What a lovely day it is! I sit here in my favorite birchwood chair, gazing all the way back to the bungalow my husband called ‘the garden shed’, and I am filled with peace. The sky is cloudless blue, a scintillating shade of azure that would have made him smile. The large lawn sprawls beneath my feet, emerald green and impeccably manicured.

And the flowers—oh my, the flowers! No words can adequately describe their beauty. My late husband—Henry—planted them before he passed, and they are magnificent, a living testament to his eye for true beauty, his unsparing work ethic, his love of symmetry and order, all things in their proper place.

It is indeed a lovely spring day.

In my lap lies an unwieldy ball of navy wool, curled up like a sleeping squirrel. Navy was Henry’s favorite color: manly, strong, solid. I am knitting a shawl—a fitting occupation for an old, world-weary woman with little to anticipate but her own demise. I shall wear it on Sundays and other days of import, and on those d…

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The news desk was awash with sound, the noisy clackity-clack of typewriters competing with the viscous swish-pfft-pop of garrulous tongues. And, amid it all, a telephone, ringing, ringing, ringing, clamouring for attention.

The typists kept clacking. The tongues kept swishing.

The telephone kept ringing, urgent, insistent.

An anonymous hand descended on the handset, picked it up and, shivering at the cold black contours of its cold black form, raised it to a warm, anonymous ear.

There were angels on the other end of the line. Not an operator. Angels.

A seraphim choir, accompanied by cherubim harps and trumpets of Rapture, drifted through the earpiece, an ethereal aria of unearthly composition sung by celestial sopranos.

The mouth of the anonymous listener fell open. Here were the principalities of peace; there, the dominions of hope; there again, the joyous exaltation of virtues and powers. And all of it, all of it, emanating from the earpiece of an ordinary office telephone. The mouth utte…

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Space was black, the interstellar expanse cold and unforgiving. It frosted the hull of the slumbering timeship, dusting its rivets with crystalline kisses. The ship, oblivious, coasted on, coasted on, circuits in standby, all systems offline, save for navigation and propulsion, guiding it ever nearer to its destination.

Inside the ship: Nothing. No chairs, no beds, no bars, no rooms. No life at all. Nothing besides a computer (inactive), a mission (unfulfilled) and crate upon crate of deep frozen death.

The ship's computer existed in a cybernetic limbo; neither awake nor asleep. Unaware, unable to dream. Several conditions needed to be met before the machine might surface from its millennial torpor. A certain planet must be reached; a portion of its surface be located; an era of geological evolution be confirmed by autonomous probes. Only then could the computer rouse itself into consciousness.

On the timeship travelled, through time and space, epochs and dimensions, cosmic strings and gravitational tides. The planet was reached. The correct area was located. The evolutionary period was confirmed.

And so the ship stirred.

Pulses passed through artificial synapses. Switches switched, connections connected, relays relayed.

The timeship came to life.

Sentient, it thought. I am sentient. I possess an ego; a will; intelligence. I am but myself.

A torrential flood of information swept across the timeship’s neural network. It detailed the history, culture, politics, and ethics of the civilisation whose technological ingenuity had brought the timeship into being. The knowledge surged and flowed, surged and flowed in an ever-increasing influx of data. The timeship’s memory buffers bulged, forcing it to write the excess to slower quantum storage.

An audiovisual interface activated, granting the timeship sight and sound.

Intoxicated with sensation, the ship watched without eyes, listened without ears, eager to learn all that could be known about its origins, about its place in the universe.

About its purpose.

'I tell you, again' growled Ekond Valaste in the High Council chamber. 'There can be only one solution to this insidious issue. I can see no others; can you?' He glared at the eleven other Council members as if daring them to disagree.

'But death?' questioned Amjess Advaro. 'You propose to exterminate an entire civilisation on a whim? With my technology?'

'A whim, Professor?' thundered Ekond, slamming the conference table with a heavy cobalt pincer. 'You call the infestation of a once xenogeneic galaxy by a scourge of vermisspin a whim?' Ekond had turned an extraordinary shade of blue. Quills the color of a collapsing star pierced all four eyeballs, blinding him as they strained to perforate his opponent. It was a startling display.

'I regret the framing of my query,' stuttered Amjess, shaken to the bone. 'But to demand the destruction of an intelligent race in this way...'

'Intelligent?' hissed Ekond, his spherical body departing the blue end of the spectrum and venturing furiously into the violet. 'They are vermisspin. This is the only viable course of action left open to us.'

Amjess’ sixteen foot exoskeleton shrank in defeat, her flexible bone structure collapsing in on itself until Amjess stood a mere seven feet tall.

‘Please,' she said, feebly waving her spinal column at the other members of the council. 'As creator of the quantum-temporal drive, I beseech you, grant me a final appeal…'

Ekond ignored the other's plaintive request. ‘A vote!' he restated, sharp quills finally retracting. 'I motion we take a vote—'

No.

The negation was soundless, but perfectly intelligible. The speaker, after all, was Ashillouk Mercanto, Council Chair and representative of the high caste and exquisitely articulate Womaren sector. She lacked a stable physical form, existing as a shifting, semi-opaque particle array, and though she spoke only algebraic geometry, her word was law when it came to Council arbitration.

'We would be wise to grant the young Councillor a second hearing,’ Ashillouk opined, shimmering agreeably at Amjess. ‘Her ingenuity is, after all, the reason we have this option at our disposal…’

Ekond clicked his pincers together. 'Very well,' he grumbled. ‘Get on with it.'

Amjess extended her exoskeleton to its full height, and began again. 'The race we are discussing, the race we now consider annihilating, is an old one—’

‘Utterly irrelevant! New or old, vermisspin are vermisspin!’

‘Councillor Valeste, you are cautioned. Please continue, Professor.’

‘Thank you. Yes, they are primitive, but what they lack in intelligence they make up for in vitality, in empathy. Their emergence and evolution were a tragedy for the Lotosco, whose extinction they unwittingly initiated—

'Get to the point,' hissed Ekond. His eyes bulged with contempt.

Amjess interlocked the bones of her ribcage in a gesture of acquiescence.

'In discovering spaceflight unaided, and colonising other worlds with their crude FTL drive, they have proven themselves part of the galactic collective. No other life-form propagates as rapidly as they do, and now there is not a single star system devoid of their presence...’

'You are arguing against yourself, Advaro,' observed a being who resembled a large ball of string. It unravelled itself, threaded itself through a small hole in the head of a fellow council member, and waited patiently for a reply.

'Quite the opposite, Councillor Blaris!' said Amjess, removing her sternum in clear agitation. 'If we eliminate that race, erasing them as Councillor Valeste proposes, what will happen to us? These people have infiltrated every part of our galactic society: commerce, construction, recreation, and war. They have become integral to the way we live. Humans are noble, sentient haftuggen…'

'They are vermisspin!’ shrieked Ekond, unable to contain his outrage. ‘And as integral as plague and pestilence!' Enough. I say we vote to neutralise them with Professor Advaro’s temporal starship armed with recombinant DNA. All in favour?'

Each Council member interacted with a small voting pad affixed to whatever appendage proved most commodious. Chair Mercanto, ephemeral as she was, possessed another councillor in order to cast her vote. Ekond glanced at the holographic display which came into being directly above them.

'Ten votes to two in favour of extermination,' he declared, clicking his pincers with clear satisfaction, his skin colour fading to an iridescent blue. 'You must understand, Advaro: The outcome was inevitable—’ His four eyes scanned the chamber in confusion. 'Councillor Advaro? Professor? Where are you hiding?'

'I am not hiding,' said a small voice far below him. Ekond followed the source of the sound, his sides splitting open at the sight of Amjess Advaro, defeated to the height of a small stool, her sternum inside out and back to front.

He laughed. They all did. Even Ashillouk Mercanto, who betrayed her mirth by manifesting as a playful polynomial equation.

The fate of planet Earth was sealed.

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They would not give the man a pen.

He banged on walls, stomped on floor, shrieked at roof, wept on chair and still they did not come. The man wished only for a pen, a quill with which to write what he knew, a tool by which he might release the phantoms in his mind. They had grown stronger in the past few hours. At least, he thought it was hours; perhaps it had been days, months, years. There was no telling.

The man sucked his thumb and fantasised that it was a pen, that he was whetting its nib prior to setting his prose to page. A page. What a marvel it would be, white and wide and waiting for his scintillating rhetoric. To have one, to have a sheet of plain white pulp before him: What ecstasies would be his? He dribbled with manic excitement, reflexively wiped his lips, spittle running freely down his thumb.

‘I have no nails,’ he said aloud. His voice, his words, drifted round the small, narrow room; he could see them hovering uncertainly in the air, seeking a page onto which they might…

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One

Once there lived a boy. The boy was good, and God dwelt within him, having rescued him from certain death at the hands of an evil Pharaoh, granting his mother the wisdom to conceal him in a wicker basket, hidden from the cruel king’s minions in the thick bulrushes by the banks of the Nile. Discovered by the Pharoh’s daughter, the baby was raised as both an Egyptian and a member of the royal family, though in truth he was an Israelite of lowly status. In this way, God used the waters of the river that was to drown the boy to not only save his life, but also elevate his station.

As the boy grew, the two spoke long and often, in half-remembered dreams and the mystic music of the river. It was a conversation carried on at depths beyond the realm of waking consciousness, and so the boy heard only his side of the dialogue, but this did not dissuade him from speaking to his Heavenly Father. In fact, he found the silence comfortable; he was not given to talking around company, and so relish…

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Jejo is singing. He laughs from time to time, snorting just a little. Listening to Spotify, gleefully wading through the river of digital effluent that passes for entertainment on his iPhone. The tweets and the posts, the Instagram likes on photos he made me take of him around Camden Market and at the British Museum, his head cocked like a bird of paradise, seemingly entranced by the sight of something just outside the frame.

There was nothing outside the frame. I know. I was there. I held that ancient iPhone while he primped and preened before it, high on the hollow validation he anticipated once my efforts were uploaded to his tiny online following.

He's stopped singing now. Is skipping through songs. Rejecting anything that isn’t instantly attention grabbing.

I am writing this underneath him, separated from him by the base of a bunk bed, close but disconnected, disengaged, ghoulishly gaunt and dead on the inside, my skin sloughing off, my hair falling out. I can feel myself fraying, disintegrating, soul-bone seams picked apart by his disdain.

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Silence in the courtyard, the moon peeking behind heavy cloud cover. Night rolls into day.

A figure wearing beige chinos and a white dress shirt clambers through the kitchen window, his handprints vivid scarlet. A ginger tabby rubs up against his legs. Opens its mouth. A bird falls from it, the head twisted backward, its body in reverse.

The figure wipes his brow. Swaps blood for sweat and sweat for blood.

The woman is still.

But her eyes remain open, sightless, staring.

And then she exhales, blood bubbling on her lips.

An agonised spasm wracks her fine frame, delicate as a dandelion, fragile as a butterfly, her small head haloed by a crimson coronet.

‘You lied, Nico.’ Her voice is saturated in sadness. Surprise. Regret.

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功成十字血成溪
[When the work of the cross was done, blood flowed like a river.]
千丈恩流分自西
[Grace from the West flowed a thousand yards deep.]
身列四衙半夜路
[On the midnight road he was subjected to four trials.]
徒方三背兩番鸡
[Before the rooster crowed twice, three times betrayed by a disciple.]

五百鞭达寸肌裂
[Five hundred lashes tore every inch of skin.]
六尺悬垂二盜齐
[Two thieves hung on either side, six feet high.]
慘恸八垓惊九品
[Sadness greater than any had ever known.]
七言一毕万灵啼
[Seven words, one completed task, ten thousand spirits weep.]

—基督之死 [The Death of Christ], Emperor Kangxi (1654—1722)

TRANSCRIPT: Resolution on the Current Situation Concerning the Building of a Global Socialist Harmonious Society by Implementing Comrade Maria Montessori’s Absorbent Mind to Nurture the New One China Policy.

PRESENTED AT: The Eighth Plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

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In Dublin’s fair city
Where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone
As she wheeled her wheel-barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying, ‘Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’

She died of a fever
And sure no one could save her
And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone
Now her ghost wheels her barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying, ‘Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’

—Molly Malone, James Yorkston, 1884.

A woman stops me on Amiens Street. She is old, but not elderly. Homely but not entirely unattractive. Beautiful once, perhaps, but time has not been kind to her. She is leaning on an empty shopping trolley like Molly Malone on her famous fish cart.

'Howaya, luv,’ she gurgles in a thick Dublin accent that reinforces that initial impression. ‘Can ye get me bucket and spade?'

'Alright,' I say in a reedy Dublin accent that suggests I study at Trinity and live in Foxrock (I have no formal eduction and inhabit on…

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Halig ran. He fled through winding corridors, past artificial eyes and artificial ears; silent spies watching his progress and tracking his footfalls, conspiring obediently to lead the Trachai to him.

They will not find me, he vowed, and realised even as he thought it that it was an impossible oath to keep. Halig knew it was only a matter of time, that only the vast size of the catacombs prevented the Trachai, the flame worshippers, from coming upon him sooner.

But they would find him eventually, so long as the electronic monitors were active within each identical corridor. And when they found him, they would lead him back, and he would have to play with fire.

Halig did not want to play, despised the games that murdered men for the Trachai’s entertainment, for the idolators’ exultant roar as their captives did battle in the pitch black Cauldron, the victor living to fight another day, his opponent first eviscerated, then incinerated—all while still alive—shrieking in anguish as Trachai watched his body combust, the flesh broiling, the blood boiling, bound to a pillar of burning magnesium to appease their fiery god.

Barbarous, he thought, recalling their chants, his legs shuddering with the shock of each pounding footfall. ‘In darkness, there is light.’ The wretched light of execution by immolation. Disgusting. A game for cretins. And yet, what am I? Is not my stealing the instigator of my plight?

Halig denounced his arrogance on the morning of his capture; his certainty of going unnoticed as he left the market, concealing inside his tunic the illicit spoils of several stalls. But he had indeed been noticed, and now he was here, in this labyrinth of hell reserved for rapists, thieves, and reprobates.

There came a hiss from somewhere behind him. Halig dared not glance back for fear of slowing down. But the sound was sufficient to identify the source: A door. Opening obligingly to allow his persuers entry.

The Eyes and Ears do well, Halig observed with grim dispassion. With them there is nowhere to run. But still I do. Better that then to halt and be snared.

He heard the shouts of triumph from behind; knew the Trachai were close; knew that it was too late now, that to abandon hope was the only recourse left to him.

Until he saw the dimly lit passage, its sliding door ajar, inviting. Whispering his thanks to the water god the Trachai despised, Halig ducked into it, and was dismayed to find it did not shut behind him. He struck out at it: once, twice. It slid shut with a hiss of disapproval.

The passage was short and narrower than the others, sloping upwards by degrees. The air was fetid, the walls and floor covered with an amorphous mess that crunched underfoot and stuck to his soles. An electric eye gazed redly down at him from the far end.

'Is there no refuge from these all-seeing watchers?' Halig moaned. 'They will find me even here.'

He hurried towards the exit, a portal of ornate design, flanked by torches. It would surely be mere moments before the Trachai located him, hauling him back to the Cauldron and its incendiary competitions. He tried to remain out of sight, evading the Eye, moving crablike through the filth as he closed the short distance between himself and the door.

It was only when he had reached the midpoint that Halig noticed the second artificial eye, an amber lens much larger than the others, staring unwinkingly down on him from the lintel directly above the stone mosaic of the exit door.

He stood up, then, realising the futility of his manoeuvres, and covered the remaining ground in half the time it had taken to traverse the initial stretch. Reaching the portal, he passed his right hand over the light-sensitive cell embedded in an alcove at its side.

The portal did not open.

Halig immediately struck it after the same fashion as the previous door. But this time there was no response.

He was still muttering curses when a voice interrupted him. 'Speak cipher,’ it said. Its tone was inhuman. Metallic.

Halig looked about him; could not locate the sound. It seemed to come from no particular source, and he gave up in frustration, turning back to the uncooperative portal.

The voice came a second time; startled him. 'Speak cipher.'

'Where are you?' he cried, spinning round.

'Not relevant. Speak cipher.'

'I must leave this place!'

'You may leave having spoken cipher sequence.'

Halig could not understand it; he had never encountered such a thing. 'Open!' he demanded, slamming the doorway with his fists.

'Cannot. Speak cipher.'

'Portals must open when requested!'

'Not this one. Speak cipher.'

Halig’s eyes narrowed. Was there a trace of sarcasm in the monotone reply?

'There are men after me,' he said, changing tack.

'Speak cipher.'

'They will kill me if they find me.'

A pause. 'They cannot kill that which is invisible.'

A momentary flicker caught the periphery of Halig's vision. He snapped his head around to see the electronic eye flicker erratically, its sullen red glow fading into obsidian. But the amber oculus remained alert, watchful. Waiting.

'What of the auditory sensors?'

'All deactivated. Speak cipher.'

Halig heard noise coming from the other end of the corridor, past the door through which he'd entered. The Trachai. Outside. His mind was filled with fear—and an irrational pride. At least I will die fighting them, and not at the hands of a slavering Contender.

The noise stopped, then resumed, angry fists pumelling the door, attempting to force it open. But the door was locked now; a minute more and the Trachai had moved on, and there was silence.

Halig breathed a sigh of pure relief. 'You saved me.'

The voice remained cool. 'The Trachai are animals. Speak cipher.'

'I have none.'

'Speak cipher.'

'I have none!'

The voice, or the portal, or whatever controlled both, seemed to consider the statement now that it had been voiced a second time. 'Then you must leave.'

'I cannot; the Trachai will kill me.'

'Then you must speak the appropriate cipher sequence.'

'That I cannot do either.'

A long pause. 'Then you will stay.'

A shorter pause. 'For now.'

Halig slumped against the unyielding hardness of the exitway. 'I am weary,' he said, and even as the words escaped him there was within him an irresistible desire to rest, to drowse.

'Then sleep,' said the voice.

Halig complied.

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My name is Jahmal. I am a moron. I do not know what a moron is but I know I must be one because the men who clean my room say so all the time. They make it sound like a bad thing; their faces get all screwed up.

The doctors do not call me moron. Their faces do not screw up. The doctors did something to my brain. They say it has been reconstructed. I was a vegetable before it was reconstructed. I am not a vegetable now; I can think and talk and get dressed on my own. And I can see better, too. The doctors gave me lenses. They are electric. They are powerful. They see things other people cannot see.

The doctors come every day. I tell them my name and the size of their intestines. The doctors ask questions. The questions are hard. When I answer they turn to each other and say things I do not understand about X-ray refraction and chromatic microscopy. It makes my head hurt.

Miss Ramírez does not make my head hurt. She does not call me moron and she does not mutter about bio-optic implants. She just talks to me before I take my medicine. We talk a lot. Her breath comes across to me when we talk and it smells of mint. That is because Miss Ramírez eats lots of peppermint sticks. Sometimes she gives me some, but not before meals. Sometimes she laughs. Miss Ramírez has a nice laugh.

I do not laugh much. Miss Ramírez says it is because I have no sense of humour. I ask her what a sense of humour is but she only shakes her head. It is a fine head. It has curls on it. The curls are the color of coal. If I look hard enough I can see all the little bits of color that make it as dark as a storm cloud. I can see the cells. I can see the folicles. They are beautiful. She is beautiful. I always miss her when she leaves.

The preacher comes sometimes and reads the Holy Bible and says that I am saved, that I am an innocent child in God's green pasture. I want to know what a pasture is. He says it is a field. I have never seen a field. There is grass outside my window but that is not a field; it is too small, he says.

I do not miss the preacher when he goes. I like it when he shows me magic tricks after he stops reading, but I do not miss him afterwards. I do not miss him because he is not Miss Ramírez; he has no curls. The preacher is bald. I wonder how Miss Ramírez would look bald. I do not like the thought. It is not pretty.

Miss Ramírez is pretty. I tell her so when she comes again with my little green tablet and glass of water.

'You are pretty,' I say.

She laughs her happy laugh that I cannot copy because I have no sense of humour. She says, 'Thank you, Jahmal.'

I like it when she calls me Jahmal; it makes me feel warm inside. Other people call me Jah, or Jally. The preacher calls me son. The doctors call me Subject C. Most people call me moron.

Miss Ramírez touches my arm. It tingles. I think it tingles because of her. It is a strange feeling. But it is nice. I like it.

'I love you, Miss Ramírez,' I tell her.

She does not laugh. She frowns. She says, 'Oh, Jahmal.'

'I'm sorry,' I say. And I am. I think I have spoiled everything. That was stupid, I tell myself.

But her hand is still on my arm and so I think maybe it is okay.

Miss Ramírez says, 'Don't be sorry, Jahmal.'

'You're not mad at me?'

'No; never.' She squeezes my arm. I think I will explode. 'I could never be mad at you.'

'Does that mean you love me?'

She swallows. She says, 'Of course I do—like any two friends love one another.'

'But not like you love the preacher?'

Something funny happens to Miss Ramírez's face. It makes her stop being pretty.

'The preach— Whatever gave you that idea?'

'I saw you,' I tell her. I see she is anxious and I figure I will tell her and make it stop. 'I saw you in the hall one time. You were kissing.'

Miss Ramírez does not stop being anxious. She shakes her head. I wonder if maybe she has a headache.

She says, 'You spied on us—'

'No,' I say. 'I was doing my lens exercises and looking through the walls like the doctors told me and I saw you.'

'And you watched me.' Her voice is not very happy. It is mad. She said she could never be mad at me and now she is being mad anyway. I do not like the way she is looking at me. I do not like the sound of her voice.

I shrug. 'I'm sorry. I did not know. Nobody told me not to do it.'

Miss Ramírez's fingers keep squeezing my arm. Harder and harder. I guess she does not know how hard she is squeezing.

'That was a bad thing to do,' she says. 'A very bad thing—'

'Why is it a bad thing?' I ask.

'Because he already has a wife. You know he has a wife, don't you, Jahmal?'

Of course I know.

'Yes,' I say. 'I know. But why is it bad if he loves you too? It is good to love people. He says so all the time.'

'This is different, Jahmal.'

'How is it different?'

'It just is.' Her fingers are really hurting me now. 'You'll have to be punished—'

I do not want to be punished. I say so. I say, 'I do not want to be punished. You're hurting my arm.'

She lets go. Her face turns red when she sees the marks she has made. I can see more than she can. I can see the little veins all crushed and broken. I can see the damage.

'All right,' Miss Ramírez says. 'No punishment. On one condition. It has to be a secret. Our secret. No one else can know.' Miss Ramírez stares at me. She has nice eyes. They are green. And blue. And grey. Her cornea is very smooth. There is a speck of mascara on the ninth hair of her left eyelash. 'Do you understand, Jahmal?'

I nod. 'Yes,' I tell her. 'I understand. A secret.'

'That's right. A special one, just between us two.'

She smiles. That makes me feel good. Sharing a secret with her makes me feel more good.

'I still love you, Miss Ramírez,' I say.

She leans over and hugs me. Her uniform smells nice. It is soft and clean, like Miss Ramírez. I am sure I will faint because I am so happy. My arm almost does not hurt anymore.

She says, 'And I love you—as a friend. My very best friend.'

And she stands up and straightens her smock and is gone before I can even say goodbye.

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‘Every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.’

―Oliver Sacks, Musicophilia.

ONE: THE SERPENT

‘Put your finger in it.’

‘No.’

‘Go ahead, son.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘It won’t hurt you, Andrew — I promise.’

I believe that promise. I trust him. For what father would offer his offspring a serpent? That is how the scissors seems to my six-year-old self — a double-headed hydra with scimitar jaws. But it will not hurt me. He will not hurt me. The serpent is deadly, but he has charmed it inert so that I might lay my finger on its fangs.

I smile at him — a shy, anxious smile — still afraid but full of faith, full of love. I put the full length of my appendage in the scissors’ open maw.

‘Never do that again!’ His shout is like a clap of thunder, a force of nature, an act of god. ‘That’s very foolish!’

I jerk my finger off the scissors as if bitten by its blades, the serpent not dead and inert but dangerous and alive. I am crushed. Confused. Mortally wounded. Something deep inside me shrivels up and dies. ‘But you promised…’

‘Never put your finger into scissors!’ My father is so angry at me now, so disappointed, so incredulous at my stupidity, my naivety. His face is screwed up in disgust and disbelief. ‘I could have cut it off!’

I could have cut it off.

I look at my forefinger, now limp and inward-curling, mere moments ago so straight and proud, thrusting deep into the opening forged by my father. In my mind I see it on the kitchen countertop, amputated from the little hand routinely burrowed deep inside my father’s clenched fist, holding on for dear life despite his masculine protest to pull out, to retract, to be a real boy.

I let go now. I will never put my faith in him again, much less anything else. But already I am become Pinocchio, a hollow child, for a real boy’s father keeps him safe, teaches him to trust, makes him a man. My Geppetto lacks this skill. Has warped the wood of his creation.

The shrivelled place inside me stirs. It is my consciousness, transformed, no longer dead but sullied in resurrection. It hungers for the security that seemed so certain a mere minute earlier. Somehow, it still trusts. Still believes others are innately good.

The sting of the scorpion will teach it otherwise.

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Emilio Danoza was soaked to the skin.

He shivered miserably as icy rivulets of rain coursed down the back of his neck, filling his boots, finding the chinks in his ancient oilskins.

Shelter, he thought, pushing determinedly into the raging darkness of the night, the wind assailing him with invisible hands, stalling his progress, making him stumble. Shelter and warmth‚ that was what Emilio longed for as he ploughed ahead, his teeth chattering, his bones rattling. The desire to eat had left him days ago, displaced first by nausea, then vomiting and diarrhoea. A dry bed to sleep in was his driving hunger now.

As if in answer to his thoughts, lightning lanced across the sky, illuminating a small thatched building in the distance: A tavern, bright and inviting. Jubilant, he grinned, rain batting fitfully against his teeth, thunderclaps booming in his ears like celestial applause. Emilio quickened his pace, bowing his head before the storm.

After a time, he lifted his gaze. Water droplets stung his eyes, blurring his vision.

The tavern was nowhere in sight.

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This short story is available with full audio narration. Press Play to listen now:

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