Lake - NaNo 4

ii

He looked out upon the lake and thought of water. There was now only the memory of water, and it was not his, but he could see it etched in every crack in the hard flat ground. The wind was warm upon his face and he closed his eyes, tilting his face towards the sun. It's warmth spread though his and re-energised him, dispelling the sleep that still inhabited his bones, now cast back until there was nothing but strength. Whatever strength that he could muster. He was wasting. They were all wasting, but slowly. This was not survival, this was a slow death. Even so, that was preferrable to submission. He reopened his eyes, the sudden brightness of the near midday sun causing him to squint once more until he accustomed to it. He had been up late, taking the evening watch into the middle of the morning, always the hardest one, causing him to feel sluggish and out of sorts during the day. There was no point in these watches, he knew that. They all knew that, but still they did it. Perhaps it was the need for something to do. Perhaps it stilled the panic and hopelessness that would slowly build if they were all just left to chew on dried winterplant all through the transitions. There was no way the Loom would send out for them here, not during the summerphase. As usual then, his watch had brought nothing to his attention and did no good for his temperament. He would presumably end up shouting at Fi again, and he hated it when his temper got the better of him, but nerves were frayed.

The landscape was unchanged. As it had been over the indeterminable amount of time that the settlement had been there. He supposed he should have been tired of the view – the same view no matter where he cast his eyes – but it was not unpossessed of a certain beauty. The flats bore towards the horizon until they met the base of a mountain range that encircled the old lake bed on every side. Some of the peaks surely scraped the heavens themselves, the tips if the canines doused in snow, giving them the appearance that they had rendered the clouds apart. He couldn't quite remember what lay beyond those peaks now, and was sure that he should be able to, but that was a lifetime ago, when ten times their current number had fled

civilisation

where ever it was they had dwelled before the Descent. That was when there had been hope, something that had evaporated along with all the drinkable water prior to the Descent. They should not have been able to survive, and indeed, most did not. It was only the ones whom evolution had seen fit to bless, the result of what their race had endured before on a place far from where they suffered currently. He wasn't sure of the details, merely thanked the gods (if there were still any that remained) that he was one of the blessed. He supposed it was not without irony that that which had driven them from their home all those generations ago should be linked with what they now endured. Perhaps they were just not meant to survive. Yet he had to believe otherwise.

Or did he?

He sighed and opened his pouch, pulling out some dried winterplant and chewing on it slowly. He was struck then how curious it was that the strange herb that grew in the cool transitions between the cracks on the flats should be so utterly tasteless. Another blessing, for if it had any taste at all then perhaps some should take a dislike to it, or others would perhaps grow bored of the dark matter. As it was, eating it was like chewing silicate, and was therefore tolerable consistently.

A blessing. The one thing there was to eat and the best thing that could be said about it was that it was tasteless.

He closed his eyes once more and tilted his head towards the sky. He should just sleep here, he felt such a strong pull to just lie on the flats and let himself sleep, for that power that had coursed through his veins was already dissipating. He was too weak, they all were. What if he had seen something last night? What if he saw something now? Even a lone figure of the Loom gliding over the arid surface would be enough to strike fear into him with such force as to render him mute and frozen. Even a lone figure would be enough to destroy them all, should it survive the journey. He knew of course that it would not, but still, there was an if. Could they run? If he opened his eyes now and saw that familiar silhouette approach silently. That abhorrent ticking noise slowly reaching him over the vast silence. Of course they couldn't. There was nowhere to go.

There was nowhere to go.

“Doh, are you actually sleeping standing up?” A voice said into his ear, startling him and causing him to suddenly lurch forward, losing his footing and sprawling on the hard dry surface of the flat. Dust billowed around him and he stood, turning and coughing furiously.

“Mey...” Doh spluttered, looking upon the older woman who had managed to somehow sneak up on him.

“I hope that this is not a reenactment of how you keep watch,” the woman – Mey – said, corners of her mouth turned upwards in a half smile, half sneer. “Else perhaps we would all be ash by now yes? Shovelled and spread.”

“What the hell are you playing at?” Doh retorted angrily. He should have known better, and he would pay for the insolence later he was sure. He was embarrassed, he should have been more alert. They all had to be alert. He prided himself on his youth and his power compared to the elders, yet here one had managed to shock him onto the salt. He was glad that they were far from camp. he dusted him self off, rubbing furiously at his skins, although they would never be clean, nothing ever was. He stood defiantly and glared at her.

Mey was surely was one of the oldest amongst them, and should not have been able to survive as long as she had. She must be second only to Mir, and he looked older than the mountains that bled the sky. Doh wondered now as he looked at her what she would have looked like in her youth. Despite the eyes that had grown narrow and the lips that had thinned (and seemed to be in perpetual mockery) her face was aesthetically very pleasing, features well aligned and proportioned. Her eyes were blue and piercing, sharp and very alive. She was a little taller than he, and possessed a grace and elegance that told him she must have been someone of importance or wealth back before the Descent. Certainly, she commanded attention whenever she spoke and they all listened, even Doh. No one would dare question her, a mistake he had just made.

She appraised him as he appraised her, he could feel her gaze. He knew that she was far less impressed with him than he of her, and knew also that she had not much to look upon. He knew of his shortcomings, his lack of height and athleticism despite his leanness. Yet he knew that mentally he more than made up for that fact, and prided himself on his perception and intelligence, which was more the reason that her sneaking up on him had angered him. It was well known in Remains that he was the most alert, a fact alluded to by him being consistently given the most mentally exhausting watch. They knew that nothing would escape him. Nothing would surprise him.

Except her.

Of course it had to be her. Even as he matched eyes with her however his mind worked furiously and pointed to one question only.

“Why are you here?” He asked her.

“Try again.” Mey responded coolly, eyes flicking from side to side as she read him.

“Apologies, please,” Doh said, remembering his place now he had calmed a little. “I ask what it is you need of me.”

“Better.” Mey replied, her expression hardening. “Although I should be asking you the same question.”

“I just needed to...” he began, Mey silencing him with and off-hand wave.

“He wishes to see you.” She said.

“Now?”

“Do not push me.”

“Why?” Doh asked, not needing to know of whom she spoke. There was only one who would ask for him. The structure of the township of Remains was simple. There was Mey, and there was Mir. There always had been and – so long as they seemed to defy mortality – there always would be.

“He will tell you, go.” She said, turning her back and walking back to the township leaving Doh standing once more alone. She would be expecting him to wait until she was there before him. It was protocol, unspoken and unwritten, but both elders travelled alone. Surely there was no need for such stuffy procedure. They were on the cusp of extinction yet staid and pompous ceremony remained. Perhaps it was such things that had doomed them all in the first place.

He waited until she was a scratch of dark just below the horizon and he made to follow.

What would Mir want with someone like him?

Lake - NaNo 3

i

It began like I always thought that it would, but perhaps just a little more pain. It's difficult to imagine what pain lies in wait for you. The mind's funny like that. You know something is going to be arduous, you know something will be traumatic, both physically and mentally, and you think you've fortified yourself. You think you have steeled the will, that you are prepared.

You are not prepared.

I thought I was prepared.

I was, in a way. But the pain. That pain that I sort of knew would be there, that would be running through my nervous system like electric water. I couldn't prepare myself for that.

When I was just a boy – around five or six years old – my father took me down by the streams. This was long ago, way back before they descent. Way back before the ascension. Back when there were streams, when the water actually flowed. Can you imagine that? Can you recall? I can't really, only a little, but it hurts when I do. Same for all of us. But the pain back then. I recall the pain. Why I cannot recall that pain and apply it to a potential future I do not know. The brain is capable of so much, but not that.

The streams were fast flowing and the grilles were yet to be pulled into position, they were empty. This was around two weeks before the years first transition and no fish would be caught for a few weeks yet. They were hanging high above the stream, heavy dark iron things suspended in mid air by chains thicker than my legs. Thicker than one of my fathers legs, and how I marveled at his limbs. I idolised him. I was just a boy. He was strong, powerful and tall. I wanted to be like him when I grew up. I wanted to be him. No one was stronger than my daddy. My father. He was old though, even back then. He was old, gray and broken. Still powerful, that never left him – that strength that he held in his eyes even as his body had relinquished itself unto time.

I wait for time now.

Under the grilles was a concrete walkway held high over the water. I am not entirely sure as to the function of the grilles other than to stem the flow of fish during the second and fourth transitions. There is so much that has been lost. Lost to time.

Time again, that unseen nemesis of us all.

I wish I could remember more.

We had to get to the other side, to move on to the other streams. There was urgency about my father, and I asked frequently as to the whereabouts of my mother but it was a question that remained unanswered.

“Where is she?” I would ask, as he held my hand as we descended the shingles and moss down towards the first stream, the walkway at that time of year only feet above the surging water. The wind was high and the grilles swayed to and fro, the chains creaking as dying beasts. It was cold. I was cold. I did not show it to him. I asked again, and again. At first I thought that he had not heard me, that the wind had greedily snatched the words from my mouth and cast them into the ether. So I spoke louder, until he winced visibly. We were down by the first of the streams then. The biggest one, the grilles almost overhead. Massive, dark and foreboding. The creak was louder. The throes of industrial death. He turned and faced me suddenly, kneeling down and bringing his face close to mine. His steel gray eyes boring holes through my small skull, an organic drill set to the music of a decaying world.

“Do not ask me again.” He whispered. I shouldn't have been able to hear him but I did. I did as he asked.

My father stood suddenly, turning and looking around. Back up the hill from where we had come then over the streams, towards the skyline of ragged buildings cast stark black against the gray sky. The rotten teeth of the city towards that which we were headed.

The sky was as his eyes.

Cold steel.

I remember now, with the benefit of my years, the expression that was etched into my father's heavily creased face. At first I thought that it was concern, for the light was falling in the sky, the diffuse orb of our sun descending slowly towards those rotten teeth, to be devoured until it was darkness. It was close but we still had some hours yet. I wanted in my youth to tell him. To reassure him of the hours surely remaining to us, and I opened my mouth

WHERE IS MY MOTHER

to tell him. To reassure him. He would look to me and smile, to see me as a man, not a boy. I would dispel his concern.

It wasn't concern. I see that now. His face against the back of my eyes. Those same weathered lines matching my own in the reflection of the still waters. I see it in my own face. Fear. One pure and unpolluted emotion rendered from forehead to chin. He was afraid, my father, he was afraid.

He dragged me towards the walkway. I was afraid of the grilles, they hung low and swayed in a wide arc. The iron chains protested loudly, louder than the rushing waters below. Louder than my own heart. Louder than my labored breathing. We had run for some time. I stumbled, my clumsy feet catching on a large piece of slate, my foot going under and it's ragged edge digging into my shin, through the light metal guards around my legs and into the tender part just above my ankle. I went down hard then, my hand slipping from his as I fell. I wasn't quick in my early years, I couldn't bring my arms into position fast enough to protect myself and I landed hard on the broken slate and shards of glass that made up the bank of the stream. The pain went through me, my hands impaled on shattered glass.

Not that pain. That pain was nothing. Yet even then it was an awakening, and prompted an instantaneous advancing of my years. I was a boy still, but in my head I was older, wiser, all from that pain. There is not a single better education than pain. They know this, and they apply this principle. They apply it like master artist would apply a paint to canvas. That is all we are to them.

A canvas.

Only if that artist was to loathe and lust after that canvas equally, perhaps then the metaphor stands. He wishes to craft and destroy in equal measure. To lovingly create upon the material whilst simultaneously denying it what it is and forming something new from the destruction he brings to it.

The pain.

Yes the pain was merely a taste. Had I known it then I would have perhaps been a little more canny in my vocalisation of my hurt. I am embarrassed now, looking back, to how I was in those moments. he turned to see me folded in agony, my hands held to my weak breast, my eyes wet and flowing as the stream flowed behind and below my father. The teeth beyond that still eagerly anticipating the sun. I almost saw the saliva build between the darkened husks.

“Get up.” He urged, his voice still barely above a whisper but – like before – I heard him regardless. The expression was unchanged. Devoid of any sympathy, or empathy. I had to get up. To do as he said.

I got up, I was shivering. I was young still. A tender boy. I didn't understand.

I am not sure yet if I do, but I know more now.

I wish I didn't.

I got up. I reached out for his hand and he took it, prompting my love for him to momentarily eclipse my pain. I idolised him again then. He pulled me to him and kissed me gently on my head, the lightest of touches. He whispered something else then, something that I didn't hear and god damn me the one thing I wish I had heard most of all. I have fantasied, fixated upon those unheard words since. The words that wind still holds for all I know, never to return them to me. Yet those words are all I want now, especially here. Here where I feel like that boy once more.

We were to make our way across the narrow walkway, across the surging stream. There were many beyond this. Many streams, many walkways. The rest were devoid of their grilles. Only this one, the first, still had them. How effective they were my father did not know (I would listen to him and my mother talk at night when I should have slept, their voices comforting) but he was glad at least some streams still had them. They were the most effective means of controlling the fish. Apparently.

The walkway. We were halfway across before I fully realised where we were, momentarily made drunk with the pain in my hands. When it had subsided to become a mere dull ache, clarity gripped me once more and I saw that he had hauled me over more then half of the span. We had traveled fully one and a half grilles from the southern bank and were directly underneath the large central grille which was suspended low above us. A dark moon of rust. It swung low and the wind had picked up further. I was worried then, worry beyond pain, for my father was distracted and he moved quicker than he had before. My hands were slick with blood and I struggled to keep a firm hold of his hand, pulling free on more than one occasion, blindly reaching for him each time I did so. Still his pace did not slow nor did he falter, yet he looked behind more. I didn't understand. I looked to him and I looked up at the low dark moon above and I didn't understand. Perhaps I should have glanced back, but what would I have seen? I can guess now, but back then I was not ready for such a thing. None of us were, and that was the problem.

But then we shouldn't have been there should we?

We shouldn't be here.

The wind threatened to cast me into the water below as easily as it had stolen those words from the mouth of my father moments before, but that was not the worst of it. For the low dark moon above move closer with a suddenness that put a jolt of fear through my body and rooted me to the spot. With an almighty scream of metal, the dark moon began to pull free of it's restraints, aided by the fierce wind. A crack like thunder brought one of the chains away from it's mooring high up in the parallel concrete causeway a kilometer above and whipping furiously towards us.

I don't think I can remember much more from then on. The remains of that day is a stranger to me, as alien as the sound of my own voice would soon become once I had been through aural castration.

But the pain. I remember the pain. Moreso I cannot recall what became of my father. I remember the fall, the water, the near-drowning. I remember washed ashore, the iron through my torso. I remember the recovery and flashes of what was between. Anguish.

But I cannot remember my father.

Had I lost him then or was that after?

I would recall but not yet. I was undergoing a process. I couldn't think clearly.

That pain. I could have applied my memory of that pain with what I knew would befall me if our plan failed. Something that I think each of the eight of us in turn knew would happen. Perhaps we wanted it to fail, sick as we were of resisting the irresistible. At least I could have prepared myself, but no. The memory of pain is all it will be. A forgotten echo of the real thing. Scars that will never heal are all we have to remind us of what we endured. Perhaps, just perhaps if we could remember succinctly that which would bring the strongest of men to his knees. Perhaps our future actions would be altered.

We would still be here though. There was no choice in that. Where else would we go?

There were two descents. I would tell you of both in time. If I would be allowed. But not yet, for here the door opens and they enter. Two of them.

I can hear them ticking, they remind me of the clocks in my father's workshop.

But I still can't remember what became of my father.

The Seventh Crisis - NaNo 2015: Day 2

Right. The clock had just gone four fifteen when an old lady walked in to the bank.

As in, walked in to the bank. Well, more sort of though it really. Right through it. 
 
Brian glanced up at the sight of the old lady entering, the branch at that time devoid of any other customers, patrons, bankers or anyone else apart from him, Big Glen over at the business banking counter and Dara at the desk two down from Brian. The both of them were doing as much work as Brian was it seemed. Dara was messing about on her new phone (a highly expensive black slab of high-tech wizardry that quite frankly scared the bejesus out of Brian) and Big Glen looked very much like he was sleeping. Standing up. With his eyes open. Either that or he was dead.

Was Glen dead?

Brian wasn't sure. He was just about to get up, walk over and prod Glen with a yellow biro (with the banks logo and name taking up 95% of it's cheap surface area) when the old lady walked in. The shush of the automatic doors caused Brian to sit his sweet arse back down on the stool that he had just vacated and with an inward groan he noticed that the sweet old dear was making her way over to his service point, even though Dara's was closer. He tried to look busy, keeping his head low and scribbling frantically on his pad with a pen in each hand. he quickly glanced up. No use. She had passed by Dara who was still glued to her phone and was fixed on Brian, her lips puckered into something resembling a dogs bottom. Brian appraised her quickly:

Short grey perm type hairstyle – Check

Light blue anorak that had seen better days – Check

Shopper – Unknown, possibly left outside but doubtful, for the youths that frequented the high street on a Tuesday afternoon would be off with it before anyone could say “this steak is very much not cooked to my liking, please inform the kitchen”.

Battered handbag brimming with useless paper, lists, lottery tickets and bingo cards – Check

Glazed eyes oblivious to the fraught and stressful days of the present, proving only to be windows of a brain firmly planted in yesteryear when you could buy a car for a chewed hammer and you were allowed to shoot dogs with a crossbow – Check

Textbook old lady. Inbound. Four seconds and three, two, one...

Then she went through his service point – the desk bisecting her in two momentarily - onward straight past his face and through the solid and very much closed doors of the elevator. Her expression never changed and she made no sound. She did smell of slightly sour strawberries however. 
 
Then she was gone.

“Eh?” Brian said aloud. Silence filled the bank. 
 
Dara played with her phone.

Big Glen still looked dead.

“Eh?” Brian said again.

Dara still played with her phone.

Big Glen blinked – really slowly – and twitched the corners of his mouth slightly.

Brian got up from his stool once more and walked over to the elevator. It was about five paces away and the doors were still shut. he placed his hand upon the cool surface of the door. A surface that was covered with yellow vinyl and the name of the bank which took up 95% of the surface area. Even then whoever fitted it didn't manage to get the whole name in. It read:

The Royal National Scotland Bank of Banking and General Fin

Which quite often would make Brian inwardly chuckle to himself as he imagined a massive fish smoking a cigar, wearing a uniform emblazoned with medals from a million battles filling out a deposit form at the front counter. General Fin, the hero of the War of Aquaria, decorated veteran of the Filter Insurgency and all round nice fish. 
 
Brian wasn't chuckling as he gingerly bent forward and sniffed the door. Looking back at this later that night, thinking the incident over as he lay in bed next to a very loudly snoring Stacy, he wondered why exactly he had sniffed the door. He never did find out why, just that it felt like the right thing to do.

Strawberries. Slightly sour.

“Huh.” Brian said.

Dara cooed with delight as her phone made a rather irritating noise.

Big Glen was still blinking.

Brian pressed the button of the lift. The doors remained shut but a loud deep whirring sound told him the lift had acknowledged it's summons and was currently descending towards his position. He couldn't have missed her opening the doors then. The lift wasn't even on this level. What if she was a ghost? Could she have been a ghost? Had he just seen a ghost? Lets see:

Old lady – Check

Going through stuff – Check

Brian decided that he might just have seen a ghost.

The doors clunked open noisily and Brian took one step back, mouth agape. The lift was empty, but that wasn't why his mouth was agape. He was yawning. He was tired. That explains it, he decided, he had fallen asleep. A small micronap with a little lucid dream. But still, he was pretty sure he hadn't been, because while he was bored, he wasn't aware of being tired. Until now that is. Well, until a few moments ago. He decided that this could do with a little more of an investigation and went into the lift, sniffing away. No smell inside however. A faint smell of lift, but no strawberries, sour or otherwise could be detected with his ever so slightly larger than normal nostrils (I didn't mention that before). Should he go up? Could the old lady have gone up?

What old lady?

Of course there hadn't been an old lady. He'd just had a bit of a brainwrong. He'd read about it somewhere. Or perhaps not.

Brian went back over to the service points, standing before Dara who either had failed to notice him engrossed as she was in her phone, or was choosing to ignore him.

“Dara,” Brian said. He didn't like Dara. She was four years older than him with four children and a fat husband who smelled of coal. Dara wasn't fat, not that it made him like her any more. She had a way about her that was just annoying. She looked down on him, he could feel it. She was condescending every time she spoke to him and she complained about everything. Oddly Stacy didn't mind her, and occasionally Dara would bring her coal-smelling husband around to Brian and Stacy's house of an evening. Brian would be nice to them both and complain like hell afterwards. He was convinced that Dara's husband had once blocked his toilet by putting a ham-filled roll in cling film down there one day, but he couldn't prove it. Stacy had asked him what possible reason would Dara's husband have to put a whole ham-filled roll wrapped in cling film down the toilet. Brian couldn't give a good enough reason but he knew that it wasn't him. He couldn't ever remember Dara's husband's name. Was it Stephen? He looked like a Stephen. Or a Jabba. He looked like he could be a Jabba as well.

“Dara.” Brian said again, a little more loudly this time, taking the pen on her desk out from it's docking plinth and throwing it in front of her.

Dara looked up and fixed Brian with a glare that instantly filled him with a great clarity. Dara didn't like him either. Suddenly he felt weird. Suddenly he wanted Dara to like him. He still didn't like her but he wanted to be the one that did all the disliking. Now he realised that she disliked him, her subconsciously wanted to move to the other side of the liking sphere and like her. That's how much he disliked her. He would like her out of spite.

“What is it?” She said coldly. Had she always spoken to him coldly? He wasn't sure. He was now thinking that perhaps she had. Had she always disliked him?

“Did you see an old lady?” 
 
“I've see lots of old ladies Brian. There are old ladies everywhere. Most of them come into this bloody bank. I probably serve more old ladies than you masturbate in a week. I reckon you masterbate a lot Brian. I don't see dead people. I see near dead people. All. The. Time.”

Had she always been this cutting towards him? She totally disliked him. Damn. He could have spent much more time liking her. If he'd liked her and made it obvious all those years and months, she might have hated him more. Then he would have won.

Won what exactly?

“Okay, you know there's no need to be like that. Did you see an old lady just now I mean. One particular old lady. She came in here about five minutes ago, went straight thro...eh, straight past my desk.” Brian said. He was losing her. She was glazing over in that

dead

disinterested way that people do when Brian normally speaks to them. “Just minutes ago Dara.” he prompted.

“Nah, I didn't. Was playing Candy Crumble wasn't I?” She replied, holding up her phone that was just far too large to be of use to anyone. Brian thought that over years all those tech companies had been trying to make things smaller. Why the hell were things getting bigger again? Who was asking for bigger things? Not him. He was just starting to get used to smaller things. Now it was bigger things. 
 
“Yeah right. Never mind.” he said, and began to walk away, but something in his tone must have piqued the curiosity of Dara the Despiser (a name which Brian decided that would fit quite well from now on) and she momentarily forgot all about her phone as she leaned forward on her desk, large yet sparse face craned towards him.

“How come?” She asked, the icyness suddenly melting like an ice lolly left on a sunlounger. In the sun. In a hot country.

Brian had decided that if he told Dara, then she would either despise him more, forcing him to like her even more, or she would think him a sausage short of a hotdog. He instead mumbled something and angled his head towards his desk, grinning obtusely. A strange tactic but one that seemed to work and moments later Dara was bent over her phone, continuing those strange cooing noises. Brian decided to ask the big man himself, and quickly sidled over to Business Banking. Big Glen had been staring right at her. He must have seen her. If not, Brian decided he would just forget the whole thing. Even though it had seemed so real, it obviously wasn't.

Obviously.

Old ladies do not go through things. It's a known (but not often discussed) fact.

The Seventh Crisis - NaNo 2015: Day 1

1. The First Weird Thing

The first weird thing happened at around quarter past four on an otherwise completely mundane and unremarkable Tuesday afternoon. Tuesdays are famed for their utter unremarkableness (which lets face it, if it isn't a real word, it should be), and surely this is a day that, moreso than Monday, truly deserves something to happen within it's folds. Mondays are Mondays. I mean, sure, we all hate Mondays don't we? Unless you are one of the minority of unhinged that move amongst us. You know who you are. You go to bed early on a Sunday, leaping out of bed before your alarm the following morning with a grin on your face, ready to face the week. Stop it. It's not right.

Weirdo.

Tuesday however, lets talk about Tuesday.

Tuesday is a day when the full horror of the working week slaps you across the face with the remains of Friday nights kebab. Tuesday says “Yeah buddy. The shock has worn off, you're back at work. You cannot pass me off in a hungover fugue as you recover from the weekend and all it's debaucheries. I'm Tuesday hombre, and this is your life!. Fire up Excel and lets get stuck in! Altogether now... Yaaaaaawn with me!”

Tuesday. Tuesday can do one.

At least - thought Brian as he slumped forward on his stool / chair / torture device - he has broken the back of this most dull and irritating day of all days. Come half past five, a mere one hour and fifteen minutes hence, it was time to vacate the premise and get his sweet arse home. He knew he had a sweet arse because his girlfriend of three years told him so, and he reckoned that he could take her word on it. He wasn't sure quite what she meant when she said it (did it taste sweet or...) but she would say it with such convinction that it would be wrong for him to question her. Brian personally thought his arse fulfilled it's function well enough but other than that he didn't really feel the need to dwell on it. Odd, as it has just been dwelled on far more than is merited. 
 
So, yes. The weird thing. Well, it was just about to happen and it was – in terms of weird things – a doozy. It all began when...

Hang on. The weirdness can wait a little. Who the hell is Brian? Where are we? I feel I have jumped ahead a little. Surely Brian is interesting enough to know a little about first of all isn't he? 
 
I can fix this.

Hold up.

Just a second.

Honestly I'll be right with you I just need to...

0. Brian Harold

That's better.

Okay, Brian Harold. The man with two first names. He was often thankful that his parents (a lovely if rather unremarkable couple of travelling salesmen) hadn't deemed fit to give him a middle name. He often mused that school would have potentially been more awkward had he basically gone about with three first names. Hell. The fact that one of his teachers had accidentally started third year by calling him Harold Brian hadn't helped matters, and left him ultimately a little confused as he struggled with his own identity in a puberty-driven existential brain party. Nonetheless Brian Harold he was. 
 
Really, he hadn't endured that many problems with his name, apart from the aforementioned existential crisis, which had only resulted in him once walking back from school instead of taking the bus and throwing one of his school shoes at a cow. The cow hadn't shown either way if it had been hurt by the size 7 black Clark's school shoe (bought new only five days prior) that had collided with it's large beefy flank, and merely continued to stare dolefully past Brian towards the small hedge and field beyond on the other side of the road. That field looked a lot greener than the one in which the cow currently resided. Brian mused afterwards, after he had taken a hiding from each of his fathers, that he could have consoled the cow and eased a small part of his guilt at having launched his shoe at it, by going over to the field in question and bringing a few handfuls of lovely fresh grass to the lonesome and rather depressed looking animal. He mused further, even later that night, that the animal probably and in all honesty didn't give a shit about what it ate and it's mournful longing was a figment of Brian's imagination. A brief flight of fancy whereupon he connected with the cow on some deep and entirely imagined subconscious level. But then he mused no further as he focused on the pain in his arse (an arse at this point a long way off from being described as sweet by a rather attractive 26 year old banking customer service representative) from where both of his fathers had taken it in turn to belt him. Baldy father always took to the task with gusto and Brian was sure that he had worn the leather belt with the metal holes specifically for the occasion, as he was sure when he had returned home to break the news of his missing shoe, he hadn't been wearing a belt at all, but a rather striking red and gold pair of braces.

Shall we talk about Brian's fathers? There really isn't much to say to be honest. They are both perfectly lovely people and work in the business that they gained employment in together shortly before they met. It was a carpet business. They sold carpets. There you go. There was Harold Booker (or baldy father, as Brian never once said to him) and John Pleasant (who had hair and a beard and could have but never was called hairy father by Brian, except in his head). Brian had apparently been adopted when he was four, but then he had also been told that hairy father had given birth to him accidentally when he was sat upon the porcelain throne, that he had been dropped off by a drunk stork and, the best one, that he had actually been sent back in time by an army of sentient machines to save the earth from destruction. Brian and hairy father were machines and baldy father was their human protector. The story altered every time Brian asked either of his fathers and would only last as long as whomever he asked could keep a straight face, so he soon didn't bother to ask. The last time he asked hairy father, he was informed in level tones that he didn't actually exist at all and was merely the figment of the imagination of an 11 year old boy from Botwsana.

So yeah, Brian took a fair bit of what they said with a pinch of salt. Although one time he did actually try and cut a bit off his arm to see if he was machine underneath.

He wasn't.

And it really bloody hurt.

So Brian grew up not really knowing about his origins that were now rooted in some indeterminable point in the past, some twenty nine years ago from the present. Saying that, he had quite a happy childhood, excusing the minor bullying - which wasn't really bullying at all and he may have exacerbated it in his own rememberings as the extent of it, bar that one teacher getting a bit confuddled, was a pair of twins the year above him calling him Harry once in a while when they passed him in the corridor. Brian didn't even know them but they would wink and whisper his name as they passed. Not really worth mentioning really. Honestly. Is it?

He had a fairly uneventful life. School, High School, College, Job. Some friends, a few silly things now and again but nothing as extreme as the cow & shoe incident. Oh apart from one incident which would have been completely forgotten about had Brian not been musing on where the scar on his knee his come from as he played on the computer at fourteen minutes past four on that Tuesday afternoon. There was that one time in college where he jumped off from a garage roof to try and land on the rather large camel that was passing by underneath. That as it turned out was the only time he'd taken to dabbling in drugs. The old lady had spent a few days in hospital due to falling into a small knee high shrubbery, some kind of evergreen thing with nasty thorn-like protrusions. Brian complained to the friendly policeman that it was the person who'd planted it so close to the pavement that should be hauled in for questioning as it was obviously a pensioner trap. She had quite the shock apparently as Brian landed three feet in front of her, exploding on to the ground like a sack of apples dropped from a high-rise. The fact that he was wearing a cape made from his jacket and was naked apart from his pants stretched over his face only (it was assumed) added to her confusion and distress, causing her to fall backwards over the aforementioned shrubbery, pension slip fluttering lazily down after her in the slight breeze.
 
Brian stuck to coffee and the occasional beer after that. Even now his limit was three bottles of Becks and a pint of shandy.

Why Harold anyway? Who gave him that surname? Neither of his fathers knew, or would tell him why they had chosen that name for him. It could be that Harold the baldy father had liked his own forename so much that he liked the thought of his son carrying it on as a surname, like he was a ruddy Pharaoh. 
 
“Why Harold anyway?” Brian had asked, giving voice to the same question at the tender age of eleven. Baldy father had just returned from a carpet conference in Stoke (having left hairy father down there for an extra day on account of some spat involving a petrol station attendant, a large sausage roll and a copy of the Daily Mail – Brian never did find out what happened).

“What do you mean why Harold anyway?” said Harold “baldy father” Booker. “It's a bloody lovely name and you should be honored to have it”. He then leaned over and patted Brian on the head, a slightly sloppy grin spreading over his face. He had quite a sloppy face come to that. Not unfortunate looking just, well, it just looked a bit lazy, like all his features could never really be bothered getting into position for any particular expression and instead were content to slide around his face, knocking haphazardly into one another. 
 
“It's just...”

“Just what?”

“It's a bit random, that's all. Having your first name as a surname.” Brian said, rubbing his head after a rather generous and heavy handed patting session. He was sure that it was a little bit flatter than it was before.

“You're lucky you've got a name at all.” Harold replied, sloppy grin gradually and haphazardly being replaced by something altogether more serious. “When you were constructed from that alien goo that was found on the moors behind...”

Brian decided against listening any further at that point. There was probably something on the telly. yes. The telly was a far better option. He left baldy father in mid-ramble and went to the telly. The blessed telly.

What then, of Brian Harold? This rather unremarkable protagonist. What of his features? his appearance? Is he a bullish rogue? A spry elf-like nimble dancer? Has he muscles on his muscles? Three legs? A wooden eye? A wooden ear? Does he wear his hair in a beehive and shrug upon his shoulders an overcoat made of human skin every morning?

No. No he does not.

Brian Harold is an average looking man. Just shy of thirty years of age. His hair is dark and thinning slightly (but only slightly, right?). He has it cut short and neat, the beginnings of a widows peak forming. A bit of a five o'clock shadow on his relatively slender face. A face that the features of, I may add, move into their allotted position promptly. There's no sloppiness about Brian's face. His eyes are a pale grey and sharp, and one can see the intelligence burning there, when he's not thinking about unintelligent things, like what would happen if he was somehow able to fill the automated money dispensing machines with crisps instead of money, and if he did that, would the world be a happier, or distinctly less happy place? He supposed it was determined by the flavour of crisps. Cheese and Onion may prompt a civil war. Did he want that? Maybe. It would make Tuesday a little more interesting.

Brian hated Tuesdays. One big yawn.

Where were we? Ah, yes. He was of slight build, not overly lean but not chunky either. He walked and went on his bike and did a few other bits and bobs to keep himself in shape (normally involving the rather lovely 26 year old that was mentioned back a bit. Just read up, she's there somewhere). But he wasn't obsessive and was quite content to let himself slide a little. He wasn't planning to compete in anything Olympic events so he would allow himself pizza and three bottles of becks (and one pint of shandy) on occasion.

How tall is Brian?

I honestly don't think it matters. Are you ready for the weird event yet?

Wait. His girlfriend's name is Stacy.

Think that's about it. Now. Where were we...

1. The First Weird Thing (again)

The first weird thing happened at around quarter past four on an otherwise completely mundane and unrem...wait. We've done this bit.

Okay so the rest of the day up until that point had been your typical day. From his seated / perched / tortured position on his stool, Brian had a clear view of most of the bank's floor, the front door and could see the high street beyond the windows.

Oh. A bank. Brian works in a bank. The Royal National Scotland Bank of Banking and General Finance. The RNSBBGF for short. It's a stupid name, but was brought about by the merger and acquisition of numerous other banks after the Big Money Explosion and Financial Crash (as it was termed by no one really). The board couldn't decide what to call it and it came down to either The RNSBBGF or rather obtusely the Bank of Crap. The Bank of Crap actually got 45% of the votes. Not sure it would actually have been a worse name. No one was. The worst thing about it all was that the bank was never abbreviated on any corporate stationery, branding or anything else. Consequently, for example, Brian's name badge was seven inches long. He had to pin it in the centre of his shirt and even then it clunked off everything. He wasn't alone in this of course, and commiserated with the females that worked there, often bringing up the cumbersome name badges in conversation so as to give him an opportunity to possibly if he was very quick (and really rather subtle) to just possibly get the briefest of glances at the female in question's bosom. It's not that he was that kind of man, he really wasn't. Well, he didn't think so, and especially shouldn't have been now he was spoken for (and Stacy had a most impressive bosom come to that). But he either had the small joys that he could get from a day or succumb himself to gazing out the large window, across the dismal high street towards Land of Reduced Items and Various Other Bargains Most of Which Are One Pound But Not All. Brian could only commiserate with the staff of that particular bargain outlet. He watched workers come and go all day and every single one had to enter sideways or else their name badges would get stuck in the door. So yes. Small joys and all that. Of course if Stacy caught him doing it, sweet arse or not, she would quite possibly remove him of his testicles. Mind you it was getting to the point where Brian wasn't really too bothered about possessing his testicles or not, or going out with Stacy for that matter. She was lovely (and far too good looking for him) but in truth he was rather bored of it all.

Of everything in fact.

So bored he nearly missed the weird thing, too engrossed was he in playing Candy Crumble that had recently been accidentally installed alongside the new operating systems on the computers. None of the big chaps upstairs had the slightest clue about computers, computing or computat... combutatio... something something. So Brian knew that they didn't know that he knew that there was a game that he could waste hours on in stead of doing anything constructive. So the joke then, and indeed the punchline, was squarely on them not knowing that he knew about them not knowing and they didn't know about his knowing of them not knowing about him knowing about... Right that's enough.

To be upfront. This was probably the weirdest thing that had ever happened to Brian. I think we've established that nothing amazingly untoward has happened in Brian's life (including the camel incident) so he definitely saw it as a bit weird. Well. Actually there was another weird thing and actually rather a sad thing that happened but I've not mentioned that yet. Apart from when I did there. But we'll get to that. First thing's first.

Are you ready?

Right. The clock had just gone four fifteen when...