Beyond The Fence

I stole this one from part of one of Robyn's letters she sent this week (sorry, Robyn). We'd been talking about meditation and this part just cried out for a short story:

"… after swimming, when I relaxed … and focused on the sounds I could hear beyond the fence. I couldn't see any of the noisy things—the air conditioner, the chain saw, the highway."

I loved that phrase: "the noisy things …"

Anyhoo: 500 Words:

Beyond The Fence

The sky must have been blue, not that she could tell. She lifted her sunglasses and blinked up at it through half-closed lids. From where she lay it was so bright it seemed like all the colour had been burned out of the world. The sky above her had no colour, or at least no colour that she had a name for. Her daddy had once told her that the ancient Greeks possessed no word for blue; their sky was bronze. She felt she knew what they meant. A country that had so much sea and so much sky; so much blue; why bother with a name for something that was everywhere? Homer's sea wasn’t blue; it wasn’t any colour; he called it wine-dark. She liked that.

A slight breeze raised goosebumps where the pool water evaporated from her skin. The slap and gulp of the filter blended with the other sounds.

She couldn't see beyond the fence; the noisy things: the air conditioner, the mowers, the highway. Somewhere off a-ways somebody had a chainsaw going.

She inhaled and closed her eyes, watching the patterns form. Sounds of the highway.

The sun's heat rippled over her body. Breeze tingling.

The highway …

She watched the lights at night. Each set of lights a person or people. All going somewhere. She had no idea where or why or who but the lights had a fascination all their own. They spoke of escape, just as the sounds of the highway called to her now as they mingled in her ears with the sound of her own breathing.

Escape from what? Or probably more pertinently, TO what? Her life was nice enough; most folks would think her well off. Yet the highway called out to her and in the long dark watches of the night something deep inside her howled like a wounded wolf. For what? For the road?

The journey or the destination? She decided it must be for the journey; she had no interest in the destination. Wherever it led she would still be herself. Still carry these thoughts. This place; that place. It didn't matter.

Sounds of the highway.

The chainsaw had stopped. A distant plane roared. Vapour trails, white against white. Pool filter: slap, gulp, slap. Her skin hot now. The fence white against white. The black asphalt on the highway would be shimmering; sticky. Three o'clock. Mid-summer. You could fry and egg on it or so folk said. She drove on it most days. There and back. There and back. Never just 'there'.

Never just 'there'.

One day …

Maybe.

One day she might just take off and not come back. As long as she never settled on a final destination she'd be fine. She'd be free.

White on white.

She closed her eyes again.

Watched the patterns.

She listened to the noisy things: the air conditioner, the mowers, the highway.

The pool filter: slap, gulp, slap.

Somewhere a kid yelling.

One day …

Not today, though.

Some Sage Advice For Students

This week's sentence was taken from 'Barchester Towers', by Anthony Trollope.

The sentence was:

'There was nothing poetic in the nature of Mrs Quiverful.'

Some Sage Advice For Students

It is an immutable law of the educational universe that all colleges possess a Mrs Quiverful. She will usually be found tucked away in some dusty room at the end of a little-used corridor, lying in wait like a vast, baggy spider in tweed skirt and cardigan for the unwary student to get just a little bit too curious.
Indeed it is in just such a room at the end of just such a corridor that we find the subject of our own cautionary tale.

There was nothing poetic in the nature of Mrs Quiverful. That at any rate had been the confirmed opinion of all who survived the sequential sensations of initial amusement, increasingly concerned confusion, sudden alarmed realisation and final crushing despair that comprised her creative poetry classes. How she had managed to obtain her professorship in the first place was a topic of much fevered debate among the traumatised few who made it through the academic year.

Yet there she was, and there, it seemed forever, she would stay. Over the decades Mrs Quiverful’s classes produced a string of highly successful accountants, bankers, insurance brokers, politicians and the like, whose generous donations to the college ensured her sinecure.
That there was nary a poet, nor indeed a single person with a scintilla of creativity, conscience or compassion among her old students went regrettably unnoticed. As did the fact that those particular professions adopted by Mrs Quiverful's creative poetry graduates held in common the peculiar requirement that a successful practitioner possess no poetic soul.

Yet such creatures are not born soulless. It is a truth self-evident that no sane person would ever aspire to a career in say politics, banking or insurance. None but the deranged and psychopathic would choose to work in marketing or HR.
No, these people are born as normal as you or me, but at some point in their formative years have fallen victim to a Mrs Quiverful and have had their souls torn screaming from their bodies and sucked straight down to Hell.

It is Mrs Quiverful who is responsible for the plague on the world that is the suffering caused by the Soulless Professions. For this is where we get the condemned: those pitiless proto-dæmons who stalk the earth spreading misery and despair among the living before taking up their pitchforks to torment poor sinners in the afterlife.
This is where bankers come from. This is where Big Oil comes from. This is where we get the agrichemical industry, personal injury lawyers, political lobbyists, waterboarders, Republicans, junk food, arms dealers and daytime TV.
This is Hell on earth.

So, dear student, be wary of that seemingly simple course of lectures, of that dusty and obscure corridor, of that nice, tweedy old lady with the twinkle in her eye. Be ever watchful for Mrs Quiverful.
Should you doubt me, simply look into the eyes of an insurance salesman and witness the horror within.
Then turn and run.
Run as fast as you can.

Wormold Makes A Choice

This week's sentence was from Graham Greene's 'Our Man In Havana.'

It was: 'Wormold felt an enormous bewilderment.'

Wormold Makes A Choice

Wormold felt an enormous bewilderment. For a split second his mind considered alternatives before concluding that bewilderment was indeed as concise a definition as it could muster.
At least at such short notice.
One moment he had been wrenching his bag free of the damned ticket barrier and running pell-mell down the platform toward the conductor who was about to lock the doors.
And the next.
Well that was where the bewilderment came in.

Most things in life bewildered Wormold. He confessed that women especially were a complete mystery to him. Come to think of it, just about everything that had happened to him over the last fifty-something years had baffled him in some way or another.
Summoned into being in such a bizarre and traumatic fashion as to refute the existence of any benevolent deity, he discovered that life came equipped - rather shoddily in Wormold's opinion - with neither user manual nor "undo" button. Even a manual filled with gibberish, such as the one that came with his Moskvich car and which he was convinced had been translated by someone who spoke neither Russian nor English nor had ever seen a car, would have been better than nothing. But nothing was what he got.
From that first breath to this last he had lived, like the rest of us, by winging it and hoping for the best. And now, after a lifetime of not knowing what was going on or why, came the biggest bewilderment of all.

Wormold supposed that now was as good a time as any to consider the afterlife. Look at the possibilities. Browse the catalogue, as it were.
Most religions' afterlives were out of bounds to him as a non-believer, but he still had options. He had been raised a Christian, but would be happy to discover he had been misled. An eternity of hellfire and damnation didn’t sound a bundle of laughs but it was decidedly more appealing than a heaven filled with self-righteous god-botherers sucking up to the kind of deity who considered the penis an ‘intelligent design’.
Wormold had flirted with Buddhism as a teenager but now reincarnation seemed way too much like the lottery. A glance at the numbers told him that the laws of probability ensured that just about everyone on the planet would come back as an insect. Bugger that!
The only afterlife that really held any appeal was carousing in the halls of Valhalla. Wormold was sure he had some Norse blood in him somewhere and wondered if he might qualify.

But no. Oblivion was the way to go. To simply cease to exist. Nothing bewildering about that. As a bonus, existentially speaking, the moment his own consciousness, and therefore the entire universe he knew, blinked out of existence, so would everything and everybody else. Including the bloody train company.
As his body fought for breath that wouldn’t come and pain tightened across his chest, Wormold smiled. And the universe and everything and everybody in it ceased to exist.

Bob Has A Good Day

This week's sentence was taken from Henry James' 'Pandora.'

It was 'Then she has got her sister staying with her: Mrs. Runkle, from Natchez.'

Bob Has A Good Day

'Hey, Frank.'
'Hey there, Bob! Come on in, neighbour. Artemisia not with you?'
'Heavens, no. She's having one of her tornado days. The kids have brought the grandkids over for dinner, and they all brought their damned dogs, too, so it's a madhouse over there. Then she has got her sister staying with her: Mrs. Runkle, from Natchez. We don't get along. I just had to get out of there, Frank, so I'm throwing myself on your mercy and asking for asylum for an hour or so.'
'Of course, buddy. C'mon in the kitchen and I'll brew up. Abigail's out at her mother's all day so you're welcome to hide here as long as you like.'
'Ah, you're a lifesaver, Frank.'
'Say, I didn't know Artemisia had a sister.'
'Mrs. Runkle, yeah: Hortense, though she never lets me call her that.'
'I'm curious I've never heard tell of her before.'
'That's because we get on like cat and dog. We never visit one another; Artie and her sister don't really write 'cept for Christmas and birthdays. She's only here because of all that kerfuffle in Natchez.'
‘I must have missed that on the news, Bob.'
'It’s Ralph, her dumb schmuck husband. "Unkle Runkle, the children's entertainer." At least that's what he was until last weekend. As if it weren't bad enough having a goddamned clown for a brother-in-law, the police have gone and arrested him for fiddling with the kiddies.'
'Oh, my lord, Bob!'
'He always was a creepy bastard. We shoulda seen that one coming. Anyways, the damned press are camped out on Runkle's doorstep so the old bat sneaked off over here to make my life a misery.'
'She's that bad, huh?'
'Bad? She acts like she's some kinda southern royalty because Runkle came from old money. Expects to be waited on hand and foot, even though there's not a red cent of that old money ever came our way.'
'She sounds royal alright; a royal pain in the ass.'
'Heh-heh. You ain't kidding, Frank. She always resented the fact that her sister married a nobody; said I brought shame on her family. Now she’s gonna have to cook up a whole mess of humble pie before I’ll think of being civil to her.’
‘So if her husband is old money, how’d he end up working as a clown?’
‘Fool gambled away the entire fortune, and with a brain like his it was either that or stacking shelves at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart woulda been a better option after what he’s done to those kiddies.’
‘So what happens now? Sounds like you’ll be stuck with Hortense for a while.’
‘Nope. It’s payback time for Mr.Nobody. I called the press before I came over. They’ll be here soon and the old bat’ll be over the back fence like greased lightning and out of my life at last.’
‘Bob, you always were a sly old dog. Here’s your coffee. Let’s sit out on the porch and watch the fun.’
‘Cheers, neighbour!’

What We Did On Vacation

This week's sentence was taken from Bram Stoker's 'Dracula.'

It was: 'I am alone in the castle with those awful women.'

What We Did On Vacation

Jesus, Maggie pick up the goddamned phone. I know you can hear me. Where the fuck are you? I spent the past half an hour searching high and low and now I find the car's gone. I mean storming off is one thing, but taking the car and leaving me here like this? I'm alone in the castle with those awful women. Your mother and her shrill fucking harridan sister and poor bloody Arlene. Jesus! What do you expect me to do? This is the middle of fucking nowhere. How the hell do I find a taxi in the arse end of the English countryside? And you've got my wallet in your bag. I'm stuck here with the three of them. Thanks a bunch. Some fucking vacation this is turning out to be. Your mom and your aunt both hate me and they know we've had a row and now they're hunting me down. There's only so many of Henry the Eighth's goddamned bedrooms I can hide in. I mean what the hell am I going to tell your mother? Eh? Answer me that. Sorry, mom, but your daughter's run off with the car and she's got my wallet so we've got a fifty mile fucking walk back to the hotel?
Shit, Maggie, pick up the damned phone, will ya'? Look, I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry, but talk about getting the wrong end of the stick. I mean, what the hell do you think was going on? Me and Arlene? Jeeesus! You got it all wrong. I mean would I make out with your cousin? Would I? And more to the point, would she make out with me? For crying out loud, Maggie, I was only trying to comfort her after the thing with Ted and that bitch secretary. You just walked in at the wrong fucking moment, that's all.
For Christ's sake, Maggie. Pick up! I know you're listening. Just bring the fucking car back here and fetch your mother and your goddamned aunt. You can leave me and Arlene to walk if you want but just get back here. Jesus, I know what it looked like but it wasn't, okay? It just wasn't. Nothing happened. I mean my hand slipped but that was just the shock of you walking in on us. I was just comforting her. You know how upset she is with that cocksucker of a husband of hers. That's all the kissing was. It meant nothing. It was just comfort. Honest to God, Maggie. Come on. Please pick up your fucking phone. You know it's you I love. Not her. D'you really think I wanna spend the rest of my life with Arlene? For fuck's sake. That woman’s as dumb as she is ugly.

Oh, crap.

Arlene? I didn't mean it. You know I was just trying to calm Maggie down. Arlene! Come back!
Oh, Jesus. Maggie? Arlene's run off in tears now. I hope you're fucking happy.
Maggie?
Pick up the fucking phone!
Maggie?

Claire

This week's sentence was taken from James Ellroy's 'The Big Nowhere'.

It was:

'Claire chain-smoked and drummed her nails on the dashboard.'

Claire

‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ he thought.

‘Okay, other than the obvious.’ He looked down at what was left of the bed and the tangled car wreck of his own body and Claire’s.

‘I mean, do I love her? I’m pretty certain she doesn’t love me. I’m just kinda convenient whenever she wants something. The rest of the time she’s out with her screeching harpies or yammering down the phone at them and I might as well not exist.’

He sighed, quietly so as not to wake her, and tried to figure out how the hell he got in this situation in the first place.

Sure, she’s young, sure she’s pretty, sure she’s … er … spectacular in bed, but what else was keeping him here?

Claire grunted, turned over and started to snore like an asthmatic horse, leaving a sizeable pool of drool in the hollow of his collarbone.

‘How do I love thee?’ he mused. ‘Let me count the ways …’

Numero uno: Claire snored. Fair enough, so did he.

Claire spent eighteen hours at a stretch in the bathroom. God only knows what she did in there but it always took him ages to clean up afterwards.

Claire chain-smoked and drummed her nails on the dashboard. Plus she spilled that whole Chinese meal between the car seats that time and he never got the stink out.

Claire chewed her food with her mouth open and all she had to do was walk through a room to trash it like the aftermath of a frat-house kegger. She was dumber than a box of rocks and her voice scraped the surface off the inside of his skull.

And yet …

He closed his eyes, knowing full well that the sight of Claire naked - even with the snoring - would outweigh all his arguments.

‘Men are so fucking weak.’ he thought. ‘One glance of a boob and our brains run out our ears leaving us drooling idiots.’

He looked down at the pool of drool Claire had left him.

‘And don’t even get me started on her inbred fuck-up family.’

Claire’s mother was a bed-bound four-hundred pound mountain of bitter regret who, when she wasn’t yelling and swearing at him was bawling her eyes out and pleading with them to give her grandchildren. Her snivelling alcoholic moron father had run up a debt that would scare a small country. Claire’s brother was the only one with any sense. He’d run away to Mexico with a waiter.

‘Is this what I really want?’ he thought. ‘Am I happy?’

Claire started up a tractor and he shifted a thigh to try to stop the noise, only for her to change to an impression of a yak gargling.

A sudden snort and she was awake, rolling over and giving him the full benefit of those eyes that could give a saint a hard-on for a week.

And he knew he loved her.

‘I’m leaving you.’ She said.

Prelude To An Incident On Somerleyton Marshes

This week’s sentence was taken from L. Frank Baum’s ‘The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz’.

It was:
‘Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions.’

Prelude To An Incident On Somerleyton Marshes

Blindingly bright shivers of light sparked off the water, breeze-ruffled, disturbed by the passage of mallard and water vole. Green-mottled beneath the surface shimmer lurked a sly old pike, invisible in the weeds, cold as the death awaiting unwary stickleback or perch.
Lacking the patience of pike, the boy raised his eyes from the river and the world swept to the horizontal.
Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. Only the broken brick stumps of windpumps, mostly long-derelict dared raise their heads above that endless ochre ocean, their graceful white sails long since replaced by diesel pumps hidden in nasty little fletton boxes alongside the myriad dykes and ditches of this trackless world of bog and fen.
Black peat oozed black water over the boy's boots as he walked, filling his footprints, leaving a trail of miniature lakes in his wake.
The soft squelch followed him, yet the vast expanse was far from silent. A cacophony of song from warbler, coot, moorhen and mallard accompanied him. Across the marsh came the low boom of a bittern, and far above the water meadows a single skylark trilled it's brilliant song to the world. The boy craned his neck and squinted into the sun until he spotted the tiny dot. It must have nested on the riverbank, the thin ribbon of short, duck-cropped grass snaking through the crowding, hissing reeds.
The breeze gave the marsh its sibilant voice and brushed its fingers softly through the surface sending waves, sea-like flowing across the reedbeds, hypnotising the boy into daydreams of pirate ships and the cries of gulls.

Tiny stained patches of dull green-black alder carr stitched the join between the flattened disc of dull gold and a sky far bigger than the world.
There above him spanned a monstrous arch of universal unreal blue, intense as lapiz lazuli on Tamurlane’s domes in far Samarkand. The boy gazed upward in awe, his dreams now sent flying by magic carpet into the worlds he loved: of exotic Arabian nights and tales of caravanserai along the ancient silk road.
That great bullying, overbearing sky pressed down on him and on this land flatter than freshly ironed linen, dwarfing the world, squeezing it into these few square miles of waterlogged flood plain where he wandered twixt mead and mere, an insignificant ant traversing a devastating emptiness.

Up ahead he heard at last the swish and crackle of scythes through Norfolk reed and the low mardling of Habbo and Roly in their flatboats cutting bundles for thatching, their harvest soon to gleam gold on church and cottage roof, lovingly entwined with hazel spars. The thatch would be good for another eighty years of blazing hot summers and those bitter Norfolk winters that lashed down from the arctic, their bellies replete with invading hordes of swan and tern.

Habbo looked up as the boy waded closer.

Sometimes That's All You Need

This week's sentence was taken from Willa Cather's 'Death Comes For The Archbishop'.

It was:
'Muerto,' he whispered.

Sometimes That's All You Need

Tharp blinked funny.
His right eye always seemed a little ahead of his left. Or perhaps it was the left eye that was slower than the right. Either way, people found it hard to talk to someone whose blink was out of sync. Before long they would become acutely aware of what their own eyelids were up to, which left them kind of distracted.
Tharp's sequential blink rolled across his face from left to right as you looked at him and your eyes couldn't help but follow the movement off to one side, somewhat in the manner of a typewriter carriage, with the result that you found yourself constantly flicking your gaze back to meet Tharp's from a point somewhere above his left shoulder.
People got the impression he was doing it deliberately, which of course he wasn't. Or at least you thought he wasn't until you next met him and then you couldn't help but have your suspicions.
Oblique by nature, Tharp liked to live in profile, more comfortable at counter than table. As long as you could only see one eye at a time he was pretty good company. Errant eyelids aside Tharp was as normal as you or me, although knowing you and me that might not be as reassuring as it sounds.

He had worked at the mortuary all his adult life. The dead don't care how you blink at them. Tharp felt that his charges respected him more than the living so he cared for them with skill and tenderness.
His one real friend among the living was his boss, Stent. A much younger man, Stent had married a beautiful but simple girl whose closest approach to academic achievement was to obsessively search for the image of Jesus in her food. Their life was idyllic yet Stent craved from Tharp the conversation he could not get at home. Tharp was older and wiser and loved to talk.
And so they got along.

Somewhat superstitious, Stent could never bring himself to mention death in his native tongue and substituted Latin or Spanish when the subject raised its grisly head, which at the mortuary was not an uncommon occurrence.
'Muerto,' he whispered.
Tharp blinked at the figure on the slab. Stent's diagnosis was, as usual, concise and accurate.
'So what was yesterday's count?' Tharp asked, as he did every day before they got down to work. Stent didn't look up.
'Three,' he said. 'One burned into the toast at breakfast, one in a pork chop and a particularly good one in her mashed potato.'
Maria posted photos of her edible saviours on a blog. She had quite a following.
The conversation strayed to last night's radio adaptation of Chekhov's 'Seagull,' meandered on into politics, books and the entertaining collection of tattoos adorning the elderly lady who no longer felt any sense of shame at the ministrations of these strange men on her naked body.
They worked on, happily. Tharp liked Stent. Stent liked Tharp.
Life was good.

With Apologies To Anton Chekhov, Master Of The Open Ended Short Story

This week’s sentence was taken from Boris Pasternak's 'Doctor Zhivago.'

It was:
'The hotel staff were being driven frantic; the incident in No.23 was only one more nuisance added to their daily vexations.'

With Apologies To Anton Chekhov, Master Of The Open Ended Short Story

The phone had rung for ages. The hotel staff were being driven frantic; the incident in No.23 was only one more nuisance added to their daily vexations. That aside, room service were going to get their arses kicked if his breakfast wasn’t delivered in the next half-hour. In the meantime he slouched to the bathroom. Showered, shaved but still angry he reached for the phone again.
Then he saw the gun. To tell the truth he had seen it several times already but it was only now that it registered. Once the initial shock had passed he sat and looked at it.
He was reminded of Chekhov: 'If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.'
He wondered who was writing his story and hoped they did not know their Chekhov. A writer should remove anything inessential from the story and now here was a gun placed nonchalantly on his nightstand, bringing with it an implicit threat from a dead Russian playwright. He decided not to be around for the next act.

Maggie was in the lobby.
‘What the hell is wrong with room service this morning?’ She said.
He shrugged.
Yanking her shapeless hat down over her head she checked herself in one of the big old mirrors and made a face like a lungfish.
‘Ah, screw it. I’m going out for a smoke. Coming?’
‘Sure.’
They sucked in traffic fumes and nicotine washed down with what might have been coffee from the stand on the corner. Maggie coughed up a lung.
‘Jeez, that’s better.’
‘There’s a gun in my room.’ He said.
‘What the fuck? Yours, I hope.’
‘I don’t own a gun.’
‘So what are you doing with one in your room?’
‘I woke up this morning and there it was. Actually, I didn’t notice it until I came out of the bathroom but it must have been there all along.’
‘D’you have company last night?’
He shook his head.
‘So what’ve you done with it?’
‘Nothing; it’s still lying there. I just got the hell out in case its owner came back.’
Maggie ground out her butt and tossed her cup in the trashcan. ‘Let’s go take a look.’

The gun was gone, which scared him more than if it had still been there. At least with it on his nightstand he knew where it was; now there was a gun in his story and he had no idea where it might turn up next. Consequently, nowhere was safe.

Maggie found the manager outside No.23.
‘There was a gun in No.42 but now it’s gone.’ She said.
He didn’t reply, just stared fixedly through the open door into the room. Maggie followed his gaze.
‘Holy shit! What the hell happened in there?’
‘You honestly don’t want to know.’
She looked up at him.
‘You know what would really make Anton Chekhov spin in his grave?’
‘No, what’s that?’


Note to self:
If you cannot think of an ending to your story, simply leave it hanging and call it Chekhovian. After all, a great many of his 800 or so short stories simply sketched out a situation, played it along for a bit and then left the denouément to the reader.

As the man himself said, when Suvorin accused him of doing just that: 'You confuse two concepts: the solution of a problem and its correct presentation. Only the second is incumbent on the artist.'

Which gives me a good excuse not to bother thinking up an ending.
Plus of course, I liked the idea of making Anton spin in his grave by introducing the gun and then NOT having it fired. And of not explaining the incident in No.23.
Or it could just be that this long, cold winter has given me cabin fever and I'm writing and talking gibberish.
Hey ho.

What Happens When We Choose

This week's sentence was taken from William Burroughs 'Cities Of The Red Night.'

The sentence was:
'He was passing a huge marble snail, a bronze frog and a beaver.'

Apologies in advance for the strange ending of this one. As I was writing it and wondering just who Hans might be and what was happening I got the idea for the ending. Unfortunatley, to write the whole thing properly would have taken about another 1,000 words, so I copped out and cut it down to 500 by writing a kind of precis of my idea for where the story was going.

Hey ho. I'm as confused as you are …

What Happens When We Choose

Hans had been walking for ages when something snapped him out of his reverie. He glanced at his surroundings, trying to get some bearings. Often on his wanderings he wound up in the oddest places and today seemed no exception. He was passing a huge marble snail, a bronze frog and a beaver.

'Either I’m in a museum,' he thought, 'or the drugs are kicking in.'

Cautiously he watched the animals for a few seconds. When none of them moved or spoke to him he concluded, with a slight air of disappointment, that he was not hallucinating.

It turned out to be the window of an art gallery; one of many such places that sprung up out of the ground like mushrooms in this part of the city and just as suddenly disappeared again.

On a whim he pushed open the door, to be greeted by the blank gazes of the inanimate animals and a frosty stare from a startlingly attractive girl standing awkwardly by what appeared to have been a tragic accident involving some hideously uncomfortable and garishly coloured sofas.

With a superhuman effort he managed to avoid opening with 'Nice beaver,' instead simply shifting his weight from one hip to the other and grinning a little sheepishly.

'Where the hell have you been?' the girl snapped at him. 'I was supposed to go to lunch twenty minutes ago.'

Despite the fact that he had never before seen either girl or shop, Hans felt it safer to play along, in the hope that things might become clearer later.

'Sorry,' he mumbled. 'You'd better take a long lunch to make up for it.'

'You're damned right I will.'

She flounced out in high dudgeon, shoving him aside and leaving him alone with the mad menagerie, the furniture catastrophe and his perplexity.

Avoiding the sofas he perched instead on the snail and tried to come to some conclusion based on the information available.

It appeared he was Hans, owner of a chic yet pointless art gallery and employer of the startlingly attractive and very angry girl who had left a bruise on his upper arm.

He stared at the beaver.

'I have no idea who I am.' He said.

Hans was also unaware:

• That before he took his walk he had been Peter, arriving at a business meeting with no inkling of where he was or why, yet somehow coping reasonably well.

• That when he left here he would be somebody else yet would retain no memory of any previous life.

• That every choice a person makes in life leaves an alternative life unlived.

• That these unlived lives linger, littering the universe.

• That he was dead.

This is what happens to dead people. Our souls become lost, un-anchored, set helplessly adrift among those countless abandoned lives that the living leave lying around, to be lit into consciousness only for the short time it takes such paths to cross, before moving on; perplexed, bereft, eternal.

The soul that was currently Hans stared at the beaver.