Goldsmiths - University of London

"Hi mum!"

A hand landed roughly on his shoulder.

Hives grabbed hold of his chin and spat in his face once more.

"Who are you boy?! Some kind of half breed? You don't know do yer? Well boy you're nothing. Repulsive and disgusting. Just a tiny maggot!"

This had been going on for at least thirty minutes. Adam wriggled but couldn't free himself from the back of the basketball hoop, where Hives had hung him by the lapel of his jacket. Hives tightened the zipper even further pushing it up to his chin so it pinched his apple. And as the next verbal onslaught began Adam looked over at the roof of his house and pictured a shimmering, silver saucer drop out of the now insipid cloud and hover over the house's flaking roof, a few of its slates sliding off from the hum and wind kicked up by the craft. A light beamed from it painting the house golden and in it appeared an angel and Adam smiled.

"Now let's go and see your mother," growled Hives.

A piece of duct tape was placed over his mouth. Then Hives walked back over to his mother and slapped her face. She started and gave a little cry. This made Adam start too, but he could do nothing as his hands were tied. Hives stood behind her chair and put his right arm carefully around her neck. He leant in so his face was directly behind her head looking away to the side, so that they were cheek to cheek. He began to push harder into her windpipe, pressing his clenched fist into his chest with his left hand. It was seconds before Adam could take in what was happening. He saw her feet tighten in their slippers, the only movement from her legs, which had reminded him of wooden drumsticks. The folds on her neck stood out above the forearm. He could see she was fighting to swallow. Adam began to kick out against the ropes that bound his legs together. She was beginning to change colour. Hives snorted with the exertion, his eyes trained on the telephone table in reptilian concentration. Her hands pawed uselessly at his arm like the legs of an overtired insect. Her eyes screwed tight and then opened, almost rolling in their sockets. Adam kicked out at each of her muffled, enfeebled cries, squirming violently as if feeling the pain and movement she was unable to perform. Her chest heaved, her thin breasts beneath the blouse, and he saw the fight to save her life there. Hives grunted once more, and feeling the frantic deployment of her blood to the brain and Adam's muffled screams against the tape, sensed he was on the home straight.

And Adam could himself feel the pressure in her temples, the stars shooting, the impromptu fireworks bursting in them. Saw the man's nostrils flare and puff and felt the squeezing that also seemed to lift her up in the chair as the fanfare of stars exploded in her head. Hives took his forearm away, her head lolled forward and her hands fell as the being who sustained life had dropped the strings, and her eyes stared up wild into space, fossilized. And Hives, his knees cracking as he stood up, pushed the lifeless body of Grace off the chair, as if disgusted by it, and without looking at Adam, but weary with effort, went out through the living room door and into the hall.

For the first time Adam became aware of the hot tears that streaked his face. And just as the shaking began he heard the click of the front door as it closed.

And when the next day he had freed his hands and feet and ripped the tape from his mouth, he leapt from the chair and to the crumpled heap of his mother, lying obscenely askew, and sat there cradling her head in his arms. In his keening he felt a stone grow in his heart. And then he was calm.

"Where's my wife?" he said weakly.

"Oh, my downstairs is flooded and so very kindly Amy allowed us to stay here," replied a very pale Jean.

"Yes but where is my wife?"

"She's over at Molly's. The children too ..."

"But why?"

"To give us some privacy."

"Molly lives in Rotterdam."

Jean bit her lip and cursed Amy's dizziness. Richard marched out of the house shaking and within seconds Jean was on the phone.

"Ah so she does ..." said Amy.

The Southbreaths were newly arrived. To their left were the Ritmov family. Both Celia and Daniel found them disconcerting. Daniel remarked how expressionless they seemed, how wooden their manner was when they greeted the new arrivals on the front lawn. This was on account of the amount of botox in their faces and collagen in their lips. Brent Ritmov escorted them out back. "You can see the new developments from here." The Southbreaths followed them in trepidation.

"They've completely regenerated the riverside."

"Tarted it up, said his wife Leila.

Now the breezy neighbourliness of the couple on the right they found much more refreshing: Geena and Alan Hartley. On the very first night there was a knock at the door and the couple were standing there with a bottle of wine.

"Hi, we're your new neighbours. Wondered if you'd like to pop round for a drink," said Alan sweeping the hair off his face.

Daniel came up behind Celia and put his hands on her waist. She shrank a little.

"Yeah that'd be great. Why not?"

Celia glanced up at him.

"We'll be over in ten minutes," she informed them.

"Terrific!" Alan beamed.

An hour or two later the four of them were indolently sprawled over Geena's canary furniture, in a graveyard of empty bottles. Geena hiccupped and furrowed her brow.

"You know there are those squid aren't there? That go without sex for the whole of their lives and then come together from miles around for a mass orgy on the ocean floor, lay their eggs and literally all die. Now I think that's lovely. I mean what a way to go. Well, what I'm trying to say is we haven't done anything all evening and ..."

"Geena what are you trying to say?" piped Alan, sounding rehearsed.

"Well I thought the four of us could get ... squiddy."

"I can't stand seafood," Celia said firmly.

Daniel leaned forward almost dislodging his wife who was recumbent upon him.

"Celia listen to what she's got to say."

Geena stood up unsteadily and took a plastic pouch from the pocket of her skirt.

"Perhaps this will help."

"I'm not taking any of that filth," said Celia.

"I'll have a little if I may," said Daniel. "Just a touch."

Geena clumsily poured some of the white powder on the coffee table.

"Say when."

"That's fine thank you."

"You're ever so polite Daniel."

"God Daniel, since when have you been Thomas de Quincey. One lemsip and I have to carry you upstairs usually."

"You've got a real gentleman there Celia," said Geena. "Want some?"

"I can get high on his shoes thank you."

Just then Alan stood up.

"How about if Geena and I just pop outside and give the two of you the chance to think it over. You know, see whether it's what you want and what you might get from the experience."

He rocked on his heels, clapped his hands, smiled at Geena, who smiled back, and somewhat awkwardly, they turned and left the room.

There was a moment's silence.

"So do you fancy him then?"

"Well I've had worse."

"When?" asked Daniel aghast.

"I suppose it would be different," she went on. "We are a bit stuck in our ways. Everyone says we should get out more ... But not a word of it at a dinner party ok?"

Daniel reached over and kissed her on the cheek.

"Thanks Celia."

"Just look at the cat with the cream. You needn't look so pleased. And I intend to enjoy it too you know."

"But not too much eh?"

At that precise moment their hosts returned.

"You've had some time to reflect and ..."

"Let's get started," said Celia. Daniel gazed at her as if for the first time again. Geena sat down beside him and began stroking his tousled blond hair. Alan remained rooted to the spot watching them. Celia began to pick at the carpet.

"You're ever so nice Daniel. Both of you are, a really nice couple. Really ... well mannered. And I think that's lovely."

"Daniel can I have a word?" said Alan abruptly, all the humour gone from his face.

"Eh well I'm sort of tied up mate."

"If that's what you want dear," cooed Geena in his ear.

"It's important."

"Alright." Daniel kissed Geena. "Won't be a moment," and he followed Alan out of the door. Geena smiled at Celia, who returned it, somewhat forced as if across a waiting room. Within seconds Daniel returned in an obvious cloud, Alan's beanstalk frame towering over him. In a monotone he said:

"I find you very attractive Geena but I'm afraid I can't go through with this."

Geena glared at Alan who was looking at his feet. She whisked up her shoes and marched past him.

"I'm going to bed ... alone," she announced.

Geena lay awake in the prickling darkness staring at the ceiling. Realising it was hopeless she sighed and got up, putting a towel round her nakedness. She walked slowly to the living room, opened the door and stood in the doorway staring at her nails.

"I just wanted to say that I thought this was a really good idea at the time, and it's actually the first time we've tried it as well and because we'd had a few, but as it turns out, I don't really want to."

The sofa bed was out and there were muffled sounds coming from underneath the duvet.

"I suppose at the end of the day I just want to be loved."

She started to sniff.

"Alan and I have had a few problems lately. My boss is bullying me at work and his terrapin died. We seem to have lost interest and I thought it might bring us closer together. I was lonely as a child and I think I use sex to compensate to fill the void. It's all fucked up."

At that moment Celia's head popped out at the foot of the bed. She leapt up and kissed Geena hungrily on the lips dragging her over and into it. Geena's towel fell away like the door of a rusty, old banger.

Around one o'clock Celia and Geena had stationed a couple of chairs in front of the bed with their hands on each others' thighs in the afterglow of love, watching Daniel athletically sodomising Alan on the bed. Both men were trying to put on a brave face but Daniel frequently looked distraught and Alan winced.

"Aren't they lovely."

"Bless," said Celia. "it's really not his thing."

He paused in the road. Gnats swarmed about his head. Then he plunged headlong into the crop and vanished in its embrace. His head appeared moments later over the other side, like a hippo surfacing in a river. And with lizard stealth he kept low to the ground and crawled to the fence. He slid the cutters out of his tracksuit bottoms and set to work on it like a zealous dentist. Slipping through the hole he made, he bounded up to the shed, leaning against it to get his back his breath.

He glanced round its corner. A firefly bobbed in the air. Suddenly it fell away to the ground and expired. A flame flared and another glow began just where the other had been. It was then he realised it had been someone smoking. The smoker stood in mute contemplation of the red sky. Adam saw the entrance was open, spilling the building's light. He padded quietly round to the front and slipped noiselessly through the door. He found himself in a corridor. On tiptoe he peered through the glass in the next door he came to. He spotted a drinks' machine and the open, silver mouth of a basking, crisp packet, as if it fed on dust from the air.

He put his ear to another door, pushed it open a fraction and then some more. Under its stark, blazing ceiling lights, he was confronted by a scene that reminded him of the pictures of Birkenau he had seen at school. Rows of cages, one on top of the other, their bloated, clucking occupants stuffed like sandbags, clambering over one another for a flicker of comfort or too weak to struggle and resigned to their mutant agony. Shocked he forgot himself, closing the door with a bang.

He then pushed open another. Its floor was covered with a soft, undulating, yellow cumulus in a pen, which came as a relief. He leaped into the heart of it. A mass of chirping chicks recoiled, leaving a ring of exposed sand and seed beneath his feet, their shrill, one note cantata rising to a pitch he thought might burst his eardrums. He felt a surge of feeling for their tender, warm breasted confusion and all thought of stealing a meal gone, he tried to save as many as he could, stuffing them in his jacket pockets, as if they were wads of notes.

The man in the canteen blew the empty crisp packet across the table, unzipped the holdall at his feet and took out sandwiches wrapped in cellophane. When they were laid out on the table he took the top slice off one of them and peered without relish at the thin paste inside. Overhearing a noise, he paused in his inspection. Moments later a face rose up in the door's window like a washed out sun and quickly retreated. He slapped the slice back down and phoned the police.

Cautiously Adam approached the entrance. Firefly man had wandered off and the sky snow had also vanished as night closed in. Adam ran, his organs chirping. He scrambled under the fence on his back so as not to crush any of his litter and in minutes was back on the road to the village oblivious to the wheat's embrace. The gnats danced in front of his face again, but he ignored their robotic gyrations, and brazen bites.

A police van passed him as he entered the village. It screeched to a halt and emptied four officers with batons from its rear. Adam, with finely tuned instinct, knew they were for him, so he turned and ran back the way he had come, down a dim alley and over a wooden fence into a back garden. He vaulted all the gardens on that side of the street one by one, a phantom hurdler. Two of the police followed him, trampling flowerbeds, some way behind to a chorus of yapping dogs, broken slats and the scandalized shouts of neighbours at their back doors. Adam was into the last garden and hurled himself over the opposite fence before the owner, who had been alerted by the commotion further down and was stood in the middle of his garden, could grab the panting spectre. Adam rolled over the final hurdle without snagging himself, but when he landed, the other two policemen were waiting for him. One instantly stuck a can in his face and sprayed. Adam's eyes filled with water and as he staggered blindly, they leapt on him pinning him to the ground.

"Ahh! Ahhh! I can't see anything!" he screamed. He felt his eyes burning, as if hell had come looking for him.

"I didn't do it! I didn't do it!"

There was a loud clatter and the other two baton wielders dropped from the fence. Adam was rolled roughly onto his back.

"I want to die!" he cried over and over again, but his lament was greeted with nothing but grunts and the scuff of boots on the pavement and his plaint petered out. Workmanlike hands felt in his jacket pocket for identification. All they emerged with, one by one, was the lifeless booty of the chicken shed.