TRICKS

If you ever need anything please don't hesitate to ask someone else first. I'm too busy acting like I'm not naïve, I've seen it all, I was here first - KC

ROUTE A

Lance was making lucky again. He was getting better and better at it. When he was a kid, it would just happen sometimes, never when he was thinking about it. Something bad would happen, then there would be a wrench, a twist, a turn, and it would be earlier, before the bad thing, and everything would turn out better.

Here he is, now, in a lap-dancing club, a pretty dark-haired girl writhing around him, in a private booth, all darkness and sex. Kinda smoky. Just a minute ago, she’d slapped him for touching her. Now his hands are on her naked thighs. He’s whispering to her, suggesting they should fuck, and she laughs, a little harshly.

She’s naked. She wasn’t earlier. Club rules stated that panties stayed ON. She’d merely raised an eyebrow at the suggestion that they should come off too, but they had. Just another little trick.

Skipping back, through reality. Just rewinding. He’s more than a little drunk, always seems to help. It’s coming real easy now. Back a little further. He can touch more than her thighs now. She’s making little noises. He’s surprised by how wet she is, then laughs to himself: no, no he’s not.

She the one that makes the move.

“I don’t ever do this,” she whispers, lips moving against his ear. “But if you like, you can come to my place, it’s just round the corner, and you can fuck me.”

She leans back in his lap, arms around his neck. He’s grinning like the cat that got the fucking cream.

“Sounds good,” he says.

She raises an eyebrow. The same expression earlier said ‘panties must stay on’.

“You still gotta pay, though,” she says, and pouts prettily. “A girl’s gotta make a living, you know?”

Lance laughs. He’s happy with that one. Sure, he could give a trick a go, but he’d learned that if he did too many in a row, if he really pushed it, it would leave him depressed and unable to do it again it for days. He was more then happy to pay.

Generally speaking, Lance was a pretty happy guy.

*

He could remember four or five times when it had happened when he was young. The very first time, he’d been walking up the path to the front door of the caravan his family was living in while his father converted an old chapel into a house. He had a ball ... a football, just a plastic thing, a Bay City Rollers branded football, and he was bouncing it up the path. Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, up the path, and then it hit the ground and stayed there, defying the Laws of Bounce (he was about ten at the time, there were Laws of Bounce back then). He stared at the ball, stuck on the ground, amazed. How could the Laws of Bounce have been so suddenly and so strangely broken? He tried to pick it up, and it was being held by something. He wondered if gravity had decided to claim the ball. Pulling harder, the ball came up in his hands, and there was the sound of air escaping. The ball had bounced onto a carelessly discarded strip of barbed wire, and was punctured. He remembered the ball deflating in his hands as he stared at the metal spike, remembered the sense of injustice, and remembered that at that moment part of the world turned.

Something had changed. He had had no sense of WHAT had shifted, but something had. He was back at the bottom of the path, bouncing the ball again, and, astonished, stopped, just held onto the ball. Carefully he’d located the strip of barbed wire and threw it over the fence. Curious but very happy, he’d carried the ball into the caravan, and thought nothing further of it.

Another time, a year or so later, he was on his BMX, just riding up and down the street. They’d moved into the converted house by then. Life was sweet. He was eleven, and full of it. Star Wars figures and Lego, those were his tools. Great realms built of earth in the garden (still un-landscaped, a paradise to young boys), where US marines mingled with cowboys and indians and fought epic battles of right and wrong, of good and evil, light and darkness.

On his BMX, practising bunny-hops, jumping over little natural ramps – a kerb here, a drain cover there. Too ambitious, he’d lost it, and somehow landed on his chin. Right on his fucking chin. He’d felt the impact crash through his jaw, pain on either side of his face, just in front of his ears. His chin cut open, blood flowing. Stumbling back to the house, down at the end of the street, past the dalmatian that grinned when being friendly, baring its teeth in a seemingly vicious snarl, but actually just saying hello. Past the house with the big goldfish pond where his cats fished when unobserved. Into their house, searching for Mum, in pain, in shock.

“Oh my god!” she yelled, as he stumbled into the lounge. He was so happy to see her so concerned, the reassurance of Mum. ‘Mum’. Safety. She would make it better. And then... Then she said it.

“Don’t get blood on my carpet!”

The concern wasn‘t for him. It was for the shagpile.

Loss overcame him. His brain couldn’t acknowledge the paradigm shift. He was aghast, in disbelief. And at that moment, part of the world turned.

Rewinding. Outside the house with the pond. Past the grinning dog. Not far enough, yet, he remembered thinking. Then he was on his bike before the wipe-out, and spun it into a tidy little skid. He spent a moment realising he had just done his little trick, all serious and forlorn. Then he grinned, happy as larry, and rode off down the street.

*

It had taken him years to be able to consciously do the trick. He still wasn’t always able to. For six years, from thirteen to nineteen, he’d tried very hard to make it happen each time the shit had hit the fan. It had always failed him. Nowadays he laughed (privately, to himself, he never mentioned his strange ability to anyone else) at how he really could have used this skill in those years, the teenage years of magnified angst and grief. But never mind – he’d gotten better at it, over time.

Now he could do it by not really thinking about it. He’d realised that he’d simply been too logical about it, too straight-forward. Concentrating, actually THINKING about doing it - on sliding back through time had never worked - but he’d figured out that if he just let a little part of his lower brain worry about it, it would handle it on its own.

He’d Googled it. Typed in “anatomy of the brain”, and after a couple of misses, found a site that mapped it all out. In one part, the amygdala, the “limbic structure involved in many brain functions, including emotion, learning and memory; part of a system that processes ‘reflexive’ emotions like fear and anxiety”, THAT was where it happened, he’d decided. Now he felt – or visualized – a tingling there, right in the base of his brain, each time he slipped back through reality to change it.

*

She’s back in her clothes (what little of them there are). There’s a little moment where the manager tells her she has to finish her shift, but the tricks are still flowing. They walk out into incongruous sunshine. It’s the middle of the afternoon. Quite what Lance is doing in a lap-dancing joint in the middle of the afternoon, even he doesn’t know.

Quickly on to busy city streets, traffic flowing. Arm-in-arm, laughing, both of them excited by what lies ahead. Lance doesn’t care if she’s looking forward to the sex, or to the money, but that’s probably because the odd tweak here and there will make it work for both of them, and man ... Oh man does Lance like to make it work for both of them. Very important to him. He’d always responded to his partner’s lust to generate his own. Feedback loop. And in more recent years, he’d endured but erased a number of less-than-lustful moments.

He asks her name.

“Trixie,” she says.

He laughs loudly, rudely, upsetting her. Skip back. Smooth flow.

Arm-in-arm walking away from the club.

“Hey,” he says, “I’m really good at guessing people’s, well, girls’ names...”

She smiles, hugs his arm. “Really? So what’s mine?”

He pauses, smiling, savouring the moment. “Hmm, let me think... Reckon it begins with a ‘T’...”

She claps her hand onto his chest. “Yes! Wow. Go on then!”

He rubs his chin. Lance is a poser, a grade-A fucking poser. He loves it. But then, so does everyone else. Especially when the guy doing the posing can rub out the fuck-ups.

“Hmm... let's see. Ah.”

“Ah?” she asks.

He nods sagely. Traffic moves quickly by as they walk.

“Yeah, I got it,” he says, still nodding. Lets the moment hang a little.

“And?” she asks, exasperated.

He stops and turns to her. Holds her shoulders in his hands. Lets the moment hang a little. She’s enjoying that, looking into each other’s eyes. Reality is working fine, no need for tweaking here.

“Hmm, yes...” he says, still playing it out. He’s a real fucking poser, that Lance. “Yes... Trixie,” he says.

Her jaw drops. Literally, jaw-dropping open mouth amazement.

“How the hell...?” she’s starting to ask, but something else has caught Lance’s eye. He looks across a busy junction. A mother is yelling to her three or four year old son as he runs from her. She’s got a pushchair with a baby in it. She’s torn between the two.

Trixie sees Lance’s frowning gaze and follows it. “Oh, wow, what a cute kid, look at his hair!”

The kid has big hair. All fuzzy, unkempt. A little grey t-shirt and light tan shorts, dark trainers. He’s grinning as he runs from Mum. It’s all a game to him. But he’s running onto the busy street. It’s a crossing, sure, but the little man is on red. The traffic is moving quickly towards him.

Someone is yelling, Lance realises. No, not just one person, but two, the kid’s Mum and Trixie. The former in terror, the latter in horror. It all slows down. It always does. Lance’s gaze shifts into the flow of vehicles headed for the kid. The kid still grins. It’s all a fucking game to him. There’s a Land Rover, moving too fast, heading for the kid. Lance freezes.

There’s no sound. Lance can’t hear anything as the Land Rover hits. The kid’s a ragdoll, now, flying up and over the bonnet, his little body just clipping the top of the windshield. He’s spinning like a dancer, but his arms are all over the place. He hits the roof, just once, then he’s out of sight and the Land Rover is skewing into a tidy skid.

The mother is screaming. Lance remains frozen, but somehow manages to hold Trixie as she folds into him, sobbing and moaning.

The briefest – the very fucking briefest – of moments, and it is all too obvious what he needs to do. So he does it.

*

“Really? So what’s mine?” asks Trixie, but this game is no longer for playing, and Lance is looking to see where he is in relation to the junction. The junction where it happened. The junction where it won’t happen again.

It’s right ahead, and he ups their pace a little.

He sees them. The kid is tugging his Mum’s skirt. She’s doing something with the baby in the pushchair. Lance looks to the right and sees the Land Rover, some way off. He walks with Trixie quickly. She’s saying something, annoyed, but he ignores her. As they draw closer to the crossing he sees the little boy make a break for it.

Lance looks over at the Land Rover again. It’s coming in fast. Not so fast he can’t make it. He breaks from Trixie without a word and runs out into the road, hitting the crossing diagonally. Damn, but he’s timed it well. There’s someone yelling, he realises. No, not one person, but two, the Mum and Trixie. He scoops the kid up into his arms and out of the path of the Land Rover. The driver sounds his horn, and speeds past. Gone. As if nothing ever happened. Because nothing had.

The kid’s Mum is practically crying as Lance hands him over. She’s thanking him, again and again. He grins, says it’s no problem, just happy to see everyone safe. She thanks him over and over. Then the little man is green, and he heads back to Trixie.

“Oh my god,” she says, hugging him. “Oh my god, you are SUCH a hero! Oh my god!”

He laughs. “Just in a day’s work, Ma’am,” he says as he moves his hands down to the curve of her buttocks.

Her eyes are flashing passion. She leans in and kisses him, very softly. She pulls back and grins.

“Well,” she says, “for doing THAT, you get to fuck me for free.”

Lance laughs again. That suits him just fine.

*

ROUTE B

There were six of them, in an almost featureless room, off-white, artificial light, just the one-piece plastic chairs and plastic-topped table they were gathered around. A pale grey speckled carpet. The plastic faux-artex ceiling dotted with spot-lights. A perfect conference room, cold and isolating. Only one person stood, a tall handsome black man with excellent posture. He wore a long blue-grey leather coat with a high collar.

General FangFong called up a screen. It growled vertically then hummed horizontally, finally showing a nodal map-fragment of the Multiverse. Running in 4d, a tiny part of the Infinite Existence was represented by a series of spheres for nodes and rods for links. Each of the many links grew slowly until they reached and formed another node, then further rods sprang from those, diverging, each a new reality, headed for yet more nodes, causing new rods to reach new nodes, and so on, forever, forever. The form was ridiculously limited, of course, but that was part of the deal with the Agency – there was only so much they could handle. Infinity was pretty big, after all.

The General pulled what appeared to be a pen from an inside pocket of his long leather coat. He gripped both ends and pulled, extending it to a length of two feet. He coughed lightly and tapped the screen.

‘And, this - gentlemen,’ he glanced over at Cassiopeia, who smiled indulgently, ‘...is why I have called you here today.’

His attention shifted to the screen. He tapped and dragged. An area expanded, rods and spheres twisting as they grew in size.

‘What we looking at, chief?’ Squang asked, frowning as he lit a cigarette with a jet and chrome zippo lighter with a four-leaf clover and the word ‘lucky’ on it. There were no ashtrays in the room.

Cassiopeia gasped. Her right hand went to her chest.

‘Holy shit,’ said Moritz. He reached for a tablet and stylus.

Bedicus lent back in his chair, his expression unreadable. He turned ever-so-slightly towards Squang, who did not respond.

Professor Simeon Trent actually said it, nervously handling his PDA, wires trailing under the table. ‘Dead Node.’

The General smiled grimly.

Squang laughed, a short humourless bark. He tapped his cigarette in mid-air, and although ash fell (his left hand shifted slightly), none landed on the floor. ‘Wonder where the fuck WE’RE headed to, then?’

The map was replaying a short fragment of existence. A crimson rod was reaching out into potentiality, stretching out some unidentified reality. It reached and formed a node, and instead of branching out into more realities, the node turned grey and became dormant.

All of them regarded it in silence.

Squang took another drag, stifling a chuckle.

*

They’d readied themselves, realising that the reality was going to be at least inhospitable, if not deadly, but they could not have prepared for the dread this place inspired.

Desolation. Emptiness. A broken sky. Ruined earth. Limitless horizon. Not even a trace of death, never mind life. Dead Node approaching.

Everyone looked different. Recognisable, but subtly warped.

The five of them stood aghast, unable to talk. Squang found he could barely even think.

It was Bedicus who recovered from the initial horror first.

‘Oh my,’ he said, fiddling with his monocle. ‘Well, this is what we’re all about, everyone. We’re here to fix it.’

Squang frowned and looked over at him. Bedicus looked away. No-one else said anything. Even seeing this place hurt. There was nothing to look at.

Time passed, but didn’t. Something was wrong with cause and effect here. Squang turned to look at Cassiopeia, and she was frowning, just on the verge of saying something, but stuck. Something moved at the edge of his vision, and he turned to look and then - the moment stretched out. Squang was staring at the horizon. He turned to look at Cassiopeia. She was just about to say something. He was looking at the horizon again. Looking at Cass again. He shook his head, blinking. He saw something reflected in the edge of his shades, turned, but there was nothing there.

Moritz shifted, broke the eternal moment, raised a hand as he looked at his chronometer. ‘Uhh... guys!’

Squang narrowed his eyes and looked east. They’d only skipped back for a few minutes before the Dead Node focused, just to observe.

‘Jesus, we’re cutting this kinda fine,’ Squang said, ‘come on you crazy kids, we better split.’

But the Dead Node was upon them. A great red and fierce light was coming in fast.

‘Fuck!’ Squang made a shape with his left hand. ‘Just fucking bail! BAIL! Get the fuck out of here!’

He stepped to the left and was gone.

*

The Prof checked out some local realities, but every one of them was slick as fear-induced sweat. He just had to go for it, had to get out. So he took Squang at his word, and bailed.

Morphing, sliding, shifting down and left and back. Looking for an easy way through. Then smoke, and noise.

He’s on a horse, riding hard. Galloping through a mess of cavalry, the confusion of the battlefield. Screams of the dying, man and beast. Blood and sweat and fear. A cannon blast, earth erupting to his left. His mount, snorting in terror. Uniforms, swords, gunnes. The damp leather of the hilt of his sabre, the weight of its metal. A slowly settling sense of fighting within a war within a nation. Civil, but not exactly polite.

‘Oh fuck,’ the Prof thought, just before the reality took him completely and he turned into Corporal Simon Gilmartin of the 5^th Brigade. ‘I didn’t want to fucking do that.’

*

Moritz chuckled. For some reason he always laughed when disaster loomed. He pressed a button in his head and solemnly regarded some math. Almost immediately, singularity was gone and he was studying walls of raw code. He produced a light stylus in his left hand and started sketching formulae, muttering in ones and zeroes. The abstract architecture started to unfold before him into a glorious miniature temple of light. His pulse raced. He was loving it. He grew excited, grabbed the corner of an equation, and fell apart.

Moritz wormed into the geometry, and was gone.

*

Cassiopeia looked over her shoulder at the fast approaching Dead Node. She took out her dragon, Cerulean, and murmured to him. He purred and growled. She leapt on his back, and asked him without speaking to get her the fuck out of there.

Cerulean made a sound like stone scraping against stone, and Cass giggled, recognising the dragon’s laugh.

And then he was off, fast as electricity, racing away from the oncoming void wave.

Cass laughed out loud. The uncanny reptile beneath her – between her – was vibrating hard.

‘Mmm,’ she said, enjoying the sensation. She lent forward and held her dragon’s scales. ‘Take me all the way home, sweetie,’ she whispered. All kinds of thoughts were going through her head.

Cerulean purred again.

Cass made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a moan, and slowly fell asleep as mighty wings beat steadily below her.

*

Squang was shifting like a mad fucker. Realities poured and flowed around him. He was checking on his comrades, and knew something was wrong. He could see Moritz, made of light and numbers, he was fine. Cass seemed to be on the verge of coming, which meant she was cool. He knew Bedi would be just dandy, but the Prof had fallen through the gaps.

Squang swore. He stopped the flow around him, grabbed six dimensions at once and yanked them, hard. He strained and turned towards the Unified Realm, hoping to fuck he wouldn’t meet an Angel.

Squang grimaced as he got closer to God. He knew he was really pushing it, but Simeon was his friend. With his right hand he turned the key to the Null Station. He thrust his left hand out, tearing into the existence stream, through velvet/moleskin, and smelt smoke and blood. He heard the noise of warfare, but could see nothing of the reality he’d penetrated.

He fumbled in mid-air, closed his eyes and grabbed, felt himself catch fabric, miss. In a confusion of light he grabbed again, and caught hold. With desperate strength, he yanked who he had by the collar out of their reality and onto the Null Station.

*

Bedicus grinned. He stood and watched, so happy, as Squang took a step to the left and was gone; as the Professor morphed and slid; as Moritz stepped through vivid math; as Cassiopeia summoned her dragon and flew away...

He turned to regard the oncoming Heat Death, and smiled. He was ready.

*

Squang gasped and opened his eyes. Simeon was on the floor next to him, dry-retching. He crouched and put his hand on Simeon’s shoulder.

‘Whiskey,’ Simeon groaned, and Squang wondered if he was demanding alcohol, and wished he had some on the Station. ‘Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.’

Squang’s shoulders started shaking. He hugged Simeon hard and laughed. Simeon was shivering, hugging back. Holding on to Squang as if he were the mast in the storm.

‘What the fuck, eh mate? What the fuck. It’s alright, fella,’ Squang said through the laughter. ‘It’s alright mate. Squang’s got ya.’

They held each other for several moments, then Squang froze. He looked up to the right, unfocussed his vision, and saw Bedicus.

*

Bedicus braced himself. The Void Wave was riding down from the east, from the sky. The rupture was beautiful, full-on red light and violent shadow. He threw back his head and laughed, then steadied himself. He’d have to time this just so.

He roared as it took him. The death of the node tore his clothes off, stripped away his skin, melted his eyes out of their sockets. His monocle welded to his left cheekbone. He almost panicked when he lost his sight, then regained his resolve. His flesh burned, and fell away. His organs withered in the unreal heat, but he held on to his brain for as long as he could. He just needed the moment, the one tiny little fraction of time, the answer.

There it was. A busy junction. A kid with crazy hair. A man who could play tricks with reality.

Bedicus screamed in agony. He wanted to yell out Squang’s name, but he collapsed into ash and there was nothing to yell it with.

*

Squang was soaring away from the station. He usually hated flying like superman, but this was no time to worry about clichés. He punched through realities, layering his own composite paradigm. He flipped and squirmed, paused. There. Right fucking there.

He grunted and forced his hands into the stream of colour, reached past the metaphor and grabbed a mess of charred bones and black liquid. He cried out, palms burnt to fuck. No time to care, no time to spare. Still clutching his prize, he fell.

Squang started singing, a song he had learned in India, long ago. He let himself fall through the Multiverse, slamming into realities, causing absolute mayhem in too many ways. But he didn’t care. This was Bedicus. He wasn’t going to stop. Not for anything.

He continued to sing, the notes high-pitched, the sound guttural, almost inhuman. Almost.

As more and more realms flowed past him, he sang more. The song grew desperate. Squang hurt. He hurt bad. He felt something snap in his back. He had to carry on.

The mess in his hands moved.

Something hit him, very hard, took him near his left eye. His shades were forced into his left brow, cutting him. They didn’t break, but he could feel blood seeping into his eye. He glimpsed the reality he’d hit – a dark place, full of smoke and music, then it was gone. He kept falling.

The mess in his hands started to writhe.

Something grabbed him by the right foot. He struggled to flick it off, but it held him fast. He blinked, trying to clear blood from his eyes, and looked down, past the smear of light and colour and sound and mass, and saw an Angel holding him by the ankle.

The Angel smiled, coolly, as ever.

‘Need some help?’ it asked.

‘Fuck off,’ Squang said. ‘I know the deal with you cunts.’

The Angel laughed.

‘And I know you, Shifter. I’ll do this one without retribution.’

‘Yeah. Right. Ha ha fucking ha.’

The Angel grinned, a fearsome sight. ‘No, Shifter, I will do this for you. You are kind of cute, you know.’

The mess in Squang’s hands got bigger.

Squang snarled, and met the Angel’s placid gaze.

‘If you help me bring him back,’ Squang said between gritted teeth, ‘if you help me, I’ll give you one.’

The Angel laughed.

‘No, Shifter. No, you won’t. I’ll TAKE one from you.’

Squang scowled. He hurt like hell. ‘Whatever. Make it quick, bible-basher, ‘cause I’m FUCKED.’

The Angel laughed again, relaxed its grip. It reached under its wing and produced a business card, then carefully tucked it into Squang’s back pocket, smoothly stroking his buttock as it withdrew. ‘Sing again, Shifter,’ it said.

And Squang sang. As hard as he could.

And Bedicus came back to life.

ROUTE A

By the time he’s left Trixie’s, tired but happy, the sky is dark overhead, and the city is awash in light and colour. Lance is in his element here, still a little drunk (whiskey at Trixie’s place), comfortable on the busy streets. He’s heading back to his house, via the centre of town, half of him considering seeking out more action, more company, maybe another girl (or two) – and half ready to hit the couch, sponge out in from of a DVD, maybe smoke a little dope.

Lance spots a newsagents, pops in and buys a can of Red Bull (Light) and two packs of Golds (even though he has a half-full pack in his inside pocket). Outside the shop, he pops the can and takes a swig as he walks.

At a busy junction he heads for the subway, dirty cream tiles and grimy fluorescent light. A homeless guy in a stained green sleeping bag pocked with cigarette burns weakly asks for spare change, but Lance walks on by without acknowledging him. He gets four steps and guilt snags him, so he turns back, fishing in his pocket for one of the unopened packs of cigarettes, tosses them to the guy and grins.

“Don’t smoke ‘em all at once!” he says.

The homeless guy grins in response. “Cheers, mate!” he calls after Lance who continues on down the grubby corridor of the subway.

Lance is pleased with himself for not just handing over cash, then a tiny logic-worm wriggles in his head and he realises that giving the homeless guy cigarettes as opposed to actual-filthy-cash is really no great thing. Then he looks up as a pretty girl with short dark hair enters the corridor from the ramp at the far end, and forgets all about it.

The woman is tall and slim, dressed all in black. Lance is immediately drawn to her. She’s gorgeous. Black boots, tight black jeans, a long black leather coat. She’s wearing shades. Lance is considering some cheesy line as he approaches her.

She’s seen him, smiles coolly, and Lance raises an eyebrow, smiling in return. Then she’s reaching inside her coat. Still smiling, she pulls out a gun, some kind of heavy pistol, and Lance’s face drops and he feels everything slow down. It always does.

She keeps smiling as her arm moves in a steady arc towards him. Lance freezes, watching, then blinks and rolls the trick out and he’s shifting backwards through time.

“Cheers, mate!” the homeless guy calls after him. Lance stumbles, almost twists his ankle. Everything slows down. Again. He’s shifted back, but something is out of place – the girl with the gun is already in the corridor, already reaching inside her coat, and she’s not smiling now.

Lance panics, plays another trick, hard and fast.

Everything. Slows. Down. The carton of cigarettes is just leaving his hand, turning in the air, moving towards the opening palms of the homeless guy. Lance turns slowly to the right, and the girl is there, closer than before, teeth bared now, gun already out, moving in slow-motion towards him.

He shifts again, desperate, as hard as he dare, and Lance turns to the right, and she’s stood directly in front of him. She’s almost exactly the same height as him, a little taller in her boots. He can see his reflection in her shades. Shit, but he doesn’t look good. She snarls and prods him hard in the chest with her gun.

“Time - ” she says, and there’s a flash of movement to his left, her right. The homeless guy is on his feet, driving a flick-knife hard into the woman’s back.

She yells, sounding more angry than afraid, and falls to Lance’s right, blue light flickering around her as she heads for the tiles... and is gone.

*

“I’m John,” the homeless guy says, grinning and offering a dirty hand. John’s wearing a thick woolly jumper that may once have been white, filthy blue jeans and a chunky woollen hat that some people might have generously described as ‘brown’. He examines his knife, frowns. Lance sees that there is no blood on it. John shrugs and tucks it away.

Lance feels sick and leans against the wall. He retches, but nothing comes up. No posing for the Lance-meister now.

“Ooh, mate, not good,” John says and puts a hand on Lance’s back.

Lance shorts and sniffs, gulps and gasps, straightens. “What the fuck happened there?”

John frowns then laughs. “You don’t know?”

Lance swallows hard. Adrenaline is fading in his system, leaving him shivering. He gulps air, shaking his head.

“Some bitch just tried to shoot me,” he complains, and realises he’s whining. He clears his throat and starts again. “Why – why the fuck – did some bitch just try to shoot me?”

John raises his eyebrows and backs off a step or two. “Mate. She was Control. And you were flickering around like some kind of fucking genius, you know?”

Lance breathes deeply. He’s confused. He considers driving himself back as far as he ever has, trying to push it more than he ever has... but he’s drenched in sweat, knows he’s exhausted, and couldn’t fix an instant, let alone minutes. He feels a sudden stab of pain just above his left eyebrow, but even as he’s reaching his hand to it, it fades.

“What?” he asks. “What do you mean?”

John narrows his eyes. Sums up Lance as he pants and trembles, then sighs, and relaxes. “Mate, sit down.”

Lance puts his back to the wall as John helps him. He feels like he’s about to burst into tears. There are people passing by, but they’re oblivious. John sits next to him, actually pulls the dirty sleeping bag over both their legs. Lance grips it feebly, still shaking. Passers-by just ignore the two wretched humans, the two hopeless homeless. Part of Lance wonders if someone would give him cigarettes, if he asked.

John gives it a while, then turns to Lance and looks him in the eye.

“Listen, pal,” he says, and Lance tries to place his accent. It sounds London, but might have some Midlands in it, too. John sighs. “She was Control. I don’t know all that much about it, I’m not exactly a ‘talent’, or anything, but I do see it a little bit, I can tell when reality-bending fuckers are trying their luck.”

Lance freezes again. He’s never told anyone about his talent. No-one has ever hinted to him that his talent could even exist.

John looks him over again. Takes out one of the cigarettes Lance gave him earlier. “Uhh... Have you got a light?”

Lance nods, and passes over a jet-and-chrome zippo with a four-leaf clover and the word ‘lucky’ on it.

John lights his cigarette, takes a drag, puts his head back against the wall. “You just do it, don’t it? You haven’t got a fucking clue, have you?”

Lance actually sobs, softly. His eyes are wet. Tears are near. He looks at John and shakes his head. “I don’t know how it works.”

John draws again on his Gold, exhales luxuriously. He shakes his head, too. “Mate, I don’t know anything about it, either.” He turns back to Lance. “But. But! I... Heh. I do know a man who does.”

*

John produces a half-bottle of JD from somewhere, and takes a healthy swig. He passes it to Lance, who accepts it gratefully. They’re walking through streets Lance doesn’t know. John was taking him to the man.

“I don’t know much, Lance,” John says. “But I do know there’s a war. There are sides, fighting over it, fighting over reality.”

“Reality?” Lance asks.

John shrugs. “People like you, Lance. People who can twist it, somehow. I think I can do it, just a little bit.” He looks at Lance intently. “But not like you.”

Lance shrugs in turn, takes another drink, passes the bottle back. John takes a few more steps, drinking as Lance stops, and he turns as he’s swigging and looks back expectantly.

Lance is frowning, more than a little drunk, but at least the drink has stopped him being scared. “Who the fuck are these people?”

John wipes his mouth and passes the bottle back to Lance.

He shakes his head. “I only know that there are Control people, and a bunch of people called The En-Ohs.”

“The what?” Lance drinks.

“The ‘N’ - ‘O’s. I don’t what it stands for, but they’re people like me.” John laughs, reaches to take the bottle back off Lance. He swigs again, waves his hand dismissively, offers the bottle.

Lance is starting to realise that John stinks. He accepts the bottle, drinks again, and also realises he doesn’t care.

John continues. “People like me. The fucked, the broken, the hurt, the damaged,” he takes another swig, and laughs bitterly, “the whole bunch of ‘useless cunts’ who’ve fallen away from the rest of the world.” He laughs again, less bitterly this time. “The underground. The foundation, man, below it all, holding the rest of the fuckers up! We’re the invisibles! No-one sees us, but we’re still there. We’re the hardcore everything is built upon, and no-one knows we are here.”

Lance sways slightly, frowning. “That’s not strictly fair, John.”

John regards him intently, and for a moment Lance thinks he’s fucked it up, but then John laughs and offers him the bottle. “Don’t go all ‘guardianista’ on my ass, motherfucker.” John mock warns, and brandishes an accusatory finger, then adds “or I’ll have to get all ‘homeless’ on your ass.”

Lance has just drunk, and almost snorts it through his nose. He manages to swallow, and then he and John are laughing, as oblivious to the city around them as it is to them.

“Aw, man,” John finally says. “Uh! Eh, come on, he’s just up here.”

*

He speaks with a Northern Irish accent. Lance knows just about enough to suggest the guy is from Derry, but decides against mentioning it, in case he’s wrong.

“The ‘N’-’O’s? Heh! The fucking ‘Me-Men’?” The unwashed man before him laughs again and takes the offered bottle. “A bunch of fecking would-be Control Cunts, wallowing in their own fecking filth, and reckoning the whole of infinity owes them something.” He drinks, foul lips pursing around the neck of the bottle, then pauses and looks up, hopefully. “You... you wouldn’t happen to have a smoke on ya, would ye?” He grins, black teeth yearning from blacker gums. And drinks again.

Lance tries not to breathe in through his nose. He’d thought that John stank – this guy was much worse. The smell was inhuman, on the verge of intolerable. Shit times ten. Lance was starting to realise that his own world was cut off from much of reality. “Sure,” he says, and takes a pack of Golds from a pocket. “Here.” He offers the man a single protruding cigarette.

“God bless ya, Jesus bless you,” the filthy homeless man takes the cigarette. He looks up with surprisingly bright eyes. Lance offers him a light, and he accepts.

He drags long and low. Exhales, holds Lance’s slightly drunken but still focussed gaze. “So. Why the feck does ‘city boy’ want to know about The Fugue, eh?”

Lance is confused. The what? He tries to rewind, fails. He tries again – nothing. He gives up trying to pretend he has any control. “I need to know. Need to know something. The – Control people are trying to kill me, and I don’t know why.” Lance shrugs. It’s becoming a familiar motion.

The unnamed man laughs again, a fox-like bark. “You’d best stay the feck outta all this shit, young man, with your dandy clothes and London accent.” The Irishman stopped, frowned, then sighed. Lance felt the guy’s resignation and tensed his shoulders. The Irishman looked over Lance’s right shoulder, then fox-barked again. “Funny feckers, anyways, always in their black leather and ‘PeeVeeCee’. And can any of them feckers see right in those sunglasses in the fecking dark, eh?” The man smiles and nods. Not at Lance.

Lance senses someone near him, behind him, to his right. Can feel their warmth, or simply that they are there.

The Irishman smiles. He takes another drag, drinks a little more. He offers the bottle to Lance, who takes it carefully. “Ya might be needing that, mate.”

Lance holds the bottle very hard. There’s not much left in it. Part of him is hoping it’s John behind him, but he knows he’s wrong. He reaches for the rewind, but there’s no juice left. He’s alone.

“Mind if I finish this?” the Irishman asks as he indicates his cigarette, and a shot is fired, very close to Lance’s right ear.

He flinches away, dropping to his knees, his left hand going to the ground, then rises unsteadily to look at the Irishman. His cigarette still burns, a good few drags left in it, on the ground, rolling in a gentle arc, three, four, five inches from his open fingers. Dead, the bullet hole in his forehead just off-centre, a little up, and a little left.

Lance can’t put it off any longer. He slowly turns to look at his reflection in the woman’s shades.

“As. I. Was. Saying.” She puts her gun in Lance’s face and grins. No emotion in the expression.

She doesn’t look quite so pretty now.

*

ROUTE B

The re-union party on the Null Station had been going so well, but now Squang stared at the thing that shouldn’t have been there.

He felt the freeze just after he saw the clip of ammo on the worktop. Then he parsed what it actually was. A calling card. A fifteen-round clip for a SIG-Sauer P-226. The type of pistol Miu favoured. He looked up in shock.

Shades flocking in the corners of the Null Station. Movement. Green light.

Squang snarled and span, left hand curled in a claw, but hopeless, locked in the freeze, nothing shifting here.

Bedicus was on his feet, yelling. Cassiopeia was startled, but her face quickly settled into a combat frown, and she started to mutter a pistol out of nothing in to her right hand.

Arcs of blue electricity snapped out of the darkness and embraced Bedicus, lifting him off the floor. He arched in agony, the holdfields gripping him tightly. Cass was turning, but there were muzzle-flashes from the shadows and she stopped her gun forming and pushed bullets away instead. There were too many rounds to stop them all.

Moritz’ face went slack, and he separated into red, green, and blue, flowed inward and was gone.

Trent made to stand, stopped, looked around, initially in shock, but then in resignation. He looked at Squang and shrugged, mouthed, ‘what now, mate?’

Squang ignored him, running towards Cass and Bedi. It all slowed down.

It always does.

*

Bedicus writhed in the grip of the holdfields. Blood started to pour from his nostrils, ears, then his mouth. He cried blood and screamed in agony as he was crushed.

*

She must have deflected a hundred rounds, two hundred, then one got through, hitting her on the left arm, on her biceps. She didn’t stop pushing. More bullets fell from the air before her, another dozen, another fifty. Sparks flying, light strobing. Another hit, on her left shoulder. Squang ran towards her. Already too late. Another one took her in the chest, and then another, and another, and the full rain of bullets pounded into her and she fell.

*

Professor Simeon Trent held his hands up and shook his head as a figure stepped from the shadows, pointed a pistol in his face, and fired point-blank.

*

Squang knew it was all his fault. And he was furious.

*

He wasn’t screaming. Whatever he was doing was beyond that, an uncanny battle-cry, almost beyond human. Almost.

The insurgents – Control Shock Troops – tried to scatter and run before him. Squang might not have been able to get off the Station – someone might have frozen the local - but he could still shift on a scale tight enough to render their sub-machine-guns useless as he neared them. He shifted without subtlety. Bullets ricocheted off him, but not off his clothes, which were torn to rags. His shades jumped, right lens shot out, then settled back on his nose. Squang had seen where the bullet had come from, and glared through the empty frame at the firer, leapt forward and reached out with both hands, held the sides of the man’s head and twisted. The soldier collapsed, his head only attached to his body by skin and sinew, spine severed.

Squang moved on, Control ST’s screaming in his wake. He reached past night-vision goggles and gouged eyes, reached under collars and tore out larynges. He smashed ribs and broke limbs. Plunged his fist into faces and pulled out teeth. Moved through the ST’s without coherent thought. Covered in gore and splinters of human bone, clothes shot to ribbons, he still yelled his unnatural battle-cry. Carnage incarnate.

And then Miu stepped in front of him, holding someone by the back of the neck with her left hand, her right pushing the muzzle of her SIG P-226 against her captive’s skull.

Squang fell silent. Stopped. Breathed deeply through flared nostrils. For a long moment, his sorcerous battle-cry echoed around the Station, then faded.

Miu smiled coldly. ‘Hi Squang,’ she said brightly. ‘Long time no see. Got a minute?’ She cocked her head to one side and grinned prettily. ‘I’d like you to meet my new best buddy, Lance.’

Squang frowned as Lance looked up at him, his face an almost exact copy of his own.

*

TWO ROUTES CONVERGE

Lance shook with exhaustion and fear. He couldn’t help but watch as the woman in the black leather coat and shades pistol-whipped the guy covered in blood and gore, again. And again.

Lance spat blood onto the rusted metal floor. He knew just how the other guy felt. The woman had already hit him with her gun at least four times that he could remember.

He tried to rewind, but still nothing happened. He wanted to cry, but couldn’t even find the strength for that.

The woman apparently called ‘Mew’ seemed to grow bored of beating the guy apparently called ‘Squang’. He was barely responding, anyway, hardly making a sound as she hit him, just breathing heavily and occasionally spitting blood. She sighed and twisted her lips in childlike annoyance. Removed her coat and carefully set it aside.

Since he’d been taken – god only knew HOW – to this, this... this 80’s Sci-Fi movie set of a place, things had gone from seriously fucked-up to utterly unreal. Lance wondered if he was going mad. If he’d GONE mad.

After shooting the Irishman, Mew had taken him by the scruff of the neck, forced him to the ground, and hit him. Repeatedly. He’d gotten angry at first, but faced with the muzzle of a pistol, he’d soon cowed. What the fuck could he do? She’d been talking the whole time, but he couldn’t remember exactly what she’d said. Some crazy shit about killing reality. Realities. Crazy, fucked-up shit. About how he needed to be taken care of. Eliminated – stretching out the word as she said it. Eventually – perhaps as bored of beating him as she seemed to have grown of beating Squang – she’d reached in her coat for a mobile phone, made a call and confirmed something. She’d hauled him to his feet, pushed him towards a wall, and then there’d been a feeling similar to but not exactly like when he rewound. After that, a sense of utter dislocation, of being NOWHERE, and then they were here, on the Doctor Who Fights the Fucking Daleks or Maybe the Cybermen AGAIN bollocks crap fucked-up film set.

They’d arrived here and as his senses settled, he’d heard this sound like a pride of lions roaring in unison, which faded as his vision cleared and he saw the guy covered in blood. Saw the place covered with dead and dying Sci-Fi soldiers. After that, mayhem as more of the fuckers crawled out of the walls. Both he and Squang had been forced to their knees, hands bound behind them with plastic ties. And then Squang had endured the same punishment as Lance had earlier.

Squang was spitting blood again, just as Lance did the same. Their eyes locked. Lance was starting to realise there was something very familiar about Squang, but couldn’t quite place it.

Squang controlled his breathing as best he could. He hurt like hell, but shifting was out of the question. Miu had had his hands tied just so and he was effectively helpless. He stared at Lance – at his own face – and wondered just how much the fucker knew.

Miu cleared her throat, and he looked up at her. She smiled.

‘That’s the problem with you ‘part-timers’,’ Miu said as she prowled the Station, her eyes never leaving Squang’s. She slowly brought her P-226 up to her face, frowned slightly and licked a little blood off it. ‘You’re just... too sentimental. About your ‘friends’.’ She lowered her gun, slowly shifting it to aim at one of the Control ST’s. Squang saw the man glance momentarily towards her, then snap back to eyes front. Miu sneered. ‘You have to realise,’ she said, and emptied the reminder of her clip into the ST, fourteen rounds very quickly fired, moving towards the soldier as she did so, grimacing at him as he collapsed under the onslaught of lead. She turned back to Squang with a sweet smile. ‘That everyone is dispensable.’

Everyone but Miu tensed. Squang waited a beat, then spat blood again. He barked a hollow laugh.

‘Still fucking psychotic dear, I see,’ he said. He shifted his weight slightly, tried to move his hands again. No go.

Miu giggled. ‘They’re only templates, silly.’ She tutted. ‘Squang, Squang, Squang.’ She walked over to him as she held her pistol with both hands, ejected the clip and smoothly slotted a fresh one into the butt. She leant over to whisper in his ear. ‘You always were such a one with the compliments. And here’s one back at ya.’

Squang tensed as Miu raised her pistol, but she stopped as a lightdoor rezzed up just a few feet away from her, and a tall figure strode through.

Lance had given up. Mew had just shot one of her own men, for fuck sake. He was going to die, for sure. She was going to kill him. REWIND, REWIND, REWIND, he prayed, but nothing came. He was almost frantic – he felt up to playing a trick, but it just wasn’t working. Was he trying too hard? No. Something else was stopping him. This place. Something was wrong here.

At least Mew seemed intent on doing more harm to Squang than to him, now. He watched as she raised her hand, and then to her right a spot of white light appeared in the air. It grew into a horizontal line about three feet long, then dropped to the floor, forming a bright door-shaped rectangle. Lance squinted as the silhouette of a tall man appeared in it and stepped through. The light collapsed behind him.

General FangFong paused to take in the Station, upper lip curled, his hands clasped behind his back. The General was still wearing his high-collared floor-length blue-grey leather coat. He regarded the massacre, reviewed the assembled ranks of ST’s, frowned slightly at the gap in the line where the corpse with bullet-holes in it lay. He ran his right hand smoothly over his bald crown, then re-clasped his hands as before, and sighed.

FangFong turned to Miu. ‘Special Agent Miu,’ he said.

Miu had stood to attention the moment FangFong had appeared. She all but saluted, now.

FangFong looked down. ‘Agent Squang.’ The General forced a smile.

Squang’s eyes flickered from the General to Miu and back again. ‘Alright, General. ‘Ow’s it goin’?’

The General’s smile grew more forced. His nostrils flared as he breathed in through his nose and turned to regard Lance, and took a step toward him.

Lance tried to hold his posture under the General’s gaze. He trembled.

‘So.’ The General turned back to Squang. ‘One of yours, Agent?’

Squang grinned, tried his restraints again. The plastic cut into his wrists. He sighed. ‘A version of me, I suppose.’

Lance narrowed his eyes at Squang. “Fucking hell,” he said.

DESTINATION, NO, WAIT: STOP-OFF

Squang looked at his iterative else and smiled. ‘Alright, mate?’

Lance licked his lips. ‘You’re me, aren’t you?’ He felt something like confidence come back to him, despite his bonds.

Squang grinned, and shook his head. ‘No. Not really.’

Miu sighed, exasperated. ‘Oh. Please.’

The General cleared his throat. ‘Before this turns into some kind of party, can we deal with the actual matter at hand?’

Squang chuckled. He tried his hands again. Something gave. He could move the little finger on his left hand. Just. He tried to shrug, as best he could. ‘I’m all ears, guv’,’ he said cheerfully.

The General scowled. He walked to Squang and leant towards him. ‘Just. Tell me. One thing. Just one thing, Squang. Is he anything to do with you?’

Squang paused, then hawked up a ball of phlegm and blood, and spat it on the floor. He looked up at the General. ‘He’s a fucking iteration, man. Are you gonna fucking blame me for infinity, next?’

‘Answer the question, Squang,’ the General said.

Squang bared his teeth. ‘I’m Control.’

The General smiled humourlessly. ‘Well. Therein lies the rub. Are you Control, Agent Squang? Or are you Horned Eye?’

Squang pursed his lips and scowled. ‘For fuck sake, General. Will you just leave that the fuck alone?’

The General straightened. ‘I will,’ he said. ‘If you prove it.’ He looked at Lance. ‘Finish it.’ The General put his hand out towards Miu. She hesitated then handed over her gun. The General turned and proffered it to Squang.

Squang hang his head, breathing hard. He could feel everyone looking at him – everyone who fucking mattered, anyway – and he sighed and looked back up. Smiled horribly.

‘Anyone here got a phone?’ he asked. No-one responded. The General’s eyes narrowed, but Squang moved the little finger on his left hand, just a fraction. ‘Hey, look. I’ve got an idea.’

DIVERSION!

Still on the floor, but now sat rather than kneeling, Squang spent a long moment massaging the feeling back into his hands.

‘Don’t worry, General’ Miu said, fondling her gun, evidently glad to have it back. ‘We’re locked down here.’

The General did not look convinced. ‘Hmm. Whatever. Squang?’

Squang raised an eyebrow and took the offered phone. He took a business card out of his back pocket, looked at it, snorted, then dialled 555-HEAVEN. He raised the phone to his ear. Waited.

Lance looked on, bewildered.

Squang got connected. ‘Ah, Peter? Yeah, hi mate, it’s Squang.’ Paused. Laughed. ‘Heh! Yeah, I remember. Anyway, Pete, mate, we’ll hook up soon, but this is real urgent, seriously.’ Paused. Made a face. ‘Yeah. Sorry. We will.’ Squang made an apologetic gesture to no-one in particular. ‘Anyway, thing is, I need to be put through to Belial.’ He paused again. Frowned, then looked exasperated. He gestured as he talked. ‘Pete. Mate. Seriously. Yeah. Yeah, I know. Just put me through, please. Okay. Okay. I’ll hold.’ Squang fell silent as he lent on the floor with one hand, kept the phone held to his ear with the other. He looked up at Miu, winked.

She looked scared.

Squang looked back into blankness as he concentrated on the call and chuckled lightly.

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Mate. Yeah. Well, you knew the call was coming. Here it is. Reckon I got you a deal.’

NO TURNING BACK... OR MAYBE THERE IS. IN. FIN. ITY. WHO KNOWS?

Lance felt his wrists, rubbed the cuts where the plastic had dug into him. ‘What now?’ he asked.

Squang had showered and was rummaging through a wardrobe, pulling out identical clothes to the ones he had been wearing earlier.

Lance looked at him. They weren’t exactly the same. But they could have been twins. Almost.

The Control Shock Troops were spread around the Station, helping themselves to protein and energy drinks from the fridges, laughing, chatting, chilling.

The General sat at a control console, scowling, idly fingering the self-consciously antique buttons and dials with a slight air of disgust.

Miu sulked furiously in an armchair.

Squang sat down opposite her, and laughed as he pulled on a new top, opened a drawer in the cabinet between them and replaced his ruined blue shades with new ones. He raised his left eyebrow at her and grinned. ‘Ahem,’ he said, but she only pouted harder.

Squang turned to Lance. ‘Now, Mister Lance, sir... now, we wait for an Angel.’

Lance squinted, then laughed. His laugh was exactly like Squang’s. He shrugged. ‘Okay...!’

Squang got up and went to sit next to Lance on a chrome-framed and black-fabric couch. ‘Mate,’ he offered, gesturing towards the ST's. ‘Help yourself to the shit drinks the Station generates. Sorry there’s no booze.’

Lance laughed. ‘No worries.’ He went to get a drink and was intercepted by an ST who, smiling, offered him an unopened can. He took it, thanked the soldier and re-joined Squang and Miu, the former regarding the latter with amusement, the latter unimpressed.

‘So when’s this ‘Angel’ arriving?’ he asked.

Squang narrowed his eyes, looked at a point in a corner of the Null Station and then back at Lance. The two of them regarded each other for a long moment. ‘You might not like this, Lance.’

Lance sighed, and looked away. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m guessing that whatever’s on offer is better than being shot by Mew.’

They both looked at her. She was turning sulking into an art-form.

Squang laughed, long and loud. ‘Her name is Miu, Lance. Em-Eye-Yew. Miu.’

‘Oh. Shit.’ Lance laughed again. ‘Okay. Got it.’

Miu scowled at him. ‘Make sure you’ve fucking got it, Lance.’

Lance touched a tender part of his jaw. Winced. ‘Yeah. I got it, Miu. Promise you that.’

Miu shook her head, sneered. ‘Yeah. What. Ever!’ She crossed her arms, then smiled. Slyly. She looked at Squang, who smiled back.

Lance started to feel the need to address her earlier sadism, then lost the will as he remembered the way it worked here. She was a player, for sure. She knew the rules. He was still on the verge of calling her on it, though.

And then an Angel appeared.

Lance felt his new-found confidence drain from him. Felt himself fill with something else. Something like awe.

The Angel nodded at Squang, then bowed to everyone. It turned back to Squang, wings beating mightily. ‘A deal, Shifter?’

Squang sighed and turned to Lance, took his chin in his right hand. ‘Ready?’ he asked.

‘Shit.’ Lance’s shoulders slumped. ‘ I guess.’

THE ACTUAL DESTINATION

Even the General shied away as Belial soared without moving, sang without a voice, shone without light, and opened the Multiverse. Via the Unified Realm. Via the Godhead. Via Heaven.

Things like lightdoors (but not like them) opened up all over the Null Station. Somewhere, Miu screamed, more afraid than angry.

Figures appeared in the doors, almost all the same build, almost all the same height.

Squang turned to Lance, and smiled.

Lance was terrified. ‘What do I do?’

Squang looked down sadly. ‘It’s all open, Lance. Do your thing.’ Squang breathed out, hard. ‘All the way back, Lance. All the way.’

Belial had turned to Miu. She stood, calm now.

Lance looked at her and she smiled at him, then nodded towards Squang. Lance looked at his iterative else for a long moment then took a deep breath, felt his mind empty, and played the trick. The figures, all of them him, all of them Squang, stepped onto the Station as one.

DEPARTURE/ARRIVAL

A ten-year old boy. Walking up the path to the front door of the caravan his family was living in while his father converted an old chapel into a house. He has a ball ... a football, just a plastic thing, a Bay City Rollers branded football, and he is bouncing it up the path. Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, up the path... and he looks up as it’s caught by a woman wearing dark sunglasses. He stops.

‘Hey,’ she says cheerfully, and offers him the ball back. ‘You need to be careful with that!’

He accepts the ball, a little afraid. He looks at her long black coat. He watches her. Mesmerized by her.

She smiles and turns, bending down to pick up a piece of discarded barbed-wire from the ground that had been hidden in the grass. She shows it to him. ‘You could have burst your ball!’ She throws it over the fence.

He’s still uncertain. Something is strange, here.

Something big passes overhead, something with wings. They both look up but it’s already gone.

The woman crouches, smiles, holds his hands around the ball. ‘It’s okay,’ she says, and smiles again. ‘Go play!’

He believes her. He’s happy. Says ‘thank you!’, and she moves past him as she smiles a final time and walks away.

He’s happy. He takes his ball inside. He almost never thinks of her again.

END