How I got here

I do house clearances, I pick up all sorts of things, odd things. Some goes to auction, some goes to charity, the rest of it, the smaller stuff I stick on Gumtree or maybe EBay if I'm not so sure of the possible value. That was how I came across the guitar. It was in a old biddy's flat in Stirling, she'd been dead and gone for a while. To be honest there wasn't really much of any great value in the place. Some china, some prints but the guitar was there, left behind I guess and putting two and two together I thought it unlikely it had belonged to her. It was my simple assessment anyway. The guitar was a three quarter sized acoustic, six string and sunburst. Now I didn't really know much about guitars but I knew that by the age of the wood and the weight that it was a decent piece. There was no name of the headstock and only a very faded label in the body hidden down beyond the sound hole. The print on looked indistinct and had faded so it wasn't much help. It was a bit dusty and worn looking but I considered it to be interesting. I had a friend who knew about these things though so I put the guitar into the back of the van, wrapped up in a blanket just in case.

That was a few weeks ago and the guitar had just been lying in the office, I hadn't really got around to doing anything with. It was collecting more dust. So this girl comes in, she's got a bill to pay for a removal job we did the other day. A proper job with an invoice and so she hands me £250 cash for the day's work and I scribble on the receipt. “I need this for the insurance,” she says. Then she looks around and spots the guitar. “That for sale?” As I'm not sure the value I hesitate and look at the guitar and then back at the girl before responding. “Well I picked it up a few days ago, I've not had the chance to value it properly, it looks old enough to be worth a few pounds. Did you have a figure in mind?” “Well not real money but I'd give you this lottery ticket.” My jaws clearly drops as she produces a worn looking lottery ticket. She sees that I'm puzzled and says, “it's winner and I'll trade it for the guitar.” “Let's see the ticket.” There's nothing special about it, it's about a month old. “Ok but before it's a deal let me check those numbers.” At this point I expect her to drop the charade and offer me fifty quid for the guitar but she just looks straight at me and says, “Yeah, you go check those numbers, when you do you'll hand me the guitar.”

I nipped into the back office and flipped up the lottery results page on my phone. April. There were the winning numbers; 16 23 26 28 42 49. I looked at the ticket, the numbers matched. It looked like a genuine ticket and not a forgery. I was trembling, this was crazy. I stopped and thought for a minute. This made no sense, it was too good to be true and I knew too well what that meant. There has to be a scam in this and why bother for an old guitar even if it's worth a bit more than I might have thought? Then I thought about the ticket and saying nothing and just handing over the guitar. I also thought I needed a witness to at least corroborate whatever the facts were from now on in but there was no one else around. I counted to ten and looked at the ticket. Through the office glass I could see the girl, she was staring at the guitar and chewing gum.

I took a deep breath, “Hi, ok I'll take the ticket, you can have the guitar, that'll be fine if that's what you want.” She seemed to be looking right through me. “Thanks, you'll not regret this.” She walked over and picked up the instrument, casual pinged a few untuned strings and a dull chord rang out. She giggled at that and without turning around walked away and dropped the guitar into the back of her car. I watched her as she drove off, my thumb and index finger squeezing the lottery ticket between them as I held it in my pocket. I waited a long time, I counted the traffic lights and junction times before I moved. I wanted to count her out and away. The time seemed stuck in single figure minutes but I moved eventually. I went to the office door and locked it. I took the ticket out of my pocket and put it on the desk. I fired up the laptop and checked another lottery results website. I looked at each number on the ticket, I held it up to the light. Everything was checking out, everything was the way it should be except for the fact that I'd just swapped a jackpot winning lottery ticket for an old, battered guitar. That didn't check out but sometimes life's like that and you just have to go with the flow.

All that was eighteen months ago. I'm now settled down on the Cote d'Azur. I cashed in the ticket and bought a tidy villa up in the hills above Nice. I'm here with my girlfriend. We've a nice pool and some statues in the garden. I treated the family and my pals, bought a couple of nice cars and now I'm holed up here, happy and there's enough sitting in a Monaco bank to pay the bills well into the future. But I still think about that day when she came into the office, I wonder if it was all real. I wonder was there ever a girl or a guitar? I tried to trace her from the invoice address, no luck. I looked around for the guitar in salerooms and on EBay but got nothing. Looking back on that day in the office it was all over in a tiny sliver of a moment. Was it just my ticket, lost in my pocket all the time and my subconscious played a recovery trick? Did I have a breakdown? Am I in a parallel universe? Was she an angel? There certainly was a ticket. I framed the photocopy. I'll never forget that sequence of numbers either. Sometimes life, even when it adds up doesn't add up.

The last battle

You know you've driven too long, too far when you vision blurs, the roadside markers wobble and that dammed white line seems to be a revolving ball that you're running around to chase the horizon. I had to stop and when the Bar and Grill sign flickered up at me in the twilight I made the choice. The hot tyres crackled on the gravel in the failing light as I parked up and stopped dead. The sensation of just sitting and not moving was a deep physical pleasure. My hands slumped down from the wheel and my head tipped into the top of the it and I allowed myself just to feel woozy. I could've slept there, there and then. I was short on strength and normal sensation but I was also thirsty and hungry. The five minutes of zoning out in the parking lot was good but I knew I had to get out, stretch, breath some other air and eat. Then, once those common drugs had started to work on me I'd get back on the road.

The diner was run down and friendless. There would be no food hygiene prizes or fine cuisine here. It was chow and beer and that hard wooded utilitarian nothingness you get when you're off the beaten track. This was there. There was a warmth about it, some evidence of TLC in the paintwork and the pot plants but any investment or enthusiasm had been sucked right out of the business a long time ago. The sign said “OPEN” but there were no other cars parked up. At the side there was a red VW and a while panel, too far back to be customers I thought. I'd be No1, maybe first of the day or even the week. I swung open the door, no creak, no squeak, it was an unexpected welcome of sorts. Then came a female voice, rising like syrup from beyond the counter and filling the space where empty tables and chair and sauce bottle decorations were lined up in anticipation.

“You want a sweet hot coffee or an ice cold beer before I tell you everything that's on the menu?”

“I'll take that cold beer, any kind you got and I'll take steak and eggs and fries, any kind you got!”

“Well we've only got one kind of any of that so you're a very lucky man, just one that's not spoiled for choice.”

“Choice is the great curse of the modern world, give a man too much to choose from and he won't know what he wants, he'll also know what it is he can't have. All that tends to lead to bad situations and fisticuffs. I'm happy with you're four things.”

“Oh, we do have others but I'm not going to bother you with them, find a seat you like and I'll be out there with you in a moment.”

“I will do that, don't you rush and hurt yourself!”

I sat down at a table facing the window and the road, my back to the kitchen. As I leaned back in the chair I thought about my drive and my flight, my earnest flight to get away, get away from biggest cyber attack in history (so they said) and the business, my business that it had been unceremoniously destroyed before my eyes. I was fleeing the scene of somebody else's crime but in there I had a share of that crime. I was a third party and my trader site was wiped, wiped as I'd just handled my biggest transaction ever. It had all gone my way, the money was there in my account, over, down and out, I had the money and I also had the merchandise. Then when the hammer fell, when the Koreans or whoever it was attacked I had a double blessing; cash and goods. It took me about five minutes to think it through, to cement the final number, hide then away and then run as all the other numbers tumbled. Who would ever follow my tracks or trail. All the blank screens and flickering lights, all the news and propaganda, all a cover for guys like me to up and run and wait it out and cash in. Some I'm hiding in this cafe in the wilderness at the end of the universe, beyond signals and fibre optics ordering a medium steak. I'm running and I'm hiding and I'm rich...somewhere.

She appeared from the kitchen gloom with my brown bottle and a shiny glass. She put down the paper napkin, screwed the glass onto it and poured the beer. “It'll do you more good to look at that than it will to drink it but I know you're gonna drink it.” “I surely am.”

Her name badge said “Rosa” in a scripted font, she was about thirty five, still pretty, still slim, still in the wrong place I guessed. She smiled a dark smile as the bottle emptied. “You're food's gonna take a little time, fire up the burners you know.” “Business bad?” “Hell no! Business is business, we do what we can, we feed the hungry and water the thirsty, there's always that kind here, all the runners come here. Who you runnin' from?”

I smiled and deliberately supped on the beer, I wanted to gulp by she was holding me in a tractor gaze. She'd either read me like a book or she was a keen fisher of men. I tried in some way to look like I wasn't running and tried to purge my thoughts just in case they were running across my eyeballs like a telecaster and she was reading every word. “No time for me to run, I'm just exploring my business opportunities, here, there and everywhere. This place is in the right place but I'm sure you know that.” “Everything is in the right place.” She looked at me hard and then looked away. “I'll fix your meal.”

Now that the motoring part of my world had stopped moving I was suddenly swept by tired thoughts that grew and distorted. Her I was, on the run, looking for cover and somehow sitting on a fortune. One part in the Cayman Islands, whirring in a green lit bank server far from the Korean's grasp and a warehouse full of high quality prescription drugs. Locked, bolted and anonymous on some tired industrial estate in some tired Mid-Western town. I had seen neither thing, neither asset but somehow, thanks to a criminal glitch they were both mine and all I had to do was lay low until the dust settled, the machines healed themselves and the markets returned to whatever normal is. That was a lot of hungry thinking but it felt like I'd sorted it. It was the hundredth time maybe that I'd been through this, tried to imagine the numbers, the sheds and the eventual outcome. I had to stop, get control and just quietly much through the steak that should arrive at any moment.

Rosa brought me the steak. It looked good, it was big, that's always important when you're hungry. “Whatever you're trying to get away from...you won't.” Rosa's pretty face delivered the line completely straight and without expression. I looked down from looking up at her and then back. “Rosa, you and I do not need to have this kind of conversation. I'm hungry and you've brought me a steak, I'm happy, please don't complicate things with some lines of crazy talk.” She stooped down and whispered, “they are in a the back of the shop, they're watching, they're in the shop.” I shuddered but somehow kept it together. “Who are they?” “The guys you're running from, they're here.” She quickly turned and headed back to the dim beyond.

The steak in my mouth was not so tasty. I was trembling and sweaty. I couldn't quite cut the meat, I couldn't quite hold the fork. I gulped some beer this time and stood up from the table. All hell broke loose. Four back Ninja type guys leapt out from behind the counter, hit me, downed me and pinned me to the floor. “We follow you Jack with our many satellite and phones, we see your deals and read your minds. Today we declare a war on all the dealers and the brokers. We take back your cash and your hot stuff. Write your access codes on this paper!” He grabbed my right hand and tugged it over to the paper. “And speak into my device!” He held up a Samsung phone to my face. “You don't and we chop you up, good!” I did as I was told.

When I woke they were gone, my car was gone and my codes and my short lived fortune was gone. Rosa was standing over me. She didn't look to friendly to me. “You're the third one today,” she said. “The other two are out back. For fifty bucks my brother will get you all into town and drop you at the bus station, he's out there in his truck.”

Every little universe

“Help ma Boab!” “If it's not one thing then it's something else, that's what life is all about, one crazy thing after another in no logical or reasoned order and without thought or due consideration for anything that gets in the way. How then does anything ever actually get done? When the left and the right cannot recognise each other or work in any kind of harmony or agree any kind of common ground then what is the point. Every little universe is thrown into a complete state of constant chaos that is both unending and insufferable and then regularly revisited and stirred as we bring our plans, schemes and children into it so tipping it further into an arc of imminent destruction.”

If that is how you view life, your own life in particular and how you fit into the bigger picture then I truly feel very sorry for you. You, my friend are missing out on so much, so much creativity and positivity because life can be different. Life can be as upbeat as a Cliff Richard film or a Spice Girls

song or a heartwarming Broadway musical number, (though it doesn’t have to be totally gay). It does not have to be the bleak way it is portrayed from the minds and pens of our dark lords, you can be uplifted and fulfilled, that is your natural state and cosmic inheritance for all – believe it.

Common Problems

“So now I'm kind of wondering where all this will go next. It's like I've been through some big event, like a festival, a big show or a huge banquet; I'm stuffed and tired, a little over stimulated and I'm thinking I am satisfied. Satisfied is an odd kind of word, I know what it should mean but I feel I'm just stretching it a little to cover the application here. I suppose I'm satisfied but I know fine well that there is always going to be something else, pushing it's way in just to steal that feeling. Unexpected, maybe a bit unwelcome, jostling with other things and struggling for impact and success and starting the whole thing of again. Perhaps I'm played out, perhaps it's steak and eggs and heavy duty protein drinks and build up time. Glasses of milky stout and beetroot and wholesome stuffing and ruthless exercising, is that what you do? Still part of me wants to lie back and just float, float in a sunny careless haze, down streams of low expectations, anonymity, invisibility, following tiny shadows in the sun. Here today and drifted another hundred yards tomorrow. Catch me if you can? You certainly will because I'll be going nowhere and there you go, you've caught me.”

Sheila slapped my face. I almost fell from the porch bench, I was aware of the warm timber and flies and bees and insect noises, I stopped the procrastination. “I'm fed up with your self searching bullshit, get a job, get some money, sort yourself out. You last job's done, ok, maybe it was satisfying but that's all history. Go and start something new.”

The playful slap hurt, the words were all I expected, in this business the jobs come, the jobs go and whatever money there is just disappears in some spiral event that usual centres around the things that Sheila wants to do. I reached down and clicked open a beer and smiled at her. She was staring away into the distance, avoiding my eyes and doing her passive aggressive thing, trying to turn me back around.

“You know Sheila, you're damn well right, I'm going to finish this cold beer and head right out and see what the opportunities are downtown.” She laughed and slapped me again, a little beer spilled and we play wrestled on the bench. We were both giggling and tickling and then we stopped and just lay still and held each other close saying nothing. Over in the field I heard a big diesel engine running, in the trees crows were angry at something and the insects stayed busy avoiding being eaten. Sheila was hot and sticky in her work jeans and cheesecloth. Her breathing was low and pretty and I liked that. I settled to stay still and she did too, on the warm bench. So I just stared up into the afternoon sun and dreamt away a little more. I still wasn't feeling satisfied, I wasn't feeling anything I could describe. Maybe that's the trouble with my trouble, my chronic common trouble, I just don't have the right words to describe it but still I know it's really there.

The Camera

On reflection, the camera seldom lies.

“Time was I was a pretty good looking guy, clear skin, no pot marks, good colour skin, a little stubble, nice jaw line and a nose that was straight and precise as a pencil. Eyes bright like brown headlamps, no bags, no drooping. Teeth all pearly white and no furry tongue. I’d thick hair in those days, under control, not like now, bald where I don’t want it, sprouting from places I never knew it grew, black eyebrows, hair like fuse wire, Jesus, I’m out of breath describing my features. I look and I don’t recognise myself. Inside I’m still that kid, nineteen and I didn’t have to try, it all came easy. I just looked, made a little contact, a little smile, cheeky maybe, then look away, then look back, then look away, then stare and …hold. In a snap I’d caught me a fine slim, sliver fish of some girl. Too many now. I can’t recall their names, well some, some just blur into one another. It’s how it is until you find that right one. Swimming in that shoal, all looking the same from a distance but up close, you can tell the one. Yes I was a catch and so was she. A catch catches a catch. That’s how it should be, that’s how you find happiness, in equals and balance. Yeah, she was a pretty fine girl. Then of course I had to chase her down, talk a little, look a little, maybe run a little. It was the funniest game and you know we both knew that, whatever it was it was inevitable, like science or maths or something. It just clicked and we knew what we knew. She didn’t want to let on about that anyway, see that’s not how you play. You play smart and long, even if you’re really going in a circle. It’s all circular movements, to get to the place that you want to get to. Circles.”

“So, well right now I’m no catch, I’m in no shape to be caught. I look at this old face and all the damage me and my friend time did. We put this thing through it’s paces, now it’s pretty tired, worn out, beat up and weather beaten. It’s as if the scaffolding underneath it all just has some serious kind of fatigue. It’s shaky…and the fabric, it’s stretched out, too dry, too much extreme. Like an old motor that can’t quite rev up to places it used to rev up to. There’s a clear drop in performance. Hey but maybe that’s no everything, ‘cos now that she’s well…gone, what’s a fellow like me got to look good for? Why should I try? I’m not some silver fish that any crazy girl’s gonna want to hook, look at me.”

“Yes, time was that I could make things happen, a razor, a tack, a stiletto; sharp as they come, that was me. I could fight. I fought for her, oh yes, there were others. Keen as the mustard in a street vendor’s hog dog. They slipped and slid and there was a little blood, a few words…but she was mine, I never was a quitter. Better guys than me too, I knew that, I see what I see and I saw that. They had me all measured up but I surprised them, I punched above my weight. Nobody really expects that, nobody expects that sharp, quick punch. I fought for her all right, won her fair and square and now…it’s all some kind of history that nobody else can really remember. Only my version of events. What I saw and did and now, the little of that that I can remember. That’s all I have left, this fragile thing inside my head that plays all those tricks, this memory. I swear some days I cant figure where the lines cross and where they bend. I think I remember things, clear as ten crystal bells ringing on a snowy night. Then I remember nothing, that’s when I get the chills, the frustration. Beating myself up because you see, I can’t quite picture her face. All those years together, those things, sunny days and lollipops and I’m such a dead man now. I can’t tell what she was like. Ok I have photos, paper with ink, running colours and blacks and whites. Get togethers and beaches and weddings and monkey suits and families. I look at her in those pictures, she’s so young and so am I, well younger. She’s there on the paper but it kind of makes no sense. It’s paper, it’s a fucking piece of paper. What’s that to have at the end of your life?”

“So doctor, you can see I’m an agitated man, my face, my memory, my head, what can you do for me? I need a package, a package to get me back there, into the stream, I need to live just a little more. Get the taste and colour, the appetite. She gave me so much. I want to get my hands on those things underground, grasp them again. I need to make some sense of this life before it all just trickles away. They say that’s how it is. You go on for years, you’re proud and caught up with yourself. You don’t look up or down, you miss the detail, the little things, they just kind of evaporated like the steam out of a kettle or the flavour from a pan. Those things that made the difference, well right now they’re eluding me, I can’t get them, can’t get back there. In my mind it’s like a conspiracy is afoot. Conspiring against myself. My mind and body have their own bloody minded agenda. They had it all the time, they played at that and they just didn’t let on, didn’t let me know that all the time that I was trusting and relying and using them they were on a whole different thing. They were real busy, running down the clock, running it down.”

The doctor sat back, elbows on the chair arm, his fingers knitted together as trying to form the roof of a tiny log cabin. He was staring at the finger pattern. The silence lasted. Neither man spoke. The doctor breathed heavily but Michael just sat quiet. Confessing his primal fears and shifted perceptions had exhausted him, he’d spent his vocabulary, pushed it all out with much of a pause for breath or thought and now his mouth was dry and he felt older but no wiser.

The doctor spoke. “Well Michael, you’re in a better place than you might think. You see you came to me looking for a cure for a problem that everybody has but no one can fix. Getting older and losing that little bit grip, friction, traction whatever that holds you onto the path of…forgive me sounding pretentious here…life. You have, momentarily lost that grip you once had. Quite a common occurrence and there is no cure…except…acceptance.”

The doctor pulled out a smart phone and clicked the camera on. “Smile please!” Automatically Michael smiled and the photo was taken. Across the room a printer kicked into life and pushed the printed picture out from it’s grey plastic innards with a whir and a few mechanical noises  as if giving birth. The doctor walked across to the machine and picked up a sheet of paper. “Just stay there on the couch, I’ll get this,” said the doctor.

“Michael, do you recognise this man?” Michael looked at the print and then looked at the doctor. “Well it’s a lot like a guy I used to know…” the doctor looked again at the print then at his phone. The image was not what he expected. There on both the paper and on the phone screen was a young man, maybe nineteen, dark and animal, jet black greased hair, in his prime. Beside him on the couch was a slim, smiling  girl, sitting right next to him, pretty eyes staring out into the lens. They were holding hands. In the background the doctor could make out every detail in is surgery. It was a pretty good camera phone.

The man who built time bombs

Of course the thing is that time bombs look nothing like popular (?) image you'd imagine, that clock and dynamite picture you see when the word comes up. Oh, I build time bombs, certainly but they are nothing like what you might think...and their purpose is quite different from...the traditional bomb.

You see what I do is that I act like a kind of official whistle blower. I come along, into your life take a good look, note things down and so on and then when the time is right I blow the whistle. Now I'm trying not to stretch all these analogies and things but when I blow my whistle then it just may be a little time bomb will be set and will go off. Maybe not right away but sure as shit it will. It's my job, I build them, guard them and then when you say so I light the fuse and generally stand well back or at I'm gone altogether by then, on some other job or something. Mixing and matching.

So the thing is the client gives me all the bomb making ingredients. There's no special chemicals or anything. What I need to do a good job is just a stack of facts and some evidence, maybe a witness or two if you want to pull it all out a bit. It's really up to you and how much you feel comfortable about paying and of course how much of a burden of guilt, shame, revenge or whatever the hell it is that you need to detonate.

I usually do my bit just after my client has gone off on, shall be say a long journey, one from which he does not expect to return. Or it may be that he (or she) is sadly deceased, passed away, crossed over the river. Whatever the circumstances I tend to follow their instructions to the letter. So I turn up a funerals, family gatherings, will readings, business briefs and meetings, press conferences or whatever way the client instructs. Then, at the agreed and opportune moment, bang! Of goes that bomb.

Some have taken a lifetime to build, others a few weeks or maybe it was all down to one little thing. Whatever the scale I will share this knowledge and information with the assembly (who do not generally know what's comin') and then see what happens. Maybe it would help if I gave some recent examples and then you'd understand. You see everybody, deep down, even crazy people want to make their peace and cleanse their lives. They need to reveal, explain and whatever else before it all just goes in a puff of smoke...and I can tell you that that smoke can smell pretty bad sometimes.

So some examples...well martial problems tend to be in there, secret lovers, unknown relationships, being unfaithful to a life time partner, the whole classic double-life thing, even double families. Then there's the criminal element (which may of course be in every example to some degree...fraud and deception etc.), stealin' and killin', movin' money, tax dodges and as I said criminal associations. Surprising how many killin's keep comin' up. That's a very heavy burden for a person to carry for a lifetime.

Then there's all the sexual stuff, gets a bit dark in here sometimes, straight sex, fetishes, gay relations, memberships of clubs and “out of town” organisations and fellowships. You can never tell what is goin' on but strangely some troubled people eventually tell me. Often they are proud of it, just couldn't quite tell the other half or the family or the wider world but they want that quirky little part of them to get some final recognition...it makes a lot of sense.

Some other folks need to vent their feelings, they've gone a lifetime playing the game, saying what was expected of them, turning up a church or the office, looking good and smiling when all the time something quite different was playing out behind the blinds. I find these kind of situations can cause the most...friction.

Money comes up a whole lot; there isn't any, there's more than you thought, there's all that but none of you are getting it for the following reasons. Or it's all going to a) a secret son/daughter b) the Republicans c) the old lady next door for her magnificent skills in fellatio d) some other real cluster fuck of a reason.

Justification: People the world over feel the need to explain and justify themselves, what they did, their decisions, their reasoning, their whole way of living. You set it out and I'll explain it. It may well mean nothing to the assembled masses, it may be a pile of shit but whatever it was you felt the need, at the last hurrah to get this thing off your cold dead chest.

So that's my job, I build the bombs from the carefully chosen parts you send me. What you got to share?

Most beautiful

“It is so strange to wake up and know that you are the most beautiful woman in the world.” Lara was talking to herself in the mirror. “ Other women can't understand, naturally they hate me, I suppose, why wouldn't they? What they don't understand is the effort that I have to make, the work and the working out that I have to do, the pain, the self denial, it's constant.” She was looking deep into her own eyes, the conversation becoming more serious though her refection took no notice and blankly refused to answer. “I fine tune the regime, try things, drop things, stick with things, note what works and what fails, all to stay here in the top slot. Clothes, hair, cosmetics and preparations, that's just the start, that's almost the easy part. It's keeping yourself out there, being seen, even heard once in a while. No, they don't really want to listen to me, nobody wants a talking magazine cover or a model that chats on the cat walk. It's forever about my superficiality and only the very edges of anything else...but at the moment I retain the edge.”

She continued to chat into the mirror, unconsciously she was fixing her skin, her hair, looking for some tiny, threatening blemish, looking for the start of the downhill rot...but that was some time away. Right now she had to dab a tissue on her lipstick and squint at the corners of her eyes, just to check the translucence that was always there was always there.

“This is for my fans, the little people.” She was brushing her hair. “And this is for the scumbag press and the media liars and the bad bloggers and the paps.” She dabbed nail varnish remover across her fingertips with cotton wool...where is my manicure? It's nearly eleven.” She sipped some cold water. “Nice, pure, cold and clear...a little like myself.”

“Maybe today I feel I have a sore back, like my Polish mother would have said, like a worker, maybe I'm tired but still buzzing.” She sat back in the chair and daydreamed about smoking a long Russian cigarette and eating a large cheeseburger. “I do look sexy when I smoke, I look good and dirty and independent but that's not so good for this image, for the business. These managers they tell me what to do, where to go, what flight, I get there but I never really know where I am...other than the top. My mother would have laughed at that, traveling the world, five star everything, six star anytime ans still only wanting to be something that's a position on a list, a position on a list, a slippery, stupid list.”

Lara's phone chirped. She ignored it for a moment then picked it up. Few folks had her number and she had very few numbers. Being number one doesn't mean that all the numbers fall straightaway into the right places. Some number vanish all together. Some numbers are in funds and investments and bonds and sunny shiny white properties that will act like a magnet for other sunny white properties and their sunny owners, occupiers and clients. She sipped more water listening to the voice on the other end of the phone call. It was itinerary, travel appearances and way down in the detail some work, covers and opening nights and appointments. Tomorrow was to be a travel day.

She put the phone down and returned to the mirror conversation. “They say I have eight hours, then it's that premiere, then sleep, then an early start and I'm in Dubai or somewhere...are you getting this dumb bitch? Are you having a fantasy about a lettuce leaf or an oatmeal cracker? Are you worried about the size of the gap between your thighs? We both have stuff to do, to straighten out and I need you to be straight with me but you never talk. I do all the hard work planning and getting dressed and undressed and you...you just look back at me.” She tapped on three perfume bottles as if they were a little drum kit. “Boom, boom, boom I need red meat, masturbation, maybe a man,maybe a woman. A trustworthy worker who'll fill my bed and move between me and that mirror woman. Yes I'm talking about you, you look like you're listening but I'm not so sure, glassy eyes and that haughty look. What am I to make of that? So it's back to you and I am you're only audience but you refuse to perform for me.”

When your best friend is only a reflection your conversations will be frustrating; circular, tedious affairs, you will question your sanity. Mirror people don't talk back or share, interact, argue or tell you anything new. So you get in there and you find, suddenly it's all too deep, you've manoeuvred yourself into that place, that mirrored hall of self examination and reflection where you can go but no one else can reach you. You can't describe it or explain it, it's a ditch and you're ditched.

Maybe under different circumstances, with better tutelage, guidance, a smaller mirror even, Lara would have made that flight to Dubai. As it was she never was found but then again nobody knew she was lost and she never was number one anyway They said it was all a bit “smoke and mirrors”, that listing. If it did exist then the prize belonged to the girl in the mirror, wherever she has gone.

Which is best?

Is it better to leave no trace...or to leave a footprint?

Susan

“I should be putting in lines between these thoughts, creating breaks and boundaries, managing the stream, stop those collisions. I should but I cant. It seems like I just know that it's in those mysterious and random collisions that all the interesting chemicals change and processing occurs. These things are wild and unlimited, their conclusions unpredictable, at times unthinkable. You know how you have those pictures inside your head of who you are. Then you look in a mirror and get a shock, you don't look like the person you feel. That's disturbing but it's also the truth. It's also a collision and a spur. Which person do you want to be? The true reflection or the imagined and what's the difference between the way those two look, think, behave and react?”

The professor closed the door on the capsule. “She'll be fine in there but it is going to be a difficult and a different journey.” The team retreated behind the screens and into the control room. In the capsule Susan was still, serene almost. The mind training allowed her to disembody, dislocate, get away. The trip would be physical but on this voyage her mind and conscious self would travelling separately.

“Look upon your body as a piece of luggage, personal effects, things you'll need when you arrive. I think that's the best way to look upon it. You are a pioneer, your journey will blaze a trail for billion others, in all directions...and I'm sure your luggage will catch up.” He allowed himself a giggle and a smile as he switched off the microphone.

It was sundown when the countdown ticked to zero. A happy coincidence and a extra effect. At zero there was a flash, bright white and then the following on of loose colours from all across the spectrum. The light was so bright that you might have imagined it warranted some accompanying noise, the sound of thrust or schism or energy releasing. There was none however, just light and a vapour that ballooned out and then hung in some kind of good imitation of an incandescent rain cloud. In a few seconds the process was over and the capsule had gone. The team checked the sensors and instruments to ensure it was safe for them to emerge. For some reason it felt right to stand on the spot where the capsule had been even though they had no sense of which direction to look in order to catch a glimpse of it. It had not been a conventional launch or departure.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” began the Professor, “it may be sometime before we hear from our colleague, as you understand our ability to communicate across these spaces is unexplored and untested...but we will continue to listen and to...hope.” They returned to the control room and cracked open the champagne as each shared their thoughts and feelings on the scientific triumph.

And so it was that they listened and waited and listened and waited. Two months passed without a word. The media, having been excited at the outset drifted back and looked elsewhere. There were other better stories out there. Some team members left, they had other projects to work upon and so the personnel shrank to a two person shift, perpetually now in listening mode only. They listened, dozed, read and researched. They reminded themselves of the mission, occasionally they forgot the mission. Time passed for them but not for Susan.

It was almost six months from the launch that she returned. It was in the grey of some unexpected morning, the listeners were diverted by their own fatigue. That was about to change. As had happened when she launched there was light and vapour but no sound, the CCTV caught it all. The light dimmed and the capsule appeared, hot and glowing. They took out Susan's body, they estimated she had been dead for about six months. By the time the professor arrived she was laid up in the laboratory, the medical services hovering and scribbling. One by one the shift members arrived and gathered in the control room. The professor was silent and grim. The triumph of the capsule's return eclipsed by the discovery or the dead passenger. They sat there for a few hours musing over the possible causes and the consequences. It was an emotional rather than scientific time.

Just after midnight a burst of white noise and static shocked everyone in the room as spluttered from the loudspeaker. Then silence, then noise, then silence. Then a voice. “Hi, Susan here, I'm OK, I've arrived, I can't seem to see the screen...I think it's back light has failed...and I seem to have lost my luggage.”

The persistence of ideas

She's moving the furniture around the room, all the time. Like some piece of dancing animation where the couches, tables, lamps and variety of soft furnishings waltz across the lounge as if choreographed by Busby Berkeley. Sometimes they settle, as if to take breath, to review and ponder their latest arrangement then of they go again. Responding like the particles set into a kaleidoscope lens, never ending and unreliable combatants that argue with themselves in terms of function and aesthetic balance. She watches this in her head as if it was a movie, light entertainment, a reality TV show that is only real in her imagination. The thrum of the rolling table, the swish of the twisting carpet, the clatter of chair and table legs and the jazzy canvases that attach and move across the walls looking like a vista from  passing by suburbia through a train carriage window.

Then, abruptly into the room steps her future self. Older, respected, strange, as if seen in a dirty mirror glass. All the moves are over now. The furniture is stock still, the cushions are steady, the painting hang with no swinging. There she is moving amongst the furniture like she was at a party. She's holding a wine glass, giggling, perhaps flirting but there is no one else there. Popping a canapé into her mouth and savouring it. She looks confident and successful, she looks happy but she's had too much to drink. So it seems. She has the hint of knowing smirk that her younger self doesn't recognise. She comes across to her, she's going to talk to her younger self.

“You do know that ghosts live before death as well as after death.” She says. “Time for us isn't fixed, we have our peculiar freedom, we have our ways, we have our ideas.”

“I don't believe we've been introduced.”

“I don't believe we need to do that you stuck up, confused, bitch. You know fine well who I am.”

“Ahem, I'm not getting any of this, you are clearly a figment of my imagination and you're interfering with my plans and daydreams. Simple as that...and what's more if I'm seeing you and therefore going mad I'll just simplify things and swallow a few more pills and gins and...blot you out...and don't call me a bitch you...ghost.”

“Your lazy mind can hardly blot out something that doesn't exist. You can't even arrange furniture without getting stuck in a loop and you can't even see that being civil and communicating with me might actually help you...oh and I'm enjoying myself because, well you can't see it but we are having a party here. Right now.”

“You can't hold a party here without my permission, particularly while I'm rearranging the house. I hereby dismiss you. Please allow me to return to my own imagination.”

“I think you'll find that this is your imagination. You're just so far up yourself you've forgotten how to use it properly. You used to, God knows. Now all you do is fuck about with this junk playing yourself, as if the position of a couch or a lamp improved the quality of your life.”

“You can hardly talk about the quality of life, you're a ghost.”

“I'm a ghost but I'm also you. How does that sound? Perhaps you're seeing a bit of an opportunity here? Some constructive dialogue, some advice from my angle, something from outside of time itself, wouldn't that be attractive? I'm prepared to dip out of the party for few moments.”

The two women sat on the couch and faced one another. They talked for some time. To the viewer, had there been one, all that they would have seen was a woman sitting on a sofa, looking ahead and talking to herself. As the light failed the conversation seemed to slow and then the woman flopped back onto the couch and fell asleep. The sleep was a dark, cleansing and anonymous one. An hour later she was woken by the room light coming on and a man entering the room. “Hello darling” said her husband, “how's your day been? Have you been having a nap?” “No, no, yes...but I'm fine, I had a friend round.” “Anybody I know?” “She's an old acquaintance from the past, she was in town and dropped by, a nice surprise really.” He didn't answer but just nodded, kissed her temple and went upstairs to change out of his business suit. She patted her lap and stood up. She thought to herself that the room arrangement looked rather good.

Later they ate together. It was a simple meal, salad, some meats, a crisp cold white wine. They chatted but he was tired and the conversation was wandered and aimless. She also found concentration difficult, it had been an unusual afternoon. As they cleared their plates she sat back. She looked at him, then she seemed to look through him and she spoke but it was not really to him. It was to nobody in particular or perhaps just herself. “You know, I've just realised, death isn't an event in life at all.”

Sometimes you can get yourself so far into things that it's just impossible to get yourself back out.

My ISM problem

“A lump of chocolate now and then for the cancer, a drop of red wine now and then for the heart, a suck on a cigar occasionally for the inflamed nasal passages, a clove of garlic for the prevention strokes, a little aspirin for the blood, a brisk walk for the Alzheimer's, some regular sex for the endorphins, a bit of red meat for the brain cells, a plate of stir fried kale for the iron, a cup of tea for the early mornings and the regular check of the intermediate shaft bearing on the Porsche 997/998 2.7 to 3.8 engine. The one fitted between 98 to 2004. That is except for the 3.6i unit fitted to the Turbo and GT3, they of course use the 993 bottom end so there's no IMS problem. Lucky bastards. No one knows when or if the bearing will fail and Porsche don't seem to offer any reason or explanation. I find it a bit disconcerting that the fault can just occur without any warning. It's time bomb really, a cot death, that's the thing with physical and mechanical health...and well being. You just never really know. One day it goes 'click', one day that thing in your brain just goes 'click'.”

“So intermediate shaft failure is probable rather than inevitable, I don't know what's worse. It's like cot death or spontaneous combustion or something. Lightning strikes even. Some nights I don't sleep for thinking about it, I toss and turn, get the sweats, losing my mind, cancer and health and that IMS failure. I have nightmares about that pool of oil there under the car, I don't notice it (or maybe I ignore it) and try to drive away and there are all those costly consequences. Towed away by a yellow truck. Cancer or shaft failure? I'm shaking thinking about it, I'm disturbed, my eyes fill up and water, I get the shivers.”

“ There are solutions out there, they say the revised shaft and seal, that's the WPOZZZ99Z (6)S**** bit that works. I'm considering it but I've only clocked 46000 miles and the expense is just too much to consider what with all my regular medications and lifestyle costs. I'm keeping it together but it's a challenge. There are no official statistics, you'd think that there would be but no, it's all word of mouth and forum gossip. I don't know about that, those guys are all in California and you just never trust those things. Fly by night. I don't know if I want to set myself anymore challenges, not now; like trying to write a story when there's some other distraction, with a knife hanging over your head, naked, out in the worst weather, dressed as a woman, drunk and incapable, cornered by a mad dog, badly parked with people honking, tied to a lamppost, waiting on that pool of oil forming. What did the forum say again? The pencil keeps breaking and I keep trying to sharpening but it's soft and the lead is broken and the sharpener is blunt and I'm having ideas but I can't get them down, can't hold a single one.”

“In the workshop a job is underway, there is a flange bearing support bolted to the engine with three bolts, the flange is removed and you can see the threaded holes for the bolts. I wished someone could show me the bolt in the middle that shears off. So I could just see it for real, put my finger tip in that threaded hole. It's all in my imagination. What is the truth about the cars? I hear that 20% of Boxters don't make it past 100k without that catastrophic failure, then a £6k rebuild, a whole engine eaten up and shredded. Then again 80% are ok, that's good odds. Still it's those cursed bolts, the bolts fail and everything just falls apart. What if I have them? Maybe if I just keep the revs low, don't gun it, kid gloves and care, light right foot, tender loving care. I could stay well under 4000 revs if I had to, I could do it. Then consider the grip and gnaw of the tension that it would create. That's no way to live.”

“There's an old theory that Porsche know all about it. They build those engines on the cheap, or just cheaper, entry level engineering, Eastern European or Indian bolts, inferior alloy and so on. Wherever they source parts, who knows? Bet they don't make them in Stuttgart. That shiny factory is like a hospital. Beautiful but mean. Better than a hospital, hazy science fiction. Cost cutting or efficiency or carelessness or a plot for the benefit of the dealers. Decisions made in the board room, wood panelled walls, whispers and fine china, maybe a brandy, maybe a whisky, a nod in the right place, cool Germans, level headed, clinical. Well it is a hospital. So times are tough and it's all about pushing out the tin and money changing hands. Long term survival or a quick buck. Just enough quality in there to get them through the warranty period, after that you're on you own, living with the risk and the cost.”

“That's the buzz out on the forums, all the geeks and honest men, retelling their tales, posting pictures, ground up oily metal and unsmiley faces pasted to the jpeg. Their solutions, their after market additions, putting things right, solving those design faults that the so-called designers missed. Men in white coats looking through glasses, checking the bits against the drawings and nodding at each other. Nobody ever won the Nobel Prize for a reliable engine bearing, nobody. What were they all thinking? Now it's all repeated and played out and frankly I'm at my wits end and it's just a silly machine, a machine with a flaw. Like me, I might get that cancer or blood disease or some STD. All liable to breakdown, out of the blue, but I'm bombarded, all the time, tales of woe, early deaths and failures, diets and quick fixes, cures and snake oil, wrecks and wreckage on the highway. Plagues. No wonder I can't sleep. We are all broadcasting, all the time, all across the social networks and forums. We are all storytellers – that's how we make sense of our lives, but still it makes no sense.”

(“You know, I have another theory. Those blown engines, the intermediate shaft failure, the early and untimely deaths. Well it is just possible that those cars were not driven regularly, not exercised or stretched. Then you get deflection in the shaft from just sitting there, idle. Thermal expansion and cooling, it gets to the metal, gets into the metal. Slowly the tolerances get out of balance. Out of balance is never good. These cars were meant to be driven, their place isn't in showrooms or languishing as trophies and garage queens. It's the open road, whatever that means to you.”)

Losin' my religion

“Yeah it was a few years ago, I was a lot younger and I was a part of a cult down in Texas. They were all grim Presbyterian types, kinda skewed in their beliefs. Extreme and driven. They'd pick up and recruit homeless and vagabond types. They kept me there about two years, they were clever cock-suckers, they controlled my weight, held back food, kept us on a low protein diet. They made me work out in the garden most days, other times I was in the kitchen but they made sure none of us ate too much. They had regular lessons for us, morning, noon and night, brought us together for teaching and prayer. That was mostly them telling us what was wrong with us and how we were unrighteous and in need of grace and salvation. They used to speak from the Old Testament, they liked all that conquest and battlefield shit. They wanted to cleanse the country. They wanted a Old Testament solution I think. They seldom mentioned love or Jesus but you couldn't comment or criticise 'cos that wasn't on the programme. The programme was all about their control over us, that bombast of bullying, how they were right, how their reading of it was right and everybody else had it wrong.”

“I was pretty young and impressionable, I'd had a few bad breaks, I didn't feel too good about myself and so I was easy meat for these guys. I just didn't see it. I didn't see how they were controlling me, expecting things from me, the levels of obedience and what they liked to call grace. I just kept my head down, didn't argue, just got on with my work. Day in day out in that Texas heat. They fed us bread and vegetables, communal meals but they (the leadership) never ate to much with us. They ate later when they had their leaders meeting in the evening and we were working pretty much dawn till dusk. They ground me down I can tell you. I'm there, feeling like shit, they're telling me I need to change, what the fuck was that about? I looked at myself and it was true I wasn't much of a person, I had form and history but I couldn't figure how I was supposed to change. I just kept working and eating less stuff and I could feel myself withering away. They worked us hard, kept us busy and we were just too tired some days to think. There was no debate either. When they said bible study they meant they'd read a bit and then they'd tell you what that meant. I was usually that God was mad with us 'cos he loved us so much but we were a disappointment and though Jesus had come to redeem us we were still no making it. We had to work, to change (that word again).”

“I looked around and I looked at them and they were all in pretty good shape. All those leaders had cute wives, pickup trucks, clean blue jeans and leather boots, big black bible books and they didn't do much in the fields. Their hands were soft, they thumbed through those bibles and talked about it like that in itself was hard and worthwhile work. They wore spectacles when they read. They chose their words carefully, stressed service and servitude and faithfulness and that shit and they kept a eye on us all the time. They discouraged us forming little groups, they changed the rotas. I was pretty confused all the time and I felt increasingly disapproved of even though I was doing all the right things on the programme and keeping up with my duties.”

“Then one day I was working out on the Long Acre, we were nipping the tomato flowers and I was on a break, a water break. I was there just blowing out and the contractor who maintained the tractors (we had no mechanic for some time due to another little dispute) was fixing something and he stopped up and lit up a cigarette. Well I was there on the spot, hot and hungry and just feeling all shrivelled up inside and I saw him light that cigarette and I saw him suck in and blow out a big lungful of smoke. It looked so good. I stopped over and asked him for one please and I took the time of day. I was about halfway down that sweet smoke when I heard the foreman elder comin' and he was shouting and pointing and yellin' at me and the contractor. The contractor just looked and said that he was all too holy with a real big bug up his ass and too big a head for his hat but the foreman elder just came right up to me and he punched that half cigarette right out of my mouth and knocked me on my back in the dust. I stayed down there for about a minute. He was quoting the bible at me and talking about my body being a temple for the holy spirit. The contractor said this ain’t none of his business but he didn't care for the atmosphere around here. Lying there in that dust I had one sore chin and I had one or two crazy thoughts there in my head. Now there wasn't quite enough sugar in my blood to give me the speed of thought and action I once had but I still had something in there and I was feeling just a bit angry.”

“Time was moving slowly and I got up and looked at that guy. He was tall in his elder's jeans, clean and bright blue and he was looking right down his nose at me. He said something and referenced it all from Leviticus and nodded at me looking for an acknowledgement and agreement. By my left against the fence wire there was a loose piece of 2 by 4. I grabbed it and hit Mr Clean Jeans square across the jaw. He went down then like a pile of purple bricks. The contractor just said fuckin' good work boy and got back to his repair work. I was trembling though 'cos I knew I'd have hell to pay from those guys in the leadership. The foreman was rolling on the ground, both hands holding his chin, he was sobbing and writhing. I wanted to hit him again but I thought better of it. I thought about the rest of the leaders and I could see some of the gang heading cross to where I stood. I jumped the fence and ran across the potato field and down behind the water tower. I was struggling, this effort in the heat and in the state of shock I was in was too much. I vaulted the inner fence and now I was back at the compound.”

“I looked around and saw another of the elders comin' out the ranch house doorway. I just started to walk across to the cookhouse like everything was ok but I knew I was on the way out big time. When I got in there I just lit up every gas burner on the range and I threw towels and paper sacks and any shit I could find at that cooker. It was all in flames in seconds and by that I mean everything. I guess when he knocked that cigarette out of my mouth I snapped. I saw all that cunning and control, the lack of honesty and respect, all the cruelty and disregard embodied in that single act and I, despite my weakness, struck back in my own clumsy way. I was just standing up to the bullies and the hypocrites. I was also running out of the burning cookhouse and headed for anywhere but here.”

“There was a red pick up parked and half loaded with goods to sell at the farmer's market, vegetables and craft work. The keys were dangling in the ignition. I turned them, the engine growled and I was gone. Behind me somebody was clanging on the fire triangle as smoke billowed out all across the yard. People were shouting and I heard women screaming. Right then I didn't care nothin' for any of them, not even the other disciples like me and certainly not the elders and their dumb wives. I just thought I wanted those stupid bastards to learn a lesson and I hoped that even just for a few seconds they might consider that the wrath of their cruel and spiteful god was being wrung out all over them because of their ways and their sins and the disrespectful and casual indifference they showed towards their fellow man and people like me. Whatever the hell that might mean.”

“I was driving fast down the track towards the highway. I checked the mirror, the smoke was rising into the sky but there was nobody following me. I drove a little faster and the dust cloud grew and blew up behind the truck. When I finally hit the highway there were blue lights headed out towards the ranch. I couldn't see much expression behind their sunglasses but they ignored me as they went went on about their business. An hour later I was at the edge of town and I got my bearings. I stopped the pickup in a superstore car park and finding fifty bucks in the glove box took it and then threw the car keys down into a drain. Ten minutes later I'm blowin' the froth from a cold beer and getting ready to tuck into a double cheeseburger and fries. My head was clearer than it had been in years and the words, the prayers and the cruel controls of the cult were falling away from me like rotten fish scales. When the cheeseburger arrived I just whispered to myself a thank you Jesus for fuck all and bit into the juicy beef. I'd gotten my appetite for life back.”