terror, even when overcast

You see, I was there. All you know, you saw on television, through the internet, blurred with commentary and idiotic rambling by people who knew nothing about what was happening. Filling others’ ignorance with their own base desires and cravings. I didn’t see any journalists, just the suffering. I can only think that the journalists stayed away, reporting by looking inwards from their hotels and the fly-over footage provided by the UAVs while they stayed safe in the knowledge that no-one could possibly contradict them.
I was going to work. It had already started and none of us standing on the platforms knew. I had seen it and not understood.
The sky is always open, even when patterned with the flowing underside of clouds piled over each other, sliced by the arcing paths of darkly silhouetted birds. It is the sky of a flat land, not hemmed in with hills or mountains, stretching and filling the mind of those willing to look upwards. The shapes above tear and fight leaving wounded pictures of emptiness. Only when the tram arrived did I look down, back at the earth.
I was jammed against the doors once they closed, as usual. Trying to avoid the press of strangers bodies, find enough space to be able to place my feet in balance against the jagged movement of the tram. I turned myself around to look through the window, through the condensation forming on the glass, at the speeding scenery; The blank spaces between people melt. The tram passed under the twin concrete flyovers of the M62. The gap between them a grey shaft of light punctuated by the upward flight of a startled pigeon and the illumination of an inane and brilliantly coloured graffiti. Beyond it the industrial estates, the tarmac retail park, the endless lines of garages selling cars hidden behind industrial scrubland.

It was as the tram descended into Manchester that I realised the colour had gone. Then the tram stopped, shaking to a sudden halt with the application of the emergency brake. The carriage mood split into annoyance and the usual expectation of shoddy service. Then the doors opened. I almost fell out. After checking that there was nothing coming that might injure me, and irritated at the way I had almost fallen from the tram, I jumped down already composing the letter to the company in my head.
It is not so simple a thing to describe. What happened next, I mean. A few on the tram had followed me down. The rest were stoic, watching me from the window with impassive faces. Looking down the road towards Piccadilly I caught sight of its head, rising and falling above the buildings. A shade of non-colour, almost the same as the sky but of a different light, a feeling of reality broken and ground under foot. A daikaiju imagined by Escher. Then it screamed, crying with a scent of destruction, dust billowing around it even as the scream began to try and infiltrate my own mind. It feels now like it was a reflexive, animal instinct that caused it to destroy the city. It was not a judgement, or a warning. It was not summoned by some ancient Mayan treasure brought to the museum, or physical experiment at the university. It wasn’t some super-dimensional rift caused by City’s win in the derby. Watching it I knew that it had always been there. We had just never seen it before.
I turned and ran.

Moving On

Marie checked herself out of hospital after too few days. She was bored and frustrated with everything around her from the plastic coated sympathy of the nurses to the few awkward visits she had received from her fellow police officers. So she decided to go home, so that she could think and plan.
Unfortunately her wounds had not healed. As she dressed, and even more so later as she walked, the thin scabs of the many stab wounds across her back and arms would rub against the material of her clothes and she could feel the fabric begin to cling to her with the grim dotting of blood stains.
Marie ached all over, not just where she had been stabbed but everywhere. She was bruised from the attack and felt belittled by its ferocity. And the worst thing was, she told herself over and over, that she hadn’t seen it coming.
She should have known, she should have seen. Or so she argued to herself.
It didn’t matter to her that everyone else told her that she couldn’t have predicted the attack. It didn’t matter that he had been under the influence of a brain altering mechanism. She had seen him coming and she should have seen the danger in his eyes. Had she begun to see him so little? Had she got so slow and complacent?
As she reached the door to her flat she paused. The door to his flat door, which was opposite hers, was closed to her forever now. It accused her, standing as it did all firm and locked up. She could almost hear the scream of the void on the other side. He wouldn’t be coming back, the fish had done irreparable damage to his brain, and to a great extent he wasn’t really there anymore anyway. And it was her fault. Or at least, it was her responsibility.
Marie sighed. She pulled her own flat key from her coat pocket and was just about to insert it in the lock when the door flowed open before her. Her heart started jumping wildly in her chest and she felt dizzy. An instant of panic widened her eyes and her head pulsed with the pain of frustrated control.
Before she could actively think what to do next she had stepped mechanically into the room. Then she stopped, half turned to flee, an anger rising through her from her gut to her grinding teeth.
A man stood with her back to the door, oblivious to her presence, unsensing of her anger.
Marie noticed a couple of things almost simultaneously. The first was that the intruder appeared to be feeding her fish – not the most obvious occupation for a criminal with malicious intent. The second was that the shape of the back, the way the shoulders were hunched high into the neck and the faint ripples of muscles stretched the fabric of his shirt, was achingly familiar to her. She slumped a little, letting out her held breath.
She wasn’t sure whether this was worse than she had initially imagined.
“Jon?” she asked in a voice weak with emotion.
The man turned and she saw that she was right. It was her ex husband, in the flesh, looking slightly greyer than she usually pictured him, older and more tired. He said nothing, appraising her in return. She avoided his face and instinctively started looking around and about the apartment, knowing that something was missing. Too hurt and tired to be hopeful.
“Where’s Toby?” she asked finally, watching his face now as a wave of emotion swept across his features. This didn’t look good. Marie felt for the door handle, using the cold metal as a crutch.
Jon looked down at his feet, a crimson flush spreading over his white face. “Our son is missing.” he muttered quickly.
Marie felt the world ripple underneath her feet. A veil of ivory lace fell across her sight. She decided that she should sit down.

Anomaly

Arkady shuts down the lights leaving the tiny cabin space absolutely black. The thin curve of glass, reflectionless, leaves only the vacuum and his own thoughts. His eyes slowly become accustomed to the pinpoint rainbow of stars. Up ahead he sees the distorted crescent of Saturn, the arc of the rings just visible. There is no sign, using only his own eyes, of the anomaly. He sits back in the contour of the chair, letting the dark purity of the vision soak into him, drawing up memories of his uncle’s farm, lying on his back watching the stars in the slow spin of Earth.
He hears the grind of the door behind him as someone spins the lock. Arkady remains still, trying to lose himself in the last moments of silence, to disappear, before whoever it is comes through and disturbs him.
“Arkady? You in here?” A woman’s voice calls out; Klein. The chief of the science crew. Arkady sighs and grunts a response. He gets up and switches the lights back on as the heavy, white door slides open. “I need to talk to you.”
Arkady turns to face the scientist. She is young for her responsibilities, made her name in studying the anomaly and eventually a Nobel prize. She has a European prettiness, stretched by Martian childhood, that does not carry into photographs. Her blonde hair is cropped short, framing a strong jaw-line. Arkady will occasionally admit to himself that he has a crush on her.
“What is it chief?” He asks. “I was trying to catch some relaxation. It has been a long shift for me.”
Arkady has been overseeing the work crew repairing the starboard array after it suffered a micro-meteor strike a few days before. The physical damage was not so great, the structure being reinforced by carbon nanotubes to the best spec available, but some of the electronics were hit leading to a long stretch of fiddly work replacing parts and testing them. Arkady, in years of accumulated time in space, has learned to despise electronics.
“I’m sorry, Captain. I think this is important, you should come see it.”
Klein deigned to call him by his title, Arkady notes. Not a good sign. He follows behind her as she navigates her way along the corridor to climb down the ladder to the low centripetal gravity of the ring where the labs and living quarters are arranged. Within a couple of minutes he is looking at a screen painted against the lab window. The three junior scientists are studiously watching their own monitors and ignoring them. It is easy to see what Klein wants to show him; he can see the large cluster of bright red icons flashing and mutating around the location of the anomaly as it slowly spins around the window.
“What am I looking at? Has something changed?”
Klein raises a fist and pulls it towards her, causing the screen to magnify on the anomaly.
“It hasn’t just changed. It’s moved. Not far. But it is accelerating.”
“Towards us?”
Klein shrugs.
“Of course.”

Warmth

Blue-green waves lapped up against the sun-warmed sand, frothing slightly around the point where solid and liquid clashed. Joe looked down at his toes, bright orange in the deflected sunset light, and wiggled them.
“What are you doing?” A harsh, high-pitched voice broke into Joe’s thoughts and dragged him reluctantly back into reality. He turned to face the voice.
The sand led back calmly to the edges of a palm tree fringe. Tall scalloped trunks reached up into the deep blue sky, topped with massive dark green fronds that swayed languidly with height not wind.
It was, all in all, an idyllic desert island. The affect was spoilt only by the metallic gash across the beach that led to the mangled pile of debris that had been their transport. And the leaping, shouting, bloodied form of Joe’s companion.
Pwjlk was finding the sand too hot to stand on so was hopping from one of his four feet to the next in strict rotation. In consternation and anxiety Pwjlk was waving his two upper arms in the air while his two lower arms clasped and wrangled each other. The crinkled, layered face was beetroot red against the pale yellow of its skin and the single eye was stretched wide and unblinking.
“What are you going to do?” Pwjlk screeched again.
Joe sighed. He looked back out again to sea but there was nothing there. Only the faint streak of black smoke vapour trail in the sky remained to signify where they had come from.
Pwjlk hopped awkwardly down to the ocean’s edge, sinking slightly into the wetter sand but finding no relief in the relative coolness there. He looked up at Joe from his full metre high height. Joe patted him on the head and Pwjlk flinched.
“We wait.” Joe said simply. “We wait and see what comes next.” He started trudging back to the wreck of the ship.
“What if ‘they’ come?” Pwjlk yelped, running after Joe and pulling at the shredded remains of his jumpsuit.
“Then they come. We can’t do anything about it if they do.” Joe paused and frowned in thought. “Well, maybe we can see what survived the crash. You never know. We might get lucky.”
“Hmph.” Said Pwjlk. “Not likely though is it.”
Joe smiled. At least a cynically grumpy companion was better than a panicking one.
The wreck was still smouldering and Joe grimaced, remembering the instant of impact before they had started their enforced descent, searching through the still hot metal for anything that might be salvageable. He still couldn’t work out what had happened, what it was that had hit them and brought them so abruptly down. He did know that they had been in the middle of nowhere, looking down upon an unbroken expanse of blue ocean. So this island had been a very lucky occurrence. A chance in a million. His stomach knotted with the bitter sensation of disquiet. It was too much of a coincidence wasn’t it.

Colour

Light scores the horizon. The sky is a faint grey bleeding to the palest of blues.  The promise of a clear Winter morning. I let the net curtain fall back over the condensation-edged window.

I fill the kettle with water and click it into its dock, flicking it on. The kitchen side is cluttered with dirty cups and plates. The old, laminated surface bubbles with age and damp at its edges. Brown stains reach through the black and white pattern in the plastic. The curling grind of the kettle slowly joins the stereo hum of the boiler and fridge.

Raising the curtain again the sky is lighter. Grey is the wrong colour. It is white, but not yet bright enough to be true white. On the edges of the roofs and walls the snow takes on the luminescence of the sky, reflecting it with a deeper, crystalline blue.

Winter Hunt

A melody of snowflakes plays across the large cockpit window. The Captain steps from around the wheel, passing control with a touch on his First Mate’s shoulder, moving forwards into the bubble frame of the window. Some of the snow catches and melts against the glass, some sticks in little piles. Beyond the flickering white leaves there is only the dark, grey sky. To the Captain’s senses the rest of the world has disappeared. Only their instruments tell them where they are.

The Captain sighs, lightly, rubbing a finger along his forehead, wiping at the irritation where the band of his cap clings tightly.

“How are we suppose to find anything in this?” He asks. Neither the First Mate nor the navigator bother to answer. Each just keeps their eyes focused on the panels in front of them. “Sergeant.” He calls out.

A young, squat man with dark hair and a scar running along the side of his face, distorting its natural and beautiful symmetry, enters through the heavy door that passes joins the cabin to the rest of the command gondola.

“Sir?” The Sergeant asks.

“Fetch me the passenger. Tell her we are in need of her assistance.”

The sergeant does not stop to ask which passenger, even though there are more than twenty civilians and a small platoon of Red Army soldiers on board. Only one would be summoned to see the Captain and only one is a woman.

Bees (7)

MICROFT was built without the ostentation and affections I gave to HOLMES. He is a tool of the government and, although I designed his brain, I gave him a more serious practicality than my own detective. With the Home Office scientists helping me it seemed harder to justify gimmicks such as the metal face and pipe for expelling excess steam like a man deep in thought. Instead, MICROFT’s pipes are tucked away behind panels and lead away, dispelling the effluence of the computer into dark sewers nearby.

I know that since I first built him, and further developed him in the war years of 1914 and 15, he has been expanded and enhanced by the team of younger men dedicated to him. I am, however, unprepared for the extent of the change. Bigger, I knew. The small screen fixed with simple brass bolts to his surface was something new. I had heard of the technology, a television, but had never seen it. On the grey, snowy screen the features of a stern, jowly old man peer out from an over-size white moustache; the very picture of English sensibility. The figure grins at me and I realise with a start that this is MICROFT. A speaker, hidden behind a delicate wooden grill, crackles and the familiar, deep voice spills into the room.

“Watson, my dear fellow” He says. “It’s good to see you. How long has it been? Ten years? Fifteen.”

I nod, still slightly in awe.

“Things have changed, eh?”

“They certainly have. I’m not as young as I used to be,” I say, shaking the cane in demonstration of my fragility. “And you have certainly grown.”

It offers a small bark of a laugh. This is a device well beyond the primitive imaginings of HOLMES and I find it slightly terrifying.

“Your new face is particularly remarkable.” I say.

“Indeed. I felt it would help me project a more human, trustworthy air for our masters. Sometimes I felt that they would not take my suggestions as seriously as those of a person in a suit.”

“I would have thought your successes in Germany would have been enough.”

“Memories are short. And the dangers are greater than ever. This is why I’ve asked for you, Watson. I fear that it is only you that can help me now.”