Xavier Leret

Here is the second KAOS DREAM VLOG.

Check out the KAOS site.

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Here is the first rehearsal process VLOG for the KAOS DREAM. You can find out more about the show at www.kaostheatre.com.

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I had meant to get this out earlier in the week but I've been busy in rehearsals for The KAOS Dream, which I think is going to be an absolute blinder of a show. Check out the KAOS Theatre site for my rehearsal blog.

Anyway, here is the new chapter of Daisy.

Caring For Daisy Byatt Chapter 9 - The Transaction

When the transaction was first suggested Daisy and Carlo were traveling together in the back of a three wheeler Robin Reliant with an old man who would lean right over the gear stick in order to take closer and then closer looks at Carlo between brief glances at the road. He was barely tall enough to peer over the steering wheel, a compact man with a thick heavy left foot and a walking cane stuck in the door. He had stopped to pick them up as they were attempting to hitchhike out of Bristol along the M32. They had been standing there for one hour, and had hardly noticed the time go as each car that passed brought with it fresh hope as it had sped around the corner. It was a renaissance moment, the cold clear sky morning made them feel shiny, newly polished, aluminum, when they looked at each other they could see their reflection in each others eyes, it was as if they were looking in a mirror to see themselves.

Daisy’s teeth were chattering, she wasn’t cold, just coming down. Carlo gave her his coat and took a jumper out of his bag. One or two cars drove by, as well as trucks and a coach. Daisy lit a cigarette. Carlo picked up a sheet of cardboard, found a pen in a side pocket and wrote London in big black letters, neither had ever been before, at least not alone. Daisy had never broken the close orbit of Bristol, whereas Carlo could remember once visiting the city with his father who did not feel at home on the Underground system. For him the crowds were too much; but for his son the trains shooting through their tunnels with their automatic doors were like a haunted ride in a fairground, the thousands packed together, the faces peering down avoiding gazes, steering away from conversation, refusing to acknowledge a stranger’s gentle breath in their ear. The juddering, the shaking, the squeaking somehow shut the collective consciousness down, as if the hordes had just connected to the energy source and were silently charging themselves up. Silent eyes down, ears shut, senses off. The smell of humanity was overpowering the hundreds upon hundreds of armpits sweating in tandem with the pubis, some washed and dipped in perfumes like almonds in sugar whilst others were raw, ripe and soft like fruit in the sun. He longed to return to experience that closeness again, to feel the bodies next to him and jump in and then along the line, seeing through different eyes, experiencing, cotton, silk, nylon, wool, leather against pink, brown, yellow, tight, soft, smooth, hairy, irritated and pampered skins. All the anatomical aromas through each and every one of those nostrils, secretly breathing each other in, discretely breathing it all in. Yes, he was longing to go back for this - not the gold paved streets, not the promise of riches or success, just the masses, the people - the life.

At this transitional moment in their lives they imagined being picked up by a speeding Jaguar or a top class BMW at worst a Ford or a Renault. Daisy described how they would dash at a hundred miles an hour with the roof down and the wind streaking through their hair, pulling it back, throwing it around. They would be traveling so fast that they wouldn’t be able to open their eyes fully, the sheer velocity endeavoring to rip them out of their sockets and sticking their cheeks behind their ears into a Hollywood face-lift. Besides to break the gravitational pull of the city it was obvious they required a vehicle with all the power of an Apollo spacecraft. Nothing less would do except perhaps a chariot that them ancient Roman emperors, like Tiberius did, that were pulled by flying horses so when the Robin Reliant rolled up to a stop because it had no more hill to run down they felt humbled; humbled like Christ riding in on an ass or Gandhi walking around in a sheet and his pants; humbled like two young prophets who had been all too proud of their mission and the good Lord had just brought them down to earth, if only there was someone ready and willing to chronicle their adventure, to put it all down in some great book, place it all somewhere at the end of the great beginning or the great beginning a long way from the end, or maybe before the big end that always seems to come at an awkward time for them employed in the doing of no good.

Daisy sat on the back seat. When Carlo got in Block smiled a broad smile that showed off his teeth. They were all his and slightly brown and worn, not unlike a retired horse or the old keys of bar room piano. Carlo had trouble shutting the door so Block leaned over him and gave him a hand. His arm stretched and seemed to have the ability to magically extend its reach whilst his other hand bore down on Carlo’s thigh. The door shut with a gentle “there” as if it had been blown shut by the wind. The old man looked around to Daisy and then back to Carlo. He fiddled rudely with the gear stick, put it into gear, and with both hands on his steering wheel they slowly pulled away, disguising his fragility as care, edging out onto the highway lanes as if putting a big toe into a hot tub. Once positioned safely in the slow lane Block relaxed and his hands took over the driving and he allowed his eyes to wander Carlo’s way.

Daisy sat in the back, she was tired, her eyes red. Her body was damp and covered in a thin film of sweat, she was coming down with the fever and she knew what that would mean, the cramps and the hallucinations. The Robin Reliant was small and claustrophobic. Each breath of wind would knock them. She could see the muscles in Block’s hand flex in the fight to control the vehicle, it was as if there were little creatures moving underneath his skin, his veins like blue snakes. Her hearing was becoming increasingly acute and she could make out the sound of their conversation, a series of muscular creaks and joints popping, shouting orders at the fingers and tendons bullying control like an apparition from the dark side fighting life back into a corpse.

Once or twice they were hit by the wind so hard she thought that they were being attacked, giant vultures dive-bombed them, toyed with them, showed them who was boss. Block hardly watched the road, his eyes were on Carlo, he was biting his lip and then she saw his prick come alive, it was breathing and mumbling quickly under his breath. The eye in his penis was watching him and then Carlo, jumping between the two, listening intently, conferring quietly, pleasing his master by rubbing against the inside of his silk pants, nodding continuously in agreement and sometimes bouncing with laughter. Occasionally it would take too much blood in an attempt to become more bulbous, proving too much for the old man’s heart so his hands would begin to pass out, loose control of the car and then they would all jump. Block’s dick would then recoil, hiding back up in the old man’s pelvis, releasing blood to the hands. It would not take long, though, for it to summon up a throb of courage, desire made it reckless you see, desire made its mouth frothy with white jelly. Sometimes the eye would open wider and Daisy could see in, down the tube. There was semen in there rising and falling like mucus on a lung, as fresh and as vibrant as when he was a young man. It wanted to be held, it cared not whether it was strangled or caressed, kissed, kicked or whipped raw. It would do anything, say anything, pay anything to look up Carlo’s tight, tuned bottom, look up there, peer up there, go up there, slip up there, get snug up there. And he talked nine to dozen, his life, his exploits, the parks, the parties, the boys, stripping by the pool side, slugging it out in hotel rooms, the silk skins, the tight lines, the unshaven jaws, the muscles flexed like proud swans, the dandies with doved chests, the crests, the crescents; each line in his face had been grooved there, not carved, his hip worn out by the dancing and then one evening his energy was swiped by a creature called old age, he’d been mugged by it one night, one night when he wasn’t looking, beaten down a blind alley so to speak, so now he made do with his pension, his bountiful pension, which could get him a room, a marble room on the top floor of a notable hotel, which turned a profitable blind eye to pensionable old buggers arsing around with young lads; beautiful lads eager for a quick buck by giving up to his slow, slow harvest, because at his age, believe me, she heard him say, you just ain’t no quick draw McGraw. Ain’t that the truth, she thought.

She was feeling a little faint. Each one of her pores had developed a nostril and the smell in the car was making her see things she wished would stay hidden. When she breathed in it was like he was getting inside of her, creeping under her skin, blocking her veins and pulling the blinds on her consciousness, pulling them shut until at last she could neither hear nor see, her heart and lungs gently pumping on, limbs limp, life necessary functions on auto pilot.

Block gently fondled the gear stick as his Robin Reliant jolted and jerked on the motorway, the wind made the nose of this indecently designed automobile bob in the most obscene fashion. The engine made the seats vibrate unfairly, charming Carlo’s flaccid organ into a peacocked erection, the car was a rope magician or a snake charmer. There was little to nothing that Carlo could do, he was hard and Block could see him bulge, he was, after all, a man of tremendous anatomical experience with a profound understanding of the wizardry of his vehicle – he had made some of the more magical adjustments himself. Block’s Robin Reliant juddered the nerve endings rather like the seats on a bus; the resulting rigidity was an unconscious reflex re-action. But however mentally unintentional the penile growth it, nevertheless, begins to dominate the unassuming imagination, flushing blood from the brain and replacing it with lurid sexual hallucinations – there is little a man can do. Witches ride brooms whereas homosexual aged incubi place their supernatural trust in a vehicle that most of us wouldn’t be seen dead in. Not everything is about looks. Real power is rarely flamboyant in appearance rather choosing to disguise itself as a beggar, a ploy famously employed by evil stepparents in fairy tales and contradicted only by presidents of countries and self promoting prime ministers.

Block was not an evil stepparent. Daisy’s visions were nothing more than withdrawal symptoms. Carlo was quite enjoying his candor. He spoke about his sexual permissiveness as if he was an epic adventurer. In his youth he had all the luck of a mythical hero, he could surround himself in sexual conquests, men threw themselves at him, and he in turn threw himself at them. Never a night went by that he slept alone, he always had company. Often too many for his bed. They would break the springs, they would spill out of the sheets and flow all over the floor, the six packs, the biceps, the triceps, the pecs, the buttocks - his life was a festival of masculine variety, the butch, the camp, the big, the small, the dominant, the subservient; he had had them all. He had had everything other than that one great clichéd failure of sexual gluttony – love. He knew the feeling, he had felt it on a couple of occasions but he had never given himself over to it, or rather the situation never became more than a lovely conversation, a feeling that grew without the structures of commitment which given the circumstances of his lifestyle was doomed to fail. Of course he had fond memories of numerous partners, fanciful fantasies about one or two exciting encounters which were so perfect that they could only develop into the full fledged thing, but alas neither had had the courage of their feelings. So the gentle, loving, involving, explosive touches and caresses which were at the time as consuming as continental firework display faded as quickly as the bang and the pretty lights, remaining only as flashes in the memory, their moment to be replayed again and again to add pain to the isolation of old age.

Block told Carlo that he was like a millionaire who had squandered it all away and old age was a curse. He repeated the word again and again. Block accused age of being the cruelest villain reducing a man to a wreck, withering the body away, absconding with animation and stealing beauty. No amount of cologne can hide its terrible odor; sometimes waking with himself was like waking with death. But worst, worst, mind you, is that age destroys the body but not the drive, you want to fuck the same – no more – more than a young man. Block explained that when he was young he had sex because he could, he never had to say no, it was a habit really, the sex, the abundance of it, he would look at a body and a body would look at him and that was it. Now he would just walk through a room and be invisible at best, usually, though, noses would turn up and faces away.

He looked at Carlo’s moving erection; his car had won it over. He said that he was infected by the need to fuck anyone and everything. The need was with him at all times, it was an affliction, he would look at young men and see their cock, he would see it through their garments, their beating heart was pumping it full of blood and he wanted to pump it, ‘it’ mind you not ‘he’ – you don’t see a boy you see their hole, you smell their hole. Often he would find himself masturbating but it was like scratching an itch, it only made the feeling worse, the only release he could find was in a rent boy, he needed to be in flesh or have flesh in him, and the silence that it brought, the petite morte, was only a momentary release, an hour at most, sometimes only seconds, but he could only afford three rent boys a week, only three, so he had to ration himself. My god, he wailed, I sleep but three hours a week, THREE HOURS A WEEK, if I am lucky, and for the rest of my time I drive this fucking car. I can’t be still. I can never be quiet, I’m never alone because they’re in there fucking - fucking and talking to me, making me look at their smooth limbs, their taut tight skin riding over muscles as they forever screech towards ejaculation, sometimes so violently that their screams make it impossible to do something as simple of shopping, I’d fuck even the most ugly boy. Christ I’d even fuck a woman.

Block longed for it to end, he just wanted to reach that age when it would all stop – not death – just the death of desire, to not be able to get it up any more, to not have to live with that dreadful, unearthly din of copulation.

Carlo saw that Block was leaking out of his trousers. He should have been a hetro, Block said, he could have sired millions, more than double the quota of the great hall of souls. Block could have single handily kept the world going for an eternity. Sperm is like wine, he said smacking his lips, the more it has aged the smoother and mellower it becomes. Pair him with the right eggs and that would be an end to war and destruction – his offspring would have only one thing on their minds, not love because that can be broken, discarded, abused – no his children would know about pleasure, they would be experts in the subject and the practice of it, they would form the pleasure monarchy and he would be its great everlasting Queen.

Carlo looked at Block. It was true age had done its worse but they could do with the money. He knew what Block needed and he understood that he would pay for it. He looked back over at Daisy to see that she was asleep. When Block finally raised the question he just said yes. Block pulled the car off the motorway. They were at Junction 14, the Hungerford turn off. A man once walked down the rather well dressed high street of this market town with automatic shotguns casually killing shoppers. No-where is safe. They pulled off the main road onto a narrow country road before hiding the car in a discrete little copse. Carlo wound his window down and took a deep breath of fresh air. He closed his eyes. Block asked him to take out his penis; he wanted to see his young cock. The car had made Carlo hard, but it felt more like smooth rock than his own.

Daisy woke up on the back seat. She was drowsy, she felt like she had been given drugs, a secret vial. She felt Block inside of her trying to pull her eyelids shut. Block pulled out his organ; he wanted Carlo to put it in his mouth.

Daisy took one look at it and told him not to do it. He was with her on this one. Block’s penis wasn’t in good shape; it was more than just having been done over by age and unhealthy familiarity. It was clear he hadn’t been kidding about his appetite for rent boys and judging by the state of his appendage he hadn’t been too choosey about where he found them. Cleanliness goes hand in hand with self-respect and it was clear this old man had long since thrown his out with his shame, discarded it like the skin of a lizard. If you found his history in the bin you would want to leave it there or incinerate it to stop kids from trying it on.

When Block saw that Carlo didn’t really have the stomach to continue; he became angry, calling him names, he slammed his head against the dash board screaming that a contract was a contract. He was squeezing his penis, almost trying to pop its head like it was an acne left over. And then Daisy slipped the strap from her bag around his throat, pulling it tight. At first Block choked and then he began to masturbate wildly gasping the words yes, deary, oh yes, squeeze it tighter. He rub himself harder and harder, his eyeballs began to stick out from his sockets, his tongue tried to break free from his mouth, his pallor was that of a purple bruised damson. At last he shot a hole in the windscreen, his fluid like a sheriff’s silver bullet, shattering the glass and splashing Carlo’s hand. And then he was dead. He was dead, sticky and twitching.

Daisy screamed at Carlo to get out of the car, quickly. She grabbed their bags, somehow managed to manoeuvre Carlo out of the car before falling over the front seat and into the open herself. Carlo was standing confused with his erect penis still sticking out from his trousers. Daisy took one look at it and could tell that he was infected; that whatever that thing was that had inhabited Block it had leapt from his ejaculate and landed on Carlo. There was only one thing that she could do. She pulled Carlo to the floor, putting her lips around his sexual mass she began to suck the poison out. Carlo was beginning to feel delirious. He could feel whatever it was latch onto the inside of his skin with millions of little claws, it began to scrabble, scratch, tear as it fought against Daisy’s powerful vacuum suck. Carlo thought that he was going to die, the pain was unbearable, the desire was beginning to be uncontrollable, he began to feel that he needed to turn Daisy over and stick it in her, pump her arse full of the demon until at last she squeezed the poisoned ejaculate from deep inside of him. She sucked it so hard that Carlo’s scrotal sacks would feel bruised for days and before the devils semen could touch the walls of her mouth she had spat it out and rinsed her mouth with Cola.

They lay exhausted. Carlo slowly got to his feet. They struggled back to the main road and then stumbled out onto the empty motorway roundabout. There was a blue sign underneath directions to Hungerford. It said The End. Underneath it someone had scrawled, “too fucking right”.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

Posted by Xavier Leret at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here it is Chapter 8.

And so it begins.

Carlo lived in a burrow. His parents rented the basement flat of a council building. The building was Victorian and spacious and had once been a proud family home with servants and everything. Now it was divided into three flats, the biggest being the top floor, the smallest in the middle and the cosiest in the basement. Living in the basement somehow suited Carlo’s parents, they likened it to the ancient catacombs that were used for the first underground Christian meetings when the movement was persecuted by Romans; but the truth was that it was the nearest they could get to burying their heads in the sand and for Carlo’s father it was a perfect preparation for the grave, if not a little warmer.

The flat was a dusty archive. Most of the rooms were stacked full of Christian magazines and books and were quite a testament to the human imagination. Every aspect of the religion was covered. There were descriptions of saints, angels, apostles, apocalypse, apostates, prophecies, Philippians and resolutely no mention of the ascension of man from primates. The philosophical and ideological musings that randomly stacked the walls and practically held the ceiling up, were so imaginatively athletic that they made the great surrealists, realists, poets and painters seem like numbskulls. This was the environment that Carlo, much to the shock of his parents, introduced to Daisy one fateful Friday afternoon in April.

To be fair to Carlo’s parents, their reaction to the young Daisy was for a whole host of parents understandable. They would have not been alone in their worry that their child had fallen into the wrong crowd. She was run down to say the least and her spirit was weathered beyond her years. Her accent was broad, her voice had a husk and she stank of cigarettes. She was truly one of the fallen and even if they could reach over the precipice and catch her from falling further and who knows even raise her up, she was not the sort of character that their son should be associating with. Mrs. Roberts took one look at Daisy and resolved to have her flung from their home for good and to sever all contact between her and her son. As she watched Daisy she noticed that her eyes would occasionally slip up into the back of her head, a sure that sign that she was on drugs, although she did not notice any needle track marks on her arms, which was something at least.

Daisy was not equipped for the Robert’s household. She walked through their flat as if she did not belong, as if she was looking for things to steal, as if she might abscond with their entire life savings at any moment. She had no idea what they were talking about. It was not just their vast range of vocabulary but their subject matter. They did not seem to have any connection with the real world. Even when they talked about the shops they talked about the gift of the world to man and the abundance that was ours to harvest. She was a little taken by surprise because she had found a real companion in Carlo. She wondered how Carlo could have been born into such a household before finally deciding that he had been adopted or perhaps that his mother had a brief affair or, more likely, had been raped or something and that Carlo was a secret child. Certainly she was not the kind of woman who would have been a whole bundle in bed. There was nothing soft about her; she suspected that down there she was full of splinters. Perhaps when she was young there might have been a reckless moment, a vacuum of abandon that made her panic and the man involved no professional so conception had been premature, which was lucky for Carlo for had his father been able to perform his mother would have spat him out before ejaculation and shut her legs like a castle portcullis. Whatever the truth it wasn’t just Carlo’s mother who felt that Daisy didn’t belong, but here, for some reason, Daisy felt safe if not comfortable and she was prepared to play the game for as long as it took, doing her best to be polite, and yet she would only have to open her mouth and she could sense the family recoil. Her voice lacked the music they were accustomed to and as a result she always sounded out of tune.

Carlo knew that this would happen but he knew that they would need somewhere just to collect themselves and recover from the death of Stanton Parks. He had no idea if anyone had seen anything. For all he knew the body had yet to be discovered and since his parents had refused to allow a television into the house there would be no real way of knowing until the next day when they could buy a copy of the local paper. For the time being it was important that should they have to run they would do so calmly and not in a blind panic. He was not afraid.

The evening supper was a solemn affair. Mrs. Roberts asked Daisy about her parents. Daisy told her that her father was dead and that her mother was with someone else who wasn’t JG. She said that she hadn’t seen her mother for some years but that it was all OK because although she sometimes missed her she had gotten over it. Of course there was a piece of her that was missing but what she really wanted to know was the physical appearance of her father because her mother never kept any pictures. She only had an inkling of what he looked like and that was her biggest regret. Daisy didn’t eat much and Mrs. Roberts thought she looked emaciated and was more than a little shocked at Daisy’s story.

Daisy went on to say that her Dad was a sailor and that her mother had met him one evening when his ship was in port and that they had had a really romantic night together before he smuggled her on board his vessel and that was how she was got. The next day her mother was discovered and slung overboard. Daisy knew how heartbroken her mother was because she could really picture her crying on the dock side as her father’s ship pulled away as he stood silently waving back to her. Because they had been discovered in the early hours of the morning passion had robbed them of the opportunity to swap addresses and although her mother clung to his memory, and she was sure as she could be that he clung to hers, they had tragically lost contact. Daisy told Mrs. Roberts that her mother would tell her how like her dad she was and that her looks were entirely his and that he was the only bloke she’d ever got on with the best and that sex in a hammock was a right laugh specially when you’re trying to keep the noise down and not let it out that you’re there at all. This was all met by an embarrassed silence although it made Carlo smile.

Daisy had a quality of candour that quite overwhelmed Carlo. He loved her. It was the kind of love of fairy tales, the sort that breaks down barriers as well as opens rifts. It was an extraordinary sort of feeling that made him glow and would drive his parents to excommunicate him from them. Such would be their temper that they would draft a letter to the Pope asking him to do the same. However, his mother loved him too much to send it and deep down she would always hope that he would see sense and come back. Besides, as long as she was there to weep for him at Christ’s feet then perhaps her faith and her compassion would be enough to barter a place for him in paradise. The only hope for Daisy was that she would abandon him right there and then. Not wanting to seem entirely heartless, and at Carlo’s insistence, she would allow her to stay till morning. She would prepare the sofa for her and then lie awake throughout the night listening out for her footsteps. There was nothing to steal but the soul of her son, and this was not something she would give up without a fight. It was an item so valuable to her that she would lay her own life down to save it. Tragically for her Carlo had been fucked good and hard up the arse of his own volition and this, even for the most liberal members of her sect, was enough to seal his everlasting doom.

*****

Eternity was the least of Carlo’s problems as unbeknownst to him Rufus Tonnes had witnessed the two of them escape from the tower earlier that afternoon. He had watched Stanton Park’s body crash from on high; he had heard it thud into the ground and he had turned a little green as the skull cracked. In an unusually inquisitive move he had even taken a closer look at the body to see that its head was splintered, the nose imploded and the teeth smashed. He had sensed two sets of footsteps make their way down the spiral staircase. Knowing that the feet belonging to the steps would shortly appear through the old turnstile gate Rufus had sought refuge in the bushes. So terrified was he that he had hidden his face only, not realising that his oversized bottom was highly visible. Thankfully for him Daisy and Carlo were new to the game of killing and were happy to make a quick and speedy exit from the scene. They failed to see the rotund mass of their conspicuous voyeur who continuing down the route of unaccustomed curiosity had turned in order to catch a glimpse of the unfortunate young man’s assailants. As Daisy and Carlo vacated the tragic scene Rufus Tonnes took them in, absorbed them into his memory before taking one more glimpse at the lifeless Stanton Parks. As he looked on a crow descended out of the sky and picked a morsel, which had been scraped into a dangle, from the young corpse’s lip. This one cruel act of nature was enough to bring lunch and breakfast gushing up and almost instantaneously blood and bone was mixed with vomit, gristle and carrots; a reflex which left the soon to arrive forensic team decidedly unimpressed, their morale for the murder more than a little watered down.

It was not young Rufus who was responsible for calling the police that afternoon it was Professor D.P.G. Harvey. Professor Harvey discovered a large lad in a state of distress in the close proximity of the battered corpse of Stanton Parks. At first the professor, who had made his name through his study of Middle German at the University of Bristol, assumed that the carcass was indeed the victim of Tonnes. Naturally this would be the obvious first impression. However, the professor who was an astute man of some bravery soon concluded that this was not the case and after calming young Rufus he went in search of a policeman. As policemen are always difficult to find on quiet afternoons the professor knocked on a door and kindly asked if it would be possible for him to use their telephone in order to call the police because there was a body at the foot of Cabot Tower and a young lad who may very well need some kind of help as he had, understandably, lost his bearings and was in a heightened state of distress. On completing this phone call he immediately phoned his wife in order to cancel that evenings engagements, as he was sure that the police would want to question him and besides he felt a degree of responsibility for the post pubescent Tonnes. The house at which he sought assistance belonged to the offices of Higgins and Co a prominent Bristol company of chartered accountants who were, of course, delighted to be of assistance and immediately offered to take a flask of tea to the abandoned fat boy who was by now clawing at his own skin with sheer fear for having been left with a corpse not knowing whether the two killers might return and finish the job properly by dispatching all those who may have seen something. Thus an entire company of some twenty chartered accountants climbed to the top of Brandon Hill with tea and biscuits so that they too could see the sad remains of Stanton Parks under the pretence of bringing cheer to a youth who was, it turned out, difficult to like. By the time the police had arrived there was quite a Friday afternoon in swing. Everyone, of course, had climbed to the top of the tower just to gain first hand what it must have been like to tip over the edge, judging for themselves the velocity of the fall, the violence of the act, the ingenuity of the perpetrators finally commenting on just how dangerous the streets of Bristol had now become. Each individual had worked it out entirely and were more than happy to share their observations with the police, which they did with lowered and respectful voices pointing out each aspect of the crime as they saw it.

Stanton Parks was at peace. There was nothing that anybody could have done to bring him back for had the machine been invented Stanton would have refused to return for he was happy in his non existent form, happy to have left it all behind, happy to no longer be able to be happy, sad, alone or blue. There is something to be said for passing behind the veil of this life into the pure silence of the continuum of nothing, to no longer think, to no longer be plagued by thought, to no longer be taxed by anxiety or tribulations to be in rest whilst being unaware of rest; to be beyond it all. If Stanton Parks could express himself now he would say wow, no worries, no nothing, nothing. Nothing. Ha! What Rufus Tonnes would have done for this eternal nothingness is, to a degree, impossible to determine. Let us just say that for weeks and sporadically till the end of his days he would have nightmares, horrific dreams, brutal fantasies and unforgiving visions. He would be plagued to the point of distraction allowing the events of this afternoon to be the reason for all present and future underachievement. His life would spasm out from this moment, it was uncontrollable, unbearable, teeth clenching, eyeball flicking. Every spasm brought an ailment, a virus, a sickness, an allergy, an injury, a condition, a symptom, a reason, an excuse. From now on he would walk into a crowded room and find that his wallet was missing or that a knife was held to his throat. He was the victim, the hunter’s prey, the legless, wingless quarry and each terror he would encounter each simple minimal challenge had its root, its stem in the moment that Stanton Parks died. But the truth is that Rufus Tonnes was and had always been a challenge for anyone’s sympathy. Even his mother found him hard going and now the police were soon to discover that he was an absolute exasperation with a talent for merging, forgetting, mislaying and twisting facts that would buy Daisy and Carlo the time necessary to make good their escape.

Rufus Tonnes was questioned by five different officers before finally settling with a chief inspector Moses who had a long beard. Moses had a talent for calming the most anxious stars of a criminal investigation. His experience was gained before the science began to dominate the crime scene. He could look into a person’s eye and see truth tapping at the pane. He had the gift of a medium with a corpse, an eye that could spot the smallest clue and a nose that could follow the slightest scent. Moses took Rufus Tonnes aside and gave him a cup of tea. A warm, steaming, soothing cup of tea which seduced the fat lad like a truth serum, albeit an unreliable one, allowing the detective to rummage, unpicking the buttons that held up his lack of confidence and bigging up that which lay behind. He brought a smile to his face. When he was done he called over the criminal artist to paint an impression and continuing to massage the young lad’s, by now rigid, ego, he coaxed out a description of Daisy and Carlo that they felt confident enough to allow onto the front pages of the local press. Infuriatingly they had missed the morning editions so it was not until the following afternoon that the duo was published in shaded black and white. The apparent age of the killers was to spark some fierce journalistic debate that would spill over onto the national television networks, cause some heated exchanges in the Houses of Parliament and waking one or two in the House of Lords.

The portraits were so accurate that Carlo’s mother would pass by the window of a newsagent and in a daze walk through the door like an apparition. She would buy a copy of the Evening Post, her hand shaking. The newsagent would ask her if she was OK and told her that she was looking pale. She smiled a good cold Catholic English smile, handed over her small change and walked out with her head held as high as she possibly could, high enough to draw attention to herself, a beacon broadcasting distress, a big bright red one, or an emergency vehicle siren. On the way home people got out of her way. Nee Nor, Nee Nor they all cleared the pavement to let her pass. She thought her heart would explode, the pistons of her existence working overtime. Christ had put his foot down on the pedals and she was racing. It was all she could do to run, walk, then stagger the quarter of a mile home before the burden became too great and she collapsed in her hall, spittle dribbling from her mouth, as if a demon had entered her or the devil himself had his wicked way in there.

*****

The night had been a difficult one. The sofa was old and like Carlo’s mother it had spikes in it, spikes on the end of springs. Daisy could never make herself comfortable. Mrs. Roberts had been as courteous to her as a masked assassin; she had performed her hospitality like a wooden actor ruining the show for everyone, although she couldn’t make the star look bad, somehow he kept the pace of the evening up. Carlo was really good. He only had to wink and time would seem to speed up.

Daisy had given birth to a new side of herself. She spoke long sentences now but her words were a little short and some were overused. Every now and then a bit of her would speak up just to stoke Mrs. Roberts perpetual hell fire. She couldn’t help it. She was like Lilith, moulded of the same clay as Adam and she wouldn’t lie underneath, she was argumentative and definitely of the night. When she was fucking for money she was on top and with this self righteous born again self re-made virgin who had hair dried her pussy so it would scar up a cock, there was no way she would be on the bottom. She was banished into the night and her great secret was her great love. And Carlo knew it too, but out of respect he would keep quiet, she was after all his mother, he had some inkling of the pain she’d gone through to have him – he was tall because he was a breach, the doctors and midwifes had to pull him out, stretching her vagina as wide as they could, a human rubber trick in an Amsterdam peep show. She hadn’t been as malleable as chewing gum, even though she had a habit of sticking things up, so you can imagine…

Mr. Roberts was quiet, every now and then he would venture a smile but there was no point of contact between him and this, this - girl, other than his son and he’d rather not venture there. He didn’t need to imagine, but what he did not know for sure was exactly the place for him to be. Ignorance was not quite bliss; actually it was like awaiting a harsh punishment like death but not knowing quite when the moment of execution was going to take place. He had spent most of his life in this fashion. The moment of Rapture, the day that Christ would come again and fire falls from the sky, might indeed happen within his lifetime, he possessed enough guilt to be uncertain of a perpetual happy destiny but his lack of knowing when the great judgment was coming was enough to keep his anxiety at bay. And so it was with his son and the beautiful demon he had brought into the flat. At least within these walls there was enough scripture to protect them all. He was certain that his mother would anoint their bedroom door and Carlo’s with enough holy water to douse the most furious hell fire. But her voice was a trial and he longed for the meal to come to an end so that he could retreat into a religious magazine, although this would mean breakfast would be with them soon and he dreaded actually seeing her in the morning. He was not the sort of fellow who would have succeeded as a missionary in the inner city. Sin, however innocent, was like a mucous. It was everywhere, impossible to wipe or wash. It was sticky. It was in the flesh. It had an ability to seep into the imagination. It could inhabit a being, jumping from creature to creature like a flea, spreading like a virus. There were different shades of it and it would make people gleam in the sunlight. This girl would sit there and a simple move of her hand would flick it in his eye. He could see it smear his wife but worst of all he could feel it grow within himself. Jesus, she would arouse him but he would never touch her. Could he wait till later? He tried to keep his mind off her and put it into his wife, he forced himself to have desire for his wife, he imagined sticking her, trawling her. But it was no good. Daisy was born of the same stuff as himself not formed from a rib. She was the reason the dusk sun bled away into the night. She was the menstrual moon. Eli, Eli, he cried La’ma sabach-tha’ni. But of course no God came, no saint, no priest, no aid, just the most dreadful skin tightening temptation. He was forsaken by no other than himself, abandoned by no greater being than himself, bereft only with himself.

There was a shooting star, though, but of course there are thousands of those, randomly skimming the earth’s atmosphere like pebbles dancing across a pool. They have no meaning other than they are. Like seconds flicking off a clock they are so small you cannot even tell the time by them. They are like us, Carlo would conclude, crumbs from the universe’s table… or great sparks from time’s factory furnace cresting into a shower of a million lights, vanishing as quick as they came. Bright for a small time only… bright for a small time… for a small time… but in that time so very, very bright.

At the end of the meal there was a silence. Carlo looked over the table and smiled at Daisy as his parents gazed at the floor. The plates and cutlery were cleared and washed, the sofa made and the flat cleansed by the tears collected from a weeping Madonna housed in a chapel in Italy. An icon that had wept for mile long queues and millions of eyes. An icon in such a state of depression that no amount of prayer could cheer it up.

Mrs. Roberts leant Daisy a pair of Carlo’s pyjamas insisting that the girl wear them, marching her to the bathroom to change before leading her to the tired old sofa. Daisy could hear her at the door half the night breathing quietly, standing guard until finally she deserted her post. It was not long after that that Carlo sneaked in, tucked himself in next to her, put his arm around her, letting her head rest against his chest. They didn’t say anything, enjoying the silence, sharing it, before drifting off to sleep before waking together into the same disembodied landscape, naked and glistening in night’s dew, laughing at the millions of hallucinations that drifted and appeared before them before being harshly dragged back into consciousness by Carlo’s mother, who by anyone’s standards was having a right old over reaction. She whipped the sheets and blankets off the sofa, letting the cold night really slap them about. She flung Daisy’s cloths at her and screamed that she should get out. She stripped her naked, in front of Carlo, and forced her to dress. The light that shone from Daisy’s skin so blinded Mrs. Roberts that Carlo was able to intervene and more tenderly aid his love into her garments before putting his own cloths on; and then in the blink of an eye they both left. They did not slam the door behind them; they gently shut it, leaving Mrs. Roberts to her own misery. They left her to freeze with it, as freezing a muscle is good way to block the pain. And Carlo left, never really expecting to return. Of course he understood his mother’s tantrum but he couldn’t condone it. For people who read so much they lacked any wisdom or foresight. They had long since shut off their empathy. Charity was a thought, a concept, something distant on another continent – it was not an action. Carlo had had enough. He’d discovered the key to their chains some time ago, had taken them off for small periods of time just to feel what it must be like to walk free and now was the time to remove them forever.

His mother’s screams woke the entire street. As they walked away hand in hand house lights flicked on, lighting their escape route. Faces appeared in windows and figures in doorways. Their audience watched as Daisy turned to Carlo and asked if he was alright. He stroked her hair. Her short red fiery hair. He smiled and said he was fine and then before the dawn had time to catch them they stepped out of the street-lights into the dark, dark night…

And were gone.

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