Jessica awoke to a strange, droning sound from outside her third-floor flat. There was a bright green light behind the bedroom curtains. She climbed out of the bed, suddenly very awake, and went over to the window to look out.

Jessica modestly removed her clothing, fearing an intruder might be scandalised by the Victorian flannel nightshirt she had buttoned up to her chin. Surreptitiously she tore open the curtains and quietly shouted out in Latin.

to have every utterance obscured by the convoy of heavy vehicles coming down her street.

the wind blue chill against her now flannelless frame the light glowed greener a voice she'd never heard before spoke inside her head...

"Come inside dear, you'll catch a chill"
She went back to bed and fell soundly asleep.

Chapter 2

At 7 a.m., Jessica woke again, remembering nothing of the night. She washed and dressed and left for work. It was an ordinary morning until she stepped onto the number 16 bus, and

...felt a sudden sense of deja vu mischievously creep up inside her, announcing to her, on this day, a moment's rememberance of an unforseen expectation. For it was on the number 16 bus 8 years ago, that Jessica, a mere sprite of a soon to be post-teenager at the time, had begun her descent into a parallel world, of uncouth lawlessness and circumspect ear canal hygene. For it was on the number 16 bus that.....

she sat on the back seat and smoked her first cigarette.
Smoking was allowed on the top decks of buses then, and her friend Nigel had given her a cigarette "just in case". She's carried it around for about 3 months. It was dry and brittle, small flakes of tobacco were found in her pencil case from time to time, but she kept it like some talisman, fearing the day she would need it and be without.
None of her friends smoked, in fact they were all sporty "goody goody" types and the mere thought of even holding a cigarette was considered a crime of the lowest taste.
But such was her fait in Nigel that she clutched this guilty secret like a warm coffee mug to her cheek during a bout of sinsuitis.
l
In case of what, he never said, but this morning she needed a smoke more than ever.

Jessica fought the urge (a skill she seldom used) and watched out the dirty bus window. The street was notorious for its tiny shops where forged passports and plastic surgery could be procured for a few pounds and a half price coupon found in tins of Sterling Tea.

Suddenly a Punjabi gentleman darted from a cellphone cloning shop, raised a camera, and snapped a picture just as Jessica's window passed before him.

The thought hung heavy on the air like a leaf of lead. It fluttered briefly as a humminbird of transience. Elsewhere out of the corner of her eye she saw an old man pushing his life towards the dustcart of Hades. The soulles snapshots of a city from the bus window. A naked thought ran streaking, searching for itself, like the spirit of the sixties before it got so messy. A film from last night was replaying in her head... no more caffiene, no more pills... her life was slipping away in the throws of self hate. The last thing she remembered was her Sister Jaunita visiting and puking up on her coach. Drunken debauchery with the guy from the Bookies... Her trainers rubbed her heels in all the wrong places like the ghost of frostbite. Hopefully return to the 3 day week. Why not. Passed a pile of dead bodies been set on fire outside Tescos.. it looked like it had begun.

[ASIDE: Far away, a Canadian novel-collaborator, realizing he has no feel for where this is going, stoically steps back and awaits clarity.]

Jessica snapped out of her apocalyptic hallucinations. Familiar passengers had recognised these fits of internal torment, where thoughts wound round each other in a perverse danse, coaxing one another on to scoop out the marrow of torture and serve it up to Jessica's brain. She conveniently carried a small bottle of smelling salts on a black necklace, an ampule of bottled up sobriety ready at hand. Passengers would often uncork the small bottle and return her back to her bus-ride.

The bus lurched forward after she had got off, yet another day spent in the quagmire of fetid work. Her job wasn't so bad, it's just that she had ealy in her nascent career determined that she was bad for her job. The nature of her tasks enjoyed themselves at the rodeo of mediocrity, entertaining no-one and charging a day's less existence for a job so indifferently done that it would draw even the laziest of tears even to those for a penchant for the effortlessly milquetoast.

The incessant hacking heard in the distance announced both Bogdan's presence and today's mail. The hacking cough took ownership of Bogdan as a result of vocation, for by leaving Bulgaria, he left behind the prestige, fame, discounted gas and free cigarettes that one acquires by being a member of Bulgaria's National Smoking Team. Bogdan was neither captain, nor was he a member of the elite speed smoking squad, as he was not in possession of the lung capacity of a pearl diving Somoan, a necessary requirement for inhaling cigarettes voraciously against the cruel metric of an impatient chronograph. Rather, he was the second in the Synchronised team. The thin film of jealousy within the team prevented him from being the first, for team managers believed that a man of both such talent and swarthy Bulgarian looks is an anomaly and could have no equal, and that such anomalies should be suppressed rather then provoked, in order to maintain the quiet dignity of the Plovdiv populous' status quo. Despite the best efforts to keep a good man down, Bogdan parlayed both his looks and his skill for juggling three lit cigarettes with his mouth into a semi-lucrative deal to become the face of Victory brand cigarettes.

But it was not the lap of fame that Bogdan wanted to nestle in, but rather the possibility of the opportunity for escape that most piqued Bogdan's interests in the sponsorship. For aside from his smoking related skills, Bogdan was a man whose cupboard of viable skills was pathetically empty and rapidly collecting cobwebs. Furthermore, he realised that the continued enrollment in the National Smoking Team would inevitably lead him down the short and quick road to health ruin. He need only think of his mentor, Georgi, the great speed smoker who singlehandedly dominated the Eastern Block smoking circuit in the 70s, to be given a sobering reminder of the diminishing frills that await one as he puts down his last professional cigarette. A voice box, one lung, and the appearance of someone who was twenty three years his senior, Georgi was a mere husk of the man he once was. Bogdan used the first foreign promotional tour of Victory cigarettes as an opportunity to flee. It was 18 years to the day that Bogdan, 3 months after fleeing, became the resident mail clerk and longest serving employee of Jessica's place of employment.

Jessica made a point of ignoring Bogdan as she hurried to her workdesk. Every day it was the same and every day the snub hurt more. One day he would tell her the awful truth about herself. But not today. :(

The Canadian novel-collaborator whistled a Sheena Easton tune as he cooked himself some beans on toast. He knew that inspiration was close at hand. :)

A fly buzzed around landing on a cup holder feasting off the coffee stain, that mimicked the human condition so acutely it hurt to look at. The never ending circle of sludge.. tastes sweet to lick but sour to live. The breath of Janine was foul like a duck vomiting up turds. She hovered unnecessarily via the screen as Jessica typed a love email to a well known actor. The fly meanwhile, caught in a malfunctioning strobe of a faulty VDU screen had an epileptic fit.. when it came too the radiation had passed it on to the next stage of evolution.. it slowly watched the office workers and developed its strategy for attack. Then it had a second fit and died.

Meanwhile, in Iceland a

lump of ice landed on the foot of the Director General of the Death Squad Police. He screamed in rage and shot his own foot to teach it a lesson... he then shot wildly at a spider, but missed it completely, instead ventilating the chest cavity of a passing Mime artist... The crowd mimed sadness then stepped over his body...

"you're a moaner, you wanna."

the mime artist growled accusingly. The Director General, who had never been so insulted in his life, harrumphed loudly. He picked up the red telephone to report the insolence of the Icelandic mime bastard to the International Mime Federation whilst the mime lay bleeding and speaking in tongues.

A short man in a dark grey overcoat entered the room and coldly surveyed the scene. Wringing his scarred wrists, he cast a penetrating stare toward the Director General, who knew at once why he had come....

"Smith", snarled the Director General with false bravado, "have you come to gloat, or for revenge?"

Didn't Monty Python do a sketch on this topic. If my memory serves me correct, they were 'live' at the writing of Thomas Hardy's latest novel. Commentators were giving there opinions on each word.
I remember it starting..

Commentator 1: "A"
Commentator 2: This is the third time he has started a novel with the indefinite pronoun
Commentator 1: "A Sat",
Commentator 2: Doesn't make sense?
Commentator 1: "A Saturday"

and on it went..

Neither, I left my coat when I was in here earlier fixing a listening device to your chair.
I now have all of teh evidence I need.
Your days here are through.

HAH!!!

"HAH indeed", thought the recently-deceased uber-fly. He knew not where he was, in which cosmic dimension, but he did know about Smith, the Director General, Bogdan and Janine, and how they were all implicity connected.

He opened his mouth, and from the centre of the void, began to recount his explanation.

"I am the fly at the centre of the universe - my many legs and wings vibrate outwards in harmony with the cosmos, all things pass through me. Now I really wanna sniff some poo"

The cosmic fly swat came down hard - no one new less than the fly at that precise second, how the shockwaves would reverberate like a ripple of madness throughout the universe. A Canadian Novel Colloborater had a brain implosion brough on by invisible Nazi dust, that fed itself into his ears and nose - he coughed for a while while his brain was being reformated like a computer disc with his finisghed essay, being wiped by the evil of Microsoft. The brain was rewritten as a gestalt force of the dead fly soul... and the brain of Charles Mansons pet raccoon that had hurt him emotionally when he had been a boy, constantly felt tip penning swastikas onto his head - which resulted in Stacey's constant refusal of dates... he became so bitter because of that raccoon...

The Charles Manson's raccoon thing is actually going to take a bit of explaining. For that purpose, I have been enlisted as flashback narrator. I am not omniscient, but I am better niscient than you are in real life. That don't mean nothing bad about you or me. I get extra niscience, you guys get real bodies with real erogenous zones that make heap'um big pleasure explosions. So, to everything turn, turn, turn and I just stopped by to pick up a reason. Opening the proverbial envelope, my reason is that the Charles Manson raccoon thing is going to take a bit of explaining.

The raccoon really was a raccoon (specifically a polar bear white coloured one, which is pretty rare). And the Charles Manson was really that Charles Manson. Personally, I am more of a Zodiac or Gillmore man myself. Now those cats had something to say. "Picking off the little kiddies one by one as they come bounding off the schoolbus." My spine freezes when I think about the chilling words of the Zodiac, an apparent believer in even later term, ergo yuckier abortions. What ever happened to that guy? ahhhh, tribulations of the partially niscient, but I digress.

Getting back to something I actually know anything about, I can disclose the significance of the Manson coon was that his bite harbored the power to make people really freaking pliable. And that was why the vibe at the Ranch was the way it was. It is also a lot why Manson bores me so to tears. He was just the guy slipping roofies into peoples drinks only his roofie was an animal that was very cu-uu--uute and quite docile for a raccoon. Well, till you got bit. Then you turned into Squeaky or whoever.

So this raccoon has a rich and storied history, but one, alas that is beyond the scope of my personal forum-novelish jurdictioe-nay. Long story short, the raccoon did end up living under a rock overhang by a crystal brook which ran thru the land that the Canadian Novel Collaborator was being raised on, deep in Ralph Klein country. For better or worse, the raccoon --- you really should be told his name at this point -- his name is Unhalfbricked, so named due as a youngster being so unhalfbricked in penchant drossness. Now, those of you not quite niscient enuf to know what those words mean should take heart for a couple reasons. First, as Wittgenstein correctly pointed out, if lions could talk, people (non-narrator ppl he meant) would *not* understand what they had to say. So, like don't feel bad, nobody gets it. Fortunately, you have the niscience-plus narrator, and I can tell you that I know exactly how-and-why the raccoon was considered as being , well not bricked, at least not by halfbricks. I just can't explain these "concepts" (I use the term concepts loosely here, raccoon-analogues of concepts would technically be the correct term) to you because of what Wittgenstein said, but I can relate that if you knew what Unhalfbricked meant and knew what drossness meant in this context and likewise with penchant, and further if I could explain the "idiomatic" (Raccoons do not employ standard idiom in their thoughts, probably the right term here is raccoonish idiom analogue) "connections" (raccoons do not separate the world into constituent Cartesian portions, again standard descriptors are of little help). Anyway, imagine I got you through all those heuristics or whatever you call that kind of thing: BOTTOM LINE: you wouldn't care, it would not impact one way or another how you would feel about Unhalfbricked. So, I guess if you are getting this as a school reading assignment, just make sure you know the name Unhalfbricked and that should get you thru the quiz on this part.

Anyway, at some point in his Guy Pierce in Memento style wanderings (raccoons have doody for long term memory), Unhalfbricked realized that he could work for himself, instead of working for jerkos like Manson. The raccoon realized that he wanted to, to put things into human terms, live by a crystal stream with decent nocturnal access to trash. This he found at Canadian Collab's boyhood home. Collab became, not on it too fine a point put, a slave of the raccoon from age 10 forward. Collab lost his innonce, so gently on his shoulder, with the tenderest nip, a soft red rose on an iceberg tip made out of white bread kid. And Collab had been worried about the black (non-cosmic var.) flies. Whoops!

As the boy and his coon played master and servant through his formative teenage years, Unhalfbricked would mark his property, just like Charlie taught him. Collab has already alluded to this. Collab would feed (still feeds!) that raccoon pail after pail of smelly slop. Sometimes Unhalfbricked, who is not a particularly nice raccoon, will have Collab dump one pail of slop on himself when delivering a second pail for urgent intercourse between raccoon lips and the slop prize within. UHB says that makes it "hotter." Even you humans can probably tell what the raccoon means by this and what the dynamic really is between the pair. I don't think Collab will ever be right in the head, but if it was me, I wouldn't either.

Anyway, all that is basically why some dumb raccoon was in a position to crap things up between Collab and Stacy. Which bums me out, because Stacy action, if my more especially niscient narrator buds are telling me true would have been THE hotness, a story with much variety and no shame in things where shame would be expected. Somehow a boy dripping with ecoli juice, bits of eggshell, assorted wrappings and smelly bad lard is NOT my idea of hot. Nuff about me. I think I now 'splained what I was supposed to 'splained. I only know as much as you do about Smith and Detector Inspector and all them other great characters they are developing in the main story. Return of the curse of the partially niscient, I guess. Anyway, my Favorite is cosmic fly 'cause that dude seems bat-shit nuts (can you say bat-shit nuts on the Internet now?). I wonder what will happen know that his mind got transferred or whatever sci-fi crap they had happen with all the brains up above in the previous part of this novel.

The chocolate mousse was stolen by an ego maniac carrying a large box full of law books he used to kill field mice with...

Robert E Howard dropped the C when he read this

The Welsh General just finished buggering his underling... He did up his pants and laughed. "Now you must puke up on command." He shouted and the underling vomited back his reptile soup... "Now reheat it and serve it to the men" He scooped it up into a dish and ran off... The Welsh General smiled "Im in control and they'll eat whatever shit I tell em" he laughed hard.... He needed more viagra tho, hed taken his last pill... He then recieved a call to his mobile.. it was the ego maniac "I have the chocolate mousse, if you want to see it again tou have to perform in my play"

He weighed it up in his mind... he already had an avocado dip and fish fingers, but he liked to stock up on food ...

(note; the google ads being generated at present are
"Free articles & info about Jeffrey Dahmer"
"Charles Mansons' son?" and
"Makeup & Madmen, so you're all doing very well!!)"

Jessica noticed that where her place of work used to be there was now an internet cafe. She went inside paid the shaven headed man a pound and sat down at the computer. She knew that cyber-heaven was only a few clicks away.

Only to find the Fall forum offline.. with no explanation.
Tears filled her eyes, she rain into the rain blessed streets, splashing gravy stains up the back of her ankles.
Through the cars parked and toward the pub. A stiff drink was needed.
Drivers, startled from their REM song on Radio 2 applied the brakes, but the only effect was to induce a slide worthy of a playground in winter.
Her eyes met those of the driver of the Ford Mondeo, wheels locked but still racing towrds her at 30mph...

This is exactly what happened to me on that terrible day. It's uncanny! :o

but what happened next??

I...I....I....I don't remember. :(

Waking up from a coma in the Royal Hospital for Head Cases, Mr Bavey D (names changed to protect the innocent) moved his hands slowly under the crisp white sheets following his recent bed bath.
A series of pipes & tubes seemed to be coming from, or was that, into his body.
A cyclical beep kept metronomic time, it was not unpleasant.
The gunmetal sky loomed heavy through the dirty window and the TV was showing the afternoon news.
The year was 2011.
King Charles had just sired a son from his Queen (Billie Piper, now known as Queen B,who replaced Camilla following an unfortunate accident at a polo match involving a tin of caviar, a duck and a stilletto heel), and was considering naming him Winston.
Or Marquis Charles Charles.
Bavey D tried to gasp in horror, wondering where the last 5 years had gone, but the tube down his throat prevented him and all he could do was gurgle a mixture of sputum and saliva.. "he..ellll...pp...mmmmm..eeeee...peh..leas..."
"Nurse, Nurse" he's waking up...
"oh shit, quicky, more sedation...."
A chill feeling crept up Bave D's arm and the gunmetal sky wrapped him up like a WW2 parachute.

But he was ready, clutching the top from the lucozade bottle so tightly, it cut into his palm, was able to stave off the arms of Morpheus.
"He's gone again"
"Thank God for that, if he ever finds out..."

:cry2: :cry2: :cry2:

Fighting back waves of nausea, Bavey rode the fine line between here and there. Images and phrases faded in and out...
the young nurse was wearing a blue top, he had a tatoo on his arm which said "FUCK" and his fingers were brown from too much nicotene.

"well someones gonna cop it" he said to an unseen figure
"well it ain't gonn be us, pretty boy"
"hurh hurh"

The urge to vomit was building, the back of his throat burned. Suddnely his body spasmed, a fountain of clear fluid sprayed from his mouth, drenching the nurse.
"why you little....."
as his arm went cold and the grey fabric wrapped him up again.