Nanowrimo 2010 - Space

Chapter One




‘I’m sorry.’ He said.

‘Are you?’ Her tone was gentle, quiet. She kept any accusation from her soft words, she kept her gaze on his eyes even though he looked at the ground. She waited through the silence that followed.

He looked up at her, that same imploring look in his gaze back to her. She knew that look, she was close, and she rallied herself against the urge to rush on and lead and ruin the whole session. She waited, again.

‘Yes.’ He said eventually, ‘of course I am.’

‘Of course?’

He nodded.

‘I suppose I’m wondering, with how you felt at the beginning of our sessions, why you would say, of course.’

‘What you mean?’ He sat up slightly, just a micro movement of defence against what she might say.

She had to be careful, this was the crucial moment that would bring the sessions closer to an end, or add another twenty to the hundred or so she’d already had with Don. She had all the time she could ask for of course, but she liked to race herself, and prove she could succeed with more and more efficiency. She relished efficiency, and the paperwork that came proudly afterwards.

She sat up slightly too, mirroring him just enough to show her empathy.

With everything else that may be said of her, it must always be remembered that she truly had empathy.

‘I mean, when you first came to me, during our first few sessions, you would never have voiced those words. “Of course“. You used phrases like ‘I know I should’ and I realise that people think’, but never that the feeling of sorry should be a matter of, course.’

‘What does that mean, why does that matter?’

‘Because it shows a change, Don, it shows to me, and please correct me if I’m wrong, that you know this is your time to be understood and heard, but it seems to me that it’s a real change, in your thought process. Before, you always knew that you should be sorry, and that other people thought that you would be. But now it seems that you actually are.’

Don looked at her, right in her eyes. She saw the softening she was hoping for, waiting for. The realisation from Don, dear, enduring Don, that he may actually be sorry. There was no glistening at the corner of his eyes, his lip did not quiver, but his hands clenched his knees slightly, he swallowed a little sooner than he otherwise would have; it was there, the first true sign that their sessions were reaching the ending stage, and that he could be sent to the next phase. She held back her smile, the triumph kept from her mouth, she was a professional.

‘Really? You think so?’ Don asked as his eyebrows raised and his posture stretched his body towards her, spine straightening out and neck leaning closer.

‘It doesn’t matter what I think, Don, only your opinion matters in this room.’

He sat back and looked over to the window. She watched the course his eyes took, fascinated at the things people linger on. He skipped the shelves of books carefully placed and arranged in haphazard shapes and piles, their spines broken and bent but their front covers smooth and untouched. He slowed over the photo of the British Museum, the one placed there to show a piece of architecture, but also a collection of small children playing subtly on its front steps. She watched carefully as his eyes reached the picture of pretty children. Before is eyes would have lingered on them, his pupils dilating slightly. But this time his eyes moved down, a slight dilation but still he moved his sight away. She risked a small smile as he wasn’t looking at her to catch it. She almost had him. All these eye movements were minute and took the slightest of seconds, but she was so well trained after years in this office, that she could find them all with the minimum effort.

The other trinkets and ornaments placed along the shelves and side table didn’t interest him, as normal, and he rested his gaze on the window, and the quiet courtyard beyond. They were in the basement of the building where she had her office, there was not much to see outside. But she kept it well, with lines of overflowing flowers caught in un-coordinating pots and a gently swirling patio of light green slabs. Don stared at the swaying flower heads.

‘I think,’ he paused, swallowed, then continued, ‘I think I wish I hadn’t hurt him.’ This time a tear did crawl down his cheek. ‘I wish I hadn’t hurt him.’

‘Why?’ it was a risky move, to ask a pure question, to sound so judgemental, but she knew what she was doing, she always did.

‘Why? I just, I shouldn’t have, it was wrong, I know it was wrong.’

‘You knew that before you did it, Don, you knew it was wrong, you said so when they caught you, you said so at your trail, and you have always said so in here. But why do you wish you hadn’t hurt him?’

He started to cry.

It was a shock to her, it has to be said. She hadn’t expected that reaction so soon. But it through her for a moment only, then she regained herself, and pounced on his tears. ‘I’m sensing such a change in you,’ she began, leaning towards him, perched on the edge of her seat, ‘You seem in such pain. It’s important that you acknowledge that. You need to recognise why.’

‘It was wrong!’ He spluttered, spitting around him, a spot of drool left on his chin. His nose was beginning to drip, she couldn’t stand human fluids, but she was always professional. She ignored it and moved closer still.

His body had slowly moved towards her too, he wanted the comfort of her listening ear and the safety he felt in this room with her. She was the first one to look at him, into his eyes, and not grimace. She did not recoil from him, she did not spit at him and shout, kick him to the ground and tell him he deserved it, the sick fuck that he was.

He sunk further into the comfy, overly padded armchair. As he felt his sobs slow down he moved his hands form his knees and gripped the arms, feeling the threadbare material beneath his fingers, digging them in as he vaguely knew, somewhere behind his mind, hundreds had done before him. The room was warm, but still airy. There was a glass of water placed for him on the little round side table just to the left of them. He reached out now for it and took a long, deep gulp, swallowing air along with the tepid liquid. He did not want to disappoint her. She would know if he lied, he knew she would. He could tell her anything, he knew that too. He looked at her now, and she looked as she always did. Indefinable age; maybe mid thirties, maybe fifties, and in certain lights at certain times, no older than a teenager.

Unconsidered glasses, slightly twisted so that one side seemed to sit higher on her ear than the other. Simple metal frames. Long dark hair, always scooped up behind her, sometimes in a pony tail, sometimes a bun; always forgotten. No makeup, her face was like a child’s, a child with gentle wrinkles around the eyes. He loved each of those wrinkles hidden behind the glasses. Her face had unnerved him at first, it had made him wary and guilty, but he understood it now, and loved her for it, on some level.

She wrapped a cardigan around her, tightly, doubling it over at her breast. It was a beige cable knit, warm and functional and known to him now. He knew he was safe with her. She wore black trousers, he thought in an attempt to appear professional, as a prisoner’s therapist should be, and black, low healed boots and a simple black strapped watch. She never looked at the watch, she always knew how long they had and never seemed rushed or forced. She was slim he thought, from her delicate wrists and neck, but nothing else of her body could be discovered from her baggy, careless appearance. He didn’t care, he wouldn’t have looked, but he appreciated it none the less.

Of course, if Don had looked closer he would have seen that the glass of the glasses was plain and brought nothing to her sight, as she needed no enhancement. And the cardigan she so cleverly lost herself in, although having been a style out of production for over ten years, was brand new and still held the tag tucked deep into her sleeve. She, as her room, was perfectly created.

Some people can’t stand silence. They feel a need to fill the void with meaningless talk of clouds gathering and dinners they’ve enjoyed, what amusing movement their pet had made the night before, or the latest terrible murder on TV. But she knew the worth of silence. She had been trained, after all. She knew that in the silence, a true, allowed silence, a person could really think, and find answers that otherwise mindless voices would drown out of existence. She let Don have his silence. She waited, she could always do that.

Don stopped crying. It had shocked him too. He’d experienced a swelling in the corner of his eyes before, he had felt a pressure push on his closed eyelids from time to time, but he’d never cried. Not over the boy, not before.

Is that what she had meant? Is that what he was supposed to feel? He was supposed to be sorry for… what?

‘The boy,’ he said finally, his voice a sharp echo in the settled room. ‘I wish I hadn’t hurt him, because,’ another pause as the following words built in his mind in shock and wonder, ‘it hurt him.’ his eyes widened, then he crumpled. He knew. He had hurt the child, ripped his innocence and his future and everything from it as he had ripped into his tiny frail body. ‘Oh god.’ He wailed, an actual wail; loud, terrifying and full of the pain she had been waiting for. ‘Oh god, no!’ tears and mucus fell from his face to his shirt. He spluttered, he slipped from the chair, curling himself into a ball, pressing his arms around his stomach as the first aches of true horror came to encircle him. ‘No, no, no,’ he chanted, with each ‘no’ knowing that it was true, that it was a yes. Yes he had raped the child, yes he had ripped the child’s body to shreds, and yes, he was so fucking sorry.

She slid off her chair and down to him. She couldn’t believe the break through, the quickest she had seen. Only seven months with this client and already she had him a spluttering mess on the floor. She placed her hand on his back, a soothing, warm touch. ‘You can say it, Don, you’re safe in here.’

It was just a whisper, but she heard it. She savoured it.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m sorry I hurt him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he felt so much pain! Oh god, I can hear him, he’s screaming. He begged me to stop, he begged for his mother, but I didn’t stop. Oh god, I wish I’d stopped. I don’t want to have hurt him, I was wrong, I was wrong, oh god please take it back, bring him back, take me, take me, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, oh god please.’ he whimpered.

She kept her hand on his back and leaned down to him. She moved her mouth close to her ear. It was time to begin the next phase, time already to pass him on to the next group who would continue the process. She was almost sad to see him go, she had enjoyed this one, and his sobs told her she had done well.

She held her mouth next to his ear, let him feel her warm, reassuring breath, let him become expectant of her comfort. Then she said it.

‘There is no God, not for you.’

Then she stood, quickly, abruptly, so he fell slightly against the chair, and left the room.

She didn’t look back, and he would never see her again. Someone would come and collect him and take him to the next phase. He would spend the next few weeks crying out for her, begging to see his only comfort. But they would deny him that. She would watch, now and then, from the hidden safety of the observation room. She would consult with them on how best to progress. But essentially her job was done, she would have a rest and then move onto the next client.

She walked down the simple beige corridor from her office, the sound of screaming flowing along with her, becoming softer and softer as she moved away from him. Reaching the end door that led outside, the screaming stopped, abruptly, as Don was moved on to the next phase.

She stepped outside into a gentle heat. The courtyard was quiet, empty, and still. She stood for a moment, breathing deeply, her eyes closed and allowed herself to rest, to loose her mind and think of nothing, but feel the air move around her, and digest the shrieks of her previous client. She would write up her report later, but first she needed to calm herself. The rage was never far from her, understandably. No one would blame he if she wanted to let off steam, maybe go to the execution grounds and take out her fury legally. But she would not, she couldn’t do that again, even if it was legal now. Once was enough, it didn’t sooth her as the thought it would have, and now she preferred to merely begin the process, then watch it enfold.

This courtyard held her own personal contribution to the company’s recreation programme, one that luckily only she was interested in. a little Zen garden, ten foot by ten foot, with a few carefully chosen rocks laying across beautiful white sand. The rake still stood where she’d left it, leant against the far wall. She stood over the square for a moment, her eyes tracing out the previous pattern, to remember her last session. She’d been agitated, it’d been a few sessions back and she had felt that Don still refused to see what she needed him to. The sand was amass of sharp zig zaging curves, sharp angles and rocks thrown into uncomfortable shapes.

She started by clearing off the rocks, then dragging the rake through the sand to abolish any sign of the previous pattern. Then she stood in the middle of the square and let her hands sway the rake in large, circular movements, creating soft curves and calming swirls.

‘That seems, better.’ a nervous voice broke in.

She only stopped for a second, allowing her shoulders to tighten in order to then let the tension slide down her arms and into the rake. A slight judder in the latest curve and the pattern continued.

‘Better?’ she said, without turning to him, ‘there is no better, Tobias, only the present. Nothing else exists.’ She did enjoy messing with his head.

Her assistant shifted uneasily. At least she wasn‘t looking at him, there was always that. ‘I was just saying, you seem better. More relaxed. You did well with him. I suppose.’

The final two words were said in the kind of voice that the owner keeps quiet so that the listener can’t hear it, but then the mind adds volume to, because it really wants to be heard. Appreciated. Understood.

She knew this, knew it about him, and chose to ignore him. For now.

‘The client has been processed now, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes, he’s gone, there.’ A pause. ‘I just.’

‘Have you got all the paperwork ready?’

‘Of course,’ he said.

She smiled. ‘Of course.’

‘It’s just,’ he tried to continue.

‘Are you not happy in my department, Toby, is that what’s wrong?’

He looked at her. She hadn’t stopped moving the rake through the sand, she hadn’t looked over to him. She knew him, even though she barely even looked his way.

‘No, no it’s not that.’

‘You can always ask for a transfer, you know. Any request will be considered.’

‘I know, it’s just,’ he didn’t know how to continue.

‘Just, you don’t agree with our methods.’ silence. ‘You knew what department this is, didn’t you? Of course you did. You should’ve thought it through better.’

‘I just, I think it’s too cruel, that’s all,’ he said finally.

‘That’s all? That’s allot. That’s fundamental. that’s, too bad really.’

‘I think it’s too much,’ he said.

She smiled again. ‘That’s because you’re young, and a good person. We need good people to keep us grounded. But this is the job we do, and the position our employers hold. Our employers don’t believe in an after life, they don’t believe in hell, so they’d rather take care of the punishment themselves.’ The rake was put aside and she picked up one of the rocks, placing it carefully in the centre of one of her circles. ‘Always speak freely with me, Toby, I thrive on discussion, and debate. I need it.’

Tobias thought for moment. ‘It’s too much.’

‘Too much for monsters?’

‘I know, they’re despicable, beyond redemption.’

She stopped then, a large rock in her hands, and turned to him. She looked at him. She’d taken off her glasses, hung her cardigan over the low wall surrounding her garden. She stood in simple black t-shirt, black trousers and boots. She looked as much herself as she ever could. Her large, turquoise eyes, from her childlike face, staring right at him.

He shifted again, shuffling slightly backwards. She scared him, with no physical reason.

‘No, Tobias, not beyond redemption, that’s the point. That’s the foundation of everything we do. I pioneered this practice, I wrote the training manuals, and I’ve yet to be proved wrong. Some are lost to us, so far in their own minds, damaged and broken, that we can’t reach them; they are beyond true punishment of course. But give me a person with their mind, and I’ll redeem them, with enough time I can redeem anyone.’ she turned from him and placed the rock next to the first one. One for her and one for Don, encircled, for the moment, for ever. She picked up the rake and returned to moving the sand in slow, fluid streams.

After a moment she began talking again, slowly, each sentence flowing with the sand. ‘They need to be redeemed, they must know what they’ve done and repent, truly repent, not because they want punishment to stop, that never worked. You can hang them up and torture them. Burn off their skin, cut slices of their flesh and feed it to them, anything you want. They’ll beg for you to stop, they’ll scream that they’re sorry. But they’re not sorry for what they’ve done, they’re sorry they’ve been caught and are being hurt. It doesn’t count, the punishment is meaningless. But once they repent, once hey know what they’ve done and are truly sorry that they hurt their victims, they are redeemed. Then you can truly punish them. Then they’ll really suffer.’

‘It’s too much. Every time?’

‘I make them whole again, I give them my empathy and positive regard, I’m honest and congruent with them, I give them a safe place to heal. Only then can they become whole again, and be punished for what they’ve done. I was hired by to make them suffer, and I do, very well. If our employers had wanted degrees of suffering then they really should have said.’ She finished her pattern with a final swoop, then stepped out of the square and lent the rake back against the wall. She looked down at the pattern as she spoke. ‘Basically, Toby, that man raped a six year old boy to death, he bled out in the ambulance and didn’t even make it to the hospital for his mother to comfort him. He died screaming, and so our lovely Don will live screaming. If you don’t like that, belt up.’

She turned from him and the garden and walked back to the door.

Toby waited a moment, then remembered what he’d come out for. ‘Wait, I, they sent you a memo.’

‘She stopped and turned, in his vague direction, although not straight at him. ‘Well?’ she held out her hand.

‘Oh I forgot it.’ a long pause.

‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘what did it say?’

‘Oh, um, you need to go straight back to your office, your new client is waiting.’

‘What? I need a rest. They can wait. They can always wait.’

‘The memo said urgent.’

‘Fine, I’ll just enter the office ten minutes ago, no big deal. I need some coffee. And a cake.’ She turned back and walked through the door and down the corridor, in the opposite direction of her office.



Chapter Two



She had gone for the chocolate. Every time she went into the canteen at Then Sight --- she was convinced she would try something new. She would imagine something with berries pilling over the sides of a pure white slab, or a mottled beige square with tiny, deformed lumps of fruit trying to crawl from the sides. But she went for the basic chocolate fudge, every time.

It seems strange to concentrate so much on a cake, on her thought process and final choice, but these little considerations were important to her, like swirls in the sand.

The canteen was large and sprawling, split into sections of tables and chairs, and comfortable couches surrounding low, round coffee tables. People were always filling it and emptying it. The Then Sight office were open day and night, all and every Time. It was on the ground floor of a huge building that had just the two floors; the ground and the basement. On the ground floor were offices, other canteens, conference rooms and storage space. These offices had recently been rented out to other businesses, the conference rooms to life coaches and motivational speakers. The storage rooms stood empty, having had their contents moved into the basement.

Up stairs, the ground floor, was normal. Set on the outskirts of the small town of Southminster, Earth, the building was set way back from a side road and on top of a gently rising hill. It was a plain white, short building, unimpressive and unnoticed. The only reason anyone rented its parts was because they rented so cheaply. No one could understand how the Then Sight company made any money from renting out it’s rooms, but no one knew what Then Sight was anyway. And no one much cared.

The basement, however, was not available to the people of Southminster. There was not to be any motivational speeches or box manufacturers locate down here. The simple double doors, the only entrance to the basement, were strangely always locked to anyone from Southminster, and the lifts did not work. The board in reception, that held lists of all the ground floor businesses, had been emptied of any sign that there was a basement. But other people came in and headed to the simple double doors, and they opened then.

The basement is where she had her office and where she saw her clients. And it is the basement she headed for now, after finishing every crumb of chocolate fudge cake.

Does any of this make sense? It does to those who are allowed through the simple doors into the basement. Mostly. It becomes confusing when the people from the ground floor are involved. Information becomes blurry, you never know whose read what story. You, I would imagine, are from the ground floor.

You may not realise it, you may not care, but the basement of this plain, white building, does not just exist in Southminster.

It is confusing to those in the basement too, but they either learn to ignore it, or are slightly mad anyway.

It can not be understood, that is the point.

As the therapist walks from the canteen, down the plain white corridor and to the simple white doors, you can hear a little about this place, if you like. Skip the next few paragraphs if you don’t, but then you won’t understand what’s to come.

The little hill on which the Then Sight offices sat wasn’t really a hill. It was a mountain, a huge, towering thing, a stretched slice of land that spread out across everything. The Mountain lives, it has thought, an it is not good. Within the Mountain tunnels and passages snake, they change and swirm, they reach to one land, only to stop, turn and reach out to another. The Mountain controls it’s passageways, and what rooms it creates to end them. Beneath the Mountain it’s passages reach anywhere. It links this World, your World, to so many others. Time means nothing to the Mountain. It can stop it, change it, rewind it or store it. If the Mountain lets you into it’s passageways it could take you anywhere in seconds, or leave you wondering for years, keeping you alive, and watching.

The Mountain watches everything

One day the Mountain got bored.

It had reached everywhere, and found that it lacked something.

It wanted, something.

It wanted Her.

There was someone, a girl, and the Mountain fell in love.

There are no records of her, because She hasn’t written her story yet. All histories in the Mountain’s towering library are written by those who lived it, or by Her, if all others involved are dead, or lost. But she has yet to write how She came to be the Mountain’s love, so no one knows truly who She was before Her change.

This is all we know.

The Mountain was bored and it wanted to be entertained. It wanted company. The Mountain bleeds. Chemicals leak from its walls and bubble up in wells. These chemicals do different things to different creatures. If the chemicals are combined then more wonderful things happen. They can cure you, or kill you. They create monsters and broken things. No one had ever taken all of the chemicals, until the Mountain found Her.

They stayed together forever. This is not a romantic notion, it is the truth. They have existed forever, Time didn’t take her years or corrode the Mountain’s walls. The Mountain watched as She explored all the Worlds it linked it’s passages to.

Then, they both got bored.

So She started to experiment.

She tried to help, really she did.

She would take a crop from one World and plant it another. But the crop would mutate and become a poison which took over the land.

She would try to advise a tribe, only to have them view her as a god, and sacrifice the weak until none but the strongest were left. So She told them to kill each other.

But her experiments continued.

Then She forgot who she was, or who she had been. She wanted to know, so She tried to create herself.

She created monsters, things close to gods, or distorted from reality so they slumped and crawled into other Worlds to die.



Chapter three



Waiting outside her room, sitting in one of the three upright chairs lined up against the wall, was Taverns Wolf. This was strange. Taverns held an office deep within the Mountain, a cosy room with a roaring fire and comfy armchairs. Lines of shelves stretch along every available wall, filled with hand written books and scrolls and files of loose paper with scrawls in different inks and hands. Taverns never left this room, it was assumed that he wasn’t allowed to. But there he was, sat up in the middle chair, hands in his lap, knees together, with three green notebooks fanned out on the chair to his left.

She stopped when she saw him, and he turned his head to he, and smiled.

The thing about Taverns smiling is that, when his lips pull back, you can see the sharp teeth that line his gums.

Nothing registered on her face for a moment, then she smiled back and walked towards him. She held out her hand and he took it, holding her fingers loosely, without taking his eyes from her, and without changing his smile.

‘Hello, Taverns,’ she said, ‘what can I do for you?’

He held her hand a moment longer, just long enough to be uncomfortable, then let her fingers slide from his grasp, making sure that her finger tips stroked over his long, pointed nails.

Taverns is not human, just so that you know. I would hate to leave you confused.

‘How are these days? I haven’t seen you since the trial.’

She swallowed. ‘I’m sure you’ve kept an eye one me. From your room.’

‘Subtle. Yes, this is important, and I’ve come to you. I could have sent for you, but I honestly didn’t think you would turn up for a while. It seems a trifle strange down here to use such a phrase, but we don’t have the time to waste.’ he stood, slowly, using the arms of the chair to push himself up, shuffling forward and straightening gradually; everything to show his frailty.

She had never fallen for that, not from him; his eyes were as sharpened as his teeth.

‘I thought that Time is the one thing we had in abundance, so much so that wasting it would be the perfect idea.’

‘Unfortunately your employer, although certainly blessed with an abundance of Time, is still, shall we say, a tad impatient. Strange, I know. You would think living forever would make you slow down, but no,’ he smiled a tired, friendly smile, ‘it seems, sometimes, to speed her up. I do miss the days when she locked herself in the library, but, oh well.’

They watched each other for a moment, then she spoke, ‘would you like to come in?’ she gestured to her office door.

‘That would be lovely. Do you have any hot chocolate? It’s very cold, don’t you think?’ he bent down to pick up the three notebooks on the chair, then walked towards her door, opened it, and walked in.

She stood for a moment longer, breathed in, sighed out and followed him.

He was already sat in the clients chair, sunk down into the cushions, his left ankle on his right knee, and his eyes roaming, amused, around her office.

She went over to the small kitchenette hiding in one corner of the room and searched through the cupboards for a jar of chocolate. She could feel Taverns behind her, taking in her things, the positioning of everything, the pictures and paintings and carefully flung books. He knew what she did and why she placed objects in certain ways. She suddenly felt self conscious, as if a teacher was marking her homework while she was still in the room.

She found an old pot of hot chocolate and set about making him a mug. She took her time, measured it out, heated the milk to just the right temperature. She didn’t want to join him and talk, she didn’t even want to look at him. Taverns made everyone feel like this; uneasy and tense and not knowing quite why. He relished it.

Finally the drink was made and she had to join him. He watched her walk over and smiled a kind, gentle smile as she handed him the mug. She shivered.

‘I told you I was cold,’ he said, ‘you should have a cup too.’

‘I’m fine. What do you want?’

‘Always to the point, business like! We are lucky to have you.’ He took a long sip of hot chocolate. ‘Alright,’ he continued,’ we have a special assignment for you. A little amusement for your employer, a puzzle. There is a story that needs to be told, but there are different versions. As there always is, I suppose. Everyone thinks that they are hard done by, hat they are the victim and it’s someone else’s fault. I know, we should use the Training Rooms, but this is different. The is a new World She’s found.’

The therapist looked at him. ‘How can it be a new World? She knows everything, doesn’t she? Or everywhere.’

‘It may not be new to her, but it is new to the Mountain, for this exercise. And She likes it. She doesn’t want to take it over, to corrupt it. She likes it. And the people fascinate her; their politics, their very way of life There’s a magic there, a scientific magic that reminds Her of Her own experiments and She doesn’t want to ruin them.’ Taverns stopped to drink down the last of the hot chocolate in one gulp.’

‘What is my assignment?’ She asked, eager now, not only to get rid of him, but also to understand what was going on.

The Mountain was linked to all known Worlds, and through it’s dripping chemicals, She was immortal, and had been everywhere, seen everything. But because the Mountain could also control Time, not only inside it but also in it’s underground passageways, She could visit anywhere, at any time. Whatever amused Her and Her Mountain. They loved to be amused.

‘You are always so eager,’ Taverns Wolf said. He sat forward in his chair, ‘You are to see three clients and write a case study on each. Maybe we can organised a field trip for you, so you can find your bearings. We want an honest appraisal on each client and the overall impression of what happened. Yes, She could go and find out for Herself, before you ask, but She doesn’t want to. You know how She feels about being entertained, and this, She feels, will certainly do that, She finds you very entertaining.’ He smiled his biggest, broadest smile, bearing his rows of sharpened teeth.

She shivered again.

Taverns held out the three notebooks for her. She took them from him and opened the first. As she had thought, they were empty. ‘Why do I have to make my notes in these?’ she asked.

‘Because they have to be archived. Don’t worry, the notebooks won’t take anything from your mind, it doesn’t count if you’re not in the Training Rooms. He books won’t take your memories from you, they won’t be your memories anyway.’ He stopped for a moment, ‘you had the chance to get rid of your memories, of what you had done. Once you had written your notebook, filled it with your memories, you could have left it behind, and forgotten. But you didn’t. You kept it. Have you ever realised why?’

She thought for a moment. She had gone through the training, as did everyone who worked for Then Sight. She had taken all her memories, written the down in the notebooks, and was purged. When leaving the Room she was clean. She was knew, and without worry or pain. But then you can always pick the book up, and soak the memories back into your mind through your skin. You do not know what the book is, of course, but you feel it. Your mind will instinctively know if you want the memories back. And she did.

And she knew why.

She looked back at Taverns, ‘Because knowing what I did helps me do my job. I need to know myself.’ she answered him.

‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘But you never took back your name. don’t you think that’s strange?’

It was true, from the moment she had left that Room she had never again introduced herself with her name. It was amazing how well she did it, but she had yet to be in a position where she had to give it. No one but Taverns knew what it was.

Taverns stood up, ‘Well, it has been interesting, to se you in your own environment and see how you make hot chocolate. It’s always very telling, how someone makes a beverage they are not used to making. But I really must be getting back. I do hate being away from my fireplace, and my own little room.’ he walked away from her and towards the door while saying, ‘the first will be in momentarily. They know nothing of the Mountain,’ he stopped at the door with his hand on the handle, and turned back to her, ‘or of Her. They think they are just seeing a counseller. The second, though, may be more difficult. That’s when you may have to go on a field trip. We’ll see. Do well, my dear, remember the they’re watching you, and they do so like to be entertained.’ He left the room.

She picked up his empty mug and washed it in the little sink. She busied herself around the room, slightly rearranging the objects, trying to wipe the knowledge that Taverns had seen what they all were and where they had been.

Then there was a knock on the other door, the one next to the kitchenette, the one her clients came through from whatever World they belonged to.

She walked over to it, took in a deep breath, checked the position of her glasses and pulled her cardigan around her, then pulled open the door.

Behind the door was a man. Nothing strange there. Human in appearance, gently dark skin, black hair left to sit scruffily behind his ears and to his neck. It curled slightly at the ends. He was about fifty, although she could never truly tell. He had black eyes, which threw her for the smallest second, and a curving, subtle mouth. He was tall, at least six foot seven. Powerfully built in the way of a man who had worked hard all his life. He wore a simple jumpsuit in green and with an insignia on the breast that she did not recognise. He looked like a fighter pilot, or an army man. Something military. His stance was upright and alert, but there was still something deflated about him. His shoulders pulled downwards, his back bone curved just slightly too much. And his eyes were so sad; he looked as if he was broken but hadn’t quite realised it yet. He was certainly handsome, but not attractive, and she felt that he ad done something terrible, and again, hadn’t realised it yet.

Her appraisal of him took a second, and she smiled a warm, inviting smile.

Then he reached out his hand to her. ‘Dr Penrose?’ he asked.

No, she wasn’t, ‘Yes, welcome,’ she said and took his hand. She stepped away from the door and said, ‘come in.’ in her softest tone.

He waited a moment while he looked around the room, then cautiously walked forward and towards the two arm chairs that faced each other in the centre of the room.

She followed him in and gestured to the client’s chair. He waited for her to sit down, then she sat herself.

They looked at each other for a moment.

Normally she would have some indication of who her client was, of what they had done. But this time she wasn’t even sure that he had done something. She had to be careful not to judge him to be the same as her normal clients. This was different. This wasn’t a prisoner her employers had taken to break and fix and then experiment on. She would have to remember how she had been before, before she had done her evil thing and had been turned into this.

Before she had been broken herself she had been a counseller, helping different clients help themselves. She had been quite good, but not great. Now she was great, but certainly not in a way she had originally trained for.

Her tutor would have been disgusted.

She would have been disgusted, had she seen her future.

But this wasn’t about her, she couldn’t let anything be about her now. She would have to be a counseller, someone in an office that someone else had come to talk to. She would not manipulate, not until she knew what was happening.

‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ he began, ‘I mean, I don’t know what good it’ll do. My superior said that it would be a good idea, that it might make me feel better. They know what I’m planning, they must do. I would.’ be looked up at her, he was crying, silently and without movement, but a tear escaped his eye. ‘I can’t do this again.’

‘You can’t do, this again?’

‘I can’t live through this again. I know they think you’ll stop me, but you won’t. I’ve put in my request for the execution, and you won’t change my mind.’

She waited for a moment, weighing up her options, trying to decide what would be the best course of action. She decided on honesty. ‘if I could just stop you for a moment, but I think you’re assuming that I already know your issues, I don’t. I don’t know why you’ve come to me, I don’t even know your name.’

He straightened up, and she worried that he was insulted, or too thrown and embarrassed to continue. She held her breath for his reaction.

‘I’m sorry,’ he began, ‘I assumed. Of course, you wouldn’t have read the file, would you? I had a counseller before, and he said he preferred not to know anything about his clients before hand. I should have realised.’ She relaxed again. ‘My name is Alex Hexton, I’m in the Seventh Region, I was a pilot, but…’ He paused for a moment. ‘I’ve put in for an execution, this is the second time. I recovered from the first but I won’t again, I’m too scared to. I’m sure you’re very good at what you do but it won’ do any good. I’m going through with the execution. I just need you to sign y release form and I can go to the Arena.’ another pause, then he said in a quiet, calm voice, ‘I do want to die this time. I can’t go on, not again.’

The trouble, she had found, with counselling people from different Worlds is that most of the time she had no idea what they were going on about. They had strange customs and laws. Some of the people sent to her had been arrested and tried for the strangest things, for reason she, or her own World, would not have seen as important. But the fact was that they were important to the where the client was from, and as such important to the client. They broke a law, they knew that, and they knew the consequence.

Even though she didn’t know the World and its laws, she never felt that it impeded her. Basically, she winged it and eventually all the information came out.

‘So, you want to die.’ she said.

He nodded, resolute.

‘And you’ve put in to be executed and you need me to sign your release form.’

‘Yes, please, I know we have to go through this to make sure I really want this, but please, just sign it and let me go.

She thought for a moment, then said, ‘Alex, you know I have to be sure too. I can’t just sign it without talking to you, hearing you.’

There was a pause, then he nodded slowly, deflated but understanding. ‘Ok,’ he said. ‘How do we go about this?’

She remembered the notebooks and that Taverns wanted them filled in. three of them, and this was to be the first entry in the first book. She considered handing him the notebook and asking him to write it down, but that would be cheating and it may not be as free flowing as if he spoke it out. So she resigned herself to writing it all down afterwards. ‘Would you mind if I recorded our session, just so I can fill out a report after, so it’s as accurate as I can make it?’

‘You need it for a case study?’ She must have looked a little surprised, although normally she was so good at keeping her emotions in check. ‘We’ve heard that they’ve started making case studies, to make sure the Execution Arena is still viable. It’s a good idea. If my study will help keep it open then it’s fine by me.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, growing more and more interested n the Execution Arena. Arena said to her, sport and entertainment. But maybe it was different in his World, words so often meant different things to different cultures. Or species.

She stood and walked over to her desk o find her Dictaphone, lost in one of the drawers. Sometimes she cultivated a friendly, unorganised persona, sometimes she was just plain messy. She found it hiding in the back of a seldom used drawer, and carried it over to the two comfy arm chairs and little round table.

The man and the therapist looked at each other for a moment longer. He looked nervous, she looked kind.

‘Maybe if you told me your story, from the beginning, where ever you think that is. Sometimes its helpful to view me as, an alien, someone who knows nothing of your World. Don’t assume that I know what you mean, I want to know what it means to you. Describe things, buildings, activities, even laws. Let them come out in your own words.’ Ah, the old ‘pretend I know nothing’ trick, a staple of counsellers.

He sat for a while, just staring down at the carpet. She knew the difference between the silence of thinking and the pleading silence of someone lost and needing to be talked back. She waited as the thoughts came to him and arranged in the way he wanted.

Finally he broke the silence, and began.



Alex - Session One.



I suppose it started with ---. That’s what I always think back to, it’s where my memory seems to start. Of course I remember my childhood and everything, but it doesn’t seem to matter, not compared to everything else. I’ll go through it quick, just in case. It might matter, might’nd it? Ok.

I was born in the third Region, as you know, sorry, no, you don’t do you My own words, ok.

The third region is rough. Not the roughest, not like the eleventh. You’re lucky if you make it past six with all your feet intact. We were poor. We ate, slept with a roof over us, it was at least a warm climate down there, but still. That’s all we had. I’m a real success story, aren’t I? humble beginnings to Major.

I should’ve stayed where I was. They wouldn’t have been harmed then.

Anyway, we were poor, it was rough. One of the gangs took my mother in. she started selling for them, space mainly, not the best quality but not dangerous. I remember I found a box of it once, hidden in a cupboard. I was, nine maybe? I opened the box and took out the neck piece. I’d seen it on the streets, even though she tried her damndest to keep us all in the house and watching the tel. She wanted us to learn, and get out. But it’s curiosity, isn’t it? You have to know. Open the box, the door, go back into space.

So I knew how to put on the neck piece. It was loose for me, this was back in the day when criminals still had some sense of what’s right, they hadn’t created a piece small enough for children. Or maybe I’m being nostalgic, maybe they just hadn’t figured out how.

Anyway, I put it on and the pads just about touched my skin. I didn’t get the full effect but I felt something. Space. An open area, room to move. Nothing to stop you stretching out your arms, turning round and round. Remember, this was before the colonies, before we found new homes. We were so cramped back then. A family of five in one room that sat on top of fifty other identical rooms. The first drug hadn’t worked, the women still turned pregnant at sixteen, eighteen twenty-five and thirty. I suppose the deaths were justified. It is better now, right? Better than that. Imagine, you can’t feed the children you have and you know another is coming the next year. Can you remember those times? Sorry, no, you won’t, my own words.

I was the third, I hardly ate. Remember when they tried to quarantine all the men so the pollination couldn’t happen? It still did. Nothing seemed to hold it in, it’s just in the air, isn’t it? That’s why we went to other planets, to find space.

I will say, I know you shouldn’t, but that second drug was cruel. It was bad enough giving that first one to the men, to stop them producing. Didn’t work and I think they knew it wouldn’t. they were just trying to look like they were doing something. But the second one. My mother was given it, and she survived. But all those deaths. But it worked, didn’t it? once they got the dose right, it stopped the last two reproductions. Only two children per woman. Still allot to house, but still. And then, on those other planets, I remember when we first found out that the pollination didn’t work there, that we could just, fall in love, choose. Do you remember? When the first man knew, actually knew, which was his child?

Anyway.

It was air, it was a sky programme, in my mothers box, and, even though it was foggy because the neck piece didn’t fit, I could feel it. Space. I don’t know how long I had the neck piece on for, but I sure remember when it was ripped off.

I don’t know which was worse; my mothers disgust, the fear in her eyes, or the feeling of how much I missed all that space.

Maybe it does matter, my childhood. Maybe that’s why I joined. I wanted the space back. Mother always pushed us towards that. I’m sure that’s why she dealt in the end, to get the money to pay for the tel so we could learn. It killed her, of course, in the end. The day before I left for the Institute, her body gave up. She’d buried one child, lost another and now I was leaving her too. I often wonder. They said it was malnutrition, they always said it was malnutrition.

Am I making sense? I feel like I’m rambling. Do you need this stuff? Is this right?

(what ever you feel the need to say is right, it’s your story for you to tell)

OK, ok.

My childhood was that; cramped and lonely. We all felt so hopeless. No way to control the population, no food to feed us all. That’s why everyone paid for Space; just to feel it.

I remember being ill for weeks after she ripped the piece off of me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I wanted it so much, I was already addicted. But my mother nursed me through. It was her strength that kept me off it. One day she came back, she’d been beaten up. I remember the bruises but most of all I remember that she didn’t mention it. It was as if it hadn’t happened. But those bruises were there for days. That’s why I never used again, because I’m sure she was hurt because I’d used up one of the neck pieces.

My wife…

My… first wife.

When we were children she lived in the room next to ours. She was the first bourn and her mother had died giving birth the second, so she’d been given to one of the lucky men to be allowed children. He was a good man. I always had this fantasy that he was really my donor, but there’s no way of finding out, is there? Still. Not all men could look after children, they used to die so young. But Paul, that was his name, Paul, he was in his thirties. He had been given four children, and Laura was the oldest. I wanted to live long enough to be given children, I remember that.

Laura was hard. I’m sure it’s ok to tell you, but she was one of the panel that discussed culling female babies as a form of slowing down the population. She was right; without as many females there wouldn’t be as many sets of four children. I thought it was because her own mother died, it gave her the idea. But it was to horrific, no one could face the idea of infanticide, even to save the rest of us. So they moved over to my department; colonisation.

I dread to think of what would of happened had we not cracked that Drive. It wasn’t me, I was never that good a scientist, it was another member of my department, Charlotte Cray, as you must know. She finally found a way to push our ships fast enough to make it to another planet. It was so simple, once she’d found the formula. It made travel almost instantaneous for carriers. She was amazing. Then she died in childbirth before the first carrier.

Anyway. Laura had moved departments. We had drifted apart. I remember when we were children, experimenting with our useless bodies. Pretending that we could have children that way. Playing parents.

(the client stops for a moment and pours himself some water. The session is quiet for about ten minutes before he continues)

That’s all I think I ever wanted. To be a parent. And have space, was that too much to ask for? It’s why I did it, to secure a future. Why was it all taken away?

I loved Laura, I want that noted. When we made it on the carrier to the new World, when we found out that we cold make our own children! When they granted marriage as a necessity rather than just a whim, I ran to her. I ran to her lab and begged her to be mine and mine alone. Sex wasn’t just for fun anymore, the sperm could enter her, she could actually be made pregnant by a specific man! I wanted it to be me. I wanted t be a specific man. I could be more than Paul; an actual father to children I had chosen to form with a woman who had chosen men. We were all so amazed, the planet was ecstatic, you could feel it in the air. The pure happiness. Space, control; we’d found a way at last. It wasn’t our species that was cursed, it was that planet. Our home World had poisoned us.

Well that was it, mass evacuations were planned. We could stop the population problem simply by moving home!

But there wasn’t enough space on just this planet, not if we were going to do it properly. We needed other planets.

I’m jumping all over the place. I’m rushing. Do we have to do this? It’s hurting. I gave my reasons on the form for the Execution Arena. I just want to go the same way my brother chose to go. I want to go back home and die.

I deserve it, don’t I?

I deserve to be at piece.

I only ever wanted to be a father.

(at this point I ended the session and arranged to see the client the next day)



Alex - Session two

(The client seemed well rested. He expressed gratitude for the previous session and said that he had considered how much of an impact his childhood had had on his decisions later in life.)



I think it’s best I try to stick to some sort of time line. I think I jumped around a bit yesterday. We all had those problems, we all grew up with the threat of over population and a longing for space. These are not the reasons I want my chance to die.

I know that I’m too young to request it, and I know I have another twenty years to serve before my life is reviewed. I had planned to wait until then when I’m sure they would have advised the Arena anyway. But I can’t wait another twenty years! Everyday it’s getting harder, not easier. The memories of their faces. I can’t bare it, and I hope that your report will show that.

I was only meant to live into my twenties. That’s what the young ones don’t realise, the one’s who where born, ‘normally’, as they call it. We Didn’t know the curse did that too! We didn’t know that once we stopped polluting the air with our essence that we’d live for so fucking long. I was supposed to be dead by now anyway. I’m eighty two, it’s enough!

I’m ready to go home and die. Let them suck out my essence and use it for some good, before I have none left to donate.

Where was I? We’d moved to the new World, discovered that we could reproduce normally, that the man’s essence wasn’t ripped from his skin.

I married Laura, she said yes. She’s the only one I wanted, and to know that she felt the same way as I did. It had nothing to do with her experiments, that’s what they’d said at the funeral. But I know that she loved me as well as wanted to choose her reproduction. I reminded her of Paul.

It was ten years on the new World before we were ready to try for another planet. Many others had joined us on the transports, the new planet was filling. The first wave of naturally reproduced children were reaching age eight, and my son was one of them.

He was a beautiful child.

(the client paused and drank some water before continuing)

I did it for them. The new World was filling up. We had founded some good crops, the land was so fertile, we were doing so well.

But I had a vision, you see. I was head of my new department; further conalization. I didn’t want my son to grow up like I had. I wanted him to have space, as much as he needed. We couldn’t leave our neighbours on the old World to just die, but we couldn’t risk filling up the new one before the population numbers had been stabilised. There was still so many of us.

We had to find another viable World.

Now, I know that it isn’t talked about, and part of me knows that it was wrong, but we were suffering so much.

I know, they suffered too. I know that now.

Ok, we were stronger. Given our numbers and how advanced we were. We needed their planet and we took it. There, I’ve said it. It’s glossed over so much these days, but I can say it here, can’t I? we took their planet and used their bodies for research.

It wasn’t wrong, and that I do stand by.

I searched for an empty planet, one that could sustain life but had none of its own. There are none. Not now.

Laura had retired, she felt that she couldn’t give anything to the colonisation programme. She didn’t like it. She understood the necessity but after having our child… She didn’t have the taste for it anymore. She’d seen something, she said, something that left her cold. She never made the new World her home. We never really talked. At the time I thought it was because we didn’t have to. We knew each other so well. She was cold to everyone except me, and then Peter…

Our son, Peter.

In the end she never really went out. All that space around our sprawling house, and actual building with several rooms, just for the three of us! And land all a round. A huge garden with flowers; plants growing, not to eat but just to look at. It was amazing! Hills an valleys, fields left to fallow because we had an abundance of land. You had to walk to see someone else, they weren’t just next door anymore, you had to travel to meet up.

But she didn’t embrace it. In the house she only ever used a few of the rooms, and by the end she never even went out.

Peter was everything to her. I sometimes think that, at least she had him to comfort her, at least she wasn’t alone.

Night time was the best. We’d spend the evening together, the three of us. I’d help Peter with his homework and she’d watch us. I’d catch her smiling at me now and then. She tried so hard to appear cool and hard, but she wasn’t. she was so soft and loving, when she had someone to love.

I did love her, please make a note of that. I still do.

Then we’d put Peter to bed, taking turns to tell him a story. She told the best stories. Full of monsters and heroes. Then it would be just her and me. No one else, just us.

I remember the last night, before I left on the transport. she held me so tightly.

She was strong, she never showed any weakness. She rules everything and everyone around her, including me.

She said, ‘don’t go.’ just that simple, don’t go. Her voice was quiet and still, it wasn’t a demand or a plea. It wasn’t even a request.

But I went. I left her there at the Colony base. With our little boy.

I want to stop, can I?

(The session was stopped and the next was arranged for after a lunch break)



Alex - Remaining Sessions



(The remaining of this case study will be worded by the counseller. The sessions became very displaced, with the client becoming erratic in his telling of the history. The following account has been pieced together from the remaining twenty six sessions by the counseller.)



Alex Hexton stepped from the Transport ship and onto a deep blanket of the greenest grass he could have imagined. The World was beautiful. More so than the images back from the probe they had sent to explore this planet.

He walked out into the land, taking it all in. It was covered with soft, purple bushes and sprays of multi coloured flowers. Gentle insects skipped around the petals, paying no attention to him. He stopped and breathed in. it was clean and warm; perfect.

He led the first scout party away form the ship, their sensors scanning for any signs of life larger and more threatening than the plants and the insects. They did not want a repeat of what had happened before.

Before it had been different.

They had been desperate, if that was to be any justification. Alex seemed to accept this as reason enough, although it had not been discussed, by him or any of the other members of security.

Before they had been suffocating, each new life pushing in on the population, squeezing themselves further into a rapidly shrinking space. They needed to find more, somehow, they needed to stretch out their arms and breath again.

When the Transport system was finally perfected and they found the ability to move to another planet, they chose the nearest one with air. They chose one already populated.

But this one was not, not with a species that would argue or fight. It had simple creatures, a few species of mammals, small and unassuming, insects and plant life. It was perfect, and so much more than Alex could have hoped for.

They set up camp that night by a rash of flowers. They took every precaution and explored carefully and slowly. They spread out from the land sight, documenting all the indigenous life. They had time, they could be careful. This time they would do it right.

Weeks went by, the second transport joined them, then the third, and now thousands bustled around the land, stretching their camps out wide, using all the wonderful space there was.

It was heaven, and Alex loved it. He did not want to return. He would send for Laura and --- on the next transport.

But the next transport was late. It was very late. Alex was too busy clearing areas to expand into to really think about it. There were many reasons why the transport would have been delayed.

Alex continued his job. They were settling. There had been no instances, nothing had taken away their excitement at this new home. The accelerated crops had taken to the land and they had even found an edible plant already in abundance.

Then the next transport came,

Alex was among those who rushed to great the new arrivals. He hoped that, even though had had got no word to her, Laura would be on it.

It was when it landed that Alex began to worry. The sides of the ship were scared, huge chunks were hanging off, like limbs ripped and dangling. Cuts ran the length of its hold, it bled fuel and sparks of blue electricity sprang form its engine.

The door of the transport fell forward, crashed into the ground.

The first survivor hobbled down towards Alex. She was limping, and holding a child close to her, for support as much as to comfort him.

Alex ran forward, but it wasn’t Laura. He was half relieved as well as half terrified. As he came close to the woman she fell into his arms. She held his face in her hands and croaked something at him. He couldn’t make it out and moved closer to her, but she passed out.

Her son looked up at him. ‘She said they weren’t dead,’ he answered for his mother, ‘they weren’t all dead.’

Others followed behind them from the Transport, falling, limping, being dragged on make shift gurneys. They were all bloodied and bruised, and defeated.

Alex picked up the woman who had fallen into his arms and carried her over to the side, her little son following, holding her limp had. He lay her down on the floor, and was about to run back to the Transport entrance to search for Laura, but the woman woke up, and clutched his hand.

‘Not there,’ she whispered, ‘not make it.’

Alex didn’t want to ask, he hid behind the hope that he had misheard her, that she was delusional and wasn’t talking sense. ‘It’s ok, be quiet, you’re ok now’ he said, stroking her head.

‘It’s not, they’re dead, I’m sorry, Alex, they’re dead.’ she passed out again.

The little boy came up to him and wrapped his arms around his shoulders. ‘I saw them. He was my friend. He flew.’

Alex sat, holding the little boy, waiting for his mother to wake up again. He watched as sixty eight people came from the Transport, each injured or spattered with someone’s blood. Laura was not there.



It took all night to settle the survivors. Those who could be saved were bandaged, those who could not were held until they passed. It was only the next morning when some sense could be made of what had happened.

Alex had got it all wrong.



When they landed on -- he assessed the threat. They hadn’t shown up on the initial scan, because there were so few of them. They lived scattered over the rocks and caves, and seemed so simple.

But then they came to the Transport, flaming torches in their hands. They seemed like Alex, humanoid in shape, but they were stooped, their legs thicker and their arms shorter. Their skin was sallow and tinged green. They were hairless and wore just the simplest cloths.

They wouldn’t stop. Even once it was obvious that Alex’s department was stronger they wouldn’t stop coming. There was no chance of communicating with them, and it all happened so quickly.

Alex and his team were chased from the Transport and into the hills. They tried to hide in the caves, but the others knew them all so well. They had torches, huge flames leaping into the air. Someone shot first, and then everyone did. Alex shot again and again, aiming at the crowd closing in on him and the others in his department, then at individual heads, as the crowd began to thin down.

Finally there were none left alive.

The species seemed primitive, they had not communicated with each other on any recognisable level, they were not organised and had only fire as weapons. Alex, and the rest of his Department resigned themselves to the fact that nothing could have been done differently. They had no choice.

The colonisation continued, although greater care was taken to search for any other dangerous life. They found simple dwellings in the higher caves, and attempt at growing small sections of crops, but no more of the species that had attacked.

The caves where they had lived were cordoned off, they were useless to Alex and his people, as the space around was far more inviting for the vision of sprawling houses and buildings they wanted to live in. and some of the caves were dangerous, Alex sent a group to explore them but only a few returned, saying that there were uneven floors in some of the caves that bent and fractured when they walked on them. The others had just fallen straight down to their deaths.

It was decided to level the section of hills where the caves lay in order to make he area safe, but for now the area was banned.

They planted new crops and added accelerant, they began building the first houses, stretching them out across the land. Then they sent for the first Transport, and the others began to arrive, and start living in their new home.

The green species were forgotten, or not discussed, and life continued on.



He had thought they were all gone, there were no more signs of life like them on the whole planet. But he had been wrong, not only about that, but about what they could do.

The reports from the survivors were sketchy, very little had been seen. It had been night, most were asleep and it came so quickly.

Alex had stayed with the woman and her son. He carried her back to the camp and lay her out in his own bed, placing the now sleeping boy next to her. He spent the whole night sat next to them, waiting for and dreading them waking up, and telling him what had happened.

In the morning the woman awoke, and finally he recognised her. Somehow it came to him; Sarah. She had worked in the building department, she had helped plan the town courtyard. it was beautiful work. How had he not recognised her? As he had moved around this World he had envisaged how it could be formed. He was in the middle of his report to the Council, he had included a site he thought would be perfect for another town courtyard, and he had her design in mind.

She woke up and looked at him. It took a few moments for her eyes to focus, for her to realise where she was, and remember what had happened. She started to cry, mindful of the still sleeping boy next to her; she was quiet, and he found her so dignified. She closed her eyes again.

He waited for her, he held out his hand and took hers. She squeezed it and opened her eyes.

‘I’m sorry. They, we were all running. We all went to the Transport. We couldn’t wait behind.’ The tears started again.

‘It’s ok, you’re safe now. Just tell me what happened.’

She took a deep breath. ‘We were sleeping, my husband, he heard it first. He woke me up and told me to go and get Jack and take him into the strong room, but by the time I got him…’ she swallowed and paused before going on, ‘I saw Daniel on the floor. He had something in his neck. He wasn’t moving.

‘Then there was a flash, suddenly there were flames all around us. I don’t know, I heard screaming. I knew we should head for the Transport. I picked up Jack and ran. That’s when I saw her, Laura. She was shouting something, I’m sorry I don’t know what it was, but she was running the other way. She was running away from the Transport.’

‘What about Paul,’ Alex finally asked, unable to hold back anymore, ‘did you see my son?’

Sarah looked away from him, ‘before she ran, Laura, she had Paul with her, but then she handed him over to, that man, your neighbour, Richard? He was took him, he tried to argue with her but she ran, and so he started running towards the Transport, carrying Paul.’

‘So, they made it to the Transport, he’s here?’ Alex couldn’t contain the over pouring of hope. But her face did not let it continue.

She turned back to him. ‘The whole camp was alight. The flames took on so quickly, the screaming, both us and them. They shrieked at us, and kept throwing these torches at the buildings, at us. Then explosions, there was something more, these spheres, green balls were being thrown. They blew up. Tribal explosions that fed the fires. It all happened so quickly, I didn’t know fire could spread like that.’

Alex grabbed her shoulders and pulled her towards him. He shook her so hard the little boy next to her woke up, and sat quietly, eyes wide, staring at him. ‘Please! My son!’

‘Richard had him, but then, those spheres, aimed right at him, the explosion couldn’t have, the fire took them.’

He let her go and she sank back down to the bed. She reached up and pulled her son down to her.

Alex sat on the bed, his head in his hands. He said nothing, made no noise. Eventual Jack moved form his mother and over to Alex. He wrapped his arms around Alex’s neck, as he had done the night before. Alex clutched the boy, and wept.

It seemed like hours before Alex could speak again, and ask the final question. ‘Laura?’ He whispered.

Sarah sat up and move towards him. ‘She saw. She turned around just as it happened, she screamed, no, no, but then the flames reached her, a huge explosion out, huge green flames like a gunshot. I saw her body fly into the air and land, she landed by the caves. Then I ran, I ran for the Transport. we were some of the last to reach it. We took off and left the other behind.’ Sarah started crying again, ‘We shouldn’t have left them.’

The three of them sat huddled on the bed, each lost in their own terrible memories.



The next few years are blurred for Alex. He can remember just snippets, and what he has been told by his second wife and children. Slowly he came round, and managed to function. He left the Security Department, a decision taken by his superiors, and not disputed by him. For a few months he didn’t even leave his house. Sarah and Jack stayed with him, moving into the spare bedroom, and kept him fed. They left him alone, until he began to come out of his room at meal times to sit with them. Slowly he spent more time with them, and less time on his own. He could see that they were mourning too, they had lost so much, and it made them closer.

Eventually he felt ready to venture outside. The camp had built up around him, they had begun work on the Town Courtyard, housing for those from middle world surrounded him. The new World had grown around him, without him, and without Laura.

Some of the survivors had died, their wounds too severe to recover from. But the others had healed and began building new lives and another new World. This one was beautiful. The weather was gentle, the land was fertile, and the new crops they had found were tasty.

While Alex had hidden in his room, the Department of Security had made all the difficult decisions without him. They had heard nothing from middle world, so they had sent a small transport back to search for survivors. The transport hadn’t returned, and they decided to relinquish the second planet. The pollution on their home World was closing in, they had to evacuate as many as they could. They had to concentrate on those they could save, and forsake the World they couldn’t.

Alex did not argue with them, he saw no use in returning for the burnt bodies of his wife and child.

He followed Sarah into the Building Department, and four years after his first wife’s death, he married her. A year after that, she gave birth to a daughter, and Alex felt he could be happy again. He felt that he had mourned, and suffered, as had Sarah and Jack, and they deserved to be happy again.

Then the Transport returned from the middle planet.

A tiny, charred body was laying in a little box, its arms crossed on its chest. It looked peaceful, and arranged to look so.

on the ramp as it lowered to the ground. No one else was on it.

Alex was called into the Council building, they took a slice of his skin to check against the dead child. It was confirmed, the child was Alex’s son.

The next Transport to land was from the old World. It was scratched and burnt, just as the one Sarah and Jack come from, twelve years before. Again Alex watched as people stumbled off, burnt and cut and broken.

Old World had been attacked, with the same explosions as on middle world, by the same bent green creatures.

But these survivors came with a new story, of a new creature, one leading the others, but different. This creature stood upright, it’s arms were longer and it’s legs smaller, it’s skin was not the deep green of the others, but a sallow, sickly pale green, and patchy, as if it had been burnt and healed, over and over.

It stood taller than the other things, hairless, but for a few strings that hung limply form its head. One of it’s eyes was covered with a metal mask that stretched across half its face. A red light shone from the place where the eye should be. Pieces of metal laced in and out of its arms, twisting through its veins. It moved in a jerky way, as if it’s movements hurt it, and angered it. It exuded anger, those who had come close and survived, could feel hatred from its form, it’s one eyes staring into them, the green skin flaking from its eyelids. It was falling apart, this malformed thing, but it was strong. One of the survivors said that he’d seen the thing shot. One of the guard had shot a bolt right at the thing, it should have gone right threw, but it embedded itself just in the surface of the thing’s skin, and it pulled the bolt out, and threw it back at the guard. It shot straight through his neck with just the strength of it’s throw.

It had led the attack, that was clear. This time it was organised, and on a grander scale than even the attack on middle world had been. There were more of them, and they came through the tunnels that had been lost to the fog years previously.

Again it happened at night, with a sudden burst of flames as more green orbs were thrown, catapulted, into the main collection of towers. Thos on the top had no chance to escape, the huge buildings collapsing on top of themselves and neighbouring towers. Only those who had been working over night survived, those working on the Transports themselves. Some tried running for the tunnels on foot, away from the flames, but the fog grabbed them, filled their lungs, and pulled them into the sodden, sinking ground. But still, the flames from the green explosions were even more terrifying. There was something in them, stuck to the licking fire. It stuck to the skin and ate into it. As the survivors ran for the final transport they saw their --- in the distance, some only skeletons, some still twitching with the snaking green flames feasting on whilst remained of them.

There was no fighting them, most of the Security Guards had been move to new world, those who remained were useless compared to the numbers and rage that faced them. All the people could do was flee to the line of Transports that were up and running and clamber on. Not everyone could fit on, not all who were still alive made it on. The Transport pulled away, set on automatic as soon as the doors where yanked closed. The survivors had to watch the others running after them, entering the fog and falling into the disintegrated ground.

The green things gathered behind at the station platform, shooting fire out at the remaining people. The green thing stood, watching the final Transport leave. They watched as she took aim at it with a flaming arrow, at the back window. It would not pierce the toughened glass, but it stuck to it, and those at the back watched as the end of the arrow broke open and a sickly liquid oozed out and over the window, sticking to it and solidifying into a dark red paste. They backed away from it as far as they could in the cramped carriage, but it did nothing more.

When the Transport came to New World the arrow was still there, and the red paste had hardened to steel. The scientists of the Court tried to chip it off, they were fascinated, but tiptoed not budge, and it was burnt with the Transport.

They sent a Transport back, and this time it returned, but without good news. Everything had been destroyed, the towering buildings where flattened, the bodies of the dead had been burnt to ashes, and no one had survived. The factories had also been burnt down to dust, nothing remained, not even a hint that they had even been there.

They had only evacuated a few thousand people, the rest were dead. They were no longer a growing species, but a battered one, no longer the rulers of three grand lands, but refugees on one. As beautiful as this new land was, it was not yet their home, and they had lost the broken land that was.



Alex was shown his child. He held the boy in his arms and he feel back into his grief. Why would they do that? Why mock them, him, with this charred little body?

The doctors ran an autopsy on the body to try to find anything about the green species, some information on the terrible fires that had exploded from their weapons the oozing liquid that would eat at their lost comrades flesh. But they found that someone had already cut the body open and his insides had been removed. Inside they found some more of the red --- that had been left on the Transport. the boy’s body was burned to destroy the red---, the laboratory, the scientists and Alex were all quarantined. They thought it was a weapon, that they had sent a bomb to them, hidden in a child’s body.

The smoke from the fires spread out over the Camp, and Alex watched, losing himself again.

Jack, the son of Sarah and now Alex’s adopted son, was twenty by now. He had watched his father die, his mother suffer, and even the child of his new father fly through the air and burn to death. He had watched as his mother tried to go on, to care for him and then Alex, he watched as Alex came out of his room and joined them and slowly they began to heal together.

Now he began to see Alex pull back into his room, away form his mother and him. He had stayed quiet through all these years, but he couldn’t anymore.

He joined the Security Department, against his mothers wishes, and signed up for the Transport back, the one that would arrive in daylight, and strike back on the green species.

He was gone before Alex knew what was going on. He came out of his room to find Sarah crying. She screamed at him, struck out at him an blamed him for all of it. It was his fault they had attacked on middle world, his fault the guards weren’t there to help. It was his fault he killed the first green species, all his fault. If Alex hadn’t been so desperate to colonise then her husband would still be alive, and so would Laura, and so would his son.

And now he’d forced her son into the Security, into the force that would run blindly back to the Middle World.





(at this stage in the session the client became much more lucid and began telling his story in chronological order, and was able to explain his situation and reactions to it. The account will now continue in his own words again)



This time it was Sarah’s turn to lock herself away. She took the baby from me, she left our home and moved into a small collection of rooms by the South Tunnel. I didn’t know what to do. All I wanted was to fix it. I swear, I didn’t send Jack back there but she was convinced it was all my fault. She left me, and took my baby girl with her.

They didn’t know what they were doing. The best members of the Security Department had been taken in the other attack, we had no one to make the right decisions, to lead. They were talking about not returning! They were just sitting there waiting for the Transport to send some message. If they were in trouble they’d send no message! We had to go there, I had to go there.

I demanded they take me back. I didn’t give them a choice, I was the only one left with any real sense of security. They had no idea, I had to lead them! I had to find Jack.

I began --- immediately. We had to gather a small team to run the torpedo transport and go in quietly and find them. We couldn’t loose any more people to those things.

I gathered twenty good guards, those who would go. My second had lost her husband to those monsters, another had lost his father, all of us were broken by what had happened, and we all wanted to get our people back. The Council wasn’t sure, they wanted to leave middle world alone, to except defeat. We couldn’t do that! They’d butchered us, burnt our families to their bones. Taken our land and our houses. We couldn’t let it go.

It took weeks to prepare the transport and gather the few weapons we had left. We had to leave some security behind, just in case. Production had gone down so much that the weaponry hadn’t been a priority, but I convinced the Council that we needed protection before anything else. Farming was the only thing that could not be touched, everything else, building, expanding, had to stop while this threat was on the other side of that tunnel.

When we were ready I went to visit Sarah. She wouldn’t let me in. I shouted to her through the door. I told her that I would fins Jack, I would save him and her and my daughter. I would fix everything. When I returned I would have fixed it all and she’d love me again. I’d have my family again.

We left in the morning, so we would arrive at noon, when the sun was strongest and, I hoped, the things would be hiding. They always attacked at night.

When we got there the first thing we saw was the transport Jack had left on. It was destroyed. They’d burnt it, leaving it a shell with no way to tell what had happened or if there had been survivors. Some of the guards said that we should go back and there was no hope but I wouldn’t listen. I had to bring Jack back with me, you see, it was the only way to get her back. I told them we had to find Jack, I begged them. Some of them agreed to come with me to scout out the area, but the others stayed with the transport, and gave us twelve hours to return, or they would go back without us. I agreed, the others looked nervous, but they wouldn’t leave my side.

We went out towards the Camp. It was so changed. the beautiful, shining white walls were scarred and broken, Sarah’s courtyard, the flowers were ripped and trampled. Everything was destroyed. But they hadn’t even attempted to clean it up, it was as if they didn’t even want the land, they just wanted to destroy what we’d built. I can still see the courtyard. it had been deformed, twisted from a place of splendour to a dirty, malformed simulation of what were are. We were.

I walked out into the centre of the courtyard and looked around at our destroyed home. The others were sifting through the rubble for anything resembling their memory of this place. A group had split from those in the courtyard and were searching through the remains of the houses and building. I just stood there. I had fought for this Camp, built it on my visions. And they had taken it from me.

One of the guards came running towards me. He had a signal, finally, he said, finally we have something! He all but threw his receiver at me. I looked at the dusty screen and there is was, a tiny red flash. A distress signal.

I can’t explain how I felt. I know it felt like the first time I’d been alive in years. If I’m honest, if I truly tell what I’ve thought and felt, I hadn’t been alive since that first battered transport came in and Sarah told me what had happened. I died that day. But now, there was hope. We had no idea who it was but we all ran towards the signal. So stupid, looking back, to just run towards it without a thought of what would be there, but I don’t think any of us cared anymore. We just wanted to find something good.

The first thing we saw was a single spiral of smoke. As we came closer we could see a small fire, then closer still we saw an array of sacks around the fire. We stopped. None of us wanted to go further, it all seemed so cruel. To come all this way, for them to give us hope but then.

But then, it was amazing. One of the sacks moved. We just stood there watching as it sat up. Guard Hestor was the first to move, she screamed and ran towards the firs and the sacks. More moved and sat up, and climbed from out of the sacks and ran towards us. They were alive! All of them! Just lying asleep around a fire. I watched them all run towards us, my guards running towards them. I looked around, searched every face. But he wasn’t there. I grabbed the closest one, a scrawny little girl I didn’t recognise. I know I shook her too hard, I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean any of this. But I needed to find him! Where is he? I screamed in her face. Two of the guards grabbed me and pulled me from her, pushing me to the ground. We have to go, they yelled at me, we have to get back to the transport, they’ll leave without us, we’ve found them, we can go home now.

Home? What did they think they meant? Those things had taken our home!

I don’t know, they said I was screaming, I don’t remember I really don’t. I remember being back in the transport, it being dark and the rumble of the tracks underneath. I was alone in the cage at the end of the transport. I remember the floor was so cold, slimy almost. I could hear laughter from the other end of the transport. happy voices and shrieks of joy. They’d been saved, everything was wonderful. I lay there on the ground, I think I was crying but I couldn’t feel anything and the noise was so loud, from them and the tracks. I didn’t try to stand, I just lay there.

I slipped in and out of sleep, a painful, aching sleep that made me more and more tired as the transport moved on. The cold of the floor was sinking up through my skin, my bones hurt. I had such strange dreams. I saw Laura, running through a stream of fire. She was laughing. Her eyes were black, all black, no white left. She was dead, but running and laughing that terrible laugh she had, when she was making fun of me, when I’d done something stupid. She could be cruel, as much as I loved her.

I saw things moving around me. Little black shapes darting around, just as I shut my eyes. I could see dots moving around me; red and green. I could hear laughing, I’m sure I could. But they were laughing in the next carriage, in the front of the transport, away from me.

I must’ve fallen into a deep sleep, or passed out. I woke up in the hospital, they’d strapped me to the bed. I lay there for so long, quiet and calm, waiting for the doctors to come and release me.

An ambassador from the Council came, she looked gravely at me, kept her distance, they didn’t un-tie me for the meeting.

She told me quietly and bluntly. Jack was dead. The transport had been attacked as soon as it arrived. The green thing was there, but it was different. It was covered in armour, heavy, battered metal, bolted roughly together with rusty joints. It still had it’s metal mask over half it’s face, the only piece of skin showing was the cracked sallow green around it’s sickly green eye. On the mask the red eye shone out towards the transport.

It stood no taller than any over them, but it towered, it had terrified them. It held a bow in it’s hand and stood just in front of the transport as it pulled into the defeated, burnt down station. It stared at them through the window, and most wanted to try and turn the transport back into the tunnel, but Jack wouldn’t let them. He pushed open the door, even as other guards tied to restrain him, and he leapt at the green thing. It smirked at him, it just stood there and let him come. He had a dagger and he thrust it into the thing’s face, the only uncovered space.

The thing seemed to laugh, the dagger left just a small trickle of blood under the thing’s eye. It grabbed Jack and lifted him from the ground. It through him to the ground and stamped on him, then pushed his still body away from the tracks and down into a shallow ditch.

The other guards jumped from the transport to help him, but others came, the green species surrounded them and beat them down. There was no fire this time, the but green things were so much stronger, the guards were captured, blindfolded and carried off away from the transport. they were kept in a large cage for days, the green species did not try to talk to them, but they were fed and given water and were not harmed. They were fed allot, a strange meal of a local plant cooked and crushed. The green species only became violent towards them if one of them refused to eat, it was as if they were insulted if their food wasn’t eaten. So the guards ate, and waited.

The green thing came back, a few days later. It stood in front of the cage and spoke. It’s voice was high, damaged, the vocal cords seemed ripped and weak. It told them that it was ended, that, if anyone came, they would be sent home. But they must not come back, they must not try for War. We would loose, it said, we would be torn apart. Never return to the second world, and never return to the first world, as they had burnt it, and the pollution reigned all the land there now.

Then the green thing left, and they never saw it again.

They went on like this until one day some of the green species came into the cave and blindfolded them again. They were led out and pushed onto the floor. They could feel warmth in front of them, and hear the flickering of a fire. Most thought that they were going to be killed, that they had changed their minds, or that we were never coming for them.

But a croaky voice, they were sure was from the green thing, told them to stay there like that until they heard a beep, then they could remove their blindfolds and do as they wished. It advised them to stay where they were though.

When the beep sounded they pulled off their blindfolds, and saw that they were all in a circle around a little fire, pots of food and water all around them, with sacks and blankets and a signal tracer next to the commander. He reached for it and set off the signal, then waited to be saved.

I lay in that hospital, strapped to the bed, calm and reasonable, until they let me go. I wanted to go straight to Sarah, but they said they said that she’d already been told, and that she wouldn’t come out of her room. I went there anyway. I banged on the door and shouted for her to let me in, I’m sorry, I tried. I explained that I hadn’t wanted to leave without Jack. She wouldn’t answer the door or say a word.

Eventually I left, saying I would go to the Council and organise a transport back, but I knew it was no use. They had told me it was over. There would be no more transports. The levels of pollution had dropped to barely registered, and the colonisation had been completed.

There would be no more transports.

The crowd of people who had gathered around me, staring at me as I shouted through at Sarah, some of them came towards me and one took my arm. Come back to the hospital, they said, you need to rest. I pushed her off, I must have been screaming because they all looked so worried.

Then someone else screamed. The crowd backed away, staring now at the end of the building, closest to the tunnel. Sarah stood there, clutching our little girl.

The green thing stood behind her, one hand on Sarah’s waste and in the other it held a long serrated knife my daughter’s throat. It’s one green eyes looked at me and only me. It’s face smirked. I recognised that eye. It had stared at me in the cage on the transport, it had been in there with me.

I lunged for it, no one tried to stop me, or help me. It was so fast. It leapt back and towards the tunnel, dragging Sarah with it. Sarah screamed. Ivy screamed. That sound is in my ears. With every word anyone speaks, when I hear a clock ticking or someone laugh.

That’s all I hear; them screaming at me. Sarah’s was one of anger, Ivy’s; just fear. Sarah tried to push Ivy away, away from the green thing, but the green thing had such a grip, that knife still at Ivy’s throat, and it was so fast. It disappeared away from me and into the tunnel. The tunnel! I ran after her, I did, but how could I enter it? No air, course, pungent poison circling it. How could I go in?

I know I collapsed at the entrance. I could see the swirls of smoke coming towards me. I wanted to go in, but what good would it do? It had them, they couldn’t breath, who even knew if the thing could breath in there?

It had come for me, hadn’t it? And it took them.

They wouldn’t go back. They sealed the tunnel entrance. They’re gone, all of them.

Do you see now? I can’t bare it anymore. Please help me.



The therapist watched Alex for a moment. He sat holding his head and sobbing quietly. She gave him time, and evaluated what she had heard. She’d heard something about it before, and she was trying to remember where while still staying present with Alex, he was her main concern.

He looked up at her suddenly, and she was glad she’d remembered to keep her eyes on him. ‘what happens now?’ he asked.

‘I have to write a report, and see my supervisor.’ she answered.

‘What do I do?’

She leaned slightly towards him, ‘you wait, just a little while longer. I’ve heard that you’ve gone through so much, and how much you’ve suffered. To loose one family is a tragedy no one should suffer, but two? I can sense that you’re tired, that this has broken a part of you. But you have survived, remember that. You didn’t follow Sarah into the tunnel, I’m wondering why. Why didn’t you follow them?’

He sat back in his chair and stared at the wall behind her. ‘I don’t know.’ he answered simply, ‘I sometimes wish I had.’

‘I’m wondering if you didn’t, because you hoped that they would change their minds, that they would send another transport through.’

‘Maybe, maybe.’

‘The colonisation, you mentioned that they had decided it was over, you seemed distressed at that.’

‘I was. We weren’t finished.’

‘Finished?’

‘Yes. There were more tunnels, to different lands.’

‘your people were safe, those you could evacuate, you say the pollution was all but gone.’

‘Completely gone, now,’ he interrupted her.

She checked herself, she was supposed to know all this. ‘Of course,’ she continued, ‘I guess I’m wondering if you were content, please correct me, but you don’t seem content with how the colonisation ended. I don’t mean the war, or the deaths, but that they shut down the tunnels.’

‘No, I’m not. There was more.’

‘The land you all settled in, you used the word “beautiful” to describe it.’

‘It is, and more so. We’ve begun building again, more contained this time, but beautiful all the same.’

‘Contained?’

‘Yes, we have to be careful, don’t we? Now we won’t be colonising any more land, we don’t have the space.’

‘You don’t have the space.’

‘We can contain ourselves, build up instead of out. The building Department is very…’ he swallowed, ‘they no what they’re doing. But we wanted more.’

Some thing clicked for her, a word often used by him. ‘We wanted more?’

‘Yes.’

‘More, what?’

He looked back at her, ‘space! We needed more space!’

‘Alex, you saw “we” and “needed”, but I don’t see anyone else needing it. They are comfortable, they breath clean air, they can build up. They closed the tunnels. Thy seem content.’

‘So? What do you mean?’

‘I wonder about when you use the word “we”, I hear the word “I”. You want the space, Alex, you have always wanted the space.’

She sat back and waited, watching his face as he digested what she had said. ‘It’s always been about the Space,’ she continued after a while, ‘you pushed to colonise, even when there was someone else there.’

Alex shot his eyes up to her, anger towards her for the first time, ‘They took our home! They killed my wife! My child! They took our home from me!’

‘They took your home?’

He stared at her, but he couldn’t answer.

‘I understand that your people were dying, but you could’ve turned back, when you saw them with their torches, but you killed them all.’

More silence.

‘And you weren’t happy, you needed more. Even though that land was perfect, you needed more Space. You continued the colonisation, you left Laura and Paul to go to a new land, you took most of the guards with you, for what? Encase the same thing happened again? You considered another attack, another species wanting to stop you taking their land, their space, so you took the guards with you to kill them if they were there. You considered it, and even though you already had your safe space, you decided you would kill whatever you found for more. So Laura, Paul and the others were left behind, helpless, and that is why they were killed.’

Alex sat staring at her. She knew she had pushed him, but she wanted to see his reaction. Had this occurred to him before?

‘You didn’t follow Sarah and Ivy into the tunnel because three was no space inside it, it was enclosed and constrained, you couldn’t stretch out.’

He would say no more, she could see that. He sat, deflated, and staring at the floor with a look of despair on his face. She didn’t actually know if she was happy about that.

She paused for a moment, then said, ‘we’ve come to the end of this session, I will see you once more at least, to discuss what had been decided, to see what conclusions you’ve drawn. But I would suggest, not that I’m supposed to, hat you consider the possibility that you are still addicted to the Space.’

‘I only ever took it once.’ he whispered.

‘Did you?’ she asked.

He looked up at her, shocked, broken, and confused.

She stood up and gestured to the door. She took his hadn’t and he shook it limply. ‘Did I do this?’ he asked at the door, ‘Did I kill them because of space?’

‘I can’t answer that for you,’ she said, ‘but you can.’

He left the room walking lower than when he had come in. She didn’t know how to think or feel. She aimed to break people, but this one, she truly didn’t know if he deserved it.

She had expected to take a long rest in-between these clients, go to her garden and work it all through. She probably should, but instead she found herself heading for the cosy, uneasy office of Taverns Wolf.

Chapter



It was always a dangerous undertaking to try and find Tavern’s office. It was situated at the end of a long, stone tunnel. The problem was that you would only ever reach the end of the tunnel if the Mountain wanted you to. There was always the worry that, on the day you needed to find Tavern’s office, the Mountain and it’s Mistress would be bored. If they were bored then thy might move the tunnel, either to some unknown destination, or no destination at all.

But she really needed to speak to Taverns. So she located the entrance of the tunnel and started down it, trying not to think about where she might end up.

The fact that the huge, oak door with its iron work flowers lacing up it appeared almost immediately, gave her some idea of how amused her Employers were with this present case. They obviously wanted it explored and where eager for the results. She used the heavy door knocker shaped like a ---- and waited for an answer. She heard him bustling around inside, heard objects drop and clatter and the mumble of Taverns as he, usually futility, tried to tidy his rooms.



Eventually the door swung open with a satisfying creak. Taverns stood in the doorway smiling at her in his comfortable, reassuring way.

‘Well hello there my dear! Please come in, I’m so interested to know what happened, how it went, your conclusions. Come in, come in.’ he moved from the door and over to one of the deep, velvet arm chairs that sat lazily by a flickering, crackling, perfect fireplace.

Taverns’ room was indeed perfect. It’s walls were a deep oak panelling, what you could see of them. Most where covered with lines and lines of books and scrolls along lengths of oak shelving. They were bowing under the weight of all the different tomes. They were from all places and times, there were scrolls and hardback, even pulp paperbacks from the seventies. There were piles of disks and USB sticks, sheaths of paper bound with paperclips or string. They were from different times, but they all looked brand new. It was always an unsettling sight.

The floor was covered in thread bare rugs, with unconsidered pieces of gathered furniture thrown around and used as places to hold the overflow from the shelves.

She tried not to let Taverns see hr glancing around his room. She knew what he had done with it, all the well placed pieces, arranged into a sense of a well meaning, slightly dithery old man, with no more danger than a kitten. He would smile and offer you a hot beverage, and all the while you knew that he would somehow strip the skin from your bones if you made the wrong move.

She sat on the chair opposite Taverns, hearing the crackle of the flames next to her. ‘You lied,’ she started, ‘there’s no way She hasn’t been to that World.’

He smiled at her, his toothy, terrifying smile, ‘of course She has. You are always so refreshingly forward, I really should be a tad insulted at your words, but you do amuse. Yes, She’s been there.’

‘And She experimented, didn’t She.’

‘Why do you say that?’ He could seem amazingly naive sometimes, even when you knew he knew everything that went on.

‘it was cruel, to do that to them.’

‘Yes, it was. Tell me what you thing ‘that’ is.’

‘It’s a maze, isn’t it? And they’re the little mice. She poisoned them, didn’t She?’

His smile left his face. ‘You are clever, you know. Or course you do.’

‘Children died, I thought She didn’t allow that?’

‘She didn’t do that, they did. All She did was create the environment. It shouldn’t have happened. Anyway, the nature of the experiment is not your concern, your three clients are. Your second will only see you for a, home visit. You will have to go to their World.’

‘Which one?’

‘Well I’m not going to send you to the polluted part, am I?’

Taverns stood and walked over to a little round table next to a larger table in the centre of the room. He riffled through a pile of folders and notebooks until he found what he wanted and carried it back over to the fireplace. He looked it over for a moment, and then handed the folder to her.

She opened it and found maps and diagrams and written accounts. ‘What is it?’ She asked.

‘It’s information on their World. I thought you would like to familiarise yourself with the surroundings you are about to be drenched in. We are, at times, helpful.’

She stood and walked away from him and towards the door. She turned when she reached it, ‘why does She want this?’

‘She normally gathers these stories herself, but that makes them all in her vice, and through her eyes. She wants to read someone else’s account, and She is interested in another element, which you will hear about, when you are ready.’

‘I’m sure I will,’ she said, and left back through the huge, oak door and down the now dark, stone tunnel.



It took a little longer to make it down the tunnel, but only slightly. She headed for the courtyard and her garden. But when she got there she couldn’t think of anything to do, any pattern to make. She did not know how she felt about Alex and what he had done. Normally her clients are pretty clear cut. They were bad, and she knew this. She made them good, but they had still doe terrible things, and she felt no issue with leaving the room for someone else to collect her client, once she had finished her job.

But Alex was different. He wasn’t her normal client, not at all. She began resenting this assignment.

She sat on the low wall that encircled her garden and flicked through the file.

The World was a huge disc of land that hovered above an uninhabited planet. It moved around the planet like a moon but sat in it’s atmosphere. The surface was broken up into individual pockets of towering, sheer mountain sides, almost smooth and un-climbable without the technology. It seemed that the people of each populated section didn’t think to go over the top of them. Joining each section were tunnels, but inside the tunnels it was imposable to breath, the atmosphere was sucked away, and poisonous gasses swirled in it’s place. The people were kept in their sections until such a time that they could negotiate the tunnels. But then the --- became overpopulated, and Space became the most important commodity.



She returned to her office and found her assistant standing by her desk, his hands fiddling with each other.

‘What is it now?’ she asked, her voice tired and strained.

‘I’ve got a ticket for you.’ he said, ‘apparently it’s for a transport or something? They didn’t really explain.’ he picked up a small, white envelope from the desk and held it out to her. ‘Apparently you can use your other door.’ when she took the envelope he walked quickly past her and out the door behind her.

She decided to leave the file behind, she knew enough to not be startled by what she would find. The only question was, who would be her next client?

She walked through the other door.



The nature of the Mountain meant that, as long as you were downstairs, it could take you anywhere. She opened her door onto a train station. Stepping out onto the platform she could see that it was empty, the space around her echoed with each of her heavy footsteps. It was a dirty place, strange purple moss was forcing it’s way onto the platform, the metal floors were rusting and bending up in places. Part of the roof had given up hanging there and had fallen to the ground. Sitting on the tracks was a long, slender train, a string of bullets linked together and ready to fly through the dark, whistling tunnel ahead of it. As she stared into the black entrance she could make out tendrils of wispy smoke trying to reach out. It couldn’t seem to get past the entrance, but swirl around and back into the tunnel, to try and escape again.

As she walked down the platform the floor buckled slightly under her feet, she cold see from the corner of her eyes the purple moss moving, sliding itself towards her. She had the feeling that it was hungry.

As she came closer to the transport a light flickered on in the front carriage, then flickered off, then strained itself back on again and just managed to stay. The door to the first carriage was closed, but a small slot sat in the side next to it, so she opened the envelope and pulled out the ticket. It was the same width as the slot, so she pushed it in. A staggering whirring sound started up and the ticket jolted inside, then the doors screeched open. She stepped inside and found what she could call the least dirty seat, sunk down gingerly onto the edge of it, and waited.

When the transport started she did consider jumping off it. It did not sound safe, it sounded as if it was crying. It was jolty and tired and as her carriage came closer to the tunnel she began to look around at the joins, just to see if the fingers of smoke made it through.

As she entered the transport the carriage became deathly black, and it was the longest moment before the meagre light clicked on over her head. She sat with her hands in her lap, trying not to move, or breath to harshly.

After a while, and when the sudden shudders didn’t make her quite so worried, she began to grow bored. She looked around the carriage. There were old discoloured newspapers and magazines carpeting the floor. She bent down and scooped up a brightly coloured glossy with a happy, smiling couple on the front. The date on it meant nothing to her, but it looked a good year old. She flicked through it. It was full of beautiful, spreading houses and laughing children. At the back were adverts for furniture and ornaments, and streamline bathrooms and new kitchen designs. It was a wonderful life they were making, in this magazine, anyway. She scooped up another magazine and this one was for different musical instruments, some she recognised, some that were so alien she could only guess how to play them, or how they sounded.

The newspapers were full of letters she didn’t recognise, and the paper was so distorted and it disintegrated in her hands. She sat back in her chair. The transport had become smoother, and it lulled her a little, enough to slip into a gentle sleep.

When she woke up the transport had stopped. She stood and looked out of the grubby window next to her. She was in another station, but this one was worse. It was burnt and all that was left was a blackened skeleton. But more of the creeping purple mss was twisting it’s way up the few poles that remained standing. It cast a macabre colourfulness over this dead structure, like balloons at a funeral.

She stood and walked over to the sliding door of the carriage. It juddered open a few inches, then stopped with a sickening squeak. She had to wedge her fingers into the gap and push the doors open enough for her to get out. The air was a sickly, thick consistency, and she could see particles dashing about in front of her. She stumbled out over the rubble filled floor, now not sure of where she was to go or do. She wished she’d taken the folder with her, she couldn’t now picture the maps or remember anything about this place. It was so silent, not a chirp or buzz or anything even the deepest part of countryside could offer. It made her ears ring.

She kept walking out past the skeleton structure and into what would one day be a pleasant view. It was singed and battered, but there were trees and bushes in brightly coloured foliage, and waving hills with a stream running just in front of her. It looked like a sight of a finished war, recovering from it’s wounds.

She went over to the stream. The water was clear and gently chasing itself to a far off destination. She decided to follow it for a while. As she went further away from the desecrated station she began to hear some sounds; a low humming of tiny wings, and a rustling form the trees that were closing in comfortingly around her. The land was healing more and more the further away from the station you went. Eventually she saw a strange little creature wiz past her nose, it was like a butterfly, but with a perfectly round body and no legs. She watched it for a while and it came to rest on a bright orange flower, and just before it rested, four little legs seemed to unfold form its body, and it scuttled off along the flowers stem.

She saw more and more creatures as she walked on. Some were remarkably familiar, rabbits were everywhere now she was so far from the station, with seemingly no fear of her. She thought she saw a dear, but it moved so quickly she couldn’t tell. Some creatures were stranger, with odd numbers of legs, and overly fury, they seemed to hop along on their five legs, no sign of eyes or nose or any feature under the mound of fur. Nothing seemed fazed by her, some looked for a moment, but then turned back to their day, and wondered off.

She thought this land was the most amazing place she had ever been sent to. She fell in love with it and soon forgot what she was there for, and continued wondering down with the steam. She brushed passed the flowers and foliage, then stopped to smell a particularly beautiful, gently multi-coloured bush.

‘It’s poisonous.’ a creaky, week voice came behind her.’

She jumped and turned, and jumped again.

It was no taller her, no wider, but it loomed over her, terrifying in the grotesqueness it presented. It’s body was shaped like hers, two arms, two legs, but the limbs look like they had been chewed on, mauled by a lazy wolf. They were mangled, her right arm looked like part of it was just bone with skin stretched precariously over it. And the skin, it was so wrong. It was tinged green in places, with other’s a darker, more putrid green. It looked burnt, like it had been melted the churned and left to cool. It swirled and mottled, bumps and flaps of decaying flesh hanging in places it should never be. It had no hair o it’s head, just a few forgotten wisps of brown. A metal mask covered half it’s face, its one visible eye was another mix of greens, form the dark green of the iris to the light tint on what should be white.

Its face was wither sneering, mocking, or considering where to bite first. It was a hideous thing.

But it had spoken, that weak, pathetic voice. The part of its throat she could see was buckled in and looked like it was crushing in on its windpipe, no wonder it couldn’t speak properly.

They stood looking at each other for quite a while, the therapist, for the first time in years, having absolutely nothing to say.

Eventually the thing smiled, a crooked, menacing move of its lipless mouth. ‘And what are you?’ it croaked.

‘I’m,’ she stuttered slightly, then stopped, breathed in and continued. ‘I’ve been sent to talk to you,’ she managed to say in a near enough calm.

‘I don’t talk well.’ it said.’

‘No, I can hear that, I’m sorry.’

It gurgled out what must have been a laugh, ‘sympathy is always appreciated I’m sure. Talk about what, anyway?’

It seemed to be in pain, its throat looked like it was trying to swallow but couldn’t quite manage it. ‘My Employer had sent me to hear your side of the --- that occurred with the ----.’

‘Your employer? Don’t you mean Ioni?’

She was startled. No one ever used Her name, the ruler of the Mountain, not even Taverns Wolf. And how did it know about Her?

It seemed amused by her obvious bemusement. ‘I know, we’re the innocent, unknowing subjects, we run around Her maze and She carries out her experiments and we just live and die and suffer in-between. I know.’

The therapist was lost now.

The thing gestured for her to follow it, and it walked away from the stream and into the thicker trees. She followed it; what else could she do?

They walked further and further into the woods until they came up to a tiny cabin, slow smoke spiralling from the chimney, and a warm, inviting crackling light beaming from inside. It was getting dark, she hadn’t even noticed, but she was suddenly glad of the appealing light inside.

The thing opened the unlocked door and stepped back, gesturing for her to walk inside. She did, and was greeted with a wall of warmth and light. It was a tiny space, but comfortable, with a chair next to the fire and a bed in the corner. A simple kitchen hid in the corner and dotted around the room, in any space they could find, were books. Hundreds of them. All battered and old, some falling apart, all well read and loved.

‘Welcome to my home,’ the thing said, having walked in behind her. It pulled the door closed, walked over to the chair and sunk down into it, with a barely audible sigh.

The therapist stood by the bed, then decided to perch on the edge, as there was nowhere else.

‘I’m sorry it’s not more use to visitors, I don’t have any,’ it said, ‘now, you want my story, do you?’

‘yes,’ she said, ‘you can tell me, and I’ll write it down…’

‘Is that what he did?’

She stopped for a moment, ‘Alex?’

The thing just looked at her.

‘Yes, he dictated it to me.’

‘And did you write what he said, word for word?’

‘No, I started to but…’

‘He started to but became disjointed, he jumped over his story, couldn’t stick to one subject.’

‘Yes, pretty much.’

‘What are you?’

‘I’m a counseller.’

Another gurgle of strained laughter. ‘Do you believe in lost cases?’

The therapist thought for a moment, ‘yes,’ she answered finally.

The thing seemed to smile. ‘Good, then you won’t try to save me. I am beyond all that.’

‘What are you?’ She asked before even realizing that the words where coming out.

It looked at her, and continued, ‘I can write my own story, give me the notebook.’ it held out its withered, left hand. It seemed to have claws, but maybe just nails.

She handed it the notebook, ‘shall I leave you to it?’

‘You can sleep, if you want. It isn’t safe out there at night. You may use the kitchen, but don’t bother me.’ it reached out to a nearby pile of books and found a pen fallen by the side, and stooped in the chair to begin.

‘What are you?’ she asked again, curiosity overriding all her fears, although she found herself fearing this thing less and less, and pity rising in its place. ‘Why does She want your side?’

‘Who are you?’ it asked her.

The therapist thought about this. She had been asked, over and over, by various clients for her name, but she never gave it out. She could dodge the question expertly every time. Only Taverns Wolf knew her name, and her Employer, of course. She had given up her name years before, too many to realistically take it back. And if she gave out her name, they could trace her, and find out what she had done. How she had been made into this.

But this seemed different, this thing seemed too knowing, too lost and understanding to distract. She felt as if she should share something, if she was to get anything from the thing. ‘My name is Rose, Rose Hill,’ she said finally.

The thing watched her for a moment, seemingly weighing up her obvious discomfort and judging whether it was enough. After a while, what seemed to be forever for Rose, it removed her metal mask. Underneath the skin was different, an oval of pink. Mottled, burnt skin, stretching painfully from its forehead to its chin. Its eye under the mask wasn’t green, it was brown, a deep brown in a perfectly white ball. It looked human. Like her, like Alex it had eyelashes curling sweetly round and looked beyond macabre settled in the pink burnt skin next to the sallow green flesh. The thing looked a there a moment longer, then said, ‘I’m Laura,’ and returned to the notebook.



Rose sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the green thing that was Laura. It, she, sat bent over the notebook, the pen held uncomfortably in her withered hand, scratching words into the paper in jolty, awkward strokes. She still looked like an it, to Rose.

It was black outside, and strange noises washed in and out of the tiny cabin. Wind drove through the leaves and bushes and the sounds lulled Rose into a sleep that pulled her gently onto the bed.

Light from the window above her woke Rose from a dreamless night. She lay there for a while, just staring out of the window at the little creatures milling around, the trees waving at her beyond. It was peaceful, just the right level of sound and light and other things.

A shadow fell over her, or she just noticed it. Laura, the thing, had been standing by the bed, and Rose turned to her, frozen by the jolt out of her daydream.

Laura held the notebook by her side. It looked well used, bent at the corners and creased along the front cover. She stayed standing there, looking down at Rose.

Neither moved for a long time.

Then Rose sat up and reached her hand out to the notebook, but Laura edged away slightly, and moved the notebook to behind hr back.

‘No,’ she said, ‘not yet, I’m not ready to give up my history to you. Not until I know yours.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your history. Your throat isn’t ruined, you can tell me. You want me to give you this history, I want to know how you ended up working for, Her.’

‘Why?’ Rose felt so unnerved by the request. No one had questioned her in these past ten years. No one had asked where she had come from or why, and this gave her the power she needed to feel over them. But this thing, this Laura, she was not scared, why would she be? She was also a thing to be feared and unknown, and now Rose was asking to know everything. ‘I won’t read it,’ she added suddenly, trying to get out of speaking about herself, ‘if you want, I can just deliver the notebook.’

‘But, can you do your job if you don’t know my story? Surely you’re more than just a delivery boy.’

Rose remembered then, what had slipped from her as she negotiated this knew land. She had to know all three stories, wherever they came from, so she could evaluate them, and decide who deserved to go through to the next phase. She had not wanted to remember that.

‘I didn’t think so.’ The thing Laura said. She move back to her chair and sat down. She looked at Rose, and waited.

‘What do you want to know?’ Rose asked finally.

‘I want to know what broke you enough to allow Her to put you back together like this.’

Rose stood up and walked around the little cabin. ‘Do you have anything to drink?’ she asked.

‘I have something in that cupboard. You add water. It’ll keep you alert enough to ensure you can tell me everything.’

Rose looked in the cupboard and found a tin filled with a dark brown powder. It smelt like coffee, but with something else, something sticky and sweet. She found a cup and poured in some of the powder, then added hot water from the tap. She sipped the thick liquid. It was just like sweet coffee.

‘You’re stalling,’ it, Laura, said, ‘and I’m tired. I don’ have to give you this notebook, you know.’

‘She won’t be happy with that.’ Rose said.

‘I don’t care, Se can’t do much more to me.’

Rose sat back down on the bed, drained the cup, and began.



‘I was, innocent. Not in a sexual way or a worldly way. But I still believed that anything could be fixed if you gave it enough time and effort. I thought that my World could be fixed, and I was hell bent on fixing it.

‘I was a counseller, freshly qualified. I set myself up, niavly, in an office with the last of my money fro my mother’s death. We don’t have to go into that, it didn’t effect me as much as it should of. Maybe that was an early warning sign of what I really am.

‘I saw clients who were having trouble in their marriages, or couldn’t decide whether to move house. Some had no noticeable trouble at all, they just felt like dying. I did my best, and I found that I was quite good. They would leave feeling better, over the weeks they would improve, and then they would go, onto whatever decision they had made. I felt like I was changing the World one lost person at a time.

‘I didn’t know, how surface it all was. I couldn’t comprehend that there was so much more underneath each human’s psyche, how low we all went. She knew, and she wanted me to experience it.

‘I had one client who wanted to leave his wife. But he was scared that he would make the wrong choice. I saw him for weeks, every Wednesday at six. He seemed straight forward and kind. I liked him.

‘One evening he didn’t come, then the next week he came in, shaking. He said that she’d found out about his affair and she’d left him. He shouted at me, saying why hadn’t I told him how to fix it. He hadn’t ever told me he’d been having an affair. I asked him about the woman he’d been seeing, but he got jumpy and apologetic and ran out.

‘I saw two more people that evening, then walked home at quarter to ten.

‘It was so grubby. Ridiculous when I look back on it now, when I think of what I’ve heard other people have done to women, children, the odd man. It was a matter of minutes, pulled into the preverbial bushes and forced down. I’m almost numb thinking about it now. Almost.

‘But at the time, it destroyed me. I crawled out from the bush, covered in little scratches form the stiff leaves. Pulled down my skirt, gave up on my underwear. It hurt to walk, he’d sodomised me too and I’d never even considered that before. I limped home, clutching my stomach, threw up on the way all over the street. No one stopped, no one asked if I was ok. I passed a good few people, male and female, and it was obvious I wasn’t alright. But no one asked, and that’s stayed with me. I had expected someone to ask, I think that’s what it was. I had run the senario through my head many times as a grew up. I’m sure many women have thought over how the worst thing that could happen to them might go. I always invisioned people crowding round me to help, the community gathering to support me. There was nothing, no one cared. That’s stayed with me.

I went home and crawled into the shower. I was embarrassed and disappointed in myself that I hadn’t seen it coming. It was me, you see, who he thought he was having an affair with. His wife had found in his diary our appointments and assumed that they were meetings with a mistress. He didn’t deny it, then he started believing it, as having an affair had answered his question of whether or not to leave her - she left him. If he had explained that he was seeing a counseller, maybe she would’ve understood, but this way he got rid of her, but he was still duplicitous, he still didn’t know if it’s what he had wanted, and he was now the bad guy. He hated it, so he focused his anger on me. I became the mistress that he’d been seeing. Then he came to see me, and I ruined his allusion. So, he thought, if we had sex then that would make it real again.

‘So, I showered, and that was my mistake. Becoming clean calmed me enough to ring the police. They came over, took my statement, I went through the examinations. They found ripping and bruises, but no DNA. They could se I had been harmed, but they only had my word for who had done it.

‘It went to court, and get thrown out. They let him go. This man I had been trying to help, who had ruined me, was allowed to go free. I saw him outside the court. He smiled, an apologetic, oops kind of smile. He touched my shoulder and said he forgave me for ruining his marriage. He walked away, I think he was whistling, but that could be my imagination putting the final flourish on the vilian of my life.

‘I went home, and I didn’t leave again for a while. A very long while.

‘Looking back on it I can see how it all came about. I had a basement flat, you see. I’m assuming you know how the Mountain works, how it can seep into anything underground and move it, rearrange it and spill it’s own time into it, making it into anything it wants. It got into my flat, read all my case notes, seen me crying. I lost three stone, I wasn’t exactly overweight. I went pale and weak. I was dying. My flat was tiny just like this cabin of yours. The smallest space that could hold a person and the few things they needed. It used to annoy me. I wanted a sprawling loft space with a view of the Thames. But I had this space and it was all mine. After it happened, I relished the confined rooms. I wanted to be squeezed into a tiny space so no one would notice me, and I felt safer there.

‘It sounds pathetic. It does to me, now. The things I’ve heard, and seen when I’ve requested a session in the Observaton Rooms. Do you know them? They’re plain rooms with one glass wall and a line of chairs facing it. You can summon up any time and place on the other side and watch whatever is there unfold. I’ve taken some clients there, to see how they react to seeing what they’ve done. And I’ve watched it. Don’t get me wrong, another person taken by force in a grubby little park, pushed down and invaded, I would take on that case, and I would punish whoever did it. Maybe I am hard on myself, maybe I’m just numb now. I judge myself differently from other people. Others can cry, I can not. It’s weak for me, weak to be so hurt by what happened. Maybe it’s because of what I did next. I’m worse, you know, than any of them. Now.

‘I can never forgive myself for being weak, even though I would see it as no kind of weakness from anyone else. I’ve seen other women who have been hurt like I was. I see no weakness in them.

‘I often wondered why I do not allow myself the same empathy as I gladly give others. But anyway.

‘The Mountain was in my basement flat, I don’t know how long for. But one day, while I lay on the couch curled up into as small a space as I could occupy, there was a knock on the door.