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Diary of Valentine Orphanet

Sunday 4th

10:20

We were sat around a small plastic table, it had three uneven legs, not bad for a tripod.

I could hear the familiar sounds of the orchestra’s brass section ripple from Xanthic’s aura singing at the back of my mind, enhanced by a deeper beat coming off Ludo like a heat haze which raised in volume and tempo upon contact which was difficult to avoid due to our uncomfortably close proximity to each other in the cramped café.

With my personal soundtrack playing in the background I began to think I was more concussed by my injuries than I first thought as I was sitting on a wonky wire seat at a table with a self confessed demon and something that looks like, and smells like a rotting corpse every time the shadow passed away from him and he was left in the light.

“Please explain to me what’s going on.” I asked. “Five minutes ago I was being held hostage by that thing there and almost murdered I might add, and now I’m having a cup of tea with him!”

“Captive.” said Ludo

“What?” I spluttered.

“Captive, not hostage.” said Ludo. “You’re only a hostage if someone has requested a ransom. And I never did……”

Xanthic waved us to silence and lent forward gripping his small plastic cup filled with brown lukewarm water masquerading as coffee.

“You were in no danger.” he said as if we were all here simply enjoying the drinks.

“What do you mean no danger? “ I erupted. “HE.” I pointed at the thing introduced to me as Ludo who just leaned back in his chair with a sheepish grin while playing with his beard. “He drugged me, took me from my bed, laid me out in God knows where, talking in some Hell-spawn tongue and was going to eat my brain or something. “

What I wanted to do was run out of this noisy cramped café at the entrance of the hospital. The harsh electric lighting reflecting badly off all the white plastic tables hurting my eyes and forcing me to look upon the two figures in front of me or face a modern kind of snow blindness and not try to look elsewhere to detach myself from the situation. One my saviour, the other my attacker but both my only oasis of colour in a sea of artificial light and glaring plastic.

“Please, I will explain things to you and that is hard when you are drawing attention to yourself.” Xanthic said looking at me and realised I had risen from my chair. I sat down, folded my arms tight across my chest and sliding as far away from Ludo as I could. O.K I was being a little childish but hey, I am the injured party around here.

‘’Long story short as we haven’t much time here and I am needed elsewhere; so shut up, stop pouting like a fish and listen.’’ Xanthic began one of his monologues, you can feel the weight of centuries within his wisdom but I always thought back to the stubbornness I fell into during lectures from my foster father when I screwed up as a skinny snot nosed kid.

“Ludo here is one of Us here on Earth and I trust him as far as I trust anyone born of an Other, which usually isn’t that far but Ludo is a Poenavore, an Under Fae. They are related to the other Extraxi in some mix or other that I’m at a loss to understand, but it works for them so c’est la vie.”

“What the Hell is a fairy Deadmother doing in a bloody children’s ward anyway; I thought the master plan was to hunt out these freaks and kick them back down the hole they crawled through.” I hissed through my teeth as I tried to keep a smile aimed at Ludo.

“Not exactly and you know it, we investigate the machinations of those who I am tasked to, Others whose plans are not aligned to my Lords and Masters wishes and if they do not agree then we kick them back down the hole, or the bits of them we can find if the Lords and Masters catch up with them first. Or we simply track down what we are told to and if anyone gets in our way it gets a little grey.” Xanthic shuffled in his seat and pulled at his lapels on his jacket and then settled into his seat to continue his input. He was centre of attention, a place he frequently aimed to be.

“We all have to eat you know.” said Ludo under his breath

I almost stood and punched him in the face. I’m sure the half rotten maggot filled flesh would have splattered under my blow and his brain would have fallen onto the plastic fake wood floor; But I could hear the tempo of the musical aura of Xanthic start to pick up which was usually a sign of imminent danger or that he’s getting annoyed — or both.

“Ludo is a Poenavore, they eat pain, feast on the suffering of agony. Many of their kind cause a lot of pain to people, animals or whatever they can get their claws into. The smaller ones in their inexperience are very fierce, they rip into flesh to extract pain by the handful, but some grow old and cunning and have learnt the bitter sweet pain in mental suffering and cruelty of the mind. They whisper in the night that your wife has been unfaithful or your Boss will give your promised promotion to that Bitch in accounts. They start off small but by the time they finish with you there is nothing left, well sometimes a bloody heap under a bush, but mostly just a shell of a person too paranoid and stressed to function. And that’s why I have to hunt them, not because of what they do but because they do not leave the soul in a state it can be corrupted or coerced to discolour through acts and deeds suggested by other Others on my side of the dispute.”

A spotted teenager pushed a brush along the floor leaving a wake of crumbs and napkins behind him, the general cleanliness improved by virtue of hiding the rubbish under the tables. As he came closer Xanthic eased sideways over the arm of his chair and whispered words never heard but felt deep and clear. The youth stopped, dropped the broom to the floor, stormed towards the teenage looking manager trying desperately to look middle aged in an over sized shirt and incorrectly rove tie, shoved him two handed against the counter, turned and thundered out of the café ripping his sweat stained uniform polo shirt and discarding it in, according to the sign above it, the ‘self service waste disposal stand’ by the door.

“What was that all about?” Ludo asked. “I thought you had given up on playing with the mortals.” This got Ludo my best funny look although he didn’t show any signs of recognising it.

“Got to keep my hand in.” shrugged Xanthic, “You never know it might do him good to get out and look for a real job.”

“That poor boy, what did you do to him? You haven’t damned him into inciting violence have you?” I asked unbelieving my own eyes even though, like the majority of the clientele of the café, I had followed the whole performance from start to finish with my mouth open.

“The boy is an innocent, or as innocent as a teenager can be with enormous levels of hormones coursing through his system. No, he wasn’t my target, just had to light the blue touch paper, sit back and enjoy the show.”

The manager-lite had continued to react to the shove and now I looked back could see he had lost his footing, grabbed the glass counter front and got one foot under him before slipping on a napkin dropped by a customer in a hurry to grab a coffee, doughnut and run. A hollow ‘donk’ sounded as he hit his forehead against the glass leaving a greasy mark adorning the fresh cake display-case. A laugh was quickly issued by the customers all around and then just as quickly muted when the red faced young man turned to face us all. He busied himself trying to get to his feet, pull himself together and look unperturbed over it. A young waitress rushed over and tried to assist get him upright and kissed him on the cheek; suddenly the mood changed. What started in shock and them humour turned into a group embarrassment. Another girl, this one from the back of the shop ran over after hearing the commotion, took one look at the waitress who had just pulled away from the kiss and slapped her hard around the face. She then recoiled her hand and thumped, who we found out to be her imminent ex-boyfriend.

“Bastard!” was the only clear word I could make out, but the additional slaps from both girls around the guys head rang out loud enough to carry the full meaning of the conversation.

Xanthic had started talking again and I reluctantly turned my attention away from the three way personal Armageddon. Ludo saw me looking blank and continued the conversation as if nothing had just happened.

“I got to the point where I had lived amongst humans for over a century and made a few friends………” he paused and looked up. Behind him the fight was getting more intense and the heavily sweated shirt and tie wearing teen found that as the two girls were now focusing on each other he could stand slightly away from the scene distancing himself from it. He cracked open a bottle of cola displayed on the countertop, looked at his watch and walked away.

Ludo carried on. “One of my friends had a child, I was asked to be a Godparent, I was shocked as you can imagine but I couldn’t attend the Christening. Nothing to do with the church you understand, that doesn’t work on our level, but I had a holiday booked to go back home to the Old Country. When I got back all the celebration had turned sour, the little darling had been ill, meningitis. It hit hard and fast and every time I saw the baby after that it was drugged up on medication and in a troubled sleep or crying in the arms of its parents who were crying just as hard. There was no time, after that my friends were never the same.” Ludo shuffled in his seat and gazed over each shoulder and bent his shoulders in further. “Then I thought I would help. I fed from them and eased their pain; taking enough to help but forcing myself not to take it all and break them. They couldn’t cope without their grief and when they found out they …….did not take it easily. They cursed me for not helping their child and letting him pass in pain and threw me out of their lives. After that, whether it was the curse or just the intensity of their words but I could never go back to my old life of hunting the streets at night, influencing drunks to argue or fight for my diet. I took a job as night porter here and sit with the children and make their time easier by removing their pain. I’m not expecting a medal but if I can help a child sleep at night then that’s enough for me.”

The story continued and it was explained by my two companions that Ludo was now rejected by the bigger two sides of the eternal light/dark, heaven/hell, yin/yang or them and us disagreement. The other Poenavore see him as a traitor to the old ways and the good Fae, angels and Angels see his actions as preying on the weak and innocent. Xanthic says he supports him because some of the innocents recover and grow up to be brought unto the dark where they would have been retired pure in their hospital beds; but I like to think it’s because although he is a………creature of the dark, he has a soft spot for us all really deep down. Really, really deep down.

“So why the did he have me in stinking place with all the voodoo crap?” I politely enquired of my employer. “That sure as hell didn’t feel like he was working for the Angels in any way shape or hairy arsed form!”

“You were attacked….” started Xanthic.

“I know, by him.” I was struggling to keep my temper here, can you tell?

“No,” spluttered Ludo louder than he meant, but with a force of nature under it that I slipped back in my chair chastised and shamed by the word.

“There was another, I can feel them here, somewhere. They are taking too much, feeding off the vulnerable. I think they have been hurt, and hunting easier prey. It is dangerous, injured and willing to fight for survival It went for you and poisoned you. I was pulling its contamination from you or you would have died and it would have fed from your remaining time.”

“And that’s why we are here.” said Xanthic, elbows on the table now with hand under his chin. “That’s why you have the blade. Its blessed and cursed and almost unique in this part of the world. It will prove invaluable in what we need to do, and soon. I’ve already dispatched something with it but I feel like I’ve come in halfway through all of this and trying to catch up. I don’t know enough about what is going on yet.”

I went cold, ice flowed through my spine. I had the knife, it was…….somewhere, so why didn’t I take it with me when I went off on my solo adventure, I had looked through my stuff and……..

The look on my face obviously alerted my companions as they both hunched forward closing the distance between us and asked me almost simultaneously if I still had the blade.

I had to confess that I did not, not on my person, and I couldn’t remember where I had put it. Then it came to me, it was under my pillow, my pillow that was NHS issue and they had a tendency to change anything that had trails of dried blood running across them. I orated my concerns over the whereabouts of the knife-thing Xanthic had given me. Xanthic jumped out of his seat, which fell backwards and bounced of a couple on the next table who looked over in surprise and disgust. Xanthic was already striding to the exit.

“We have to find the blade and retrieve it NOW.” he said; Ludo and I were quickly on his heels behind him.

As we left, the trails of brass and stringed instrumentals building tempo within Xanthic’s mood fell away in our wake. The manager of the hospital café was on his mobile, presumably to head office or a more senior manager demanding the sacking of two of his staff fighting during a shift and in this action making his soul and the world a little bit darker.

We had arrived back at my hospital ward at pace, but slowed when we heard the commotion emanating within.

11:50

BQ was calling for a nurse, everyone was calling for a nurse, the police or in one case their Mum. Luckily this being the NHS under a Conservative Government, not member of authority was present to answer these calls. But why disappoint them?

Xanthic, already in the lead increased his pace and burst into the ward through the double doors and demanded in a tone of voice so commanding it had an immediate effect.

“Can someone tell me what is going on in here? The rest of you return to you beds.”

It was incredible to see, but all twelve adults put their heads down and shuffled away like four years old’s caught out of bed by their parents.

“Who are you?” asked BQ, the only one who — I was later informed, was too closed minded to anything other than his own little internal world to fully bend to conformity.

“I am a Doctor and I am telling you to get back into your bed.” even my knees started to bend forcing me to reach out for support; the cold bony hands of Ludo who caught me snapped me back into reality — and sent a chill up my spine.

“Is he really a Doctor?” I whispered to Ludo.

“Yeah, I think he is. He walked into a local university one day, solved a student infecting fungus problem, taught them something about space dimension and walked out with an honorary doctorate.”

“Oh, I always wondered how you got one of those.”

“Now what is the meaning of this fuss?” asked Xanthic in his best old School Master tone as BQ sat back onto his bed. BQ, with fingertips only as if scared to make physical contact with the object resting upon, held forward his hands, whereon, balanced like the scales of justice, sat a dirtied knife. This one was nothing special just an old kitchen knife with a blunt serrated blade with teeth missing. It had an old dirty and faded wooden handle with a rivet missing and a prominent bend to the last inch of the dull blade.

Xanthic took it from him in a handkerchief which he flourished and then made disappear, with the knife, in a second. With the knife gone the temperature in the room increased and the anxiety of the inhabitants dwindled in equal measure.

A nurse walked in, one of the big old fashioned matron types from black and white TV. As broad as a sofa and just as well stuffed. She looked around with a grimace of one drawn rapidly from an importance engagement for a trivial matter only to find that matter less trivial or nonexistent upon arrival. She was not happy and wanted a focal point to display this fact on and with a gaze that took in all her domain her eye settled on Xanthic in his most unhygienic oily black leather long coat, frayed and ripped through lifetimes of wear and toil.

“Just who……..” she managed to get out before Xanthic expertly turned upon his heels and faced her, a winning smile displayed across his expressive face; his eyes betraying the smile with his true emotions for her at this time but the smile was enough to win his faces argument.

“Dr Abaddon, here for my rounds and you have urgent matters elsewhere that need your expert attention.” the smile was static throughout his speech.

“Um yes, there are…….” the nurse looked confused, “Who did you say you were again?”

“I am here to help.” Soothing tones came from Xanthic who turned to the nearest bed and deftly took up the clipboard hung there and the medical notes it held, he lowered his head and read them. “My work here is to save life, or at the very least prolong it. Now go about your business so I can go about mine.” Xanthic dropped the clipboard and as it fell it hooked back over the bed and rested.

We were left alone and I swear the nurse almost curtsied as she left. I stepped forward to my allotted bed and began to search where I though the blade could have fallen; I lifted sheets and pillows and kicked my bag laying under the bed to one side but could not find it. Xanthic stayed my hand by placing his on my arm and said into my ear not to worry about looking any further. I obviously looked puzzled — or confused, which is my normal state with the majority of matters concerning Xanthic. Into my hand he placed his handkerchief, it flowed across my outstretched fingers as soft as a mist rolling across a field, but when the last of the silken fabric brushed the tips of my hand a weight grew there and under the silk as it whipped away with a twirl by its owner’s hand, a knife appeared. It was not the wooden handled kitchen knife of the one taken, this one was an antique. It looked to my highly untrained eye to be a bayonet; I’ve seen similar but only on war films with heroes dashing around Europe at some point in recent history. The blade I might add was as sharp as a brick and probably just as hard to stab someone with, at least with the weight I could do serious damage by hitting someone over the head with it.

“The task before us still stands. Somewhere close is something feeding off innocents and we must locate it with haste and bring it to an end.” Xanthic looked into my eyes. “But for now you are tired, you are drained, have been drained by the very beast we search for. This tells me it is known to you and you have met and have been recognised as a threat.” He looked over me, my hair, my face, my neck and body. “Our presence here has been noticed, it has attacked and lost. So does that mean it will flee and find a new source of succour or dig in and fight for its territory?”

A two tone alert siren sounded out of a voluminous jacket pocket. Xanthic stopped talking, looked at his chest and put his hand inside his coat. Silence soon followed and Xanthic looked up gravely.

“It appears I have urgent business elsewhere of the utmost importance.”

“What’s going on? What was that noise?” I asked, totally unfamiliar with the alarm and not wanting Xanthic to leave me here alone. This was also a concern to Xanthic himself as he continued.

“It’s a couple of hours until nightfall. I doubt anything further will happen until the dark has settled over the land. I will endeavour to be back here before that happens, but what I need you to do; what I need you both to do is find something to narrow down the suspects, without becoming the main course!” he looked at Ludo and myself then again at Ludo. “You keep her safe you hear me, whatever happens she is to remain untouched. I cannot stress this point enough.”

“Lying, cheating and Under Fae I maybe, but I will do my best Sir.” Ludo puffed his chest out which is not a good look in a hospital issue dust coat. Stood in the shadows as he was he almost looked handsome — but probably only if there was a female bear looking for a flea ridden and balding mate.

Xanthic left, he rushed to the door but did offer his warning again about being safe but the necessity for covering as much ground as possible. He told us both to guard the blade, it was and will be invaluable in our duties. I felt in all the rush I had escaped a dressing down from Xanthic for losing it in the first place. Before he left he paused two beds down and he whispered something into the ear of BQ who looked as if something he had long suspected had just been confirmed.

“Bloody nurses.” hissed BQ, “I knew they were favouring the posh patients. Wait until one of them comes in to change this bandage, I’ll give ’em what for” gesturing as best he could with fingers poking through his dressings.

I dressed after pulling the privacy curtain around my bed, into something more suitable for wandering corridors but more importantly something less drafty in the rear incase of quick exits, made sure I had the blade in my bag and shoulder to shoulder with Ludo we stepped out of the hospital ward to search for danger of demonic kind whilst leaving conversations between BQ and The Gent about informing the Daily Mail about the mistreatment of the honest working class in favour of workshy bankers and C list celebrities. I think we were getting off lightly.

I’m not a trained investigator so the thought of going out to look for a killer, especially one who had already had a stab at killing me — literally and physically, in a building that was almost the size and population of a small city filled me with dread, especially without my employer and guide since I discovered what I thought of as my raw talents as a witch and the otherworldly inhabitants of my world, our world that we all live alongside whether we like it or not and especially as I also had a tag along that works here, taking the pain of others for his — its, nourishment and in daylight appears to be a rotten corpse and — probably worse in shade looks like a wide mountain man that hasn’t seen a razor in about as long as he last saw a bath full of water.

Ludo gave me the facts on the hospital. Originally built in the 50’s with an almost total refurbishment in 2012; several new buildings and extension throughout the life of the building and service areas that the public can’t go. Six stories above ground, two partial ones below plus a separate morgue and incinerator complex. Thirty eight Working logically we needed to scale down the foot falls to cover the greatest area in a targeted way.

“OK.” I said. “If I were hunting ‘Something’ that is killing here.” I waved my arms around to emphasis the whole building. “I would start in the morgue where all the dead bodies are.” I felt proud for this piece of thinking.

“Possible.” replied Ludo, his face betraying a ‘BUT’ hanging after that word left unsaid.

“But……” I injected.

“Any Under Fae or Extraxi won’t be caught dead in a morgue. We feed off life and have as much negative associations with the dead as humans do. No, unless we are dealing with a Demon who revels in decay and rot, then we need to head where the life is strongest.”

“So we can rule out the wrinkly wards too.”

“I would, for now. There maybe a lot of death there and probably the easiest to cover tracks on but it’ll be like eating a biscuit when there is a gluttony of feasts elsewhere. No, if I were looking for fast easy prey to regenerate my strength I would want a constant supply of succour and a death rate that wouldn’t draw too much attention. A strong life vs high death ratio if you will.

“Surely there isn’t that many places here for that?” I asked. “You work here, ruling out the morgue and those waiting for it, run of the mill stuff like operations and accident and emergency, where else is there?”

“Hold on. I think you may have something. We don’t know what the food supply is, it’s not blood. If a vampire was here I would know about it, Hell you all would know it, there’s a reason why everyone know they exist and the rest of us slip away into the murk.”

Ludo went on to explain Extraxi could feed upon many things coming from the ‘warms’. Pain and suffering being the most fulfilling but other Extraxi have evolved for different diets such as fear, sadness and grief — some even cause the grief by hurting or killing an individual and then feed off the loved ones, panic, some even feed off positive emotions and generate enormous well being in people then syphon it off. Some at the top of the Extraxi evolutionary chain can feed off all emotions and latch onto an individual and generate crushing lows followed by nirvana like states of ecstasy within them just to feast upon the subtle changes in taste and delicacy .

“So accident and emergency would be ideal, so much life force generated post injury for the body to recover and with the ever present deaths from the serious cases. I think it would be the best place to start. What do you think?” Ludo didn’t so much ask the question than infer this was where he was starting.

“That and they are usually so busy they wouldn’t notice a few extra people hanging around for a time.” I added; If I had a coat I would have collected it.

I asked Ludo to lead the way to A&E. Partially this was because he worked here and knew the way, but partially because there was a bit part of me that didn’t want a soulless feeder that preys on humans standing behind me where I couldn’t see him.

This plan was soon changed when Ludo whipped out a wheel chair and asked me to get in

“It’ll look less suspicious if an porter pushes you around the corridors.” he said.

Hospitals are busy places; the hustle and bustle of nurses, cleaners, doctors, patients and kith and kin — like any moderately busy town centre; but if the general hospital was busy then A&E was like an international airport at Christmas. The waiting room was bigger than my flat in its entirety and filled to the rafters with all manner of people coughing, bleeding, sleeping, talking and on occasion, singing. It looked old and tired, the walls, decoration and most of the uniformed staff too.

“Where do we start?” I asked looking around at the room. The task made worse by a multitude of corridors, cubicles, rest rooms, side rooms and more corridors.

“I can’t tell if there are any of my kind about, too much pollution from the humans, but if I were to get closer then it’ll be easier to tell. Not only will they stand out to me but hopefully they’ll recognise you and run………..or try to finish what they started.”

I didn’t like the way Ludo smiled at his last statement.

“We’ll stay away from well lit or public areas, my kind do not look our best in light and they wouldn’t want to be face to face with a mob, and trust me, one look into the eyes of my kind on a feeding hunt will turn all of these people into a mob, it’s built into you all on a primal level; you’ll be surprised how quickly you can find a bushel of burning torches and a pile of pitchforks.” Ludo looked around checking a huge mob hadn’t snuck up behind him.

“Xanthic said this thing is new here, so I doubt it’ll be a member of staff, OK?

So would you recognise someone pretending to work here or hanging around?” I mused aloud. “How long can someone be here in A&E before they’re kicked out? Do they still have visiting hours? Can a relative or something hang around all hours?”

“Um, not sure, possibly, don’t know.” answered Ludo scratching the unruly hair on his chin. “But I do know with all the checks, background and work history that it’ll be almost impossible to trick a job here, and with the teams we work in an imposter will stand out real quick.”

Ludo stood tall on his heels, breathed in far too deeply for anyone pretending to be human and swept his gaze around then bent low to speak into my ear.

“Night is drawing close, I can feel it, so let’s just go. We can plan and think but I always trust in luck, random and chaotic so it is but it’s going to be the best we can hope for, so hold on tight and think lucky.”

We swept through the main room, a few eyebrows were raised but the battle hardened staff had witnessed much more anarchic behaviour and a tut from a nurse was all the comment we heard about an orderly racing a wheelchair bound patient through the corridors.

We managed to cover most of the area this way, only a meal trolley and a hard working kitchen porter had slowed us down but Ludo for a large ‘man’ was very spry and escorted myself in that chair out of a serious risk of being scalded — ok ‘warmed’ by trays of hospital food.

There is a doctor patient confidentiality thingy which means information cannot

be passed by any route from consultation room to …….well here…..but as I was neither a doctor nor a patient then I guess that doesn’t count.

We had a routine of a quick knock on a door, open it, look at the person/people within, mutter an apology and close the door before anyone could complain. Followed by quickly moving onto the next. An orderly and patient can get away with this if quick enough. What we saw was an education for me and (in Ludo’s words after) a mouth watering feast he could not touch.

There was a young man, head down, arse very much in the air with a doctor stitching a wound, caused by sitting on a bottle for a bet.

“I couldn’t see his face.” I said

“But our Extraxi wouldn’t be here for that and the doctor was human. Very sweet pain in there, do I have time for a quick sip? It’ll be better for him than any local anaesthetic.”

My look told him very quickly there wasn’t and we moved onto the next door.

A woman, naked to the waist and laying face down on the bed, was being looked over by a nurse; on her back a very large and very inflamed tattoo. Blood was seeping from the swellings and her blonde hair matted with sweat and stuck into scabs and congealed fluids.

From the tears of the patient and the stifled laughter of the nurse as she sterilized and cleaned, we both came to the conclusion this was not our goal. Neither noticed or cared about our intrusion or exit.

“Did you see that picture?” I asked as the door slowly closed on its spring.

“Two fat ladies riding on tiny mopeds?!” You humans are crazy.” said Ludo laughing with a tear in his eye. In this darkened light they glinted blue and shone with an inner nobility. It’s a pity I had seen them red and flushed with diseased secretions pooling in the corners earlier as he loomed over me or I might have begun to like him.

The next couple of consultation rooms had people receiving stitches and/or injections. None jumped out at us — figuratively or actually speaking, and so we moved on.

Next was a mini waiting room filled with people on chairs or like me in a wheelchair, most were holding themselves and guarding a personal pain.

“Next up X-Ray, always busy in A&E.” said Ludo, “We won’t get into those rooms so easily but we can try.”

I was wheeled around the corner and we saw a man, twenty something and in tatty jeans, shaven head, sleeveless tee shirt a very red grazes running up his arms from his wrists to his shoulders. He was more noticeable for his laying on the floor and hanging on for dear life.

“Someone help me” or words to that effect once extracted of expletives and translated into English from ‘street’ The voice was loud but broken and whiny like my little niece when she doesn’t get her own way. Oh and very very drunk.

“Oh please help me rapidly, I seem to be about to fall off the floor.” again, I translate into words Mothers would be happy to read here. I’m not sure what a Fur King is, but he seemed very keen on calling for one every other word.

“He’s obviously had a small half a shandy too many.” I commented from the side of my mouth quietly. Ludo, his mouth at my ear spoke in a rich tone I had not heard from him before. I felt myself leaning in towards his voice it was so smooth.

“Did you know you humans spend more than half your lives blind?”

I shook my head and felt his beard against my cheek, funny but it felt as soft as puppy fur.

“Your eyes act like cameras, taking still pictures and sending them to your brain. Your brain tries to make sense of what it sees and it judges movement, changes and other things by comparing it to the last picture sent. Brilliant if your brain wanted to keep check on that funny mound in the long grass 1,000,000 million years ago and watch as it slowly gets closer and what are those big white teeth like things; then wow, it looks very dark in here.”

I took this in unsure where he was going with this. He continued. “Well, you are blind for all the gaps in-between the stills; anything from half to two thirds of your waking life. In the blind times the muscles around your eyes move, but the brain is clever enough to move the picture around and keep things central — like a really clever steadicam. But! “ This word was said with a flourish and his tempo of conversation increased as he was obviously enjoying himself.

“But, alcohol is just basically sugar right, and such a refined fuel supply for your body that it kicks up a notch; same thing if you give a kid fizzy drink and chocolate; and the eyes start working faster, the gaps get shorter and the brain has to process the information much faster and it starts to slip. The auto focus that makes the world go steady tells you what you actually see not what you think you see, which is the world bobbing around and you all end up grabbing the bed, lamp post or any convenient friend or stranger. Fascinatingly though, I get recognised a lot more around club kicking out time even in darkest Winter. Must be the brain not having time to filter out all the superfluous, weird or confusing information and telling you how it is.”

“So drunk people see more demons than sober ones?” I asked but believing the theory behind it. I’ve seen some weird shit when drunk but put it down to a bad glass of lambrusco.

“There is obviously no medical research into this mind you, but toddlers do look at me funny and any drunk trying to mug me as he staggers home soon runs a mile.”

I looked at him and the magic I was feeling over his honeyed voice and soft facial hair was instantly back to nought. It wasn’t well lit here so he looked human but I would give him a 4, 4.5 at best; I’ve dated worse, but only with the assistance of…….alcohol!.

“Where can we get enough alcohol to get truly plastered?” I asked with a glint of an idea forming.

“There’s gallons of the stuff in the staff rooms, but medicinal alcohol might be quicker and healthier for you…….ish.” came the reply, he was obviously thinking the same way as I as he was now starting to manoeuvre my chair around to head back the way we came.

The average NHS wheelchair can pick up a fair pace when needed, and I have to admit I was enjoying the ride, it was fun and there was alcohol to come in the very near future and if I didn’t look directly at him, very pleasant company to boot. I had almost forgotten the inhuman animal that was at work hunting its prey in our midst until we got back to Ludo’s territorial corridors where he plied his trade and an alarm sounded followed by a London marathon level of runners streaming towards the children’s ward.

“We’ve got two of the kids with fever crashing.” called a nurse to her colleagues as they ran past us. “We could lose both of them.” They were gone, we were left standing in the corridor. We needed to find strong alcohol — and we needed to find it NOW!.

It was hot and stale, the air still and the only movement was the sweat starting to roll down my back. I tried to move my head, to look around at where I found myself but it was impossible; my arms and legs would not move to my orders but I did not start to panic, instead a calm had come over me the same as when a young child is collected into its mother’s welcoming arms and carried above all its problems back to the safety of its home, no control over its own movements but safe in the knowledge that it is protected and cared for.

From my eyes I could see a countryside worsened by too much sun and too little rain. The grass, uncut and brown, did not wave as there was no wind, no breeze at all to disturb it or the dust road that cut through the grass leading to ………. here. I was bent over, arms folded on an ancient and cracked post and rail wooden fence whose colour, once dark and rich now grey and broken with deep gouges and cracks running between the grain. It was twisted and rickety but strong enough to act as a guide to where the dust road ended and the baked earth and grass began and to hold my weight as I casualty laid my weight upon it.

The sun was low, setting I would guess from the heat of the day, and shadows ran the full length they were allowed. There must have been a tree behind me judging from the shadow that lay to my side and stretched out merging with my own. The tree was dead, or leaf less, long branches with hundreds of offshoots stretching out like fingers reaching for the sky. My shadow was long and thin, different to my own and now I am not sure where I am or what I can see — still no panic, just the knowledge I am not where I once was, not who I once was.

I cannot hear, nor smell, only see. I am behind someone else’s eyes looking across a ruined meadow, standing on a small mound, on a bridge of mud and stone which lay over a dried up stream small enough to step over and only noticeable by the line it cut in the sloping ground around it and by its lack of brown grass which was dominant everywhere else.

Here, in this dry scene, a tree, a stream, the grass and me, I was completely alone. There were no birds in the sand coloured sky, there were no animals on the ground, no rodents, no cattle, no insects within the grass. There was one fly, a large black thing making a haphazard route along the rough cut bed of the stream, following it but not crossing it. It flew in my peripheral vision until it was out of sight. It had made no noise; either it was silent or there was no sound here to carry to the ears this body must have had.

The fly had gone.

A shadow appeared to my left, it moved slowly across the grass until it reached the height and shape of my own; another person I guessed. it sagged, leaning on the railing just as I. It was now motionless, soundless. My guests body did not move to observe this new comer, nor did it move its mouth or tongue to vocalise the recognition of its presence.

We were just there, two people on the same dust road, in the same countryside and on the same squat bridge. I was on my side of the waterless stream and they were on the other.

We stayed that way for hours, neither moving or speaking. The heat was almost unbearable, but neither moved to seek shade. Then, slowly, ever so slowly like the rotation on a planet and without any alteration in our bodies or the heat, it went dark.

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