Arachnophobia - OctoboPhobia short story

My first memory is of spiders. I am seventeen now, and don’t really remember much before I was five, but this is something I’ll never forget.  And as I look at his eyes, I remember it.

I was wearing my yellow skirt. I don’t know why that is something that sticks in my brain, but it is.  I don’t know what else I was wearing, although I was wearing socks rather than shoes. That’s definitely important.

We were visiting my grandparents in the countryside, and I was able to run around their grounds as much as I wanted.  Looking back now, it wasn’t as big as I remember, but it felt almost like its own country. Like it should be on a map somewhere. “Grandparents”, just around the same size as… I don’t know. Birmingham or somewhere I’ve never been.

It was so much bigger than where we lived. So much bigger than anywhere I’d ever been.  We didn’t even have a garden of our own. We had a small piece of land outside our flats, and there was a park down the road.

I was allowed and even encouraged to explore, as long as I stayed away from anything sharp and I didn’t eat anything I found. And, of course, as long as I didn’t go near the road by myself. I’d seen a rabbit and chased it for a bit, shouting and screaming in delight.

Then I found the shed. Not the shed they actually used, the new, larger one that was also their garage. The old shed, the one on the top end of the garden that you couldn’t see into.

I couldn’t reach the handle with enough of a grip to open it, but I could fit my fingers into the gap between the door and the wall. I pulled it, expecting it to be locked, and it opened, scraping against the ground. I had to put all of my strength into opening it enough to fit into.

There were shelves and piles of cans, old tools and jars and bottles. It was like a treasure trove, and I ignored the dust and the cobwebs as I began to explore it, opening drawers and looking around everything that I could. There was an old wooden chair that served me as a small stepladder as I searched my way around it (including finding a small stack of old magazines, hidden in a drawer, featuring naked ladies that made me feel troubled and confused as to why there would be such a thing at all, although looking back, they were likely an old secret of my grandfather’s, although that thought never crossed my mind at the time).

There was an old, cast-iron lawmower in the corner that was heavily coated in grim, dust and webs. I felt my way around it, confused as to what it was, and found a small latch that allowed me to open up the green metallic hood. It was entirely black underneath.

And then the blackness moved.

I didn’t understand what was happening at first, as the centre of the blackness vanished, and it moved outwards, up the inside of the hood, and across the lawnmower, but then it began to wave over my hand, a black sheet of thin, hair-like legs, swarming over me.

I screamed and dropped the hood, which slammed down with a crash, but what seemed like hundreds, thousands, maybe, of small black spiders crawled all over the lawnmower and the floor. I fell, trying to brush them off my hand, and more came over me as they tried to escape the now-destroyed safety of the lawnmower engine.

I could feel them all over my legs, body and hair, and I kept screaming, trying frantically to brush them all off me. I shouted and screamed as loudly as I could, even when I felt one around and then inside my mouth, which I spat out.

I must have been screaming loud enough for my parents and grandparents to hear, as it can’t have been long until they found me.

I cried and cried and cried as they brushed them all off me, and as they told me off for going into the shed, and as they stripped my clothes off, and then put me into the shower. I cried when I was put to bed that night, and I screamed again when I woke up in the night, surrounded by darkness and convinced I could feel them all over me.

Ever since then, I have never been able to bear them. Any time I see one, I know there must always be more nearby, but I always kill them. Stamp on them, roll up newspapers and squish them until they’re just a small black and red smear, or whatever I have to do.

And it’s while I look at the toddler’s eyes, I remember it.

I babysit now, usually two nights a week. It’s a good time to study or watch television or talk to my friends on snapchat. I get paid pretty well for it, and I usually like the kids. The parents are out until whatever time they’re out until, and once the kid’s asleep, I get the house to myself. Tonight, they’re at something in town, and will be out most of the night. I have the spare room, which means being paid even more to sleep, which I’m okay with.

He’s old enough to help get himself ready for bed, although I have to help with some of the trickier stuff like changing and brushing teeth properly. But he’s well behaved and actually comes to tell me that it’s his bedtime. I’ve sat for him plenty of times before.

It’s when he does that, that I look at his eyes. They’re dark brown, with black pools in the middle, and framed with thick eyelashes. He looks tired and maybe a little unwell as he tells me he’s ready for bed.

It’s as he’s saying that, that it happens. Two eyelashes, just right at the bottom of his left eye, move. 

They curl up briefly, and then flex straight again.

I am stunned into silence, not understanding what I’m looking at, but then the memory of the shed overwhelms me.

They’re not eyelashes. They’re two small black, hair-like legs.

I grab him as he leaves and turn him around to face me again, and he smiles, not seeing my actions as aggressive, and leans in to hug me.

I let him do it, and then hold him a bit further away at him again, and look at his eyes again.

This time, the eyelashes stay still. Maybe they know I’ve seen them, but I don’t let on. I have to surprise them this time, not let them surprise me. And I have to be sure.

I help him get changed, and take the opportunity to look at the rest of his skin. It takes me a while, because I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but then I see it.

His back is very slightly moving. Underneath the skin. Small waves of constant movement. It’s almost imperceptible. But once I see it’s there, I understand what is happening.

In biology, a little while ago, I learned about parasitic wasps that lay eggs inside their prey. The eggs then hatch and they devour their victim from within, controlling them beforehand.

I can’t let them know that I know. But as he puts on his pyjama top, he smiles at me before he goes to brush his teeth, and I have to look away, pretending to check something on my phone.

His open mouth, smiling at me. I can’t look at it without imagining spiders pouring out of it. Not that close to me. I can’t do it.

He goes to the bathroom, and I follow him. I steel myself, and I put a towel around him as he stands on the step and I pretend everything is okay and I put the toothpaste onto the brush, and put my hand over his as he holds it and I pretend that I can’t feel the scuttling movement underneath my hand as we brush his teeth.

I put him to bed, which still has the barriers up a bit to stop him falling out, and leave the nightlight on, and I watch him carefully while I tell him a bedtime story. Every sentence I finish, I look again at him, and each time, I see more and more movement.

He pretends to fall asleep, or rather they pretend to fall asleep, and I go downstairs.

They are in him, swarming all inside him, just waiting to come out.

I go into the kitchen and take one of the knives. I don’t know if he can be saved. I don’t know if I’m going to be trying to cut the spiders out of him without killing him too, or if he’s already dead and just pretending. But if he is, at least he won’t feel anything.

I take a deep breath and climb the stairs. I know that once I make that first cut, the spiders are going to come swarming out. Thousands of legs and bodies.

But I have to kill them all.

I hold the knife carefully and open the bedroom door. 

Feeding

At times of stress, I've had a tendency towards nosebleeds. Sometimes, I'm immediately aware of it, when the pressure behind my sinus builds until it feels like it pops and drains, and the red warmth spreads down from my nostrils. Other times, I'm not even aware of it until I feel the coppery, tangy taste on my lips, glance down and see the tell-tale drops on my shirt or my shoes or the floor.

The worst one was the day our daughter died.

Months old, lying in the cot, and I was woken by my husband's screams. I remember opening my eyes, and I remember standing with him by the cot, but I don't remember actually getting out of bed. I only remember standing there with him, looking down at her, and registering somewhere in the base of my skull that I was barefoot.

I hate being barefoot. I always have. Usually, when I get up, I plant my feet into a pair of slippers, and I obviously hadn't done that. The screams had made me move with a primal urgency, but when I got there, when I stood there with him looking down, my brain wanted to think about something else rather than admit what I could plainly see.

She lay still, her eyes unfocused and staring without seeing. My husband was crying, and touching her hand.

"She's cold," he said, and then he wrapped his arms around me and squeezed me so hard that it hurt. "I'm sorry, Annie. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

I wanted to push him away from me and hit him and hurt him and blame him, but I couldn't do that because it wasn't his fault and it was hurting him as much as it was hurting me. I just wanted someone to blame. But I let him hold me. For a short while, and then I made him let go so I could touch her and hold her for myself.

Her skin being cold felt wrong, but the lack of any movement felt more so. My fingers pressed into her side as I lifted her and it felt like I was handling a large piece of meat rather than my daughter.

As I held her against me, I didn't feel the pressure popping. I didn't even notice the wetness spreading down my face, as it was mixed with tears of anger and sorrow.

"Annie!" My husband shouted, and I looked down and realised that the blood had poured over her face and babygro, making it look like an obscene blessing. I put her back in the cot, as quickly as I could.

"I'm sorry", I said, cupping my hands to my nose. "I didn't know." I fled to the bathroom to clean up, and the main thing I could think of was how much I hated being in bare feet, the cold lino against my skin.

As I washed, I heard him shout again, and ran back, blood and water still down my front.

"She's... she's..."

Her mouth was opening and closing, as she fed on the blood. Her eyes were moving, and as we watched we could see her skin grow warmer.

We just watched for a few minutes. Neither of us moved. I could feel the cold bloody water on the front of my pyjama top.

"We can't tell anyone," I said.

He looked at me and, after a moment, nodded.

We soon learned that she wouldn't eat anything else other than blood. We tried other options. We tried blood from animals (sourced from the local butcher), but she wouldn't go near it. We heated it up, and that almost worked - she accepted it, but couldn't keep it down, vomiting up a lot of creamy blood.

It needed to be human, and it needed to be fresh.

For a while, we took turns. We bought razor blades, and kept them carefully sterilized. We would cut our arms once a day, and drip feed the blood into her mouth. He took mornings. I took evenings. Sometimes, she would gurgle happily while she drank it. Other times, she would accept it grumpily. It depended how hungry she was.

But after she fed, those hungry small little eyes would look sated and sleepy.

We took to wearing bandages on our arms, covered up with long sleeves. The skin became a little weaker and would break more easily, so we had to be careful otherwise people would see the blood seeping into our clothing.

After a while, I took to using the razor blades to slice the skin just above my nipple. I had to do it deeply in order to produce enough blood, but it also felt a little like she was latching on and feeding normally, and for just a little while, I was able to feel like a proper mother. I would watch her scrunch up her eyes and concentrate on suckling.

Changing her should have felt more grotesque than it was. The thick, clumped blood that she excreted was messy, but (as with all emissions at that age) it felt more like an extension of our own bodies, so we just quietly got on with it.

It exhausted both of us. It took quite an amount of blood each time to sate her, but she was healthy and comfortable, and that was the most important thing.

It wasn’t long until she started teething, which was obviously painful, but it did, at least, make her gums bleed sometimes, which appeared to be something that let her ignore the pain at times and stop crying.

But it was when she moved onto solids that things became difficult. Her teeth had grown in enough for her to clamp down and bite, and it was with a sense of wanting to feel her close to me again that I sliced the skin above my nipple (easily gouging into it enough for blood to flow now – fresh scar tissue is thin and tears easily). She clamped and bit and slowly tore, and it took all of my love not to ball my hand into a fist and punch her to try to get her off me.

When she finally let go, and thankfully with not that much flesh torn off my breast, she swallowed and then laughed happily. I held her and patted her back as she brought up a little bit of blood. Thankfully, no flesh came along with it. It was the first solid thing that she kept down.

I performed first aid on myself, and my husband stitched the skin back together when he got home. It hurt and I cried and I swore.

We tried meat, and we tried everything we could think of, but she either wouldn’t eat it or (in the case of raw pork heated in the microwave), she wouldn’t keep it down. We were reduced to drip feeding her again, but she was getting angrier and more hungry.

My husband talked of cutting fine slices from his leg, but I pointed out that she was only going to need more. He wouldn’t be able to heal fast enough, and I wasn’t prepared to lose anyone in this family in order to keep another part of it alive.

We drove around the streets of our city, in the early hours of the morning, looking for the homeless. We didn’t look too much in the centre, from fear of hidden cameras. Instead, we looked for those who sought privacy themselves.

The first was a young man, drunk and high and asleep on a park bench covered with a blanket. He looked thin and gaunt, and we were able to carry him to the car with the promise of taking him for some food. When we got him to the house, we took him to the cellar and we killed him there, and cut a large strip from his thigh. Almost panicking, my husband held the warm, bloody meat to our daughter’s mouth, and she carefully ate it and we held her and we told her what a good girl she was and we cried out of relief. We had enough from him to last her weeks.

Or so we thought. Actually, after two days, she wouldn’t eat it any more. We managed to get her to eat a little more by heating it, but after another day, she couldn’t keep it down any more. It had to be fresh.

We became ghouls, tracking down the homeless and abducting them, taking them to our cellar and keeping them drugged and gagged as we crucified them against the wall. We would give them enough food and drink to keep them alive, and we would do our best to keep them clean, even though there was so much blood, so much more than we ever thought could fit in a person. Once, our daughter sat underneath the stream and played. It was the happiest we had ever seen her.

We could keep them alive for weeks as we carved as much flesh off them as possible to feed her. Men and women. Old and young. Sometimes younger than we imagined. Runaways and homeless.

But she fed and she grew stronger, and, given a break from being the sole source of her blood, we grew slowly stronger as well.

She’s been crawling recently, and beginning to make words. We have gates against the stairs and anywhere where we might sleep. But we are scared of what could happen when she grows old enough to totter and move quickly. She looks at us greedily, and it is frightening to be looked at by someone you love so much as they balance their love and their instinct. We are beginning to be scared of sleeping, and for now, we do it in shifts, but we won’t be able to do this forever.

I’ve been ill recently, and it took me over a month before I realised that I hadn’t checked my cycle. I’ve never not thought about it before. I don’t even remember the last time my husband and I had sex. We have had, but it happens as instinct rather than love, and sometimes I’m not fully awake. It doesn’t happen often, but it happens.

And now I know I’m pregnant again. It’s too early to feel it, I know that. But I imagine that I can. I can imagine it inside me, growing and feeding from me.

And it is hungry.

The Christmas Plan

The young man carried the newest selection boxes to the display stand, and set them up next to the sun-cream.

The shop sound-system looped back to the beginning of the CD and Noddy Holder shouted out maniacally once again. The young man removed his santa hat and wiped the sweat off his forehead before replacing it.

“Brian?” His supervisor shouted over.

“Yeah?” He shouted back.

“We’re going to need a refill on the mulled wine after this. It’s next to the Pimms.”

Brian wished that there were windows in the Supermarket. He looked at his watch. Nine-thirty at night. He wished he could be in the pub garden with his friends. He wished he could see the sun instead of just feeling the heat.

Slade gave way to Wizzard, who sang that they wished it could be Christmas every day.

Finally, it was too much for Brian. He sank to his knees in front of the selection boxes and burst into tears.

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It was an announcement that nobody expected. It came during the budget statement, and the Prime Minister stood up to support the Chancellor while he made it. The financial situation in the country had become untenable, and something had to happen. Every measure they’d tried had failed. It was time for something drastic.

The Chancellor explained that the build-up to Christmas was always a strong one for the economy. And so, for the next calendar year, Christmas would not be held just once a year as it had always been, but would instead be held every Sunday. Fifty-two weeks in a row.

The live twenty-four hour news coverage ground to a halt due to none of the presenters or producers quite knowing how to react. There was silence across the channels for a full two minutes before the voice of the producer on BBC Live 24 was unintentionally broadcast, screaming to get the fucking Archbishop on the phone.

When they actually managed to get the fucking Archbishop on air, he gave a very hesitant endorsement of the idea, since worshipping the birth of Our Lord was obviously a good thing, wasn’t it? And since more people going to Church each Sunday would be good for the Church, wouldn’t it? It sounded like he was actually thinking it through while answering, since he ended up far more confident about the idea than he did when he started.

Richard Dawkins refused to take part in any interviews.

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The first week it happened went smoothly. Presents were bought, roasts were cooked and churches were attended. TV channels had been given enough notice that a completely new schedule of Christmas specials filled the TV screen throughout the day.

Even the Queen’s speech had a lighter touch than normal, as she giggled twice during it. Of course, for her, this had been the biggest change in her routine that her life had ever seen. A Queen’s Speech during the first week of January was possibly the most mind-blowing thing she had ever been asked to contemplate, but there she was anyway.

The second week wasn’t quite as good.

The Queen forgot her words and froze. Shops ran out of Brussell sprouts, wrapping paper and cranberry sauce, having not had time to order in advance. There was a new status quo and they just weren’t prepared.

The protests outside Downing Street started on the fourth week, although they ended by the seventh week, when it was deemed illegal not to celebrate Christmas, using an extremely old law dating back to the early celebrations of the fifth of November.

At first, it seemed that the law was on shaky ground, however the Government made clear that they would not extend this law to other protests, and it was, after all, only for one year. When the arrests started, the population began to realise that they were tied into it after all.

The TV specials had notably declined in quality, as the lead-time ran out. By June, the Christmas Special of Doctor Who involved Matt Smith in a sixty minute story featuring him fighting no enemies at all, and just having a Christmas dinner with former companions. Although, to be fair, this was actually the most critically acclaimed episode of the entire year, and was seen as a triumph for Stephen Moffatt. The September episode where Matt Smith was ill and spent most of the hour trying not to vomit was less well received.

Suicides reached their peak in May, which surprised statisticians. They’d expected them to keep rising throughout the summer, but they gradually fell off throughout the year. “Maybe it’s the thought that we’ve got less to go than is already done,” one theorist said. Less optimistic statisticians pointed to the overall fall in the poverty rate, suggesting that those least able to afford Christmas had been the main ones to go, but other than the Guardian, nobody bothered reporting that. It just seemed a bit too grim.

The rich had their own problems. Sundays had just become doubly expensive to pay anybody to work, so employment cost a bit more over the year than it had done before.

However, by August, it had to be admitted that, on a basic financial level, these measures were working. Spending had definitely gone up. Savings were being depleted, but profits were up.

The response was taken well by some, but others were devastated. A large part of the population was hoping that it would be judged to be a complete disaster, and the plans would be abandoned. Royalists were also up in arms, as the Queen was visibly more and more distressed as the weeks went by (although by September, she stopped giving a shit and just stared angrily at the camera for the length of the speech each time it was on). There was a small and continually growing group of people who seemed to completely love it, though. The whole thing. Not just Cliff Richard fans and people who owned novelty ‘Keep Calm, It’s Only Xmas’ mugs either. Some people seemed to carry Christmas around with them all year in a way that suited them.

In October (the same month that the murder levels reached their peak), Mary Berry was fired by the BBC, for her diatribe on a live episode of the Great British Christmas Bake-Off, in which she declared she “couldn’t take any more fucking cake. I’m done. I’m done with fucking cake.  I’m done with fucking Christmas Puddings. I’m done with fucking crackers and their shitty gifts inside. I’m done with fucking Mass every Sunday, and I’m seriously tempted to kill the next fucker that sings ‘Silent Night’. No, don’t try and stop me, Sue, I’m going to have my say. There is no God, this is just a sham, and fuck you all.” Paul Hollywood tried gamely to keep the show going with her replacement, Vanessa Feltz, but the magic was generally agreed to have gone. Mary Berry, meanwhile, was offered a job on Channel 4, where she seemed to massively enjoy her new role in charge of the hit show “Mary Berry’s Merry Bally Christmas”, where she was encouraged to rant. Sales of ‘Mary Berry Was Right’ t-shirts suggested they were an increasingly popular Christmas gift.

The strangest thing happened in the third week of November. TV ratings dropped almost entirely, and everyone appeared to spend time with their families and actually enjoy themselves. The crime rates dropped to almost zero, and the overall mood of the nation grew rapidly.

It appeared that the usual point where the serious run-up to Christmas started was actually the point where people started actively anticipating the end of the year. The blitz spirit had taken hold of the country, but it could only have endured as long as people had an end in sight.

The 25^th of December itself was an enormous party, although the nation as a whole seemed to suffer from a metaphorical hangover for the final week.

The 31^st of December was a sedate affair. People nodded at each other when they passed in the street, the weathered and aged faces reflecting what they had been through. Nobody spoke about it. Nobody needed to.

The country had endured and come through stronger. The economy was undeniably doing better, and the boost had definitely helped.

But six months later, it was down again.

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The Chancellor stood up in parliament. His eyes were sunken, like someone who had spent the entire previous night crying.

“I have an announcement…” he began, knowing he was throwing away the next election.

1 Missed Call

You have

1 Missed call from PAUL

1 New Voicemail

Diane looked at her phone for a long time before dialling the voicemail.

You have one new voicemail. Press 1 to –

She pressed 1.

“Hi babe. I’m stuck in traffic. I’ll try and make it up on the way, but hold off on dinner for a bit, will you?”

Press 1 to hear the message again. Press 2 to save it. Press 3 to delete it.

She paused, and then hesitantly pressed the 2 button before finally sorrow and relief overtook her and she burst into tears.

The hospital had called her on the landline, and she hadn’t seen the missed call until after they confirmed Paul’s death. The car had been hit by a truck less than a mile away from the house.

Her first thought, even though it sickened her in a way, was that she was free.

Free from the last fifteen years of marriage. Free from the manipulation. Free from the verbal abuse. Free from the disparaging remarks about her appearance. Free from the violence that he subjected her to every time he got drunk, and free from the inadequate apologies the next day.

She supposed she’d loved him but that feeling had been overtaken by fear a long time ago.

She went through the motions of a funeral, and the proper show of the bereaved wife and then moved to a new job and new life.

One night, she called up her voicemail. She decided to hear his voice one last time before deleting it forever.

You have one saved message. Press 1 to –

She pressed 1.

“Babe? Babe, I don’t know what’s going on. It hurts so much. I keep saying hello to you, but you don’t respond. What’s going on, baby? We can work this out.”

She deleted the message with a hand that hadn’t been shaking a minute before.

She didn’t sleep that night.

A week later, she checked her phone again. She must have been dreaming.

You have one saved message. Pre –

“Why aren’t you answering me, Diane? I said sorry last time. I meant it. Why aren’t you answering? Baby?”

She deleted it and threw the phone down.

The messages didn’t stop. He was always confused and always slightly scared. They came through about once a week at most, and once a month at least.

She changed phones, but they kept turning up. Changed numbers, to no avail.

Eventually, she met Mark. A nice man, this time. A quiet one. He respected her. Loved her.

The messages changed.

“Who the fuck is he, Diane? I saw you with him. Saw you. I will beat you until you can’t fucking walk.”

She stopped owning a phone then. Moved in with him. It worked.

Until he was hit by a car.

She was given his belongings by the hospital. Including his phone.

She looked at the screen.

You have

1 missed call from PAUL

1 new voicemail.

The Secretary - Short Story

The most important thing you need to know about me is that “secretary” is just a job title. I have levels of clearance within this government that are higher than most people know exist. When the Prime Minister wants information regarding the department I work in, he calls me directly and it is down to my discretion whether or not I tell him.

My predecessor committed suicide before she turned fifty. So did her predecessor. I didn’t ask any further back than that. This job has unique benefits but also unique pressures. This is why I am retiring at a young age. I do not intend to kill myself. So I am training my replacement and then I am walking away.

I was psychologically evaluated by the age of fifteen. I had seduced my headmaster to improve my grades, and was implicated in his divorce. Due to my age, it should have been something which he was seen as being more responsible for, but for the fact that I was caught sleeping with his temporary replacement two months later in an attempt to improve my chemistry grade. Add in a little matter of compulsive theft, and my mother became concerned and sought professional help.

I maintain that she felt threatened by me. By the time I was a teenager, I had a way with men that she had never been able to compete with. Perhaps if she had been more concerned about the way my stepfather had attempted to assert his dominance over me, it may have been more useful.

It was actually a relief when I was diagnosed as sociopathic. It made sense to me. I was also described as being intensely manipulative, which I didn’t particularly see as a bad thing.

I got into trouble again when I was in my late teens. My ambition was not high, and my social opportunities weren’t many. I’d become involved with gangs, and ended up playing two East London gangs against each other. I had a rival, who had tried to spread rumours about me, and they almost got me killed. I was more efficient in my response.

I was told my mother wanted to see me. I didn’t care. I was old enough now to be sentenced as an adult, and had my own problems to deal with.

It was around then that she came to see me. The most amazing woman I ever met. Katherine Pettaval.

“We’ve been watching you for some time,” she said.

“How?” I asked.

“We work closely with psychologists who deal with children and teenagers.”

“Why?”

“So they can alert us to promising recruits.”

I looked her up and down. She looked strict and harsh at first, but when she smiled at me, I felt accepted for the first time. I felt an aching for her in every part of my body and my soul.

“Promising in what way?”

“I’ll teach you to be like me.” Katherine said.

I wanted that more than anything I’d ever wanted in my life.

“What do I have to do?” I asked.

“You sign your life to us, and we’ll compensate you. You’ll be educated, trained and given every benefit the British Government can. Then you do what we tell you to do. Primarily, you’ll be taking care… very particular care… to one of our biggest assets.”

I expressed misgivings about working for “the establishment” like that. Well, I was young.

She laughed. “The establishment is very different when you’re on this side of it. Believe me. I’m offering you the Golden Ticket.”

I accepted.

The training took years, but I came out of it as someone who could walk into any meeting room in the Civil Service and take control of it. I came out of it as someone who could convince someone to do what I wanted them to, and also have them utterly convinced that it was their idea in the first place.

I raced up the ladder, and excelled at every part of my role.

Eventually, I was called in by Katherine, as I had been judged ready to learn about their secrets. Only Katherine and the head of the Service, who everyone called “Mother” were there.

I was handed a file. It was thick. “This,” Mother said, “is our secret weapon.”

“We find suitable agents,” Katherine said. “We then manipulate them to see the world in a certain way.”

“In our way.” Mother said.

“In our way, yes.” Katherine agreed. “It means that their life completely revolves around the job that we send them on. Everything they think, everything they want… their reaction to everything around them has been planned to the smallest detail.”

“You mean you brainwash them, ma’am?” I asked. It was impertinent, but I knew when to cut through the bullshit.

Mother looked at Katherine for a moment. A brief glance that most would miss. But, as I said, I was trained very well. “Yes,” Katherine said. “That’s exactly what we do.”

I opened the file, to see pictures of a man. He was tall, muscular and slim, and most would think of him as being attractive. I hated him at first glance. I didn’t know why. That was just the first though. There were others too.

“There is a down side to this kind of programming, though,” Katherine said.

“They don’t live long,” Mother said. “They’re put into very, very high risk situations. We trust them implicitly to use their own judgement, as they’ll use the judgement we train them to.”

“How do you find suitable candidates?” I asked.

“The same way we found you,” she said. “Psychological profiling. Both of these roles require very… specific criteria.”

Katherine elaborated. “Part of the way we do this is to have very specifically designated relationships. Mother becomes the most important thing in the subject’s life, and pleasing Mother is always the one thing they strive to do.”

“So where do we come into it?”

She smiled, and while I still felt it deep inside, I’d been taught to contain it now. “We’re the life they can never have.”

“Is that important?”

“It’s vital. They’ve got to have the dream that this is just temporary, and that they can some day give this up. You’ve got to be the one they’re in love with.”

I tilted my head to the side. “How much of a relationship are we talking about here?”

“Oh, don’t worry. You won’t actually have to do anything.” She laughed. “They’re designed to see women purely as something to rescue, kill or fuck. They’re users by design.”

“And we’re different?”

“Oh yes. You’re the one he never gets to fuck. You’re the one he never gets to have. You’re the one who always promises more. You’re the relationship he desperately wants, but never gets.”

“And that works?” I asked.

“It’s worked beautifully so far. We’ve given them the appropriate memories, so their upbringing, their defining experiences….they’re all planted.”

I continued looking through the file. “All the rest got killed on duty. How come this one,” I asked, pointing, “committed suicide off-duty? Did something go wrong?”

“He fell in love with someone.” Mother said. “We cut ties after she died.”

“He begged to come back,” Katherine said. “But the programming had been broken. We actually incorporated the dead wife into their back-story. It worked, as it gave them something extra to obsess over. It actually made them better agents.”

I laughed. It wasn’t intended as spiteful. It just seemed so absurd.

I wasn’t able to be part of the meetings with him. I had to content myself with watching camera footage in another room of meetings, in order to learn about him. The room itself had to be perfectly maintained. The placement of everything, the smells, the visuals…it all had to feed into the programming. Complement it.

I hated him. Immediately, I hated him. The way he carried himself, the way he spoke. I couldn’t define it, but I hated him.

I told Katherine about it when she came to see me afterwards.

“I hate him too,” she said. “It isn’t important. Don’t think of him as a person. He’s a weapon. That’s all. Think of him as machinery.”

I watched those meetings until he died a few years later, shot through the head while on assignment.

Mother told me, also letting me know that the next one would be ready for assignments in two years time, and that he would be mine, not Katherine’s.  I was given a codename.

The next time I met Katherine, she was distraught.

“I miss him.” She said. “I wasn’t expecting to. I hated him so much, but so much of my life was spent being his life. I was the closest thing to a relationship that he ever had, and he was the closest thing that I ever had.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She killed herself a year later. I had somewhat expected it.

My assignments went mostly well. I actually oversaw a few of them over the years. Bringing them in, being the woman they wanted to spend their life with, smiling at them and flirting at them, and loving them with my eyes and sending them to die.

It takes a toll. Of course it does. So I finally got to select and train my replacement.

I sit back in the same room I did when I watched Katherine. I feel pride watching her.

I see her preparing. Practicing the surprised turn from the filing cabinet. A gasp with a perfectly rounded mouth, followed by the warmest smile you’ve ever seen since mine. Tits and teeth, darling.

The door opens, and he walks in. I watch the monitor carefully. This one doesn’t walk. He prowls, like an alpha male lion, all muscular brutality and lethal intent wrapped in a designer suit.

She hits it perfectly. The turn, the smile and the warmth. I see him fall in love with her.

“Hello James. M will be ready for you in just a minute.”

50 Shades of Sugar - Chapter One

It's a quarter to two when I arrive at the Amsprop centre, a huge five story office building,  all grey and brick. I am greatly relieved I'm not late as I walk into the glass, steel lobby, past the fleet of taxis outside.

Behind the bland desk, a strict looking woman stares at me, looking unimpressed. She is dressed immaculately and raises an eyebrow at me.

"I'm here to see - "

"Yes, I know." she says, cutting me off. "I suppose you think you're dressed appropriately?" She lowers her eyebrow before raising it again and tutting.

I am beginning to wish I had dressed more appropriately. I have made an effort, though.

"I thought so, yes", I reply.

"Hmm." she snips.

She hands me a security pass. I can't help my smirk. Surely it's obvious I'm just visiting. I don't fit in here at all.

She picks up the phone. "It's Karen, My Lord. She's here." She then nods primly as if there were a camera watching her.

"You'll want the last elevator on the right. Press for the fourth floor."

The elevator whisks me with terminal velocity to the fourth floor. The doors slide open, and I'm in a tiny lobby with two sofas and pictures of cityscapes. There is a white haired man standing there to greet me.

"Hello, I'm Ana", I say.

"Ugh," he says, rolling his eyes dramatically.

"I'm here to see - "

"Yes," he says, shaking his head in a disappointed manner. "He's through there."

I push open the door and stumble through, tripping over my own feet, and falling head first into the office.

Double crap - me and my two left feet. I am on my hands and knees in the office doorway and rough hands are around me helping me to stand. I glance up. Holy cow - he's so short.

"Miss Kavanagh," he extends a stubby-fingered hand to me once I'm upright. "I'm Alan Sugar. Are you all right? Coming in here, falling over. Why don't you sit down. It's why chairs were invented." He gives a little smile and looks around awkwardly, as if he's just made a joke.

He's attractive, very attractive. He's short, dressed in a suit, with grey hair and strange, gnarled features. He looks like a sexy shaved gnome. It takes me a moment to find my voice.

"Um...." In a daze, I place my hand in his and we shake. As our fingers touch, I feel an odd exhilerating shiver run through me.  "Miss Kavanagh is indisposed, so she sent me. I hope you don't mind, Lord Sugar."

"And you are?"  His voice is gravelly, and he emphasises words in an odd manner, but it's difficult to tell from his eyebrows, which are bunched together like a seductive scrotum.

"Anastasia Steele. I'm studying with Kate, um...Katherine...um...Miss Kavanagh at Royal Holloway."

"I see," he says simply. I think I see the ghost of a smile in his expression, but it could be acid reflux.

I look at the room while I get ready for the interview. It is one enormous table, set up in front of huge frosted sliding doors for no reason. I set up the mini-disc recorder, and inexplicably slice off one of my fingers. I hope he doesn't notice the blood spurting out of the bloody stump. Damn my clumsiness. I'd blush, except for the blood-loss.

"Sorry," I stutter. "I'm not used to this."

"It's a shame. I had plans for that finger."

He's teasing me? I hope. I blink at him, unsure what to say, and I think he takes pity on me. "No, I don't mind."

He takes a seat. It's a large throne with a booster seat. He hops up onto it in a lithe, athletic manner that belies his aged appearance.

He sits there like a hotter version of Yoda. I cannot help but feel a little shaky just looking at him.

"So, to what do you owe your success?"

"Well, I grew up in a rough area, a part of London where you didn't have your fancy mini-discs, or lifts, or cars, or... or paths."

"I see."

He juts his neck out to emphasise when he talks, like an erotic turtle. "And you know, I've just been around for long enough. You buy, you sell. It's simple."

“You sound like a control freak.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

“Oh, I exercise control in all things, Miss Steele,” he says. “Like when I owned Tottenham Hotspurs. I flogged my way through seven managers, but they would have had it easier if they’d believed that Les Ferdinand would play better with nipple clamps.”

“Do you feel that you have immense power?”

“I employ dozens of people, Miss Steele. That gives me a certain amount of responsibility. Besides, immense power is acquired by assuring yourself in your secret, masturbatory, reveries that you were born to control things.”

I cannot help but think about that image. It’s like a sexy walnut lying on a bed playing with itself.

“I’m sorry, but I really should go,” I say. “I have a long drive back to Enfield.”

“No,” he says gesturing towards a bed that I noticed in the corner. “I think you’ll stay. We have some very good benefits here, and – “ he says, beginning to unbutton his shirt, revealing the wrinkled, leathery skin underneath “ – I can be a very….generous and attentive teacher.”

I can’t help myself. His sexy stony  eyes look into my soul and locate my inner goddess.

“You mean….”

“Yes,” he says, licking his lips like a lecherous lizard. “You’re fucked.”

Anonymous

The actress accepted the award. Newspaper editors glared at the screen. Not only had she won the award yet again, but it meant that the front page would be wasted on an actress in her late sixties, rather than the cleavagy young thing that had also been nominated.

She was gracious, noting that she felt that she was very lucky. After the award ceremony, she made only perfunctory appearances at the after-parties. They were important for networking, but were for the publicity-conscious, which she no longer needed to be. Ten, twenty, thirty years ago, maybe. But no more. 

Instead, she went home.

She received multiple phone calls, and had many messages, but the only one she cared about was the one that told her that she had to be killed.

She cried at first, but she knew what it meant.

She had a stiff drink and then made a phone call. It was the early hours of the morning, but it didn't matter. She knew they'd answer.

They did, and they knew it was her calling.

"Does it really need to be so soon?"

The woman on the other side of the phone was pleasant and professional. "I'm afraid so. The time has come."

“You’re sure?”

“There’s no need to be scared,” she was told. “It won’t take long. Come in on Thursday. That way, we’ll announce it on Saturday morning and get maximum exposure in the weekend papers.”

She said good bye and put the phone down. “I know it won’t take long”, she said to herself, wishing that she’d said that to the woman on the phone.

She looked in the mirror while she removed her makeup. Not just the first layer, the eye liner and the makeup, but the rest. The latex, the putty, everything. It took hours to put on every morning, but always came off so quickly.

Taking off the tinted contact lenses last, she looked at her own eyes. Removed of the dullness of the contacts, they shone brighter than they had on screen for years.

On Thursday, she sat waiting in the clinic. The nurse came out to her. A young (yes, young, of course he was young, she thought to herself) man.  They introduced each other, then he said, almost predictably:

“I’m a big fan.”

She smiled. “Thank you. That means a lot.”

“Look, before this happens, could I get you to sign something for me?” He was, bless him, awkward.

“Of course.”

He pulled a DVD out of his jacket pocket. “It’s not for eBay or anything. It’s a transfer of one of your first movies.”

She looked at it. “I didn’t even know any copies existed.”

“They’re not allowed to.” He said. “You’re too recognisable in it.”

“I’m too recognisable in all of them,” she said. “Do you have any idea how much trouble I got in when they found out that I’d lied about not being in films before?”

“I know. As I said, fan. I had no idea you were one of us until you came back in the seventies.”

“So how did you get a copy of it?”

“I was a projectionist in the twenties. I kept the original. You were amazing in it.”

She couldn’t help it. She started to cry.

“I’ve never…” she said, gulping for air, “I’ve never done this before.”

“Really?” He asked. “I thought you had back in – “

“No,” she said. “The theatre… God, that was easy.  It wasn’t until photography turned up that the problems started. Stupid bloody invention.”

He hesitated, and then asked “Is it true that you always wore sunglasses for photos?”

She laughed, although the tears continued. “Yes. Worked great for about a decade.”

“It’s just going to be simple surgery. You’ll be unconscious, and we’ll break and reset some bones. It’ll hurt for a while, but it’s so much more effective than plastic surgery.”

“I know. I just… I wish there was another way.”

“You’re in the wrong business for that,” he said. “If you want to continue, you need to change your looks. The arts aren’t like other industries. You’re too public.”

“And it’s not like I can be anonymous.”

“Not with what you do. Writer, street artist… you can do those and be anonymous. You know that big guy in Britain, does the graffiti? Nobody sees that and thinks of the stuff he did during the renaissance. You can get away with that with art. Not the screen though.”

“I know. It’s just…I’ve really liked being her.” She dabbed her eyes, which had finally stopped crying.

“You’ll still be you.” He said.

“No, I won’t.” She said.

“Why not?”

“It won’t be my face any more. It’ll be a stranger in the mirror.”

“Then you’ll get to be someone else. Someone new.”

“They want me to have a boob job, you know that?”

“Why?”

“Because I’ll get to be the young actress now, and they don’t want my body recognised. It won’t even be my body any more. I refused to do it while I was… me. Now, though, they’re insisting, or I won’t be allowed to go back to it.”

“There’s a plus point though. Next time you do this, you get them taken out again. You get to do that.”

She laughed. “How fucking efficient.”

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get it over with.”

“Wait,” she said, looking in the mirror as she stood up. “Just let me say goodbye.”

Months later, she stood in front of the mirror in her new bedroom. She undressed and looked at her body first. She still didn’t like the new breasts. But she did like the tattoo. She’d never dared have one before.

Then she stood closer to the mirror, and looked closely at her face. She ran her fingers across her face, feeling her way around while she looked.

She didn’t know the face. Not yet. She was still working on it, but she could finally hold her own gaze without crying.

“Hello,” she said. “Hello, you. Hello, me.”

Short Story - The Happy Pills

Note - I've noticed an increased number of people finding this story by searching for 'pills to make you happy' or similar. This is a work of fiction, and not what you're looking for. If you are feeling particularly vulnerable, I strongly recommend you speak to The Samaritans (UK) or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (US). I hope this isn't taken as patronising, and I hope that you find whatever works best for you.

I bought my first packet of the Happy Pills two days after they became legal. I'd have bought them on the day itself, but they'd sold out everywhere. And walking down the street, you couldn't really tell. People were still working, were still rushing, but there was a slight change. Barely noticeable at first, but the closer you looked...the more you noticed that there was a bounce in more peoples steps. There were slightly more smiles on faces, slightly more animated conversation. The mood was almost infectious. 

The Happy Pills fired synapses in your brain that, normally, needed stimuli in order to fire up hard enough to push your mood. The kind of stimuli that would be caused by those few hours spent in the park, basking in the good weather with no pressures at all. The kind of stimuli that would be caused by totally unexpected, really good sex. No, you didn't feel like you'd been doing those things - but you got the same kind of good mood that I can only describe by relating it to euphoria.

It wasn't euphoria though. Euphoria tends to lead to you losing some element of control. It doesn't always, but it can do. The Happy Pills didn't. They had absolutely no negative side-effects whatsoever. They just put you in as good a mood as you could possibly be in. That was it.   

At the time, Karen and I were having problems. We'd been married for eight years, and it's fair to say that the passion had long, long since died. Sex had been non-existant for the three years prior, and it hadn't been much present after we became parents anyway. And while Karen and I were best friends as well as lovers, eight years of cabin fever were beginning to cause their problems. There was still love in our marriage, but it had been a long time since we were in love. We'd tried things to get the romance back into our lives, but it just wasn't happening.

And then the Happy Pills came out. We talked about it, about trying them. We thought they might help. And so, two days after the pills came out, we tried them. Both of us. And then we waited.

It wasn't something that happened immediately. It wasn't that noticeable, because it was subtle. We were sat talking, and after a few hours, we realised we were laughing more than we had done in a long time. It didn't seem artificial either. It was just like we'd remembered things that we liked about each other. It didn't sort everything, not immediately, but it was fun.

We took the pills daily. That weekend, we went out and just walked around Hyde Park for a few hours. It was the site of one of our first dates, and we hadn't done something like that for a long time. Just enjoyed each others company for the first time in years. The park was packed, but there was no hassle. Everyone was in a good mood.

The longer you took the pills, the more you noticed the change, and - conversely - the less it mattered. The pills had a way of just clarifying everything. It was like realising that, for the last however many years of your life, you'd been suffering from a constant migraine that finally lifted.

Within two years of the pill being launched in public, they were selling on a similar level as bread. Everybody bought them. And there were new kids turning eighteen every day, so it was an evergreen product too. A product base that was only growing.

It wasn't just Britain either. The Happy Pills were worldwide. And it was making a difference. It took a while for the wars to finish, but they did. Suddenly, religious and cultural differences stopped mattering. It was difficult to find the emotion necessary to kill someone when everyone was in a good mood.

Crime was down too. Not actually zero, but certainly at the lowest it had ever been. Perhaps it was because poverty wasn't as big an issue any more. People were happy, and didn't feel quite as much of a need to prove themselves through money any more. As a result, there were record amounts being given to charity. Although the pills made you happy, the happiness meant that people were more productive. People either found the joy that made them want the jobs they were in in the first place, or they felt more confident bout themselves, and went after the jobs they actually wanted. And rejections were a lot easier to deal with when you felt good.

And the sex. Oh God, the sex. It was amazing. And every time was good. Karen and I were back like we were in our first year of dating, rediscovering everything about each other. It was fun, it was happy.

Last year my mother died. She was in her late sixties, and she had died in surgery, in an attempt to remove a benign tumour. An infection led to her contracting an illness, and the illness killed her. The funeral was a beautiful affair, full of joy and love, as we all remembered everything that had been good about her as a person, and how much she enriched our lives. The only tears that day were tears of laughter. She would have loved it. We grieved. Of course we grieved, but it wasn't as important as remembering how wonderful her life had been.

The world had become a wonderful place. And not artificially either - the mood may have been caused by the pills, and maintained by them, but it wasn't just them. Once you were up and running, the pills just helped you keep to a certain level. The real highs were natural, and the real lows just didn't happen any more.

It was a utopia. A real utopia, right here on earth.

And then it ended.

We didn't realise that the synapses in the brain would wear out. We didn't realise that, one day, they would just stop working. It wasn't one day, all over the world or anything like that, but rather a little over six years after you started taking them.

Nobody realised for a while. The suicides of the original scientists, and the chairman of Abblexcon were puzzling, but nobody understood. They didn't tell us.

As a result, it took time for it to spread, and for people to realise what was happening. But all of a sudden, there were two classes in the world. There were those that were happy, and those that weren't. Those who had been poor in the past were still happy, since they were generally the last to start taking the pills. Those that were the first - those internet buyers - were the first large group to be affected.

There were murders. Lots of murders. There's nothing worse than watching other people constantly being happy when you're not. And there were a lot of suicides. The death toll, as it stands, is in the millions.

There are riots on the streets. Unhappiness and depression, and anger towards those that still were happy. Watching it happen was horrible, and we empathised, but we didn't understand what it felt like any more.

Until it happened to us. You remember how I told you that it felt like a migraine had suddenly been lifted? Imagine getting the migraine back, and realising that it was never, ever going to stop again.

Imagine spending the best six years of your life, and realising that the rest of your life is going to be spent living with the memory of all the good feelings, all the happiness, and realising that it's denied to you forever. Because you used a pill to burn out the part of your brain that makes you happy.

You can't understand, David. I don't expect you to understand, and I hope to God that you never understand. I need you to keep the next sentence in mind for the rest of your life. Never take them, no matter how good you're told they are. Because I love you, son, and I never want you to feel like I feel right now.

Your mother killed herself two hours ago. We had an argument and we fought. It's all my fault, and I love her, and I miss her, and I miss feeling like we used to feel, and I miss being who I was when I was with her, and I miss how much I loved her, and I miss how much she loved me. I miss my mother. I miss my wife. I will miss you so much.

My body will be upstairs, David. Don't look. Call the authorities, they have enough practice in dealing with it. Just know that it didn't hurt. And it's the only thing that can stop me feeling like this. From knowing how much I've lost.

You will never fully know how much I love you.

Your father.

Flash Fiction: The Girl Who Cried Rose Petals

This was a flash fiction suggested by @armouredviolet, based on this picture she took on the Piccadilly Line.

She couldn't cry for many years and felt a sickening envy for those that could. She stopped crying completely between the ages of eleven  and twenty-three.

At twenty-four, her heart was broken, and for the first time in thirteen years, she cried.

Except she didn’t cry tears.

She cried petals.

Red, thick, rose petals. No pain, other than embarrassment. She tried not to cry in front of others.

On the Piccadilly line that morning, he got down on one knee and asked her to marry him.

For the first time in her life, she didn’t mind crying in public.

Left - Short Story

I fell asleep on the sofa an hour after my wife went to bed. I woke up in the middle of the night, which is always disconcerting. I stood up, noting an ache in my lower back from the uncomfortable position, and set about turning lights off and joining her in bed. They were already off, which sleepily confused me.

I quietly opened the bedroom door and crept in. One advantage of my mobile phone is that just switching the screen on gives me enough light to see where I'm walking without making enough light to wake her up. It wasn't until I was around to my side of the bed that I felt a sudden cold wave of fear and confusion flow down over my skin like ice water.

Next to my wife was someone lying in the bed, quietly sleeping.  I froze, trying to make sense of what I was looking at, and also thinking how quietly I could retrieve the cricket bat from inside the cupboard. I looked over at my wife, who was sleeping heavily, but breathing obviously. I then looked more closely at the figure's face.

I saw my own face lying on the pillow, eyes closed.

I recoiled, horrified and confused. I couldn't make sense of it. I just stood and watched the two in the bed sleep for a while. When he turned over, I could see that he was wearing the same t-shirt that I was wearing.

I walked carefully around to the other side of the bed again, and shook my wife softly. I didn't understand what was happening, but she was always my first port of call when I was upset, or when I needed to talk. She continued to sleep.

I shook her harder. She didn't wake up. I was scared about waking him up, but eventually, I couldn't bear it any more. I shouted her name, and I shook and slapped her to try and wake her up.

Nothing.

Had he drugged her or something? I went back around to my side of the bed and shook him this time. He didn't respond either. Neither of them did. I eventually screamed, but to absolutely no avail.

Not knowing what else to do, I went and sat on the sofa again. I cried out of frustration and confusion before falling asleep.

I woke to the sound of voices. She was in the kitchen while he was getting dressed, and they were discussing their day. It took me a few moments to recognise my own voice, with the slightly unusual quality of hearing it at a remove.

I raced through to the kitchen, and shouted, but she ignored me again. When he walked into the room, he didn't walk through me, but he may as well have. I was pushed easily out of the way when he brushed against me. It felt like I'd been hit by a car, and when I fell against my wife, it was like being hit hard in the opposite direction. I scrambled out of both their ways but continued talking. They couldn't hear me.

I stood up and watched him stood next to me, talking to her. He was exactly my height, my weight, wearing my clothes, speaking with my voice.

After a while, he went to work. I tried to follow, able to get onto the bus, but I lost my nerve when I got to the train station.

Instead, I trudged back to the house, and sat all day. I wasn't hungry. I didn't need the toilet. Nothing like that.

I could interact with household objects, I found. That first day, I wrote messages, but when my wife got home from work, she either didn't see them or didn't read them. The letter was treated as rubbish. The message written with her lipstick on the mirror was perfunctarily wiped off, without so much as any sense of comprehension.

I couldn't communicate with her in any way. When he came back, and they ate, I just sat and watched. When they sat on the sofa and watched television, I sat on a chair and just watched with them. Sometimes, he said the exact thing I was thinking. Watching quizzes, we would often answer the same questions.

One day, I followed him all the way to work. I wandered around the office while he worked at times, but at other times, something was nagging at me that took a long time for me to fully realise.

He was better at it than I was. He was working hard throughout the day, and seeming less distracted than I sometimes felt.

But then he was better at everything than I was. Not by much, but it was enough for me to notice. Better at exercising, better at working, better at listening and taking note of what my wife said. He was a bit neater than I was. A bit fitter. Better at making love.

Or was I just jealous of him, and looking down at myself?

I don't know, but eventually I got used to it. I became his shadow, more or less. I could spy on anyone, and find out information by myself, but I had nobody to share it with. It was so much less effort to allow him to make the decisions.

Sometimes, I sat around her while she went around her day. It felt like I was spending time with her.

Sometimes, it felt real.

One time, when I was stood in the bathroom behind him while he got ready for work, he looked in the mirror, and his eyes shifted from himself to my reflection behind me. He had never done this before. His eyes locked with mine.

And he smiled.

Motion Blur

I was sitting in the pub, quietly sipping a pint of ale when Blur came in and sat at the table with me.

"Did you see it?" Damon asked, his eyes shining with an excitement that belied the aged skin around it.

"What, you guys at the Brits?" I asked. "I actually did. Well done, that was a good show."

"Yeah. Yeah, it was. And did you see that we're on the Olympics closing concert as well?" He asked, nudging Alex James.

"I did. Congratulations. You must be very excited."

"We are." he said. "We're totally excited. We're not messing around this time. No new stuff. Just wall to wall, balls out, classics."

I realised that I wasn't going to get to drink my ale in private, so I put it down and attempted to properly engage with the conversation.

"No new stuff?"

"None."

"I thought you wanted to write, like, new stuff all the time. Like opera."

A glimmer of sadness formed in his eyes, and he briefly looked like a little boy lost in a man's set of clothing. Much like Richard Hammond. "All I ever wanted was to speak to God," he said. "He gave me that longing."

Then he focused and the sadness was replaced with anger.

"No, not this time." he said.  "I didn't want to do it this time. The Olympics, they asked me if I would, right, but I didn't want to. Alex wants us to - "

Alex interrupted him. "I have this great idea for a new chorus. It goes 'Doo doo doo doo doooooooo....I'm loving it'".

"Shut up, Alex." Damon said. "But we're not doing it this time. We're concentrating on what works."

"That's good," I said, beginning to look for my nearest exit. Damon was looking a little bit manic.

"And do you know what the best thing is?" He asked.

"....no, Damon, I don't know what the best thing is."

"It means we win."

"You win?"

"Yeah," he said, nodding his head. "We win. You saw The Brits. You saw Noel Gallagher. Reduced to duetting with fucking Coldplay. He didn't even win Best Solo Male Artist."

"So?"

"It proves we were best. Nineteen Ninety Four, 'Country House' versus 'Roll With It'. We won then, but people thought we lost the war. Everyone was all 'oooh, Oasis, they're brilliant', but look at them now. Where are they now, eh? Nowhere, that's where."

There was a dangerous glint in his eyes that scared me.

"Do the rest of the band feel the same way?" I asked him.

"Who cares what the rest of the band felt?" he responded angrily. "Noel Gallagher, right,  didn't even win best solo artist, and then everybody cheered for us. We won. Like we should have won all the time."

"Damon," Alex said, "Wait. Think about this. If we lose all the anger at Oasis, we can just have fun again. We can project a nicer image, and maybe get corporate sponsorship, like McDonalds. And McDonalds is brilliant, isn't it Damon?"

"Shut it, cheese-fucker." Damon growled. I couldn't help but raise my eyebrows as Alex looked sadly at the ground.

"Maybe you're being a bit obsessive." I tried to say to Damon.

"Everyone's going to be saying how brilliant we are at the Olympics, while Noel Gallagher is sat outside with a piece of card saying 'I used to be relevant, why did I ever argue with Damon'. That's what he'll be doing. While I walk out as the fucking God of Brit-Pop."

"Look, you need to calm down" I said, as Damon continued to raise his voice.

"You know what my last concert is going to be? It's going to be us doing a concert on Noel Gallagher's grave. We're going to dance all over it and sing Song 2."

"I'm going to leave now," I said.

"Woo-hoo, Chris! Woo-Hoo."

As I left, Damon continued shouting "Woo-hoo", getting more and more out of breath.

Alex ran up after me. "Look, I just wanted to say..." he said. "...I don't fuck cheese. I just really like it."

"I know, Alex," I said. "I know."