Hip to the max

They were the poster couple for a fashion that desperately wished it could be forgotten.  She had knitted white wrap-around boots that she'd bought in a little boutique shop in West London for more than her monthly salary.  The shop assistant had tsked sadly at her, and asked her which diet she was trying at the time, and she'd sighed just as miserably and talked for an hour about the relative benefits of Cambodian peasant food versus Atkins-assisted cabbage soup and roasted fish bones.  They'd compared wrist sizes (she'd won, of course) and she'd left carrying the boots like a prize.  She never looked back, and never saw the shop assistant slamming her own head against the glass in the door, trying like a tortured horse to commit suicide in the confines of her stable.
Above the boots she wore burgundy jodhpurs that didn't quite fit around the waist or her bottom, and she held this up to her friends as proof that she was size zero.  Her friends, of course, sympathized with her over cocktails at lunch, over canapés in the evening, and now and them over ironic shots in overpriced bars that she thought were edgy and underground.  They tittered to themselves as they ordered Old Fashioneds and knocked them back, not seeing the bartender's wince or the looks of pale disgust from people with little enough money to actually want to appreciate a drink.  Behind her back though, her friends talked about how over-hard she tried, picking out clothes that didn't fit in an effort to appear thinner.  They all agreed that she should just try stripes, though it might make her look like an anaemic prisoner, or that other tragically hip people might try chaining their bikes to her.  Which would be terribly ironic and thus raise her hip credibility rather well.
Her coat was fluffy and white and was worn by reality-television stars, bought from the high-end of a ubiquitous high-street chain and so was naturally ironic as she rejected all such trappings and determinedly disavowed any knowledge of those shows, except that other people talked about them.  People condemned to eavesdrop on her high-decibel, ear-hurtingly screechy conversations shouted out in uncrowded tube-cars and near-deserted buses marvelled that someone who allegedly knew nothing about the X-Factor could somehow talk about it for twenty-five minutes.
Her t-shirt had been ripped by a girl who'd dated a guy who'd tried bisexuality out with one of Madonna's dancers at her last London show, and so was clearly iconic and only worn on special occasions.
He was sat next to her, wearing black-plastic rimmed spectacles that harkened back to the National Health Service Issue of 1972, only with plain glass in the lenses as he was far too vain to admit to a little short-sightedness.  He'd been assured that designers and writers and illustrators wore exactly these kinds of glasses, but hadn't been listening when some wit with actual taste in wine had wandered past with the only good bottle in the kitchen and commented that they wore such things because they couldn't afford anything better.  That was the house-party in Camden where they'd met each other, and he was wearing the same pair of skinny jeans again today, because she liked the way his legs looked in them.  Other people wondered how legs that thin succeeded in supporting him, especially since he clearly had a paunch better suited to someone fifteen years older and his knees splayed out a little unless he remembered and carefully stood with his feet together.
The paunch was being covered by his baggy white scoop-necked t-shirt that showed his unshaven chest, which to his eternal regret was still as smooth as a hard-boiled egg.  He'd experimented briefly with a chest-rug, but the glue holding it in place had come off on his trip to the sauna with an old school-friend, and he'd ended up on his knees feeling around for it under the wooden benches while his friend asked him awkward questions about leprosy.  He might have felt better if, after the sauna and in the showers, he hadn't realised that his old school friend had a much bigger penis.
His boots were pleather, but only because he didn't know that there was such a thing and believed that they were genuine leather.  His scarf was Gucci, a present from his mother at Christmas, but he lied and told people it was stolen from a tramp lying unconscious in a pool of someone else's vomit in a doorway at New Year.
Together they sat patiently on the tube, waiting for their stop, oblivious to the fact that they'd missed it five minutes ago and were being briskly whisked out to the Zones where people wouldn't control their laughter until they'd walked past, and where blood on the streets was considered to be a fact of everyday life rather than a chilling description found in National Geographic Magazine.

The commission of Feng Shui

"I wouldn't try moving that," said Deadneck quietly, her voice barely audible over the clatter of her typewriter keys.  Miss Girard stopped pushing Janet's desk and looked over.
"Why not?" she said.  "Look, I'm being paid to do a job here and it seems like you're all determined to stop me! Your Chief Constable has hired me to do this, you should be helping me, not saying stupid things about how you think things should be done!"  Her voice rose steadily as she spoke, and because it all came out in a torrential flood of words she ran out of breath at the end and found herself gasping and squeaking like a cat toy.
"The desks are bolted to the floor," said Deadneck, not stopping typing.  "That's why you can't move it."
Miss Girard gave the desk another futile push, and then knelt down to peer at its legs.  Sure enough, they were bolted to the floor by two different bolts on each leg.
"Why?" she said plaintively.  "Everywhere else in the police station has been fairly easy.  Of course, people complain when you move things but they see the sense in the new system fairly quickly.  I've improved the filing system, I've made the hot-desks places it's nice to spend time, I've even made the ladies toilets something less than a horror movie.  Why is so hard when I try and deal with Inspector Playfair's side of the office?"
"Probably because we all know what he's like," said Deadneck.  "And we know what's likely to happen when he comes back, and because none of us want to take the blame for it."
"What is he, some kind of monster?"
"Oh no," said Deadneck pulling a sheet of paper from the platten and getting a new one ready.  "Monsters can be killed."

Miss Girard's response to that disappeared behind the opening of the door to the rest of the police-station again, which heralded the arrival of her handyman, Oliver.  He was wearing his usual blue overalls with the paint splashes down one leg, a white t-shirt with a frayed collar, and carrying his metal toolbox.  He looked around the room, nodded at Deadneck, and wrinkled his nose.
"Smells like dog in here," he said.
"I don't care," said Miss Girard.  "I need these desks unbolting so that they can be moved."
"That don't sound right," said Oliver.  "You just pushes a desk, Missus."
"Not these," said Miss Girard, pointing.  Oliver followed her finger, but still looked puzzled, so she knelt down to show him the bolts.  There was a low discussion down by Deadneck's feet as Oliver wanted to know why the desks were bolted down and Miss Gerard made wild guesses.  Eventually they both stood up again.
"It'll take a while," said Oliver.  "Someone's sheared the heads off all the bolts."  Deadneck just nodded quietly.  "And it might get a tad noisy, we'll have to drill the bolts out in a number of places."
"That's fine," said Miss Gerard with the casual arrogance of someone who doesn't have to be there listening to the noise.
"Er," said Deadneck who felt it wasn't fine.
"Right then, let's get started.  You might not want to stay in here, miss."  Oliver looked at Deadneck, who shuddered and typed a little faster and a little harder.
"It's the energy of this room!" said Miss Girard suddenly.  "There's a strong negative energy here, so strong that I can almost feel it!  It comes from... she swung around, her eyes tightly closed and her finger outstretched.  Oliver stepped back to avoid it.  Deadneck never stopped typing, but her eyes were also on Miss Girard, fascinated to see where she'd stop.  There was nothing for a few seconds but the squeak of Miss Girard's heels on the floor. Then she stopped, somehow facing Playfair's door.  Without saying anything, she swivelled slowly until she was facing Miss Flava's door, and then she shivered.
"Warring factions," she said, her voice thick and slow.  "There is a powerful energy here, but it runs into opposition before it can gather real momentum.  It is tamed temporarily.  We must direct the energy to a better source, we must guide it into productive lines."
She opened her eyes again, and seemed to recover herself a little.
"We must bring in tokens of disillusionment!" she declared enthusiastically.  We must re-route the energy around the contestants, so that they are calmer within and withof themselves!"  There was a noise from Deadneck's direction that might have been a stifled laugh.  "I have just the things in the car!"
"Is she always like that?" asked Deadneck after Miss Girard had left, struggling womanfully with the door.
"Not really," said Oliver.  He opened the toolbox and took out a power-drill and started looking for a socket to plug it into.  "I think the police station's getting to her a bit."
Deadneck just nodded, wound the sheet of paper out of her typewriter and picked up the next report.  She wondered, just for a moment before returning to her job, what Playfair would decide to arrest Miss Girard for when he discovered what she'd done to his office layout.

Bounty Hunter

Dodd wasn't quite all there, most folks would agree with that.  He was a nice guy, and there wasn't no-one who would say he wasn't, specially not when his mother was down at Martin's bar and drinking heavily again.  She had a heavy fist and she kicked a man when she got him down.  But he actually was a nice guy, wouldn't hurt animals or insects, and cried for half the day when he found a roadkill squirrel outside Martin's.  His mum was inside at the time, and Lady Agnes stuck her head round the door and let it be known at the top of her voice that Dodd was screaming and pounding on the road outside, holding up the traffic.  Then she disappeared back to the chauffered car and Dodd's mum looked up from her pint of dark, made a face like one of them gargoyles on the top of the church where the reverend thinks no-one looks no more, and went outside.  I wanted to follow her, and I'm sure every man in that place did, but there ain't none of us had the courage.  We sat and we waited, and we heard what might have been the slap of a meaty hand meeting flesh, and then we waited some more and finally Ma Dodd came back in, and put the squished squirrel down on the counter and gestured to it.
"Cook it," she said.  "Cook it good."
No-one said a word, though we were all wondering who was going to be eating it, and Martin gave the nod to his niece who was tending bar that afternoon as well, so she gets a page of newspaper, wraps the squirrel up all careful like and takes it back to the chef.  Twenty-minutes later the squirrel's back out, on a plate now and shaved or somesuch; there's a pickle shoved in each eye socket and some fries and a bit of spiky salad on the side, and Martin sets it down in front of Ma Dodd as careful as you please, and she picks it up and takes it outside.
Hell if we weren't all dying to go and look and see what she did with it.  But none of us would move, and so the rest of us were all sitting still, not wanting to be the first, not wanting to be the one out of place when she came back in.  She came back in with the plate, though the fries were all missing, and puts it back down on the bar.
"He'll stop crying now," she said.  "It's food.  He understands about food."



*
A few years later I was a bit further out of town dealing with little jobs and bigger jobs, some of which needed other jobs that kind of wrapped around them and kept them from prying eyes, the kinds of jobs that need doing but need doing quietly, in shadows and becurtained rooms with people who're somehow slightly allergic to light, as they like to tell it.  I was sitting out at the front, minding my own business and watching the world go past, waiting for it to deliver a little package to me, when Dodd pulls up in a battered old car, the kind of thing that'll run forever because when they made it it was all iron and steel and chrome and they didn't have anything better or lighter.  When he stopped I could see it start to sink into the gravel.
"Merry afternoon," he said gravely, getting out of the car and picking a hat up off the seat next to him.  He put it on; it was a hunter's cap, with the ear-flaps and the peak, and it looked a little odd on a guy I was used to seeing in shorts.  He was wearing a jacket and trousers that were all taupe, and I was impressed with myself for knowing what that colour was, even if I didn't think it was a colour a man should be wearing.
"Dodd," I said, not too friendly but definitely not hostile.  I'm not a hostile kind of guy unless I'm provoked.  "You got yourself a nice car?"
"My car," he said, patting the hood and wincing when he left his hand there too long.  "My car.  It takes me home, to Mummy."
"I bet it does," I said.  Dodd wasn't that easy to talk to.  "It brought you here too, right?  Why did it do that?"
"We're looking for people," said Dodd, trying for serious now.  I made myself stop smiling and forced myself to listen.  "I've got a job, and I look for people.  Have you seen any of them?"
"I don't think I rightly know who you're looking for," I said, thinking that I rightly knew everyone he might be interested in talking to.  "There's only me and you here right now, Dodd.  I reckon you've found both of us."
"It's my birthday tomorrow," said Dodd, but it was always his birthday tomorrow.  "For my present you could just tell me where the people are."
"That sounds like a mighty good present to give you," I said, "but I still don't know who it is you're looking for, Dodd.."
"There's a woman–"
"Hah!" I laughed.  "If it's a woman you're after Dodd, you've come out of the wrong side of town.  You want Katerina's, but there's a membership fee."
"No, I'm looking for a woman.  She steals children."
That gave me a pause for a moment, I don't have anything to do with that kind of illegal.  Children are strictly off-limits as far as I'm concerned, but it also meant I didn't know who he was after.
"Children?" I said, now curious.
"She steals children," said Dodd again.  "And she takes them home with her, and then she makes them leave her again so she can do it with others."
"She sounds bad," I said.  "Shouldn't you let me deal with that problem, Dodd?  I can have a word with the Sheriff, see what he wants to do about it all.
"He appointed me!" Dodd sounded very proud now, and produced a badge.  "See? I'm a bounty hunter!"
I stared at the little badge, wondering where our Sheriff's sense of humour had come from.

A little more rain

Rain scours the streets.  The wind drives it on, hurling it against the cobbles so that it bounces back up again.  It's coming down hard enough and fast enough that there's a thin film of water on top of the stones and it's a little like paddling when you have to splash your way through it.  William is sheltering under a tree, its spreading branches and still-green leaves holding the water at bay near the trunk.  Further out though the leaves pour steady trickles of water down that find their way down collars and necks, a quick, cold shock to the passer-by halted by the weather.
There's a roar in the distance, at the end of this street the cobbles yield to tarmac and lorries and trucks race each other to see who can leave the city first.  William shivers a little, he's worrying that the rain will become a thunderstorm and then he'll have to leave the shelter of the tree.  He fears the lightning more than he fears getting wet, even though he's wearing his only suit and he needs it for tomorrow when yet another client will be visiting the office.
A woman walks by, high-heels clicking on the stones, her head held high despite the rain side-swiping her in the gusts of wind.  Her hat is a pill-box, black, with little bits of fashionable netting draped here and there and offers her no protection at all; her blouse is thin and revealing in the rain, and her skirt is short.  William forgets for a moment about where he's stood and just gawks, his mouth hanging unconsciously open.  If she sees him she doesn't acknowledge him, and in a staccato succession of clicks she's gone again, another soaken-beauty walking the drabs streets of the city, brightening a rainy day with her presence.
William shivers again and decides that waiting here is pointless penance; the sky is a uniform grey and the rain looks set to carry on forever.  He will run out, run to the metro station and find a train home.  He will hang his suit in the bathroom and hope that it dries before the morning.  He will wonder about the woman all the way home, wishing he'd had the courage to step out and join her.

A lift full of rain

I staggered into the tube station reeling from the concussions of the raindrops against my head.  I've been caught in bad hailstorms before, where you stagger in from them bruised and bleeding, but that's the sky throwing lumps of ice at you: you expect a little collateral damage.  This time I was bruised and aching from the sky throwing water at me, and I didn't think it was entirely fair.
I got through the barriers with only the usual trouble.  I have one of their little cards named for some kind of seafood; a Kalamari-card or somesuch, but apparently being anywhere on my person is enough for it to corrode.  When I pulled it out of my pocket to press it against their cheepy, cheery little reader it had brown, rusty streaks on it, and it's made of plastic.  The reader squawked, and when I pull the card off and slapped it down again it cheeped like someone had set it on fire.  I tried a third time and this time it wailed a little but the barriers parted and I could get through. I noticed as I did that there was rainwater swirling around my feet and I was paddling my way to the lifts.
I didn't bother waiting for the lift, I get impatient and claustrophobic when people stand near me.  I headed round the corner for the stairs, and thanks to a slight incline in the floor, left the water behind.  I had to dodge a wheelchair rolling backwards at one point, but I was mostly relieved that the occupant wasn't trying to go down the stairs in it.  There are some tight, hairpin bends when you get below street-level.
There are one-hundred and twenty four stairs at the this station, and they break up into six flights of stairs, three landings, one hidden corner, four extra steps in places you're not expecting them, and a long corridor in the middle that makes you think you're almost at the platform when in fact you've still got three flights of stairs to go.  I figure the Victorians and Edwardians must have loved spending the day trying to figure out how to find the trains more than they wanted to travel on them.  I was the only person on the stairs, so I dripped my way along the corridors and down the flights in a squelchy kind of non-quite silence.
I was four steps from the bottom and in sight of the lift when it reached the floor and opened its doors.  No people came out, just a wall of water that sprayed past me down the tunnel to the north-bound platform.  It slowed its gush after a minute, but it didn't stop, and I realised that the rain must have managed to flood the station.
It slowed after another minute, and stopped after two more, but the lift looked dead and damp, and I figured that no-one else would be coming down now.  I thought about going back up, but my knees hurt at the best of times and climbing the stairs now would make me regret it.  I headed off to the south-bound platform, wondering what I'd find.

The Imperial Bridge

Tal Mallan, City of Walls.  Two rivers run through it, both are wide and tempestuous by the time they reach the city and they force their way through to the sea like bullies in a bar.  There are high and wide levees in the richer parts of the city; there are streets that function as flood-plains and houses that are regularly filled with mud and water in the poorer parts.  There hasn't yet been a winter where people haven't died, either because the melt-water caused freezing floods or because the icing of the rivers split the barricades set up to hold them back.  Their names were Twivix and Lernal, and they were named after fractious twins in a local legend.
I was on the Imperial bridge which crosses the Twivix, having been walking for half the night.  I'd been woken by noises; the scraping of chitinous claws against the fabric of reality, the sounds of frail curtains tearing, and the heavy, wet breathing of things that shouldn't have lungs, shouldn't have dragged themselves out from the depths, things that are jealous of the brightness and the warmth of the life they dimly perceive just out of reach.  I'd been eating haruspice the evening before, Tal Mallan's most important spice, the one you have to cross the seven walls to find.  The one that is policed and regulated so fiercely that almost no-one will attempt to smuggle it out or deal in it.  The one that allows a limited glimpse of the future and demands payment by later on showing you the present as it really is.
I shivered, my skin was still clammy and I could taste the aniseedy, cinammony headiness of the haruspice again.  It was slowly seeping out of my pores, and I knew that I should be alone, washing regularly, not contaminating the outside world with it, but I couldn't face going back into that house and seeing the things on the other side of the walls; well, the other side if you could count your dimensions correctly.  I leaned on the metal railing that edged the Imperial bridge and looked down on the Twivix.
The water was foaming and racing, building up momentum as it approached the shallow falls, a twenty-yard drop that coincided, not at all coincidentally, with the second of the seven walls.  You could try and climb the wall, persuade the gatekeepers that you should be allowed passage, or try and find a wall up sixty feet of angry waterfall.  Or you could turn back and learn some common sense.
I had walked out from the fifth wall to here and I could get back again; my badge of office would get me through the third and fourth gates, and I could command the guardians of the fifth gate though it was painful and difficult.  Which was, of course, why I couldn't venture through the sixth or seventh gates, the guardians would seize me and consume my soul, slowly over the years, luxuriating in my pain and prolonging my death.
The Imperial bridge was a filigree structure of bronze, tantalum and carbon-fibre that glittered in the afternoon sunlight and was like a bridge of white fire in the stronger morning sunlight.  Here, just after dawn, the bridge was drinking in the light as the sun rose, and I could feel it getting warm beneath my fingers.  I estimated that I had perhaps another hour before it was too hot to stand on, and perhaps an hour and a half before the bridge was lethal to approach.  But here, above the Twivix, surrounded by air, surmounting water, embracing arising fire, and with pockets filled with grave-earth, I could direct the haruspice hangover, free myself from the visions of what really was and wander astrally for a time, seeing what was to come.
Of course, as is always the case when I've come prepared, the only vision of the future I could see was me leaving the bridge in half-an-hour's time, walking calmly down the steps on the left-bank and heading for my favourite coffee-house where I would buy a coffee and a buttery, flaky pastry.
I shook suddenly, leaving the vision behind.  The water beneath me roared hungrily, and I stared into it, wondering what had shocked me.
Then I realised: my favourite coffee-house had burned down three days earlier during a riot in the second wall district.  So what on earth was the vision telling me?

Book of Miracles XII

The bacon was tolerable; no-one really understands it like the United Kingdom do and it was closer to crispy pancetta – which I happen to like – than to real bacon.  The sausages were more Germanic than anything else, I thought, and the eggs were definitely Spanish, I could taste garlic and chorizo in there.  A thorough hodge-podge of a cuisine then, still intended to keep where we were a mystery.
James was unhappy with the bacon but cheered up when he got to the eggs and hash browns; Irene seemed quietly happy with her bacon rolls, but then she put more ketchup on them than anything else.  After she asked for a second bottle I figured she was making ketchup sandwiches and the bacon was just there for a little bit of texture.  Isabella's omelette was crepe thin but filled with buttered new potatoes, slices of ham, slivers of garlic and something green that I think was leek.
The coffee was excellent though, and I was on my third cup when Isabella looked at me warningly and told me that we had at least an hour's drive to the safe-house still.  I paused, the cup half-way to my lips, steam rising from it and making me blink.
"I'll pop to the toilet now then," I said, unwilling to stop drinking the coffee.
When we were all done Isabella paid with a credit card that appeared to be a jet-black plastic slab, no numbers, no name on the front; just a way of transferring funds in unlimited amounts.  I was envious.  Then we were leaving by the doors and, to my astonishment, walking to a different car than the one we'd arrived by.
"Our actual car has arrived," said Isabella, leading the way.  "It has all our luggage from the plane."
"We had a little extra luggage in our boot," I said, trying to be discreet.
"Don't worry about him," said Isabella.  "I mentioned it back in the café.  He'll get a breakfast, on me of course, and reassurance that he just slipped on some oil in the car-park and banged his head."
"Efficient," said James sounding pleased.  He opened the rear door of the long black car with, I noted with a little dismay, tinted windows.  I got in, and discovered that the car was long because the back contained a little horseshoe of seats, enough for six people to sit in comfort, eight to sit if they knew each other well, and anywhere up to twenty students to squeeze in.
The car moved off as soon as the back door was closed, and not only could I not see out of the windows, but the window between the driver and the passengers was up and there were no visible controls for it.  Irene sat forward and slid a small table out from one of the unoccupied seats.  "Scrabble?" she said brightly.
We drove for probably an hour and a half, but my guess was based on us playing three games.  Irene and Isabella were tough opponents, but James was out of his league.  When I set down BOLUS, making six words and a little over fifty points in the first game his jaw dropped, and when Irene followed that up with SPICY making three words but sixty-three points I thought he was going to stop playing.  His final scores were usually a fifth of what myself, Irene and Isabella obtained, and a couple of times he clearly wanted to challenge a word he'd never seen before.  When Irene finally played EUOUAE he actually did lay his rack down and announce he wasn't playing any more.
"Well, we're almost there anyway," said Isabella, her eyes not leaving the board.  "We should really put this away."
Almost as she finished speaking the car slowed and I heard the crunch of tyres on gravel.