Terry's mother

Terry had invited me round for coffee, so I was sat at the breakfast counter drinking a microwaved Nescafe very slowly when his mother came in clutching a Louis Vuitton suitcase and some carrier bags that rattled.

"How was your holiday, mum?" asked Terry. He put down his cup of coffee and went to hug her. She pushed the suitcase into his arms, and I took advantage of being ignored to pour the coffee into the nearby biscuit jar. Terry's idea of coffee had apparantly been acquired during a stay at Guantanamo Bay.

"Well, it was nice," said his mother, sighing. She's in her early eighties now, a little bit under five foot, and has fever-bright eyes that never seem to miss anything going on around her. She's also very competetive and hates to lose at anything. She's been banned from all of the local Bingo Halls. They usually say she's too aggressive a player and makes the other patrons feel nervous. She says that she's just a little outspoken about infractions of the rules. We're not sure: there have been a large number of stabbings at Bingo Halls she's been too, and we think it's a little suspicious that all of these little old ladies just happen to have fallen awkwardly onto their knitting.

"Where did you go, Mrs. Mossbrook?" I said. Terry hadn't mentioned that his mother had gone on holiay.

"Italy," she said. "It was a tour of churches, a religious thing I think. Lots and lots of saints. It wasn't my idea of course, but Agnes from number 30 didn't want to go on her own so I said I'd go."

Terry had put the suitcase by the washing machine ready for unloading later and was picking up the carrier bags. They clacked and rattled in an oddly familiar way.

"What's in here, mum?" he said, opening one. I saw what looked like a human leg bone fall out onto the table, little crumbs of dried mud falling off it.

"Oh, that Agnes," she said. "Every church we went in she had to get herself a little scraping of earth from the grave of whatever saint was buried there."

I started to grin, and Terry turned pale.

"Of course, I couldn't let her win," continued his mother looking as smug as the cat that found the cream, "so I collected relics from each church."

"Relics?" said Terry, and I knew he was hoping that these would turn out to be gift-shop souvenir replicas.

"Yes," said his mother. "I've got a bone from every saint. The carrier bag at the bottom has the one I got from some church in the Vatican; that one was a bugger to get out, I can tell you. Finally I shopped Agnes and let the swiss guard take her away while I got out of there."

Terry sat down heavily in a chair, his head in his hands; I started laughing; and his mother bustled over to the coffee-jar to microwave some more Nescafe.

I'm only meat

It's that time of year again, when our pretty little friend
melanoma gets herself out and about, and decides to walk across this
already cancer-riddled frame of mine. The exquisite agonies more than
make up for the fact that (due solely to the number of amputations) I
haven't been able to persuade even farmyard animals to have sex with me in the past three years. I relish my discomfort, honestly I do.
The sun beats down on me, and I can feel the ultra-violet being
ultra-violent to my skin, peeling away the last protective layers I have
left and flensing my flesh. The infra-red heats me from the outside in,
and I sometimes wish that the microwaves from the sun be strong enough
that they could also heat me from the inside out; I cook so much more
evenly then.
Melanoma whispers her sweet nothings in my ears; of cool white
sheets and hospital beds with hot and cold running sores (I'm sure she
means nurses really, the darling is just trying to wind me up), of
doctors who sigh and tsk like they mean it, of a loving wife (who died
three years ago of terminal frustration having sex with a bread knife,
and so would be sat at my bedside in an advanced state of decomposition
-- I don't want the competition!) and children who don't want my
inheritance because it might be contaminated.
All of these things, just because I lowered the lid on the
sunbed, and the timer went wrong, so I can't get out, and it's been
nearly a week now. Hunger is making me delirious, but another five
minutes and I'll be done enough to eat. I'm only meat.

No country for young men

The toilet-seat was so sticky that I had to peel myself off it to stand up when I was finished. Normally I'd be nauseated, but I'd been told that things in lesbian bars weren't the same as anywhere else. I cleaned myself up as best as I could and went back out into the bar where the headteacher of my daughter's school, Ms. Moscow, was drinking Ovaltine cocktails.

Ms. Moscow was in her late forties, had a hairstyle from the forties, a waistline that was probably in the forties and an IQ that -- well, you get the picture. The woman was consistant, and that was a good thing. She also had a slight, brown moustache from the Ovaltine cocktails. As I approached she upended another glass and waved coquettishly as the bargirl.

"You can guarantee me that my daughter will become a lesbian?" I said, sitting on a plush red suggestive couch. "You'll throw her to the gym teachers when you get back to the school?"
"Darling, the gym teachers aren't lesbians!" She sounded shocked. "That's such a terrible cliche. We have deployed our forces far more carefully than that. But yes, I guarantee that your daughter will get useful life-guidance in womanly matters for you."
"Will she be a lesbian by June?" I said, tapping my foot on the floor nervously.
"She'll be a lesbian by June, Marianne and Betty!" giggled Ms. Moscow, flinging her head back. The bargirl, who had been approaching our table with a tray containing a fresh cocktail was taken unaware, and Ms. Moscow's head caught the edge of the tray. The cocktail shot into the air and shattered somewhere in the distance, Ms. Moscow's eyes rolled up into her head and she slumped back onto the couch, and all around I sensed predatory instincts firing into life. I fled.

Back home I called up my procurers, Angie and Val, and had them send a lesbian over. They sent over Hettie, who they referred to behind her back as the dyke bike. When I asked them about this, having been under the impression that lesbians mated for life, I was told that simply wasn't true and I should know better than to believe what bitter gay men had to say. Then Val, waiting till Angie had gone to check out how well I'd vacuumed, had said that Hettie did mate for life, but had many more lives than any normal person. I shrugged; all that mattered to me was that I had a lesbian.

Summoning my poor dead wife was easy with a real lesbian for the channelling. Hettie gurgled like a blocked drain and her face slackened, and then she sat up again, her face twisting to look like my wife's, and I knew I'd got through.

"What in the seven hells have you put me in this time?" she said, sounding revolted. "Just how people are living in this body at all?"
"Angie and Val said she's a dyke bike," I said, "Though I've no idea what they mean by that."
"That's because you've no idea of a how long a normal relationship should last," she said tartly. "Most people manage longer than Hello...Goodbye."
"Bitch."
"Cumdump."
"I spoke to Ms. Moscow today," I said, trying for the higher moral ground. "She says she can guarantee that Helen will be a lesbian by June."
"Do you think we're doing the right thing? It seems slightly wrong to try to force poor Helen to be a lesbian..."
"We've been over this," I said firmly, "in order to bring you back from the dead we need someone similar enough to you. She's your daughter, and the only reason we had a kid in the first place is in case one of us died."
"It would have been easier if you'd died," she said, wistfully.
"Damn right it would," I said, "but you were the one who had to go and find the only lesbian serial killer in London. Anyway, we've talked this through before too. When you come back, it'll pick up all of the imposed lesbianism anyway, and she'll be back to normal."
"Normal?" she said. "How many 'older sisters', and 'concerned mother-figures' have you provided for her over the last eight years?"
"Enough to be looking forward to having you back so I don't have to look after her by myself anymore!"
"I love you too, cumdump."

Hettie chose that moment to recover, so I went to make her a cup of tea. This was all a lot of work, but it would be worth it to have my wife back. Then we could get on with our real plans. We were going to show the world what ruthless really means.

Footsteps on the wind

I walk three inches above the ground, and have done since I was four. I don't know why, and the doctors my parents took me to had no idea either. They finally pointed out that it didn't seem to be hurting me, and told my parents that I'd probably grow out of it. I never have.

When I was eight I started leaving footprints in the air behind me. They would glow softly and fade after a few seconds. That got me more attention and more doctors, and this time a particle physicist, but still no understanding of what was wrong with me. Or, as I was beginning to think, what was right with me.

After all, when I fell over, I never hit a hard surface; the air cushioned me three inches above it. And at night my glowing footprints made me easy to spot, and they gave out enough light for me to make out my surroundings. That's very useful when you're 8 and need the toilet in the middle of the night. There were a couple of downsides, mostly that I couldn't learn how to swim because I stood three inches above the surface of the water. But they didn't seem very important to me.

Two days before I turned sixteen, the particle physicist turned up on the doorstep. He said he suspected that something else was going to happen when I turned sixteen, and he wanted to see what. I sulked. I was 15 after all. It turned out he was right though, at half past eight in the morning on my 16th birthday a flock of green and blue birds flew through the wall of the kitchen, circled my head, and flew off through another wall, passing unharmed through the house as though it weren't there. The physicist muttered something about sentient neutrinos, but I ignored him. Then he shook my hand, told me that he thought I wasn't born to live in this world, and left. I've not seen him since.

I turn 32 in 7 hours time. I checked what time I was born with the hospital. Something's going to happen; odd things are happening already. Yesterday I absently mindedly took the square root of the furniture in the living room, and it hurts my head to go in there now because it all seems perfectly normal and when I leave the rest of the world seems fundamentally wrong. An hour ago my footprints started glowing more brightly, and ten minutes they burst into flame. Luckily the flames don't seem to burn anything in the real world; at least not yet. I've just started hearing a low, sonorous voice talking somewhere behind me. The birds are circling my head, and don't seem inclined to leave.

I may not be long for this world now.

The wisdom of Buddy

Hi, my name's Buddy. I'll be your spiritual guide for a while. There's a lot I have to teach you before you'll become enlightened, but the journey's part of the learning process and trust me, it's going to be fun. But before we start, I want to tell you a parable.

Years ago, when I worked in an office for a while, I was stood outside a meeting room telling a group of colleagues how I'd managed to clinch a business deal the day before with an inspired use of judo when one of my colleagues, a tall man with a saturnine aspect, said distinctly, "I hate you, Buddy."

"Do you?" I replied. "Do you really hate me? Do you wake in the morning fresh from dreams of burying me alive in an unmarked grave in Epping Forest? Does your breakfast have an iron tang to it, because you know in your heart of hearts that it should be seasoned with my freshly spilled blood? Do you drive to work focused intently on the road ahead, hoping that I'll appear at the roadside so that you can veer to the left and run me down? Is your day spent planning in meticulous detail how to get me to electrocute myself in the washroom?"

"Or is your hatred of me the weak, insipid kind that etiolates your spirit, drags your mood down with your low-level revulsion, not only of me, but also of yourself for your inability to do anything about it? Do you earn yourself an ulcer for never releasing your rage? Do you deprive yourself of happiness, hoping that some spiritual voodoo will transfer it over to me, and that karma will kill me for you?"

"Where is your passion in your hatred? When I hate, I hate intensely, like the bright light of a supernova, and just like the supernova, my hatred explodes outwards in wonderful, fantastic luminence, slaughtering everything in its path."

"I don't hate you that much," said the tall man looking sulky and disappointed. He shuffled his feet and frowned.

"Do you hate like that all the time?" asked another colleague.

"Of course not," I responded. "But I carry my passion throughout everything I do. In the absence of hatred, other emotions may take the stage. When I love, I love so thoroughly that everything else ceases to matter. I never have to ask if the earth moved because if you'd even noticed the earth, then it wasn't me loving you. And when I set out to make a deal, I make my deal and the handshake that seals it is like the sonorous ringing of the judgement bell for all concerned."

We dispersed at that point and went back to our desks. The tall man continued to hate me in his small, mean way for another two days, after which time he unaccountably opened a window and stuck his head out while the trees outside were being pollarded. The chainsaw sliced messily through his neck, and I looked up just as his head fell past the window, and I know I saw recognition in his eyes.

The moral of this parable is, of course, that tall men can always be cut down to size.

Cookery school

I was getting slightly worried about this cooking school. I'd been here three days so far, out of the two-week learn-to-cook holiday I was on, and it already felt like a lifetime. I was crossing the days off in my little pocket diary already, and would probably have left quietly in the night if they didn't lock us in the dormitories.

The dormitories were just that: long, low-ceilinged rooms with twelve beds down each of the long walls with a locker at the foot and a wardrobe-cum-cupboard at the side. Each bed had sheets and a single thin blanket, and when I opened my cupboard there was a pin-up in there, presumably from the previous occupant, of an asparagus stalk. With some stains on it.

On the first day we had looked in dismay at the beds, put what we could of our luggage in the lockers and wardrobe, and then looked on in further dismay as everything that wouldn't fit was taken away from us to be burned. Luckily I always travel light, and hadn't actually be able to fill my locker or wardrobe, so I kept all of my stuff. The woman who'd arrived with a toddler had been told that either it went in the locker or went to be burned. She went hysterical, and we've seen neither of them since.

The first day in the kitchen was spent on knife work. All day. 18 hours long to be precise, chopping things into batons, into julienne, into dice and brunoise. My fingers were bleeding at the end of it from the numerous occasions I'd slipped, and my arms were aching as though I'd been lifting weights. I could barely see from the tears that the onions had induced. I was so tired I slept without noticing if the bed was hard or not, or if I was warm enough with only a sheet and a green, military issue blanket.

The second day we were split into two groups. My group was announced to contain only the people who were competent to cook, and there were four of us. The other group, containing 19 people were told they weren't fit to clean our knives, and set to making stock. We continued to hone our knife skills; we were given double the quantity of vegetables to chop as the day before, and told we had only 15 hours to do it all in. I chopped like a maniac. It helped that I didn't want to look up: the splashes and the screams told me how the other group were being punished for failing to get their stock right.

When the 15 hours were up I'd chopped up all of my vegetables and was so edgy that I was sharpening my knife every two minutes because I had nothing left to chop. When a slab of beef was slapped in front of me and I was told to fillet I'd started before the instructor has taken his hand away. As he walked off I heard him saying quietly, "this one has potential."

That night I took the blankets from the beds on either side of me, and annexed a locker and a wardrobe that I didn't need. I'm not sure why, but I felt a definite need to exert my authority. No-one tried to object; they just got on with shivering in silent misery.

Today, the third day, two people had graduated from the stock group to my group, and the rest all seemed to have burns and scalds; mostly hands, but one or two faces too. When I came into the kitchen I'd pulled my knife from my belt automatically and looked from something to chop or to fillet, and the rest of the students had backed away from me. The instructor looked at me appraisingly, and then at a live chicken chained at the ankles to the long steel instructor's table at the front of the classroom. He nodded at the chicken, and said,

"You have three minutes to kill, clean and joint the bird. You may leave the feathers on."

A red haze seems to descend, and I can't remember what happened after that, but I remember moving fast, and hearing a high-pitched squawk. My memory only clearly comes back with me shouting "2 minutes 48" and hurling the chicken head at one of the slaves in the second group. It hit her between the eyes, and she collapsed to the floor. As she did so I said curtly, "Pick it up and use it for stock," and I'm ashamed to say I don't honestly know if I meant the chicken head or the woman.

I felt the chef's hand on my shoulder, and he said quietly, "You will make a good chef-assassin, we will move you up to the advanced course tomorrow."

And that's what's got me worried; I don't know if I can cope with the advanced course....

It's what the public wants

I had been sent to the TV studios to do some interviews with the parents so that we could send them over to the magazine team and let them publish them in the next issue of the magazine. The show would go out the next month, by which time we should have been able to generate enough hype to guarantee our audience share for the next quarter. The advertising boys had had a hard time selling at first, but then the Mirabelle Watson case had hit the papers and stayed on the front page for four days. The selling was a lot easier after that.

I arrived at 10; the auditions were due to start at 1, but already there was a long queue of parents and their children. A lot longer queue than I'd expected. I stopped in the car park, looking at it starting at the studio doors and snaking round the side of the building, all along the wall, and then round another corner and out of sight. I looked at Joe, my camera-man, and he looked at me. Neither of us could find anything to say, so we picked up our feet and headed over to the front of queue.

Joe started the camera rolling as we approached, and I raised my microphone defensively. The parents, a young-ish couple with a blonde boy of possibly 11, spotted the red light on the camera and immediately straightened up. They beamed at the camera, white teeth almost sparkling, and the mother leant forward a little and said quietly, "Joel, the camera." The blonde boy looked up at us then too.

"Good morning!" I said trying to sound cheerful and bubbly. "We're from GlobalSat Networks. We're doing the 'Making of...' video. I hope you'll be willing to talk to us for a few minutes. We'd like to know why you've decided to enter your child in America's Next Serial Killer."