Grains of Sand

          “So, Tom, why don’t you translate this for me?” Ed was holding up a print out of Requiem Aeternam.

            I looked at it but had no time to respond, for Sharona was already answering. “‘Await your shepherd; he will give you everlasting rest. Be ready for the rewards of the kingdom, because the eternal light will shine upon you evermore.’”

            “How is you know all this stuff?” we asked her.

            “I read it in a guidebook one,” she replied, with a wry smile. “Anyway, I’d say it all sounds like a perfect excuse for a little lazy sunbathing to me. How about it?”

            “Actually,” I said, “requiem aeternam sounds a little more like a weakly concealed euphemism for death to me.”

            “Way to bring the mood down dude,” said Ed, “come on, let’s hit the beach!”

            “Dude, we’re in Switzerland.”

            “Whatever. There’s a lake here.”

            “Anyway, death can be interesting. Joyce wrote some compelling passages about eternity.”

            “Oh yeah?”

            “Eternal damnation, that is, rather than ‘requiem’. Here, let me quote you a bit…”

            “Seriously, shut the fuck up, people are trying their hardest not to be suicidal here.”

 

*

 

            In fact we did find an area approximately akin to a beach on the lakefront. We set ourselves up and began sunbathing to our hearts’ content. After some time a girl came walking along and decided to sit down near to us. The waterfront was fairly packed so this was not unusual behaviour. She began to read a book until Sharona noticed her and suddenly asked her, in French, whether she was enjoying it. She’s always talking to strangers like this, in an effort to remind us that she could never be English.

            The girl began to answer back in German; why not? These Swiss seem to switch between the two languages at will. I understand both languages and so I followed the conversation that proceeded, occasionally contributing.

            “Don’t be a pair of assholes,” Ed said suddenly, “someone translate.” He pulled himself up onto his elbows and apparently had noticed that we were talking to a girl. Sadly for him he doesn’t know any languages other than English.

            “What a dickhead!” the girl said, in German.

            Ed evidently picked up the emotion, if not the literal translation. He shrugged and sank back into sunbathing while our voices continued like white noise to help him rest.

            Eventually the girl made to leave, but not before telling Sharona and I we were the perfect couple together. This made us grin widely and look at each other with pride. I will never tire of hearing flattery of the girl I’m with. I love to be proud.

            “What’s your favourite song?” I asked, in clumsy French.

            “‘Meme-si’ by Lucie Silvas and Gregory Lémarchel.”

She Quivered

“Then whosoever will, let him believe, and whosoever will, let him disbelieve. Lo! We have prepared for disbelievers Fire. Its tent encloseth them. If they ask for showers, they will be showered with water like to molten lead which burneth the faces.” – Koran, 18:29

 

          We broke into the cemetery by scaling a ten foot solid stone wall along a hidden part of the Western side. We had to go through someone’s garden to get to a private section of the wall that wasn’t so well protected.

            We arrived early, at 2am, to ensure we could be ready for Felicia’s arrival.

            The meeting point was the Circle of Lebanon. You need to look this place up and see the pictures to fully appreciate the sinister magic of it. It is a semi-circle of tombs and crypts with a great cedar tree in the middle.

            We set ourselves down amongst the tombs, silent in our contemplation and respect, and waited in the darkness.

            Exactly on time, at 3am, Felicia emerged from the shadows. She was more striking than I had expected, wearing a black hooded cape over black clothes. Beneath it all, though, I saw the youth in her, the immaturity, and I worried.

            The four of us moved away from the area without a word and Sharona led us to an ornate and decorated grave. Suddenly Sharona’s voice broke the silence.

            “This is the grave of Elizabeth Siddal, the wife of nineteenth century poet and artist Dante Rossetti.” She spoke with a deep, narrative voice, as though she were back in New Orleans giving a tour. Ed leant against a gravestone and I sat on a nearby tomb. Felicia remained standing, stock still. I took out my sketch pad and began to draw the scene as Sharona continued to tell the story of Elizabeth Siddal. She had been a model to the painters of the time but had ever suffered from ill health born of consumption. “When finally she died she was buried here,” Sharona said, pointing to the grave. “Some years later Dante Rossetti was destitute and addicted to drugs, badly in need of money. He came out here, in the dead of night, with a friend, to exhume her corpse and retrieve a book of poetry he had left in her coffin. To his shock, she lay there perfectly preserved. Her golden red hair had reputedly continued to grow, filling the coffin. He retrieved his miserable book of poetry but it did him no good – it wouldn’t sell at all.

 

“Oh grieve not with thy bitter tears

The life that passes fast;

The gates of heaven will open wide

And take me in at last.

 

            “But the gates didn’t take me, they never did.”

            She fell silent, but her final words were not lost. Felicia gawped at her, stunned. A light breeze caressed us and stirred the trees around us. Ed bared his teeth in the moonlight.

            Nobody spoke.

            Felicia was caught between terror and ecstacy.

            At once, Sharona reached into her satchel and pulled out a white cotton dress.

            “Put this on,” she said, handing it to Felicia.

            Felicia took the dress and looked about her.

            “No,” said Sharona, “you’ll change right here.”

            Felicia did as she had been told. She began to strip before us, revealing her pale skin to the warm evening. Again I wondered at her age. I guessed her to be 17.

I hope she was at least that.

I felt very uncomfortable. I knew nothing of this plan at all. Nobody had mentioned making the girl take off her clothes. It seemed to me that we were into the realms of some form of sex crime. From Ed’s passive stance I could tell that they had obviously planned the whole thing.

Felicia, now completely naked, began to put on the white cotton dress. Ed snarled.

I knew I should act, stop it all. I continued to draw and watch.

Felicia was dressed. Sharona motioned to a flat tomb next to Elizabeth Siddal’s. Felicia lay down upon it and, as though herself a part of the plan, turned her head, exposing her neck.

She quivered.

Ed approached and the wind picked up, blowing Felicia’s dress and hair all about her. Ed leant down to her and touched his teeth to her neck. I could see the texture of her skin as his ivory fang pressed gently into it. Ed exhaled, allowing his breath to tempt and warn her. She gasped, and though I’m ashamed to admit it now, I felt an erotic thrill, right then.

Ed may have felt it too, he seemed to suddenly sink down his teeth into her flesh. A thin trickle of blood rolled down the side of her neck as she gazed up, paralysed. Ed ran his tongue along her jaw and through the line of blood. To my horror, he licked the blood over his lips, coating them. I watched him pause then, momentarily, before taking Felicia’s face in his hands and kissing her, full on the lips, mingling blood and saliva.

After a moment he stood back and looked across at Sharona. She nodded and the two of them beckoned to me, before stepping back into the shadows, leaving the girl alone, wide eyed and catatonic. I quickly followed them, not wanting to be left alone there to figure anything out.

My mind reeled.

 

*

 

            We arrived home in the early morning. The sun was beginning to tint the sky pink and blue and its light was a relief to me. Once back inside we all sat on the sofa of Ed’s living room. Our bodies may have been tired by our minds were wired.

            Ed and Sharona started giggling wordlessly at each other. I frowned slightly and shook my head, unsure what to do or say. Ed pulled out a small plastic bag from under the sofa cushions and opened it up. He scattered the contents onto a plate on the coffee table. He had drugs!

            “Smoke?” he made the offer to both of us, as he began to roll up some cannabis.

            “What the fuck is that?” I asked.

            “After all that, don’t be a pussy now, Evans.”

            “I’ll have some,” said Sharona, taking the joint from Ed’s hands and lighting it up. She took a long, hard drag on it and gave it back to him. She sighed as Ed took his turn. Five minutes later they were both giggling and recounting details of poor Felicia’s gullible astonishment.

            Sharona took another drag and this time offered the joint to me. “Come on, Tom, it won’t bite you!”

            “And neither will I!” said Ed, causing hysterical laughter from both of them.

            “No thanks.”

            “Suit yourself,” she said, laughing, “but don’t look at me that way. I dance to my own tune.”

            I raised an eyebrow.

            “Oh come on, modest, careful, Tom. You’re no better than us. I saw you watching Ed with that girl. I saw you watching her chest, rising and falling. I saw into your head and I saw the lust.”

            The memory came back to me. She was right.

            Sharona suddenly knelt up on the sofa we shared and straddled me. She reached down and placed her hand on my cock. “See?” she said, “You wanted to fuck that girl, right in front of me didn’t you? Maybe you should’ve done Tom. Maybe I’d’ve liked it. Maybe you should just do more of what you feel and less of what you think.”

            I looked across at Ed. He was watching with stoned, detached amusement.

            “You want a threesome after all?” asked Sharona, seeing me look at Ed, and laughing wickedly. She pulled her top off over her head and shook her hair loose.

            The lust inside me was now insurmountable. In one movement I got my feet, clutching Sharona to me by her tight, firm buttocks. She wrapped her legs around me and shrieked, pressing her breast into me and biting my upper lip. To my relief, Ed made no move, but sat there, semi-catatonic. I strode into our bedroom with Sharona still clinging to me. I threw her down onto the bed, slammed the door of the room, and then fucked her with passion, and just a little… hate. As I came I slapped her hard across the face and in the moment she came too, screaming loudly.

            In the breathless moments that followed my brain sought to reassert itself but couldn’t, instinctively knowing it wasn’t the time. Instead, I held onto Sharona tight, watching her fall slowly asleep with a smile on her face.

Felicia

“Rape had been possible for years, decades even, but it was realised only when I stopped looking at whether it were possible, or prudent, or even desirable  but without premeditation did it, feeling myself a puppet to a force outside me, a creature of the gods – the die- rather than the responsible agent.” - Luke Rhinehart, The Diceman.

 

          “I’ve lain in passive slumber. Unlock my vision.”

            “Blood. Red, pretty drops turning black and spreading through my veins. Give it to me.”

            “Hiya, thanks for adding me as a friend, please come and visit gothdeath.com! Have a nice day!”

 

            We sure were receiving some weird stuff since adding all these people as friends on Myspace. The middle of those messages was sent from that same strange girl that had taken the bait somewhat yesterday. She called herself Felicia.

            Ed wrote back to her.

            “Blood comes in different forms, Felicia. Some bloods can mix and turn eternal, perfect, black. Other bloods mix and simply congeal.”

            I see the attraction in all this. There’s magnetism in mysticism. Blackness can draw one in. It combines an edge of danger with a desire to know the ancient unknown secrets of existence.

            Sure, it’s had me fascinated once or twice, when I haven’t been quite myself, but it’s nonsense really, and I’m not sure of the wisdom of messing about with an obviously vulnerable young girl.

 

*

 

            This afternoon we thought about the other line of adventures, currently waiting on that Gaelic sounding song that the philosophy professor had mentioned mid last week. We looked the song up online. It’s apparently sung entirely in Scottish Gaelic, ‘Gáidhlig’. It’s a song essentially about drinking which led Ed to immediately suggest going to the pub. It wasn’t an inspiring suggestion so Sharona and I overruled him. We read more carefully and saw mention of the island of ‘Uibhist’ or Uist, in English. It’s a little island off the coast of Scotland.

            We looked up pictures of the place and saw that it’s a desolate bleak place. Sharona took an immediate liking to it, describing it as ‘inspiringly lonely’, a phrase I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. She pleaded with us, trying to persuade us to go there. The plan was at least in line with our previous adventures so eventually we agreed. If there’s one thing I’m learning it’s that amazing things can be discovered in the most unobvious places.

Gothic Acting

          “I’ve got an idea!” said Ed today, to my immediate trepidation. “We should pretend to be vampires and see if we can entice anyone into meeting us for a voluntary conversion to eternal life and blood lust!” He was referring to a song we heard last weekend, Before I’m Dead, by the Kidney Theives.

            “I don’t know about that, Ed. It sounds a little dangerous, in the potentially illegal sense.”

            “Aw, come on Tom!” said Sharona, “It’ll be awesome! You can have a lot of fun with the dark side you know? Remember that night in New Orleans?”

            “Alright… But on another note…”

            We had been sort of sharing adventures lately and chaotically overlapping and looping them around each other. There wasn’t enough order in it for my liking so I suggested that the philosophy professor’s adventure should be mine while this vampire thing could be Ed’s. He was happy enough with this suggestion and I was relieved at having a lesser part in this ridiculous vampire idea.

            “Okay,” said Ed, “so how does one go about entrapping a would-be vampire in the modern age?”

            “The same way one does anything else,” I replied, “Myspace and Facebook”

            Ed and Sharona spent the next three hours designing a site for Ed’s alter-ego, the vampire Blake Locke.

            “What do we do about the profile picture?” Sharona asked, eventually. “No offence, Ed, but despite your admittedly gothic edge we can hardly take a picture of you or anyone will be able to see you’re not really a vampire.”

            “I’ll draw him as one,” I said. I’ve drawn all the other pictures for this site but Ed and Sharona don’t know about that, since they’ve never yet seen it. They were a bit surprised but allowed me to give it a go.

             By the end of the afternoon I have to admit they’d created a most convincing site, full of blackness and vampire speak. The picture I drew fitted in perfectly and Sharona typed in some nonsense about how Ed’s image couldn’t be recorded by camera.

            “And now,” said Ed, “all we need to do is suck some poor bastard in! Mwah ha ha ha ha!”

            “Very funny,” I said.

            We scouted out some potential targets and ended up trawling through a menagerie of goth culture and art. Some of these people go to extraordinary lengths to later their image, in reality and digitally, to make the most provoking images of themselves. We added them all as friends and within no time at all we had 25 ‘friends’. A few of them sent innocent and depressingly banal messages of welcome to their community. They plainly saw through the situation (obviously) and were glad to have another actor to interact with.

            One girl, though, apparently aged 17, began asking a number of rather silly questions. When were you born? Who sired you? What’s your real name? That sort of thing.

            “I believe we have our girl,” Ed said.

            It was plain that this would be a slow burner of an adventure; nothing would’ve occurred tonight. Indeed time was required to develop the situation.

 

*

 

            We went out to see Nicole in Soho again. Sharona had organised it; she was my friend so I was glad to see her; and, Ed wanted to shag her. So it was an easy decision. Once we arrived Nicole revealed to Sharona that she’d been chosen to sing a part for an upcoming advertising campaign. She starts tomorrow morning! We were all very excited and I bought a round to celebrate.

            The rest of the evening was spent watching Ed try successively less and less subtle moves on Nicole, ever drunker on each occasion. Nicole loved it but really she just enjoys controlling that kind of situation. I’ve never known her have a boyfriend though occasionally she dates. She needs to stay in control. She had clearly decided that Ed was just fine as a suitor, but nothing more, so she tantalised him and kept him hanging like a naughty puppy. It was good to see Ed getting a taste of his own medicine.

You Know Where They Take the Dead People, Right?

 

          Last Saturday night in Brighton, when we ran from the bar, I committed the last song playing to memory. It was ‘Hip Hop is Dead’ by Nas. This would create Ed’s next song-venture. We discussed it this morning and nothing obvious occurred. We listened carefully to the lyrics until Sharona spoke.

            “’Bodies in the morgue lie together’ – let’s use that line!” she said.

            “How do you propose we do that?” I asked.

            “We’ll find a morgue and Ed can go lie next to a body.”

            “Yeah,” I replied, “how hard can that be?”

            “That’s the spirit, Evans! I’m in,” said Ed.

            We started online, looking for a morgue but it’s surprisingly difficult. You can’t just type ‘morgue London’ into Google. We were drawing a total blank on it. Then I remembered that Robin used to work in the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, to earn money for his legal training, so I gave him a call. He agreed to meet us at the Roebuck pub opposite the hospital, but I didn’t tell him why.

            We were just leaving when Alice rang the doorbell. As I saw her I remembered with considerable embarrassment that I’d texted her last night and agreed to meet for lunch today. I’ve been trying to stay in touch with her since Ed dumped her; she’s such a sweet girl. I’d forgotten all about her though.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Ed asked, not amused to see her. I restrained him and explained. He shook his head in apparent pity at me. “You can’t leave well alone, can you Evans? So be it.”

Reluctantly he agreed that she could join us but in the awkwardness no one actually really explained what we were doing to her, and no one introduced her to Sharona who ended up putting on a brave display and doing it herself. Alice reacted to Sharona’s introduction shyly but politely.

 

*

 

Over a splendid lunch at the Roebuck Ed began questioning Robin.

“So you worked over there?”

“That’s true, many years ago now.”

“But you remember the place? You remember the layout?”

“I was just working in an administrative role.”

“Yes, but you know where they take dead people, right?”

Ever the master of tact, Ed. Robin became extremely reluctant at this stage and I tried to explain with some cock and bull story about Ed needing to describe the inside of a real morgue to his school kids! Can you imagine? It was the most transparent lie and Ed could hardly keep a straight face. Alice looked slightly concerned by this point.

            Robin didn’t like it at all but nonetheless, after lunch, he took us into the hospital and helped us find the morgue. We dodged a couple of doctors on the way in, pretending to be on our way elsewhere, with the elsewheres supplied by Robin. It was actually a very well lit place and not half so much like a horror film as might be suspected!

            We found a side room full of liquids and scalpels and decided to take a closer look. Ed told Alice and Robin to keep guard outside and make sure no one caught them. Neither of them looked at all impressed.

            Once inside Sharona looked at home. She wandered about lightly touching objects with fascination. Suddenly Ed yanked open a big metal door. Inside, amazingly, was a dead body. I froze, uncertain of what to do at the sight. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a dead body. Ed on the other hand didn’t appear in the least concerned. Worse, he actually managed to find space on the metal surface to sit himself down next to it.

            “What the hell are you doing?” I whispered, hoarsely.

            “Oh calm down,” he replied, in ordinary tones.

            Sharona walked around the other side of the surface and placed her hand, lightly, on the dead man’s hair. “Lie down,” she commanded Ed. He looked around at her and raised an eyebrow. He looked down at the body and for a moment hesitated. Then he did as he was told and lay down, sideways, alongside the body.

            “Guys,” I started, “I’m not sure about this at all. Maybe we’re taking this thing just a little too far.”

            “Sod that Evans,” said Ed, “just whip out your phone and take a picture before it’s too late!”

            “What, and create evidence of this insanity?”

            “Do it, Tom,” said Sharona.

            I started. There was an odd lilt in her tone. She looked altered somehow, almost high. Reluctantly I took out my phone and took a quick snap.

            “Now get off and let’s get the hell out of here!”

 

*

 

            Back outside the room Alice and Robin were gone. In silence we stalked uncomfortably out of the hospital. No words seemed appropriate.

            “What have we done?” I said, once we exited the place. No one replied.

            Alice sent me a text message shortly later.

            ‘Thanks for lunch. It was… unusual. x’

            Back home in the early evening I found Ed at the computer.

            “Let’s see what’s next,” he said.

            “Don’t you think we’ve done enough?” I asked.

            “You’ll get over it.”

            He brought up itunes with all our songs on it and typed ‘dead’ into the search box. Up came ‘Before I’m Dead’ by the Kidney Thieves.

            “It’s off the soundtrack to that vampire film isn’t it?” he said. “Just so long as it doesn’t involve morgues – maybe you’re right Evans, perhaps we shouldn’t go back there. Might get caught next time…”

 

The Pixie, The Imp and The Devil

            We strolled into the bar last night feeling like a million dollars. The girls were together, dressed in graceful backless dresses, long waved hair falling about their shoulders. We took a table and ordered drinks. I took another look at Sharona and noticed that her dress was made of black velvet, and that she wore a single white rose pinned to it. I leant across to a passing waiter and ordered drinks for the girls who hadn’t yet noticed us. On receiving the drinks they came across.

            Ed and Miranda embraced, while Sharona and I stood apart, looking at one another.

            “Does the rose ever blossom?” she asked me, at length.

            “The answer to your question is but a dream away.”

            “But what if the rose stays closed, the petals too scared to unfold?”

            “Then we’ll know that black velvet is as choking as the unknown it portrays.”

            Sharona smiled prettily and nodded to me in deference. We turned to the others and noted their slack jaws with amusement. I took Sharona’s hand and drew her back from the table, before bringing back the chair and seating her. The other two sat too, in silence, watching us. Sharona winked at me and normality resumed.

            After a short time the girls went to perform. Miranda accompanied Sharona on the piano. The two of us watched them with real pride, basking in our circumstances. We barely needed to exchange a word. When Sharona returned to me at the end I again wondered ‘why’, but put it to the back of my mind this time.

            I asked Sharona about Miranda. She simply said they’d been best friends for years, since they met playing music at an early stage. Sharona then asked me about Ed. I told her I couldn’t back him for fidelity but she thought that was just fine. I hoped that opinion didn’t reflect her own attitudes. After a moment’s knotted brows I got a grip and bought another round. In a moment of madness I then invited Sharona to dance. I think perhaps she was surprised that I could, but we moved gracefully enough and soon she was laughing.

            “You know what they say about a man who can dance.” she said.

            And before the others could blink we were outside in the alley, Sharona on her knees before me, my cock in her mouth. It was a hell of a kick, seeing a girl dressed like her, so classy, in that scene.

            She stopped after a few moments and left me burning. She pushed me back against the wall and stepped away, running her fingers slowly half way up her thigh, showing me just so much, then leaned in.

            “Come with me,” she whispered. She led me to another graveyard in the city, magnificent and gothic. We could barely keep our hands off each other as we jumped over the fence and penetrated the dark depths of the place. Sharona moved with direction and took me to a crypt. She opened the stone doors and we actually entered the place. Down below we found an altar and she lay upon it, legs paired together and flexed at the knees. Her black velvet dress slipped down her smooth thighs and I went to her then, at that moment. Just as though I were falling from a great height I couldn’t pause for thought; I fucked her as though the laws of physics demanded it.

 

*

 

            I woke gently this morning to the smell of bacon.

            “My turn,” she said, smiling. I ate and she watched me. “Why did you come to me?” she asked, at length.

            “Why is your name Sharona?” I replied.

            “How did you know my name before I gave it?”

            “It’s written in our story.” I laughed.

            “What story?”

            “The story of us in the infinite library of Babylon.”

            She smiled. “What’s the story called?”

            “My Sharona.” I stopped eating for a moment and looked at her. “Why is your name Sharona?”

            “My Papa gave it to me. He wanted me to have a distinctive name. He told me that with a name like mine…” I began to gently caress her exposed midriff, the soft flesh between the ribs and the hips, “…I could always expect fate to come and mix up my life. He said that fate is a Pixie of no alignment and that she would as easily shower me with fortune as misery. He told me he could wish for nothing more than experience for me: good or bad. Anything more than ordinary…” my hand began to wander further up, and further down, “…and so he named me Sharona as a siren call to the Pixie.”

            “But is the Pixie in your mind? Is she your own Pixie, or is she Pixie to us all?”

            “Both!” She giggled.

            “I like that. I believe in your Pixie Sharona. It was in fact your father’s siren call that brought me here. Your very name, Sharona, called me from England on the wings of the Pixie, just as your father predicted.” I explained the adventures.

            “So a song told you to find me?” she said, at the end.

            “Yes.”

            “When you hear the lyrics, how do you know what to do next?”

            “Ed tells me, once the Imp of the Perverse in his mind has given counsel.”

            Sharona gently drew in breath as my finger traced the outlines of her breasts.

            “That’s very trusting of you.”

            “Very. Sometimes I doubt the wisdom.”

            “And what did Ed tell you to do with me?” she asked, playfully, and the whole thing broke down. We submitted to the Devil of Lust.

            Some time later she lay on top of me, the length of her body pressed into mine. She leant over me and her hair fell about us, shielding us from the world outside. We lay in mingled breath and gaze.

            “What now, Tom?” she whispered.

            I was destroyed.  I had to bite my lip. I wanted to ask her to come back to England with me. I was frightened of the idea.

            “Come with me,” I choked, and whispered.

            “Again?” she replied, and winked. Then her eyes softened slightly and she kissed me tenderly. I knew it was an acceptance of my meaning.

            And so much more.

 

*

 

            Sharona packed in less than two hours. I dared not ask how long she planned to join me but she declared straight away that she would let the flat go. She resolved to leave the remainder of her stuff with Miranda around the corner and so we left to speak to her.

            Miranda let us in and it became apparent that Ed was there, the sly dog! We told them our plans and they both looked mortified. I was worried about Ed’s reaction to the news: I’d thought he’d have been happy for me.

            An awkward moment followed in which Ed and Miranda looked at one another, each apparently wondering if they ought to follow our lead. The tension held for a few moments until they comically broke down in shared relied, agreeing that they were just fine on their own.

            The afternoon progressed. Ed and Miranda helped us move Sharona’s stuff into Miranda’s storage cupboards though they both displayed a kind of unspoken resentment.

            “Is everything okay, Ed?” Sharona asked, after a while.

            “Just fine,” he muttered.

            “You must tell me,” she said, “if I’m coming with you I’ll do it on your terms, as well as Tom’s.”

            “Alright,” he replied.

            Sharona called her employers next, requesting time off and refusing to be drawn into specifics of it. She lost the tour guide job completely; I could hear the guy yelling down the phone. She didn’t appear the least bit fazed by it.

            By early evening the three of us were standing in the low sunshine, with our boots and packs on. We were ready, but amusingly enough hadn’t worked out where to go. In the end we went back to the hostel, booked transport for the following day, and another night’s stay.

            We’re about to go to bed now. The evening’s passed peacefully with a few shared hostel games and beers, Ed and Sharona getting to know one another.

            On the morrow a new chapter of my life begins.

From New Ghandi to Your Moma

“Doctor Leibniz mentioned to me long ago that there are two sorts of intellectual labyrinths into which all thinking people are sooner or later drawn,” said Caroline. “One is composition of the continuum. The other is the problem of free will.” – Neal Stephenson, The System of the World.

 

          “So how does this song go then?” asked Ed. I played it to him: Jane, by the Barenaked Ladies. “So, let me get this straight,” he said, “I’ve got to be a thief, unfaithful, or a letter writer. Alright. Which?”

            “Theft is against the law, and that’s against the rules.”

            “Pussy.”

            “Unfaithful is strictly impossible, since you’ve no one to be unfaithful to…”

            “What are you trying to say about us? I thought we had something special.”

            “…it’d be too easy anyway. So that leaves only letter writing.”

            “Okay.”

            “And since the song is about Jane…”

            “Not okay. That’s a really bad idea.”

            “Come on Ed, I can’t believe you’re threatening to wuss out on me.”

            “Look, I already went to lunch with her and you saw how that turned out. Can’t we just leave her out of it now?”

            “No. Let’s not. Let me dictate:”

 

            Dear Jane,

I had to write, I can’t seem to express myself to you in person. I wanted to tell you, I regret how it ended between us. The thing is… the other day, I had something important to tell you, but I couldn’t get it out. I’m sorry Tom was there. Here, let me spit it out… Jane, I’m having a baby with another woman.

 

            “No, Tom, that’s really not clever.”

            “The more you say that the more brilliant a plan it sounds to me.”

 

*

 

            We went around to Jane’s address so that Ed could post the letter in person. When we got there he paused, gripping the letter with white knuckles.

            “This is a fucking bad idea mate, she’s already psycho enough without this kind of interference.”

            “Fine, I’ll do it.” I snatched the letter out of his hand and posted it through her door. At the last moment I became seized by a sudden fear and ran for it once the envelope was through the door. Ed was shaking his head slowly when I returned. “What now?” I asked.

            “Dunno,” he said, absently.

            On the way back to the station we walked past a Post Office collection branch. “In here,” I said. Once inside I asked the first member of staff I saw for his favourite song.

            “Insane Killers by the Insane Clown Posse,” he replied.

            “You’ve gotta be kidding,” Ed said, “what the hell is that?”

 

*

 

            Back home we looked up the song. Our concern increased.

 

From New Ghandi to your Momma,

We gives absolutely no fucks

Mothafucka

Natural born serial murderers

Mass mothafuckin murderin murderers,

Bitch, come and meet your maker.

 

            And that’s just the start.

            “Christ, I’ve got to become a serial killer,” said Ed, slightly dazed.

            I stared at him.

            “Are you okay mate?” he asked.

            I guess I’d been staring at him as though he might be serious. With Ed, one never quite knows.

            “I’ve got a better idea…”

            “I should fucking hope so mate.”

            “…you can meet a killer. I’m representing one on Tuesday.”

 

*

 

            Tonight we discussed my next adventure. We listened to ‘I Write Sins, not Tragedies’ by Panic! At the Disco.

            “Mate, this is all about a wedding,” Ed said, with a glint in his eye.

            “I can hear that. But this doesn’t mean I’m getting married.”

            “Come on!”

            “No.”

            “Alright. I suppose that would be a little extreme. It might break some of your bollocks rules.” He adopted a pensive look. “I know, we’ll crash one!”