The Pagan Activist

“Siobhan.”
The Master’s voice caries across the atrium much the way it carries over the battlefield, I expect. I turn without speaking. Eyes lowered, I wait for him to speak. I can hear him approaching. His fingers brush my cheek, and he tilts my face up to look at him.
He is a handsome man, though these Romans are very different from my own people. Slender and dark, with brown skin, they appeared quite alien in Cruithintuait, where most are red- or golden-haired, and even those with black hair are fair as ewe’s milk. The Master is tall for a Roman, and broad shouldered, though the priest I lay with at the Beltane fires was easily twice the Master’s breadth. Aonghas would have grown to be a great man—I stifle the thought, and force myself to meet the Master’s eyes.
“Why are you out here in the dark?” His arm slides around my waist and he pulls me close. He wants me to put my arms around him. I never do.
He leans closer, his lips brushing my temple as he inhales the fragrance in my hair. Were it my choice I would allow myself to decay, hoping infection might take me away from this, but the Master gave me a staff of slaves to see to my every need, and I fear that by not using them they will be punished. Really, even if I were here willingly, I would need no assistance. The Romans’ women are apparently a feeble lot, if they have so great a need of slaves to bathe and dress them.
The four slave girls that were given to me have few duties. One draws my bath and lays out my gowns, two tend to my chambers, though I leave them little to tidy; and the last dresses my hair, for that I cannot do. We priestesses wear our hair loose, or in braids; fashionable Roman women dress their hair in elaborate curled masses, something I doubt I will ever learn. Absurdly, after the girl has worked my hair into an acceptable fashion, it is then covered with a veil, for Roman women of quality are required to cover themselves. Women of Cruithintuait, Albion and Eire are much freer. We are judged by our character, rather than by how much of our person is visible.
The Master pushes my veil off my head and runs his fingers through my curls. “What are you thinking Siobhan?” He speaks in heavily accented Cruithe, though he knows my Latin is perfect. When he is in my bed he murmurs to me in my native tongue, as though that will make the act of rape sweeter to me.
I shake my head. Nothing you care to know Master.
His fingers under my chin again, looking into my eyes. “Tell me.”
I sigh. I have nothing to say worth speaking.
His thumb brushes my lips. “Speak Siobhan. Tell me your thoughts, how you spent your day. Tell me of the season, how your people celebrate the harvest. Tell me how the household is running.” His other arm slips around my waist, his hands resting on my hips. “Say my name.”
I have no choice now. I can make the night easy for myself, or hard on the household. “Master, I—“
He silences me with a gentle kiss, and were I another woman in a different place my heart would melt. Even now, hating him, hating this, I feel my breath quicken.
“My name,” he murmurs. “I am not your master. I have told you this. I treasure you above all things. I would love you if you would allow me to. I love you even now, though I know it breaks your heart to hear me say it. Say my name Siobhan. I want to hear your voice.”
“Lucius.” I will give him this much. As for the rest, my people are destroyed; there is no one to celebrate Lughnasad in three days’ time, and if he wants news of the house he can speak to the slaves.
“Better,” he smiles, and I am again taken by his smile. He truly is a handsome man, Lucius Suetonius Malleus, commander of Rome’s Fourteenth Legion.
Unfortunately, his command was the word that burned my home to the ground and killed my infant son.
He claims he loved me from the moment he saw me cradling Aonghas that day at the sanctuary, and that he asked the Lady if I was wed. Her response that I was not was sweet music, he says. He was knowledgeable enough to understand that the priestesses were not required to wed, though it seemed strange to him, and he understood that my son was not a bastard, but blessed by the gods themselves, being both conceived and born on two of our high festivals. His anger that his orders for my safety were ignored was terrifying. Indeed, he asked me if I knew who had forced me—was it any of the men that had accompanied him to the sanctuary? I had given him no answer. I had resolved not to speak, for I feared what I might say, or that I would give him the satisfaction of hearing me weep. When he asked where my son was I nearly came undone.
“Did you send him away, Lady? If we can find who you gave him to I will gladly claim him…”
As tears began to roll down my face he stopped speaking, then in a hard voice asked, “You did send him away, didn’t you Lady?”
I closed my eyes, unable to bear the pain of my babe’s loss, seeing again his body breaking against the tree’s trunk.
“Siobhan.” He grasped my chin, forcing me to look at him. “Where is your son?”
“He’s dead,” I whispered. “They took him from me…” I dared say no more. He would see my tears, but he would not hear my broken heart.
With a curse he released me and stalked from the tent. I could hear him outside, speaking to one of his aides, shouting that the men who’d raped me were to be found and brought to him, or the entire legion would be executed. That night three of the men were crucified, and the fourth, the one that had flung my babe against the tree, was tortured for hours, and finally disemboweled and left to die. He did it for me, I know, but I found no comfort in the deaths he gave me.
His work done in Cruithintuait, Caledonia, Lucius Suetonius Malleus was to return to Rome. The five moon journey was a nightmare I could not wake from, though he saw to my every comfort, even going so far as to hire a medicine woman to tend the wounds so brutally inflicted on me so soon after giving birth. Her assurances that in time I would be able to bear more children was little care for me, though Lucius was delighted.
He did not lay with me the entire journey, though he took me to his bed every night, and his hands roamed my body, often followed by his lips. I was to be his, but he would not inflict any more injury on my body he said, and when I bore him a son, he assured me that he would break with Roman tradition, and though the boy’s name would be Lucius, his second name would be Aonghas, for the son we lost.
On our arrival in Rome he was eager to present me to his associates, for though I was a captive of war, I had not borne arms against Rome myself, and so was not a criminal. My lineage spoke well for me also, for my father was a priest and my mother the daughter of a noble Highland family. My education as a priestess far outshone that of many other Roman ladies, and I was spoken of well by all of Lucius’ associates, though their wives looked on me with scorn.
Admiration or scorn, it little mattered to me. Lucius had approached the Senate, announcing that he wished to marry me and not have our children born with the stain of slavery on their names. The Senate’s deliberation was brief, and now, as Lucius led me into the villa for dinner, he told me that we could be wed before the year’s end.
He saw me settled on my couch, then signaled to the slaves to begin serving. I ate little, and he would urge me to eat more, as always. Tonight we were dining alone. He continued to speak in Cruithe to keep our conversation to ourselves, though I thought I recognized another of the boys from the sanctuary as well.
“The festival of Larentalia is in four months; I think that would be an auspicious time for us to wed.” He smiled at me, and sipped his wine. “What better way to celebrate joy in the home than to marry my love and begin a family?”
I said nothing. I touched little of my food. At Lucius’ signal a slave placed a sugared pear on my plate. I had no appetite for sweets, either, though I tasted it to spare myself his usual speech on how I needed to eat so I would bear him strong sons.
“You will have every honor as my wife,” Lucius continued. “The house and the slaves will be yours to oversee, much as they are now. And you will be a citizen, and will be able to travel the city freely. I thought tomorrow we might go to the Temple of Venus, and ask Her blessing on our union. What say you Siobhan?”
“Of course,” I answered quietly. I was familiar with his goddess Venus, and had little thought that love would ever grow in this marriage Lucius desired. I supposed I should have been grateful that he wished to marry me, for I understood that a Roman man could have children by his slave women and claim the children, thus making the children legitimate, and belonging only to him, while the women finished their lives in slavery. As Lucius’ wife, he wouldn’t be able to pass me around to his associates, as often happened to attractive slave women in many homes. Lucius was unmarried, and had no children, thus I would be spared petty jealousies of that ilk.

Held Captive - Chapter One:

Twilight. The Faeries’ Chimes glowed in the fading light. What were they called here? I couldn’t recall, nor did I care to. Always one of my favorite flowers, they filled the air with their cloying fragrance, easily overpowering their more respectable neighbors. Ah, the sweet smell of poison. Oh Master, if you only knew: iron cannot shackle inborn knowledge.

I stood in the garden, the atrium, these idiot barbarians call it, and watched night fall on the city. A small part of me was thankful for this small green space; Rome was a filthy place, far dirtier than any of the great towns of my land, though I’d heard that a city called Londinium in Albion was quite large, and nearly as filled with offal as the gutters of Rome.

Here on the outskirts of the city, the Master’s villa gave the impression of open country. He owned a large estate, and many fields of wheat and vineyards. I had been told there was a kitchen garden around the back of the villa, but had never seen it. I was not permitted to leave the house, except to walk about this inner garden.

The Master had gone so far as to ask what I wished to have planted, so I might enjoy my garden more. As is my custom, I gave him no reply. The household slaves were told to follow my instructions; I gave none, and so they made no changes. Soon after, the Master had me summoned to him here in the atrium garden, and had me witness the slaves’ beatings. They had not followed my instructions, he said, and therefore earned their punishment.

I wept for them later in the privacy of my quarters before he came to my bed. The next morning I sent one of the kitchen slaves to the markets to collect healing salves and medicinal plants. I tended to the slaves, then planted the herbs myself. I will have no one suffer for me at the Master’s orders, and he knows this. These Romans use cruelty to meet their ends, and by needlessly whipping the slaves, he knows I will take on the role of Lady in his house, though I am no more than a slave myself, a spoil of his campaign against my people in fair Cruithintuait, the lands he invaded, and destroyed, and calls Caledonia.

A torch ended my reverie, and I stood motionless as a young boy came out to light the torches in the atrium. His face is familiar to me, though I can not quite remember who he is. Here he has no name—he is most probably simply called ‘Boy’. I know his name, but things of grace and beauty, like names spoken in Cruithe, are smoky memories, lost amid the fires and screams and blood that the Romans destroyed us with.

The boy’s torch pulls me back to the sanctuary, and the very moment we knew all was lost. As one building after another was eaten by flames, we made our way to the forest. Ancient, sacred, the forest would be our haven until such time as we could return to our ways. Our gods hadn’t fully abandoned us; they couldn’t have. Or so I believed.

I know who he is now, this boy. He is Ganelon, one of the younger novices, still in his mother’s care when the Romans attacked us, and when Eliean fell to a sword I took him with me and all the other children, and ran for the forest, clutching my own babe like our lives depended on it. They didn’t. Only his.

I had hoped Ganelon had escaped. There were Romans at the forest edge, but I saw them before they saw all the children, and we backed away, and I sent the children off in another direction I saw was clear. Would that I had sent my babe along with one of the older children. Or that I had followed them. But he was only a moon old, still too small to live without me, and I had thought to guard the children’s escape, then return to aid my sisters if I could.

I didn’t have time to return to search for my sisters. As soon as the last small form melted into the forest’s mist, I returned from whence we had come, and still at the forest’s edge I was caught, four Romans looming over me as I stood and waited for my death. Perhaps that was my downfall. My arrogance at knowing that they could do nothing to me, that in my death I would be reborn, and be united with the gods again.

When they tore Aonghas from my arms and dashed his fragile body against an oak, I knew the gods had indeed abandoned us. When they bore me to the ground and ravaged my still birth-weak body over and over again, only to drag me to my feet and close my wrists in iron rather than kill me, I knew that the gods had never loved us, that we were just poppets, living and suffering for their amusement.

Later, not even a day after our world had ended, the Roman general came to inspect the captives. Priests and priestesses, farm folk, we were all slaves, bound to live or die at the Romans’ wills. Not a fortnight ago the general had visited the sanctuary, and spoken with the High Priest and Priestess. Those of us in attendance were greeted cordially; in fact he had offered me congratulations of the safe birth of my son. The Romans set great store in boy children, though at the time I had no thought except thanksgivings to the great Goddess for such a gift.

Now he looks us over like we are vermin, gauging what price we will fetch at the slave auction, I expect. I close my eyes. I cannot watch him, nor bear the look on the faces of my remaining sisters and brothers. And the children…my heart bleeds as my womb does. Two of the younger priests had tried to tend my wounds, then carried me to an older priestess, but had no success. Our skills are lost now. I will heal or I will die, and I don’t care.

Footsteps approach, then stop before me. I don’t bother to open my eyes. I am curled around myself, bloodied and broken. They can not possibly have any more interest in me.

“Lady?” The voice is closer, as though the speaker has knelt beside me. “Lady Siobhan? What has happened to her?” A hand rests on my shoulder, then touches my hair.

One of the priests that tried to heal me speaks, tells as best as he can what ails me. He doesn’t mention my son. He may not have known I had one.

“Remove her chains.”

Hands work at my wrists, and I am marginally freed. Suddenly I am lifted, cradled in strong arms. Faintly, hope stirs, then my rescuer speaks, and I am thrown back into the nightmare we are all living. “I gave orders that Siobhan was not to be harmed. She was not to be touched. Find out who did this to her, and bring them to me.”

The Roman general carried me away from what was left of my home, holding me close, as though I were something precious. I’m not, though. I’m his whore.

The DeadGiveaway - Chapter 8:

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“Oh. My. God”

“I know”

“But…………”

“I know. Come on”

“Where are we going?”

“I have no idea?”

“What are we doing?” the whisper was harsh and jarred against the silence that pervaded the lab.

“SHH!” was the response intended to elicit quiet but that cut through the pervading silence so completely, had there been anyone searching the room for them, their hiding place couldn’t have been given away more completely than if they’d installed a 7ft neon sign that flashed “They’re here” and had an animated arrow indicating their whereabouts.

“Yes, but…”

“SHH!”

Aside from the rasped questions and pointed interjections that floated around like squabbling spectres, the lab was empty. The only indication that anyone had used it recently was a pile of clothes crumpled on the floor, suggesting that their owners had vacated the premises in something resembling a hurry.

“Look” whispered Steve, injecting into his voice a tone that made it quite clear he wasn’t going to be shushed anymore, “What the hell is going on!? Why can’t I fetch my clothes? It’s fucking freezing behind here!”

Amanda glared at him, her expression stating categorically that she’d heard and taken note of the tone of his voice suggesting that he wasn’t going to be shushed anymore but that, regardless, If he didn’t shut the hell up she was going to forego the shushing altogether and simply pull out his voicebox.

It was on the tip of Steve’s tongue to say “Look” again, and attempt to get as much of his annoyance out as possible before he was subject to physical violence from Amanda when the door to the lab was opened and a bunch of orange-suited men walked in who, despite their eye-wateringly bright attire, looked to Steve about as friendly as carving knife to the throat. These, he assumed, were The City’s heavy mob.

He looked at Amanda who glanced in his direction and, with simply a widening of her eyes and a raised brow, managed to convey “See! This is why I wanted you to shut the fuck up!” without uttering a single syllable. Steve, who never was any good at mime, simply mouthed the word ‘fine’ and went back to squinting through the tiny holes in the console the two of them were hiding behind.

The men searched the room and inspected Steve’s clothing. When they turned up nothing but a few printouts, one of them picked up the phone and dialled a number.

“Agent 12, Sir. The lab’s empty. Looks like they left quickly. The mark didn’t even bother to get dressed. Of course, Sir. Would you like me to post a guard, in case they come back? Very good.” He replaced the receiver and spoke to the others. “Let’s go. The Boss wants us back for debriefing.”

“Are we not waiting for them?” asked one of the men

“No” said Agent 12, “The Boss wants everything to appear normal. Our presence outside the office may provoke unrest. We’re to return to the office.”

Without a word the men exited the building and closed the door. Steve made to push the machine he was crouched behind out of the way, but Amanda grabbed his arm and shook her head. Steve, who was just as bad at reading between the lines as he was at mime looked at her exasperatedly. Amanda looked back, raised her eyebrows to indicate that she really couldn’t believe that he hadn’t learned anything from the last few minutes when…

“AH HA!!” the door to the lab flew open and one of the orange suited men burst through it. Steve thought it may have been Agent 12, but he wouldn’t have put money on it. “Oh” said the man, disappointedly. He glanced quickly around the room, then left, closing the door behind them.

Steve, who, though slow on the uptake, was beginning to learn a few things, strained his ears to hear anything helpful through the heavy stonewalls. The sound of the outer door slamming shut seemed to be all the indication Amanda needed, and she began to heave the console out of the way.

“Who the hell were they?” ask Steve, as he pounced for his clothes and began pulling them on.

Amanda looked pensive, the top of her nose was wrinkled and her eyebrows seemed to be huddling together for warmth.

“They…” she began, “…They were the Orthority. They’re like the heavy mob of this place.” Steve held back from patting himself on the back. “They’re supposed to police the city and the Detention Centre, to ensure that order is kept.”

“The Authority?”

“No, Orthority, O, R, not A, U”

Deciding that Amanda’s ability to distinguish between homophones was something he reality didn’t want to ask about, he said “What did they want?”.

“You, apparently” she said, matter-of-factly, “Did you not hear them call you the mark?”. Steve hadn’t.

“No” he said, not a little petulantly, “What the hell do they want with me?”. He tried valiantly to keep the crack of panic, that had suddenly appeared in his larynx, out of his voice, and succeeded only in producing a tone like a teenage boy who’s hormone levels had just made a bid for the sky.

Amanda continued to look concerned. “I don’t understand” she muttered to herself, “It doesn’t make sense”.

Patience was never one of Steve’s more prominent virtues. He could wait in queues without problem, listen to someone who stammered struggle through a conversation without feeling the urge to finish their sentences and even stand at a night club bar at 1am and wait to get served. But when it came to issues that may, or may not, directly affect his ability to live, breathe and in anyway survive, he was of the opinion that urgency took priority over confused mumbling.

“OK, it doesn’t make sense, brilliant. But being confusing doesn’t necessarily preclude the possibility that the situation has the ability to inflict tremendous pain and suffering on my extremities, so what do we do about it?”

“You don’t understand” Amanda began “Something is hugely, HUGELY wrong”.

“Nope, got that. Heard that loud and clear. The big guys in horribly loud suits made sure of that. The question is who can we ask for help?” Steve knew he was beginning to sound whiny and unreasonable, but the fact was that burly men with frightening fashion sense wanted to arrest him and probably hurt him in strange, otherworldly ways and, frankly, he didn’t want them to. He was allergic to pain. It brought him out in all manner of unsightly bruises.

“No” said Amanda, her voice now full of urgency and something Steve couldn’t quite place, “You’re not getting this. The only people who know that you’re here are you, me and…and…” she paused.

“And, who?”

She looked at him, and he realised that the other thing he heard in her voice was unmitigated confusion.

“Custodial Pete Gately” she said.

“There! That’s where we need to be heading for”

“But it’s miles away!”

“At this point, our options aren’t exactly multitudinous”

“OK, just don’t let go of my hand.”

“I’m not holding your hand.”

“Pete Gately!” exclaimed Steve

“SSH!”

He failed to keep the frustration from exploding onto his face, but managed to wrestle his voice box under control and whispered “Why the hell would Pete Gately send the Authority after me?”

“It’s Orthority” Amanda corrected him, causing the hairs on the back of his neck to respond to some unheard rendition of the national anthem, “and, I have no idea.” She chewed her thumbnail for a few seconds and then said “We have to get out of here.”

Steve didn’t need telling twice. ‘We have to get out of here’ was the universal signal that things had gone beyond bad and wandered helplessly over the border into shit. He quickly laced up his shoes.

“Where are we going?” he asked, straightening up.

“Not a clue” said Amanda.

“Ah.” There didn’t seem much else he could say.

Amanda quickly gathered up a few sheets of paper, stuffed them into a bag and slung the bag over her shoulder.

“Let’s just get out of here. We can decide where we’re going on the way”.

“I can’t let go”

“Just try to keep moving, we’re almost there”

“Steve help!”

“Amanda!!”

They crashed through the outer door to the building and made it about 30 feet down the street.

“STAY WHERE YOU ARE!!”

Seemingly from nowhere, hundreds of orange suited men appeared making Steve feel like he was in some kind of bizarre soft drink advert. The lurid crowd began closing in, slowly forcing Steve and Amanda backwards.

“WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED!! ESCAPE IS IMPOSSIBLE!! SURRENDER NOW AND NO-ONE GETS HURT”

Steve never considered himself a brave man. Every time he heard on the news about some soldier throwing themselves on a grenade to protect his platoon, or a householder who physically beat a burglar into submission, he’d catch himself wondering what he would do in their place.

And each time his answers were the same. If it came down to a choice between run away or save everyone with a sacrificial death dive, he’d probably watch the explosion from a good 100 paces away. And, as for tackling burglars, he knew for a fact that he’d much rather stay at the top of his stairs and give the raiders pointers on how to unplug the tangled mess of cables behind his huge TV than thrown himself at them armed with a rolling pin.

However, even with the knowledge that he was an inherent coward, he was still surprised at the mental strength he had to utilise to stop himself from flinging his arms up in the air, dropping to his knees and pleading “I give up! Just don’t hit my face!”.

Closer and closer the badly dressed crowd pressed, forcing Amanda and Steve, further and further backwards.

“Stop” said Amanda suddenly, but quietly so that only Steve could hear, “We go any further back, we’re into the Relloc”.

Steve allowed himself a quick glance backwards and gasped at just how close the two of them were to the dark, sparkling mass.

They were trapped.

“CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS!” yelled Steve. He was well aware that the chances of actually talking his way out of this were beyond slim, but as every other option appeared to have fucked off, this seemed to be the only one left.

“NO!” was the swift and conclusive reply.

Well, that put paid to that, he thought. We’re done for…unless….

“Amanda?”

“Yeah”

“Do you know what they want me for?”

Amanda shook her head.

“And, do you know what they’ll do to us if they catch us?”

Again, Amanda shook her head “No” she said.

He looked out at the sea of orange bodies around them.

“Have you ever seen this many of the Orthorities out at once?”

Amanda’s head only seemed to know the one dance.

Steve thought for a minute, then said “Do you have any idea how we’re going to get through the crowd?”

Amanda looked at him “ We’re not” she said, crushing any remaining hope he harboured that they wouldn’t have to do what they were about to do.

“You know what we have to do, don’t you?”

She shuddered, but nodded “I know.”

She took his hand. “On 3” she said, “1…2…”

“Wait, are we going on 3,or is it…..”

As the Seville suited crowd surged forward, Amanda leapt backwards into the Relloc, dragging Steve along for the ride.

The darkness slammed down around them and the noise of the crowd was cut off instantly. Steve, though he knew he was sitting on the floor, couldn’t feel it beneath him, and struggled to, what he hoped was perpendicular.

So it hadn’t been a dream, he thought to himself, I was in the Relloc.

Somewhere to the side of him Amanda gasped.

“Oh. My. God.”

“I know”

The light exploded around him as Steve stumbled out of the darkness. His eyes, struggling against the sunlight that stabbed at them, could make out only a few shapes, nothing discernible.

“Steve!”

Spinning around, Steve could make out a rectangle of darkness behind him, surrounded by light, and within the darkness colours seemed to be swirling.

Amanda.

Ignoring the fact that his eyes were still unaccustomed to the brightness, Steve lunged toward the dark shape and grabbed for the colour that thrashed within it. It took a few moments before he could gain any purchase, then his hand caught hold of something warm and he grabbed onto it and heaved as hard as he could.

He landed heavily, his coccyx informing him loudly and painfully that it didn’t appreciate that kind of abuse, but he wasn’t listening. He’d heard Amanda grunt as she hit the ground beside him and that was all he was concerned about.

“Are you alright?” he asked, mashing his palms into his eye sockets in attempt to rub the darkness from them.

“I think so” Amanda answered, “but I can’t see properly.”

“It’s the darkness” said Steve, blinking frantically, “It should go away, eventually”. He blinked again, then waved his hand in front of his face. “Mine’s almost completely…..” He stopped. In front of him was a doorway, no bigger than a standard, run of the mill, everyday doorway. Yet this one wasn’t attached to anything other than the ground and appeared to contain the Relloc. Daylight surrounded it, which meant, he supposed, that it was possible to walk completely around it, yet walking through it would, probably, take you back in to the Relloc.

“Where are we?” he asked, no-one inparticular.

“It doesn’t matter” came the deeper than expected response, “You’re coming back with me.”

Steve turned and came face to face with one of the orange clothed Orthority guys. Leaping to his feet, he adopted, what he hoped passed for a fighting stance and held his fists out in front of him, circling them like a character from Tom Brown’s School Days.

Turns out, he thought, I’m not as much of a coward as I thought. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to win.

“Come here!” shouted the Orthority agent, as he lunged forward. Steve, instinctively threw a fist out in front of himself, then bravely shut his eyes and braced for what he knew would be a bone breaking impact.

It never came.

Tentatively, he opened one eye, then the other. The agent had disappeared. All that seemed to be left of him was an odd smelling orange mist, within a cloud of which Steve now stood.

“OOO. KKK.” he said, slowly “What the hell happened?”. He looked down at Amanda, and saw that she was still laying on the floor, but had lifted herself up onto her elbows and was staring, open-mouthed, at something.

When he saw what she was looking at, someone cut all the strings that held his jaw in place, and it dropped to its lowest point possible as several different variations of confused expression fought for space on his face.

It was a city. A glowing city surrounded by enormous mountains. It was beautiful. Even from this distance it made Venice look like a scruffy, east coast beach town.

“Steve?” asked Amanda, without taking her eyes off the scene in front of her.

“Yeah?” He offered by way of an answer.

“Where the fuck are we?”

“I believe I can answer that.” From the other side of the door, satisfyingly proving Steve’s earlier hypothesis, came the most bizarre man either of them had ever seen. At first glance he appeared to be two completely different blokes, jammed together to form a single entity so that they each had possession of one side of the body. A second and third glance only served to prove the first one right.

The odd man, walked slowly towards them, and smiled.

“I am Brian” he said, tapping himself on the left side of his chest, “and I am Gordon” he continued in a different voice, this time tapping himself on the right side of his chest.

“We’re glad you could make it” said the first voice again. “Welcome to the Relocation Centre”.

The DeadGiveaway - Chapter 7:

Steve shifted uncomfortably in the dentists like chair, and grimaced as the thick, vine-like cables that had been secured to his body by tape, pulled spitefully at his body hair.

He was beginning to wish that he hadn’t made such a fuss about things.

If he’d simply agreed with Amanda that he hadn’t and couldn’t have been inside the Relloc, then at this moment he’d be sitting at his grim, depressingly grey desk looking at a stack of incomprehensible DD21 forms that every business in the city seemed to be required to complete and drinking warm, stale water from the office’s small, cramped kitchen. But no, he’d had to go on and on, asking about ‘possibilities’, using sentence after sentence that started “But, what if…”, and asking ‘wasn’t there anything she could test for?’.

He paused in his reasoning. Maybe being here, wired up to a myriad of ancient electrical equipment, that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a laboratory run by Boris Karloff, in just his underwear was preferable to the office. At least here he wouldn’t be subjected to Karen’s regular outbursts of “Oh my God-duh!!” that she exclaimed every time anyone told her anything, in her appallingly squeaky nasal voice, or be confronted by Colin and his perpetual sniffle that he treated, every 5 minutes, with a quick rub with a hanky that Steve felt pretty sure would shatter if Colin ever dropped it.

His thoughts came to a stop again. Now he came actually came to compare them, neither was particularly appealing. Though here he did actually get to see Amanda, who was currently examining the results from a test she’d just run on him on a dusty old device that looked as though it had been pulled, as is, from the helm of a submarine.

“How’s it looking?” he asked, painfully aware that the look she was wearing was the universal expression for ‘we’ll have to run more tests’.

“We’ll have to run more tests” she said, “There appears to be something screwing up the equipment.” She tapped on the glass covering of a small dial, “Probably just a system glitch, a mouse probably got into the Central Processing Compartment again and chewed through a couple of cables, but we have to be sure.”

Steve considered this and asked “What makes you say that? What’s wrong with the results?” he also considered the examination she’d just exposed him to and added, “and what sort of tests?”.

Amanda squinted at a small screen, flicked a couple of switches, didn’t seem happy at the consequence of this so flicked them back again. “Well” she began, still staring at the screen, “The Spectral Matrositer…er, the big, water tank looking thing in the corner,” she waved her hand vaguely towards a large black box with wires streaming from it, that sat and loomed at him from the corner “appears to be detecting something that it can’t identify, which isn’t possible because I’ve personally seen to it that it contains information on absolutely everything in this place”. Still cowling, she turned to face him, “You give it a bowl of peanuts to analyse, and it can give you the genetic make-up of the peanuts, the chemical composition of the bowl, the names of everyone that has eaten from it, and what they had for breakfast. It’s a fantastic piece of kit.” Her scowl deepened, “Too bad it’s got such a shit name”. She returned her attention to the screen. “Anyhow, the point is, if it can’t identify this stuff, which it’s saying is only a residual trace anyway, then there must be a glitch in the system.”

Steve opened his mouth to say something, and got as far as “Bu……”, before Amanda cut him off and answered his unasked question.

“And no, it couldn’t be from inside the Relloc, before you ask. Just like the air inside a shop will contain traces of the air outside due to people dragging pockets of it in with them whenever they open the door, so the inside of the Relloc would contain traces of it’s outside.” The ghosts of science classes that he’d paid very little attention in swam silently through Steve’s head and he began to wonder if he would understand more of what Amanda was explaining if he’d paid more attention to whatshisface, the teacher, than to mooning over Veronica Russell. He realised that Amanda was still talking at decided that paying attention now would be a goo idea. “This system knows Relloc radiation better than I know the back of my hand.” she explained “If there was even the mere hint of a possibility that this trace was Relloc, the Spectral Matrositer would flag up the relationship between the radiation signatures and would have given me a print out explaining its findings. This radiation trace is simply reading as ‘unknown’, which suggests the system doesn’t have a clue what it is, which as I said, isn’t possible. So we’ll run the test again, but this time I won’t initiate the control buffer so we should be able to pinpoint where the problem lies.” she paused “It’ll be a mouse again. Tenner says it is”. She lifted her head and smiled at him.

He wanted to smile back, but her explanation had jammed down his panic button and was refusing to release it. He went through several different combinations of words in his head, as he attempted to construct a question that would convey his concern concisely, yet at the same time not make him sound like a pansy, and plumped for “Radiation?”. This he expressed whilst, apparently, using the vocal chords of a 7 year old girl.

Amanda smirked at him. “Don’t panic” she joked “You’re teeth or…ahem…anything else aren’t about to drop off. Radiation in this case simply means energy that radiates from it’s source. Besides,“ she went on “You’re already dead. Even if this were Chernobyl things couldn’t really get any worse could they?”

Steve’s initial reaction was to cup his crotch, but he managed to refrain and said simply, “Actually they could.”

Amanda continued to smile “Yes, well, let’s get this test over with shall we. Once we find out what’s causing the problem you can get dressed again and, erm, make sure everything’s still where it should be”. She flicked a couple of switches, checked some displays then took hold of a large black dial. “Ready?” she asked him.

“As ready as I was la…”

Amanda twisted the dial.

Steve had never liked medical tests. When he was about 5 years old he’d seen someone given an MRI scan on TV and his older cousin had told him that the white tube that you were put in was for cutting you up so they could see inside, and that everyone had to have the test.

He’d cried for a week.

Years later, when he heard that his cousin had lost part of his ear in an unfortunate accident with an MRI scanner and a surgical steel ear stud, he’d allowed himself a tiny feeling of justice at the irony. But this didn’t help him overcome his fear of medical equipment. Even having his blood pressure taken made him queasy.

So when Amanda had succumbed to his relentless questions and agreed to undertake a few tests, he began to curse his own tenacity when he saw the inside of her lab.

It was like a Hammer Horror film set.

Huge glass valves sat atop riveted together, rusting units, into which large, analogue dials with huge ornate hands and incomprehensible markings, had been bolted. A bewildering array of cables snaked across the floor in thick bundles, branching off at intervals to wind their way behind an assortment of nefarious looking machinery, whilst a couple of long metal prongs, set at a slight angle to one another, and up which ran a thick blue spark every few seconds, took pride of place at one end of the room. Their were levers and switches and metal wheels and chains and handles; almost everything that a scientist would need to reanimate a patchwork corpse. The only thing missing was a metal slab with wrist and ankle restraints.

He’d allowed himself to relax slightly at this point and told himself that his imagination was getting the better of him and that if he looked hard enough he’d be able to see the digital equipment hiding behind the retro, steam-punk façade.

It was then that he saw the chair and almost gave himself a hernia as he stiffened at the sight of it.

It looked, to all intents and purposes, like an electric chair, and not one of those nice ones that old people scoot around town in, blatantly disregarding the rules of the road. For the most part it was wooden, but this didn’t make it look any less menacing as the rest of it was comprised of metal and leather straps and the whole thing had been bolted to the floor.

“I know what it looks like” Amanda had said of the room, seemingly in answer to the look of sheer terror that had tattooed itself across his face, “But, believe me, it looked a lot worse before we moved in.” She’d gestured towards a curtained screen and informed him that he could “undress behind there”.

Steve, it appeared, had discovered a new skill and was able to communicate his innermost feelings without saying a word because Amanda had said “Oh, don’t worry, it’s standard procedure. The system gives a more precise result if city residue from clothing isn’t present”.

So, undress he had, and she’d strapped him into the chair. A small part of him considered that in another context this could be seen as exciting, almost kinky, but that part was brutally stamped on by the rest of his mental processes who acknowledged that, whichever way he looked at it, he was still being strapped almost naked into a tool of execution.

Amanda had attempted to allay any fears that may have spilled out of his brain and dripped down his face by explaining that the equipment was actually infinitely more advanced than it looked, and that it had been originally used to analyse the structure of organisms and materials in Afterspan and The City, but had been modified to analyse anyone that wandered anywhere near the Relloc, just to see if they could garner any useful information.

This, Steve had thought, is all well and good, but I’m still buckled into a seat that looks like it came from the S&M page of the latest Argos catalogue, in my pants.

As she’d taped the large, cold sensors about his person, with something that felt suspiciously like Duck Tape, she explained that the reason the lab looked like it had been designed by Mary Shelley was that modern technology didn’t work very well in the City, or Afterspan for that matter, for reasons that no-one really understood. Phones seemed to work OK, but that was about it.

At that point, to distract himself from the fact that Amanda had pulled one of the sensors from his chest to reposition it, and had actually taken with it a large patch of body hair that had relinquished its hold on his skin with a sound like ripping tweed, he thought back to the caravan and the fact that nothing in it worked properly. The toaster alone was enough of a death trap to make Lynne Foulds-Wood gibber into her coffee for a week. He’d never really given more than a passing thought before because, hell, when did anything in a caravan ever work? He’d once gone on holiday with his parents and had to spend a week eating cheese sandwiches because the cooker never got hot enough to melt clingfilm and the fridge had permanently defrosted itself not long after they’d arrived so they couldn’t cook or store anything that needed keeping cool.

As the screaming burn on his pectoral muscle skin began to subside he returned his attention to Amanda again who was explaining that a bunch of scientists had discovered that if they took older technology and applied modern thinking to it, they could get similar results to digital equipment. Often the machines were better than expected and some actually exceeded expectation, functioning to higher standards than living world technology. Whilst no-one was entirely sure where these scientists managed to get their hands on a bunch of old technology, they maintained that it was simply ‘lying around’.

“This place” she’d said “used to be the City’s equivalent to IBM, until people realised that they could never reduce the equipments size enough to make it viable for mass producing so they gave it up and left it here”. When the Relloc appeared, it only took a bit of tweaking to allow them to use the machinery to analyse the anomaly, and that when she’d taken it over, she’d spent months and months learning how to use the equipment. “I felt like I imagine a 21st Century CGI artist must feel if he were suddenly told that all of his work from now on had to be completed out of Lego”.

Steve had tried to concentrate on what she was saying, and had absorbed the basic gist, but much of his mental capacity was taken up with the thought that if he had to be strapped into the chair for the test then he was probably being prevented from moving about which, his rapidly panicking brain had reasoned, probably meant it was going to hurt. And he’d never been good with pain. Sure, he’d been knocked out a couple of times since he’d arrived but that was the sort of pain that crept up and leapt on you from wildly varying angles, taking you completely by surprise. The kind of pain he was expecting here was the kind that walked calmly up to you, shook you by the hand, explained how it was going to feel, then proceeded to saw off your legs with a bone saw fashioned out of an old spoon.

Anticipation was always the worst part.

“Ready?” she’d asked

“Umm, no, not really. Er…” he’d offered by way of an answer, “Will it, will it, will it….ahem…will it, will it…” he paused and took a long slow breath in an attempt to calm himself the fuck down, and force his brain out of the panic induced rut it had fallen into. He’d woven the word ‘fuck’ into his thoughts which had had the opposite effect to the desired one, and made him even more tense. If he’d resorted to swearing at himself, the chances of breathing deeply succeeding in dissipating his agitation were particularly slim.

He tried again.

“Will it, will it, will it…”

“It’s not going to hurt, no.” Amanda had said, mercifully. “It might feel slightly uncomfortable, but certainly won’t be painful. The restraints are just there to hold you in place as some of the sensors can be a bit touchy about movement.”

“Good. OK, right, well. Good.” he’d said, as eloquently as he could.

“So, ready?”

“Not really.”

“Oh.”

“But, let’s pretend that I am”

She’d placed her hand on a large black dial and made to turn it.

“It’s just…” he’d said suddenly, scrabbling around his brain for something, anything he could say that wouldn’t sound like he was just stalling the test.

“Yes?” she’d asked

“Nothing” he’d said and braced himself.

Amanda turned the dial.

Amanda had been right, it wasn’t painful. It didn’t actually hurt one bit, but that didn’t stop it from being THE most excruciatingly uncomfortable experience of his life.

If asked to describe the sensation he’d have to concede that it defied any real description. ‘Like the full body equivalent of chewing wire wool whilst simultaneously being poked by a swarm of pencil erasers’ would be the closest illustration he’d be able to give anyone, but even that wouldn’t really give an idea to just how discomforting a feeling it actually was. For some reason, whilst the test was being run, he couldn’t help but wonder if the Post Office used a similar device in its interview process for new employees, just to give them an idea of what it’s going to feel like when they’re sat in that little glass box with the stamps.

Thankfully, he didn’t have long to contemplate this as the feelings quickly subsided as Amanda twisted the dial again and turned the machine off.

“You didn’t wait for me to say that I was ready!” he yelled, incredulously.

“Nope” said Amanda. “You wound yourself up last time, and I didn’t want you to do it again. Now, sit there and shush while I check the results.” She turned and began checking readouts and dials, leaving Steve feeling like he’d just been violated, and not in a good way.

As he watched, Amanda checked the readouts, pulled a face that suggested she was expecting to see familiar results and had been shown a video of a marmoset running the gauntlet up the west part of the M25 instead, flicked some switches, kicked at a lever, then returned to look at the original screen again, her subsequent expression making it clear that, instead of rectifying the situation, her actions had actually turned the marmoset into a large pink fish.

Steve felt a tad perturbed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked in the manner of a man strapped to a chair and covered in electrodes who believes he is about to be wired to a large battery.

“I have no idea” Amanda whispered, not at all reassuringly. She flicked, experimentally, at some more switches.

“That isn’t reassuring”

“Sorry, but the Matrositer is adamant that there is no mistake. You have trace radiation on you that is unidentifiable. Without the control buffer in place, I’ve been able to pinpoint that the majority of the radiation is coming from your hand. This has never happened before.” Amanda drew a pencil from the pocket of her jacket and began to scribble furiously on a pad, mumbling to herself.

Steve looked at his hands and wondered which of them he could most live without as he felt sure Amanda was seconds away from setting about him with a hacksaw.

“Can I get dressed now?” he ventured cautiously

“Hmm?” hmmed Amanda, still scratching away with the pencil, “Oh, right, yes. Just give me a minute.” She didn’t appear to be in any hurry to unstrap him and kept saying things like “This is extraordinary” to no-one inparticular.

“I would, actually, really like to get dressed” said Steve, trying to ignore the rising panic inside him, and hoping that the crack in his voice wasn’t as audible as it felt.

“Yep…yep, I’ll be right with you. I just have to make a quick phone call”.

A phone rang. It was answered.

“Hello? Yes?” The voice sounded congenial, it was the kind of voice you’d gladly bank with. “I see” it said, it’s congeniality wavering slightly “You’re sure it’s unidentifiable? The Matrositer was calibrated correctly, yes? I see. Right, well, bring me the results and we’ll see what next steps are needed, OK? Excellent”

The voice’s owner replaced the receiver, then quickly took hold of it again, and dialled a short number.

“It’s me” the voice said, no longer congenial. It had gone from a voice you’d bank with to one of such nervousness the words that it spoke were positively sweaty.

“We have a problem”

Godmother:

Joe Miller was crying again. It seems like every time you turned around he was tearing up about something. Take this afternoon for instance. Peeking over the divider between our cubicles in response to the burbley snuffling I could hear, there was Joe, an outline for the Meyers proposal, and an inkblot. His pen exploded. On an outline. An outline is not presented to anyone. Well, that’s Joe for you.

So there goes Joe, wiping his eyes with one hand and steering his grungy SUV with the other (yet another cause for tears-it got dirty after he washed it) and nearly taking out a yield sign in doing so. Even from where I stood I could see him start to bawl. Funny, he drives much better when he’s on a hard core crying jag.

There’s tons of speculation as to why Joe Miller’s always so damp. He’s an excellent worker, one of the best. He’s won employee of the year at least six times (all smiles then, but woe betide the years he didn’t!).

I think it’s that fairy godmother of his.

You know, kind of like the one in The Ordinary Princess that seems to do more harm than good, only everything turns out all right in the end, so you know the gift was good? Yup, I think that’s what happened. Only somehow I don’t think Joe’s gift is ever going to do him any good. I mean, the guy’s forty-six! What good is being caring and sensitive going to be while working in an investment firm? If he were a nurse or priest or musician, sure. Joe fishes and drinks beer on weekends. He’s not some closet Beethoven.

Thank God my fairy godmother looked ahead and gave me a gift with numbers. I can lay out financial statistics like anything. Joe? Joe can cry. And gasp when his pencil tip breaks. And gulp when the cover doesn’t twist off the bottle of WiteOut easily enough. He blubbers in line in the company café because the paper napkin left a piece of a corner in the dispenser. A trip to the men’s room is a trek through enemy territory, for all the wailing Joe does when he comes back.

I would love to get my hands on Joe’s fairy godmother. I’d give her a taste of her own medicine: spend a week with Joe! Thirty-two hours!! She’d de-wing herself after two days.

Why couldn’t she have gifted him with chest hair or a green thumb? Why tears? Did her favorite piece of milkweed fluff stain the carpet that day? Was she PMSing? Maybe she broke her best wand, or was just having a bad day. I didn’t think fairies had the same emotions as us, but anyway, why, oh why did she have to pass everlasting sorrow on to poor Joe?

Maybe she expected him to be a failure, and just got him ready for the worst. Well she was wrong. Joe could be a chairman, the

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Home of the Vital Rites Project and now being read in 46 countries!