u/Original-Loquat3788

‘Technology has rotted your brain,’ Samantha said. 

John didn’t immediately turn to her. He was on the same sofa, but he was in his augmented reality, collecting golden starfish. 

‘What's that?’ he said after a few seconds' pause. 

His wife slapped him across the back of the head, and his Meta Specs were momentarily dislodged. 

‘Your brain is being rotted,’ she reiterated. 

She went into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of tap water. A steady stream of water ran down a weak point in its side. 

Their to-do list was on the fridge. It was a little tongue-in-cheek, her side written in pink and his blue. Her list was empty. His stretched on. 

‘It's called brainrot,’ John answered, ‘Liam told me.’ 

Liam was their precocious 6-year-old nephew who they both doted on. Beside the TV, which nobody watched anymore, was a picture of him. 

After Sam’s sister Gemma had Liam, kids were on the radar. The prospect didn’t terrify them, but then again, Liam was awesome. 

‘Well, whatever it's called, you have it.’ She pointed at the leaking faucet, then at the apartment balcony, where the guttering hung in a twisted mess. 

‘Ok, ok, I’m a little sloppy, but you’re overreacting.’ 

‘Overreacting,’ she said, her voice rising. 

‘But I know why… It’s because of Gemma…’ 

He had the ability to pull things from whatever cloud world he was living in and turn them into solid-gold insights.

It was about Gemma, the younger sister: Hurricane Gems. She was chaos manifest, whether in the men she shacked up with, the waking hours she kept, or bouncing from job to job. 

The last time they’d visited her apartment, there’d been a hell of a row. Gemma had a new tattoo, a dragon on her arm, and while getting inked up she’d forgotten to enrol Liam in school. 

Gemma had lashed out and probably would’ve told them to go to hell entirely, but that meant losing her chief babysitters. 

Every time they got back from Gemma’s, Sam went on a marathon cleaning and organising session, tackling the bathroom's nooks and crannies and finding new ways to arrange their books. 

It was not about hygiene or convenience; it was about not letting the forces of chaos win out. 

John stood up and went toward his wife. He reached over, and she thought he was going to stroke the lock of hair behind her ear, but he missed. 

She slapped him playfully on the chest. ‘You were reaching for a starfish in that stupid VR game!’ 

He was still wearing the glasses. This time, he stroked her hair, then kissed her on the neck. 

She tingled. 

A wave of lust washed over her. Their sex life had gone by the wayside recently, but when the mood did strike, it came on like a flash flood. There were no candles or rose petals. It was very much take me now. 

They peeled each other out of their clothes and just about made it to the bedroom, where John took her from behind. It was good, great, in fact; for a while things had fallen a bit flat, but he’d found some reserve inside himself, and now he was able to summon up the passion, so it was like no time had passed since their college days. 

After they were done, they collapsed into a heap on the still-made bed. John had worked up a sweat; his face was dripping, and he took off his glasses and headed to the bathroom to shower. 

‘Jesus, John,’ Samantha said as she heard the water turn on. ‘You didn’t even take your glasses off when we were...’
 
He didn’t hear her. 

Boys and their toys. She picked them up and put them on. The Specs were very well made. Indistinguishable from regular ones. She wore contacts, but perhaps it was time for an upgrade, at least until the tech on contacts caught up. 

She stood and walked to the mirror. She had painted her toenails the night before, so the mirror was angled downward, but something wasn't right. Her leg was not right; it was skinnier. 

She angled the mirror higher, and her stomach too; the muscles were more taut. Then she saw the tattoo, the tattoo she didn’t have. 

With mounting horror, she pointed the mirror upward. Staring back at her was the face of her younger sister overlaid on her own. 

The window was the old-fashioned kind: a single pane of glass, with the kind of sill an old woman in a cartoon might leave an apple pie on.

John slid it up, slinking into the dark mouth of the ramshackle house.​

The old man was a hoarder, but what John knew was that he’d once appeared on the local news as a collector of old, premium baseball cards. 

The cards were buried under a family album, showing the old man with his boy, and these John pushed aside.

Tiptoeing backwards, he was almost at the window when the light flicked on: coruscating white light from a single swinging halogen bulb.

And there the old man stood, barrel-chested, a shotgun levelled in front of him. He stared at John, and stared until it was no longer a matter of instinct but cold, hard logic.

John raised his hands and started to speak when the old man blew him away.

‘Waste of space,’ he muttered, walking over to where the criminal lay in the glass, leaking from several holes. 

And John realised that although the old man had not been waiting for him that night, in some way, his whole life, he had been looking for an excuse.

John said, ‘Dad…Pl…’

But he did not get to finish his plea because the old man pulled the trigger again, and where his boy’s head had been was now an empty void.

Pop was a Renaissance man.

For one, he liked drinking whiskey in the garden, and he liked doing it with a cool, dry ass.

Cue the tiltomatic: a bench whose seat spun a full 360 degrees, so there was always a fresh side.

He had a system of levers and pulleys that he used to build a monument to Mom out in the southwest-facing field. Called it her henge, done like the ancients.

He said, ‘Give me a place to stand, and I’ll move the earth.’

And I said, ‘What about on top of the barn?’ and he stroked my head. I was not a smart kid, a Renaissance boy.

But I suppose what he really loved was plants.

He had a greenhouse where he grew a special strain of agave for mezcal, sugarcane for cachaca rum, and, of course, his favourite corn for good ol’ American whiskey.

Liquid harvest would always be a hell of a three days and nights, and I didn’t even have to go to school.

Whatever Pop didn’t drink, we sold, and although the folks in the town didn’t have a ‘palate’ for quality liquor, they had brains that needed asoaking.

…

Pop said his pièce de résistance would be a hangover cure, and Pop knew a lot about hangovers; he was a world authority.

Our kitchen made for strange viewing, an odd mix of folk remedies and science: prairie oysters, Worcestershire sauce, rabbit shit, owl eggs, almonds, pickle juice, electrolyte IV bags.

I suppose every artist and scientist has their breakthrough moment. Da Vinci was the first Renaissance man and probably saw that lady’s eyes following him around his studio and thought, by God, Leo, you’ve done it.

And one day, I heard Pop’s breakthrough as he was in the tub.

‘Eureka!’

He’d invented a hangover cure, and did he ever need it, because I’d heard him the night before stumbling around, upsetting old photos and Mom’s ornaments.

And I took the stairs two at a time, thinking the old bastard had drunk some elixir, and he’s as fresh as a daisy growing out of a newborn baby's butt…

And then I heard the shotgun blast.

Pop had painted the walls with his face, and where his brains had been, there was nothing at all.

I will say this for him: it definitely cured his hangover, but it might be hard to patent.

I first set up my matrimonial consultancy firm in 2008, and we’ve handled all sorts of weddings: Catholic, Protestant, civil partnerships.

Affairs in which the bride didn’t turn up, or the groom.

We’ve had weddings at the beach and in the Valley; we even advised on a wedding that took place on a commercial spaceship.

Still, the last one I planned was by far the strangest because the bride wanted to marry herself.

#

She reminded me of a grown-up theatre kid: smiley, bubbly, a little too much dazzle in her eyes.

I met her in the bridal suite that morning to address any last-minute concerns.

The makeup team was there, along with my sister Laura– my business partner and company photographer.

The situation was complicated because the bride didn’t want any mirrors in the room. She thought it would be bad luck to see herself beforehand.

"Do you have a husband?" she asked, a wry smile on her face.

It was always the first question anyone asked a wedding planner, and always as if it were the height of wit.

"I don’t."

"You know I almost made the walk once."

"Is that right?"

I made a mental note to allow more time for speeches and to have the waitstaff prepare extra champagne. This woman could gab.

"Jared," she continued, "I was young, dumb, not much self-worth. My mom was killed, and it left me vulnerable, and then this ‘playwright’ comes along and casts me as his leading lady. I knew he was religious when we met, but I didn’t know he was… nasty with it. The cat o’ nine tails before bed."

The makeup lady looked at me, and I looked at the hairstylist, but since I was in command, it was up to me to deal with the awkwardness.

I put my hands on her shoulders.

"Eleanor Roosevelt once said: Behind every great man is a great woman. Well, I think you disprove that. Behind every successful woman is herself."

I didn’t exactly believe it, but it rescued the situation.

At that point, two of her friends came in, a guy and a girl.

"So, we have your good luck charms!"

"What do you mean?"

"Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue…"

The old thing was a first-edition comic, and the borrowed thing was a teddy bear.

"Two down, two to go," the bride answered, excitedly.

"Something blue," the bridesmaid continued, and at this she plucked a hair from her head.

"Thank you, m’lady."

"Now for something new."

I feared the worst, and my instincts were right.

The bridesmaid gently removed the revered object.

Excalibur.

That was what the packaging read. It was a big, white, brand-new dildo.

The bride reeled in her chair, laughing.

"Perfect!"

"I’m sure Excalibur will help consummate the marriage!"

I had to leave the room to take a call with the car rental service, and when I got back, the guy had changed into a priest’s clothes.

I say clothes, but it was the thing you might find at a fancy dress shop.

"My child," he mock intoned, "now you must confess before you walk the aisle… First, tell me about your courtship."

"Courtship?"

"How did you come to propose marriage to yourself?"

I half fancied they’d rehearsed this performance for us.

"Well, you know I was in a very bad place after Jared. I thought fuck it, I’ll go the other way, and I found everything I could online about satanism and witchcraft. I even bought a black cat called Crowley!

"Anyway, I got in deep, too deep, and I met some guys even worse than Jared. And then one morning I’m coming back from one of those Black Masses they organised in the forest, and I just sink to my knees, and I’m bawling, and I’m bawling."

This recollection threatened to set off a fresh round of tears.

"And I sank to my knees, and I thought first Jared and then Styx Nick… and both of them… withdrew… their love. A pattern going back to Dad."

I’d met the bride’s father. In fact, he was the one I sent the invoices to.

A severe man, he certainly wasn’t a theatre kid, more like the landlord who owned the building.

One day, he snapped and told her how ridiculous the whole thing was. She shouted at him right there in my office, then invoked the 2005 incident in the cabin. Well, whatever that was hit him like a freight train, and I thought it was all over.

In one sense, it was; I never saw him again, but his payment instalments came in on time…

"And you know what I did," the bride continued, "I wrapped my arms around myself, right there, kneeling down in the mud. And I hugged, and I hugged. In my childhood, it felt as if I’d been divided from myself, and what I needed was… reunification."

Something in me softened. We all have trauma in our lives. And that trauma takes it out of us. We become estranged, strangers to ourselves, we cannot live properly because some part of us has stayed at 14 when that boy under a full moon broke our heart.

#

The venue was industrial chic, with exposed brick walls and an open-beamed ceiling.

It didn’t need to be big because the bride didn’t have many friends, and any acquaintances probably tossed the invitation when they saw it was a sologamous wedding.

Zaniness pervaded, a kind of extension of the theatre kid marrying herself and the fancy-dress priest.

One couple had brought a French poodle and dressed it up as an angel.

There was a juggler scheduled to perform after the speeches, but he couldn’t wait that long, so his balls were already in ascendancy over the congregation.

A whacked-out girl in the second row particularly concerned me. She was dressed as Tinker Bell, blowing bubbles with a wand. The issue wasn’t so much the bubbles but the pool of liquid at her feet.

I was a catastrophist, which was why I was so good at what I did. I had visions of the bride slipping while she made her walk, dashing her brains out on the cement aisle.

First, the priest came down to a smattering of applause, then the bridesmaid, and the music started for the bride’s entrance: a piano version of "Love Yourself."

And then she appeared, wearing a home-made wedding dress which hugged her in all the wrong places.

That unease, that clawing sense, wouldn’t abate.

She’d finally insisted that when her dad backed out, she wouldn’t have someone walk her down the aisle, but now she was up there, she looked like a lamb being led to the slaughter.

"Friends, we are gathered here today…"

Our fake priest hit all the beats, very postmodern, and then came the vows.

"Today I make a solemn vow before all the Gods and all who are present here to grow with me and not apart," she went on. "To make my accomplishments mine, and my challenges mine…. As I have given me my hand to hold."

And the priest continued, "If anyone knows any reason why this person should not be wed to themselves, speak now or forever hold your peace."

I suddenly felt a ringing in my ears, or was it behind my eyes? I say that because it was almost extra-sensory, that odd feeling when you reach for your phone and only then does it vibrate.

And then the music started. It was the traditional Wedding March by Mendelssohn, complete with trumpets.

That ever-increasing sense of dread temporarily abated to be replaced by anger. These… fucking theatre kids.

Nothing. The music played for about 60 seconds, and then cut out.

"Ok," the priest continued, "Good prank! We have our bride, we don’t need a second… or a groom."

The bride, my bride, well, all joy had left her face.

Something had happened that I thought was impossible. Stage fright.

The priest hurried on. "Now for the rings."

The bridesmaid produced the single band. The bride’s hand was quivering.

"Repeat after me: with this ring, I thee wed," the priest said.

"Uhm, what?" the bride answered, dazed.

"Come on, darling, follow the stage directions."

More awkward laughter.

The bride held up the ring and then peered off into the middle distance, almost hypnotised.

"With this ring, I thee wed," the priest repeated once again as the bridesmaid leaned forward and whispered encouragement.

"With this ring," and the bride paused and looked up at nothing. "I thee wed."

And then she slipped the ring on, the bond made.

#

I’ve seen people fall apart before. It’s usually a combination of factors. The public performance, mixed with the weight of concepts like "till death do us part," but the bride was in a kind of daze so pronounced, I had to pull the fake priest aside to ask what the hell was going on.

"She has… episodes."

"Episodes?"

"Depersonalization. She takes medication for it."

"Well, what can we do?"

"I already gave her a shot of rum from my hip flask."

We were in the function room attached to the venue, where guests were milling around.

The bride was with the bridesmaid, and I went over and subtly gripped her hand, trying to make eye contact.

"Are you ok?"

There was nothing behind her gaze.

"Has something happened?"

"She’s here…"

"What?"

"She’s here."

"Who’s here?"

"The exile."

I slowly looked around the room where people were taking us in out of the corners of their eyes.

Could it be an actual person? Her dad, or an ex-boyfriend? Well, no, because she said "she’s here."

"You’ve got to tell me what I can do to… Fix this."

"Oh, it’ll be fixed."

We went through the motions. Dinner, speeches and then the cake was brought out.

She went toward it with that same almost animatronic motion, a kind of puppet who had started the day as a real girl but regressed.

My assistant handed her the large knife to cut the cake, and my lurid visions reached a peak. That was our mistake. We’d given a knife to this clearly unstable woman.

But no, she cut the cake, and some of the light returned to her eyes. Finally, she placed the knife down gently.

At this, she started smiling, then laughing, and the guests, perhaps sensing that some crisis had passed, laughed along too.

And the bride laughed and continued laughing, and soon nobody was laughing, and some invisible boundary had been crossed because it was the laughter of the profoundly disturbed.

I rushed toward her, but then she spun violently away and let out a long, low wail.

But she wasn’t concerned with me.

Taking the back of her own head with her hand, she pushed it toward the cake.

Laura once told me that our consultancy had become a semi-famous meme in the online wedding-planning community. We would do anything a couple required, but one thing we wouldn’t allow was the groom or bride to push the other's face into the cake.

It was tacky and well…

And the bride wheeled toward the cake in some mad duel with her own hands, and it was a fight she lost because she slammed– plunged her head through the icing, and when she reemerged, the reason was readily evident why we were so stringent about pranks.

The two central struts that supported the tiered cake were jammed an inch through each of her eye sockets.

#

My biggest strength is that I don’t dwell.

Some of my team had to take time off after "the impalement."

That night, I went home and planned the next day’s wedding, this time between two people.

Laura took it particularly hard. She even went to visit the bride in the hospital and then the psychiatric facility.

She’d been permanently blinded in one eye and escaped it barely in the other, not that she particularly seemed to care. The report I got was that she was completely gone, sunken to a permanent state of depersonalization.

In truth, it began to annoy me because Laura wouldn’t let it lie.

"We’ve got the Joneses tomorrow, and it’s meant to rain, and I have a gazebo to set up and…"

I paused, because Laura was as white as a bridal veil.

"You need to see these pictures."

"Really, Loz?"

I’ve only mentioned Laura in passing because that’s how she seemed, not there, especially on the big day. The best photographs are the ones taken when we don’t know we’re being observed.

She showed me her photos. It was the bride’s suite before the wedding, when it was full of laughter, the blue hair, and Excalibur.

"Look," Laura continued, her hand trembling. "This is when I first noticed it."

Over the bride's left shoulder was a face, or rather the outline of a face.

"It’s the makeup lady," I answered, although even I could hear the doubt in my voice.

Laura kept scrolling from the suite to the cars and then to the venue. The priest was giving his speech, but then there was the moment after the interruption when the Bridal March played.

"Jesus," I answered. "What is that?"

Beside the bride on the altar was a person. I looked closer. Her doppelganger.

My logical, rational scientific mind reasserted itself.

"It’s a mistake with the lens; it's somehow duplicated her."

Laura continued scrolling. "And then there’s this."

Now I was looking at a timeline of when things had become disastrous: the afterparty.

The first image was of the cake, the second of the bride with the knife, and next, the moment she seemed to have become locked in some battle with herself.

This photo was clearer, much clearer; in fact, it may have been some late Renaissance painting.

The bride was struggling madly, but not against thin air as it had appeared in real time; now there was the unmistakable visage of her clone.

It wasn’t a trick of the camera; this second "her" had agency, a malicious gleam in the eye, bared teeth, as the bride peered upward, helpless.

Laura scrolled, and the pictures had a stop-motion feel. The fight with her doppelganger. The defeat. And her eyes jammed on the points of the cake stands.

#

Laura thinks those pictures should be released, but do I really want to be known as the supernatural wedding planner?

Then again, the more I think about it, the more I doubt that thing in the photo was strictly supernatural.

I think it was in her. Perhaps the word is intranatural.

Maybe things happen to people and parts of them are sliced off, possibly their very souls are divided.

I’m looking at that image, the one of the bride doing battle, a fight she could never have won.

And I suppose it’s a reminder to take care. We call out to the shadow when it should remain locked away, or at least not invited casually.

No, I won’t release the photos out of respect, but here's my advice for you.

Please, beware of the exiles.

It was Tom Nixon who first spotted it. He was laying his lobster traps in the grey dawn when the shape came into view.

He thought it might be a humpback, but as he approached unsteadily over the beach shale, it became clear it wasn’t a whale.

Tom went straight to Dr Stevenson’s cottage, the village’s de facto mayor.

Now Dr Stevenson was standing on the beach, lost for words.

‘Doctor?’

The shock had not yet worn off, and the village folk peered at him.

‘It's a…’ he steadied himself. ‘It’s a giant.’

It had the features of a man: eyes and ears and a slightly beaked nose, the left side of his face pressed into the coarse sand.

‘What the bloody hell do we do with it?’

That was John Douglas, the miner.

Stevenson inspected the giant more closely. Its teeth were like lime tombstones, the bristles of his beard reminiscent of the long pieces of thatch that roofed the village houses.

‘Well,’ the doctor answered, ‘we call someone at the Royal Society. It needs to be examined.’

‘We have to bury it!’ Elizabeth Brown shouted.

She had a hysterical streak and was prone to visions of an apocalyptic nature.

‘Bury it?’ Douglas answered. ‘People will pay to see it.’

‘But,’ Dr Stevenson said, haltingly. He wanted to impress on the villagers just how amazing it was to stumble upon such a thing. With the exception of the southern and northern poles, the world had been explored. The veil had been pulled back, and here now was a true natural conundrum. ‘It’s a…giant.’

‘We sell tickets for 2 shillings,’ Douglas continued.

‘And how do you propose to stop it decomposing?’ Dr Stevenson replied, now more tersely.

Peering at the horizon where the pewter sea met the flint sky, he wondered where it had come from. These were the very same shores where the Vikings had first landed.

‘We must move him onto his back,’ Stevenson continued. ‘Check his pockets.’

The very bravest among them, like Douglas, his brother, and Aaron Smailes, clambered up the giant’s side and wrapped ropes around his uncovered arm.

Like the Egyptians who moved the 40-tonne blocks for the pyramids, ten to a rope, men, women and children, they heaved.

The giant’s vast bulk rocked, and then he came to with a vast thunk that sent up a spray of sand and shells.

It was to the giant’s inside pocket that their attention now focused. It contained a glass bottle the size of a small boat, and inside was a rolled-up parchment.

The men were exhausted, but what troubled them most was Elizabeth Brown.

She was observing from a rock, close enough to be audible when the wind dropped. Her muttering became a plaintive cry as they made progress.

‘The tide brings ill tidings. The first giant arrives dead, and his fellows in ships follow feeing and fying and fohing and fumming, smelling the blood of Englishmen!’

The children began crying at her half-mad proclamations, and the mothers tried to shoo Elizabeth Brown away, but she wouldn’t be moved.

By then, they had the parchment from the vast bottle and were unrolling it like a sail.

They tried to trace the letters under their boots, and they deciphered that it was written in English, though in a very antiquated calligraphy.

With the script fully revealed, Elizabeth Brown became fully unmoored and hurtled toward them. She pointed a wavering finger at the giant. ‘We must burn it if we cannot bury it. Bring the wood! Bring the wood! We will build a vast funeral pyre!’

For Dr Stevenson, the troubling thing was not Elizabeth’s increasingly febrile proclamations but the gnawing sensation in his stomach suggestive of her aptitude.

Every few minutes, he found himself glancing at the horizon with dread thoughts. What had the English done when they’d discovered Polynesia? Captain Cook and his band of merry men.

The message was unfurled completely and laid out over the shore.

Night was approaching, and they needed a bird's-eye view.

The villagers moved from the beach to the dunes. Fear displaced civility, and the young and the strong ascended the slopes quickly, leaving behind Dr Stevenson.

The doctor huffed and puffed his way up, damp sand sticking to his hand as he steadied himself.

The first few got to the vantage point and began jabbering. This peeved Stevenson; they couldn't read, and although he knew it was impossible, he feared that in their haste they’d somehow distort the message.

The first clipped sentence carried down to him.

‘Peace.’ ‘Threat.’ Something about a ‘moth’ and ‘beer.’

Dr Stevenson was pulled to the summit and took a few seconds to recover, then peered out at the sail where the communique was written.

‘My name is Logor, and I hail from a land of giants that mean your people no harm.’

Stevenson couldn't contain his jubilation, and he turned to the few nearby who were literate, yet their faces were etched in terror.

The message continued. ‘If you’re reading this, our enemies wrought complete destruction. Yes, the race of giants means you no harm, but the behemoths, giants to us, seek our collective obliteration. Take refuge while you can.’

And Dr Stevenson once more looked out to the horizon where there was a flood current, and a wind favourable to incoming ships blew.

That night Don dreamed of lobsters- a big red crusty thing wearing a black robe and banging a gavel.

The next morning he awoke beside his wife and watched as she rubbed sleep out of her eyes.

‘I had the weirdest dream,’ she said, ‘there was a lobster acting as a kind of congressman.’

‘You mean a judge?’

‘Yeah, something like that.’

‘That’s weird. I dreamed the same thing.’

‘That’ll teach us for splashing out and having lobster on a Tuesday.’

It was true. The remains of last night’s thermidor were in the fridge. He had a buddy who laid pots in the bay. He swore that lobsters had to be cooked alive because the second they died their bodies began to rot.

Don worked in a local high school, and as he got into the staffroom he saw that Joe Robinson (history), the notorious bore, was lingering around the coffee machine.

‘Hey Joe,’

‘Hey Don. You bring a lunch today?’

‘Yah.’

‘What you having?’

‘Lobster on rolls.’

‘You know it's funny, Don. I dreamed of lobsters last night. This lobster in Congress and it was waving its claw around banging a …’

‘A gavel, like a judge?’ Don replied.

‘Yeah, exactly like that.’

‘Did you have lobster for dinner?’

‘Me? Oh no, the things give me the creeps.’

The bell for first period rang. The students were talking among themselves.

‘Mr Roper,’ a girl said.

‘What, Cydney?’

‘Did you dream last night?’

He paused. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because we’ve been talking,’ she replied, ‘all of us, everyone, last night dreamed of lobsters.’

At breaktime, he saw the local news had picked up the story. All morning people had been phoning in, and then things got serious; it went national.

As far as they could tell, every single person in America had had the same dream, maybe even the world.

Scientists appeared on panels somewhere between concerned and baffled, and then army officials. 8 billion people did not randomly dream the same thing- it had to be put there- and revelations emerged that shady departments within the government had been working on psionics programmes.

And it wasn’t long after the president addressed the nation that a giant alien craft appeared over the National Mall in Washington.

The craft violated the laws of physics. It was made of a shiny, smooth, dark rock, and the same way plasma was ejected from the sun, this ship ejected vast torrents of molten water.

The president’s craving for publicity even outstripped his fear of meeting an alien, and as his cabinet fled, he went out onto the Mall.

The world waited to see small grey men come down the ramp on two legs, but the creatures that emerged did not walk; they crawled, and what they crawled on were 10 legs.

The male (the king lobster) had much larger claws, and the female a fanned tail under which sat hundreds of boulder-sized eggs.

The president did well to hold it together even as the giant lobster’s feelers probed the ground around his feet.

And then the king lobster spoke. Because of whatever telepathic technology they used, the whole world could also hear the conversation.

‘We have come to inspect your progress, planet Earth.’

The president hesitated and then spoke. ‘Well, GDP is up by 4%, and…’

‘Your spiritual progress,’ the lobster cut him off.

‘Well, I for one love Jesus and…’

‘Who is Jesus? Don’t you know anything about your spiritual destiny? Where are your animals? I only see humans?’

‘Our animals? Would you like to see the zoo?’

The king lobster rose up on his hind legs so his armoured underbelly was visible.

‘Every animal seeded on your planet is a species that exists elsewhere in the galaxy. On the nearest planet to you, it is tigers that have been blessed with super intelligence and then again on the next one, spiders.’

The lobster's vast claw snapped. Hundreds of secret service agents had their weapons trained on it, not that any bullet had a hope of piercing its shell.

‘We have returned to see how, as guardians, you have treated the animals left in your care.’

The president's eyes widened; subconsciously, he picked at his teeth where a part of his McDonald’s cheeseburger lunch was still wedged.

‘Yes, we keep dogs and cats as pets. Like family.’

‘And chickens. Where are your chickens?’

‘Chickens are at the farm. We have a lot. 50 billion.’

‘And you keep these chickens as pets?’

The president hesitated. ‘Some, well, I know a guy who… Well, actually most chickens we eat.’

Once again the lobster raised itself up onto its megalithic tail. ‘You eat them!?’

In the blue skies around Washington, more alien ships began to appear as if the king lobster were deciding in real time to mobilise his invasion force.

‘And lobsters, what of lobsters, the ancient venerable beings?’

‘Yes, we keep lobsters as pets, the president lied, ‘in fact, I have a lobster as my secretary of education… ’

And suddenly, humanity as a collective experienced a searing migraine-like pain, ‘Do not lie to me!’

‘Lobsters,’ the president groaned, ‘we eat them too.’

The ships began landing all over Washington, in fact all over the world; this human node of the giant intelligence experiment looked to be winding up. We were tyrants over planet Earth; we’d failed.

The president spluttered out, ‘It's been proven that animals don’t feel the same pain, especially crustaceans.’

‘We have come across other abominable civilisations that have killed and eaten their fellow creatures; now we will show mercy if you assure us that lobsters’- he pointed his claw at himself- ‘did not suffer before they died.’

And somewhere in rural Boston, Don Roper looked fearfully at his cooking pot, where the night before that delicious lobster had squealed like a tin whistle as it was boiled alive.

Instinctively, he knew the same fate now awaited his species.

Mrs McGee had been crying.

The Priest stepped over the threshold, taking the old lady’s frail hands in his own.

‘How are you, dear?’

Father Anderson’s voice was soft, soothing, a little saccharine. It was only natural for someone who primarily dealt with the very old and young.

The nurse summoned them because the patient had been changed.

There was a handkerchief perpetually stuck up the sleeve of Mrs McGee’s knit cardigan. She brought it to her nose.

‘Be strong,’ the Priest continued.

Mrs McGee’s daughter, Emily, lay propped up in the bed, very little left of her.

The palliative nurse departed, and Mrs McGee went over to the bed and stroked Emily’s forehead. Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open. The nurse had temporarily reduced the morphine so the ritual could be carried out.

As the priest arranged his sacraments, Mrs McGee arrayed the flowers. She kept a spotless house, and even if her daughter were going to die, she would do so with carnations in the room.

Father Anderson spoke softly. ‘It is best if you wait outside– this is between your daughter and God.’

The old lady nodded solemnly. Emily might have a lot to confess. She had been such a good girl, and then university had beckoned, and she’d gotten in with the blue-haired bunch and stopped taking the salvation of her soul seriously.

The first step of the Last Rites was penance or confession, followed by anointment, and lastly the viaticum. Penance was the crucial step, for without a full confession, entrance to paradise was blocked.

‘Emily, Emily, can you hear me?’

She stirred slightly.

Father Anderson was about to move on when, suddenly, her eyes opened wide, and she fixed her gaze on him.

‘It’s Father Anderson,’ he continued, ‘from St. Cassians. ‘May the Lord be in your heart and on your lips so that you make a good confession.’

He gave her yet more time to collect herself, and then she said softly.

‘Confession?’

‘Yes, dear.’

She smiled. Her lips had been rendered thin, exposing too much gum.

‘I have… a lot to confess.’

‘It is important you tell me so you enter a state of grace.’

There were still some vestiges left of what a beautiful woman she’d been. She was only 26, and her black hair fell smoothly and neatly over her collarbones.

‘Well, I lived with a woman.’

It was a good thing Mrs McGee had left.

‘We had a sexual relationship.’

‘I absolve you of this sin.’

Father Anderson had heard worse. Sometimes he could not quite believe it. People truly believed they were about to meet their maker and had nothing left to lose on Earth.

‘I haven’t finished,’ she went on, ‘I didn’t just have sex with her; I loved her. On the Solstice in 2018, we bought a gram of MDMA, and we drove into the woods and stripped naked and danced in the light.’

Father Anderson paused. That was a new one. It almost sounded a little pagan.

‘I absolve you of your sin,’ he said in a monotone.

‘For that, I don’t want to be absolved,’ she replied.

‘I,’ he paused, nobody had ever confessed to a sin they didn’t want to be absolved of.

‘What I want to confess is I ruined it. I cheated with a man. I could never shake the feeling that being with a woman was unnatural…’

Father Anderson did not know what he was absolving now–or condoning–premarital sex with a man was probably preferable to lesbian sex in the woods.

‘God loves you, my child.’

She once again looked down over her destroyed frame. The effort of talking was clearly a strain because she’d broken out in a sweat. Still, there was something that had to be aired.

‘Father,’ she said, ‘Do you believe this is a punishment from God?’

This was ground where Anderson was a little more surefooted.

‘God has not singled you out, Emily. We are all born in sin, but your Saviour has given you the opportunity to cleanse yourself.’

She nodded slowly, very slowly.

‘Father.’

‘Yes, Emily.’

‘Is there anything you would like to confess?’

He glanced subconsciously at the morphine drip, which had been slowed. Delirium was common, but there was no look of idiocy in her eyes.

‘Me?’

‘Yes, something that happened when I was in school.’

He flinched at the thought of ‘priest’ and ‘schoolgirl’ in the same sentence. Occasionally, he debated atheists, and invariably, they brought up the church paedophilia scandal. But he was part of the new breed—a breed that fully acknowledged the horrible things that had happened and set up various think tanks and commissions.

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

Anderson wrestled only with a very real desire for adult women. Yet he did know priests about whom rumours swirled.

‘In 2012, I attended St Mary’s and you were part of a committee…’

‘A committee?’

‘You lobbied the school. You lobbied 24 schools to opt out of HPV vaccines for girls. You said it could not be justified on religious grounds.’

The priest’s eyes widened in horror.

‘I didn’t know it then,’ she continued. ‘I didn’t realise until I was diagnosed with cervical cancer, and the hospital looked into my medical records.’

‘Emily, I, I mean.’

He had never been so flustered in his life. Father Anderson was God’s man on Earth – a force for unassailable good, so good that even government ministers sought his counsel.

Emily looked deeply weary at this final exchange. She turned her head away. The father had not even completed the final two steps of the process.

‘I don’t believe in your God,’ she continued, ‘but for your sake, I hope he is not real because you murdered me, and in Christianity, there is only one place for murderers.’

Probably the most surprising thing the internet revealed was how many guys wanted strangers to sleep with their girlfriends. 

The cliché was always "Black dude wanted," but Tanner found himself chatting online with an African American called Lamont about being the third point in the triangle. 

It had always been a fantasy of his. The white filling in an Oreo sandwich. 

‘Me and Nia have a family thing going on,’ Lamont said as he invited Tanner in. 

A family thing? Cousins? Maybe even brother and sister? This was upping the kinky stakes. It sounded hot, whatever it was.

‘So, uhm, where is she?’ 

‘She’s next door getting ready… About hygiene.’ 

‘Oh, you mean condoms?’ 

‘No, I mean bad breath. What did you eat today?’ 

Tanner paused. ‘A cheeseburger.’ 

‘That’s fine… And are you religious?’

These young, black, liberal chicks hated a conservative. 

‘I’m not,’ Tanner answered. 

‘Good, good, follow me.’ 

He was at half-mast now as he was led into the bedroom through a curtain of shimmering beads. 

The room was dark, but he saw the outline of a figure on the bed.

He paused. She wasn’t black. In fact, she was even whiter than his Irish ass. 

‘You said she was family,’ he said. 

Lamont smiled in the nearlight. ‘I didn’t. I said I was her familiar… He’s yours, countess.’ 

And then in the next room, they found his even older mother, pump attached to withered breasts, but still functioning.

He sat on his porch with an iced tea, and then felt a cold shiver up his back because little Ali had slipped his mind again, and the greenhouse door was closed.

It wasn't exactly clear if the jungle sent people mad or brought out some inner madness that had always lurked within. Whatever the case, Dr Royale was not a well man. 

The volunteers were glad he didn’t show his face around camp very often, instead spending most of his time in the interior treating previously uncontacted tribes. 

Their leader was a young American called Tanner. He had a nursing degree and wore his blonde hair in a tight hairband with friendship bracelets on his wrists, bought in a temple complex in Thailand. 

The recruits were new in the country and doing that thing that young people do when away from home for the first time, subtly trying to one-up each other in the aloofness stakes. 

The truth was, they were all terrified; a civil war had simmered for many years in the country, and as their plane touched down on the runway, it had suddenly flared up. 

They were on the front line in a jungle with no lines. 

To their annoyance, they heard a chugging in the distance. It was Dr Royale’s boat coming down the brown, winding river.  

Royale was terribly overweight and sweated perpetually. He dabbed a red handkerchief against his red cheeks as he struggled up the bank towards the camp. 

He seemed from another era, out of the pages of a Graham Greene novel when terms like ‘savage’ were thrown around. 

‘Here comes Dr Strange,’ Tanner said. 

Royale sat apart from the volunteers, speaking to the cook in her native language, whereupon she brought him a bowl of soup. 

Claire said, ‘They say he’s antivax.’ 

Claire and Tanner had a thing already. She had a soft spot for guys who played acoustic guitar.

‘You’re being serious?’ Tanner answered.

The day before, they’d been to Loc, a village about 50km away, on a vaccination drive. 

‘Deadly… He wrote a letter to Buchanan (Buchanan was their boss) to have all the MMR vaccines destroyed when the war started. Buchanan didn’t even read past the first line, or so he says.’ 

‘Unbelievable. I mean, I thought even T-Rexes were pro-Vax.’ 

‘He’s worse than a T-Rex; he’s a boomer,’ Claire answered.  

‘The rebels won’t attack a peace mission,’ Tanner continued. 

‘Not with soldiers around anyway.’ 

They weren’t ordinary soldiers. They were a militia force that the Corps used. 

Tanner had previously pointed out to Buchanan, ‘What kind of peace mission had ten heavily armed men?’ 

He planned to have him out of it again, but Buchanan had been noticeable by his absence, a consultant who fell apart when the peace actually ruptured. 

And then they heard laughing. It was a kind of mad cackle of someone who has become convivial with the voices in their head. 

It was Dr Royale. 

Tanner spoke out for them. ‘What’s funny?’ 

‘The idea that you would send away the thing keeping you alive,’ The doctor replied in heavily accented French. 

‘I’d argue that if the rebels do turn up, they’re much more likely to want to get into a firefight if they see we arrived with firepower.’

‘Well, you think wrong… It is, how do you say, the law of the jungle.’ 

Some of the people in the Corps were smiling, which pissed off Tanner.

‘You’re speaking like a colonist.’

The Frenchman did not bristle at the words, instead shrugging. ‘I have been called much worse.’ 

‘Are you serious?’ Tanner put down his spoon and focused his righteous indignation on the doctor.

‘Oh, don’t mistake me. This place was cruel when the French were in charge, but at least it was not barbaric.’ 

‘Sure, buddy. Let’s give the Brits back Somalia, and you guys can have Cambodia.’ 

‘I am sure they would not take it back even if you paid them.’ 

He laughed again, and that was the most enraging thing about it. That laugh was almost conspiratorial, yet the man had nobody to conspire with. 

He finished his soup and chatted amiably with the cook.

The argument felt unfinished, and Tanner piped up again. ‘You’ll be glad to know we were at Loc yesterday. 100 kids vaccinated. A good result, isn’t it?’ 

It didn’t seem possible given how flushed the Frenchman was, but all the colour drained from his face. ‘You were at Loc? Who gave the order?’ 

‘Buchanan.’ 

‘You, you, fools!’ Royale spluttered. ‘Tell me exactly, what did you do?’ 

‘I told you, we vaccinated 100 kids.’ 

He put his head into his hands and started almost weeping.

Tanner turned to the group and raised his eyebrows. 

‘Relax. There’s no 5G in the vaccines, I promise,’ he answered sarcastically. 

‘You have doomed them…’

And as if to presage this doom, the militia men started up a fuss. A boat was coming into the makeshift dock.

… 

It was Tanner who vomited first over the muddy bank of the river, followed by Claire, and the rest kept their stomach contents, only because they retreated. 

The vessel that came in was a traditional narrowboat piloted by a local man, half out of his mind with fear. 

The flies had already gathered around its contents in thick black clouds, and it was beginning to smell sickly sweet in the tropical sun. 

The boat contained 100 severed limbs, left arms to be precise, hacked off at the shoulder. Each still bore the pinprick of the previous day’s vaccination. 

Tanner could not get his retching under control, and he fell at the feet of the Frenchman, who reached down and picked the young American up. 

Tanner, his eyes streaming, looked up at the Frenchman who had a rueful half smile on his face. 

‘Wh, wh, what are you smiling at?’ 

‘Don’t you see, It's a kind of genius,’ The Frenchman replied. ‘How can they lose this war if they are willing to go this far?’ 

Tanner wiped his eyes and watched as the Frenchman turned away, sank into his boat, and continued upriver until he was completely swallowed up by the jungle. 

Then the sampan came down the river, loaded with 100 dismembered left arms, once belonging to the child 'collaborationists.'

He should’ve been checking the river underneath because when he brushed the water’s surface, a crocodile picked him clean out of the air.

When her kidneys failed, her siblings were all too willing to come forward as donors, only for the medical team to tell them they weren’t a genetic match.

‘Y’know, love, sometimes it feels like my heart is in Marylebone, and my head is in Baker Street. A riddle, ey?’ 

He sat down in his seat but didn’t close the window, as a darkened London whistled by. 

We were riding the Bakerloo Line, the final train of the night, and the only two passengers. 

He was one of those old men you don’t see much of anymore, a pensioner who wears a suit to go to the bookies. 

‘Marylebone is where I grew up… And then Baker Street is where I made my dosh as a Sherlock Holmes tour guide.’ 

I wanted to scream, and I didn’t exactly know why.

‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not from here; I’m in the Police College.’ 

‘Oh, really! So, are you the next Sherlock Holmes?’ 

‘Modern criminology is a lot more about…’

He cut me off. ‘Come on, love. We’ve gotta puzzle on our hands ‘ere. I can tell by the look on your mush that you know something ain’t right.’

‘What do you mean something isn’t right?’ 

He fogged the glass with his weak breath and with a finger wrote I. Crane.

I readjusted myself in my seat, the floor was slippery underfoot, and the carriage suddenly jerked. 

He sighed. ‘You know, there are moments in people’s lives, tests, that they gotta pass because to fail them is to… end up in Bedlam.’ 

I closed my eyes, and there was a banging against my eyelids, like the shutters had been drawn and someone was locked behind them. 

‘So tell me what has happened?’ 

‘I can’t.’ It came out as a whimper.  

He laughed. ‘Bad things happen and you, my dear, need to be able to face up to them…’ 

The train was slowing, and the tannoy announced that the next stop was Marylebone. 

Some people who’d seen through the window were screaming and calling for help. 

‘You can do it,’ he whispered, ‘because the thing about monsters is that they grow if you don’t shine a light on them.’ 

I opened my eyes, and I saw…clearly…

The old man was slumped over in his chair, blood spilling out of the open cavity in his neck like a fountain. 

The memory, the reality of things, surged in on me like a tide, but I realised, for the first time in my life, I could swim.

I ushered people away from the corpse as my training taught me.

The window above had been faulty, and when the train departed, the old man had looked outside and been decapitated by a signal sign.

It was there in the very first thing he said. ‘My heart is in Marylebone, and my head is in Baker Street.’ 

It came as a shock to find out she’d flown to the Dignitas Clinic to end her life, and even more of a surprise when the police arrested him for aiding and abetting.

For years, rival tribes had encroached upon the ancestral lands of the Araku people, but it was their new neighbours who posed the greatest threat. 

Several odd creatures had been seen from a distance, one of whom had a large, single central eye that covered his whole face. 

They also had control over animals and would send over great, noisy birds that sounded like hornets in full fury. 

Tension within the tribe reached a crescendo when it was discovered that Tumai, an elder member*,* had stolen a ceremonial necklace. 

Now Makiri, the chief- a man mountain- stood over him on the altar and asked him if he had anything to say before he was reunited with the Skyfather. 

‘I have done nothing,’ Tumai replied calmly. 

‘We know that you lie.’ 

‘It was put there by the newcomers– the demons who inhabit our borders.’ 

They were interrupted by the high priestess. She looked at Tumai’s body covetously. ‘And who is it who will have the scrotum?’ 

‘That hasn’t been decided.’ 

‘My husband is in want of a new tobacco pouch.’ 

‘Get away!’ 

Now, the tribe assembled and looked at the bound man. Howls of derision rang out. 

Tumai looked up at Makiri. ‘I care about our collective future, so I want you to take my soulfire… When I am gone, I will still be able to offer you counsel.’ 

Makiri nodded, raising the execution club high above his head, and thankfully for Tumai, Makiri was strong, and one blow did the trick. 

The thief slumped to the side, and then a novice came forward with an earthenware plate and scooped up the brains for Makiri to eat, because that was where the dead man’s soulfire dwelt. 

… 

‘It’s a lot,’ Federici, the production assistant, said. 

‘Gruesome= gold,’ Jenkins answered. ‘How many angles did you get it from?’ 

‘The sky and two trail cams.’ 

‘And what are the engagement stats for Monday’s video?’ 

They were sitting in the director’s makeshift office in São Paulo reviewing the footage. 

‘Astronomical.’ 

It was Jenkins’s brainchild: Apocalyto meets Big Brother. People said it was unethical, but recently the clips had taken off on Truth Social. Major distributors were interested. 

‘And our… engineering?’ 

Jenkins eyed him closely. ‘We’re content creators, not anthropologists. If the tribe are sitting around scratching their asses, you create drama.’ 

‘The ceremonial necklace?’ 

‘Well, don’t fucking say it out loud! And give the Xorani scout who planted it a fucking raise.’ 

Federici scuttled off, leaving Jenkins to look out over the skyline where the urban jungle gave way to the actual. 

Andy Warhol had promised that in the future everyone would have their moment in the sun, and it proved true even for members of the uncontacted Araku tribe who didn’t know what YouTube was, and certainly had no idea about Andy Warhol. 

They would have their 15 minutes of fame, whether they liked it or not. 

It was also said that the statue of Molly Malone in central Dublin, her chest worn away by gropers, now had something approaching a Mona Lisa smile.

Eventually, the superbug was traced to an old folks’ home in Vermont, where the residents had been at it day and night like bonobos.

Soon, Dr Johanson would lead him to the jungle gym where the awful crime had happened, and maybe then his spirit could cross over.