Everything that's in my head

Foreward

2010-09-30T22:19:00.000+01:00

JERICHO

anthony heptinstall

To Phoebe and Mum
Not forgetting
Dr Carson

Then the Lord said to Joshua
'See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands along with its king and its fighting men. March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days, make seven priests carry trumpets of rams' horns in front of the Ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times with the priests blowing the trumpets. When you hear them sound a long blast make all the people give a loud shout, then the wall of the city will collapse........
When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout,the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in and they took the city. They devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed everything in it-men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.

The Book of Joshua

Chapter One

2010-09-29T22:23:00.000+01:00

Chapter 1

Adam had been crying now for a staggering three hours and thirty seven minutes and if truth be known, he was getting really sick of it.

Crying for this long had been an exhausting experience. He was under the illusion that after a while the tears would subside and he would have ‘got it off his chest’. But as he hit the three hour mark he realised that the condition was chronic and felt he would be crying for the rest of his life or at least that’s how it felt. He would have to go to work crying, catch buses crying, search for change in his pocket crying,
Funerals would be OK though, as no one would notice but other than that, it was just tears, tears and more tears
And they just kept coming, running down his face in a seemingly unstoppable fountain of misery and despair not forgetting the uncontrollable sobs that threatened to tear his stomach in half.

On one occasion that morning he had let out a feminine shriek so loud that it had embarrassed that tiny, tearless part of his brain that was thinking at the time.

‘What if the neighbours hear this?’

All morning, since 9:00 Adam had been plunging into rooms hoping to find solace in a book or on the telly, only to emerge seconds later, unencumbered with solace and hysterical. At 10:05, he tried lying on the bed with a pillow wrapped around his head but he sobbed in to that all the same. He tried holding his breath, running on the spot, breathing deeply; all the tried and tested old wives' tales dished out to bloody kneed school boys none of which seemed to do the trick..

At 11:30 Adam was disintegrating like a blazing, ice filled comet.

That tiny part of his mind that remained dry was by 12; 00 thoroughly disgusted with all this unstoppable misery and wanted out. At sometime during the morning it had hatched a devilish plan and was now, as Adam sat sobbing in the kitchen, about to put it into action.
It chose its moment with perfection.

Adam rose slowly from his hunched position and stood by the cooker, his favourite place for thinking and mulling over things.
That tiny, dry part of his damp mind chose this moment to speak and did so with clarity and economy.

‘These tears will have to stop……………………………………………..one way or another’.

The voice was not that of Adam but a deeper, more authoritative voice that carried gravitas and a sense of command.

The tears stopped dead.

Presently, as Adam’s fingers gingerly coaxed the plastic ice cream container towards their outstretched tips, he realised that a chain of events had been initiated and he was quite taken up by the whole thing.

‘Gosh!’

Something was saying in the back of his head.

‘This is for real'.

Standing a tiptoe, he teased the thing gently over the lip of the cupboard and vainly tried to bring it down without spilling any of its contents but the multitudes of vitamins and aspirin contained within, spewed across the floor in an infuriating fountain, fleeing to all four corners of the kitchen with a horrible and unnerving clatter.

Through red raw eyes Adam bent down and instinctively began to pick them all up.

He came across a tube of pink Germoline that had wedged itself between the chair and a leg of the kitchen table and pondered its potential for taking life.

‘Would it be possible to put too much on?’

He asked no one in particular.

‘It’s for eczema’.

Came a reply from somewhere deep inside his head.

But by actually reaching for the medicine container, Adam had crossed a point of no return. He had set a course and was now committed to seeing it through to its final destination

He swung the utility door open and noisily hunted for some orange flex he knew lay within. In the semi-darkness a tool-box fell to the floor, an aluminium ladder collapsed on him, and the ironing board threatened to open out, trapping him inside. Oblivious, Adam pressed on, hands moving by feel, he finally managed to track down the brightly coloured cable and almost with a flourish pulled it from the murky interior.

He squatted down and set about fashioning himself a primitive noose.

After several failed attempts it suddenly occurred to him, that as he lived in a flat and was over six feet tall, there would be nowhere to suspend himself. He was the highest thing there was.

Not to be out done and with his dander up, Adam marched purposely back in to the kitchen and with unseeing eyes opened the knife draw. He rummaged noisily inside before eventually producing a lethal looking carving knife.

He ran his index finger along its long since blunt edge.

‘So be it’, the unfamiliar voice said solemnly and Adam searched for a steel with which to sharpen the blade.

When satisfied that he had done enough scraping he tried it out on a thumb.

A line of blood followed the knife’s progress from the nail down to the knuckle.

The knife was placed on the table and Adam fetched half a bottle of wine from under the sink. An improvised plan was unfolding: guided by an invisible hand.

He pulled the cork out with a squeak and poured himself a generous glass of Rioja. He drank half straight down and felt the warm liquid hit his stomach with a satisfying, steadying glow.

Next, he chose some Mozart, any Mozart, from an untidy pile of CDs and fumbled the shiny disc into the player. The orchestra struck up and Adam put pen to paper.

Sorry about all this, it began.
Sorry to let the side down but I have to go
Just couldn’t hack it. Have been feeling unwell.
Adam.

He read it back A suicide notes go this was pretty uninspiring stuff. He couldn’t be bothered with ‘I bequeath’ but this was akin to cancelling the milk. No, he would have to come up with something more befitting the occasion. After all it wasn’t everyday that you decided to do something so drastic as to despatch yourself to the ever after.

His pen began to scratch feverishly across a piece of scrap paper that lay to hand.

I haven’t gone; I am still here. I will be with you everyday, walking beside you. In the night sky I will be one bright star looking down. I will lie with you, and take you by the hand gently to sleep. I will be the sun that warms you and I will be the food that nourishes you. I will be the atoms in your heart and the salt in your tears. Remember me.

Adam put the pen down, transfixed with indescribable grief and walked the walk of a condemned man to the bathroom that now served as a scaffold.

Wanting to retain some dignity he nipped in to the bedroom and retrieved a pair of bathers from the pants draw.

He ran a bath and got in.

With a deep breath, he pressed the shiny hard edge into his left wrist. Thick red blood bubbled to the surface and squirted out in a thin and constant stream. Adam watched fascinated by this impromptu anatomy lesson and gazed at the deep red slit. He laid the now bloodied blade onto his right wrist and sliced down hard. This time the blood gushed and frothed around the opening like a burst water main and cascaded up his forearm. He plunged it into the water and closed his eyes.

After a while, with one eye open he looked around the avocado green interior and realised he wasn’t dead. The Mozart was still playing and the glass of wine still had a gulp left in it. He daren't look down into the bloodied mess that had once been a clean bath and wondered just how long it would take.
Minutes? Or hours? He had lost all track of time.

He closed his eyes again, and tried to think of something that would cheer him up.

His thoughts drifted gently to a bar he had often frequented in his youth; a noisy, busy place of seemingly endless summers and rock and roll music where he had sat on a stool and laughed and laughed and laughed. It was a Bacchanalian oasis, a place of laughing and forgetting and it had been his spiritual home. It was, for him at least, his Valhalla.
He closed his eyes and went to sleep.

The green overalled paramedics cursed and sweated his blanched, lifeless body out of the bath and onto the floor. They had received the call only half an hour before going off duty and this is exactly what they didn’t want: a pointless and incomprehensible suicide.

They had arrived in a blaze of melodramatic sirens and flashing blue lights to find the front door open and a dead Adam in a bath. He was long gone and a cursory glance by both of them decided that any attempt at resuscitation was pointless.

They had not been privy to Adam’s slow, glacial demise. They had not been around to witness his complicated and ham-fisted attempts at living, and therefore had no emotional involvement.

Adam, who could have brushed past them in a pub or MacDonald's only the day before as a perfectly fit 40 year old, was now an awkward sack of dead tissue that would soon start to bloat and stink.

There would be no heroic return journey to A and E. No grateful patient sitting up in bed surrounded by cards, grapes and relatives various. Any sense of urgency had long since dissipated and now it was a chore.

This wasn’t their first nor would it be their last. They had scraped up and bagged quite a few in their time. The whys and wherefores didn’t feature in their young professional lives. Adam’s wheezing shuffle from his mortal coil would only get a small mention between a hastily cooked pizza and the telly.

They zipped him up in a black heavy duty rubber bag and wheeled him to the ambulance.
Years before, Adam had been stopped in the street, one bleak autumn day by a pinched looking student and asked if he would like to donate his body to medical science.
The student in question was a very earnest, gangly boy of about 20 who wore an ill-fitting NATO combat jacket and who spat a little when warming to his theme. He evidently believed deeply in what he was saying and Adam, wanting to edge away, took in very little of what was being said. He signed on the dotted line, if only to get rid of him, and walked off down the street, clutching his shopping. He didn’t give it a second thought but mused briefly what a strange and complex thing death was and when it came, you wouldn’t miss your retinas or heart for that matter.

When his key hit the front door, he had completely forgotten about the incident. A letter came a week later, thanking Adam for his public spirited gesture and that: if he wanted to change his mind, he had thirty days in which to do so. Adam threw it in the bin.

So when the pathologist’s circle saw began buzzing at 3000 rpm closer and closer to his shaved scalp, it was a strangely ironic situation: that such a random, forgotten meeting would bring Adam to this place so many years hence. If he had been aware what giving your body to medical science had actually meant: IE being stripped clean of all your organs by underpaid lab technicians, dead or not dead, he would not have signed. Adam was squeamish to say the least ,so having his guts dumped unceremoniously into a bucket and his liver put into a large glass receptacle marked ‘Liver’ would have repulsed him beyond measure.

His brain was eased out of its bony casing and placed in a jar of Formaldehyde. It was then transported on a trolley with a couple of other brains to a dark room, deep inside a London Hospital and stored on a shelf, and there it lay for the next 200 years.

The rest of him, his bones and other sundry items, were interred in a grand yet gloomy Victorian cemetery on the outskirts of London, an hour’s journey by rail and tube from his brain and other organs.
His carcass was conveyed, with a degree of solemnity, to an area set back from the main path that overlooked allotments. His grave lay amidst thick, purple brambles that ran wild in summer and from which huge, juicy blackberries, thick as a man’s thumb, hung, basking in the dusty heat of the day.

The burial, although sad, passes off without major incident.
Although the pall bearers, unaware of Adam’s eviscerated state and expecting a heavy load, did hoist his teak sarcophagus onto their shoulders only for it to fly into the air and nearly crash land onto the roof of the hearse behind. The chief pall bearer managed to grab hold of one of the handles, before the coffin got truly airborne and effortlessly pulled it down to its rightful place.
To the casual observer it seemed as if this was part of some strange funeral rite. That coffins were indeed tossed into the air prior to their journey to the afterlife. Lacking any weight to slow them down, they set off at a jaunty pace with the chief pall bearer, ever the professional, digging his heels in to slow them down to a more respectful gait.

The vicar, being high church, felt queasy about burying a suicide and went through the ‘ashes to ashes’ in an unconvincing sing-song kind of way that he affected when not theologically happy with events. Nobody noticed as no one was really listening. Being too stricken with grief and lost in worlds of their own, everyone present just looked at their shoes and waited for the time when they could go home. He had to clear his throat to signal the end of proceedings and people began to drift away, in one’s and two’s, scrunching back down the path before disappearing with much slamming of car doors and revving of engines.

And so the years passed. Adam’s memory and cruel passing were buried under a blanket of platitudes. As with all bad things in life, people gradually got over it and went about their daily business with less and less pain until Adam became a picture in a frame and not much else. Grieving relatives came and went to his ever increasingly mouldy and overgrown gravestone until they too passed on and so, in the end, no one came. Anyone who had ever known Adam eventually died out, until there was no one to even distantly remember him. Presidents, like fashions, came and went. Horrific wars were won and lost. New discoveries were discovered and taken for granted. The oil ran out as did the gas even the coal dwindled into nothing. God was forgotten then remembered then forgotten again. New messiahs took centre stage only to be ushered off to make way for some other idol that captured the public’s imagination. Rome, the eternal city, was sacked again only to be built again as were all the other major cities of the world. Chinese became the world language to be replaced by another language that was easier to pronounce. And so it went on, like an endless play with a thousand acts and billions of players. On and on remorselessly until the birth of Earnest Serius and then at last, the end was in sight.

Chapter Two

2010-09-28T22:27:00.000+01:00

Chapter 2

‘I’m telling you’, said JC waving a yellow, nicotined finger around the room and at no one in particular,
‘They are using a JCB to dig a tunnel under the Atlantic, surfacing in Hollywood and kidnapping certain movie stars and bringing them back to England…….

‘Via the tunnel’ someone said, gently steering the bearded JC through his story. ‘Via the newly built tunnel and making them perform in hit West End shows. Have you ever wondered why so many of them are here? Your Cruise's, Pachino's, De Niro's, they are all at it.’

JC finished speaking with the studied air of a well-thought out theory succinctly put, pulled hard on a Lambert and Butler and flicked the ash onto the pitted, Lino floor.

‘They call me JC, I’m an American’ said JC proudly, in an altogether unconvincing American accent.

‘And another thing’

His voice trailed off and was drowned in his unkempt beard. He eventually lapsed into a silence that hung awkwardly in the small, airless room until Brian helpfully came to his rescue.

‘I tried to kill my brother’, he said beaming at everyone present.

‘With an axe’.

His eyes rolled around his head as if searching for the words with which he could continue his story and he too fell silent, lips pursed, down loading the necessary information with which he could continue but would never come.

A faint gust of wind tugged at the yellowing curtain and a welcome breeze eddied around the room. A light aircraft whined its way across a cloudless sky and disappeared over the horizon, its pilot squeezing every last ounce of power from its feeble engine.
Another awkward silence descended and everyone present took a drag on their respective fags.

‘Mind the washing machine’, said JC, presently.

‘It’s haunted.’

To the left of the smoking room, across the communal area full of battered, wine-red armchairs, lay a corridor badly in need of a coat of paint.
The first room on the right was not designed for comfort. No chair to sit on or in. No table to write on or share supper over. No pictures to gaze at and certainly no mirror. It had windows that only opened wide enough to prevent suffocation and on one wall the sooty evidence of a brief and recent fire. In perfect symmetry to its surroundings, precisely 55 inches between the windows and the door lay a bed: fastened to the floor with titanium screws and with a mattress so squeaky that even the tiniest of movements would herald a concerto of springs. Its blanket smelling of sick and Dettol was an insipid, pale blue that lent the only colour to another wise colourless room.
Somebody lies on the bed, silent and inert. Not so much a human as a switched off computer. For all his inactivity, he might have been part of what little furniture there was had it not been for his quietly beating heart.

A beetle scuttles from one side of the interior to the other. It is caught deftly with a swift, scooping movement as it reaches the halfway point and brought up to eye level to be inspected. Its antennae move frenziedly, right and left, in a vain attempt to identify its unknown assailant.

When it started its early morning walk, it had watched the blanket for signs of any movement but after nothing had stirred for some time, it felt satisfied that all was clear and it was safe to proceed. Now events had taken an unexpected turn for the worse and it was feeling scared and vulnerable. A large form had emerged from under the pale blue blanket and had risen as high as a skyscraper above the unfortunate insect. The next thing it knew, it was being hoisted into the air where it could see, agonisingly, its home, now a tiny speck on the distant skirting board.

One wing is lifted up and inspected, which would have been humiliating had it not been terrifying. Then the other wing is prized away and finally both antennae are tugged and then released.
The beetle did what it had to in such situations and secretes a thick oily, unpleasant liquid from its anus. There is a distant chuckle, and then it’s being lowered to the ground, sullied but otherwise unharmed. Reaching ground level, it seizes its chance and bolts for the relative safety of the bed and once under the protection of its metal frame catches its breath, bewildered by events and its near death experience.

It daren’t risk a dash across bare Lino; it wouldn’t stand a chance, much better, albeit inconvenient, to wait for night fall and take his chances then. It spies a bread crumb to the left of an upright and tiptoes on six legs towards it. It was going to be a long wait.

Presently, the door swings open and a pair of black shoes enters. They walk to the end of the bed and pause, as if uncertain what where to walk next. A clear plastic bag is placed on the floor containing a newspaper, packet of Marlboro, a writing pad, pen and a mobile phone.
A quivering voice is heard.
‘Kiss me’.
‘No way’, comes the reply.

And there is silence.

Chapter Three

2010-09-27T22:28:00.000+01:00

Chapter 3

Adam is falling in a deep, still fathomless ocean. He sinks like a stone, deeper and deeper into an all enveloping blanket of ink. As the weight of water increases so the pressure mounts until all movement becomes impossible.
He is beyond crying now and is content just to fall, with arms folded on his chest like a dead, marbled king. He is awake but asleep, he can hear but there is no sound, he can talk but there is no one to listen. The pain of being recedes but nothing fills the vacuum. Still he falls, plummeting into nothingness. Still he falls, down and down and down. He passes heaven but the angels have their feathered backs to him and share a joke as they toil in a field of endless, golden corn. Finally, his falling is over and he settles on the bottom with an inaudible bump. He lies inert. Ghostly crabs scuttle here and there, occasionally picking at is white, lifeless body. From time to time, grotesque fish, their features moulded by the fearsome pressure, idle by. But Adam is alone, alone in a wasteland that is his tomb and there he sleeps for eternity.

Presently, a distant voice rouses Adam from his slumber.

‘Wake’, it says coldly.

‘Now is the time to wake’.
The feasting crabs scuttle to safety and the fish scatter.

The syntax is awkward and clumsy, as if the speaker were translating verbatim from another language.

Again it comes, guttural and ugly. It won’t go away. Adam rolls over and tries to ignore it.

‘ Errr.....The time for waking is now?.

Adam ventures a feeble leave me alone but the words cannot escape his throat. Every time sleep wraps him in its warm embrace, the voice drags him back to a harsh, impossible wakefulness.

‘Fuck off, for I am dead’, Adam moans from the inky depths.

‘Wake’, comes the voice again, persistent and oblivious to Adam’s protestations.

‘Wake and open up your eyes’.

Over the Tanoy, he could hear an urgent debate going on amidst much hissing and whispering.
Adam, opens one eye enough to allow in a little light and instead of darkness there is a beautiful, translucent blue that warms his cold bones. This miasma circles above him, he is among it and like a fog on a wet moor, it swirls and eddies, never yielding or giving away the source of a hidden sun. Adam walks among it. He breathes it, he exhales it. He feels himself begin to rise from the ocean floor. Looking down, he can see the impression his long dead corpse has made on the grey, moon like dust below and he rises, inexorably upwards towards a distant light. He can see the surface now, some way off. The blackness gives way to light. Shafts of cathedral light penetrate down into the lagoon deep water and he breaks surface.

He is in room or what Adam’s feels is a room. Between blinking and squinting, Adam can make out a large Perspex window that covers an entire wall, behind which lie a group of bespectacled men with white hair and spotless, white coats.

‘Please sit up’, comes a different voice, this time English in accent and kind in tone.
Eventually, bowing to the inevitable, Adam sits up and lets out a petulant,

‘What?’

At the foot of the bed stands a young, Asian looking nurse, wearing a sweet smile and clad in an immaculate, starched uniform.
She bows a little bow and goes about gently cleaning his emaciated body with a piece of cloth that feels like silk.

‘How does that feel?’

An avuncular voice says smoothly over a Tanoy.

'Yes’. replies Adam, distantly, not really answering the question, resting on his elbows, eyeing the woman with a mixture of suspicion and pleasure.

He couldn’t see much further than the cloud of blue that hung about where he lay and for a while his curiosity lay dormant. He could still see the group behind the Perspex from the corner of his eye but at present they didn’t seem that important.

Eventually, her delicate hands reach his penis and he strikes out instinctively to protect his modesty. Adam lets out a yelp as he does so, for as his hand went to touch hers, it had passed straight through her wrist and out the other side. He lay back, quite in shock; he covers his eyes, unsure if what had happened was a result of him being mad or an unwitting part of some magician’s trick. The Asian nurse continues her labours and begins to rub the cloth over his sunken chest. He stares at her incredulously for some time before trying again. With shaking hands and racing heart, he aims his fingers at her belly and thrusts them forward only for them to pass straight through and out the other side. He pushes his entire his arm through until the whole thing appears out of her back. He moves it up and down and from side to side, even affecting a wave. He retracts his arm quickly and inspects it for any signs of gore but it is perfectly clean.

Adam rolls over and within an instant the woman is gone.

Adam by now wished he had a blanket under which he could hide but there wasn’t one, so he lay there eyes covered, for some considerable time, trying to get a grip.

‘Can you stand?’

Came a familiar voice. Kinder this time, softer and more gentle, with a timbre that oozed genuine concern. .

‘Here, let me help you’.

Adam managed to open one eye a little and in front of him this time was a middle aged man he recognised from the group that had been behind the Perspex screen. He reminded Adam of an English teacher he had once had; a face that exuded a comforting authority; a man that Adam instinctively trusted.
The man offers his hand.
Adam takes it readily, seeing it more as rock to grab hold of than a mere collection of knuckles and skin.
‘Careful’, said this saving angel,
‘‘Your legs haven’t taken any weight for quite some time’.
Adam gradually becomes perpendicular and he lifts himself from the bed.
It was only then that he could properly take in his surroundings. There was no beginning to his environment yet there was no end; only the thin blue mist that seemed limitless. His feet were definitely on Terra Firma but he could see no floor. Above him the same blue miasma continued until it gave way to an ever increasing darkness. The ‘English teacher’ looked into his eyes as if to say ‘trust me’ and they began to walk together amongst the blue mist.

It was then that Adam remembered the bathroom and its hideous memory and presumed that the man that was gently supporting him was in fact God or an older Jesus or even the devil.
‘I am not God’, said the man, reading Adam’s thoughts.
‘Oh’, said Adam a little deflated.
‘Nor the devil either’.
This, after all, was not journey’s end.
They walk away from the bed but as Adam turned slightly, he could see it seemed to be suspended in thin air.

‘Where am I?’
Asks Adam, and looks at the man he now saw as his only friend in a strange and wonderful landscape.
‘Never mind about that’, comes a confident reply.
‘All your questions will be answered in time’.
They continue walking very, very slowly, with Adam tottering and in great danger of falling flat on his face. They walk a few times around the bed before the English teacher picks him up with a single deft movement and lays him back down where he had first awoken.
The man stares intently at Adam for a while and then says
‘You have come a long, long way, longer than you or I can imagine and now you must rest’.
Weathered fingers settle on Adam’s eyes and he takes another long draught of sleep.

Chapter Four

2010-09-26T22:29:00.000+01:00

Chapter 4

Adam lay there for how long he didn’t know. He slept and slept only to wake porpoise like from the depths of sleep. Sometimes, there was a cluster of concerned pink faces gathered around his bed, which Adam presumed were the same faces behind the screen. At other times, he was utterly alone in the blue swirling miasma. It was akin to having flu, Adam thought, aching all over, high temperature, cough but not so much as an aspirin to relieve the pain.

At nights, he would succumb to the same black nightmare that visited him every time he closed his eyes. He would be incarcerated in the same bathroom where he had met his end; the knife would be in one hand, while he banged on the door with the other. There would be blood everywhere and there was no one to hear his terrified screams. Just when he felt he was dying all over again he would wake, violently, lathered in sweat. The dream was so vivid there was no way of knowing fact from fiction, truth from falsehood but sleep, no matter how hard he fought it, would always drag him back to this dark and endless hell. Occasionally, the ‘English Teacher would drop by, in what Adam felt was morning and help him take a few tentative steps around the bed, impervious to the numerous questions that Adam bombarded him with.

It was established quite early on that his visitor’s name was Dougal. Adam had asked for it as a matter of politeness and Dougal gave it immediately, a little embarrassed he hadn’t before. Dougal, on his visits, would ask a few questions about this and that before disappearing mysteriously into the fog. In the gallery above, the men in starched white coats came and went clutching the inevitable clipboard taking readings and generally looking scientific. Adam never managed to make meaningful eye contact with any of them. At times they would stare at him silently, sometimes for as long as 15 minutes with Adam staring back, winking and cracking jokes. Other times, Adam felt uncomfortable and preferred to turn his back and ignore them.

But slowly, imperceptibly, he began to get better. His temperature began to fall and he was able to sit up in bed and have quite lengthy conversations with his new found friend. They talked about all manner of things, about Adam’s life, where he lived, what kind of job he had. The questions were never taxing, what did Adam think of this, what about that; which did he prefer, vanilla or chocolate. Adam was content to give answers if only because Dougal was the only company he had (save the Asian nurse, who wasn’t there anyway) and the questions helped to break the voodoo of his nightmares. Adam kept asking which hospital he was in but never got a firm reply; The Royal this or that, the something, something Infirmary, never a precise answer. When Adam asked to make a series of phone calls, he was immediately almost rudely, rebuffed. Adam thought of his mother, work, her, these people would be wondering where he was, they had to be contacted if only to say everything was alright. But no, it was not allowed; ‘any communication with the outside world would have to wait until he had made a complete and full recovery.’

One day, when Adam was sitting up in bed fielding another round of questions, he suddenly declared,
‘I’m better now, can I go home?’
‘No’, said Dougal bluntly, shooting Adam a hunted look.
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’, asked Adam, playing for time until he thought of valid, water tight reason.
‘Why do you want to go home?’, said Dougal.
‘Well………..It’s just that……………Adam’s voice died in his throat;
Dougal looked very serious for a second and finally after some thought said:
‘There was nothing for you there, you are here now’
‘But where’s here?’ demanded Adam, not a little annoyed.

Dougal snapped shut a manilla file he had been holding and beckoned Adam to follow him. He produced a wine red dressing gown from somewhere, that had long tassels at the ends of a silky cord and once Adam had climbed in to it, the pair began to walk arm in arm. The blue miasma left them and they were walking down a corridor that seemed to stretch to infinity. Adam sensed it was underground as the empty rooms they passed had no natural light. They walked slowly with Dougal gripping Adam’s elbow tightly and reassuring him of the short distance they had to travel.
Eventually, they arrived at a nondescript office. Dougal wafted Adam in with a sweep of an outstretched hand. On entering, it was apparent that Dougal had managed to make it quite homely. A severe looking hat stand stood in the corner, from which an old fashioned mackintosh hung. On one wall stood a large map of the world and in the middle stood a majestic, oak desk on which important looking documents lay strewn and strangely of all things, a fez. Dougal gestured for Adam to sit down and seated himself behind the vast expanse of dark wood and began to read the file he had been reading earlier. He flicked through some sections only to stop at a particular page which would be read in its entirety. With head bent, all Adam could see of Dougal was a shiny, freckled pate with clumps of wispy, grey hair that curled up from his ears and settled in sprawling reservations on the sides of his head.

Suddenly he looked up, studying Adam for a short while before resting the file gently in front of him.

‘You’re on Earth’, he said flatly.
‘Although not the Earth you remember, a completely different Earth’.
Earth was a little bit vague, for Adam, who sat motionless, waiting for something more specific.
‘You are in a kind of hospital’, replied Dougal, not meeting Adam’s eyes; Adam could tell Dougal was choosing his words carefully, plucking them from the ether, one by one, and placing them in neat, enigmatic rows.
‘We felt you could relate to this more’.
Despite feeling a lot better than he had been, Adam was still very weak and the mental effort of trying to extract hard information from Dougal was proving exhausting. His eyes fixed on Dougal demanding a hard and fast answer. Dougal wore that same hunted look he had worn earlier and stretched out his arms but the ensuing sentence was still born and he brought them together again slowly. His eyes rolled around his head. He pursed his lips, unpusrsed them and then re-pursed them. Still no words came.

There was a palpable rise in tension as Dougal visibly struggled with what was obviously a difficult confession. Adam knew instinctively what Dougal was about to say was not only explosive but mortal. The stress turned his bowels to ice and he began to shake in anticipation.

‘Tell me please Dougal, I think it’s only fair that you do’, .

Dougal, who by now was at the top of a metaphoric diving board and could not turn back, sunk his head into his chest and whispered,

‘ It's Monday, 2nd April' and after a short yet horrid pause......................... ,'1 000,243 AD’.

When Adam came to, he was lying on the floor in Dougal’s office, groggy and with a slight headache. Dougal was tenderly wiping his brow with a damp cloth and had a face of pinched concern.

‘My dear boy’, he purred, squeezing the cloth into a bowl of lemon scented water.
‘I’m so sorry'.
Adam sat up, remembered what Dougal had said and let out a deep groan.
He covered his eyes with the back of his right hand and continued moaning for a further 3 minutes. Dougal let this one ride and walked back to the sink, emptied the bowl into a basin, wiped his hands on a towel and sat behind his desk.
He took his glasses off and lay then gently down in front of him, Rubbing his eyes and looking quite tired, he stared at Adam with a desperate look as if to say 'I am so sorry, you have cancer'. Adam dragged himself up from the floor only to slump sulkily in an armchair by the window.
‘We found you quite by chance, we weren’t looking for you, in many ways you could say, you found us’. Dougal said quietly.

‘We were mining, and the drill head struck something, it was your femur.
We ran a few tests to see how old you were and what kind of food you ate that sort of thing, then put you in a glass case. You are a homosapien and a very good example of one too, if I may say so. It was only when we found your brain in a completely different part of the world that we thought it would be fun to put two and two together or rather you and this brain we’d found. It was well preserved, sealed as it was in its ancient burial casket. We’d just finished a spot of lunch when the test results came through and we couldn’t believe it. We had all of you, it was a miracle. It was a perfect match, I mean the chances of that happening, must be billions to one. I still can’t believe it. Sure we found fragments before, a jaw bone here, a tooth there, but nothing on this scale. I mean you're famous, a first; a freak’. Dougal bit his lip, but it came too late. Adam looked genuinely hurt.

‘So, I’m one of them Bronze Age men they find in bogs?’

‘Yes, broadly’, said Dougal who, now he had got the confession off his chest, was noticeably more relaxed and garrulous. He lent back in his chair and crossed his legs.
‘You are a living legend. You trod the Earth all those years ago. Those feet walked on ancient ground, ground that is long since buried. OK, so you were a savage, that isn’t such a big deal, not any more anyway. This has been my life’s work, you understand. You could say that you are my baby, I mean; it was me that dragged you back here. I’ve given you a second chance, how many people can honestly say that they have lived twice? It throws up all manner of possibilities. I’m an expert on your language not like those idiots up there. I can speak the language, write it, pronounce it like a native, I've given half my life for its study. What do you think? Have I made any mistakes so far?’

Adam thought for a while and later replied:

‘No glaring errors to speak of'.

Dougal let out a triumphant sigh and rubbed his hands together gleefully.
‘Now you must have a thousand questions you want to ask me, fire away I’m all ears’.
Adam fell silent. He played with the tassel of his dressing gown and looked at the floor
His mind was racing, he had one trillion questions rising up like bubbles from the ocean floor yet he couldn’t decide on any one of them. He frowned with the effort, his eyes bulged at the mental exertion, and finally, with beads of sweat forming on his brow, he looked up and asked

‘Do you have ray guns?’

Dougal rose from his chair, visibly disappointed and launched himself at the mackintosh that hung from the coat stand in the corner. He marched to the door and opened it without taking his eyes off Adam and gestured him to follow.

They walked for a matter of ten yards when Dougal opened a side door and Adam found himself in a courtyard. It was bathed in bright spring sunshine. A fountain surrounded by water lilies gurgled contentedly in the centre and the damp flagstones under their feet gave off a fresh, earthy smell lending the area an altogether pleasant and peaceful feeling. Dougal sat himself down on a wooden bench and patted the area next to him which Adam took as a signal for him to sit. They both remained there for a while taking in this Garden of Eden before Adam opened the conversation. He felt a little self conscious, sat as he was, in his pyjamas and dressing gown.

‘What was that date again?’

’1,000,243………………AD, just after lunch, Dougal added quietly.

‘So every thing I know, everything that was my time is now no more?’

‘Yes, utterly and completely, everything, zero, zilch, nothing is left', said Dougal, spreading his hands wide and crossing them in front of him.

Suddenly his eyes lit up and he grabbed Adam’s knee firmly with his left hand, shook it from side to side hand in a bid to be jolly and said:
‘But you were a human and that can’t be a bad thing, I mean, what can you do?, There is no such thing as time travel. Never has been never will be. In short, we cannot send you back. You are here now, among friends’.
Adam didn’t like being handed this fait accompli, without much of an explanation, it vexed him that he had had no say in the matter. He had wanted to end it, once and for all, but now he would have to go through the whole thing again.

‘Christ’, Adam exhaled loudly and sunk his head deep into his chest.

‘Not even him’ Dougal said, grasping Adam’s hands between his own.
The two men sat in silence for while before Adam buried his head in Dougal's chest and wept like a baby. Dougal stood up slowly and helped Adam to his feet. He put his arm around his shoulders and they began to walk around the courtyard.
‘It is as if you have been beached on a distant shore; a creature of the deep, flung by a freak wave onto a strange and magical land. But as time passes this will become home.’

I know you as humans set great store by company, friends, companions that kind of thing, so I want you to understand that here you are never alone. This must be a very, very strange situation for you, we have gone to great lengths to make it as normal as possible but in the end this is something you will just have to accept and believe you me, in time, you will get used to it.’
‘Thank you’, said Adam distantly. He felt terrible; as weak as a pup. A crushing depression had descended upon him. Looking at his slippers, he wrestled with an unimaginable reality. There was silence save the gurgling fountain and he thrust his hands deep into his pockets.
‘Take me back, please Dougal, to my room, I'm so tired.’
‘Certainly’, and Dougal turned them both in the direction of the door they had come from.

Two more weeks went by. At some stage, he was wheeled to a location immeasurably better than the one he had become accustomed to. It was a bright, private room that over looked the leafy courtyard that Dougal had taken him to.

The Asian nurse came and went at unpredictable times. On occasion with soup on a tray and on others to give him a bed bath which she conducted with her usual, silent cheerfulness. At first, Adam was uncomfortable with these cleaning expeditions. He felt very unattractive lying as he did; with his flabby body, a bulging varicose vein and tousled, unkempt hair: not forgetting his foul and pestilent breath. The nurse was beautiful, almost perfect in every proportion; She had a loving, oval face and a smile that exuded warmth and generosity. The fact that she wasn’t physically there soon lost its shock value, as Adam was content not to ask any questions, (she wouldn’t have answered them anyway). He was happy for her just to break up the tedium of the day. At times he would stroke her face and watch his fingers disappear into her soft, coffee coloured skin. He ran his fingers down her long straight back and she never seemed to mind. She just carried on with her duties regardless and with that same warm smile.
But even these flirtatious moments soon lost their appeal, for Adam knew that if she had been real she would surely never go near him let alone give herself wholly and wantonly. As the days went by, the apparition became a pleasant diversion rather than a flowering relationship. Dougal popped his head round the door from time to time, only to look at Adam’s notes, run his weathered hands over his body and then leave with little in the way of conversation. And so it went on, day after day, for what Adam felt was turning into months.

One bright spring morning, Dougal swept in and asked, which Adam felt had been really told, him to get up. He left as quickly as he had arrived but in time to cast a shirt and a pair of faded jeans on to Adam’s bed. Adam hurriedly struggled into his new attire. The jeans were flairs and billowed outwards and downwards until they arrived at the floor in a tidal wave of blue denim. Not even his toes were visible from under the vast expanse of blue material. He hadn’t worn trousers like these since he was a boy and even then drain pipes were coming back. He tried the shirt on and that too was in the same fashion dimension. It was heavily patterned with a collar that was wide as it was long. The whole ensemble was circa 1972 and as Adam fumbled with the innumerable buttons, he quietly thanked God the world he knew no longer existed.
Presently, Dougal returned wearing the same fearsome mackintosh that hung in his office and a battered, brown Trilby set at a rakish angle. He carried an air of purpose about him and Adam felt he had no option but to get dressed and in short order.
‘You need some fresh air and exercise’ said Dougal tartly, sitting briefly on a small chair that lay near the bed.
With his charge dressed, he stood up, clasped Adam’s hand and closed his eyes.
Within an instant they were in a park. Vast, green sun drenched spaces, inhabited the place where they had been only a moment before.
Slacked jawed, Adam gaped at his surroundings.
‘This is Greenwich, isn’t it?’ he said, recognising the landscape and features of a park had grown to love.
‘Yes, we swiped it from your memory’ said Dougal proudly and clicked his fingers. Within an instant the park was full of Londoners basking in unseasonably good weather. A Frisbee landed at Dougal’s feet and he picked it up and calmly threw it back.
‘How did you do that!!?’ a high pitched Adam enquired incredulously.
‘It’s all in the wrist, you just……
‘No!!!’ said Adam exasperated,
‘How do you change this?’, he waved a hand around the park.
‘Oh that’s simple’, said Dougal.
‘You think it and it will happen, I told you that we are here to make you feel at home. You are a human after all you need this, would you prefer something more rugged?’
Dougal clicked his fingers once more and Adam was standing on the edge of a deep precipice that made him jump back, sick to the stomach with vertigo.
‘The Rockies, don’t you love them? Adam had become very disconcerted by now becoming all sweaty and pale. He staggered a bit and his eyes were like saucers. 'It is something we have learned to do over the years, Earnest taught us. Simply close your eyes and think of where you would like to be. Whether it be the past, future, or the present, just picture it in your mind. It will take time to get the knack, but once you've got it, it's easy'.

Dougal was having fun now and wore a boyish grin from ear to ear.

‘How about something a little less……..dramatic?'

Again he clicked his fingers and they were in a windswept car park in a medium sized industrial town. 'You see, you can also create exactly any where you have been in your life time, It's all in the power of the mind'

This continued for some time with Dougal showing off the many varied and different environments that seemed to be at his fingertips.
They sat sedately in a gondolier, pressed their noses against the cold glass of a Swiss cable car, took in the games at the Coliseum, watched from a hill top and saw Custer’s last stand, sat shivering in a lifeboat and observed the Titanic going down. (Adam politely gave up his seat for an elderly dowager.) They took part in a race riot, with Adam as a policeman and Dougal hurling abuse and bricks at him all afternoon. (Dougal thought this very funny). They raced up and down the corridors of the palace of Versailles on scooters, nearly banging into King Louis XV1 and forcing Marie Antoinette to throw herself clear,
‘Sorry, no cake!’,
Roared Dougal, as he swept by, leaving Adam to placate the royal couple, without much success.
Adam wanted a go after Dougal had shot Kennedy. He stood still and placed his arms by his sides. He tried to conjure a picture in his mind but only a succession of strange and unconnected images moved behind his eyes. It was difficult to concentrate and peeking out of one eye, he caught Dougal yawning which made him grab at anything that came by. Quite why he had ten thousand Bruce Forsyth’s march past him in Red Square, Adam could only guess at, but it was a start. Once he had cracked it, he became more confident.
He addressed bemused Nazi storm troopers at a Nuremburg rally, breaking into ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’ half way through a rousing speech on behalf of Hitler, who looked genuinely confused.
He threaded a lovely pass to Osama Bin Laden who then broke through a solid Brazilian defence and scored the winner in the 1970 World Cup final.
Pele was furious, but Osama just pulled his shirt over his head and ran around the pitch waving his arms in the air. Then it was Dougal's turn and he took Adam on a grand tour of history.
They were present at Shelly's death; Adam wanted to pull him from the sea when he got into trouble but Dougal prevented him and let the hapless poet sink beneath the waves. Dougal murmured that they could not interfere, which Adam thought a little rich coming from Dougal. He let it pass and they continued with the tour. They breakfasted on the Mary Celeste and saw a gigantic squid pull each screaming crew member from the deck and hurl him skywards. They were involved in a lengthy Battle of Britain dog fight over Kent with Dougal claiming two enemy aircraft to Adam’s one. They climbed Everest, had afternoon tea in the belly of a whale, and finally dined with Napoleon on the eve of Waterloo. Just as his manservant was clearing away the brandy glasses so Dougal tapped his watch to signal the end of the day’s play.
‘One more go’, pleaded Adam wanting to gun down Noel Edmonds with a particularly nasty looking machine pistol.
The two travellers plonked themselves in the leather chairs in Dougal’s office and Adam put his feet lazily on the desk.
Dougal took his coat off and hung it up on the handstand.
He looked at Adam’s feet and gave them a disapproving look. Adam hastily removed them and sat up.

‘Drink this’, said Dougal, pouring Adam a glass of water.
Adam sank it in one and noticed a bitter after-taste as it went down.

His voice was heavy and a little loud. Adam felt a wave of fatigue wash over him. His eyes felt like sacks had been placed on them and he gave out a most undignified yawn.
He remembered clicking his fingers and thinking, ‘bed’, but after that he could recall nothing concrete as a black cloud of oblivion descended upon him.

Chapter Five

2010-09-25T22:30:00.000+01:00

Chapter 5

The beetle polished off the last of the crumb, wiped his mouth with the back of one of his hands and leant back against the bed frame. It had been some time since certain events had taken place and he had only now calmed down.
The impromptu snack had revived his spirits and now with his strength returned and his heart finally still, he could take stock of his situation. As things stood there had been no noise from up top for a while and only now and again was the dreadful silence punctured by a restless chorus of springs. From what he had gathered from the smells and odours that wafted down from on high, it was obvious that the thing upstairs was a heavy smoker. On the hour and sometimes every fifteen minutes, a pair of white, veiny, alabaster feet would swing down and would be secreted into a pair of ordinary looking Marks and Spencer slippers. These would then shuffle out silently, only to remerge minutes later reeking of tobacco and wearier than when they left. Judging by the phone calls this restless soul was receiving, things didn’t seem to be going well either. The beetle’s tormentor had been fielding a series of calls that had a sinister ring to them and it intrigued the beetle as to the exact nature of what this person’s particular crime might have been.
From what the beetle could gather from the intelligence unwittingly broadcast to him via the one way conversation, was that his erstwhile torturer was up against it big time and had fallen into a big black hole, from which there seemed no escape. it made the fool hold his head in his hands and weep.

He was not typical of the fayre the beetle had become accustomed to in his time in the room; this one was definitely unusual. He was no Napoleon. He wasn’t a Messiah. The owner of the porcelain feet, seemed lucid enough to hold sentences together and that they had a beginning, middle and an end. There was just this terrible sense of despair that hung in the air and which made the beetle uncomfortable and want to make him clean his antennae one more time. A call came later in the day that had a different tone altogether but still carrying with it a great sense of foreboding. This time, the accusations were made this end and the person being spoken to was being held responsible for some fatal error of disclosure. The phone call was ended at some stage and no further contact was possible, despite repeated attempts.
Time passed.
A routine began to establish itself, imperceptibly at first: cigarette break followed by a lot of lying back and looking at the ceiling; a series of phone calls followed by long silences. During these catatonic interludes the beetle felt it quite safe to sneak out and stretch his legs. He looked at the mountain of flesh that rose above him and could see no discernible sign of life. It was as if the face was a desert, with no joy to give it grooves and so break up its featureless terrain. Occasionally, the eyes would blink but other than that it was just a thousand mile stare into nothingness. The beetle considered scuttling back home but decided against it as things were warming up here and he didn’t want to miss any of the fireworks. This one intrigued him and he wanted to hang around to see what strange and wonderful things this man came up with.

Chapter Six

2010-09-24T22:31:00.000+01:00

Chapter 6

Adam woke from a fitful dream where someone had been playing a guitar at the end of his bed and every time he opened his eyes as if to say ’do you mind?’ the apparition vanished. He also dreamt he had murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury and buried him in his back garden and just as people were getting suspicious, he woke up.
A weird set of dreams so vivid it left Adam unsettled. He checked to see any sign of the mystery guitarist but the coast was clear and all he could see was his room bathed gently in the dim light of the nurse’s desk lamp out in the corridor. Returning to sleep was impossible so he decided to swing his legs out of bed and put on a pair of slippers in a bid to take the night air and walk off the nightmare that he felt still lurked in the room.

He strolled down the empty ward waving at the nurse as he passed. He hung a left and entered a corridor that seemed to narrow to infinity as the perspective took it to an endless, distant horizon. Every 10 metres or so, a door broke up the monotony of the pastel coloured walls. They seemed locked, although Adam didn’t try them. He was content to walk and get some blood coursing round his veins. As he walked he thought about the day’s events, about how fun it had been and how for the first time since he could remember, he had genuinely laughed. He wore a rich smile at the thought of it, basking in the memory’s warm afterglow. It was a good feeling; a feeling that something had been achieved, although quite what Adam didn’t care.

After he had walked some ten minutes he began to tire and questioned the need to press on. The corridor still stretched to a point on the horizon and he felt that despite walking quickly he hadn’t got anywhere and it made him want to give up. A disturbing thought entered his mind in that he could walk for the rest of his life and still be no nearer an end. He came to a halt and with a rising sense of anxiety looked behind him to gauge how far he had come. Again the corridor stretched to infinity and Adam felt loathed to carry on. He could starve to death out here.

He had arrived outside a nondescript looking door and he gently tried the handle; to his surprise it opened. He crept into the room’s interior and waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the dark. From the orange glow of the street lights outside, he could see a form lying under a blanket which rose and fell in rhythm with the sound of light snoring. He hovered for a while; unsure at what to do but curiosity got the better of him and he stepped closer. He gently pulled back the blanket and stood back sharply. The face was hideous; There were suppurating sores all over it that continued down the neck and spread out like a plague onto the chest and beyond. It was a gargoyle made flesh and Adam froze to the spot with fear. For what he could make of the features, the man had a high forehead that rose to high widow's peaks, thick eyebrows and dark olive skin. He was, thought Adam, probably Mediterranean and about thirty years old.
He wanted to wake him up and ask a hundred questions but for once compulsion didn’t get the better of him and he made himself walk away.
The patient's notes were pinned to a clip board, at the end of the bed and Adam, with much squinting, could make out the name Earnest Serius typed at the top with a jagged graph below it. Replacing the notes, he peered at the sleeping Earnest. He noticed that despite looking nothing like him everything in the room was exactly the same as his own: it had all his things in it. The same wine red slippers tucked under the bed, the same navy blue sweater Dougal had given him, lay as it did in his room, over the back of a tubular chair. It was quite unnerving. As he gingerly put the blanket back over Earnest's face he suddenly noticed the horrific smell of death that hung in the air. He had been too preoccupied to notice it before. It was akin to shit only sweeter and now that he had become aware of it, it was unbearable.

Holding his mouth, Adam went for the door. He pulled the handle down slowly and left as quietly as he had come.
Taking in deep breaths, he managed to contain himself and walked around the corridor, uncertain as to what to do next. He fidgeted for a while, pulling his bottom lip and shuffling from one foot to the other. In there, he thought to himself was a person/thing not wholly unlike himself, who for all Adam knew, might have been dug up as he had. It had a human form after all and Adam felt encouraged that he wasn’t alone.

It came as quite a shock to see a bleary eyed Dougal marching down the corridor towards him dressed in a sensible dressing gown and floral pyjamas.

‘Do you know what time it is?’ hissed Dougal under his breath. He pulled the velvet cord around his waist and glared at Adam through furious eyes. He opened the door Adam had just closed and shot a concerned glance into the dark interior, cocking an ear to hear any sound of disturbance. Satisfied the sleeping figure had not been woken, he closed the door.

‘There’s nothing for you in there’, he hissed and ushered Adam back down the corridor.

‘I am very disappointed’.

He stopped and let Adam take the lead lest he should break away and disappear into another room. They walked in silence for a while and Adam felt the atmosphere between them awkward and frosty. Every time he turned he saw Dougal scowling at him and it was all a bit tense.

They reached Adam’s room

‘Into bed’, Dougal growled and turned to go, his charge safely returned but as he went Adam asked him a question that made him stop in his tracks and caused him to remain in the doorway, head bowed and with his back to Adam.

‘Who is Earnest Serius?’.

After an agonising 30 second silence, Dougal turned and had that same hunted look he wore when Adam asked him a difficult question. He looked at the floor and then at the ceiling,
It’s very late; it’s so late it’s become early, look’.
Dougal wafted a hand in the direction of the windows and Adam could see a salmon pink dawn seeping in through the blinds.

Chapter Seven

2010-09-23T22:32:00.000+01:00

Chapter 7

During late afternoon as the neon strip flickered on automatically, the beetle got too cocky and was caught in the open, too far either for the skirting board or the safety of the bed frame, he was scooped up and placed upon a blanket that smelt of sick.
With his eyes screwed tight he saw in his mind’s eye untold horrors unfolding; a wing would be torn off followed by the other, then a leg then an arm. His legs turned to jelly and in a blind panic he excreted as much of the yellow liquid from his anus as he could and waited for the axe to fall. It didn’t. Nothing happened for a while and he lay there wriggling with his legs in the air feeling more and more ridiculous, all the while cursing mankind through gritted, black teeth.

‘Have you any idea what I’ve been through?’ came a voice from behind a fold in the blanket.

‘Have you any idea what I have had to endure?’ The voice ventured again.
‘Look at this shit, I mean just look at it’. The beetle felt obliged to look about the room and to be honest couldn’t see anything wrong with it. Anyway, what did it matter? He was about to be squished any minute, so he could be forgiven for thinking the décor didn’t hold much ascetic value.

‘That it should come to this’, came the voice again; this time more earnest.
The beetle peeked from behind the fold in the blanket and took in the source of the voice. A pair of blue, blood-shot eyes stared at him intently and the beetle felt almost obliged to say something in reply. He shrugged his shoulders and looked at his numerous feet, speechless and embarrassed.

‘I tell you, it’s just not worth it’. It’s not worth nothing, although you think at the time, it’s like so easy, just stretch out your hand and pluck it from the tree. It’s that simple. I mean I was trying at first, I tried very hard, but in the end, you just give in. You become in the eyes of God’……the voice searched for a word, ‘worthless.’

The beetle nodded and the voice from the bed continued.

‘I can’t go on holiday, do you know why? I haven’t had a holiday for 3 years, do you know why?
The beetle honestly didn’t know and hoped against hope this wouldn’t mean a squishing.

‘Because I’d be there and I’d only ruin it.’

The beetle stared past the figure in front of him and didn’t know where to put himself. He squirmed a little and mumbled, ‘I see’, before another stream of conscience flowed that left him dumb and ashamed.

‘I threw it away, because I couldn’t see it for what it was. That was always going to be the problem. I mean the day it was all signed up, that was when I thought this whole thing was on a timer, one year two years, I mean the thing was going to go off; it was going to explode in my face at some stage. In every man’s life, no matter how cowardly he is, there will come a time when he is called upon to be brave, I was given that time and I was found wanting. But to be brave, doesn’t necessarily mean winning a medal, or walking through a burning forest to save an orphanage but knowing when to stick the knife in deep to serve a greater good. Sometimes being brave is leaving someone behind, walking away, with your back straight and not looking over your shoulder even if you love that thing more than anything else in the world'.’

'It wouldn’t have been so bad if I hadn’t made a vow before God Once you do that there is no going back. I tried going back. I lit a series of candles for my salvation. With the choir and everything and the Christmas lights, all of it, and there was I on bended knee in fervent prayer but I knew that all was lost. God would never forgive me. In church, having done all the things I had done, with her knowing and me knowing about her, it was all vile and I felt covered in spiders. I felt big black spiders all over my body so I started to scratch at them, but the more I scratched the more they itched. I have a forked tale and the legs of a goat and I stink. I stink of dead flesh for at that moment when I took the Eucharist I felt like the fallen one, I felt like a fallen angel. When I walked home, the night air was so cold I got home and stood by the heater and I was still cold. I couldn’t get warm. It was a terrible place to be and me with no redemption, I was hated and hated in turn but the person I hated most was of course....'

'You' said the beetle first.
'Me', the voice concurred
There was a tut; followed by an ugly pause that compelled the beetle to speak. He wasn’t very good at this kind of thing but now, to save his life, he felt he had no option. He cleared his throat and looked to the heavens for inspiration.

‘What’s done is done and cannot be undone’. What can be done? What you have done obviously is fairly, err….well…..undo-able’.

The beetle winced at this and looked at a distant horizon. He flapped an antennae unconvincingly as if to emphasise some point and lapsed into a silence heavy with expectation, only to gird his loins and try again.

‘What ever you did do, cannot be put back into its bottle, the toothpaste is out of the tube’.
This was even worse. When the word tube left his lips, the beetle knew he was talking balls His only hope now was to say something very, very profound indeed and quick otherwise he would be a blob of black blood on the dusty lino below. His mind was racing, snatching at thoughts as they hurtled through his mind. He grabbed at one and spoke.

‘Firstly, you have to be a man’, he began, with exaggerated confidence.

‘You have to stand up and be a man for these tears will get you nowhere, precisely nowhere. What good are they? What purpose do they serve? They will wash away your very eyes in the end’.

The gravity, with which this opening was delivered, shocked even the beetle. But it had certainly caught his custodian’s attention and he felt for a moment at least, that the noose had been loosened from his neck.

‘What is there to do when there are no more tears to shed? Will you starve for want of them? The buck, my friend, rests with you. There is only you and these four walls and this miserable bed. How long are you going to be here; a week, a month, years? You aren’t one of them’. The beetle nodded contemptuously towards the door and continued apace.

‘You will have to stand up one day. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week but you will have to stand up sooner or later, no matter how many tears you part with’.
He stopped suddenly, having run out of steam and frowned at the floor.
He closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable, this time with a dignity and fortitude that had abandoned him earlier.

Nothing happened. His sails caught a passing gust of inspiration taking him to a crest in the blanket and he stood statesman like, clutching at the cloth as if it were a dispatch box.

‘What is in your head is in your head, it is not real. Imagine your mind is a kind of cinema and there’s only you in it. You don’t like the film because you can’t follow it. The script’s bad and the actors are hopeless; there is no plot, just unconnected events. The score grates and sets your teeth on edge and that’s what it’s like in there at the moment’, said the beetle, tapping the side of his head.
‘It’s your private viewing and no one else’s invited. While you bemoan the ending of the world, there are people out there who are thinking about their supper, ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ that kind of thing. They don’t care or they can’t care, because they just don’t know what you are going through, it’s only you and you’re endless, unbearable matinee’, get me?’

The man nodded slowly.

‘The moving finger writes and having writ moves on.
Nor all thy piety or wit can have it back, nor all thy tears
Wash out a word of it.’

The beetle fought vainly to suppress a proud grin at this and satisfied.
He crossed his many legs and sat down.

Chapter Eight

2010-09-22T22:34:00.000+01:00

Chapter 8

Next morning, Adam lay in as he was exhausted after the night’s excursions. The nurse came to give him his bath but Adam waved her away with a speechless hand and rolled over. As the rope of memory descended, he began to put the pieces of the night before into some kind of narrative.
Yes, he had walked down an endless corridor. Secondly, he had made Dougal cross and for the first time there had been friction between them. That was a negative. Thirdly, there was that man in the bed called…… Adam searched for the name, Earnest, Earnest Serius that was it. Was he someone like himself? Maybe he had been brought back from the dead? If that was the case then they would have much to discuss. Finally, and most importantly, there was something about last night that bothered him; there was something at the back of his mind that wasn’t quite right. But what was it? He remembered being herded back to his room by a scowling and disapproving Dougal. It then occurred to him, that, far from being a free man in a new world, he was, in many ways, a prisoner of it. On the strength of last night’s evidence, Dougal was his warder as well as doctor and mentor and he was not allowed to wander unsupervised. This disturbed him. He got up quickly and walked out of his room and into the empty ward proper. The nurse reached for a telephone and said something into it, all the while looking at Adam.

‘That’s it, you call him; I’ll be in the bath.’

As Adam lay in the warm water ten minutes later, he heard a polite cough from outside the door.

‘I’m in the bath’, said Adam plainly and plunged his head under the water to rinse out the last of the shampoo.

‘I’ll be with you in a minute’

Adam quickly dried himself down, wrapped the towel around his waist and unlocked the door. He caught Dougal lurking outside, who then spun round and turned his back.
Adam walked back to his room, pausing only to drop his towel and wave his penis at the nurse who was sitting at her desk. She smiled her usual smile and continued with her work.

When he was dressed, there came a knock at the door and through it, Dougal asked him where he would like lunch.

Adam thought for a bit and opted for the Vatican.
Dougal blinked and within a moment, two velvet clad flunkies were fussing around them ushering the two friends to a gilded table that lay directly beneath the magnificent dome of the Basilica. Once they were properly seated, Dougal raced his eyes over the menu only to quickly snap it shut and order the soup without so much as asking Adam what he wanted. He asked one of the two men, a short dark man with a squint, to give his regards to his Holiness. The men disappeared and when they were out of earshot, Dougal opened fire.
‘I don’t know what you were thinking last night but it was highly irresponsible, anything could have happened’.

‘Like what?’, snorted Adam. ‘What could possibly happen to me here?’

Dougal looked dismayed at this and hissed,

‘I am responsible for you, and it is in your interest that ‘I'… Dougal paused to search for the right way to say this, 'should look after you. There is so much you don’t understand about this place and the work we do here. If something were to happen to you’, his voice trailed off but he quickly came back with:
‘You are, after all, a product of a thousand years’ work, judging by what we found out a few days ago, I think its important that we don’t leave you alone at all, if ever.’’

Adam knew this moment would come. It had lain in his memory like a pea under a mattress, under one hundred mattresses; affording in that one little spot, no comfort or respite.

For the first time Adam was going to talk about it, actually explain it, break it down into its different components; shape events past into some kind of narrative, give it a beginning, middle and an end.
At that moment, the two waiters returned and served Brown Windsor soup.
Dougal picked up his spoon and delicately dipped it into the brown, steaming liquid, hanging on every word.
‘‘I wasn’t very well’, said Adam, presently.
‘The only way I can explain it is its like you are involved in a civil war with your self. One half of you looks on while the other tears itself to pieces. You feel miserable at first, down trodden. Then it follows you home, this feeling. A constant gnawing in the belly, loud noises freak you out. You get so damned jumpy, edgy, on edge, tense. You feel like a bomb is going to go off any minute. A feeling of absolute dread descends like a black cloud. The next thing you know you are in deep shit, suddenly you can’t control it, it’s controlling you. Then it follows you home, then it’s round the next corner, it hits you in the morning and it hits you at night, it just gets worse and worse until well… ….you take matters in hand’.
He shrugged his shoulders at this and plunged his spoon into the bowl, causing a drop of soup to stain the table cloth.
Both ate in silence and with much slurping. Breaking his roll in half, Dougal gently shook the falling crumbs onto his side plate and looked up at the soaring heights above them and then back at Adam. When their eyes met, he felt he had only scratched the surface.
‘I killed myself Dougal'.
‘Yes’, is all Dougal said in reply and ordered the main course, with both having the lamb.

When Dougal had heaped a generous tablespoon of seasonal veg onto Adam’s plate and drowned them in a rich, dark gravy, he fixed Adam a stare and said,
‘Where I come from, my people don’t go in for that kind of thing, it’s a complete anathema. Dougal settled on this word proudly as if he had plucked it from the pages of the biggest dictionary of all time.
‘We as a people ………'. When he said people, his mouth hung down at the sides, as if people wasn’t quiet the right word but would do as way of explanation.
‘Have a very dim view of such carrying on'.
‘Who are your people, Dougal?' Adam asked, happy to steer Dougal away from a difficult subject.
‘There aren’t many of us, if you look at the size of the human race and our little village, we really are quite a small bunch. We come from a very special line of evolution. Who knows, there might be some of your DNA swirling around in here somewhere'.
Dougal drew a figure of eight with a stubby finger around his chest as if to illustrate the individual strands themselves.

‘This isn’t the real me anyway'.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Adam a little unnerved.

‘Well, let's just say that there are two 'me's'. Dougal lifted his bushy eyebrows a little and looked decidedly fly.

‘Right’, said Adam, clueless to what Dougal was on about but not wanting to appear foolish.

‘Sometimes, I don’t in fact look like this at all', and with that Dougal stuffed a large piece of blood dripping lamb into his mouth, putting an end to any more enquiry.

By the time they had got through the pudding both diners were very full and Dougal ordered a digestive. A decanter of Cognac was placed on the table with two tumblers chiming as they hung from the waiter’s fingers.
The conversation had moved on to football in the mean time, with Adam telling Dougal everything he knew.

The game had not featured significantly in Adam’s short life but it had been there all the same, a comforting back drop in saloon bars the length and breadth of merry old England.

‘When did football actually stop, as in the last game?’ he asked sadly.

‘As far as we are concerned’, said Dougal ‘the last ever recorded football match took place in a swamp around the time of 15,340. The historian Pluto, of all people was there at the time and despite poor health was able to record events in some detail. The Dougal produced a text he had in his inside pocket, peered down through his bi-focal s at it and began to read.

‘Pluto’s hand is quite scratchy in places, so forgive me if I sound a little hesitant.

Adam nodded, although he didn’t quite know at what and the venerable Dougal started.
Kick off was at three o’clock, time for lunch to settle and when there wasn't much to do . The game was to be played in a large clearing in the forest near a small stream which was handy as the players could quench their thirst should it get too hot (which it does).
Someone had been gathering reeds and had tied them into a tight, compact sphere. Its kicking potential was soon discovered and for the next 3 weeks it was kicked around the clearing with ever increasing competitiveness. This in turn attracted a number of spectators who had come ostensibly to take the waters and collect a little fruit but were now caught up in the general excitement of what was becoming a major sporting event.

Word, however, got round that nothing would start without Reg’s tacit agreement and a captaincy for him in any team that took the field. He was none to happy about all the noise the ‘games’ were generating and all the strange men they attracted.
He was coaxed down, rather ungraciously, some felt, from his tree but once fed and watered his mood lifted and eventually, after much cajoling, accepted a match should be played between his crew and the ‘other lot’ which was Reg’s way of referring to the opposition: a group that lived beyond the river. But only on the condition that they brought their own women and they promised not to kill anybody unless it was ‘absolutely necessary’.

Someone stuck the head of a monkey on a rusty pole to signal the start of the game which went down a storm with onlookers and players alike, who then proceeded to throw fruit at it and shriek collectively every time a berry bounced off a glassy, staring eye. Even Reg managed a wry smile at this and deemed that should there be any dispute, this ghoulish totem would be the final arbiter.

The game got under away at the allotted hour with much excitement and general hysteria only for it to end abruptly just before half time when Reg hoofed a clearance into a tree, out of reach of even the most dexterous of climbers. Reg just turned, oblivious to the howls of disappointment, shrugged his shoulders, climbed up his favourite tree and began to pleasure one of his many wives

The spectators went back to their fruit collecting and the 'other lot' drifted away back to their villages. The ball stayed in the tree as if to taunt everyone involved and remained there until people forgot about it. The monkey’s head gathered flies until that too was removed; lest it stank the place out and attracted unwelcome guests.
Reg was secretly delighted the game should have ended this way,(although he was careful not to show it). He didn’t much care for the opposition or even his own players for that matter. Some of them having stolen the ball from his feet and run circles around his slow, lumbering frame. This, Reg felt, was disrespectful and made him look silly in front of the girls, who had been a little too vocal in their support for some of the younger members of the squad. No, much better to keep everything and everybody on an even keel so he could continue what he was good at: keeping order, making wise decisions and ripping the head off anyone who annoyed him

So it was with some irritation on Reg’s behalf, that the ball was recovered a little later albeit with a large, brown turd lying on it, from under a bush. The ball of reeds was in relatively good condition despite its lengthy incarceration in the tree and the turd was easily flicked off with a stick. Once washed in the river, and a few more reeds added, all was set for a second half. The score was nil-nil as far as people could remember and by popular request, ‘the other lot’ were brought back from the river by the big oak. Reg at this point was beyond caring, seeing that he had an axe buried in his head and had been left for the jackals a mile down stream.

The new chief was altogether a different prospect. Bernard was much younger than Reg. He was both lean and agile and could run the fastest, jump the highest and had a degree of charisma that was both infectious and inspirational. He quickly realised how another game would boost his new found elevation and one of his first acts as leader was to behead a monkey and put the severed remains on the same rusty pole as its unfortunate predecessor. A replay was scheduled for Saturday afternoon.

This time, nearly a hundred came. They journeyed from all over the delta, some as far as the hills to the north. They came fully prepared for a long day in the sun, the thoughtful carrying mats to keep out the ferocious ants that hung about the jungle floor and coconuts to trade for refreshing juice.. The two sets of supporters kept to different sides of the clearing and were to content to hurl abuse at one another in the hot, dry sun.

Bernard was elated when his side scored first. He had chipped a loose ball into a mêlée of players who had gathered around a player’s prostrate body only for a quick thinking winger to tap it in before anyone could react. Some of the opposition complained bitterly about this unsporting gesture, one even going so far as to wrench the monkey’s head from the pole and throw it at the new chief. Order was restored when the irate man was duly clubbed to death and the most argumentative players chased away. They went in at half time, with a slender lead and still a lot of bickering.

The second half was delayed for two hours after someone spotted a leopard lurking in the bushes, and the majority of fans and players alike took the opportunity to have a cooling slice of fruit and a short doze in the branches that surrounded the clearing. The all clear was sounded at five in the afternoon and the players sleepily took their positions for the second half. It took a while for the atmosphere to return but after 10 minutes the game came alive when the ‘other lot’ equalized. A nimble fullback, with a youthful, pleasant face, picked the ball up in midfield, dribbled it past a few pathetic, half-hearted tackles and blasted it past the outstretched hand of the goalkeeper. The crowd erupted and invaded the pitch. General hysteria followed which took half an hour to subside as the happy goal scorer was raised upon the shoulders of young and old alike and carried in triumph around the camp. At 1-1 play resumed with a real tenacity and determination by both sides, who realised that with the setting sun, time was running out.

The new chief battled against an unforgiving defence. No matter what he tried, how many clever balls ‘dinked’ into the box, however many good crosses he fired across the gaol mouth, the second, surely winning goal, remained elusive. Things got worse when his goaly disappeared half way through the second half and play had to be halted briefly to launch a search party. He was quickly found in a nearby bush on top of an away fan, who couldn’t see what all the fuss was about and got dressed again sulkily, while the clearly frustrated players trudged back to the clearing.

Shitfoot got his name because he was the first player to kick the ball after it had been found with the turd on it. At first, the name rankled, but after the crowd began to chant it, repeatedly whenever he got hold of the ball, he didn’t seem to mind so much and sort of enjoyed the notoriety the name lent him. Shitfoot was short. Very short, but he wasn’t without character and a certain agility that got him around the pitch with a seeming grace and ease. He had come to the game late after having missed the first half collecting firewood. He was rushed on as an emergency sub when one of the new chief’s more promising players was carried away by a crocodile during half time.

It came naturally to him. He had an almost instinctive feel for where the ball was going to be and would arrive just as it became available. Being so short he had a low centre of gravity which enabled him to swerve around players at almost impossible angles. He had grown in confidence and stature as the game unfolded and by the time the last quarter arrived he had become Bernard's star player. If anyone was going to score, then it would surely be Shitfoot.

The sun was now beginning to dip below the horizon and some of the less fervent supporters were beginning to drift away, not wanting to risk a walk home in the dark. Both teams were exhausted and many were covered in nasty looking scratches and bruises.. Their muscles ached and their spirits were flagging but at 1-1 the new chief refused all pleas for an honourable draw. The game would continue until a clear winner emerged.

Shitfoot re-doubled his efforts. As if driven by an inner demon, he darted in and around the now slow moving opposition, harrying them into surrendering the ball. He was a ferret, here there and every where only to scuff the ball when presented with a clear shot on goal. The crowd were beginning to despair of there ever being a winner, when Shitfoot picked up the ball in his own half. He stopped the ball neatly as it fizzed at his feet, and set off towards the opposition’s half at a lightning pace. He left player after player in his wake, as his inexorable dash to goal gathered pace. A long, slow roar began to stir in the throats of the fans as they sensed that something fantastical and unimaginable was about to unfold. Shitfoot arrived in the box with only a defender to beat and proceeded to go wide of him, forcing a difficult angle from which to shoot. It was then, when time itself seemed to slow down, that Shitfoot had a brainwave. Instead of trying a cross in the vain hope that someone might be there to head it home, he did what he had to do to win the game and it was the least expected thing imaginable: as the crowd were baying for a shot, as players were scything along the dirt floor towards him, he pointed to the ground and yelled ‘SNAKE !!!’ at the top of his voice. The game came to an abrupt halt as mass panic erupted in the players on both sides and they deserted the clearing with indecent haste. The panic spread through the crowd and they retreated thirty feet under the forest canopy amidst much screaming and wailing. Shitfoot sensing it was now or never kicked the ball in to an empty goal (the goal keeper having been the first to leave) and ran a lap of dishonour around the clearing, waving his bare bottom at the away supporters end and generally being silly.

The panicked fans realising they had been tricked quite literally, went bananas.They had been gathering whole bunches of them during the day and the harvest now served as ready supply of ammunition with which to bombard the home team and its supporters. Scenes of horrible slaughter ensued. Shitfoot didn’t last long and the new chief has a lasting image of him holding the ball aloft, grinning inanely just before being eviscerated by a furious mob. Fighting followed long into the night, with neither side giving any quarter. It was only the next morning when people were just too tired to hack off any more limbs that the ‘festivities’ came to an end. But Bernard was happy. They had won 2-1, his place at the head of the tribe was now cemented and once the dead were buried he could set about starting a lasting dynasty.
A form of a memorial was erected in Shitfoot’s honour. The monkey’s head was placed on a rock near the clearing and people laid trinkets and coconut shells around it. Shitfoot’s name lived on and some girls even named their first born after him. Needless to say no more football was played after that: The tribe judged it too dangerous and taxing on resources. The ball was unravelled and the dusty, battered reeds were committed to the river whence they came.

'He goes on to cover the eighth world war and a famine in a place called 'Long Island'.

'Eighth world war? I thought there were only two'.
'No, eight' said Dougal, gently correcting Adam.

'The third world war will be fought with nuclear bombs and the fourth with sticks and stones',chuckled Dougal, quoting Einstein badly and grinning to himself.
'What's so funny about that?', said Adam with an edge to his voice.
'Well, to give you an idea, the fifth was fought with herring and the last, ..all they had in the way of weapons was cynicism. Don't worry, by the time it got started, only about 25 people turned up and half of them were mad'.

Dougal, Adam’s only friend, the man who had taken him by the hand and saved him from eternal darkness, placed the paper down gently on the table and Adam wept unselfconsciously.
‘What’s the matter now?’, Dougal asked presently, confused as to why Adam should cry at this particular piece of classical history.
His pupil blew hard into Dougal’s handkerchief and wiping the last of the snot away he blurted out,
'I am so homesick. I’m alive when by rights I should be dead. Dougal, I’m having to contend with the fact that everything I know, knew,’ he added quickly before Dougal had a chance to correct him, ‘doesn’t exist any more. How shit is that?’

After Dougal had paid the bill, Dougal popped up to see his Holiness while Adam sniffled and regained some of his composure. Presently, there was a distant laugh up a flight of stairs some way a way and Dougal came scampering down with a broad grin on his face and suggested they went for a drive.

Dougal blinked and they were in a very wide open space with a brilliant blue sky. On the horizon, there a stood a cluster of brown hills, before which lay endless tundra. They were standing on a dusty asphalt road that stretched to meet both skylines and in front of them stood a large, shiny, metallic object that reflected perfectly the occasional cotton wool wisp of cloud that passed overhead. It was the size of a family saloon that had no discernible doors but only a large, chrome exterior.
The rear of this brilliant form, rose into a set of muscular haunches, that pointed to a hideous strength.
‘Get in’,
Dougal said, pushing a button on his key fob.
A door appeared from the perfectly smooth exterior in a hiss of escaping vapour to reveal a lush, leather interior with an exquisitely designed dashboard. Adam dutifully got in and as Dougal was getting comfortable in the driving seat Adam asked him it this was in fact a hover car; something Adam presumed any discerning person of the future would have.

‘No’, Dougal said vaguely and grimaced as he turned a key in the ignition.

The thing roared into life with a power that took Adam’s breath away and filled him with awe. It felt as if he was bestriding a magnificent beast that had roamed the plains of a pre historic era. This thing was mighty, a hybrid between a tiger tank and a Ferrari. Sat in his seat, Adam felt he was in the bowels of a living thing whose muscles and sinews were perfectly toned with a limitless amount of energy and aggression. The monster idled as both of them strapped themselves in, Dougal put the thing into first and they drove way in a fearful roar, spitting gravel yards behind them as the beast tore away almost bounding down the road towards an empty horizon.

‘Would you like a dried apricot?’, asked Dougal presently, pointing at the glove compartment in front of Adam. The desert outside shot by silently and all that could be heard was the steady throb of the engine beneath. They reached 400 miles an hour with Adam folding his hands in his lap looking a little abashed.

‘It’s nice to open her out once in a while’ remarked Dougal, winking at Adam condescendingly.

’Clear the tubes’.

He hit a five hundred mph and seemed to relax a bit. He tapped a ditty on the steering wheel and hummed a tune Adam didn’t recognise.
They cruised through a mountain range with out Dougal taking his foot off the gas and descended onto a featureless plain at at a steady Mach 0.5, still on the arrow straight road that they had started on.

Dougal broke the silence.

‘This was made about a hundred years after you passed away, there was a mini industrial revolution and this is what they came up with, or one of the things at least, it was a great time to be human, believe me. It was a period of unimaginable happiness, where it really was summer all year round. There was no want, no hunger, you became, albeit briefly, one tribe and so dazzled were you by the brilliance of enlightenment it completely fazed you. It was humanity’s field of the cloth of gold, you might say, a time of global plenty. The Earth was one green and pleasant, sun-filled upland. You know there wasn’t one war for about ten years, not a single bullet fired in anger. Ten years, can you believe it? Every human heart beat as one, you spoke with one voice, you all danced to the same beat; a great, great time to be a member of the human race. This rust bucket came right at the end of that glorious epoch, a product of a brilliant time and you must forgive me, I’m rather fond of the old girl.
He changed down and took it up a couple of hundred.
They flashed through the desert landscape like a silver bullet, as fast as lightning but in the car not a sound could be heard save the low hum of the enormous engine.
After an hour or two, Adam’s jaw dropped, his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he sank forward drooling onto his shirt. Dougal asked him a question but when getting no reply, turned and looked at Adam. He smiled at Adam’s hunched shape and settled back into his seat.

When Adam awoke he was alone in the machine and Dougal was nowhere to be seen. In the driver's seat there lay an ancient leather-bound book with yellowing pages and a musty smell that reminded Adam of libraries. He got out to stretch his legs and found he was on a promontory, high up overlooking a dusty valley thousands of feet below. The sun was beginning to set and there was no sound save the rustling leaves on dry looking shrubs that lay scattered here and there.
‘Dougal?’ Adam said under his breath not wanting to break the stillness. He wasn’t altogether unhappy that he was on his own, the scenery was breathtaking, and it calmed his nerves and so gave him the opportunity to take stock.

What had he been thinking? The memory of those last terrible minutes of his life in the old world burst like a geyser into his consciousness. How could he possibly reach out over a thousand millennia and apologise to all those people whose lives he had destroyed? They were dust now. They had become the sand that lay at his feet.

He was no longer Adam but an infant of another world. The very ground had spat him back out, perhaps in disgust at this foul tasting morsel of mankind. Adam was now freeborn, liberated at last from the shackles of that which had bound him so tightly.
.
Adam felt well for the first time in a long time. He felt clear headed. On top of things. What had happened, although regrettable, had happened and he felt like a survivor.

He went back to the car, sat in the passenger’s seat and opened the book Dougal had left him.

The Books of Earnest

Earnest Serius was born somewhere in the south of England; his actual birthplace never being independently verified: although rumour has it he was in fact begotten in a cave. His parents, dwelling out in the long grass of society made no registry of the birth. He was found, at the age of five, wandering the streets of a northern market town chewing on the headless corpse of a rat and was subsequently taken into care. Various institutions struggled to raise him but he was passed from one establishment to another, as seasoned welfare officers found they could not cope. It wasn’t as if he was missing a limb or had some congenital disease that would render him incapable and in a special wheel chair. On the contrary, Earnest Serius had every component that makes for a normal human being: He had two legs (that hung like threads from his waist), two arms, a massive oversized head, unmanly shoulders and a foot long penis that swung between his legs like a gym rope. Everything was there to class him as human the only thing being he was repulsive to look at and stank to high heaven. How he came by his name, again, no one quite knew for sure but on that star crossed day when the world was blissfully unaware of his arrival, his hapless parents void of inspiration, wandered in to the local town and asked the first man they met his name and it fell to him to christen the architect of man’s destruction. The name, Serius, came from his father’s island; a distant Mediterranean outcrop that no one had ever heard of. Thick set and foul smelling, it was rumoured that he had married his sister, Earnest’s mother, who was as wild as the wood she lived in and as dark and forbidding as its murky interior. Thrown off their island by superstitious peasants, the goatherd and his wife were plucked from the high seas by a passing British merchant ship bound for England but were soon thrown back in by a frightened crew and were forced to swim to shore with the few processions they had, tied to their ankles. Exhausted and bewildered they drifted from town to village in search of food and shelter. They roamed the hills and valleys before finding caves in which to dwell and where they would be left alone. After a few years Earnest was born and nearly eaten by his father.

Earnest was a boy that not even God could love. As he grew up he began to relish the solitude that being wholly unpopular gave him. He had no distractions to pass the time and other children recoiled at the mere suggestion of playing with him. He soon became content to gaze out of the window and pick at the many festering boils that covered his body from head to foot. He had inherited his father’s condition, a bacteria buried deep within the skin that once in contact with air, rose to corrupt the flesh and give off an odour akin to putrefying flesh. This made any meaningful contact with humans or animals, nigh on impossible. The staff at the many institutions he stayed at, were very happy for Earnest to have as little interaction with themselves and inmates as possible. After some time, they both fell into some kind of routine, where Earnest would stay in his room all day and they would put his meals around the door and scamper away, amidst much coughing and retching. No teacher could come close to him so those who still cared, despairing that the boy would grow up illiterate, gave him a computer so that he could access distant learning courses and have at least a rudimentary education.

He was unlovable in that he would try, like his father, to eat anyone who came close to him if he was hungry. So not only was he confined to his room but it was also locked and bolted 24 hours of the day, 365 days of the year.
This made Earnest very happy and the staff, once they had cleared the entire landing on which his room lay, was happy too. They could go whole months without ever seeing him, and would eventually drop off food via a dumb waiter that was air locked and hosed down after use.

So Earnest grew up; alone and totally unloved, which suited him, as he had absolutely no social skills to speak of but he became, as you would expect, very adept at using the computer. Self-taught and with nothing to distract him, he would spend weeks without sleep, surfing the net and digesting the infinite information available. He learnt how to hack into the most unbreakable of systems and would correspond with the very top software magnates across the globe. He would design for them ever more and more advanced software as he had the ability to cram into a day what most humans would take weeks to complete. He never slept. He rested when his brain simply shut down from exhaustion but apart from that not a moment's slumber stopped him from what had now become a blinding obsession.

In programming circles he became a living legend, albeit a dark one: a faceless non entity that was never seen nor heard but who could advance technology in giant leaps and all at the click of a mouse. There was nothing else in his featureless existence, to steer him away from his preoccupation: no wife, no sex, no kids, no job, nothing, apart from information technology and the odd nap.

So when NASA informed the President, that meteorites were heading towards earth at an alarming rate, scientists began to think of Earnest in a different light. What role he would play in saving the planet no one knew for sure, but many in the scientific community had a gut instinct that he would play a crucial role and true enough, when his time came, he did play an important part but not in a way that any one expected.

They first saw the blazing mass of ice and iron on a rainy afternoon in November, as it whizzed past Pluto, spewing behind it a plume of hot gas. The President was woken in the early hours and with red eyes and untidy hair got on the phone to other world leaders and told them the bad news. At first the Russian premier thought it was a crank call and hung up, which everyone in the Pentagon thought very funny. Finally, and after much persuasion from his own scientists, he too understood the gravity of the situation. By 6;00 o’clock in the morning, as the world struggled out of bed, news teams gathered for what would be the most momentous briefing of their lives.
In truth, mankind took the news soberly and in its stride, for the thing wouldn’t hit for another 3-4 years, so it wasn’t as if it was tomorrow or anything.
Naturally, there were demonstrations but people soon caught on that complaining was in fact futile; for the problem was not a man made one, and therefore was nobody’s fault, not even the Americans, who were leading plans for survival anyway.

Firing nuclear weapons was out of the question, as it would not only produce thousands more little meteorites but that they would be radioactive as well. A probe was hastily assembled amidst much fanfare, to try and knock the thing off course but it crashed on take off for reasons unknown, much to the disappointment of mankind in general. Religious leaders set aside their differences and agreed that this indeed was the ending of the world and man had only him/herself to blame.

It was Earnest Serius that came up with the idea of shelters on a global scale and that given the authority, he was prepared to organise the whole thing. As high level, one-to-one meetings were out of the question, Earnest was content to manage things from his cell and sovereign states although uneasy, letting a man they had never met, run the survival of the human race from a computer/s, the weight of the scientific community told them, frankly, that unless they could come up with a better idea they had better get on with it. Earnest was the man for the job
It was Earnest's discovery of a super strong yet lightweight steel that swung it. On hearing the news of the impending crisis, he set aside 2-3 weeks of sleepless nights for its development; that it would need to be cheap to manufacture and could hold impossible weights. There were easily enough basic raw materials to go around as everyone knew that nothing on the surface would survive so anything that had been made of steel was simply broken down and smelted. This brew added to Earnest's newly found formula made for exactly what was needed and the world rejoiced.

In addition to his steel enhancing duties,, he designed blueprints for the shelters themselves. Plans for intricate and sophisticated bunkers raced across the globe via electronic mail and spewed out of ten million printers. Once these were read, a real sense of hope began to emerge; that mankind could and would survive. Prayers were said in all languages and candles were lit in the Vatican in praise of Earnest Serius, the man whom life had rejected and yet was to be its saviour. News and current affairs programmes ran feature after feature on his humble origins. The fact that he might have been born in a cave excited every one, as it lent a certain biblical resonance to his mysterious life. The Muslims claimed him as their own, as did the Christians, the Hindus added Earnest to their list of deities and the Jews swore that this was the real messiah.

Work began in the New Year and as the threat was equal to all, every man woman and child in every country across the entire earth dug as if their lives depended on it, which it did. The new steel met and exceeded all expectations. The blue prints were easy to read and adaptable. Any problem that arose was wafted in Earnest’s direction, who soon set about finding a solution. By the end of the first year there were gigantic holes appearing in all five continents. People by now had given up all notion of work in the commercial sense of the word; people didn’t work in offices or factories any more, nobody wore suits or ties. They bought agricultural attire and gloves were at a premium. The shopping malls emptied and civil wars came to an abrupt halt. Arab dug with Jew and Jew with Arab. A real sense of ‘we are all in this together’ swept through the human race.

By the second year the roofs were being covered and armies of fitters were moving in to make the cavernous spaces habitable. They were, after all, making entire underground cities; complete with roads and hospitals, reservoirs and schools. It was only going to last for 4 years, time for the dust to settle and for the sun to break through the darkness and again give life to the plants and warm the bones of the young and the old.
If mankind could only hang on, then life could return to normal and it, with its advanced brain, would have beaten the dinosaurs and survived. By the end of the second year everything was on schedule and confidence was brimming over. Earnest was putting the finishing touches to plans that covered the post meteorite world. There would have to be years of reconstruction. Whole countries would have to start from scratch, with fledgling economies and a non-existent agriculture. It was as if the slate would be wiped clean and all the ills of the past would be cleansed. There would be a fresh start and man could reinvent himself as a peace-loving and God fearing species: he would no longer be fallen and Earth would be the Garden of Eden once again.

By the beginning of the third year, the first groups of people were beginning to settle in. The ending of the world and its rebirth was to be a great leveller, class and caste systems vanished and privilege was consigned to history.
The transition was orderly because, thanks to Earnest Serius’ well laid plans, elaborate security precautions were in place well before the first people arrived. The leaders; presidents, prime ministers, kings and queens, were given only slightly better facilities nearer the surface and near telecommunications systems so that they could talk to one another and have a sense of how things were going. Livestock was herded in Noah like fashion, although considerably more than two of each. Every attempt was made to make the place homely and liveable in. The day when the great doors would be slammed shut, drew closer, and a sense of great foreboding ran through mankind.

Farewell concerts were held, where mass audiences wept quite unselfconsciously and mankind hugged each other in fraternal support and friendship. Services in cathedrals, mosques, synagogues and temples went on for days, with congregations in fervent, fasting prayer. They beseeched God to deliver them and thanked him heartily for Earnest Serius’ input.

By now, the meteor could be seen by the naked eye; a small wisp of seemingly innocuous gas that turned night into day. People could read by its luminescence and those still left on the surface complained of a lack of sleep. Whole cities fell silent. The general hubbub of daily life ceased and one by one the metropolises of the world went dark as the power was switched to support life underground.

Security personnel turned for one last look, and with rifles slung over the shoulders slammed all the ten foot thick, steel doors shut with an ominous boom. Only the crazed roamed the earth, left behind by an uncaring and indifferent populace, bent on survival.
Earnest Serius was given lavish quarters near the surface as befitted his elevated status, with a porthole that looked out onto a lush, fertile river valley. No expense was spared, with all countries contributing to the cost of what was basically a small, bejewelled palace.

He was moved, in a specially designed truck, that was hermetically sealed from the outside and only a very few were allowed to see him. The stink he gave off even from the short journey from the doors of the hospital to the open doors of the truck, caused his doctor to faint. The curious guards recoiled at the sight of him for Earnest hadn’t been in daylight for most of his adult life and his boils were as bad as ever. According to eye witnesses, he looked neither left nor right or at the brilliant blue sky. His face was impassive, and this first taste of fresh aired freedom, had no discernible impact on him. He barked at the driver to move and banged his hand hard on the interior panel and the truck roared into life, conveying Earnest in great secrecy, to his new home.

His rooms were fitted out with the latest in computer software as this was to be the nerve centre of the operation. This was where Earnest would run the labyrinth of tunnels and apartments that filled the cavernous spaces many feet under ground. He would manage the air, the heat, the light, the water, the food, power, everything mankind needed to live through its enforced incarceration.

He settled in well. He eschewed the linen sheets of fine Egyptian cotton and the mattresses filled with the softest, Icelandic down, preferring to snatch what ever sleep he needed on the floor or where he sat. He never even ventured into the gold plated, marbled bathroom. Earnest Serius had never bathed in his life and he didn’t see why he should start now. He ripped up the hand woven; Persian carpets that made his feet itch and threw them into a corner. He defecated where he stood as a vulture would ; he didn’t want the added hassle of getting up and walking to the bathroom.
The finery of his surroundings was alien to him. For a man that was not able to understand beauty, gold was a metal with no more lustre than plain iron. The beautiful tapestries and the great works of art lent to him from the world's greatest art galleries inspired nothing within him; for Earnest was an organism that resembled a man but was in truth an insect. He breathed, his heart beat, his cells multiplied but there the resemblance ended. No love, no desire, no consciousness penetrated the thick, green canopy of his thoughts.

Of all the features in his palatial surroundings, only the porthole was his favourite. He would sit for hours and watch the gathering dust storms swirl around the tiny aperture, as the meteors made their presence felt. He sat motionless, riveted by the random motion of the brown gas like clouds, thrown up by the impact. It didn’t once occur to him that this was in fact the ending of the world, that he had a ring side seat to the nemesis of man. From a humble ape to a creature of immeasurable faculty; that man’s journey should come to this dusty end meant nothing to him. He looked into the pool of infinite despair and saw only the reflection of himself, a hideous, dead eyed monster.

Loud marshal music was played to drown out the detonations. They shook the shelters violently and the lights flickered momentarily. Families clung to one another, lovers held each other close and babies wailed for days on end. One shelter in Russia took a direct hit, killing millions, and another in Africa was partially struck, opening a crack through which tons of earth and dust poured, asphyxiating thousands. However, once the impacts were over, life underground began to move forward. People realised that mankind had survived and a special day was given over to Earnest; that he might be venerated on this day, hymns written and sung in his honour.

Humanity went back to the daily life of routine. Children were schooled and people busied themselves with keeping the place tidy. Plays were put on; the libraries teemed with voracious readers, and every conceivable club was established to while away the days and slow the onset of the inevitable boredom. At first, no body seemed to notice the piped music that played one song over and over again and that seeped from every corner of every complex the world over, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

It had been an after thought by Earnest, that folk should have some light, middle-of the-road entertainment to keep their minds off the humdrum, foetid life of life underground but he was oblivious to the importance of variety to the human existence and had chosen only one song which he presumed people would like.
By now, having completed the mission the world had set for him and with nothing much else left to do, he began to while away the time gazing out of the porthole and having thoughts that only God could come near to understanding. After the advent of the mirror he stopped all communication and ignored hand written notes smuggled in with his dinners from anxious presidents about what he intended to do about ‘the song’.

‘The Lady in Red’ was a hit composed by a man called Chris De Burgh, who wrote it allegedly for his wife, Cinzia. He was happy that the single made number one and was very happy to receive all the royalty cheques that came rushing in, as the success of the record took off. It topped the charts in 1986 and was at number one for the grand total of 15 weeks. Popular with teenagers from all corners of the globe, it was the stuff of young love, of the first kiss, a musical rite of passage from childhood to adolescence.

It played throughout the day and night. From the milking parlours, to the seats of government, in the schools and offices, the bedrooms and playgrounds: every inch of the subterranean caverns was covered by its melodious, treacly sound. Mental health professionals soon had queues around the block, each wretched patient recounting the same wretched tale; 'something, anything to stop the music'. Some set pistols off next to their ears but it only gave a temporary respite as the ear would recover and the song would seep back like the slow hand of death. Men and women dug with their fingernails at the steel decking of their entombed world to find the hidden speakers that delivered the frightful drivel, or even its power supply. Such was their angst.
A rumour did the rounds that politicians of every hue had the power to turn the song off in the peaceful solitude of their private apartments. This hearsay had the effect of galvanising the masses into an insurrection so bloody that it surpassed even the cruellest conflicts 'above'.
Despite the best efforts of the armed security guards, liberally spraying the mob with machine gun fire, they were able to enter the inner sanctums of power and lynch MPs suspected of harbouring an ‘off’ button. One poor Socialist MP in Central America met a particularly grisly end, having his intestines torn from his stomach and made to eat them in front of a blood thirsty rabble. The irony being the whole bloody drama was played out to the strains of ‘Lady in Red’ as there was no ‘off’ button anywhere to be found.
Nowhere was immune. Suicides rocketed as people began to hurl themselves from strategic high points around the cities. The deranged thrust kitting needles into their ears and it became a pact between close friends; one to deafen the other with any implement that came to hand. But still the song kept playing.

‘I’ve never seen you looking so lovely as you do tonight
I’ve never seen you shine so bright
I’ve never seen so many men ask you if you wanted to dance
They’re looking for a little romance given half a chance
I have never seen that dress you are wearing
Or the highlights in your head that catch your eyes I have been blind
The Lady in red is dancing with me cheek to cheek
There’s nobody here, it’s just you and me, it’s where I wanna be
But I hardly know this beauty by my side
I’ll never forget the way you look tonight.

I’ve never seen you look so gorgeous as you did tonight
I’ve never seen you shine so bright you were amazing
I’ve never seen so many people want to be there by your side
And when you looked at me and smiled, it took my breath away.
I have never had such a feeling
Such a feeling of complete and utter love, as I do tonight

The way you look tonight
I will never forget the way you look tonight
The lady in red
The lady in red
The lady in red (I love you)’.

Over and over again. People began frantically telephoning Earnest, requesting politely at first, if he would mind playing something else or just 'switching the thing off?'. With his stature still high, people conducted themselves with reverence when dealing with the great man. But this soon began to wear thin as the weeks went by and Earnest wasn’t picking up. He rapidly became the most hated man on the planet. The peoples of the earth would have swapped Earnest Serius for a thousand Hitler's or ten thousand Stalin's, if only he would stop the noise. He had become a snake oil salesman, a charlatan; in the Mid-West many centuries before, he would have been run out of town or lynched. His statues were torn down and children were renamed but Earnest let the phone ring and the song kept playing.
He wouldn’t pick up, he couldn’t pick up for he was elsewhere. He didn’t care if mankind lived or breathed. Not any more, not after this. He was oblivious to its pain, uncaring for its agony. Mankind for all that he had done for it, this was its token of appreciation; a small, cheap and unassuming mirror.

He had acquired the offending article months before the mounting dissatisfaction over the song had really taken hold. Two of his most trusted guards had concocted an idle bet between them. It was something as mindless as; who could hold his breath the longest, with the loser having to pay a forfeit; there not being much else to do on Earnest’s floor. The rivals were unsure as to what the forfeit would be but they both knew that even being found in possession of a mirror was enough to warrant a life sentence, let alone giving one to Earnest. So it was natural then, that once a winner had been decided, handing Earnest a reflective surface would be the price; such being the folly of boredom.

It hadn’t taken them long to deduce that the elaborate security measures on matters mirror, were on behalf of Earnest and confirmed their worst fears that the thing behind the frosted glass was after all a freak. With the possibility of a life time’s incarceration hanging over them, quarter was neither asked for nor given and they both set about starving themselves of oxygen until they both fainted. Finally, after the best of three, a purple faced, thick set Yorkshire man loaded Earnest’s lunch into the dumb waiter and inserted a small circular mirror under a pile of sweet potato and a lump of garlic sausage before pulling the cord twice and sending it on its way.

For Earnest the advent of the small, feminine compact came as a profound shock. As he was polishing off the last of the gravy and licking the bowl clean, he saw something appear on the plate’s surface. He caught a glimpse of a reptilian eye that stared back at him with a burning intensity that Earnest found unsettling. When he had licked the rest of the sauce away he could take in a whole, hideous, blanched face that stared back at him, incredulously. The skin was chalk white and the face had a look of such extreme wrath that it struck terror into Earnest's heart and the plate fell from his hands. He ran into his office and closed the door.
He stayed in his inner sanctum for a whole two days before venturing out. Finally, having gained a semblance of courage, he crept over to the plate and the shiny round puddle that lay next to it. He peered down at it to see if his uninvited guest had gone but no he was still there, staring at him with hateful eyes. This time Earnest did not run but stared back not with hate but with curiosity which like wise the vision on the floor aped with perfect timing. Earnest shot an eyebrow up an inch inch causing a boil to burst open and shed its foul smelling liquid down his corrupted face. A red livid lump exploded correspondingly on his tormentor's face and Earnest was confused. It was as if the monster, the evil one, the terrifying gargoyle that lay lurking on the floor in that small space was....well....him in some way or at least very similar.

Earnest thought speaking might help.

'Do you know who I am?', he asked tartily.

There was no sound from the floor but the lips moved in perfect timing to that of his own.
Earnest went off to have a rare lie down. His brain raced with innumerable calculations as to what that thing could be but every time he drew a blank.
He must have drifted off, something Earnest never did but when he awoke he felt very anxious and upset. He had had a dream where God had told him, quite categorically, who the person was, inhabiting that small space on the floor next door, and Earnest couldn't believe it. He sat trembling at the end of his bed for a while before walking as if a man to execution back to the shiny object on the floor.

There was the apparition just as if he had left it, with the same abject look that Earnest wore and when Earnest thrust his hand out to scratch at the face a corresponding hand met his and then he finally knew. A half ton penny dropped in a ten ton machine and he let out a feminine shriek so loud that it could be heard many floors below and echoed around the empty apartments of his private palace.

As he stood alone, that small part of his mind that was human burst into a gaseous cloud of self-awareness and he began to weep.
The big, salty tears that gathered in his infected ducts were the first to fall in all of Earnest’s difficult years. They ran down his corrupted face and splashed to the floor in silent grief. He pulled at his testicles and fell to his knees, letting out deep, guttural, bestial groans that came from deep within his black, light less soul.

He staggered to the only place that could give him comfort, the porthole, and pressed his face against the cool glass. The dust storm swirled and eddied around Earnest’s lonely promontory, and he wept such bitter tears that they threatened to send the Earth spinning from its axis and hurl it into space.

And there he remained week upon week, oblivious to the distant gunfire and ghastly screams that hung about the corridors with increasing intensity. He kept himself alive by licking the condensation from the smooth surface of his window on the world, all the while in his mind’s eye, walking through a mist covered, wilderness devoid of colour or relief. He walked alone, without direction or purpose, in search of what he didn’t know. He hoped that one day he would be found in this wasteland and that his questions could finally be answered.

With Earnest day dreaming, the world grew more insane. The security personal had given up trying to keep order and had joined the masses in seeking ways to overthrow the erstwhile saviour of mankind. They hurled themselves at the machine guns and flame throwers protecting Earnest's quarters, dying in their millions. Thousands would charge at the reinforced steel doors only to be cut down by the eyeless and unforgiving robots that Earnest had cleverly installed for just such an emergency.
Bodies piled up and remained unburied with wave upon wave trampling over the decaying flesh of the fallen.

And so it went on. With no headway made at the gates, mankind imploded and shrank away from life. It had been beaten by one of its own or nearly its own; Earnest being at best only half human. A day was set and communicated around the world that this would be the day that mankind gave up its ghost. Religious leaders conceded that there was no God, only the Devil and that the humanists had been right all along. The song kept playing without respite and man consoled himself with the fact that once it was all over he wouldn’t have to hear Chris De Burgh’s number one hit ever again. The method used was the acid found in the cooling ducts that wormed their way around the underground caverns and that was highly toxic to both man and beast alike.

On Wednesday 15th November at 4 o’clock in the afternoon, ironically the day the meteorites had first been spotted, mankind drank the poison and all fell silent.

Years later, the few that remained, the orphans that had hidden in the shadows and so had been missed by the wave of human misery as it crashed on the shore of its fate, were the inheritors of a new and empty world. Years later, they broke into Earnest’s quarters only to find a smashed porthole at the end of a vast, gilded room.

Adam put the book down and stared at the horizon through the tinted windscreen.

Dougal had appeared from nowhere and stood a little distance away, he too looking at the horizon.

‘Is that what really happened?’, asked Adam, not looking at Dougal.

‘Every word and that was only the beginning'.

‘Well, fuck me’, said Adam and closed his eyes.

Chapter Nine

2010-09-21T22:35:00.000+01:00

Chapter 9

Cupped in a hot sweaty hand, the beetle was conveyed down a dimly lit corridor, wrapped in a piece of toilet paper. He waited breathlessly in the inky confines of his captor’s dressing gown pocket and waited for an unknown fate.
After some serious negotiation, a door buzzed open and both of them were in a brightly lit space in the middle of which a fountain gurgled contentedly. The air was fresh and scented with spring flowers so sweet you could almost taste it and in stark contrast to the fetid air of the room they had just left. His captor gently pulled the toilet paper out from his pocket and placed it on the ground. The beetle felt a little self-conscious arriving as he did on the ground bestride a throne of soft white paper, most regal in his new found majesty. He had tamed the beast and now the noble savage was venerating him. What a turn round. He turned and looked up at the towering figure above him, waved an antenna as a way of a goodbye and walked into the dark and mysterious undergrowth.

Part 2: Chapter One

2010-09-20T22:36:00.000+01:00

Chapter One

As Adam reached the deep end, he turned and sucked in as much air as he could into his lungs. Doing one more length of crawl was out of the question so he decided on a more sedate breast stroke and spluttered his way back on the final length.
Back in the changing room he towelled himself dry, got dressed and finally replaced the watch Dougal had given him on his wrist. Feeling weary but virtuous he made his way out of the large, deserted municipal swimming pool and into the large Victorian park it nestled in. There was no one around as Adam had instructed Dougal that he didn’t want anyone ‘messing with his head’ and that he preferred solitude to being in crowds.
He had also asked for it to be permanent winter. Quite why, Dougal could only guess at: it had caused a lot of heated debate between them but Adam had been insistent and would brook no argument. So Dougal gave him a land dusted with a light snow and beset with a freezing, cutting wind that cut through the thickest of Adam’s overcoats. Adam was entirely happy with this arrangement as it gave him a sense of home and anyway being cosy was something he felt he liked more than anything else right now.

He had asked Dougal earlier on that year, if he could live in a huge medieval castle, with battlements and a portcullis. Adam had by now, become so adjusted to getting what he saw in his mind's eye, he just needed to squeeze his eyes shut once for the impossible to happen. Dougal was happy to give it the go ahead and threw in a few stables and various outhouses. He staffed it with an army of servants and a host of cooks and administrators. It had a thousand dark panelled rooms and the only light came from a million candles that burned day and night. On some days, Adam took to wearing a large bear skin over his shoulders and would wander around the battlements sporting a beard and wearing his hair down to his shoulders.

There he would sit among the gargoyles and ruminate over the past, the present and an uncertain future.

Dougal was due for dinner that evening so after his afternoon dip, instead of going straight home past the silent railway station, he would need to make a slight detour as he would have to go via a Sainsbury’s that had been near him when he was alive. He thought the whole thing through and just closed his eyes when he wanted to be back in the place that he knew from all those years ago. Being there gave him a sense of home and he liked handling money and generally being in 2008, the year coincidently, he died. So with his bearskin slung over one shoulder, he crept along the deserted aisles until his trolley was full and made his way to the check out.

A year had passed since his resurrection and he had made startling progress.

Over the ensuing months, there had been a gradual role reversal between Dougal and Adam. As Dougal pressed his protégé on matters Adam’s time the more the answers become complex and so it was Dougal’s turn to be the pupil. Bit by bit Adam’s explanations turned into presentations and finally morphed into lectures, some lasting for hours as he explained, persuaded, cajoled, humoured, Dougal into understanding the culture, history, art and science of his time.

Golf was one the things that Adam found the most difficult to get across. He soon tired of Dougal’s pinched look of incomprehension and had ended up shouting that ‘he hadn’t practised the sport and what difference did it make anyway!’, which made the good professor up stumps and flounce out of the room. Today was the day that they would make up only if Dougal promised faithfully not to mention the dreaded ‘G’ word ever again.

He arrived that night, just as a snowstorm began to bite in earnest and wasn’t in the best of moods. Adam met him at the drawbridge with a flaming torch and a small retinue of pages and footmen.
To show his displeasure, Dougal arrived as his true self, contrary to the protocol of their relationship. As he clambered out of the carriage, he cursed the cold, the gloom and the fact they could both be in the tropics somewhere, sitting in wicker chairs sipping Margaritas.

As his six feet hit the snow, Dougal shot out an antenna and said theatrically,
‘I come in peace’, which Adam thought hilarious. He went to hug him but couldn’t decide which bit of Dougal to hug. Despite the awkwardness of Dougal’s true self both were content to beam at each other in delight at a friendship regained.
‘No problem Doog, come in’, said Adam finally, held one of Dougal’s antenna in both hands and led him warmly into the courtyard.

Over a fish supper, six months previously, having had a little too much Muscadet, Dougal had let slip that he was fact half insect or to be more precise, beetle. Adam had taken the news philosophically; after what he had been through; nothing really amazed him any more and he treated it the same way as if Dougal had been homosexual, Dougal could, whenever the fancy took him, change from human to bug with little in the way of effort, which was disconcerting at the time but something Adam had got used to.

He instructed staff to expect an important guest and that they would eat in the 'Great Room.'

A hot bath was run and certain senior members of staff i.e. the cook, the Sergeant of Arms, and the chaplain were tasked with attending the great man.

Once bathed and pampered, Dougal appeared in the Great Hall, dressed in a navy blue lounge suit, suede loafers and smelt of talc. He was served a dry sherry and stood by a roaring log fire.

His mood had definitely improved since arriving and he had thankfully reverted back to the Dougal that Adam knew and loved, once he was settled, relaxed and warm.
Adam opened with, ‘there’s something I want’,anxious to ride the wave of bonhomie and sat himself down at the end of a very long oak table.
‘Something, I would like you to supply me with’.
Dougal nodded the nod that he knew something was coming he wouldn’t necessarily agree with and fixed Adam a stare, waiting to scowl.
‘Go on’, he said.
Adam reached into the deep pocket of his smoking jacket and retrieved a piece of crumpled paper. He cleared his throat and started to read from it.
‘As you know, I am alone in this world. I have been washed up on a foreign shore. I am like a newborn, a babe in arms with only a human/beetle for company’. Adam actually said the word stroke, when it separated the nouns, giving it, Adam felt; emphasis. ‘Despite our long and fruitful friendship, I feel the time has come when we turn our thoughts away from science and onto more sentimental topics’. Adam alighted on the word sentimental, making little rabbit's ears with his fingers above his head.
Adam sensing this attempt at visual parenthesis was distracting Dougal, hastily dropped his fingers and placed them on the table.
He stared intently at the notes in his hand as he spoke and read the words as if they weren’t his own.
‘As you know, I have been without human comfort for a while. The tender embrace of a real woman I have not felt for many a long year and it is now, now that I ask you as a friend and fellow human stroke thing, if you could do me an enormous favour?’ Adam felt this last bit didn’t scan as well as it might but it had been late when he wrote it and he was confident Dougal would notice the sudden shift in register.
Dougal looked very tense when Adam paused for breath and lent forward out of the high, winged back chair he was sitting in. He cast Adam a wary eye but said nothing, content to cock his head to one side and eye him up and down like an old hen.
Adam put his speech down in front of him and sat down with an exasperated sigh shouting at no none in particular,

‘I haven’t been laid in 1,000,000 years, God help me!’

Dougal was so shocked at this he changed back into his true self and then back to Dougal in an instant.
He shrank back behind the wings of his chair and said quietly,

‘I don’t do confrontation’.

‘Sorry’, said Adam, regaining his composure, ‘but it has been a very, very long time’.

Both looked at their respective fingernails not wanting to be the first to speak.
Finally, Dougal could bear it no longer and came up with:

‘We’re working on it’, and left it at that.

‘So there’s hope then?’, Adam asked presently.

Adam winced when he said this as he knew perfectly well that hope was one of the things that Dougal couldn’t get no matter how hard you explained it. Hope, suicide and golf were the big three that you couldn’t mention just as sex, politics and religion were in Adam’s time.
‘We have found a bone, no more than a fragment but what we have learnt from you has been very useful, only it might take a while’, says Dougal from behind the security of the wings of his chair.
‘A lady fragment?’ asked Adam, probing Dougal’s outer defences;
‘A fragment from a woman born in a slightly later era than your own’. It’s a slow process; you took the best part of a thousand years’.
‘How long for her then?’ asked Adam, not unnaturally.
Dougal thought for a bit and scratched his head. He was obviously doing some extraordinary calculation in his head and his eyes rolled back and forth, until after an awkward pause he said,
‘About 600 years’.
‘600 years!!! I can’t wait that long!’ Adam exploded.
‘Give or take a few months’.
‘But, I’ll be dead by then’
‘No you won’t’, Dougal said in a quiet voice.
‘I have given you the secret of eternal life’.
’ Oh, right’, said Adam brightly.
‘None of that dipping you in the river Styx either, just change a few enzymes here and there, and Bob’s your uncle’.
This killed the moment for Adam, as he felt that Dougal’s tone was a bit disrespectful, given the mysteries of life and death.
‘You don’t think I would work away like an ant for the past millennia only for you to get all, wizened and incapable?’.
Dougal changed tack swiftly to a course he felt more promising.

‘Which brings me to my next point.’ Dougal rose from his chair and idled over to the fire. He prodded it with a poker until sparks flew and a burning log snapped and crackled.
‘We would need your help at the final stages’ said Dougal presently, staring at the flames.
‘We would need you to cast your human eye over the subject’.
‘In what capacity?’, asked Adam, folding his arms.
‘Well, as a designer, as we don’t really know what constitutes a real woman as such. We had no idea that you were a man until we saw you doing that thing in the bath.’
Adam reddened but said nothing.
‘We would need you to draw up a list of specifications as to the partner you wouldn’t mind spending eternity with, paint a picture, so to speak.
‘I’ll see what I can do’, mumbled Adam,
‘We cannot see what beauty is. Anyway, I believe it is in the eye of the beholder, it would be a great help, would you mind terribly?’
Dougal drained his glass placed it on the mantel piece, clapped his hands together and said;
‘Let’s eat’.

They ate heartily, well into the night. The cooks served platefuls of venison and partridge, mutton and sucking pig washed down with flagons of rich claret. Course after steaming course, arrived with unerring regularity. They laughed, cried, sang and nearly danced if Adam had had his way.
As the huge grandfather clock struck twelve, both men sat back in their chairs and loosened their belts. The talk was of history and war, which Dougal was obviously very keen on and harboured some strangely radical views. He found the idea of the First World War faintly amusing as he found the atomic raids on Japan a very funny joke. But then Dougal wasn’t really from Adam’s time and therefore had no real cultural reference. He nodded and indulged Dougal’s giggles as he would a man who used the word ‘nigger’ but was too stupid to care.
‘Tell me’, ventured Adam when Dougal had composed himself,
‘Where is Earnest Serius?’
The laughter in Dougal’s throat died instantly, and he sat up not a grin or a smirk in sight.

‘East’, he said and reached for his brandy tumbler.

Part 2: Chapter Two

2010-09-19T22:37:00.000+01:00

Chapter 2

They adjourned to the billiard room and Dougal lit a cigar.
They played with brisk efficiency, each moving uncommanded by the other, around the baize, fishing out balls from pockets and replacing them on their correct spot with each saying 'shot' once in a while,
Adam took a 3-0 lead in no time and Dougal complained he was still ‘too full of dinner’ and that it affected his concentration.

Adam breezed around the table like a panther, potting balls with an annoying aplomb and all the while winking at Dougal and leering.
At 5-2, Dougal wanted a sit down and they collapsed in the drawing room on sofas as large as a family saloon car.

‘We found him outside, wandering alone. After all that time mooching about, he didn’t look so great, in fact he looked bloody awful.’
Dougal took off his spectacles and slowly cleaned them with the handkerchief he always kept in his left trouser pocket.

‘No disrespect to the old man, far from it, he taught us a great deal’
In our investigations spanning many millennia, we had never come across anything with such wrath.
He must have looked into every rock pool on every shore of every beach on this empty Earth and seen only himself glaring back, teeth barred, ready to tear to shreds the image that tormented him.

Dougal lifted a buttock and stuffed the handkerchief back into its home.
‘We rescued him and he us’ he quoted, piously from some oblique religious text.
‘He had your form: legs, arms, shoulders, it was all there, like you, but up here’. Dougal tapped the side of his head, ‘he was completely different’.

By now, Adam was decidedly woozy after the meal and the numbing effect of the brandy and was quite content for Dougal to prattle on about Earnest, a man that would be god, at least for Dougal anyway.

Later, in the small hours Adam cried foul and pleaded for Dougal to stop. He had been talking, nay babbling, for some two hours about the mysteries of Earnest, and Adam fancied a walk along the battlements to clear his head before turning in and calling it a night.
He was just standing up stretching, when Dougal suggested they do something different.

‘Why don’t we go outside?’, he said quite matter-of-factly.

‘Outside, outside?’ queried Adam.

‘Outside’, confirmed Dougal and went to get his boat cloak.

Outside was a place Dougal only mentioned in passing, now and again, and never expanded on it let alone suggesting going there. Outside meant a place that was real, not made up from either Dougal’s imagination or Adam’s but the actual surface of the Earth.

Dougal returned wearing a fur hat, thick mittens and had his cloak tucked firmly under his chin.

‘I take it it’s cold’ Adam said sarcastically and Dougal laughed heartily.

‘Minus thirty’, he said and walked towards a spiral staircase that lay in the corner of the room.

They ascended the stairs with Adam mumbling that minus thirty was in fact very cold indeed and both could die the moment they opened the hatch.

‘This is only to get us to the lift’ said Dougal pointing to his attire,. And by the time they got to a damp, featureless room with dark brass portholes and a depressing neon strip, Adam could see what Dougal meant.

Immediately they entered, their breath turned to crystals that fell to the floor with a faint tinkle and Adam began to shiver uncontrollably.

‘Christ’, was all he could manage through clenched teeth.

‘Put this on’, said Dougal and handed Adam a thin plastic suit of some kind.
By the time Adam had squeezed into it, (an awkward moment, as it meant taking off his bear skin and exposing himself, albeit temporarily, to the intense cold. Dougal had to hold the trousers open while Adam climbed in to them by which stage he was almost hysterical.) Once on and zipped up, the cold magically disappeared and he began to admire himself in the reflection of a porthole. The whole ensemble was quite ‘Glam Rock’, which he found hard to explain to Dougal.
They travelled in a lift for a self-conscious 4 minutes with Adam singing 'Do You Want to be My Gang',until Dougal blurted out matter- of-factly, that he wouldn’t be going with him.

‘What do you mean? Not coming with me!!’, asked Adam incredulously.

‘I can’t’, replied Dougal, shrugging his shoulders, ‘it’s a…you know’, and made a gesture as it to point to his true identity.

‘Oh’, said Adam forlornly and before he had time to make a case, the lift door opened and Dougal thrust him out with a firm shove in the back.

When Adam opened his eyes after some ten minutes, he found himself on a flat plain of tarmac that stretched to the horizon and beyond.
In the distance he saw what he thought looked like a meter of some description and after ten minutes walking towards the familiar machine, found it was indeed a Pay and Display machine in full working order. Adam reached into his pocket and found some loose change and bought an hour’s worth of parking. He took great joy in hearing the machine buzz and whir, printing out its ticket which had no use.

He looked around and seeing nothing more than an enormous car park walked back to the lift door and pressed the down button. The door opened after a while and Dougal was there, cloak wrapped over his eyes, looking very shifty.
‘It’s nothing but a car park’ said Adam, not a little disappointed and gave the ticket to Dougal by way of proof.

‘Earnest had a car at one stage’, said Dougal apologetically and as he pushed the button to close the lift, he tossed Adam a set of keys.
‘We thought having somewhere to park it would please him’.
The lift and its chipped green door vanished and in the space where it had been stood a battered grey, Citroen Diane; luckily for Adam, he had driven one in his youth.

He started the engine, which roared into life on the first turn of the key and Adam felt a surge of euphoria. He let the engine idle for a while, mulling over the possibilities of where he could go. The car park stretched as far as the eye could see, and he wasn’t confident that it led anywhere in particular. But all the same, he pulled the long gear stick towards him into first and released the clutch.

Not being entirely confident about his new freedom, Adam was content to drive around in circles and straight lines, changing gear and generally getting used to the whole idea of having a car at his disposal. Quite soon the novelty wore off and soon he was climbing through the gears heading in no particular direction.

The car was not designed for speed and had no aerodynamic features to speak of, only a 650cc engine, which was perfect around French lanes but was slow and ponderous on the flat. Not that this bothered Adam. He was in heaven. He drove with one arm out the window and only a finger on the steering wheel.

Eventually, he came to a crossroads and instinctively stopped out of habit. The engine idled for some time while Adam thought about the possibilities. He then realised that with no other cars anywhere to be found and not knowing where anything was, direction was meaningless. So he turned East and headed towards the horizon.
Despite the freezing temperatures, Adam was not cold. The suit kept him just right; so it was crisp, fresh and altogether pleasant.

As he drove, two things played on his mind, the possibility of getting lost and running out of petrol. But as the road went by these worries left him, no doubt Dougal had thought of everything and he was, after all, too precious to lose.

The view was very much like that he had had from Dougal’s supped up car; endless tundra, rocky outcrops and gentle sloping hills. It was empty and silent which suited Adam. Having not spoken to a single human being for some considerable time he was not sure what he would say anyway.

Eventually, after two or three hours he pulled over for a well-earned rest. He changed down and pulled the car over to the side of the road and came to a gravely halt.

He got out of the front seat and opened the back door. He had hardly got himself comfortable when he was asleep. How long he slept he didn’t know but it must have been a while as the weak sun had dipped behind the horizon when he awoke, stiff and miserable.

The darkness was all consuming, it was as if a black cloak had been laid over the windows and it was a struggle for Adam to reach the driving seat and turn the engine on. By the light of the headlights he could see around the musty interior and could properly wake up. He sat there for a while, listless and on the horns of a dilemma. Should he continue on, certain in the knowledge that nothing of any note lay over the horizon or should he return to the car park and back to the comfort of Dougal? He could do with a large sandwich and a glass of beer after all, not forgetting a long hot soak and his soft bed. Anxious as to what to do, he suddenly noticed something up ahead. At first he thought it was a lonely star that had lost its bearings and fallen to Earth. But as he squinted, he knew instinctively what it was. It was the light of a single 60 watt bulb, bravely illuminating the darkness and like Canute, losing the battle against the tide of night.
Immediately, he turned the ignition and the engine leapt in to life, as if conscious of the urgency. To say he raced towards the pathetic ray of light would be an exaggeration: motor bikes had bigger engines but with his foot flat to the floor, he managed fifty miles an hour and with ten knuckles shining white on the steering wheel, he squeezed another 5 miles an hour from the straining engine.

The light steadily grew brighter and with the passing of half an hour Adam slammed the breaks on and came to a skidding halt.

Breathless, he clambered out and stood in awe of the thing that presented itself in silent majesty.

It wasn’t so much a house, more a house that had once been but by the symmetry of its lines had obviously been constructed by human hand.
There was even an upstairs window of sorts. It was square and had been put there for a purpose, which made it uniquely human. The bulb that had lured him like a moth, hung from a dirty plastic cable suspended in a crude kind of porch. There was no door, so Adam breezed inside through a portal of weathered stone and into the interior.
He could make out a breakfast room with a simple table and chair in the middle. He came across a set of stone stairs towards the rear and slowly and silently he felt his way up, one step at a time, into an ever increasing darkness.

He reached the stop stair and felt his way into a room that had the window he had seen when he first arrived. He let out a loud 'hello?', to check if any one was there; after all this wasn't his house. By the lights of the car parked outside, he could see a bed against a far wall. It had a smooth, wooden headboard and a soft forgiving mattress.
Adam chuckled to himself.
‘Dougal, you little darling’, and collapsed on a mound of pillows, in fit of giggles.
He climbed under a warm, patchwork quilt and lay still, listening to the deafening silence out side.

In the morning, Adam decided on a lie in that lasted until a guilt ridden 11:30 am and it was not until 12:00 that he was truly up and ready for the day. He trotted down stairs to the breakfast room and now that day had come, he could see it for what it was: truly Spartan. The table and chair were the only furniture and on the far wall hung a corner cupboard,that hovered above a crude cooking stove. Dougal had thoughtfully left a note on the table that had a ‘Home Sweet Home’ card attached. It read:

‘Hope every thing is OK. Wishing you every happiness in your new home,
Dougal.
PS feel free to use the typewriter’.

His eyes roamed around the room for while They settled on the cupboard again, whereupon he sprang to his feet and with one stride yanked the little door open. What he saw pleased him greatly. Seven slices of thick bacon lay, luxuriously wrapped in grease proof paper Someone had scrawled the words ’Smoked’ on the side in blue biro and Adam felt the weight of it in his right hand. It felt comforting; heavy in its fleshiness.
At the back of the shelf hid a brightly coloured, rectangular packet with exotic writing on the side. Adam lifted it into the palm of his hand and examined it in detail. He did not understand the language but written among the fancy, foreign illustrated words was the word 'Tabac' that lifted Adam‘s spirits considerably. He opened one end and sucked in a rich brew of dark, aromatic tobacco that sent his senses swirling.
He reached father into the cupboard and produced a jar of coffee, a chipped metal coffee pot, a small bag of sugar, a loaf of fresh, fluffy white bread that was soft and tempting to the touch, a pound of butter, bright yellow and slightly salty, a heavy, metallic lighter and two packets of brightly coloured cigarette papers with a picture of a dancing girl shrouded in smoke on the thin cardboard lid. The commercial artist that had drawn it spared no detail as Adam noticed that her silken dress hugged her pert buttocks in a swirl of revealing sensuality and Adam felt a stirring in his loins, it had, after all, been a long time. He mumbled a quick, silent prayer in honour of Dougal and made for a tap that he had spotted protruding incongruously, from a wall by the door.

Next to the stove was a pile of kindling that leapt into life as a shower of sparks the moment Adam applied a flame from the lighter and soon the bacon was fizzing on the stove and the smell of freshly made coffee wafted around the room. Within no time and with Adam in rapture, breakfast was served; the first one he had prepared for himself for over a million years and it tasted wonderful. The grease ran in torrents through his fingers and he wiped them on his trouser legs that afforded the only cloth in the room.

He slurped the coffee, savouring every mouthful that was too hot to drink but Adam was oblivious to the pain and continued apace, blowing madly on the steaming brew.

The whole thing was eaten and drunk in a matter of minutes and Adam leant back in his chair. Giving his fingers a final wipe he reached for the cigarette papers and rolled himself a fat clumsy cigarette that once lit with a satisfying click of the metallic lighter, preceded to puff and billow smoke around the room like an autumn bonfire.

The tobacco had an after taste of vanilla and cherry, which Adam found greatly satisfying. As he took a long pull on his creation, he felt utterly replete, cheerful and content. He felt something beneath his feet and looked between his knees to find the typewriter Dougal had referred to in his note. It had the word TYPE WRITER written in bold white lettering across it. It lay on a pile of white paper as thick as a man’s arm.

Adam removed the outer casing and gingerly placed the machine onto the table. It was brand new and had a very light touch only emitting a slight click when the keys were depressed.
He took a sheet of paper and rolled it into place.
His fingers hovered above the multitude of letters that lay before him, finally typing.

The Book of Adam
And he sat back in his chair.

He wrote all afternoon. Stopping occasionally to roll himself a cigarette, and make coffee. Other times he would wander over to the back window and stare wistfully at the valley below. By the early evening he had completed four pages of a messy, manuscript with atrocious spelling and a clumsy, heavy style. Yet despite the poor quality of what he had written, he had made some progress and by the light of the setting sun, sat outside on the roof of the car and read it back to himself aloud, stopping occasionally to underline a particularly good bit or scratch out a piece that was crap. He crawled into bed when it was too dark to read and went straight to sleep, his mind empty and void of inspiration from the physical effort of concentrating for so long.

Next morning, he was up, bright and early and making coffee just before nine. He tore some bread from the loaf and made a doughy kind of toast by putting it on the stove and almost burning it. By half past he was tapping away feverishly: with the keys hurling themselves against the paper as fast as he could depress them.

On a lazy day two weeks later, in late afternoon, he began peering at the card on the cigarette papers and at the picture of the dancing woman who moved so sensuously among the ribbons of blue smoke. Such was its detail, that he could even make out the individual folds in her dress and the two delicate bridges of muscle that formed the nape of her neck. Her face was more in profile but her jaw line was strong and pronounced. Her arms were long and slender and one reached up like a minute hand while the other lay on the slight bump of her belly, He reached down towards his manhood and closed his eyes. He saw the silk dress fall to the floor and felt her hazel, sluttish eyes burn into the back of his brain.

Within a thrice, he was tugging furiously; snorting and arching his back; sometimes on his knees or standing proudly, legs apart like some latter day Colossus of Rhodes., his eyes screwed shut lest the image of him cavorting with the temptress should fade. As he approached orgasm, and still pulling violently, he wondered where he could deposit his issue. He decided on outside and charged headlong towards the open doorway only to be met by a beaming Dougal who jumped back letting out a yelp of surprise.
‘Oh God, sorry!’ was all Adam could manage and ran to his room his head bowed in shame.
Once he came down stairs an hour later, Dougal met him with a warm smile and a toothy grin.
‘Just popped in to say hi’, he said cheerfully, without hint of the previous incident.

‘Bought you some vitals’ ,he continued and with typical theatricality, made a sweeping gesture towards a box piled high with goodies. Adam leapt upon the box and pulled out items with gleeful abandon and placed them on the table.
‘There’s more in the car’ Dougal said presently, his voice almost drowned out by the cries of joy that came from a delighted Adam at every new find.
While Adam was arranging the treasure trove in orderly piles, Dougal sat himself down behind the desk and began to leaf through the piles of manuscript that lay scattered around..
‘May I keep this?’ He asked Adam, his eyes not leaving the page in front of him.
Adam looked up from a large bar of half eaten chocolate. He had a sticky, brown mess smeared around his mouth, which he wiped away with the back of his hand.
‘Help yourself, it’s all rubbish anyway’.
‘We shall see’ said Dougal rising to go. He folded the untidy sheaves of paper and tucked them into his inside pocket of his blazer.
‘Are you off?’ asked Adam, a little disappointed.
‘Have to go’. Dougal proffered his hand and left as quickly and as unexpectedly as he had come.
Adam stayed waiting at the door, waving until Dougal had disappeared out of sight and returned to his typewriter. It wasn’t long before he was fully absorbed again and Dougal was long forgotten.

And so it went on. Adam found a perfect walk to invigorate him in the mornings, which he embarked on after breakfast and sometimes before. It started at the end of the back ‘garden’ that really was a rocky, featureless piece of ground outside the back window and ended by way of a winding footpath to a dried up river valley that once had Noah like floods crashing through it but now was a silent bowl of frozen dust. This was as a pleasant spot to have his morning constitutional. He would squat in the morning silence over a pot hole that served perfectly for his purpose and gently massage his bowel while contemplating the next chapter and taking in the view. He could easily calculate how long he had lived at the house by counting the little mounds of earth left by him on previous days. One uneventful morning, he counted 115 different mounds and was shocked how time had flown.

The book continued, chapter after chapter. On Sundays he took rest and bathed in the galvanised bath that Dougal had given him. The process took forever; filling the coffee pot to the brim with cold water, emptying it once it had boiled and repeating the process until he had two inches of warm water with which to soap himself. He rigged blankets from his bed in a kind of curtain around the bath suspended from hooks he had fashioned from empty tins of peaches and made a kind of labyrinth of interwoven cloth walls that opened onto his bath and the stove. With the steam from the boiling water and the heat from the rusty, iron plate, plus the three feet thick blanket wall, he was able to take off his suit and air his putty coloured body to the intense cold. He would stand shivering, for only seconds, enough time for him to apply the soap and to rinse it off, before he was back out and into his suit.
Once it was on, he could return and wash his hair in the soapy water before donning a towel shaped into a turban and dragging the bath outside to be tipped away. The whole venture took him two hours from start to finish but was worth it as he felt fresh, clean and ready to face the rest of the day. For it was on bath day that Adam made himself a packed lunch of bread and garlic sausage and went for very long walks. So long, he would come back in the late evening tired and aching, speechless with fatigue. The reason for these long treks was not only to take in the surrounding country side but also in the vain hope of finding something, anything, of interest and that was undeniably human. After all this planet was still his, as he was the only human alive and therefore, by default, its sole representative. It would be good to touch base with his fellow species. He needed something he could identify with no matter how banal, that could let his imagination loose and he could reminisce.
Over the course of a few months, he had collected a fossilised human hand shaped like a fist, which he found sticking out of a riverbank and which curiously still wore a wedding ring. He dug up the surrounding earth but found nothing; so only the fist was labelled and put away somewhere safe. He also found a set of porcelain dentures, yellowed but otherwise perfectly usable. A bent, empty can of Pepsi, three buttons, something he didn't recognise and must have come from a later time, a rusty fork, a coin and a piece of flat rock that Adam deduced had been part of a wall and had the words suck my scrawled on it. Adam was immensely proud of it and treated it as if it was the Missing Link itself. He gathered these artefacts and posted them around the breakfast room, which after a while, began to resemble a small town museum. Dougal, on his fortnightly visits, would pick them up with all the reverence they deserved and put them back delicately, saying nothing, but clucking from time to time at something that had obviously pricked his interest.

One particular Sunday, Adam had woken up 'feeling funny' but shook it off as being nothing of any importance and pushed it to the back of his mind only for it to bounce back with renewed vigour. He made his usual cup of coffee and noticed he felt nervous and jumpy. The problem being. Adam realised, there was absolutely nothing to feel 'nervous and jumpy' about. He made it out of the house and embarked on his usual walk with the all the energy of the panic stricken, hoping against hope that it wasn't what he thought it was. He knew the symptoms; he had been here before. If it was, what he thought it was, there was nothing to be done but sail straight into the storm.

Finally, having walked only a matter of miles, he climbed on top a rocky promontory and gave in to the blackness that pursued him. His eyes filled with tears that fell into the weathered valley below. He remained there, wretched and alone until nightfall, before managing to drag himself back to the house and his bed, not to stir for 3 days and 3 terrible nights.

He could not even manage to move an inch to the left or the right. He couldn't even roll a fag or put the kettle on the stove. Eating was out of the question, just the very thought of food made him retch. All he could do was lie there and take it. A black dog stared at him, across the room. Adam threw books at it but it didn't move.

By the end of the week Adam looked terrible. His eyes had sunk into his head and had black rings around them, as big as oysters, which made him look and feel like a drug addict. Once Dougal roared up for his weekly visit, it didn't take him long to decide to pack Adam in the back seat and cart him off to the castle where he could look after him properly.

He laid Adam on the grand four-poster bed and fussed at the window for a few minutes, muttering to himself, before finally leaving with a bow of the head and closing the large oak doors quietly behind him.

Adam slowly recovered.

3 weeks later he was able to walk around the battlements alone without Dougal hovering at his elbow. His appetite returned and within a month Dougal and he had re-started the History lessons, (more as a therapy than for learning.) He was able to dress, albeit in an extravagant, silk dressing gown, and answer Dougal's questions, patiently and calmly, without bursting into tears.

'I tell you Dougal, that's what’s its like', he said one afternoon, staring into nowhere.

Dougal was confused. Adam was obviously getting bored and it wouldn't be long before he would call an end to the meeting, feigning tiredness, and Dougal still wouldn't have got to the bottom of it.

He tried one more time.

'Is this what happened when you left your world and came to ours?'.

'It's all in the book' Adam said and went upstairs for a nap.

Part 2: Chapter Three

2010-09-18T22:38:00.000+01:00

Chapter 3

Dougal already had. In total about 327 times and into 15 different languages, He felt that medieval French lent it something that perhaps Mandarin didn’t.

He had certainly read it but what was needed was for him to sit with the author and thrash out some of the more cryptic passages. If he got that, so much the better, but if he didn’t, Dougal still felt he could put it to the council, confident that they would buy it.
Dougal followed Adam to his room and sat on the bed whilst the young man curled over and set his head on the pillow.

While Adam snoozed, Dougal began to read from a certain Chapter 6: a piece of writing that had certainly caught his attention. He read it quietly, giving it a gravity Adam felt it didn't deserve.

The Book of Adam
Page 221/222
'I had become a vampire in that I lived not on the blood of my victims but their vitality. I would suck in their sinewy energy and use it to warm the lonely, unloved beast within. It didn't satisfy me for long. I would always be back for more, when I needed a boost.
No matter how I resisted, I would find myself in a familiar situation. Why? Why does a dog lick its balls? Because it can. In that brief, fumbling moment, I felt alive and God, arms folded, looked away in disgust.

Don't get me wrong, I loved her; I loved her with my entire being. Every atom I possessed had her name scrawled on it. Every thought that ran through my mind clutched a bright, crimson flag with her face smiling from it. Her laughter fell about the room like water from a sacred spring and her smile was a thousand candles. When her feet touched the very ground, the sullied clay became holy and any pillow upon which her face rested, angels would pluck for feathers.

She ate me alive. She consumed me. I slept in her belly. As a desert thirsts, so did she. Her freedoms were unfettered by conscience or remorse. Pleasure itself was the Nirvana she sailed towards. If this was a way to trap a man, then she was the one who prized the steely jaws open. If there was a woman who could make saints stray, then it was surely she. I drowned in her rich juice and was content.

The Catch

Can one fall in love with beauty alone? Is it enough to sustain you?
No, and a thousand times no. No to infinity; eight trillion no's; a 'no' as big as a president on Mount Rushmore. It can't. It can never, ever sustain you. It is magnesium aflame: as bright and as hot but also as quick; a terrific spark and a lifeless ash, all in the blinking of an eye.

One day, it left me. I wasn't conscious of it as a specific moment in time. I didn't suddenly become aware, no epiphany just a slow, glacial realization, that I didn't love her any more because there was nothing to love.

It was something as simple as crossing a bridge. On one side I loved her but by the time I had crossed, the light had gone out. Then I had to live with this for many a year. I limped with it like, a man afflicted. A terrible, livid birthmark: invisible to the naked eye.

A temper, like a storm, comes and goes and at times is predictable, given the right experience: go ask a fisherman or a farmer.
The aftermath of a storm comes as a relief to all and a lovely peace descends. It is under this special awning of calm, that lovers love to dwell. For it is here, that love and sincerity are reborn. With her, there was no calm either before the storm or after, only a never-never world of tempest and more tempest.
Her temper was a knife that would slash soft skin.

I think, deep down, she believed in love, as seen through her prism. She believed in it as much as her life would let her believe.
Her first memory was her father beating her mother and dragging the poor woman out the door by her long blond hair. When father wasn't fucking the woman from the bank, Mother was fucking her Commie lover. And so it went on. Her youth was a Punch and Judy show with porn in the interval. She sat on the stairs and watched her mother pack, begging her not to go but Mother left all the same.

Shipped here and there between the two warring factions, she learnt to dodge the darting arrows of no-man's land all the while hewing from hard rock, an impenetrable bunker she could retreat to; away from the maelstrom overhead.

As the two empires fought, so work on this underground lair continued and by the time we were married, it was ready to move into should the occasion arise. No one again would, could or ever be able to get to her and if they tried she would simply close the iron gates and wait until it was safe to come out.

I had a terrible time with that bunker. It was yards thick. Her outside flesh was like a verdant garden, filled with fresh spring posies but scratch away the top soil and you could wrap your knuckles on an anvil of steel.

Time ticked by. Minds wandered.

I went to bars. They became an oasis of opportunity to feed my then growing addiction. It was full of the creatures that could give me life. That could carry me from one moment to another. From them I could replace the dying cells within me: In that brief fumble, I could satisfy my yearning. It would take me back to that time when I was loved, and loved; the way I wanted I wanted it so badly, only by hanging off its slender teat, could I breathe.

I told her what I had been up to with these creatures. I begged at her feet to forgive me. What she must have thought, I dare not think. There was this hysterical heap at her toes pleading for mercy; 'time to give the bunker an airing, methinks.'

We carried on as if nothing had happened. But it had and when I did it again some three years later and told her in pretty much the same way as before, she retreated further into her concrete cocoon.

The Revenge

Revenge is a thing that some people really enjoy and actively pursue: others prefer to lie on their backs and dream of all the things they would like to do to people but never actually get round to doing. She was the former. She set the dish to slow burn and while the meat stewed she went about her business of empire building. The timing had to be just right. Knives were sharpened in readiness for the feast, for it would be a feast, served cold naturally, cold as steel.
Her fruits became fat on the vine. I could feel the revenge coming. It sounded like a thousand horses hooves beating the ground, far off at first but relentless, drawing ever near and me in my paper castle.

That's when the tears started. My tide had ebbed, and I was taken out to sea. I looked in the glass and saw wrath; not at anything else, nobody or thing just at myself and my addiction.
She drew up a chair to watch as I writhed, content to see me burn.
And how I burned: a shaking, lifeless form of utter despair. This was her moment, this was her fat fruit come to fruition and it fell in her lap like an over ripe grape.
This revenge was terrible as it was perfect. even the devil pleaded for mercy but it was unforthcoming. The dice had been cast. She was now content and she tossed her head back and laughed and laughed and laughed.

The light had faded when Dougal put the book down. He placed a soft leather bookmark in between the now well-thumbed pages and rose slowly from the bed. He drew the curtains silently and tiptoed to the door. Before he slipped out he turned for one last look. He turned back into his true self and said:

'All hail, the tired voyager, journey's end'.

Part 2: Chapter Four

2010-09-17T22:39:00.000+01:00

Chapter 4

When Adam awoke he was alone. He drowsily lifted himself onto his elbows and took in his surroundings. As the drowsiness wore off, he slowly became aware of an ungodly smell emanating from the under the blankets.
Checking to see if there had been an accident during his nap, he let out a howl loud enough to wake the dead. For what had terrified him beyond his wildest nightmares were the thousand vile suppurating boils that covered the entire length of his body and that let off a smell akin to rotting meat. He threw himself out of bed and ran to the en suite bathroom and thrust his head down the toilet and emptied his guts. He wretched and wretched until his stomach tightened into an iron ball. Finally, he drew himself up to his full height and staggered to the mirror. What stared back at him was a ghastly vision of Hell. The boils that covered his body also covered his face. It was hard to distinguish healthy flesh from between the mountains of red and angry buboes. He screwed his face up in disgust, only for a rivulet of yellow, putrefying puss to burst forth and ooze down his face, drip off his chin and onto the floor. He stank of death. He could hardly breathe. He threw a towel under some hot water and covered his face, screaming for Dougal until his throat was hoarse. The old man was nowhere to be seen.
'Help' he whimpered to no one in particular

He scratched at the infections, until they bled red and white and gushed in torrents down his legs. The mess on the bathroom floor was indescribable.
He leapt into the shower and turned the thermostat up to max, scrubbing himself under the scalding water. In his hysteria he half noticed how much his penis had grown and how like a pendulum it swung between his legs.

He felt he was drowning. He felt he was plummeting toward hell. His fear gave way to wrath and he began to tear his room to pieces. First the pillows were disemboweled. Then he hurled a table through the window with a deafening crash followed by the mattress and other sundry items. He must have punched the wall a hundred times as his knuckles were red raw and bleeding by the time the pain was too much to bear.
He steadfastly refused to accept his new condition. ‘No’, Adam repeated to himself over and over again, ‘this cannot be’.
He attacked the curtains and ripped them from their hooks. As he prepared to throw them out of the shattered window, two burly men entered the room. One was the corpulent French cook and the other was the Sergeant-at-Arms. The Frenchman had hands the size hams and he grabbed Adam around the waist with gentle but fearsome strength. The two men wrestled Adam to the floor. The thinner of the two sat on Adam’s chest while the cook, tied his feet with silken handkerchiefs. With the violence of the last half an hour having spent Adam’s energy, he went limp, too weak to resist being flung over the fat man’s shoulder and carried from the room.
He dangled there for a humiliating 10 minutes while the fat man had a conversation with someone Adam didn’t recognize, before being marched purposefully towards the great hall. Adam demanded to be put down shouting weakly,

‘This is no way to treat your lord and master’.

But it had little or no effect on the cook who was deaf to Adam’s plaintive cries and oblivious to his wriggling. It suddenly dawned on Adam that he wasn’t and probably never had been ‘lord and master’ of the castle and he made a bet with himself that they had been humoring him all along. This realization made Adam's soul sag in the middle and he felt deflated and usurped. He made another bet with himself that it was Dougal who was the real ‘lord and master’. He felt like a child and began to sulk.

His boils chaffed and bled and were causing a great deal of pain when the doors of the great hall opened to a buzzing sound that was altogether unfamiliar to him. It came, as far as Adam was aware, from the back of the hall and sounded like a host of insects hovering around a nest. It was a low, sawing type sound, which was menacing and utterly un human. Adam’s bowels turned to ice as he was carried towards to the great chair, which could easily have been a throne.

He was placed upright on the seat and all the blood returned to his head in a rush, making him blush; before him lay 2-300 hundred black beetles, buzzing and whirring here and there, some rubbing their back legs together, others cleaning their antennas assiduously. Adam sat mouth agape: shaking from head to toe, speechless with fear and squirming in his seat. To have all of them together like this was truly revolting. Sure, he had seen Dougal as his true self but this was wholly different.

He stood facing the black throng, unsure at what to do next. Together like this, they smelt of horses mixed with something else; an unpleasant, bitter smell that was sinister and menacing.
They twitched and writhed, some throwing him a cursory glance before returning to their grooming. Some had human heads with solemn faces and long raven black hair. Others had human bodies with a beetle head. It was gross and disgusting and Adam could not look at them.

‘Would you like one of us to change, my Lord?’ Came a familiar voice from among the heaving throng. 'So you might get your bearings?'

‘Why are you calling me Lord, Dougal?’ asked Adam, not unreasonably.
‘And where are you?’
Dougal’s voice was lost among the multitude; it was certainly his but which beetle, Adam didn’t know.
Adam spoke with genuine fear in his voice.
‘I’m scared Dougal, I’m scared of all this and I want you to help me, have you seen me? Can you see me for what I am? I’m hideous!

‘All hail Earnest Serius, all hail’, chanted the congregation.

At this command the room fell silent and the beetles shuffled to attention, silent and motionless, which Adam felt was even more unnerving. The insects had formed themselves into ranks and when Dougal shouted another ‘All hail’, they repeated the salutation as one with a deafening roar, causing Adam to flinch.

‘Dougal, cut out the all hail, you're scaring the shit out of me’.

‘My lord, my lord, we do it because you are worthy of it’.

‘Dougal,’ replied Adam, non-plussed at Dougal’s blatant lack of co-operation:

‘Can we agree you don't call me lord.’

‘But the anointed one, you have returned. You saved us from what we were and now you have come back’.

Adam had had enough. Dougal was seriously pissing him off. He was purple with rage.
‘I am not Earnest Serius!’ he bellowed. But it was no use. The beetles chanted his new name until Adam had to put his fingers in his ears and shrink into the chair, eventually curling into a desperate ball. The beetles formed a circle round the ‘throne’ and proceeded to march, four deep, around Adam, extolling his new name as if he was Charlemagne himself.

Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, the gathering came to an end. The Beetles filed out in dribs and drabs until there was only Dougal, Adam guessed, remaining.

‘Dougal, is that you?’, Adam said faintly.

Dougal changed back into his human form and sat on the small stage beneath the throne, crossing his legs, looking very pleased with himself.

‘My lord’, he began, grasping his left knee with both hands, ‘This may have come as a shock, but greatness, don’t forget, can be thrust upon one’.

‘Our lord found us in the desert. He had been wandering the wasteland for years, delighting in his solitude but at the same time pondering the big four; who he was, why he was, what he was and when he was. He only managed to answer two of them. He knew who he was; he was Earnest Serius after all; the man who had inadvertently, wiped out the human race. He knew when this happened as well, although he certainly lost track of time when he went walkabout. The other two though; what he was and why he was; he couldn't put his finger on. Why had he been cursed so badly? What was he a man or an insect? When he met us or rather Eric the Blessed, the first one of us he actually held, Eric was able answer them and Earnest was grateful. They were easy questions: Eric just made him aware of how easy they were. It was easy because the moment he looked into that mirror, the world died. He discarded humanity like a sweet wrapper, for he was not one of them, never could be. He saw in us an understanding. We would not judge him; we would not shy away from him, mock him and would, in time, venerate him
We copulated at some stage, not in the sense that you would have it. Only when Lord Earnest had finished fiddling about with our DNA did we he mix us with him. Fairly unromantic I give you; all done as it was, at the bottom of a test tube'.
He thought for a bit, trying to place when this miraculous event had taken place but the mental effort defeated him.

'A very long time ago, we mingled and what you see now is the fruit of that union.'
Adam didn’t see this as particularly pressing. He was confused. Not an hour ago, he had woken from an innocent afternoon nap only to wake as a festering gargoyle and be chanted at by a bunch of insects. He was having a major sense of humour failure and it showed.

‘I am not Earnest Serius’ , he growled.

‘Oh my lord, you are. When we unearthed you, we found the same with you as with my lord Earnest. Ok, physically you are different, but in here….’
Dougal pressed a finger to his heart and continued.
‘Here, you were identical’; all that self-loathing, all that wrath. It was as if our lord had risen again. You could be twins on the inside.

Adam sat with his head in his hands not saying anything for a good three minutes before he said quietly,
‘I don’t want to be Earnest Serius, I’m Adam, it’s not much I grant you but I really don’t want to change.
‘But you have so much in common, Lord.’ Dougal said despairingly.

Adam did something then he instantly regretted. He reached down from his throne and grabbed Dougal by the lapels and put his face inches from the old man’s nose.
His eyes were like hot coals and they burned into Dougal’s with a hatred that Dougal had never been privy to before.

‘Don’t call me lord’. Adam growled through gritted teeth.

Dougal struggled a little and shrank from Adam’s gaze. He went red and turned back to his true self. Adam lost his grip of his jacket and covered his face with his hands lest Dougal would strike him with a claw.

Dougal was incensed. Yet despite his fury, he could not bring himself to strike the new messiah. Far from it, it would be tricky to explain to the council, after all this time, if he were to harm him in any way. He turned back to the Dougal of old and flashed Adam an oily smile, which went someway in defusing the situation. He placed his hands on his knees and rose slowly, thinking deeply about the different tack he was about to adopt.

‘I would like you to understand just how grateful we are to you, taking on this mantel of responsibility. One must remember that we were once but humble insects until you, or rather our Lord, lead us from the desert and made us in his own image.
For thousands of years we have worshiped his likeness. When he finally passed on, we were bereft, alone and unloved for the shepherd had abandoned us; but what a legacy, what an inheritance. He gave birth to the nation, the brotherhood was born and you my lord have inherited the lot. Think what it would mean to have all these folk worshiping you, on bended knee, singing hymns in your honour. I mean come on!

Look! Can’t you see the resemblance?’

Dougal ripped a painting of Earnest from the wall in a clatter of falling plaster and then produced a photograph of Adam having just come round from being disinterred and eagerly laid them next to each other.

Adam looked at both but was unimpressed.
‘I look nothing like him’ he said, rather coldly.
Dougal threw the painting to the floor and resumed what was now becoming a tirade.

There was desperation in his voice. It was shaky, tight and verging on hysteria. He was beginning to plead almost beg. Adam watched with a growing sense of empowerment, as he realized there was an opportunity taking shape here that could be exploited or at least examined more thoroughly.
Dougal's short speech came to a grinding halt and he stood in front of Adam his mouth opening and closing like a hooked fish.
‘Please’, he said meekly and sunk his chin into his chest.
Adam let him dangle for a while before rising from his throne and beginning a slow walk around the 'great hall'. There were piles of steaming, yellow excrement on the floor where some of the younger insects had relieved themselves in a state of religious fervour. Adam trod in a pile he hadn’t seen, which took some of his authority away and made him look slightly ridiculous as he scrapped his foot on the floor, trying to get the stuff off.
‘Whose idea was this?’ he asked.
Dougal gallantly proffered his handkerchief, which Adam ungraciously snatched from his fingers and continued with his line of questioning.
‘Who was the architect?’ It was you, wasn’t it Dougal? You were the man who dreamt up this charade and now your little protégé isn't playing ball. All this time, you were grooming me, molding me into this thing, this monster. I took your friendship in good faith, I'm very disappointed'.

‘You weren’t ready’, snorted Dougal, petulantly and folded his arms.

‘How could you ever see me as Earnest Serius?’

‘It was something I thought you could grow into’, said Dougal, thinly.

A game of verbal tennis had now commenced between Adam and Dougal, with both men firing forehand smashes from the baseline. No quarter was asked and none given.

‘This is terribly unfair. You could have asked if I wanted to be a stinking messiah with a severe skin condition. This affects my human rights’.

This was weak from Adam, as no such court existed any more and hadn’t for some time, nonetheless, the principle was still there and Adam wanted to raise awareness of it; advantage Adam.

‘Where I come from, this would be deemed as blasphemy, which is heavy Dougal. I mean to rise again, that’s like Jesus.’

‘Who?’ asked Dougal,

‘Don't be sarcastic', said Adam, exasperated.

‘How could you believe in a god after what you did?’ Dougal snapped.

The silence was uncomfortable and it was now Adam’s turn to dangle in the wind.

Dougal moved in for the kill.

‘You turned your back on life. You couldn’t live in a world that had you in it. You were at war with Adam and the only way you could win was to kill him. When our Lord Earnest looked into that mirror, he shared the same thing. He stared into hell himself. The only difference being what he saw was external; what you see is internal. You are the same being because your souls are entwined. You are Earnest Serius and he is you!

Dougal was spitting now. His face was flushed and he had the frightening countenance of an enraged headmaster.

Adam bellowed back.

‘I MADE A MISTAKE, OK! If I had sought treatment, I might have survived but I didn’t and now I’m marooned on this godforsaken planet with you, INSECT!
For me, at the time, it was the only way, anything to stop crying. When I’m like that the world is a ghastly place to be, I mean really horrible. But I got there under my own steam, I designed my downfall; it was me who paved the road to my own damnation. That’s what made it so much worse. Ok, if I had been an innocent placed in a difficult situation, then I could have coped with that, tough it out because my heart would have been pure. But when it's your fault then you hate yourself for it; you might as well dig a grave and have ten thousand horses ride over you. I’m sorry to all those people whose hearts I broke. I’m sorry, that’s all I can say. But that was then and this is now, ultimately, finally, in the end, eventually, call it what you want, you have to move on. Thank you, Dougal for what all that you have done for me, but I’m not Earnest Serius; I don’t want to be. I want to get better'.
Adam stopped talking abruptly. The two men stared at each other, looking for an answer or a flicker of understanding. Adam was determined not to budge an inch and Dougal was at a loss what to say next. He had, after all, spent a considerable amount of time on this project and he was damned if he wasn’t going to give it one more try.

‘You threw your life away like so much litter. You screwed up your soul and tossed it into the bin. So forgive me for thinking you were so unhappy with your own self I gave you another; one that is worshiped, one that is adored.'

‘And one that smells like a carcass, great Dougal'.

‘You humans fascinate me, you set so much by what people think of you, how they see you; where really it’s just not that important’, said Dougal loftily, giving Adam the distinct impression that the learned professor didn’t really understand his predicament.

Adam dropped a few decibels, bit his lip and tried to calm down. A light bulb flickered on in his head and he began to speak.

Dougal raised his hand as a sign to stop. There was no point in continuing, Dougal it seemed, had made a huge mistake.
He reached for his glasses and began to polish them slowly; giving him some time to think.
'Alright' he said finally, I accept that you don't want to be Earnest Serius.'

'THANK YOU', said Adam exhausted with the arguing and the whole experience generally.
'But that is not the end of the story, not by a long stretch.'
Dougal’s voice dropped conspiratorially and he looked around the room, looking for others of his type.
'The community you see, are expecting results. We have waited for a long time to have our saviour back and this will come as a great disappointment. They might become disillusioned and question the whole enterprise.'

'So, you're in a hole' Adam offered helpfully, less depressed now, sensing there was a way out of this.

'I wouldn't say hole' but in a certain amount of difficulty, yes.'

'What will they do?', Adam asked, sitting down next to Dougal, in front of the throne.

'It is uncertain, but Howard might do for us both'.

Dougal looked at the floor, a broken man.

'Who's Howard? Adam asked, his chin on his chest, looking at his many boils.

Dougal flashed him a look that said, 'don't go there' and Adam bit his bottom lip wondering what to do next.

Presently, the French cook entered and perplexed at what he saw, swiftly withdrew.
Far from Dougal worshiping at Adam's feet as might be expected, all he saw was Dougal crying on the Lord's shoulder, as the latter comforted him by stroking his hair.

It took some time to coax Dougal back to Adam's study. He sat him down in one of the grandest chairs in the room and fetched him a sherry in a bid to restore him.

'Pardon me dear boy, but it has been my whole life's work; two thousand years and for what?'

Adam really didn't know what to say. He felt guilty having let the old man down, yet the idea of being Earnest Serius for a second longer filled him with an unimaginable dread. He didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.
Instead, he left Dougal in the chair and went to look out the window. He was getting used to the smell his body gave off but the festering sores still plagued him and smarted every time he moved.
He could not leave Dougal in the lurch. That was a given. He loved the man; Dougal had become the closest thing to a father that Adam could think of. It would be despicable to leave him like this and he didn't like the sound of Howard either. A grisly death at the hands of an insect filled him with horror and if anything were to happen to Dougal, he would be alone in an unsympathetic and hostile world. It was time to cut a deal acceptable to both and one that Howard would buy.

He mulled over the exact nature of what this deal might be, before turning to Dougal, who by now was the very picture of despair and spoke clearly and precisely.

'Ok, Dougal we are in the soup and the only way out of it is that we work together'.

Dougal didn't move.

'I will be Earnest Serius, but only to Howard and whoever else might 'do for us'.
Dougal looked up as if he had heard the engines of a plane overhead and one that might waggle its wings.

'I will pretend to be Earnest Serius but only for a while. Then, when this has all blown over, I will leave this place and go and live in the house with that lady you are making. There you will restore me to my normal state and I will be the Adam of old'.

Dougal launched himself at Adam's feet, babbling prayers of the saved. He hung on to Adam's ankles with a tenacious grip that left Adam acutely embarrassed.

'Will you my lord, will you?'

'Call me Adam, Doug, now get up, we have much to plan.’

Part 2: Chapter Five

2010-09-16T22:40:00.000+01:00

Chapter 5

The smell of Dougal's lab reminded Adam of the science lab of his school days. He was half expecting to see disemboweled rats staked out with pins and Bunsen burners heating mysterious solutions. Instead, all that was evident was a large glass tank in which a body lay inert.
'Is this her?', asked Adam.

'Yes', Dougal said simply, as he fussed with a series of dials.
Adam walked around the tank slowly, taking in the woman stretched out in front of him.

Dougal rummaged for something in his pocket and realizing it was not there, left the room to search for it.

Adam waited for Dougal's steps to fade into the distance before lifting the lid of the tank and thrusting his hand through the gap and grabbing the nearest breast. It bulged deliciously through the gaps of his fingers. Gently massaging the other; he delighted in its softness, its wholesomeness and its erotic charge. He ran his hand down her body. She felt like silk; the flesh around the belly melted into his palm. It was as if he was kneading her like so much dough. He spread his hand wide and grabbed as much as he could, clumsily and with little grace. This was an object meant to be clutched and it gave itself up to his violent embrace with abandon. Adam had not felt this way for 10 millennia, if not more, and his eyes threatened to pop from his head.

The feet were small and feminine with weathered heels that were hard and calloused to the touch. This was no princess. This lady had walked in bare feet and Adam fancied, danced too. The skin was a luscious olive colour that had a hundred different shades, from almost dark chocolate around the arm pits, to a lighter hazel across her ample bosom. He ran his fingers through her hair: as black tar and as soft as butter. It swirled in tight curls down her neck and splashed sensuously over her shoulders and beyond.
He instinctively held a few strands to his nose and sucked in the scent of her sex.
This was indeed a woman; the like of which he had never felt before,

With tentative fingers, he moved a spiraling curl from her face to reveal an arch of an eyebrow that would do justice as a bow for Cupid himself.

Both were finely plucked to a sharp point which lent her face; an impish, sylvan quality: full of wit and caprice.

Her lips were pronounced and full, promising a kiss of unimaginable tenderness. They were pursed, rose like, and Adam in his mind's eye, saw them part in a smile of pearly radiance.
Adam stood back from the tank and let out a high pitched whistle from between his teeth. He was shaking his head slowly from side to side, taking it all in, when Dougal entered the room, causing him to turn away sharply, lest his state disgrace him any further. Adam shoved his hands in his pockets and kept his back to Dougal.

'You will have to be at the coronation, tonight. All other attempts at making Earnest will be consumed by the community as the one true Lord is crowned.

'All other attempts, you said I was the one true lord'.

Dougal wrung his hands and went red. 'There were other attempts, at making Earnest Serius.'

'The man in the room?’ Adam ventured, remembering his namesake in that distant part of the hospital he had inhabited.

'Yes, as it happens and a few others. They didn't turn out as we had hoped and there can't be more than one true Lord.'

'What do you mean consume? Asked an unsettled Adam.

‘Eat' replied Dougal, with little emotion.

‘But that’s disgusting’.

Adam looked at Dougal, disbelievingly, quite alarmed at the prospect of watching someone like himself being devoured.
'Don't be so melodramatic', Dougal scoffed. 'It will be over in a thrice and before you know it, you will be out of here with Betty'.
'Who?'
Dougal raised his chin a little, indicating the woman in the tank.
'Betty, the girl on the cigarette papers.
Adam didn't quite know what Dougal meant by this and stroked an imaginary beard with his left hand.
'The girl on the packet of papers I left for you in the house, she caused you to pleasure yourself, remember?'

'Got you', Adam said finally, clicking his fingers and they both looked at the floor.

'Adam and Betty, it is then'.

Part 2: Chapter Six

2010-09-15T22:41:00.000+01:00

Chapter 6

The atmosphere in Adam's room was febrile as the final preparations for his coronation gathered apace. He sat on the end of the bed, while Dougal lay out the garments, the new king would wear that evening. He whistled quietly under his breath while Adam contemplated his new and disgusting form.

'She can't see me like this',

He said, mournfully, bursting a ripe boil 'twixt finger and thumb. He sidled over to the bathroom and washed away the ensuing rivulet of pus in the marble basin.

'She will wake up thinking she's in hell, the shock will kill her.'

'It will all come right,’ Dougal said reassuringly.

He laid out a golden jacket with pearl buttons on the bed and next to them placed a matching pair of trousers. He fussed over the sleeves a little before returning to the wardrobe and fetching a waistcoat that appeared to have sequins of different sizes sewn into the fabric. Adam emerged from the bathroom and peered at the garment carefully.

‘Diamonds’, said Dougal, too busy with arranging things on the bed to look at him.

‘Diamonds and rubies, see what you’re missing?'

‘Be that as it may Dougal, but not for all the tea in China would I be Earnest longer than I have to, I want to be Adam and I want to change’.

A tired sun began to dip below the horizon and both men stood silently next to each other at the shattered window, waiting for night to fall.

Dougal turned to Adam with damp, bloodshot eyes. He reached for his handkerchief and rubbed the tears away, all the while blowing his nose with much trumpeting and sniffling.

He threw his arms around Adam and hugged him with the strength of two men, causing Adam to gasp for air.
‘Tonight, stay close to me. Look neither left nor right but straight ahead. Tonight you must be Earnest one more time but if they suspect……………………………….’.
His voice trailed off and he went quiet.
'If they suspect what?’ asked Adam, with his last reserves of breath.

‘They will tear you to pieces if they suspect you are not the one, along with the other unfortunate and we will have to start all over again.’

Both men hugged for what might be the last time.

Adam was soon dressed in his new regalia and was pacing the room while Dougal gave him a few pointers as to what was expected of him. Adam fiddled with a sceptre with one hand while trying out different kinds of walks; seeking a gait that would give him the bearing of a king and disguise his humble origins.

He tried sauntering, followed by a nonchalant amble and then a camp mince. Dougal looked on a little perplexed until Adam told him what he was doing.

'How's this?', he asked. making the return journey from the door, goose stepping and
looking fairly Prussian.

'You need to sachet, sort of slink yet be regal at the same time',
said Dougal, folding a shirt.
'Tricky' replied Adam, adopting a slow, languid smooch.
He looked at Dougal and stopped altogether. Them old man sat on the bed and looked serious.

‘What ever you do don't……………………..’. The words never came, as a sinister knock at the door pinned them to his tongue.

‘Don’t what?’ Adam asked, ‘you can’t……………………………’, but he then also saw who had appeared and by the look on Dougal’s face, he instinctively kept quiet.

Not waiting to be asked in, a little man swiftly entered, making quick steps and came to a halt in the middle of the room. His small beady eyes roamed over the two men through thick round glasses and he spoke with a thin, reedy voice.

‘Dougal, what a pleasure’.

Dougal came almost to attention, as his whole bearing stiffened; the blood ran from his cheeks and a vein throbbed in his temple.

‘Howard, the pleasure is all mine’’.

Howard proffered a hand that was as white as it was feminine and the two insects shook hands, with neither taking their eyes off the other.
Howard finally looked at Adam and the two swung round to face him. The little man bowed a very deep bow
‘Hello’, Adam said weakly and stood looking awkwardly at Howard with a smile that was thin altogether unconvincing.

Howard took off his spectacles and peered at Adam as though he were a piece of expensive art and whistled between his teeth.

‘My god Dougal, you have done a fantastic job on this one; in the right light one could be forgiven for thinking this was the one true lord’.

‘One does one’s best’, Dougal replied artfully, and he too bowed a little with his head.

The diminutive creature sucked the stem of his glasses and moved around Adam as a shark circles its prey. Adam stared straight ahead; fixed to the spot with fear as Howard disappeared behind him.

‘Tell me Dougal, is he truly .....................'.

A frightful pause filled the room and it was all Adam could do not to piss himself.

'The one?'

Dougal, staring straight at the back of Howard's head, said nothing.

Years before, during a debate Adam was chairing entitled, 'Why Hitler was Weird’, Dougal had said something that Adam, at the time, didn't think was relevant. He had remarked, in answer to an aggressive question that, 'But we can't lie', and Adam just carried on not really understanding or caring. Now, however, he understood what Dougal had been on about and it alarmed him.
Dougal couldn't lie as Howard couldn't lie as none of them could lie. They could only give you evasion but not an actual bare faced porker. The whole species had never seen the need to, so as a consequence the ability to 'be economic with the truth' , had never evolved. Adam remembered all this in a fraction of a second and cursed his luck that this was the time he finally understood.

Dougal wore his drowned fish look and the silence hung in the air like a wet rag.

Their antagonist replaced his glasses and turned to look at an anxious Dougal who was by now furiously cleaning his glasses.

He scuttled a few steps and put his face inappropriately close to Dougal's.

'Is this the man our Lord and master, Earnest Serius, who did stare into a mirror and compare it to man? Is he the one the man that saved the world only to walk upon its barren plains having destroyed it? Will he give us what we desire?'

He turned on his heel and squealed at Adam.

'Does he have wrath!?'

Adam knew from here on in, he was on his own.

‘I am the one true lord; there is nothing to separate us, we are as one. In my life before this, I killed myself. I killed myself because I hated my own skin. I didn’t what to inhabit this rotten carcass any more. So I got into a bath and I slashed my wrists. I died through loss of blood. Some people call it the Roman way, as it is seen as honourable but let me assure you Howard, there was nothing honourable about it at all It was dirty, cowardly and a frightful way to die. So, now that you have dragged me back to the same Earth that I tried so desperately to escape from, it is your duty, your solemn duty to fulfil the desires and aspirations of your people and restore the king to his rightful throne and march shoulder to shoulder with him towards a common destiny. I am indeed Earnest Serius. On your knees.’

Nobody in the room apart from Adam heard the words on your knees, so there was an awkward pause as no one, least of all Howard, knew what to say or do next.
Both Dougal and Howard both stared incredulously at Adam, who by now had his arms folded and was looking as imperious as he could.
Adam cleared his throat and pointed to the floor and then to his knees.

Dougal, with eyes the size of side plates dutifully dropped down and it was only Howard who remained standing.
‘Earnest Serius, our Lord who came out of the desert and led us to our salvation, we worship you, oh lord’. Dougal gushed, with his head bent, looking at the floor.

Adam thought he was in danger of over-doing it a bit and arousing Howard’s suspicions, so he placed a finger to his lips and looked at the old man.
Dougal fell silent, leaving Howard to stammer and stutter awkwardly.

The little man quivered with rage and bit his lip, before swinging on his heels and marching for the door. Dougal followed, taking Howard by the arm and the two insects left the room in total silence.

Dougal returned presently and the two laughed until their bellies ached and their throats were sore.

A purple faced Dougal emerged from Adam’s bedroom half and hour later, a smile playing on his lips and coughing a wheezy cough. It was going to be a long night and he had to prepare.

Part 2: Chapter Seven

2010-09-14T22:42:00.000+01:00

Chapter 7

When Dougal tapped on Adam’s door at seven, he was met by a distant, haughty voice that he recognised as Adam’s but was different in its tone. Gone was the vagueness and irresolution; a deeper, more serious timbre had replaced it.
Dougal entered and caught his breath. Adam looked magnificent. The garments that he had given him fitted like a glove and made him seem twice as big as he was. His chest was puffed out like a proud cockerel and he stared down his nose with a Napoleonic disdain that was altogether convincing. He looked more of an emperor than a king. Dougal put his hands on his hips and was agog.

‘You look great’, he said finally, shaking his head from side to side.

‘I know’, replied Adam not looking at him directly.

‘Are you ready?’

'Yes', said Adam distantly, not for a minute taking his eyes of the full length mirror.

He turned and the two men looked at each other in silence. Gone was the levity of an hour ago. In its place was a steadfastness and determination that heralded the task before them.

As Adam emerged from his chambers, there was a loud trumpet blast from two pages waiting outside.
Adam almost jumped into Dougal’s arms as the boys blew. He quickly regained his composure and the two started their journey to the Great Room. Dougal was dressed in gaiters and had a silk number on that made him look quite foppish. The ruff around his neck was a little tight, making his head bulge slightly. But no matter, he walked grimly onwards, ignoring Adam’s sniggers.

As they approached, the pages stopped blowing and in shrill, piping voices announced Adam’s arrival.

The familiar buzzing from behind the great door came to an abrupt halt which made Adam feel that little bit uneasy.
The doors opened with a loud wooden boom and they were in, welcomed by a reverential murmuring that came from a thick knot of black, shiny beetles.

The throne he had sat on before was still there, although this time it had been tarted up a bit, with bits of tinsel and pretty, white flowers.
Dougal fastidiously dusted it down with a large white hanky, before Adam wafted him aside and sat down, looking down upon the massed ranks with an aloofness that Dougal found impressive.

In the middle of the great room, sat a man cross legged, who was covered, as Adam was, in suppurating boils from head toe. He seemed quite relaxed, picking at them, yet all the while taking in his surroundings with bemusement.

Four burly men stood behind him with arms folded and legs apart. Their faces were impassive and had no discernible emotion etched on them. They stared straight ahead, waiting for an order that would inevitably come at some time in the not too distant future.

Dougal, tugging at his ruff with one finger in an effort to allow more air in brought the proceedings to the start line by stamping his foot and calling for silence, which there already was.

The man before Adam looked up curiously and smiled a warm smile that Adam found deeply disturbing.
Dougal stood up and referred to a clutch of notes he held in his hand.

‘We are gathered here today to celebrate the coming of the one true lord and to sever that which is not pure.’

Dougal had put on his best elderly vicar’s voice, which Adam at any other time, would have found hilarious but now only made his guts turn over sharply.

‘We are gathered here today to witness a rebirth of our civilisation. So many moons ago, did we scuttle about this Earth like…..err….err’
Dougal searched for an appropriate simile and a few of the congregation grew restless. There was an awkward pause before Dougal cut his losses and carried on.

‘Well….,beetles; only for Earnest to show us the way and take us from light into darkness…..sorry……darkness into light. He stands before you, the one true lord and he is the one and true successor of this noble dynasty. He went quiet for effect and time stood still.

‘Yet, we have in our midst, an interloper!’

Dougal leapt on interloper with a savagery that was a little out of place, coming as it did so soon after he had started. A few in the congregation hissed and Dougal raised a bony finger in the direction of the man sat below him on the floor.

‘There can be only one Lord; no impostors, no pretenders, only Earnest Serius'.

The man sitting cross legged stopped smiling; not sure if he liked the way this was going. Adam felt sick and Dougal’s sonorous voice was making him feel sicker. He was going to heave and that surely would give the game away.

‘Verily, did he come into our world, brought to us by the science of Earnest. This man before you, in his righteousness on his throne, did turn his face from his world and despatch himself to ours, so that he might take up the reins of our species and make us whole.’

Adam forced a smile, raised his eyebrows a little and pointed to himself by way of explanation.

‘There can be no others’. Dougal neatly folded the notes he was reading from and moved off behind Adam, out of sight.

Adam called him back with a twitch of his wrist and whispered in Dougal’s ear.

‘What’s his name?’ , he asked, genuinely curious.

‘Trevor’, came a hissing reply.

‘Trevor?’, repeated Adam, as if not sure what to do with this piece of information.

‘Trevor’, confirmed Dougal, wanting to get away.

‘Does it have to be this way?’ asked Adam plaintively, his resolve draining away like sand in an egg timer.

‘No other’, and with that Dougal disappeared.

Adam studied Trevor carefully. The wretch met Adam’s eyes with genuine fear. He trembled slightly and said something which Adam did not understand. The man did not speak English, or if he did it was in a dialect lost on Adam.

His voice was high pitched and he made a gesture towards Adam that again made no sense. He seemed to be introducing himself and with elaborate use of his hands, explaining where he was from and how he had come here. He had large expressive eyes like those of a deer, a strong jaw and a high forehead that rose to reveal two widow’s peaks of pale white skin. He tried to stand but was unceremoniously thrown to the ground by two of the meanest guards. He looked up, this time his eyes filled with tears. They rolled down his face, over and around the boils, and along his chin. He stopped talking and shouted something at Adam which in any language must have meant, please.

Adam dithered and tried some lame platitudes, ‘My hands are tied’ and ‘nothing I can do old boy’; ‘it’s not up to me’, none of which having the slightest impact whatsoever.

A low hum started from the back of the hall and grew in volume as it rippled down the gathering until Adam’s throne itself began to vibrate. It became louder and louder, drowning out Trevor’s voice completely, so Adam could only see the poor man’s mouth moving, emitting no sound.

Suddenly, Adam bolted from his throne and onto the floor. He lifted the man’s head in his hands and stared into his eyes. It was as if he was holding his own head, staring into his own eyes. The humming grew more intense, and moved to a higher octave. The man was yelling something, Adam could not hear yet he was inches from his face. Adam could think of nothing to stay: what could he say? He just stared back at him, impotent and pathetic. Finally, when he could bear it no longer. He put his face close to that of the terrified captive and bellowed, 'one of us has to make it, I will do it for the two of us !!'. The man fumbled for something in his tunic and produced a rusty carving knife which he gave to Adam handle first. He ran his thumb along the blade and produced a thin line of blood which he then rubbed onto his finger. Adam stood transfixed while the wretch collected enough on his finger to put a blob onto Adam's forehead.
He was grabbed roughly from behind and Adam turned on his heel.
As he moved away, he could hear the rending of bone and flesh. He could just make out a high pitched scream and it was the same scream he uttered in his nightmares; trapped in that Godforsaken bathroom.

The humming stopped abruptly. Adam's ears were ringing. The silence was a tangible wall of thick, damp cement. He turned and saw that nothing of Trevor remained apart from a small patch of congealing blood.

He saw Dougal beaming from behind the throne and knew it was time to leave. With a quick dart of the eyes, he indicated to the old man that time was up and he marched to the door with a straight back and a pained look on his face. He grabbed what he presumed was his crown, from a silk cushion by the door and the two men left suddenly with little ceremony. They had barely walked 4 yards before Adam was throwing his guts up with Dougal hovering helpfully, with a glass of water. He practically covered both sides of the hallway with the entire contents of his alimentary canal before Dougal got edgy and moved him to safety.

They retreated to Dougal’s lab with neither saying much on the way. Adam played with his crown and stared wistfully out of the car window. Once they were in his room proper, he tore his robes from his body and sat in an armchair dressed only in his underpants. Dougal brought him a whiskey and the two drank silently with little in the way of conversation.

‘I have done my bit Dougal’, said Adam finally, draining the last of his scotch and looking as if he wanted another.

‘Yes’, said Dougal dreamily. ‘And very good it was too’. Dougal rose slowly from his chair and fetched the bottle for Adam. He set it down next to him on a side table and Adam helped himself to a large measure.

They both lapsed into silence again, lost in their own thoughts.

‘I have done my bit, Dougal, which means you will have to honour your side of the bargain'. Adam drained his glass and helped himself to another.

‘Yes’, Dougal said again. leaning forward on his chair and staring at the floor.

‘Dougal, you are being evasive’, Adam said presently.

‘Yes’, the old man replied. He stood up and walked to a cabinet, opened it, retrieved a dark brown pill box and handed it Adam.

‘Take one of these, once a day, after food. It will clear up your skin, you will look heaps better after a while. But some things won’t change, that much'.

‘Sorry Dougal but a deal is a deal.’ Adam said with rising indignation.

‘Don’t get on your high horse’, Dougal said wearily, and dismissed Adam’s petulance with a wave of his hand. ‘You will go back to Adam, you will be Adam again but some of Earnest will remain.

‘You said…………………….'

‘ I know what I said and it was true. You will be Adam but there is a bit if Earnest in all of us. He was in that bathroom, he was in your tears, and you carried him on your back from the day you were born until the time you died. Being him just for one day, was in many ways the fruition of a life time’s work. You should embrace him and see him as a force for good. Don’t fight him Adam, understand and learn to live with him.'
Adam took one of the pills from the bottle and washed it down with a slurp of whiskey. 'How soon will these start to work?, Adam asked, his thoughts already turning to Betty.

'Soon enough' Dougal replied and walked over to the glass tank that held the young lady. He tinkered with a few knobs;pulling one here and sliding another there .until Adam joined him at the console and hovered annoyingly at his elbow.
With an almost inaudible whirr, a blue light flicked on and filled the room with a comforting miasma that had no beginning or no end. Both men stood staring over the tank waiting for the slightest of movements from the prone body. Nothing happened.
There was a tangible rise in tension, which brought on a quiet fart from Adam. Dougal didn't seem to notice. Instead, he hunched his shoulders tighter and gazed at the object before him with increasing fascination.

After ten minutes, Adam grew restless. He shuffled from one foot to another and drummed his fingers on the the glass roof of the tank. He felt uncomfortable as this was how he had come round and it brought back unpleasant memories. It would be a long time from here on in. How would she take it? What would her reaction be?
Would she like him, in that way? It was unbearable. He drifted across the room and helped himself to another large whiskey. He was feeling distinctly woozy after the two he had had already but unwisely he had another one which made him feel faintly sick and moody.
'How soon till I look better?' He asked Dougal malevolently, with a nasty edge to his voice.
Dougal didn't respond. Instead, he called for quiet with his left hand and with the same hand, called Adam over. Adam stood up, uneasy on his feet and slouched towards the glass tank. He leant a little too heavily on the glass and Dougal pushed him a little to one side in a bid to make more room. Adam looked down at the woman. She was breathing slowly and very deeply. Her chest moved up and down, once maybe twice a minute. It was imperceptible at first, but it was movement all the same. The rush of adrenalin sobered him up no end and he at once became very aware and alert.
Her eyes fluttered, and both men could see the eyeballs move rapidly from behind the curtain of the eyelids. Then suddenly one eye sprang open. It looked around and then closed only to spring open again, this time with more determination. It stayed open and looked around the tank. Adam affected a little wave which Dougal snuffed out with a swipe of the hand. The other eye opened, as if it had been called by its partner. She looked at Adam then at Dougal and her face was a picture of utter incomprehension.
Dougal put on his avuncular, calming voice and said by way of greeting:

'You have come a very long way my dear, welcome to the land of Earnest Serius'.
He squeezed her hand gently and she smiled a drowsy smile as if she had only woken from an afternoon nap.