The Mysterious Case of the Tenter Poles

Bledbottles is a typical village. Nothing special. Nothing new.

Well apart from the new village sign which had been erected on the boundary, where I lived. 

It must have been done at night. I certainly didn't see them putting it in.

It was your typical village sign. Metal. The name in large letters and something famous about the place.

Except Bledbottles wasn't famous for anything. Well, maybe villagers drinking cows' blood with their milk. For good health. Yuk! Disgusting!

I was walking our dog when I first saw the sign. Actually I was stuffing a poo bag in the bin when it caught my eye.

Why did we need a new sign anyway? We already had one. One of those large millstones popular in the Nineties. As if every village was full of millers back in the day. Regular flour magnates. More like millstones round our neck!s!

So, now there were two signs. One in front of the other. I suppose it wasn't so strange. We have two beef farms, two dairies, two schools, two pubs, two off-licences and two graveyards.

Well one graveyard and a cemetery to be exact. A cemetery has no church. I didn't know that until recently. Like the difference between cottage and shepherds pie. One has lamb, the other beef!

I digress. Bledbottles. So good they named it twice! Like the Big Apple. Except it's not. It's more like a big clot. Thick. Wet. To be avoided.

The famous something on the new sign had me intrigued though. Home of the Tenter Poles.

What the hell are those?

I'd heard of tent poles. Surely the signmakers hadn't spelt it wrong. I'd also heard of tenterhooks. Like being on tenterhooks.

I had to look it up. Tenter Poles: poles used for drying skins.

Skins? What kind of skins?

I asked my old Dad. 

Where are some tenter poles round here? 

Oh those things. Near the graveyard. They were dug up and put there.

Dug up? Where from?

The skin factory.

What's a skin factory?

An old tannery. Where they made leather.

Where's leather from?

Cows.

I thought about this.

Cows. 

Who ran the tannery?

The skin masters. The Glovers. A big old family. They brought wealth and health to Bledbottles. Lots of local people were employed by them. There's still Glovers in the village. Very well respected people. They run a massive tannery in Leeds now. Very rich too. They live in the big mansion near the church. Near those Tenter Poles. It's the old tannery slaughterhouse done right up. Like a barn conversion. The Glovers had the poles moved there for posterity. They own half the village but no-one ever sees them. Keep themselves to themselves. 

God! Living in a slaughterhouse! How gross!

I went off and an itch began to bug me. The kind of itch that needs scratching. Yep, I just had to see those tenter poles.

Cycling across the village was easy. The poles were in the shadow of a huge Yew, it's ancient dark a circular night. 

Getting up close I saw that the poles were actually four stone pillars with holes in them. The holes must have been for wooden bars where the skins were draped over. These had obviously rotted away over the last century, what with all that skin juice!

I shuddered at the thought and took a bite of my Mars Bar. All this detective work was making me peckish.

Whilst I was there I thought I'd have a wander round the graveyard. So many ancient souls. Lots of familiar names too. Old village families lying there en masse. But one thing I noticed. There were no Glovers. No Glovers at all.

Odd.

I finished my Mars Bar and was about to cycle off when I noticed activity at the back of the old tannery house. Curiosity getting the better of me I got off my bike and snook round.

Peeking through a crack in the large garden walls I saw something very strange. There where lots of really old people getting out of a minibus and shuffling into the large house. A young woman closed the bus doors and followed them inside.

I decided I'd been there long enough and rode home.

"I saw some odd stuff today Mum. At the Glovers."

"The Glovers? What were you doing there?"

"Oh, just following up on a local history project. Dad knows about it. Anyways, do you remember any of the Glovers' funerals?"

"Funerals? Well now that you mention it, no. But then again I haven't lived here all my life. They will have been whilst I was away."

"Oh, right. Yes."

Mum hadn't been away that long. Four years at Uni. That was years ago. It didn't explain how there were no graves. There must have been some deaths in the family over the last hundred years.

The next day I visited the register of deaths and births in our small Museum. I was right. No deaths of any Glovers in the ledger.

Impossible!

They must be hiding deaths and burying the dead elsewhere for God knows what reason.

I biked to the mansion that night. Dressed in black and keeping my dynamo off, I didn't want to be seen.

I snuck to the rear of the big house again when a security light flooded the walls with light. I froze and dipped into shadow. The light snapped off and I moved slower than ever to reach the top of the wall.

From there I could see a row of new tenter poles with masses of hides hooked onto the lines. Some of the hides were pale and some dark.

I could also see into a large annexe, which was brightly illuminated. Inside the same old people I saw earlier where covering themselves in what looked like lotion. They were slowly rubbing it all over their faces and arms and some their entire bodies.

In the middle of the room was a table on which an elderly lady was laid. The young woman I'd seen before, together with a young man, we're doing something to her. They looked like they were stitching her clothes. No. That's not right. They were stitching her .. face!

I gasped and nearly fell over my bike. 

What the hell were they stitching?

I peered again and the elderly woman on the table stood up. She was naked for God's sake. Her whole body was old, saggy, browny and dull. There was stitching everywhere. Like a teddy bear. As if she'd been stitched together. She was ancient, except her face. That was young! They'd stitched on a new face!

Jeeeeesus! This time I did fall over my bike before cycling off as fast as I could. 

What the hell had I just seen? New faces being transplanted by the Glovers? 

I had to tell my Mum and Dad.

Dad was showering. I waited for him at the door, which was ajar.

"Dad. You're just not going to believe what I've seen over at that mansion!"

"Which mansion Son?"

He stepped out of the shower and I saw his shoulders in the mirror. They were all leathery and saggy and I could see ... Stitching!

Oh my God! My Dad too! Christ!

"So what did you see Son?"

"Oh nothing much Dad. It's such a massive house isn't it. I just.. just couldn't believe the size of it!" 

I had had to make something up really fast and make my excuses. I had to check something out. My Mum!

She was in the garden forking spuds She bent down to loosen some weeds. And there it was. A leather patch on her lower back. Clear as day. Stitch marks and all!

My Mum and Dad. I bet the whole village was in on it!

Leather. Patches. Stitches. Skin. What was going on in Bledbottles!

In desperation I went to the police station. A house really. Near the stream. Just a single copper in a small building. 

I walked into the foyer. Gathering my thoughts before ringing the bell I noticed a poster for a missing girl. Staring at it I realized with horror that it was the same girl I saw at the mansion. At least her face was. Being grafted onto that old woman! 

Jesus Christ! Is there no end!

"For God's Sake, tell me you know about this!" I screamed at the policeman behind the desk brandishing the poster of the missing girl.

"Of course, she's been missing a month"

"But the Glovers. The leather parts. The face grafts. She's there. The girl's there!" I blundered, not able to get out of my mouth what I was thinking.

"Now take it easy. Sit down young fella. Here, have some blood and milk."

I sat and actually drank the local brew with tears rolling into the glass.

Immediately I felt sick and dizzy and the last thing I remember was the policeman reaching out.

I woke up in a vaguely familiar place.

On a table!

I still felt groggy. That policeman must have sedated me the old sod.

Next to me there was activity. 

A man was lying on another table. A young girl was sorting metal instruments next to him. He was talking to her.

"Oh hi Son! You awake!"

"Dad?"

"Yes Son! It's Dad. I've come in for my mid-life upgrade!"

"What?"

"You know! I'm getting a new face. A younger model! Yours!"

"Mine! What! No! Dad! No, please!"

I tried to get up but I was strapped to the table.

"I'm getting your shoulder skin too. Mine's been leather for a year. Gets it ready you see. Prepares the ground you might say."

"But Dad! Mum will find out!  I'm her son!"

Mum stepped out from the shadows and stood next to my Dad smiling.

"Hi Son! So glad Dad gets you!"

"I am. So glad. It's special. Mum's getting hers next year. And her back too. She's so excited. It'll be your older Sister's. We'll go on a cruise once we're both done! Our village is famous round here for its fresh looks in old age. Outsiders think it's the blood and milk but we know better don't we son, now you've scratched the surface you little Sherlock you!"

I screamed and wrestled with the straps. Turning I saw the tenter poles through the window. A hide face was draped over one, dripping blood into a bowl. It had eyes, nose. But no mouth! Oh no! No mouth!

"Ah yes Son. I forgot to say. You'll get your mouth back when your older. Much older. We can't have you blabbing now can we! You have to face up your responsibilities!"

Everyone laughed at Dad's quip. Mum. The Policeman. The neighbours. My sister. The whole village had turned out!

My Dad was prepared. Then the old young Mrs. Glover approached me with a scalpel.

"Now hold still. Its going to hurt ... A lot!"

As the tip entered my skin I could hear the whole room howling with laughter, which got louder and louder when they peeled off my face and placed it on my Dad's raw muscles.

"Keep it in the family. That's what we always say! A little stretching and it'll fit like a glove!"

The Wood by the Wheat

It was a glorious late summer's day that day. The far corona blessed the World in orange heat and we skipped in its fabulous promise.

It was as if it had been designed just for us, we the four best friends and my five year old sister tagging along.

Our knapsacks were bulging with jam butties and clinking bottles of creamy milk for our picnic. We'd brought a tatty chequered blanket too for laying in our favourite wheat-field.

So we set off, a warm breeze ruffling our hair.

First we had to ford the brook and pass the church. The old graveyard made us slow right down as we were scared of upsetting the residents by running. It's headstones seemed to turn gradually as we walked by. Millipedes halted on the inscriptions and changed them.

Then we ran and laughed and laughed, uncorking a mixture of joyousness and fright.

Things brightened as soon as we took the corner. Somewhere a cockerel crowed and the faint tinge of manure flavoured the summer air. There were farms close by. Plump cows brimming with cream moo'd from the byres and dogs barked at invisible foes in the yards.

The land opened out like a rug, plush and flat until it began to crease. Then a dry slope rose.

We stopped to stare at the small memorial to the dead girl. She'd lost her life some fifty years before to the day, running down the hill and hurtling into a barb-wire fence. She'd been scalped. She'd managed to crawl all the way to the wood where her brother was but lost so much blood from her open head that she died there. We shuddered and kicked the sandy ground not knowing what else to do. This was no way for children to go.

Hands stuffed in pockets we strolled, then hopped, then ran full-pelt uphill towards the crest of the climb.

We stopped still at the top completely out of puff and heaved our chests as fresh air swelled our angry lungs. We could see the golden ears of the wheat fields glinting in the sun about half a mile away.

But first we had to get through the woods.

The outer row of thick full trees stood a little distance down the back of the hill. They waited like a gang of leaves and beyond them lay the sable void where summer wasn't allowed.

Slowly, we descended the barren lee and in a ragged line we gawped up at the tops where the canopy soared and peered squinting into the soupy gloom for any clues of what lay within.

We had visited the wood many times before and each time was a little worse than the last, like a scraped knee that just wouldn't heal.

Crows hopped off when they saw us coming. Corvid spies the lot!

Despite our nerves we always made the most of the half mile through the wood. We kicked and threw the thick leaves at each other, we jumped over the dry streams, we chucked sticks as far as we could into the rising brambles and we played hide and seek without ever straying too far from the seeker or the sought.

But on this particular day we felt different for some reason. Some unfathomable logic made us play louder, wilder, freer than ever before. Perhaps it was the bright rays of the sun penetrating the gloom more than we could ever remember. It slit the dark like  claws and we basked in the light and the warmth of our star shimmering between the trees.

Without a care in the world we bellowed across the wood, yelling like baboons and cartwheeling over the swirling leaves. We carved our names into the oaks with pen-knives and broke branches off saplings to fence one other. The trunks echoed to the sound of stones we viciously threw at them. The bark bottoms were darkened by our hot pee. We laughed at the growing stains.

It was a fabulous feeling of freedom we enjoyed that day. A wild liberty in those woods. Euphoric, loud and ragged.

As the afternoon tattered the light began to falter in that old place.

Wedged between the belly-laughs we snarled on all-fours. Spitting at each other we growled like foxes and split our sides laughing.

Our growls became howls as we loped and leapt. Scuffles broke out and noses were bloodied.

But blood was the least we could offer. No-one could have known the price we would pay on that terrible day. The price for being part of that ancient place.

A wren zoomed across the brush cursing the whole time. Our screams were disturbing his sylvan watch. Wood ants teemed over their needled nest hurrying to get something finished. They seemed to pause as we shoved past, ten thousand antennae tapping the air, arousing the sleeping spirits.

"Let's play kick the bastard!" someone raged getting up from the floor.

Another frenziedly booted the ball through the wood and we all scarpered the other way bellowing, hiding behind fat looming oaks and hazel brooms.

"Coming ready or not you fuckin' scrotes!" They yelled once they'd found the ball.

Hunkered down in our shadows we waited. Shaking. Panting. Changing.

One by one we were discovered.

All except my little sister. We'd separated and gone in different directions.

She was found by all of us trapped behind a cage of jagged branches leant against the biggest oak.

"Get me out!" She screamed

We gazed at her, anguished, frantic, helpless and smiled.

It was then a hole appeared behind her at the base of the trunk.

She turned, saw it and yelled for us to save her.

"Pleeeeaase!"

The hole widened, strangled horns wailed in the abyss and darkening fingers reached out for her hair.

She fell.

"Help meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

She descended into the lightless void shouldering our two worlds apart. There was a sickening peeling sound. Her screams grew fainter and fainter and she was gone. Her wet toy doll, spat out with it's scalp missing, hit one of us in the face.

We all stood, shuffled awkwardly, rubbed our eyes and shook ourselves as if waking from a dreadful dream.

Altered, we looked at each other.

Dismissed by the closing rift we turned and cursed, slowly headed down to the wheat fields by the woods just a breath away, where two small girls with fleshless scalps, my sister and a stranger, sat with us, as we laid out our picnic in the pitch dark.

The Sun Don't Shine

Drowning. Falling. Stroked. Swallowed by the world. A miasma. A dreg. Bitten in two. One half dead. The other shit-thick like a dry fuck.

I will flay you. Just you watch. Lifeboats be ready. It's gonna be turgid. Scrambled. Candy-flossed skin. I'll take it all like cling film. You won't need no dermis in the death of days. You won't feel a thing. I am the King and Queen of necrosis. The brass hat of flagrant wounds. The dismal seed.

Sweeping over contours like a kestrel I can smash and grab the guts, the hearts, the souls wherever I go. A nerve bandit. A burglar in your brain, forcing the lobes apart to bag the id. To heave the swag. To leave a calling card on the grey foundation as it gives way. It says "No-one's home. Not today".

Nobody's safe. I am a furious drape as dark as plague. A nimbus of hate. It will gather you all in its dreadful billows from which you shall be siphoned. An ichor. A milk. You will be rent, the bones soft- sucked, your warm marrow brooking on my tongue. It is your fate to pool inside me.

The storm of judgement shall debride you. The vortex of an only mind. A tempest of injured limbs, a cyclone of blood-blistered despair. I am here.

It is to nothing we voyage. To the kernel of night. A quasar of misery cursing the light you humans emit. Batteries for babies. That's all. Well to hell with you all. Let me net your flailing carapace and shove my gulping forceps where your soul collapses. Watch me proper stuff you where the sun don't shine.

Showtime!

Judy stood first. Punch followed. It was party time. The night was young. As young as new blood. They had time to kill.

The streets were dark. Darker than a dead show. People were thronging beneath the only lights outside the public houses swilling beer. Laughing like apes. 

Tussling. Pushing and shoving.


Judy stepped into a back street. Pitch black it was. She smoothed out her smock and whistled.


"Hello little lady!"


A rough voice grated the air. A large man appeared in front of Judy.


"You with anyone? You fancy a drink?"


He placed his hand on her arm.


"What the .....!"


Punch slit his throat with a quick, precise swoosh of his razor.


"That's the way to do it!" he trilled.


The man fell between bins. It made a racket. But the revellers didn't hear. They were too busy revelling.


Judy bent down and stared at the man's eyes. Blood welled up like a cherry cup. She reddened her lips with a few drops and batted her eyelids at Punch.


"Oh nooooo you don't!"


"Oh yes I do!"


"Oh noooo ...."


Judy was on him. He fell backwards stiffening. They groped, unbuckled. With guiding hands they mated furiously between the bins and screamed like cats.


"Well done Punchy!"


"Fits like a glove!"


"Let's have some fun. C'mon!"


They staggered off into the tent of darkness. Hideous to look at, night owls queuing for kebabs turned away when they saw Punch's massive chin and nose and Judy's blood red cheeks and smeared mouth.


Punch ran at them with his club, swinging it wildly.


"What ya goin to do when I'm not here no more Jude?"


"Why? Where ya going babes?"


"Nowhere! It's just that the show won't last forever will it. I'm getting old darlin! They retired the ghost!"


"The ghost was dead! You're not old. You're as young as that horny dog who's always after me!"


"That damn dog! I'm going to feed it to the croc!"


"You'll need some sausages to get the dog Punchinello!"


"Don't call me that Jude!"


"Punchinello, Punchinello!"


"Damn you Jude! I'm going to get somethin' better than sausages!"


With a quicksliver flash of his razor Punch opened him up. He slid his hand inside and yanked out a splashing coil of fresh guts, colon and all.


Punch hauled them up steaming in the night air like a trophy.


"Here doggy, here doggy doggy!"


The horny dog panted, licked Judy's red lips and leapt to grab the hot giblets and gobbled them all up.


"You've done us in Punch!"


"I did it for you Jude. No more dogs, no more crocs, no more babies."


"But I liked them really."


The pair fell over the tent's sill showered with blood. Their hands went limp. Punch and Judy lay upside down.


They stared at the man's ashen face flopped in the opening between them.


Through bubbling lips he spluttered in a high-pitched voice:


"That's the way to do it!"

SORE LOSER

Gustav hadn't seen Martin for 25 years, not since they had been bitter rivals in the World Chess Championships. 

Gustav had heard from a a mutual acquaintance that Martin was dying in hospital. Apparently Martin had asked to see him for old time's sake. 

So on a damp Sunday afternoon shortly before Easter, Gustav decided to visit his old foe and pay his last respects.

They had last met in 1955. Gustav had won the World Chess Championship and taken the long-held title from Martin in a gruelling round of hostile matches.

Martin had reacted to losing very badly indeed and completely retreated from public view and was largely forgotten. Gustav had remained Grandmaster until he retired 10 years ago.

The hospital was positioned on the far side of the City in an old corner almost lost to time, a gothic heap needling with towers and minarets. 

Rooks cackled in its murky heights and one landed square at Gustav's feet. It turned as he moved forward towards the gates.

"This hospital is more like a damn witch's castle!" Gustav grumbled.

The weather was terrible. Dark skies were chequered with pied clouds and distant thunder fumed far away. 

It was raining stair-rods. Gustav pulled up the collar of his long coat and adjusted his hat to keep the wet out as he trudged through the shadows towards the other side.

An ageing carbuncled nurse met him in the gloomy reception and after mumbling about the rain Gustav asked for Martin's room. 

"Down the long corridor, the End of Life Ward,  bed 13.  Would you like me to let him know that you're on your way? I can call the duty nurse."

"No thank you. I think I'll surprise him."

Gustav pushed along the dim corridor to where the world ended for some. He wondered if he had made a mistake in coming.  After all, they had never been friends. It was their dreadful rivalry that had always brought them together in a loveless arena of Kings and Queens.

"We were just pawns ourselves!" he mused.

Reaching the End of Life Ward Gustav felt the lights grow dimmer. The temperature fell and the clock seemed to stop. 

He wavered on the threshold and questioned his next move. Gustav went in.

A wizened nurse hunched beside a dripping candle gave Gustav a knowing nod and he walked slowly towards bed 13.

He took off his hat.  

"Hello Martin. It's Gustav."

Gustav noticed that Martin could hardly open his eyes. They were covered in scabs. In fact his entire bald head, face and neck were covered in large weeping bed sores, which looked truly agonising.  

"I've brought you some grapes Martin."

Gustav placed the grapes in a cracked bowl at the side of the bed. A single wooden chess piece stood erect next to it. An old black queen, that had seen better days.

"How have you been Martin?"

Gustav couldn't help gawping at the open sticky rents on his rival's ancient body. He shivered.

"It's been a long time Martin. I'm sorry to see you like this. I wanted to see you, for old time's sake and just say goodbye. No hard feelings." 

Gustav put his hat back on, nodded and turned to leave, when Martin raised his right hand. 

Reluctantly Gustav took it and gently shook hands. He could feel the moist moldering blebs against his skin and grimaced. He drew his wet hand away and left.

Gustav hastened from the ward and went to the nearest bathroom, where he vigorously washed his hands. 

He tripped past the old nurse at reception who simply stared at him as he left. 

Hurrying through the hospital grounds the rooks seemed to laugh at Gustav. As he got further away his pace slowed. Somehow he felt weaker. His skin became parched and itchy and as he walked he could not help clawing at his face and neck. 

As he got nearer to his house adjacent to the Royal statue, Gustav began to stagger. He was burning up. Resting against the pedestal of the King the Old Monarch seemed to be looking down at him in disgust. 

Gustav fell into his home and crawled towards the mirror in the tiled hallway. What he saw horrified him to his very core and he began to scream. 

His entire face, head and neck were erupting with noxious red and yellow seeping bed sores all sopping-wet and blood-flecked.

"Martiiiiiiiiiiiiiiin!" he shrieked as he slumped to the floor.

In bed number 13 Martin left this life with a hideous smile across his face. 

On his bed-side cabinet the black queen lay flat.

One word was scrawled in blood and pus.

Checkmate.

The Red Mites of Mars

Mars opened its first store in 2070. It had been colonised since 2040 and over the thirty years it's pioneers had carved out a unique Martian lifestyle for themselves. They were different. Apart. Other.

So it was inevitable that the culture, food and fashion born on Mars would one day be a commodity that Earthlings would want and pay for. Hence the Mars store.

By 2075 they were everywhere. Mars was cool and people wanted to be a part of what was happening. Going red was what they said.

As the stores did well so too the Mars recruitment bureaus. They were packed as youngsters flocked to join the newbies, heading for the red planet to make a new life for themselves away from the overcrowded, overheating World.

Cities had risen from the crimson dust in a rapid expansion of real estate on Mars. Demand had to be met and business was booming. The planet's scarlet surface was bristling with cranes as new settlements came on stream under new domes. These newly-created atmospheric domes had made it all so much more possible. So much more achievable. It had been inevitable really.

Earth was a mess. Globally warmed. Massive population. Water wars. Air corrosion. Unstable systems, man-made and natural. Animal extinctions on a mass-scale. Half the world's peoples on the move to escape the hottest parts. A move to the shadows. A shift to the affluent North.

The stores from Mars were dotted across the North too. They stocked a myriad of items which were strange to the people of Earth but very familiar to the colonists of the red planet.

One of the shops' biggest sellers was Mars Moss grown on Martian dome farms. This reddish green vegetation had incredible moisturising qualities for dry skin especially as the World was heating up. It could absorb up to ten times the amount of moisturiser that a standard Earth moss could and apply it better on the skin.

As the temperatures rose on earth, overheated and and desiccating wealthy people flocked to the the Mars stores for this fabulous cooling Moss.

The store owners continued to sell colonists' art and crafts, together with Martian technology like the air conditioning unit, but it was the farmed moss that made them rich.

Moss was imported to Earth in vast quantities. As demand increased so too did standards decrease and the mosses were greedily ripped from wild populations outside the protective domes. 

The biggest outcrop was on the slopes of Olympus Mons, which up to that point had been protected under the colonists' strict conservation laws.

The wild mountain vegetation was shipped Earthside with scant regard for contamination. Branded as a new natural super-product from the red peak, it sold like hot cakes among the the desperate affluent people of Earth, who wanted it's even more soothing qualities no matter what the cost.

As time went on it all went swimmingly well for the Mars merchants. They got richer and fatter. But then talk of something in the wild moss began to surface. Something creepy. Something crawly.

The first official sighting of what was in the wild plant came when a diligent young girl cornered something coming out and prudently captured it in a glass jar, which she took to the nearest Mars outlet. 

The thing in the jar was peered at. Poked. Perused and cut in half. It was conclusive. It was a bug. A tiny red mite to be precise, as small as a pin-head and strong as hell. Under the scope it had a tiny shell-like round scarlet body, ten red eyes, a hundred crimson legs and huge pink serrated jaws clearly made for sawing and scraping.

No-one knew what it ate on Mars, although scientists believed it to be connected to the thin and scant chalks around Olympus Mons. Perhaps it ate the chalk. More certain was it's shelter from the hottest parts of the day. The Moss. That is how it had come to Earth.

Mars Stores put out a video-banner across the cities of the World. There is nothing to be alarmed about. The red mites will simply die on Earth as they have no access to the chalk of their own planet. Please continue to buy the wild moss. Simply shake out any mites before use.

And so all the imported mites were scattered across the settlements of Earth.

But they didn't die.

The mites thrived in the oxygen-rich Earth air. They grew cleverer and discovered a new and endless source of living calcium.

The first cases went unnoticed, happening as they did in cemeteries. The dead don't complain.

It was another incident which happened to be tele-videoed live across the globe that shocked and repulsed the peoples of the World.

Live on video a news reporter had brought a large crate of Mars Moss on set to test the number of mites that might be in there. He opened it up and began to shake the clumps. Instead of falling to the sheet laid out on the floor the insects leapt onto the man. Before he had chance to retaliate thousands of red mites covered his face and body. He fell to the floor screaming.

The mites got redder as they snipped off his clothes and like tiny surgeons cut through his soft skin along its entirety. 

The newsreporter yelled in agony. His female colleague clambered up onto the sofa shrieking in disbelief. 

With a million snips the creatures peeled back the man's skin revealing his living frame writhing like a gutted fish. Sickeningly fast they cleaned away his glistening muscle, sinews and fats. The mites then freed the still-twitching red-soaked skeleton, ripping it away from the remaining stubborn tendons in a shower of steaming blood.

As the swarm hefted the skeleton on its shoulders the man's final agonised view was of his own eyes being pulled out of their sockets and the optic nerves trailing from his skull like streamers. 

The man's bodiless brain was still aware of the feeling of floating for a few more seconds before it switched itself off for good in a nightmare of disembodied pain.

The mites carried the carcass off-set and into the street. A brave cameraman continued to follow and a horrified global public watched with a terrible morbid curiosity.

The camera filmed the carried skeleton as it made its way into the largest Mars store, the Mega Mars. It was met with hundreds, maybe thousands of other bloody frames being brought there by millions of Martian mites.

Sadly the cameraman wasn't spared and his own camera continued to roll as he was degloved and swept off to the Mega, all watched live by a mesmerised population.

For the next year the same sickening micro-surgery occured across the globe, as the voracious mites filleted and boned the peoples of the Earth, dragging their clicking booty to the nearest Mars Megastore.

It was in one such store that an intrepid kid unearthed the shocking truth about the skeletons and managed to get a report out to the remaining population before being stripped.

The bones were being fed to the Queens!

The workers got the brains and the spinal cords, which they pounced on like dogs.

Slowly but surely the human population of Earth dwindled, so everything else got boned too. Fish. Frogs. Cats. Elephants. Crocodiles. Blue Whales. Sparrows. Spiders. Everything. For the Queens to use.

From the carnage, the mite Queens had created a vast network of huge calcareous shells. Eventually these outcrops joined together to form a massive hard plate.

From Mars it appeared that Earth was now white, a planet of bone, shining like a new gigantic moon.

The Martians looked on in horror and thanked God for their bio-domes and the docile mites Mars had miles away on Olympus Mons.

The last Earthlings, holed up in the Kennedy Rocket Base, prepared for evacuation. Billions of red mites encircled the compound. The survivors' only chance was to get to Mars and live normal lives again under the colonists' first and biggest dome.

Guided by Martian Control, the ship entered the thin Mars atmosphere and the access window was opened in the dome's side to allow passage.

It was only then, as the window closed and the rocket was landing that Mars Control saw that the refugees were not alone.

The ship's outer skin was teeming with red mites and wedged in the exhausts was a vast Queen. It landed with a crack and eyed the colonists' home with insectoid relish.

Screaming out her orders, the Queen sent its army of mites out into this new world of fresh clicking bones and waited.

Dissolver

The two boys glared at each other across the vitreous reflector.

Smmek and Dedsi.

Their hatred for each other was tangible, a choking smog of avarice and scorn bubbling through the piped atmosphere.

Sworn enemies at the academy, a brutal altercation in the breeding zone, the latest in a litany of violent clashes, had lead them here, the terrible trial by combat ordained by the high authority ruling over Server City.

Only one shall live.

The combat method: Dissolver.

Invented in the lightless nights of the isolation age, Dissolver was the first and most lethal of all kill platforms where players destroyed each other in both the digital and real worlds.

The game allowed players to stalk and launch surprise attacks with cybernated corrosive programs. In other words, acid.

Dissolver had been adopted by the penal force ten years earlier and after many successful fatal bouts it was now the default wet dispatch for intractable feuds among the elite's warring children.

Since the dissolution of the charities the rich and powerful of Server City had grown ever more wealthy, decadent and greedy. Gated skirmishes were commonplace and in the exclusive cloud schools, were the richest offspring were reared, vendettas festered and feuds boiled over as the rarefied clans fought for the highest table, the rotunda, where all data everywhere was siphoned.

Smmek and Dedsi were from opposing clans and their age-sunk argument was now without reason or hope, the longest and darkest of quarrels to besmirch the golden drives of the servers.

They now sat facing each other through the latent screen, their bodies encircled by plush velvets in the player pods, their fingers poised above bristling glass controls.

The clan heads watched from luxuriant seats behind their boys, encouraging them to ever greater acts of violence and cruelty, the rotunda glistening high above in the silicon steeple like a sizzling steak within their grasp.

Smmek struck first. 

He had pounced on Dedsi within the game, a bloody pounding ensuing, where inside the blizzard of integers, a deadly button was pressed releasing a gout of cyber-acid over Dedsi's back.

He screamed on the monitor and real flesh smoked inside the gaming pod from where restrained whimpering could be heard by the wine-swilling clan heads.

"Yes! Kill that sickly fucker," bellowed one.

"Destroy the little Deds bastard!" cried another.

Dedsi ignored his enemies' jibes and rallied his strength for a terrible repost. He sprang up from the floor and leaping high into the air he sprayed Smmek's head with the heinous corrosive.

Smmek was dreadfully injured. His scalp began to dissolve both on-screen and in the real world, lumps of bloodied hair falling away onto the steel tiles beneath his console and spreading out when they landed.

He roared and his oval seat rocked with his raging. 

"You will die Dedsi! Die!"

Smmek mustered his resources and pelted down the unlit ginnel disappearing into the shadows by the videodrome, where he waited, nursing his scolded skull.

Dedsi knew the move. Smmek was infamous for his sneaky burn and run, a cowardly strike egged on by his egregious kin.

Twisting and turning like a pythoned fox, Dedsi flipped along the dusky substrate when he finally came to the unlit corner where he felt Smmek was waiting.

He stopped and instantly back flipped, missing a jet of acid erupting from the darkness, which shot over his abdomen and safely passed into the beyond.

Using his advantage, Dedsi suddenly sprang forward emitting a multiple blast of biting juiced light directly into the black where he sensed Smmek was crouched.

The acid struck and in the bated games hall a blood-curdling shriek arose from Smmek's pod. Smoke filled the air and the player stumbled out of his seat falling to the tiles. Clutching his head his face began to corrode and peel away exposing the white bones beneath.

It was a fatal strike and the screaming Smmek slumped down, his face completely burned away.

Before their boy had even died his disgraced clan stood and quickly left the hall.

Smmek's hand was still outstretched imploring them to help him as his short life expired on the steel floor.

Dedsi smiled and walked away.

The Landing

It happened in the neutron blast. Boom. I was thrown onto the staircase.

I went downstairs and realised after a while that this was my past.

I headed back upstairs and it hit me. This was my future.

On the landing was the present but I was going nowhere. 

My future and past were fading and I had to make a decision. To complete my past or risk my future unravelling.

Downstairs my brother lay dying from the neutron bomb. I could save him if I went back. He was within reach. 

But upstairs I could hear his voice. Was he alive? How could that be if I hadn't saved him yet? I was frozen in time and space.

What should I do?

Secure the future and dive into the past and give him the antidote?

Or trust his reliable voice and know the future is the safest bet?

Then the second blast erupted and I was pulverised on those confusing stairs.

When I awoke, which I did, I was the one lying half-dead upstairs and it was my brother who stood transfixed on the steps undecided what to do.

He could hear me moaning in the room above but see me below making him breakfast.

The third blast threw me back onto the staircase staring down at my dying brother. He stared at me imploringly next to broken eggs.

"Brother!"

Boom.

Upstairs at Erica's

Ada was waiting for Norman to come round. He always came on a Friday night with a little extra something for her. Tonight was going to very special though.

Today had been the first day that rationing was lifted. Not only that, the blackout curtains could be taken down for the first time in years after the war.

It would be wonderful to see daylight and moonlight streaming into the the flat once more. Years of darkness had made their lives miserable but at least they were still alive in what was left of their mountainous land.

It was already dusk outside but that didn't bother Ada. She couldn't wait to see what Norman had managed to find that was special at the full grocery store. 

Maybe some fresh meat or some sausage or maybe even a freshly slaughtered bird. How fantastic it would be to get her hands wet again on the the fat giblets of a whole chicken.

Norman knocked gently on the door.

'I'm here Ada, I'm here!'

'Oh Norman, I have been waiting all day for you and now you're here I cannot wait any longer to see what you have brought!'

Norman opened his wicker bag and pulled out pulled out some waxed paper dripping with blood.

'Fresh liver!'

'Oh my! How fabulous! Oh but if only we had some butter and onions to go with it.'

'Ta da! Butter and onions for my lady!'

'Oh how wonderful! I have some potatoes left over. It will be a meal fit for a King and Queen, even poor ones like us!'

Norman reached into his wicker basket again.

'But that's not all!'

He pulled out out large bunch of flowers.

'I could only get wolfsbane I'm afraid Darling. It was all they had and Erica upstairs got three times as much. I got the last bunch.'

'It's fine Norman. They're lovely. We haven't had wolfsbane in the home for years. I'll get water and a vase.'

Ada placed the wolfsbane on the table. It flouresced in the embryo of a full moon.

Ada busied herself at the stove with the food. The butter spat and hissed as the onion rings dropped in.

She carefully sliced the potatoes and next would be that special treat. 

The sight of the bloodied liver on the paper sent an unfamiliar but pleasant frisson of excitement through her and she found herself enthusiastically licking the blood off her fingers. 

Norman watched her doing this with fascination.

'Leave mine rare Ada. Just  the slightest touch of heat.'

'Me too as well love. Mmm!'

The evening grew and the full moonlight shone brightly through the uncurtained windows. It bathed the wolfsbane in a cold glow and it's ancient scent whispered to the old lovers.

It was whilst they were slurping the crimson off their empty plates smiling that they heard a loud crash upstairs in the flat above.

'What's Erica up to now?'

'Beats me!'

Then they both heard a growl. Clear and distinct. Like an animal.

'Has Erica got a dog? She'll be in trouble with the landlord, mark my words.'

Ada picked up the wax paper that the liver had been wrapped in and tongued it voraciously.

Norman joined her.

Upstairs the growling got louder and sounds of wooden furniture breaking made the old couple stop licking. 

'She really has got a big dog up there Ada. It's smashing up the place!'

'We'd better go and see if she's alright.'

More tables and chairs were crashing around at Erica's when they set off up the stairs. 

Ada began to feel strange as soon as they climbed. Her limp muscles started to feel tighter and her flat chest inflated. Her teeth moved and squeaked and her black nails wiggled on her creaking fingers.

Ada stared at them in horror.

'Norman!'

'Shhh!'

Norman's shush sounded odd. There was a certain gutteral depth to it that was most unlike him.  It was more akin to a .... growl! 

Ada watched with lustful admiration as Norman's old shirt ripped open revealing his now huge muscular arms covered in thick russet fur. 

'Norman!'

Her own voice had changed too. She sounded like a talking dog.

Norman turned round. His head had transformed into huge wolf's and his fingers bristled with razor-sharp claws.

He howled at his lover and to Ada's amazement she howled back, now as enormous and hairy as her man.

The wooden door to Erica's suddenly smashed outwards and splintered into a thousand pieces.

Something vast and monstrous loped onto the moonlit landing.

The wolf that was once their neighbour glared at Ada and Norman with an unfathomable malice and she commenced to walk downstairs towards them.

The three werewolves leapt and collided in an explosion of talons and teeth. Fur flew and thick blood spattered the stairwell. They fell together through the banisters and continued to battle in the hall, the two lover wolves, despite their smaller size, set upon Erica with a wild fury completely alien to them.

It was some time later that Ada and Norman were again sat at their kitchen table. This time they were naked and smothered in red 

'This liver's absolutely delicious love. No need to cook it at all.'

'I know. So big and juicy. It's a pity that Erica won't be needing it anymore!'

They both laughed loudly as blue blood ran down their stubbled chins. 

The moon above them waned in the dawn sky and the wolfsbane withered in its vase.

Norman and Ada shrugged, held hands and went into the bedroom chuckling.

So

The man began his day sweeping dried leaves from his verandah, the fallen messages from the mountain ash.
Autumn and Winter had passed and Spring in the hills blossomed.

A weevil landed on his wooden brush handle.

"Old man, your sweeping reminds me of my time at a zen temple. I would stare at the monks slowly making sand gardens and wonder what truths lay in those rills of grains. When the monks knelt for za zen I would walk round the sand lines until hours later I reached the rock in the middle. I would stare at that rock until the monks lit candles and retired to their futons. In many ways I am still walking those rills".

The weevil walked off and left the old man alone again.

"So," he said and carried on sweeping his leaves.

A lynx came by and sat on the wooden deck. It licked it's paw with it's eyes half shut. Taking it's time it licked it's other front paw, flattening it's fur and giving it a wet sheen. It looked up.

"Old man. Why do you sweep leaves. No matter. It does not concern me. My time is precious. My mind is a clock fuelled with blood. My belly a furnace fired with life. My purpose to eat and eat and make more like me so they can eat".

The lynx caught a vole and chewed it's head off. It slurped the stump like a lollipop and devoured the rest in a single chomp. It left.

The man stooped to gather up one of his piles of leaves. They rustled like torn pages.

"So," he said and carried the litter to his basket.

Stretching his ancient back he noticed a crumpled letter among the leaves.

Carefully opening it he held the thin paper in his hands and read the familiar scrawled handwriting.

To whomever it may concern. I, myself, leave upon my passing the things I have accumulated in my life to the creatures of the world:

Sand for those who seek their answer in fields of glass. Let them be.

Blood for those who's gospel is a hymn of bone, muscle and knowing. It was always thus.

Stone for those who shelter from rains of fire and winds of poison across the earth. May you prevail.

The old man folded the letter carefully and slipped it in his pocket.

"So," he said and carried the basket to the compost heap.

As he tipped out his fresh load he looked up and saw a missile arcing across the sky. It left behind it a trail of white fumes. It would land and explode in a distant valley.

The old man hurried inside his concrete nuclear shelter on the mountainside, around which he'd built a verandah decades ago. He shut himself in and waited for the atomic blast to burst forth and the terrible fall-out to subside overnight.

He would have to wear his mask tomorrow and probably all week.

"So so," he said and after placing his letter with the others he made some tea.

LAMPREY

Gregory looked in the mirror. His reflection was viscous. 

He rubbed his eyes.

Jesus, I've got to stop drinking on Fridays!

His colleagues at the aquarium liked a tipple or two after a long slog all week. Even though most of them worked another shift, the weekend was special. Not as serious. You could let your hair down.

God I feel rough!

He stared at himself again but couldn't wipe the stickiness from his eyes. He was grateful it was his day off. He'd lie in bed till the afternoon and sleep it off before Sophie came round at 7 to go out for dinner.

He drank a large glass of water but for some reason it tasted incredibly salty. He looked at his other hand and to his surprise he was holding the salt bottle. The cap was off. He'd poured it in himself!

Gagging he bent over the sink and hawked up a large gob of slime, which landed on the metal with a wet splat.

Gregory was sweating now and before he could stop himself he drank another large glass of salty water.

Struggling to breathe he staggered to bed and tossed and turned like a newborn for the next few hours; completely covered up with his quilt.

During this fitful slumber Gregory coughed up gobbets of mucus all over his pillow, which, to his horror, he sucked back up voraciously.

His mouth began to pout, his pursed lips moving in and out every other second. His teeth began to gnaw uncontrollably at his quilt. Saliva drooled onto his bed in thick pools.

Gregory was losing control. His mind became hostage to an alien force. Something was taking him over from the inside. What in God's name could it be? If he could work that out then he might be able to combat it. Then it hit him. His eyes opened wide with recognition. Oh my God! he gurgled through reforming jaws.

It must have been when he cut his hand cleaning a tank. His open wound must have got contaminated. But what tank was it? He tried hard to remember. And then he did.

Oh Christ! Hagfish! Nooooo!

The words bubbled out of a mouth no longer human but the tears in Gregory's eyes were. He sat up and sobbed and the tears ran into an ever-widening hole beneath his nose where his mouth had been. His teeth had formed a circle around the edge of the hole and the beginnings of new teeth were sprouting in a concentric ring around his vertical palette. A sucker in the middle valved in and out oozing sticky mucus.

In desperate need of water Gregory tried to stand but to his terror his legs and feet had fused together down the middle, giving his lower limbs a tail-like look.

Gregory fell to the floor hard. Trying to break the impact he realised that his arms were also fused to his body. He landed face down on the carpet with a wet splat..

His cat Sabe padded over to see what was going on. Enticed by a fishy smell it licked Gregory's face.

All at once the cat was sucked into Gregory's new radula and the animal began to whine as its lifeblood was slowly but surely siphoned out. It screamed as its claws desperately mauled at its owner's strange new head.

It didn't matter. Gregory no longer felt pain the same way a human did. He flopped around along the floor with the dying cat and gradually flipped into the bathroom looking increasingly like a long pink fish.

Sliding into the bath he nudged the cold shower lever on. Holding his face beneath the redeeming jets his head continued to alter until it was simply an extension of his long uniform snake-like body, neckless with a huge gaping mouth riddled with a swirl of sharp teeth. Gregory looked like a living saw drill.

Letting the shower water pour over his mouth the hag-man writhed in ecstasy as his skin got smoother, stimulated by the life-giving liquid. He no longer breathed through his shrivelling lungs but through nine gills that had formed where his ears had been.

Suddenly the apartment door opened. The hag-human stiffened.

"Greg! Its me! You ready?"

The thing that once was Greg peered from the bathwater and attempted to say his girlfriend's name.

"Ssshosi!"

"Greg. Is that you?"

Sophie made her way to the bathroom.

"Stop messing around. We'll be la......."

The girl saw the monstrosity slithering in the water with what looked like a cat and screamed.

The creature stopped dead and after sucking the remaining juices from Sabe flipped out its hollowed skin, where it landed at Sophie's feet staring up at her.

Sophie screamed again.

She tried the door handle but the lock had jammed. She was trapped.

At that moment the thing in the bath fixed its tiny eyes on her and looking straight at Sophie its horrendous mouth started to pout and pulsate. The creature's body began to lift itself over the bath edge.

Sophie knew that if this beast got hold of there would be no escape and she would die.

Reacting quickly before it cleared the bath she kicked its head back into the tub and turned on the hot tap. Boiling water spurted out over the thing and it writhed in agony banging its head and tail against the sides.

Sophie had once boiled a slug by mistake and she was praying for a similar but awful result.

She got it. As the boiling water covered the hagfish it thrashed and thrashed, producing large amounts of thick slime.

Before too long the creature was rolling frantically in a bath of its own thick hot mucus, screaming a high pitched note and clearly dying. It stopped moving, looked at the girl and seemed to deflate like an empty bag,  its circular mouth falling off as it gargled a single word.

"Sophie".

Sophie turned off the hot water and collapsed on the floor.

She just stared and screamed.