, to ensure when it came time to enter the room I could engage Sophie in conversation so that it would be more than natural to sit together. Yet, she was the kind of person who would often be late, and in this instance I would take a seat in an unpopulated corner of the room, with a free seat beside me that Sophie could conveniently take as she made her entrance; whether I would be in a state of despair or joy for the rest of the day would depend upon where she sat. If she sat next to another boy, especially a handsome and/or popular one, I would be filled with such feelings of rejection and anger that I thought I would not be able to contain my despair (outwardly, though, I always managed to do so). And, to the detriment of my adolescent heart, Sophie would often take a seat next to one of the class hunks. She was an incredibly friendly person who didn’t ever operate within her own strict circle of friends. If you knew her, she was your friend. For Sophie to hold a grudge against someone, they must have seriously wronged her.

Yet she did have close friends, and I did become one of the closest. We would joke around a lot, a constant source of amusement to each other, as well as talking at length about anything from school life to our families. I would crave the intimacy of these conversations, although I would inwardly wince when Sophie would tell me about her boyfriends...

She never really seemed that taken with them, really. She would never talk about how gorgeous Michael was or how much she loved Jamie. Instead, Sophie would tell me about how boring it was to be with them when they got stoned, or in her most enthusiastic moments of how they would take her to fashionable city nightclubs. They were always older boys (men I guess I should say), usually eighteen or nineteen with a car and a job. She spoke about them in a matter-of-fact way. I was torn between hopelessness at how she spoke about her relationships with me as purely platonic friend, and hope at her apparent indifference to these men.

In fact, the only person I ever heard Sophie say she loved was me.

Even though we eventually left our fictional characters behind our relationship was often spent in the territories of Goofing Off and Mucking Around, and sometimes in the hazy borderlands between there and the Land of the Serious. She would playfully slap me and I’d say something like, “Just can’t keep your hands off me, can you?”, to which she’d laughingly reply, “And I never will be able to, honey!”. And other times the transition from Mucking Around to Serious would be much more obvious, to the extent that it could not be reasonably questioned.

“Don’t be such a doofus”, Sophie would say, pulling her doofus face.

“Well, I guess that shows how you really feel about me”, I’d say, turning my face away and theatrically wiping away crocodile tears (but still wincing inside, always wincing deep down).

And Sophie would put a hand on my shoulder, her soft touch turning me to jelly. All mirth gone from her now; perhaps I didn’t hide the wince as well as I thought I could.

“Come on. You know I love you”.

“I love you, too, Sophie”. And in that moment there was nothing but honesty; we both knew it was true. But in the next instant I’d say something like “If only I didn’t have a thing for black men...”, and we’d be well and truly back in Goofing Off land. Or Sophie would start talking about her current boyfriend.

Was it ever possible that we could get beyond that and have some sort of real relationship? Neither of us seemed capable. Sophie had her older boyfriends and had my disbelief. Disbelief that her love for me could ever be more than sisterly. For reasons I do not fully understand the Land of the Serious often filled me with fear and my reflex would often be to scramble back over the border to Goofing Off. Once Sophie told me her mother had asked her if she thought Sophie and I would ever “get together”, as she thought we would be good together. Fear froze my mind and my reflex kicked in; I laughed perhaps a little too heartily and dismissed the notion. I thought I saw Sophie wince and hated myself for it.

A thousand times I have replayed that scene in my mind, and probably will do so for the rest of my life. What was I afraid of? Was I petrified that Sophie would dismiss the notion as nonsense, and therefore confirm my worst suspicions?

And if she had’ve done such a thing, could she have reacted any worse than I actually did?

I was so scared of the pain and sorrow of hopelessness, that I perhaps filled the girl I loved with that very sorrow instead. Perhaps she was trying to broach the subject of our relationship, something I never had the guts to do, and I let her down in the worst possible fashion. It wouldn’t be the first time I would let her down.

So my life went on with its roller coaster ride, falling from joy to despair with monotonous regularity. I am in heaven when she kisses my cheek on my birthday, and count the days until hers when I feel safe enough to do the same. A mutual friend tells me how Sophie made out with some guy at a party the previous weekend and I don’t know if I can hold back the tears. I summon all the courage I can muster to ask Sophie in a purely platonic, friendly manner, if she would like to go and see a movie with me. She agrees happily, but the movie we want to see isn’t on until the Tuesday of next week. My heart is set on that Tuesday; I feel that anything could happen in the dark of the cinema. But again fear freezes me, and as Tuesday grows closer I cannot bring myself to confirm with her that we are still going to this movie, even though we talked about it over a week ago, and I know Sophie has a tendency to forget about things. What if I ring her and she just laughs at me. “Why would I want to go anywhere with someone like you?” (although that is something I would be more likely to say). Surely, she’ll be there-

-and I will walk out into the cold night, leaving the usher behind me in the mirrored foyer. I will not go home because I cannot bear to tell my parents that I’ve been stood up. I will walk into the dark and into my future.

I will go to a phone box and ring Sophie’s number. A voice will answer but my all-encompassing fear will make me hang up almost immediately. I will not even be sure if it is Sophie who answers or her mother. It is a half hour’s walk to her place and I will go there, walking past her house three times, and try to penetrate with my eyes through the thick drapes that cover the house’s lighted windows. I will walk the streets until the movie has finished so that I can go home and pretend everything is okay. Perhaps it will rain and I will let myself cry. Once we walked home from school together and it began to rain. We jumped in the puddles on the footpath and sang “Singing in the rain” and got thoroughly drenched, and I knew how lucky I was.

Our lives will go on as normal. Sophie will say she loves me and tell me about her boyfriends. I will tell her I love her and make some stupid joke. We may even spend an afternoon together of sweet fumblings in her narrow bed. It will be the only time, because we both will still need our jokes and our boyfriends for whatever reason. As I look forward I can see the great lion that decorates her doona cover.

And one day Sophie will tell me of a bad thing her boyfriend did to her, and I will say nothing. I will even try and change the subject, but Sophie will just look at me and say, “I thought you were the only person I could talk to about this”. I will try to make amends, offer shallow advice and make immature threats against the boyfriend. But this is not what Sophie will want. She will want my love, and I will not give it to her.

I will continue to live a life of fear.

We will grow apart, talk to each other less and less, go to different universities and lose touch altogether. I will look for her on the street, and when I think I see her my first instinct will always be to look away.

The usher walks up to me and I think he is going to kick me out. Can I talk him out of it? If I just wait another five minutes; perhaps she is only late, as she often is.

“Hey, buddy. Do you want a refund on those tickets?”. His voice is low and I see understanding in his eyes.

“I guess you must see people getting stood up all the time?” I say.

He smiles. “Fairly often”.

“I think I’ll hang on to them”. He nods. I put the two tickets in my pocket and head for the door.

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The Uptown Cafe was the only place worth considering for my lunch break. It was not so much the place itself, but one particular dish that was the attraction; their felafals. There is nothing worse than a felafel that’s been sitting in the bain marie for Lord knows how long; dry and tasteless, garlic sauce all congealed. A cold one wrapped up in pita bread is marginally more acceptable, but not by a whole lot. At the Uptown Cafe my felafel was always cooked fresh. The little chick pea balls fried on the spot, salad and sauce freshly added and all wrapped up in foil to keep it warm for me. They were always made by a Turkish gentleman who was the owner of the establishment, and when I made my order he would always be called over by one of the Anglo waitresses to prepare the dish.

And what a feast it was. Felafel balls fresh and succulent, lovely warm bread dripping with delicious garlic sauce!

So it was with much dismay that one day I entered the Cafe and ordered my usual, only to be given an uncertain look by one of the waitresses.

“Um...I’m not sure. Let me just check”.

Bewildered by this unprecedented turn of lunchtime events, I watched over the counter as she ducked back into the kitchen. There I spied not the gifted Turkish chef of recent visits, but some old fellow in a white fat-guy hat. I saw my waitress mouth the magic word “fel-a-fel” to him, only to be met with a look of bewilderment. She returned to me, looking apologetic, and I prepared myself to face the inevitable.

“Look, sorry, but the boss is away sick today. And the replacement’s a bit...um...confused at the moment...”

She seemed unable to get to the point, even though it was obvious to all concerned. Still, I felt it had to be stated. “So, no felafals today?”

“Sorry”. She gave me a strained smile. Other customers were milling around the counter as well, saying ‘where is the orange juice I ordered twenty minutes ago’, ‘my coffee’s cold’, ‘I ordered rye, not white bread’. The pressure was obviously on the poor girl. “Look, can I get you something else?” she almost pleaded, gesturing desperately at the bain marie.

Ah, yes, the dreaded bain marie. Shrivelled vegetables, fried rice that looked to have all the consistency of gravel, a pie which dated from sometime in the mid ‘80s.

“Er...how about the vegetable lasagna?” I said, probably meant more as a soliloquy than an actual request. But there she was, digging it out with a spatula.

“I’ll just stick it in the microwave for minute or so”, she said, and turned away before I could change my mind.

So as my lasagna was being nuked, I observed the “replacement” cook in the kitchen. Considering all the customers at the counter, not a hell of a lot of work was being done back there. The old fellow was just pacing up and down, occasionally sticking his head out to ask one of the frenzied waitresses a question, then opening a cupboard or draw, frowning and staring off into space before repeating the whole performance over again. When I say he was wearing a fat-guy hat, I don’t mean to imply that the gentleman was obese, but I find this the best way to describe one of those peaked, baggy caps that overweight gentlemen inevitably wear. He also wore a striped apron; what was disturbing about this was that he looked very uncomfortable wearing such a piece of clothing.

My lasagna was handed to me in a foil container. I paid and left. Back in the lunchroom I peeled off the cardboard lid and tentatively tasted my substitute meal...and all my worst fears were confirmed. Scolding on the outside, cold in the middle, full of undercooked evil vegetables like broccoli and (eek!) cauliflower. The pastry looked only mildly more appetising than the miserable little container’s cardboard lid. Oh, how I prayed for the health of that good Turkish gentleman!

Thus, I was quite apprehensive as I entered the scene of the crime the following day. Neither the boss or the Replacement were in immediate sight, but after a quick glance at the clientele, things did not look optimistic. Little old ladies sipped their mugs and grimaced, business men lifted the lids off their sandwiches and gave each other mystified looks. A swarthy Mediterranean man stood at the counter speaking earnestly to one of the still-flustered young waitresses. She appeared to speak diplomatically to him before walking through to the kitchen. A few moments later any hope I had left sunk completely as the Replacement stepped out carrying a can of whipped cream, which he handed to the Mediterranean, before walking back into “his” kitchen. The Mediterranean held the can up close, obviously as bewildered as everyone else trying to get a decent meal in the Uptown Cafe. After some contemplation he seemed to reach a decision, before holding the can’s nozzle to his open mouth and spraying himself a mouthful. He placed the can on the counter and walked back to his table.

“No chance of a felafel today, I suppose?”.

The waitress only shook her head with a grim smile. In a way I was relieved; it was quite scary to imagine how the Replacement would go about preparing and serving a felafel. I turned and left the cafe before she could gesture to the bain marie. Chips and potato cakes would do instead.

Yet I did not give up. Everyday for the next week I ducked my head into the Uptown Cafe and surveyed the scene. And everyday I saw the dreaded white fat-guy hat accompanied by the inevitable looks of bewilderment. It was spring and I took to eating my chips in the park on the sunnier days. I sat on a bench there one lunchtime and pondered the decline of the once-great Uptown Cafe. It had been a week now since the boss had taken ill, and I began to wonder if he would ever come back. Perhaps he was in hospital with some terrible, life-threatening disease. And in the meantime his business was going down the drain. Soon he wouldn’t even be able to pay his medical bills...

And then I saw him.

I almost didn’t recognise the man. He was walking through the park, licking an ice-cream cone, looking up at trees brimming with birds. At first I was filled with joy, with hope. Well, he’s obviously on the mend. Won’t be long now before he’s back at work... And then the realisation. He didn’t have the look of a recovered invalid, he looked like someone enjoying a holiday.

Our eyes met and recognition flickered across his carefree expression. I could swear he was just about to give me a jolly greeting before he seemed to remember the duplicity, the sheer fraud of his situation. He looked away, doing a miserable job of feigning non-recognition, and hurried on down the path. For my part, I just stopped myself crying ‘truant!’, before joining in the non-recognition. After all the felafals we’d been through...

And in my anger I cursed his lousy Uptown Cafe and wished upon him the bankruptcy he so richly deserved. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone some time off, but to feign illness and leave the place indefinitely in the hands of the Replacement was unforgivable. I sat there grumbling to myself, eating my miserable chips, until gradually my indignation gave way to quiet musings. I realised why I didn’t recognise the Felafel Maker at first. At the cafe, he always looked so grizzled and stressed, cooking out the back and directing the waitresses as well, the permanent frown of the frazzled small business man across his forehead. I hadn’t recognised him at first because I had never seen the man look so happy before. And who could blame him? A beautiful day in the park, singing birds and ice-cream. Apparently not a care in the world...except that maybe his business was about to go bust.

So now when I make my daily visit to the Uptown Cafe I am relieved to see the Replacement and not the Felafel Maker. Instead, I look for him in the park on sunny days. And occasionally I see him, strolling through with his ice-cream on his indefinite holiday. I am always careful to avoid his eyes, not wishing to place any guilt on the man. And I don’t bother asking the waitresses for felafals anymore, even though no one has scrubbed them off the menu board yet. Instead, surrounded by the dwindling customers and increasingly empty tables of the Uptown Cafe, I peer down into bain marie and curse my vegetarian leanings; meat, meat and more meat. I know I really have no choice in the matter at all.

“Vegetable lasagna, please”.

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The Horror in the Bookstore

I have always been a gentleman reputed to possess somewhat eclectic tastes, burdened with an insatiable curiosity for the forbidden and unknown. As a young man my days and evenings were spent in the most singular bookstores and libraries, pouring over various obscure texts detailing the myths and beliefs of ancient tribes, as well their adjacent strange and macabre rites. So it came one evening that I was wondering the back alleys of Boston in the pursuit of sellers of curios and tomes which would somehow bring me a little closer to revealing the hidden things of our world, the eldritch secrets and forgotten lore of mankind.

If only I could have been content in my blessed ignorance, I may have resisted the lure of that blasphemous place.

I found it in a particularly dark and odorous section of the maze of alleys. All around me the shops had been long ago abandoned. These decrepit structures were either boarded up or their windows had been shattered to give entrance to the pathetic street people who made the neglected premises their foul dwellings. The clicking of my cane on the damp cobblestones sounded the signal for the street-dwellers to lurk out of their shadowy abodes and approach me with outstretched palms. I threw a few coins in their direction, loathe to come into physical contact with the unwholesome creatures. And as I made my way hastily down the darkened alley, I did not hear even the most perfunctory thank-you from the vagrants behind me, only sly, guttural laughter.

I saw ahead of me that their appeared some respite from the darkness, in a dim glow emanating from a shop window I was approaching upon my right. Eager to leave the darkness of the street creatures and their foul alleyway, I made haste towards the establishment’s entrance ignorant and caring little of what trade the little store performed. As I neared the dirty, fly-speckled window, I was overjoyed to sight the long wooden shelves lining the interior’s walls, packed with the spines of old books. ‘A-ha”, I thought. ‘A find at last!’. And yet as I reached for the door handle of the apparently nameless bookstore (for no monicker was displayed on its dusty window), I could not help but be pervaded by a nonsensical yet all-encompassing urge to flee from this place, to not pass the threshold for the sake of my immortal soul. Yet despite my mystical interests I had always been a man of science and thus of reason, and so banished this vaguely effeminate urge and opened the door of the bookstore.

The interior was a quite small area which communicated a sense of claustrophobia as several tall shelves had been cramped into its minuscule dimensions. The shelves reached the stores mould-spotted ceiling, and although they were crammed with books they could not bear the store’s entire stock alone, for numerous piles of tracts sat upon the threadbare carpet floor. A small table and chair was positioned to the left of the doorway, and on the opposite wall was positioned a plain wooden counter covered with several more towers of books. Behind the counter was a doorway covered by an moth-eaten curtain, doubtless leading to a back room. The light of a candle flickered from behind the curtain and the only other light source was a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling which swung with the air I had let in from outside. The room was pervaded with an overwhelming odour of mustiness and corruption, as if the place had been closed up from fresh air for some time. Initially, I found this smell disturbing and even of an offensive nature, but after a few moments I made the connexion between the scent and the fragrance of old books, and thus anxiousness was replaced by excitement at what I might find among these decrepit shelves.

A small man in plain, ill-fitting clothes appeared from behind the curtain as I shut the door against the chill night air. I bade him a good evening and he returned my greeting in halting English, from which I detected some foreign accent. As he stepped forward into the bare bulb’s light, I could see from the slant of his eyes and the slope of his face the man was of Asiatic blood, although probably mixed in with some European background as well. The man was kind enough, though, and after introducing himself as the establishment’s proprietor, he placed himself at my service, no doubt eager to make a significant sale to myself, his sole customer. I described my interests to the little man in the simplest layman’s terms I could muster and he directed me to a shelf and invited me to browse. I perused the spines for a few minutes before taking several volumes of interest to the reading table to study them more closely. Alas, I found little to hold my interest for long. Although there were a number of interesting texts on the dusty shelves, such as Crowley’s The Book of the Law, the mystical Lesser key of Solomon, and the devilish Ecce Qui Tollit Peccata Mundi, none of these title did not already furnish my own personal library, and thus they could by no means be called exceedingly rare. Yet, the persistent scholar in me did note the different editions and varying translations of these texts before I began to wonder what small treasures my host maybe holding elsewhere in his keep.

Every scholar worth his salt knows that all bookstores worth frequenting keep their rarest tomes away from the eyes of the general public, and only bring them to light at the request of their most significant customers. I called the proprietor over to my rude table and inquired after these things while pressing a crisp banknote into his clammy hand. I was gladdened to see him nod in understanding of my request, yet somewhat perturbed at hints of malevolence and cunning in his Asiatic eyes as he hastened away into the back room. I sighed inwardly and prepared myself to be shewn laughable forgeries at incredible prices by this foreign rascal. Feeling the disappointment well up inside of me, I stared out of the dirt-clouded windows as I waited to see what the little man would bring me, and spied several forms lurching in the darkness of the alley. The ragged outline of the shadowy forms led me to believe they were the street people whom had assailed me earlier, and yet their forms seemed somehow misshapen and quite singular, as if they were stricken with some kind of twisted palsy or gross deformity.

My musings were interrupted by the return of my doubtful host, who placed a large volume on the desk in front of me. I was immediately intrigued by the nature of its cover; a cracked leathery material, browned with age. Turning to the preliminary page I was startled to see it entitled in Low Norse (a tongue I had a working knowledge of) The Book of Eibon. A small laugh escaped my lips as thoughts of forgery once again sprang to mind. The Book of Eibon was little more than a myth, said to be written in the mythical prehistoric land of Hyperborea. And even if it had existed, the last copy had surely perished in the fires of the Inquisition in the 14th century! And yet as I turned its yellowed leaves I saw that the parchment was ancient and crumbling, and that forgery of such a standard would be beyond the realms of human endeavour.

And so I read from The Book of Eibon. After the first few pages, my command of Low Norse seemed to come as second nature to me and I had little trouble deciphering the horrid things written in those ancient pages. I read the aeon-old words from cover to cover without pause. I read of the lost land of Hyperborea and of the the things that came before its humanoid inhabitants. Of the monstrosities they worshipped, and of the ice-ridden end of that fabled continent. By the thickness of that awe-inspiring tome, I judge it must have taken me several hours to complete it, but that I did. And when I turned its final, yellow page, I raised my head as it waking from a dream to see it was still dark outside, and that the misshapen forms still lurked outside the store’s window. Modern physicists tell us that time is relative and this was always a difficult concept for me to grasp, until I entered that nameless bookstore.

Yet before I could emerge from the daze the ancient book had placed me in, the proprietor was laying another volume on the desk before me. And I gasped yet again when the crumbled, dusty cover revealed its title as Of Daemons and Thaumaturgists, by the infamous 16th century witch hunter Thaddeus Ward, a tome thought lost to the ravages of time. And this, too, I read without hesitation to the end, and learnt horrible details of pagan cults and witches and the unspeakable beings they sort to bring down to earth from the stars.

And as I completed this devastating tome, still the proprietor brought more tracts of mind blowing consequence. The blasphemous Book of Hidden Things, the terrible Of the Spawn of the Great Old Ones. He even brought me the ancient Book of Thoth, penned in Egyptian hieroglyphs which somehow made perfect sense to me and I read of its horrid content as if it were my native language. And he even laid before me the dreaded and unspeakable Necronomicon , scrawled by the mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred.

And as I completed each of these despicable tracts and briefly looked up before the next literary horror was placed before me, I saw darkness still prevailed outside the grubby shop window, and that those inhuman shapes still danced their crippled jig in the alleyway outside. And yet I could not let them pray on my mind for long, for there was too much to read, too many horrible revelations to discover. And I learnt it all, the truth about the fate of Atlantis, what lays dead and dreaming in the sunken R’lyeh beneath the ocean waters, where mankind came from and the cosmic, tentacled horrors that came from the stars to earth and are our unspeakable ancestors.

Still the man brought me more books. Damnable tomes which had no names, scratched in unrecognisable glyphs and symbols, yet completely, inexplicably, and horribly literate to my racing mind. Impossible writings from the future, the testimony of Maurice Klondike, a traveller of other worlds whom would not be born on earth for another fifty years. Tracts documenting the human dynasties the earth will not see for millennia, and the terrible insect races who will take the rule of the earth from humans in the inevitable future. And even more blasphemous, writings that defy time and space both. Accounts that are all encompassing as Azathoth himself, for all horrible cosmic truth they hold in their unspeakable pages. Yes, the Unspeakable Ones, only they could be the divine authors of these infinite works. For at that moment I saw and understood all, as my mind melted away and all sanity and reason with it. I understood the horrid corruption which is the very base of all life on this planet, and, indeed, the very cosmos.

And I could still hear their guttural laughter from out in the alley way. And as I finished a book written in the blood and bound in the flesh of umpteen tortured souls, I stood and shouted out to the filthy window:

“Ia! Ia! Shub-Niggurath! The Black Goat of the woods with A Thousand Young! N’gai, N’gai phehaux n’gar n’ Cthulhu au R’yleah”

The horrible shapes danced even more fervently, and I fancied I could see tentacles and unspeakable beaks and proboscises in those unearthly shapes. And then I heard the same thick, guttural laughter coming from behind me.

From my ever-compliant host, carrying a new pile of books for me to peruse.

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“The twentieth century was a phallacy, and now we have castrated it” - slogan 44 of the Clean Zone, a nation rooted simultaneously in hysteria and blunt truth and where, officially, no one gets rooted at all.

Penetration is blasphemy, and naturally punishable by slow, torturous death, always preceded and followed by pack rape. Slogan 55a of the Clean Zone : “If penetration is what they want, we’ll give ‘em penetration”.

The pack rape was originally performed by womyn with various dildos. But as a dildo is an illegal object, this was seen to be hypocritical by the Womyns Council (possession of a dildo is punishable by ten years incarceration, dildo trafficking is punishable by death). So a small amount of “males” were allowed to develop for this purpose. Obviously, these were the most defective of the young boys, or in some cases the most badly behaved. These “males” are freaks in the Clean Zone, a bad memory from an evil past. Debate still rages about whether they should exist at all, even for this obviously necessary function, although debate is considered treasonous in the Clean Zone and does not exist.

Treason is punishable by exile. The exiled traitor has “Rape Me” tattooed on her forehead before leaving the Clean Zone forever. Slogan 9 - “If you don’t like it, lump it”.

“Sisters do not fight amongst themselves” - slogan 109c. The Clean Zone has a zero crime rate, but word around the Womyns Council is that something will have to be done about the overcrowded prisons soon. I didn’t tell you that, though. Slogan 16 - “What you don’t know doesn’t exist”.

The last male in the Clean Zone was eradicated nearly sixty years ago, and violence eliminated along with him. Violent acts are punishable by stonings which are held in the city square every Saturday. For the more extreme violent crimes, criminals are burnt at the stake. These burnings are gala occasions in the Clean Zone with dildo traffickers talking up business through the crowds, swinging dykes propositioning anyone who’ll take them and eunuch whores selling themselves at bargain prices.

Prostitution, homosexuality and violence does not exist in the Clean Zone. These scourges died with the patriarchy and the male race that created them. Dykes are distributed to re-education camps in the country and never return. Prostitutes serve time in a labour camp next to the Womyns Council Building. The labour performed is classified. Slogan 321d - “We are here to know what is good for our sisters”.

Birth is controlled by genetic engineering and artificial insemination. Debate and rumour, neither of which exist, have it that some male scientists have been kept alive for research in this area. If any citizens had any traitorous thoughts when they heard these rumours, which do not exist, they may become confused as womyn are obviously intellectually superior to males. Fortunately, this does not happen, never has happened, and never will. Eighty per cent of births are female. The twenty per cent of males are born to criminals, deviants and whores. Each citizen must give birth twice and twice only. The female babies are taken directly to nurseries to be raised by experts appointed by the Womyns Council. The concept of family is an illegal idea, as it oppresses womyn. The male babies are distributed to isolation camps where they are raised and taught as much as their feeble minds can cope with about how their dead gender is intrinsically evil and must obviously be destroyed. Upon their arrival at puberty they are distributed to semen centres where they masturbate thrice daily to supply the sperm that had created them. The Womyns Council has commissioned the Department of Birth to create an artificial sperm so males will not need to be born at all. The Department is also working on a eunuch gene to try and create eunuch fetuses. Purists argue only when these goals have been achieved will the Clean Zone be truly clean. Purists are honoured, respected and loved by all. Purists are the number one victims of violent crime in the Clean Zone, particularly genital mutilation thought to be enacted by various resistance groups which do not exist. Every citizen strives to be a Purist. No one admits to being one. Once again, I must reiterate that violence does not exist in the Clean Zone. Slogan 12 - “In the Clean Zone, womyn walk the streets alone every night without fear”. Curfew is at 6pm. Curfew breakers have their left arm broken by police and are made to masturbate with their left hand afterwards at the station in front of all officers on duty.

When males turn fifteen they reach the pinnacle of their lives in the Castrassy ceremony. It is a joyous time for them, as they will now come as close to humanity as they’ll ever get. A great feast is held in their honour, and the whole class of males are ritually castrated by a high priestess of the Womyns Council. No anaesthetic is used, as the pain of the knife is considered honourable and penance for the evils of the male gender. They are now eunuch