Marigold the Mermaid (part 1)

Andrea was feeding her pet.

"Marigold! Marigold! Dinner," she called gaily as she tipped some food into the large fish tank.

A blonde head stuck itself out from the miniature castle embedded in the sandy floor. "About fuckin' time!" snapped Marigold, as she wriggled out of one of the castle windows and floated up to the top of the tank, her hair flowing behind her like tentacles. She reached out a delicate hand and caught one of the bits of chicken Andrea had just poured in. "What's this friggin' muck? Come-cheese?"

"No, it's chicken."

Marigold dropped the bit of chicken, and it slowly dropped down to the bottom of the tank. "Fuckin' stick it up yer arse. I had chicken yesterday. I need fresh vegetables with my complexion. Carrots and fucking apples and strawberries and things."

Andrea fished a few of the pieces of chicken out of the tank. They were floating on the surface like severed ears. "Ok, ok. I'll get you fruit or something."

"Good. And clean out this bastard tank. It'll stick of chicken ghoulies by this evening."

Marigold watched her human disdainfully as Andrea arranged the chicken on a plate and went into the kitchen. Running her hands through her hair, she went back to the castle to change and look at her calander. She had two consultations today, but she couldn't remember what time they were due.

At last, after what seemed like a lifetime, Andrea returned, with a selection of finely chopped fruits and salad - pineapple, cucumber, carrots, peaches and bananas. Marigold heaved herself out of the tank and perched on the edge of the fishtank so she could have a closer look at the plate, her tail swishing like an angry cat. "I'm not having motherfucking bananas. I bet you've been using them to pleasure yourself up the cunt. Slapper."

"Marigold, please don't swear."

"Fuck off! I'll do what I bastarding like. You're not the one stuck in a fucking tank with people gawping at you all day long."

"I don't gawp at you." Andrea handed Marigold a sliver of peach, which the mermaid greedily ate, smacking her coral coloured lips.

"Yes, you do. I know what you're up to. You knock on the walls of the tank to make sure I'm still alive, but it's not really because of that, is it? You just like annoying me."

"Whatever you say."

Marigold snorted, and dipped her fingers in the water next to her to clean them. "You got any grapes?"

"No. I'll get you some when I go shopping."

"Good. I like them. I can eat them like you do apples. By the way, I've got two clients coming in this afternoon, so I want this cunting tank cleaned out by then, or I'm going to pretend you neglect me and have someone call the RSPCA or something."

"Ok."

"And I want some new clothes. I'm sick of only having three fucking bikini tops. I want a cardigan for the winter."

"Yes, Marigold." Andrea plopped the last of the fruit into the tank and shooed Marigold back into the water so she could put the lid back on.

-

The first client woke Marigold up from her afternoon nap. The bastard was three minutes early and she wasn't ready.

"Fuck off! Andrea! You're not supposed to let these wankers come in early."

It was a new client, someone called Paulette Simmons. She looked nervous. "Hello," she said, bending down to peer into the tank, smiling gormlessly like Marigold was a three year old child.

"What do you fuckin' want then? And step away from the tank, you look like your ruddy gormless, fucking hell, I seen better things in the gutter zonked out on heroin. What do you want?"

Paulette blinked like a startled something. "Just a quick one. I want to move in with my boyfriend, but I'm not sure it's the right thing to do. How much do you charge for that?"

"we'll see at the end, won't we? Waste of my fucking time, I'll charge you whatever I damn well like dependin' on what mood I'm in at the end. Got that?"

"Yes. Ok."

Marigold squinted through the glass. "Take this lid off, would you? I can't see through the glass properly - you've got a bollock for a head."

Paulette tugged the black plastic lid off the tank, and Marigold poked her head out of the water, regarding the young woman stonily. "Right then, you cunt. How do you want me to do it? Palm reading? Tarot? Good old fashioned crystal ball? Candle wax? Tea leaves?"

"Oh... um... tarot?"

"Right." Marigold disappeared below the surface again, and returned a few minutes later with her own, specially made set of tarot cards, tiny pieces of paper, painted on with waterproof paint and then laminated with Andrea's nail varnish.

Paulette was instantly charmed by the cards. "Oh, aren't they gorgeous! Did you make them all by yourself?"

"Yes, I'm not fucking simple, like you."

"Oh, but they're so tiny and wee."

Marigold rolled her eyes, and brushed a hunk of hair to one side of her face. "Oh good, you noticed! Do you think we can get on? I've got another one of you tossers coming in about an hour and I want you frigging gone so I can cleanse my auras or whatever the fuck it is. Now be quiet would you? I need to concentrate."

Paulette smiled expansively as Marigold began to shuffle the cards.

-

Andrea came in after Paulette had gone. "Did it go well?"

The mermaid shrugged. "Alright, I suppose." She rubbed her temples and winched.

"Are you ok?"

"My aching bollocks! What do you think? It takes it out of you, this fortune telling lark. That bird was a fucking fool. Hoe much did she give you?"

"£40. I think you impressed her."

Marigold smirked. "Well, fucking bully for her. I want a new filter thingy with some of that then - do you have any idea of how filthy this fucking water gets? It would help if you cleaned it out a bit more often."

"Yes, Marigold."

"Shut up! And I want a new pet. I want a salamander or something. You know, one of those little water lizards."

"Ok," Andrea said soothingly and closed the curtains to help Marigold's sore head before she left the room.

Featuring the Invisible Travelling Shovel Of Death

Carol was climbing out of her bath when she heard the noise.

She opened her mouth to call "Who's that?" but closed it again, thought better if it. She pulled the towel around her body as quietly as she could, and crept to the bathroom door, feet padding and leaving puddles all over the faded pink carpet. She opened the door cautiously and stuck her head out, listening.

There it was again. It sounded like metal scraping against a wall, a kind of grating noise. Carol chewed her lip thoughtfully, plucking nervously at the towel. She moved further out, and stood at the top of the stairs, listening to the noise get louder and louder. Whatever it was, it was coming up the stairs, but she couldn't see anything.

"What are you?" she asked the invisible advancing thing. Another scrape, metal on her nicely painted wall. Another second and she actually saw a scratch appear on the paintwork as she watched.

Carol started to back away. She ran through the scenario in her head, wondering how she could make an escape. Run into her bedroom, run quickly round the bed, and hope whatever it was followed her and didn't cotton on to what she was up to and wait by the door. Then she had a clear run to the stairs so she could get out of her house and away from this creature, whatever it was. If only she could see it, it would be a lot easier.

Suddenly, Carol felt a whoosh of air, cold and fast moving, near her head and ducked just in time. She squealed and shot down the staits, tripping over a loose corner of the towel and going down on her knees, bobbing against each stair until she landed in a pile on the floor. She sensed the thing gathering itself to swoop down after her.

"Leave me alone!" she whimpered, and scrambled up, pulling the towel around herself to try and protect her modesty. Her still foot slipped on the carpet and she skidded agin, but managed to keep her balance this time, starting to cry in frustration.

Carol ran through her hallway, her kitchen, and through her back door into her garden. She yanked an overly large jumper from her washing line and threw it over her head, pulling it down over her knees. The towel she tossed behind her, in the direction she hoped the thing was advancing in. She knew it was still following her, because she had heard the clatter as it came after her, bashing into door frames and into furniture. Across her neat green garden she ran, in bare feet, the stones and grit cutting into her, although she didn't notice. As she slipped through her gate, and into the street where she lived, she heard the thing go clanging into a parked car, and saw the dent that appeared in the silver paintwork as she heard the noise. It was a nice and shiny Subaru as well.

Carol kept running. She needed something to fight with, some large stick or bin lid, or a hose pipe. Anything.

An old lady was walking past, so slowly, with a little yorkshire terrier on a long lead. The dog yapped and wagged it's little tail in double time, it was so pleased. Carol dodged the old lady neatly, but clipped her ankle on the kerb as she passed. She let out a cry of pain, but kept going. She had no other choice. Suddenly the old lady screamed. It was a proper, throaty scream, the scream of young girls from the olden days, which Carol supposed the old lady had once been. Carol slowed - she had to anyway, because of her smarting ankle - to look, and saw the kindly, gentle old lady kneeling on the pavement, holding a little, still whimpering red bundle in her hands. The bundle, or what was left of it, was fluffy. The tail wagged, probably some sort of reflex action.

Carol must have looked for a little bit too long, because suddenly she felt a blinding pain between her eyes. The pain lasted for probably less than a second before everything went a pure white, whiter than snow. The invisible spade chuckled to itself as it regarded the bloody shape of the young woman, one eye looking up a the sky in an almost dazed way, and red blood leaking on to the pale lilac coloured jumper. It pushed down the jumper a bit, to cover up the young lady's thighs. It wouldn't be nice to leave her like that, with all her bits and pieces showing.

Nano 08 - up to 25000 words

He sat with her for a couple of hours, as Farne sat with Verdigris, and eventually he slept, his head pillowed on his leather jacketed arm.

When he awoke, there was a small furry face peering down at him. Charlie tried to smile. "Hello, Verdigris." The cat was sitting on the slab next o him, tail held getnly away from his body. He was still wearing the hat with the feather in it. He seemed to have taken a bit of a shine to it.

Ther cat appeared to smile back, a preditrory smile. "YOu cut my tail off," he said pleasently.

Charlie tried to sit up, and Verdigris stood up and sat down again on his stomach, he was sur[risingly heavy. "I'm trying to think of the most suitable punisment for oyu."

"Now, look, I cab explain. Mirabelle made me do it, and it could have been a lot worse. I threw her aim off just enough."

"Just enough to cut y tail off? I liked my tail. I wouldn't have cared if you'd killed me, I wouldn't have known any better, bu tI really liked my tail. I could say that I was rather attached to it, in fact."

Charlie tried to free himself from underneath the cat, but he really was quite heavy. Was he making himself heavier or aomething? "Farne!"

"Don't bother. She sleeps like the dead. I have to bite her ear to get her to wake up to feed me. Perhaps That's what I should do to you?"

"No... no, don't do that."

Verdigris was twitching his stump of a tail, eyes alive with feverish cruelty, and not quite focussed. Probably still slightly groggy from the aneathetic, Charlie thought. "Or your nose. Or your eyes. Yes, that owuld be rather fitting owuldn't it?"

"No, don't do that. PLease..." Charlie was babbling, while at the same time digging into th pocket of his jacket. There were always spare bullets in there, he never knew whn he might need them.

Verdigris lay down on Charlie's chest, purring as he went through various scenarios. "Maybe I could bite your ears and nose off and make you east them. Or even better... I could have your-"

He broke off as Charlie's fingers finally closed around the small piece of metel in his jacket ocket and waved it in the air, so it caught the light.

"Ooh... shiny!" verdigris's littl eface lit up and he raised a paw to touch the silver bullet "Pretty."

Charlie made sure the cat's eyes were following th epath of the bullet and then flung it to the floor. Verdigrtis watched it dispassionatly for a moment, and then sprang when it rolled a little to the left. As he jumped, his tail struck the edge fo the slab and he swuarked with pain, breaking the shiny thing spell.

"You bloody sod!" Verdigris spun round and got himself ready to jumop up again. But he had given Charlie enough time to get up and grab hold of the gun that still lay on the op[erating slab.

"Go on then. You go for me and I'll make sure I blow off a lot more than just your tail this time."

The cat hunkered back down on the floor. "Revenge is sweter the longer you wait to savour it's pleasue, human." The gun wavered in Charlie's hand. "Don't ever doubt that I will have you eventually." The cat stared at Charlie for a minute, each of them blinking slowly, unwilling to be the first to look away, and then he turned around and walked back tot eh basket Charlie had found for him, swinging his injured tail high in the air on full view. He curled in it, and put a rotective paw on Farne's sleeping forehead. He stared at Charlie until he dropped back off to sleep again, after uttering a little squeaking yawn, probably just so he could show off his rows of sharp catty teeth. Charlie didn't sleep again, the grandfather clock had just faintly struck three in the morning and it ould soon be time to go about his tasks. the creatures liked to be fed before they went to sleep for the day.

*

"What have you done with the mistress?" The raven, as clever as Mirabelle in his own way, asked as Charlie entered the room with a plateful of lamb mince.

"Ther was a bit of an accident."

"Yoou mean you killed her?" The Raven hopped down from it's perch, it's balance slightly impeded by the thick chain that had been roped around it's left ankle, and tackled the mince with relish. "I an't say I'm surprised. It was always in the air that you wanted to kill her." It cocked it's head at Charlie. "Does that mean your'e in charge now?"

"I imagine it does, yes."

The Raven paused to swallow a morsel of food before replying, "God help us."

"I wouldn't get too excited. I've a mind to get out of here and leave you lall to it."

The Raven considered this. "Are you going to take my chain off, first?"

Charlie examined the gun he still hedl in his hand. He hadn't let go of it since Vedigris's attempted attack. "I suppose it would only be fair. I could leave you all to fight it out, and ope no one ever comes ot this house again."

He watched the Raven for a minute or two, and then left. He had to let the Vampires out of their cages so they could go down to th basement and bed down in thier coffins, hose down the living waxworks with cold water, wash the cross dressing ferrets bondage gear. They were in the next room and he could hear their agutated squeaks of hunger and discomfort as he stood outside the Raven's door. They were doing the Time Warp as he entered, but rushed at him in an awful furry tide as he slipped into the room. A pile of tiny pink handcuffs and corsets appeared at his feet.

"You're late!" snapped one of them. harlie couldn't make out which one it was, as they always like to keep the room dark.

"We had a visitor last night," another one continued. "A..." he shuddered "cat."

"Sorry. He was one of the mistresses guaests. Nothing to do with me." He waved the gun at them. "Go on, you lot, get to the back of the room. I don;t want any of you getting out and causing havoc. YOu really badly upset Frankensteins Monster last time. You lucky we have a psychiatric hospital in the attic."

This somment was met by a chorus of sniggers.

Charlie cleared his throat. "Now, I feel I| ought to warn you. I'm off. At four O'cloch this afternoon, when it gets dark, I'm going to open all the doors and you can go out an fend for yourselves in the house."

A couple of hours later, all his work done for the time being, Charlie slipped in the dining room, where he found Farne and Gwendolyn sitting at the same table as the night before, helping themsleves to sherry and dishes of Kedgeree and chilled meats. Charlie wondered if he should say something sbout the meat, but decided he didn't want to upset them any more than they already wre, abd besides, what they never found out wouldn't hurt them.

"Hello." He came into the room and pout the gun on the table, smiled reassuringly. True, he had betrayed them, but he hadn't meant to. And Gwendolyn looked nice with her hair all pver her face, and her face dazed and still slightly drugged. She looked vulnerable. He went over ot he trolley ytat leaned against the wall and started a cup of tea for her. "I'll just go and boil some water!" he said gaily, skipping off with the metal teapot, and ignoring Farne's scowl.

Gwendolyn appeared beside him at the kitchen sink, and he guessed she was going to give him some asngt. It wouldn't be a proper story without some agsnt, he figured. He felt he probably deserved it. He put the kettle on the side, and turned to face Gwendolyn. "Ok. Call me a bastard. Call me every name under the sun, kI don;t care."

To his surprise she smiled. The food had given her face some colour. What had Farne hsaid about her being an alien? "You've upset Farne and Verdigris very badly, which is understandable, bit I know you only did it becasue you had to, and I know what that's like, and she doesn't. You deserve so much more than this... place."

Charlie shrugged and handed he the kettle. He wadsn't sure why, it just seemed like the right thing to do. "It's my life. I'm used to it. Anyway, I'm leaving."

"Where are you going to go?"

"I have no idea. Just away. You said there were all these portals in this house, perhaps you can teach me to use one or two of them."

And with that, he turned away and started making th tea. Gwendolyn played with her dark hair and chewed on her lip. "Wht about al the creatures?"

"Once we're gone, they will have the house to themselves, to do with as they wish."

"We'll have to lock all the portals, whereever we go. They'll be able to leak into other worlds if we leave them unchecked. So where ever you go, they'll be no coming back."

Charlie picked up the tea tray and managed th erather spectacular feat of carrying the tray and holding the door open for Gwendolyn. "I wouldn't want to come back."

She laughed. "Don't you know? It always leads back to the creepy old house. Thw first time you had a flat tyre, you'd end up back here." Charlie glanced at her for a moment, and then leaned his face lose t her ear.

"Why are we doing all this?" he asked softly. His lips brushed her ear and his breath was warm, and so alive.

"What?"

"All this creeping aorund in the kitchen staring at each other and being all emo thing. I think we should go and hide in the cupboard and have sex."

*

Gwednolyn cast her eyes up at the ceiling in annoyance and stalked off down the hallway. "I guess the little cow wants to wait a while before the obligatory sex scene..." she muttered. Charlie glanced about for somewhere to leave the silver tray of teaware, and upon seeing nothing, rolled his eyes and dropped the tray on the floor, where it landed with a heart lurching clatter. Gwendolyn spun round.

"WHat was that for?"

"I don't know. I don't even think I can use the excuse that it felt like a good idea at the time."

Sighing, Gwendolyn brushed past him. "Come on, let's get pout of here! Farne! We're going."

Charlie took her arm. "We can'tgo. I can't leave until four O'clock."

"Why?" Her face contorted in anger as she looked at him.

Charlie shrugged, and the tea tray suddenly threw itself at him. "Ooh... blimey!" He managed to catch it, upside down, but it quicjly righted itself. He brushed a loose lock of black hair away from his forehead. "I promised."

"You madew a promise to the bats and the ghosts upstairs?"

"Yes... good point." Charlie flung the tea tray at the window. It clattered against the glass that wasn't really glass and they floated up off the floor as one organism - teapot, milk jus, sugar bowl, and those funny little tweezer things that you use to pick up sugar lumps - and flew at them. "Run!!" cried Charlie, pushing Gwendolyn through the door. Farne stared up at them over her soup.

"Where the hell did you get soup?!" roared Charlie.

"Never mind that - what's with the psycopathic tea service?"

Gwebdolyn took the soup off Farne and tipped it all over her head. Vrown liquid leaked down Farne's unimpressed face. "We're going. Charlie is going to set all the inhabitants of the house free, and then we are going to use a portal to get out of here." She pushd Farne out of the chair.

"You're not saying he's coming with us?" she asked, wiping soup out of her hair, and eating the pieces of carrot she found. "Hmm..."

"Why not?"

"He tried to kill Verdigri, if you hadn't noticed."

Gwendolyn drew herself upto her full height, which was considerably more than Farne's and houted at her. "He didn't mean to! He is my new contrived love interest, and it isn't my fault if you;re bloody jealous!"

Open eyed and open mouthed, Farne stared at her as if she had just been slapped. "Well... I... I-"

Charlie sat down at the table and peered at the soup in the tureen. He picked up a spoon and tried a small bit. "The soup's been poisoned!" he announced.

"No, it hasn''t. I've already had two bowls. If it were poisioned I'd be dead," said Farne, at which Charlie muttered something neither of the two woman could catch.

"Well, that's becauise you weren't supposed to," he pointed out.

T this point, Gwendolyn realised what was going on. "It's the writer!" she cried. "She knows we're hre, and she's trying to flush us out. She'll decide to make an appearance in her own novel in a minute! Let's go, quickly, before the fourth wall vanishes entirely." She shot out of the room. Farne and Charlie glanced at one another dubiosly, before following. Verdigris was trotting down the stairs and watched all three of them run past, before joining the procession, wondering if Gwendolyn had been at the gin, or weather the other two were just trying to kill her.

When they reached the study, there was a throng of thr house's inhabintants already there. Gwendolyn stopped dead in the doorway and stared in at the assembled monsters and creatures and people in evening dress. Charlie skidded to a halt in the doorway. "Well, bugger me."

"Do you think, if we go really quietly, we'll be able to escape?" asked Farne, creeping up beside them.

One of the creatures noticed tham and raised it's glass with a grin "Well, come inside, why don't you?" it said and it's mouth opened wide, exposing three long and sensual pink tingues. The tongues licked the creatures lips and teeth playfully.

They all ran back out into the hall.

"The door's locked!" Gwendolyn said, as she tugged ineffectually at the knob. Charlie tried the other door, the one leading back to the dining room, and found that was locked too. Verdiris ran back up the stairs, the bow on the end of ail dressing bobbing in the air.

There was the sound of a cat screaming. "Holy bloody Jesus!" Verdigris yowled, and shot back down the stairs, a horde of transsexual ferrets at his heels. Farne decicded that now was a good moment to scream, and Charlie slapped her. She slapped him back, and it could have continued in this vein, had Gwendolyn not made up her mind to slap them both. On seeing the horrific apparition, which is much too horrific to even imagine, let alone describe, she screamed herself and grabbded the othe two by the hands before setting off at a run.

Only to find herself barred by the un-unlockable front door. She screamed in frustration and kicked at the door. On glancing down, she noticed something in Charlie's hand. "Charlie! Why did you not tell us you still had the gun?"

Charlie looked down at the gun in his hand, looked up at Gwendoloyn, raised a hand as if about to say something, opened his mouth, shut it again, and then suddenly spun round and shot the atrotious abomination in the traot, or what we can probably assume is it's throat, as it is attached ot what is most likely it'shead. "Good shot!" cried Farne, leaping up and pumping her fist in the air.

The horrible thing snarled and screamed in pain, rolling about on the floor. Charlie raised the gun and tried ot shoot it againm but it had evidently run out of bullets. "Of course.. I hadn't fille dit up after you shot Mirabelle..." he said, and flung the gun to the floor, along with a couple of silver bullets for fgood measure. The abomanable horror coughed up a bit of blood, and then, coughing, dragged itself to its feet, arms ourstraetched and making a ghastly hungrey gurling noise at the back of it's injured windpipe.

Farne backed away, trying ot get behind Gwendolyn, who was at the same time, trying ot get behind Farne. "Ok.. maybe not asuch a good shot."

Gwendloyn was suddenly tugging at her arm, having seen what she had been looking for. There was an old typewriter on the hall table, and she could see a faint light of potential shimmering above it. It was th only portal in sight and she knew the four of them had to take it. As more of the horrid creatures filtered out of the study and into the hall, she was heading for the typewriter, pulling Farne behind her, who wouldn't take her eyes off the monsters.

"Come on! Charlie, put up that sodding gun - we might have need of it." Too late,m for Verdigris had run into the centre of the hall, dodgeing the 'I've run out of names for how spectacularly horrid and bile and malevolent and horrific and how it is made of liquid sick creature' quite skillfully, and picked the gun up. He scampered back with it and jumped at the typewriter, bathed in a blue light for a moment, a brighter blue than anything els ein this dark old house of nightmares, the house where all the things that live in oold houses eventually come to rest. Farne called his name as he disappeared, th white flash of his tail bandage the last thing they saw. She quickly followed him, leaving Charlkie and Gwendolyn in the hallway.

Gwendolyn looked up at Charlie, who was gaxing at the blue lit typewriter with a sort of tearful fear lighting up his eyes. "Come on. They're laive, I promise you. It's not as if you can stay here now, is it?"

Charlie looked at the typewriter, than at the things behind him. "But..." Gwendolyn shook her head and ran at the typewriter, still holdin Charlie's hand. Together they were submerged in the soft blue light, glowing with it for a moent before they vanished.

The inhabitants of the household poured into the hallway, monstres with green skin, and putrefying bodies with blood stoll oozing down their faces, and young and beautiful young irls with razor shapr fangsm and at last the Raven, stood and looked at the typewriter, as gradually it's glow started to fade. Gwendolyn, as promised was deactivating the portal. There were other ways out of the house, other links to other stories, but none to the one that she had her friends had founs themselevs in.

"Gosh," said a tall man with the eyes nd fac of a large fly, "I only wanted to ask them if they wanted to play 'pin the tail on the dovkey'."

"No one wants to play that game, Arnold. We'd all much rather have an orgy," said Miss Redding, rolling her eyes. "Now, would someone like to take this damned straight jacket off?"

*

The computer screen had lain doment ofr a long time, the keyboard unused and unloved. There was n one to see the delicate blue glow that surounded it, and the computer. Gradually the glow grew a little brighter, a little deeper and in the centre of the light, soemthing shimmered. A second later something burst out from the eye of the glow - a ginger cat with half a tail, and a hwte bandage where the ret of it hould have been, and a gun in its mouth. The cat dropped the gn adn ducked its head up and down a few times, as though it was expecting to be sick.

"Thank god..." it said in a rather gentlemanly upper class drawl, and then sat down to wash its face.

He heard a noise behind him and watched as something else, a young woman, spilled out of the blue glow and landed in an undignified pile beside him. "I say, Farne. It's a good job you're not waering a skirt if you're going ot land like that." Verdigris poked his mistress in the nose. She didn't stir, so he curled up on her face to wait for the others.

Gwendolyn and Charlie came through a minute later. Charlie took one look around him ,rolled up his eye and fainted. Verdigros thought he looked like he might have sone it deliberately.

He came to a moment later and sat up, staring at the room he had found himself in. "What is this place?" he asked. He wa trembling like a frightened rabbit, and blinking rapidly as he tried to take in the unfamiliar television, computer, the lava lamp. Verdigros stalked pup to him and Gwendolyn, stump waving in the ait. He wanted to show it off, ut Charlie wasn't looking at him.

"Farne's passed out," he said.

"Yes, I can see that." Gwendolyn crouched down beside her friend. "Ket's put her on the bed, next to the... ah..."

There was another body on the bed. Gwendloyn walked up to it and stared into familiar eyes. The body in the bed was her own, with blue eyes instead of violet, and dark aubern, almost reddish hair, instead of her daerk brown locks. She seemed drawn into the lifeless blue eyes, marbles in the girls head. She was so pale..

Gwendolyn struggled to stifle a scream as a hand touched her shoulder. Charlie. "It seems I have found myself in a world that is just as strange, if not even more dangerous, than the one we just left..." he said.

Togther they stared down at the body, Gwendolyns body, but in different colours, the same person just a different type, and gredually, wasting away, it began to disappear. Gwendolyn reached down and placed a hand on the body's arm, but it slipped right through. The girl disipated like mist the final thing to vanish being her blue eyes, givign the illusion that they wer rising off the bed and into Gwendolyns eyes. Gwendolyn brushed her hand over the empty sheets. Nothing Nothing to indicate that there jhad been a body there, no blood, no hair, no dent in the bed where the bosy had lain. She g;anced up at Charlie. He glanced back at her.

It was Frne who broke the silence, by waking up. "Why didn't you warn me?" I think I bashed my head on that stupid typewriter as I cane through... bloody hell, Verd. Get off me!" She shook the cat off, and groggiy got to her feet. "Now what? Sweet surburbia? Whata re you two doign?"

CVharlie and Gwendolyn jerked away from each other, Charlie wiping at his mouth. Gwendolyn stuck her hands in her jeans pockets, trying to pretend that they hadn;t just been emtining in Charlie's hair. "Testing for fingerprints?" he hazarded.

"There was a dead body in the bed," said Gwendolyn.

"What did you do with it? Wrap it in a curtain and flush it down the toilet while I was unconscious?"

Charlie glanced around the room. "Where's the fucking cat?"

The three humans (well, one of them isn't scrivtly human, but I didn't realyl want to say, the two humans and the not quite humkan, although maybe in hindsight that does sound better....) looked at one another and then shot out of the room, only to be blockd by a an invisible barrier on the door. It was open, but none of them could pas through it. Gwendolyn hammered on it. The abrrier made a thwacking sound as she banged her fist on it. SHe snatched up a lamp from the dressing table and bashed oin the invisible door until it broke. "What is it with lamps? They're supposed o be so hard wearing!" SHe flung the broken lamp away from her, pieces of china tinkling into the wall like piano keys. Gwendolyn decided than that the best course of action wwould be to start kicking the barrier.

Suddenly, Verdigris the cat poppd ot of an empty Primark bag. "What the devil are you doing?" he asked.

"Trying to get out."

"I don't think you can. I think this story is limited to this one room, the writer sbedroom."

GWendolyn frowned. "What do you mena, the writers bedroom?"

Verdigris sighed and rolled his eyes. "As humas went, Gwendolyn was bright a lot of the time, but when she was thick she really was think. The moments when she was think were highlighted by her usual intelligence."

"All right! you don't have to tell everyone that!" There was a pause. "How do we get out of this then? If you'r eso damned clever?"

"The bag is one of your portal things. There's all this funy blue light and when I stuck my hea dout the other side I found myself in this spaceship wiht all these red numbers counting down to lft off or something. Hang on..." Verdigris disappeared back inside the bag. He reappeared with his whiskers turned down in a frown. "Oh.. it's gone."

"Great. So what now? I'm not going back to that house," said Farne.

"Too late. I deactivated it while you were zinked out." Gwendolyn pulled a small pen out of her pocket and waved it in Farne's face. "Literary trans inducer. It removes the links between stories." Sure enpugh, there was no longer a blue glow around the computer screen. But ther was somethign diffrent about it, somethign that either hadn;t been there before, or somethign no one had noticed because f the blue light.

Charlie walked up to he screen. "There's writing." He sat down in the blue office chair, and squinted inorder to raed what was on the screen, unfamilier with computers. He started to read. "The mit was pure white and clung to the irls body, a thick steam that swirled aorund her, seeming to feed, burning itself dee into her pores. Her name wa sMargaret Annabelle Rocket... Rocket? What kind of name is that?"

"A fictional one," said Gwendolyn, coming to sit on the chair arm. She took hols of the mouse (no! not that kind of mouse! This isn't Carry On) "Her anme was Margaret Annabelle Rocket and she was stumbling through the mist as though wading though a think jungle. She knew ther had to be something beyond. She had been walking to the library, a quiet sreet in the middle of the afternon. Then she had walked straight into the mist and everything changed. All sounds ceased, and her body moved sluggishly. She had th eimpression taht ther wer others in the mist, close by, but she couldn't hear them and she could only make thm out as vague shadows floating just in front or just to the side of her." Gwendolyn suddenly gasped and pulled away from the screen. For a second he had been there, truly been there, not Margaret's body, but still in her own body walking jsut behind a small girl with freckles and moousy brown hair.

She nearly fell ff the chair arm, but Charlie caught her, pulling her half onto his lap. "You too?" She nodded. "I don't think I want to go in there."

Gwebndolyn smiled softly, a sad little smile. "I don;t think we've got any choice. I think this is where the writer had been pushing us right from the start of this chapter."

"It's a trick," said Farne.

"Not nessacerily. I have the feeling that she had even less of a clue of what's going on than we do" sh looked around. "Where's Verdigris gone?"

"I'm in the wardrobe, ahving a power nap! I haven't slept for two hours, I'm exhousted."

Farne was standing by the bookcase, a small child's case, with a mish mash of volumnes. She was rading a dog eared copy of Thomas the Tank Engine. She replaced the book back on the shelf and was opening another before she realised that the others were watching her and she ganced up. "I was thinking taht mayeb if we can read ourselves nto another world with that thing on the screen, perhaps we can use another book to choose somewhere." Gwendolyn was just staring at her. "Haven't you thought about now you're going to get Mark back?"

"Mark?!" exclaimed Charlie.

"Mark<" comfirmed Farne. "Isn't there a method to your madness? Do you actualy have such a thing a 'plan' or are you just going to leave it to chance and hope we stumple upon him by accident in some dark world while your;e flitting from place to place ahving a good time shagging people and getting drunk?"

Gwendolyn grinned. "Yeah. That's what I usually do."

"Mark?!" repeated Charlie.

"Shut up Charlie. I'm not human ither, if you must know. Gve me a few minute and I'm sure I can thin of two or three other revelations to upset you, if that's what want."

"I know you;re not human. Farne told me."

"She what!!?"

Charlie flolded his arms across his chest. "Never mind that. What about this 'Mark'?" Gwendolyn opened her motuth to speak, but she must have been atking an awful ong ime about it, because a heavy book - Volume 1 of Shakeseares plays came flying across the room at them.

Farne stood at the bookcase, a book in each hand, scowling. "Would you two gilrs sto phaving your domestic, and help me read up out of heer?"

"I'm not readin ym wayi into Shakespeare. Nothing wrong with Shakespeare, you understand, I just mean I refuse to read myself into a play. I hate being in plays. It's so one sided and dull and all that stage direction...."

Another book - rather predictably, the second Volume of Shakespeare plays - was thrown across the roomand hit Gwendolyn on the forehead. She remained standing for a moment, looking dazedm and then dropped like a brid shot in midair.

The books didn't work. Charlie and Farne flipped through most of a shelf, reading excerpts reading aloud, acted out the stories within the boks. Gwndolyn, when she woke up, woudl have nothing to do with the exercise, and sat down on the bed eating a Terry's chocolate orange (other chocolatey products are available), complaining that she shouldn't be kncoked out so often and she needed the sugar.

Farne snapped at her, "Do you always complain about your status as a not quite human, and use it as the bassi for hundreds of made up conditions?"

"Yes, I do!" Gwendolyn snapped back.

"I don;t think you should be eating that, anyway. You don;t know where it's been. And it's not real, anyway."

"Of course its real. This palce is just as real as our own world, just as real as Charlie's world. You ate the soup there, remember?"

Fane shook her head "No, This place is different. It's liek an empty shell wher etime has stopped and there is nothing living, it's like there never was anything living here, and it's all a set up to trap us and trick us into doing what your stupid writer wants us to do."

"So what if it is? There's nothing we can do about it." Gwdndolyn battled Farne with her eyes, shining as she nibbling on a slice of cholate orange.

Her companion put the book she was trying to read abck on the shelf. "There is something we can do. We can mutineer. We can stay hear and see what happens. Do nothing. Sit on the bed and not talk, not eat, not drink. I supopse we could sleep... See how long it takes for the writer to get bored, and then see what she does when she hasn't got a story to tell."

Gwendolyn swallowed the last of the choclate, and seemed to ponder this. At last she odded.

Charlie came to sit beside her on the bed.

Vedigris went back in the wardrobe for a sleep.

Farne sat dwn in the middle of the floor, apparently mediatating.

Gwendolyn yawned.

Charlie Yawned.

Farne gave the both dirty looks for daring to yawn, daring to do something. Daring to have something for the writer to write about.

Verdigris continued to sleep.

*

The writer put down the keyboard, her mouth twisting in frustrationa nd abger. "Bloody.. bloody! Fluffy! They are mutineering against me!!! hat am I going to do?"

Fluffy the cat, who was actually Verdigris secret daughter, but no one is supposed to knwo wthat yet... oh.. whoops. Anyway, fluffy was sitting on the floor, half asleep in that manner that cats have of sleeping somewhere really uncomfortable ike the floor, when they have a perfectly lovely bed made up specially fo rthem by their owers. She completely ignored the writer, who got up from her desk with a flounce and stalked off to get herself a cup of tea.

*

Gwendolyn leapt up from the bed. "Quick! Let's go ebfore she comes back."

"Go where?"

"Anywhere!"

Verdigrid cralwed out of the wardrobe Having done a poo in there, it was no longer so comfortable. "What, out the window?"

"Anywhere apart from that." Gwendolyn looked at the computer screen, apparently their only means of escape, and had a sudden idea. She sat down at the chair, put her hands to the keyboard and started to type.

*

Another world, another blue flash. Only this one was more ofa mid grey flash, and that not particularly bright. The four figures appeared almost simutaneously, and only Gwendolyn seemed unsurprised by the world of blacks and greys and cloudy whites, all washed over with a faint tint of old brown, like decayed film, which is exactly what this new world was.

"Where th efuck are we?" squrwked Farne.

"Would you stop swearing? This thing wil never get published if you keep on with your potty mouth," said Gwendolyn.

"I am not fucking swearing! And anyway, I don;t want this fucking thing to ever get published." Farne raised her arms so she could look at her hands. "MY hands have got grey."

"Yes, I did notice," replied Gwendolyn.

Verdigris looked up at the two woman. "Why have your voices gone all funny? I'm sure you used to have that ghastly East Midlands accent," he said.

"I can explain. I have written us into the Invisible man."

"Why?" asked Farne, her face all screwed up again.

"It was the last film I watched, so the story is kind of fresh in my mind., Unfortunely I have only ever seen the film, which is why it is in sepia toned black and white, and we all have didgy upper class 'Queen's englihsh' accents, except for you and Charlie, who had them already, due to a whim of the writers."

(NARRATOR: When the writer returned, she was stunned to find that her characters had slipped out of her grap and she cursed herself. She sat down with her cup of tea, wondering what on earth she was going to write about now, for Gwednolyn Carvetti had proven herself to be much more resourceful than she expected her to be, and had disappeared from sight, so intent was she on her search for her former friend.)

The four characters looked at each other. Gwendolyn's mouth opened and then closed again. Charlie looked up at the sky, expecting to see a vast and omnipresent face vanaish back into the dark grey coulds of the night sky.

"What was that?" asked Farne.

"I think it was a Narrator which is a bit odd, seeign as the Invisible man doesn;'t have one..." Gwendolyn also looked up at the sky, expecting something to come out. "She's probably sent out scouts to try and find us."

They stood there in silence for a minute longer, hoping that the writers rader would skip them because they weren't doing anything. There was a sudden outbreak of screaming from a cluster of houses somewhere to thier left, and the sound of gunshots. "Come on, I think we hd better go along with the story," said Gwendloyn, and she ran in t direction of th houses, Charlie right behind her. Farne and Verdigris exchanged dubious looks and the followed. None of them noticed the white bandage, now a dirty and discolourd grey, that was left on the gorund, tied into a loving bow by Farne just a few hours ago.

There was only the sound of her own footsteps on the ground, her sight blurred as she wsn't yet used to the sepia overtones and the lack of colour. In fact, Gwendolyn was starting to regret writing them all into the Invisible man. Thew film she had watched before that had been the Titantic, how ever, so that probably wouldn;t have been a good idea either... She was concentrating only ont hese things and something, running as fast as she was and heavier, bashed into her. "Oomfpfy!" she muttered, as she toppled over onto th hard and stony ground. Whatever it was it had mashed her top lip against her teeth. She tased blood in her mouth, and raised a hand to wipe it away, groaned when she saw the slick dark grew sheen on her fingers. A second later Charlie was at her side.

"Are you alright? You just fell down..."

Gwendolyn looked at him, and thenl looked groggily at the space in front of her, looked around for the someone that had kncoked her over. She squealed as she felt another hand clap itself onto her arm, a gentle hand, that wasn;t Charlie's.

"What is it? Are you hurt?" asked Charlie.

"I'm most awfully sorry. I don't htink you were supposed to atep in front of me like thatm were you?" the voice came from nowhere, kind and curious. Gwendolyn reached out her own hand to the nothingness that held her arm and felt the bones of a hand, taut muscels and soft cool skin.

They'r found the Invisible man without even looking, without even wantint to look for him. Gwendolyn smiled at the irony. "No, we were. We probably shouldn;t have done, but we were distinctly meant to go bumping into you." The Invisible man helped her to her feet. She shook his hand. "Sorry, I think we may have ruined your story now, and ours, beacsue we were trying to escape from something and our escape relied on not metting you."

Snow was starting to fall, whih she wasn;t convinced was supposed to happen, but she couldn;t really ermember what had happened in the film, with it being in black and white and on acocunt of the fact that she was drunka t the time. The snow gathered on the man's shoulders, outlining a tall an thin man, with a good strong nose, from the way the flakes landed and then slid down the ridge of his face. One of them ran along his forehead, along the lines. He was frowning. "I don't understand. Who are you? Are you escaping from the law as I am? I must say, you're remarkably well dressed."

Charlie put a hand on Gwendolyn's arm, shok his ehad at her as she prepared to speak. The look in his eyes carried meaning, but she wasn't quite sure what sort o f meaning it was. "WWhat?" she whispered.

"He doesn't need to know all the details. It'll only confuse the poor fellow, and he's got his own problems. We'll just keep it simple."

The Invisinle man laughed. "I hardly think your situation can be stanger than mine."

Gwendolyn and Chalrie laughed, a tinkling and uneasy sound against the falling snow and the rotton acoustics of the 1920's. "It can, belkive me. Nothing gets stanger than fiction." She looked over his shoulder, "Oh, here are the other members of our party." She nodded, and the invisible man turned to see Verdigris and Farne trotting up to them.

Verdigfris shook his coat free of fallen snow and scowled up at Gwendolyn, "Why'd you have to make it snow, b****?" He froze. "B****. F***. Boll***!" The cat paused, blinking, and then sat down in the snow. "Gwendolyn," he asked sweetly, "What the f*** is happening?"

She shrugged "It's the 1920's. I don't think you were allowed to swaer back then." she looked to Charlie for clarification, but he just shrugged.

"Don't llok at me, I've always been able to swear, but then, I dont come from any particular era. My house must have been split across different times." He shruged.

Farne shrugged as well, so as not to be left out, and The cat just muttered somethign under his breath, probably trying to find a nasty word he could actually say. "Who were you talking to anyway?" he asked.

Gwendolyn beamed. "The Invisible man, He's actually a really sweet and charming chap. He's right here." She reached out a hand to where she thought the Invisible man's was, menaing to pull on his arm and introduce him to the rest of the 'team', but there was nothing there. "Um.. where'd he g?"

"Who?"

"The Invisible man. Where is he?"

"I didn't see him go anywhere."

"Well, you wouldn't would you? He's invisible. Thats' heis tag line. The film would nevr have been the phenominal success if has been if the titla had been 'The incredible man who peple can see'."

There were footsprints in the snow, leading further way from the houses, Gwendolyn guessed the Inviisble man must have some kind of base in the village about a mile away. She knew there ws a hotel there. "He's gone that way!"

Farne sighed as she prepared herself for yet another bout of running, this time through the snow in highly inappropriate shoes. "Here we go again..."

*

They had pursuaded the hotel receptionist to let them into the hotel on the pretence that the Invisible man had dropped his wallat in the sow and they were trying to return it. The young woman behind the desk had argued, saying that 'Mr Crooks' hadn't left his room all night and in any case, she didn;t think he was in a fir state to go anyhere in the cold, as he appeared ot be unwell. Charlie replied that that waswhy it was so important that they returned his wallet, and she had wavered before finally letting them go up to his room.

"Why are you following me?" snapped the Invisible man, as he held open the door to his room, and one by one, they all trooped in, being careful to wipe their feet on the doormat.

Gwendolyn sat down on the bed. "I have no idea, but I just have this inkling that you;ll be able to help us. I hope you are, because I don't see how we are going to get out of this therwise."

"Get out of what?" asked the invisible man irritabely. It seemed that they had just caught him in the act of having a shower for he was rubbing a towel vigorously around the area f his head. For the fist tim, it struck Gwendolyn that he was actaully naked, and had been in the snow which perhaps explained why he had ru off so quickly, and she suddenly felt her cheeks burning red, She couldn't helo it, and she turned away.

The invisible man seemed to stare at her, and then he signed and pulled a threadbare blue dressing gown from a hook on the door and shrugged into it. Charlie took up a position next to Gwendolyn on the bed, swiftly joined by Verdigris, who hoped up swinging his half tail in the air. Farne remained standing by the door, unwilling to invire herself in as the other had done. She smiled awkwardly at the invisible man, and he gestured that sh should enter. "Would anyone like a cup of tea? Coffee?"

"I'd rather-"

"Shut up Gwendolyn," snapped Farne, perching on the very edge of the bed. It was hard to tell in the sepia toned mono colour, but Gwendolyn thought she looked pale.

The Invisible man, or rather the arm of his dressing gown, gwaved at a jug taht was tanding on the table next to the sink. "Water?" He found some glasses with difficulty, having to use the soap dish for Verdigris, and the tooth mug for Charlie in favour of giving the proper drinking glasses ot the ladies. He placed the soap dish in front of Verdigris and then moved away from him quickly. The cat scawled up at him, the lok in his eyes clkearly eyes, 'What? You think you look normal, mister perspex?' but for a change he kept his little bewhiskered mouth shut.

The Invisible madn paused, looking at them, or maybe not looking at the,, for who could tell? Finally he heaved out anotherg great sigh and sat down in the chair near the door. "Now, I think one of you had better explain what on Earth is going on, or preferably more than one of you. There's nothing quite like hearing several sides of the same story. Why don;t we let the talking cat go first?" he laughed, hopelessly. "You know, someone told me I was going mad, and I am beginning to wonder myself - you charming younf ladies and gentleman, and your cat could just be the symptoms of my sikness."

"I assure you we're not," said Gwendolyn.

The Invisible man considered. "No. You seem ar too civil to be creatures born of madness. But I don't know where you are from... I've heard stories of men travelling from the future into th past and the past into the future, and of creatures from Mars invadint he Earth, (here Gwdnoyln and Farne exchanged a look. Of course he would be aware of them, the Martians and the man who built a time machine, but would they share the same universe, or were they all just myths in each others worlds?) and people swear that those storie are true, and with people like you sitiing in my hotel room, I begin to wonder." Thw Invisible man stood up and crossed the room. "Would anyone like a cigarette?"

Gwendolyn started to put her hand, but Farne gave her such a forbidding look that she didn;t even dare open her mouth. The Invisible man put a white stick in his mouth and lit it, the flame from his match lighting up for an instant his face, the light reflecting off his features.

(the image of Wadsworth the transsexual butler beating peole up with a candlestick...)

They saw the look of shock on the invisible mans face, even though they couldn';t see his face, his shock and vague horror and incomprehension was evident from the shape of the air around his head.

"Excuse me?" he said, stubbing the cigareet out in the sink. Gwendolyn gave him her best 'please don't kill me, and eeven if you do try and kill me, I'm going to do my utmost best to talk myself out of it, which is why I@m smiling like this, I'm trying to think of somethign to say' smile.

She said, "Nothing, absolutely nothing." Still beaming confidently, she tured to the other and mouthed 'F***, she's f***ing found us again!'

Charlie raised his arms in the air to try and placate the invisible man, "I don;t think we have much time," he said.

"YOu'r telling me. I@m thinking of telephoning for the police, and look at the state I'm in. I don;t know which of us is the mor illegal party."

"We haven't killed anyone," said Gwendsoly.

The INvisible man jumped and looked wildly around for the pistol he had hidden in the room, but too late, it was in Gwendolyn's hand alrady and had been for some time. "That's right. We're not murderers, but you are, and if you don't help us, we'll turn you over to the police. Just like that." She hoped she sounded more confidanrt than she felt, because she didn;t know what number you were supposed to dial for the plice in the early twentient century.

The inviscible man complied and sat back don in th chair. "Very well, but I fail to see how I can help you."

"So do we," Farne put in, "But Gwendolyn seems to think you can help us, and she claims to know how the writer's mind works, so she could be right."

"The writer?"

"Our writer. Not yours. Yours wasn't a psychopath," aid Farne.

Gwendolyn smiled, and lowered the gun a little, "That's right. Somehow, you can help us."

"But how?"

Gwendolyn glanced behind her at the others, who were still assembled on the bed, "Yes... how?"

"By hiding us," suggested Farne."

"That wouldn't work, This was my nest plan, writing us into a work of fiction that the writer hadn't written, btu she still foudn us. He can't hide us in a hotel room - the writer alreday knows we're here."

Charlie put his hand up next, "BY gicving us some of the invisible stuff?"

Verdigris rolled his eyes, which as I think I've poitned out before cats aren't supposed to do, but what the hell, "That wouldn't work, We'd just go mad and start runnign around killing people," he said.

"He isn't mad," said Gwednolyn, who privately thought that the invisible man was actually a rather sweet and clever chap, adn dnot at all mad. "Of course, that's it!"

"What's 'it'?"

"You can hide us! All you need to do is create a new story. Instead of goign menatl and killing people and finally being shot and dying a=in a hospital ned sureounded by your loved ones, you could become good and use your invisibility for good instead of evil."

At this point, farne managed to rous eherself enough to spring off th bed. "So the writer wouldn't know of the new story, so she wouldn't be able to find us! You are a genius!"the two girls embraced, to further eye rolling from Verdigris.

"Wooh oo, " said Gwendolyn and flousiehed the gun in the air, accidentally pulling the trigger, causing the lightbulb to erupt in a small and very glassy explosion. There was th soudn of footsteps on the stairs.

"Oh, shit, what do we do now?"

The invisible madn started to herd them into the centre of the room, "Qucik.. get in the wardrobe," he said, usheruing them all in, and shutting the door, locking it just to be on th safe side. When the domestics started hammering on the door, he yanked it open, in his full bandage regalia waving the remaind of the broken light bulb in the maid and the managers face.

"How dare you! How dare you put substandared shitty light bulbs in your rooms! I demand my money back at once! I have been in a terible accident and i don;t think I can tak many more shocks." He then leaned back int he doorway, vindicated, panting and heaving from his outburst.

*

The manager made a great fuss of putting in a new light bulb for him. The invisible man dprowled aorunf the room, snarlign and exclaiming and swearing, in an attempt to cover up the shiffling noises from insdie the wardrobe. As the manager left, and the maid was just emptying the last of the broken glass int the dustbin, the invisible man schreeched out, "And sort out your goddamn rat infestation! I had to listen to them in the wordrobe all night last night, aving an orgy and god knows what else!"

When the manager and his employees had fled, the invisible man let them all otu of the wardrobe. "What do we do now?" he asked.

"I don't know," relplied Gwendolyn. "The linguistic filter had gone, so either you ahve amaged to change the story o much that there isn;t one anymore, or the writer knows exactly where we are and is homing in on right this very second... I hope it's the first one. I suggest you carry on in exactly the way you are doing... well, not exactly like that, but being different is good."

Th Invisible man lit up another cigarette. "What am I supposed to do next then?"

"Why don;t we go and see yor girlfriend?" suggested Farne.

"Why?"

"Because it would be so out of charactre. You're supposd to be going mad, not visiting loved ones." The invisible man laughed again as they mentioned his sanity.

Togetherm they hustled him out of the room, all bekted up in an overcoat, scarf and gloves.

On the way, they passed an old woman leanign against the wall of one of the beaten down old houses. "Invisible man going ot see his girlie!" she muttered to herself, and then cackled. GWednolyn and Farne shared a glance, Gwendolyn wordlessly being the one nominated for strolling up to the woman, and she dod so, tripping confidenlt over the snow, beaming.

"HellO! I couldn't help hut overhear your conversation.. with.. er.. ourself, and I was wondering how you came to that conclusion?"

The woman peered up at Gwendolyn, she was shrt and alomost goblin like, all wrinkles and sprightly blue green eyes. Grey wisps of hair danglied down from her man's cap. "I gort a pixie in my pocket," she said, leering at Gwednolyn, who shrank back from the filthy smell eminating from her mouth. "She telle me of future things." The old woman leant back wisely against the wall, and farted contentedly.

"A pixie?"

"Aye..." the old crone reached into the pocket of her grimy overcoat and brght out a tiny little creature, a human, but only about five inches tall and thinn as a bundle of sticks. At least, her head an arms and torso were human...

The tiny mermaid thrasjed her green tail abot on the old hag's palm and glowered up at Gwendolyn. "What t'fuck are you lookin' at? Didn't se enough in't circus?" She was also achingly pretty, with long golden hair and delicate features, poinprick hazel eyes.

"WHat's her name?" asked Gwendolyn.

"Dont have one," said th old woman.

"Marigold," said the mermaid in the same instant.

Gwendolyn coldn;t help herself from bending down a little to get acloser look at the ctreature. The mermaid, it has to be saod, took it all with remarkable good grace, as she sighed and folded her arms, but managed not to sewear. "What sort of thing does she tel you"? Too latem she discivered it was a msitake breathing in so close to the old woman.

"Futreut hings. Visions. Earn me lots of money. You have a little bit of miney to give to an old and ailing grandmother?"

"Sorry, no. Money i one of the things I seem to be lacking at the moment..." Gwendolyn trailed off as an idea hit her. "ON the other hand, I thin my friend over ther emight have some money. I'll be back on just one moment." Gwendolyn retreated, still smiling confidently, and walked back to the rest of her team. "

"May I borrow som emoney please?" she asked of the invisible man.

"What for?" his hat and scraf moved along with hsi invisible face, and Gwendlyn thought he might be frowning at her. His hand moved to the pocket of his overcoat. "And how much?"

He sounded suspicious. "There's a mermaid over there that can tell the future."

"Doesn't llok much like a mermaid."

"No, taht's some random old woman, but she ahs got a furtune telling mermaid in her pocket, and she looks like she oculd be a link to another story."

The invisible man sighed. "How much?" he repeated.

"Come with me," Gwendolyn said, and led him over towards the ols woman, who looked up with interest, licking her long greying teeth, deep in thought.

Veedigris yawmed in th snow, causing the writer to remember his existance and be forced to write a sentance about him.

(Would you stop it? I can only concentrate on two characters at a time.)

"Screw you," said Verdigris.

"What did yo just sat to me, you horribe little cat?" snapped Charlie.

(Oh no, not you too.... the wr=iter muittered inside his head)

Farne gav ebth odd looks, "What's going on? Don't tell me you having another of your little tifs."

Verdigris and Charlie looked at each other, but Farne's eyes followed the footsteps in the snow and watxhed Gwednolyn and the invisible man, who apperaed o be leading the old woman into a pub on the corner, "What are they do-"

At that moment, Verdigris pounched on Charlie's leg, he screamed, jerking about in the suddenly blood stained snow, struggling to kick away the cat athat gnawed at his boot, and tore at his trousers and skin.

"What? Verdigris!!" Farne pounced n the cat and grabbed at him. he waved what was left of his tail inher face and then shot off down the road. "Verdigris? What did he do that for?"

Charlie thoguht he mgiht ahve an idea why Verdigri shad don what he did, btu he didn;t say anythign out loud, and treid not to think about it, becasue he had a feeling that he could neve now be sure of who was listening to his thoughts. "It doesn't matter. Let's just go after him," she said, taking her hand and pulling her off down the snow covered path.

"But what about-"

"Never mind Gwendolyn. Don't you think that, ou of any of us, Gwednolyn is the one most able to to look after herself? We'll only be a minute." And with that they jogged off intot th snow, and soon become only blakcish shaped among the white.

The snow continued to fall, a grey and white bird flitted from a tree to the roof of a house, adn bolted down the chimney. All was quiet, and the moon glittered pure and bold in the black sky. At last, a moving figue puntuated the silent snow. Verdigris. He took up a position next to the pub door, narrowly missing a pair of legs as they eft the oub, and he waited for the others.

"Where are they?" asked Charlie, as he came u the slight hill at a run. "It can't have taken thta logn surely, whatever they were doing. There was the sound of panting behind them.

Farne trotted up, limping a little in her heels, which she really shouldn;t have worn to go adventurign with Gweendolyn Carvetti. "Where the fuck is she?"

They indicated the pub. "Right then," said Farne, and walked inside. Charlie went next, but held his hand up when Verdigris tried to follow him.

"You;re a cat. I think it might give them the wrong idea."

The cat, for indeed, Verdigris was a acta, as I do so enjoy endlessly poitnign out to you, sat down on the cod wet snow, tail stump wrapped partly aroun dhis feet and loked up at Charlie with wide, and somehow childish green eyes. "Fuck you," he said, and trotted inside.

"They've gone," Farne was already on her way out. She paused in the doorway, a shock away from wringing her hands in despair.

"What do you mean 'gone'? Where could they go?"

"I don't know Charlie. All I know is that the old woman is sitting at a table near the window, drinking a pint of gin which I suspect the Invisible man has bouhght for her, and there is no mermaid, no Gwendolyn and no invisible man, although I suppose he could be hanging around... we'd neve rknow. I asked art the bar and the barman said tehy in here, but hey vasihed. Literally vanished. He said he'd seen some fnny things in his life, but that was-"

"Alright, I get the picture." Charlie rubbed han over his face, his own way of coping with stress.

"So they've gone into another of Gwendolyn's damn worlds, without us," said Verdidris.

"Buy why?" nwo she really was wrtingin her hands.

Verdigris shrugged adn thougthfully ahd a wee against the wlal of the pub. "I expect she thinks we're not in as much danger as she in, ebcause this whole silly searxch wasn';t out idea. She thknks the writer of hers can't be in two places at once and she'd rather follow Gwendolyn than us."

Charlie drummed his fingers on the door frame. "So that means we are free to do whatever we like, without fear of the writer chaing after us."

"Great.. trapped in a black and whit film... I wonder what I'm going to do. Dye y hair a vibrant and exciting new shade of dark ashy tarmac grey, or perhaps i could buy a lovel new pale silver pashmina. Whoopee."

The cat paused in the act of burying his business. "It's not even tha, any more, not the Invisible man has gone."

"May I suggest that we do the only sensible thing?"

"What's tha then?" asked Farne.

Charlie gforced a grin and clapped Farn on the shoulder. "Let's go to the pub. I've never been to a pub before. I mean, I know of them of course, but I never had any oppourtunity to visit one, and my enture litrrary life has been lived inside that dingy little house I never got the chance to get drnk in a proper pub. Come on. I'll buy you a pnt."

"I'm not sure if they ahd pints in those days... thses days..." Nontheless, she followed him inside, the cat bounding ahead of them, to drink nasty looking greyish alcoholic ds=ish water out of chipped glasses.

*

(NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Gwednolyn, who ha once again given the writer the proverbial slip, has found herself in yet another new world, with a brand new set of intriguing and colourful companions, and is starting to get an idea of what she will have to do, and what further tortues she will have to go through in order to find her frined. From the peculiarties and horros that ahve gone before, it was clear to her that getting Mark back and restoring hinm to the world was going to be a bigger mountain for her to climb than she had first anticipated...)

"Oh, shut up, Narrator."

(NARRATOR: I have no doubt that Gwednoyn will one day have cause to regret telilng the narrator of this tale to end all tales to 'shut up'. I like all Narrators, am a very stressed and irritabel person, due the inane and torrid inevitability of the story and the boredom of my position...)

"I said, shut up. Stay o your side of the bloody fourth wall."

(NARRATOR: The narrator sighs and shake his head in mingles sadness and despair as Gwendolyn insults him. then he ducks as Gwendolyn flings an empty wine glass ay him, narrowly missing hitting him on the head and knocking him out. She cries out as an invisible force prevents her from venting her anger even more....)

"Sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you, but do you rally think you ought to be throwing glasses at the story's narrator?"

"He's not th ereal narrator."

(NARRATOR: The narrator has to admit he is rather insulted-)

"SHUT UP!"

Another voice joined them. "Do you fuckin' mind? I'm trying to sleep here!"

"Sorry Marigold," said Gwendolyn, "But we are going to have to leave this world already." She has realised that it was the only way to outwit the writer, only know that I have revelaed her plan, and voiced her idea that the only way to outwit the writer is to do what she plans on doing, does that mean that the writer now knows what Gwendolyn is planning and will be able to stop her? And perhaps, an even more burning question, should I telephone for th emen in white coats before or after I finsih writing this damned novel?

Marigold sighed irritably and stretched on Gwendolyn's palm, brushing at her golden hair with ehr hand. "How?"

"Lonliness."

They faded intot he ble light that permeated the small room, and it was only after they had gone that a small figure roused itself from it's place in the corner, and looked at their retreating shapes with sad eyes, eyes that always seemed to be watery. The figure wiped at its eyes with grubby fingers and stared around the tiny square confines of its cell.

*

"FDear god, this is one sweet welcome to your fuckin' life, isn't it?" Marigold snapped, wiping the vomit from her mouth. Gwendolyn winched and looked as though she was about to be sick herself, as she handed the marmaid to the invicible man and rubbed her hand on her jeans.

She smiled, "Sorry."

"Well, I didn't bloody ask for this."

"I didn't ask for my former colleague to blow up a plante and get towed by the writer," replied Gwendolyn. "I didn't ask for you two to be tied round my neck." She thought of Charlie and Farne and Verdigris. Leaving them in the black and film of the Invisible man'd world had been the only way to give the writer the slip, but was she even now following them with her mind? There was no way to be sure, except to keep an eye out for various narrative slips.

"What are you doign in my house?" said a voice from (yu guessed ity) the doorway.

"Oh, hello. I'm Gwendolyn. And this is the invisinle man. Obviously you can't see him because he;s invisible, but he is nere. And this is Marigold. She's a mermaid."

The girl in the doorway folded her arms over her slightly transparent check and sighed. Gwendolyn tok a closer look at her - a wispy blonde, pale with high cheekbones, and pale blue eyes. Again, that sensation of looking into a mirror that revealed a different colour. "I said. What are you doing in my house?" she repeated, speaking very slowly and carefuly so that Gwdnolyn understood evert word.

As the gril spoke, Gwendolyn nodded her head with each word, making it look like she was thinking very hard about what was being said. "We're from another place."

"I've had enough of people waltzing into my heouse and making themselves at home. Why don'y ou just-"

At theat moment the invisible man interrupted them. "What's wrong with the light?" he cried, wving his hands in the air. "It's all horror and pain and glorious technicolour!" he tared at his left forearm as though he had never seen it before, which in a way he hadn't done, at least not in the way he saw it, all kind of pale and flesh coloured. Of course, in his world, it was not flesh coloured, but more a sort of pale grey.

Gwendolyn turned on him, throwing her own arms up the air, then catching them and spontaneously reattaching them to her body. "Stop rolling your 'R's', invisible man, you're not in posh brit land any more."

"Yes, you prat, shut up," chipped in Marigold, just for the hell of it. Seiosul;y, why can't I have any characters that are called 'Bob' or 'Tina' or 'Lou'? Why do my chacters insist on being called silly long stupid names lkike Gwendolyn and Marigold and the invisble man, why!???!??!??!

"Thart is a good point, writer, yes<" said Gwendolyn. "Why are you called the invisible man? Do you actually have a real name, or do we just have to call you the invisible man because your copyright hasn't expired yet and the writer doesn't want to get sued."

At which point the invisble man sensibly fainted before he is forced to reveal certain facts about his life that thew riter doesn't want him to in case she gets sued by H G Wells descendants as a result. As the empty looking pile of clothes lid to the floor in a dead faint, Gwendolyn ignored him and stepped over hte body. "I'm really most dreadfulkly sorry for invading your space...? What's your name?"

"My name...? I... name?"

"Yes, do you have a name?" even at this point Gwendolyn was as doubtful as thw writer, but about the fact that the girl standsing in the doorway in front had a name, while the writer wad doubtful about something comepletely different. It her line of work, it wasn't unusual, for anything.

The girl mutely shook her head. I don;'t quite know what we were expecting... for the girl to shake her head to the sound of beels perhaps? But no, she shook it mutely, as you generally do, unless you have a pair of singing potatoes for ears. Gwendolyn put an arm ropund her. "I'm sorry..." she said. Her arm slipped off the girls shoulders and kind of into her. Gwendolyn pulled away with a yelp. "But anyway... we have to go. Nice meeting you, er... you...." she tried to smile and le tout a scream as she fell over the invisible man. She grabbed hold of his huge overcoat as she stumbled and dragged him, and Marigold with her into the quietly shimmering blue wall.

*

Meanwhile Gwednolyn's three droogs were making their way vack to the invisible man's hotel room rather despondantly. Verdigris had spent most of the night hiding under the table stealing money from the other patrons of the pub, and the threeof them were now quite rich by this era's standards.

The snow had turned to a nasty, sleety sort of rian, that poured down relently and was almost invisibl eitself due to th poor light quality of the sepia tones land. Farne held her hands up to her face to shield herself from the worst of the downpour. "Perhaps you should have stolen an unberella as well, while you were at it," said Charlie, who was seriously beginning to regret leaving his leather jacket in the house of creatures. There was a crak of lightning and they all jumped. "Good god!"

Farne started to run, "I bet they won;t even let us in that stupid sodding hotel room, and we';ll be turned out onto the cold to die of rain and hunger and awful early twentienth century deseases!" she wrung her wet hair and snivled, drips of water sliding off her nose. Catching up, Charlie put an arm round her.

"We're going to be stuck here for ever!" She creamed as another crack of thunder and a flash of lightning broke out at precisely the same moment.

"She'll come back for us. In any case, she's got to come back to return the invisible man to his own story, so she will come back, and we'll get out."

Farne laguhed, a high and screeching sound which wasn't really a laugh at all. "You trust heer? How can you - you haven't even known her for a day! I don't even trust you."

"You and Verdigris haven't known her for much longer than I have, and yes, I do trust her. She saved me from a danger i didn;t even realise i was in, because i was so used ot living it I didn;t notice what was really going on."

"Oh, don;t get all poetic..."

A clock started to chime the hour - one, two three four fivve six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen.

"Did that clcock just chime thirteen?" asjked Verdigris.

"No. It was fourteen."

"Was it?"

"Yes. One two three four five six seven eight ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen."

"You missed out nine," said Farne.

"No I didn't!"

SHe put her hands on her hips, "Yes, you did, You said one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen..."

"So I did say nine then!"

"No, you didn't."

"Yes, I did. You're lying. Just because you don;t like me."

"No... you definately missed out the number nine," said Farne.

"Doe sit really matter if Charlie missed out the number nine? The poiunt is that the bloosy clock ha just struck thirteen, and that can't be a good thing!"

"Fourteen," pointed out Charlie.

"Alrihgt, fourteen. But that's still not good. There is no number fourteen on a clock."

"There is if you are using the Demonaterisn decimal clock."

We're trapped in the invisible man," said Verdigris, "Where are wqe going to get a Demonateriam decimel clock from?"

"MAybe she's got one," sid Charlie, pointing. They all spun round to see a figure stumbling through the rain, a hand held up to her face, and a long coat almost a cloak billowing about her person. The figure was all greyish in the rain, onscured and almost pixilated the picture quality was so bad, a black grey shadow in the pounding rain.

*

First 12627 words of Nano 08

Mark fidgeted on the chair as the head of operations flipped through his and Gwendolyns files, playing with her beard contemplatedly. He coughed. "Isn't it against company policy to send me a mission on my own?" he asked.

The head of operations cackled, exposing her long canines. "Red China doesn't have a company policy, as well you should know by now, Mr. Henson. And it's not so much a mission, rather than the end of one."

Mark sighed. "Can't it at least wait until she gets out?"

"No. The assignment has to be completed in 48 hours, our temporal engineers can only hold the thing in limbo for so long, you know. I'm also afraid it looks like your colleague is going to get quite a hefty suspension."

Mark looked up at the head - he hadn't known about thaat. "Another one?"

The head gathered herself together, quite literally, as her nine disembodied and sentient tails had wandered into various crannies and corners of her office. She flipped through the files again so that she didn't have to look up at Mark. "Cracking a superior officer over the head with a bottle of scotch is highly frowned upon at the RCI, not to mention highly inappropriate. It's very lucky Calthorpe didn't have brain damage."

"Well..." Mark began, and then stopped because he realised that what he had been about to say was, 'Well, I don't think he actually had one to start with,' but that was something Gwendolyn might have said had she been here, and in fact something that she probably would say in court, leaned back in her chair, tapping her nails against something disparagingly. Mark glanced up at the head again.

"So... why do I have to do this on my own. Wouldn't you normally assign me with a new partner until Gwendolyn comes back?"

She shrugged and her beard and jowls quivered. "Normally we would yes, but there isn't time to find one before this assignment has to be finished. We'd have to find you a suitable partner who would be able to cope with the mission, character profiles, compatabilitiy tests, briefings, and of course it all depends on who is free and it would take much too long. I'm sure you'll be fine, there's not a lot to do."

Gwendolyn would have argued. Gwendolyn would have picked up the plastic vase of plastic flowers and tipped them down the front of the head's voluminous blouse. Even though the vase didn't have any water in it, it was the thought that counted. He stared at the edge of the head's desk, thinking how he was going to die, and how he was going to kill Gwendolyn when she came back from her suspension, and then how he was going to hug and never let her leave him again, and possibly never let her drink again either.

The head coughed politely. "Is there anything else you need to talk about, Mr. Henson?"

"No. Sorry..." Mark picked up the folder containing his revised mission statement and briefing and left the office. There was a window at the end of the hall, and it was raining - everything was grey sky and the miserable cold droplets of rain beating against the glass.

*

Bruse Redpath of the RCI internal police force flipped open his notepad and held a pen against the paper, poised for action. Gwendolyn leaned back in her chair and raised an eyebrow at him.

Bruce looked at her across the table, and eventually Gwendolyn's eyebrow dropped, her face growing tired of keeping up the expression. Bruce cleared his throat. "Now Gwendolyn. Before we can proceed with the tribunal, we need to have a proper statement from you."

Gwendolyn fidgeted. "Can I have a cigarette please?"

"No, you can't. You're not supposed to smoke." The girl rolled her eyes heavenwards and kicked at the chair leg.

"I've already given you a statement."

Bruse smiled at her. "I know, but we need something a little more objective than..." Bruce opened her file and peeked inside, "'Fucking bastard called me an alien, so I hit him over the head with an empty bottle. He should be glad it was bloody empty!' end quote..."

"I don't remember saying that."

Bruce smiled again. Technically he was her defence council for her upcoming tribunal. Where internal crimes were concerned, defendants who worked for the Red China Institute were not allowed to have their own lawyers. "Well, it is strictly off the record... let's just say you were suffering from a slight chemical imbalance at the time."

"Really? I thought that was the entire case? I was pidoozled out of my head and hit an officer because he insulted me."

"Whilst on duty."

Gwendolyn thought for a moment. "So, if I'd hit him on the head in my spare time it would have been alright?"

"No, but in that case it would have been out of Red China's hands."

"Ah..." She licked her lips and pondered some more. "This isn't being taped, is it?"

Bruce Redpath burst out laughing. "Taped?! You must be joking. Bloody things. No, only a nice hand written record. Can't be tampered with." He glanced down rather guiltily at his notepad, which was still blank.

Gwendolyn saw this too, and leaned forward slightly. "Can I play the racism card?"

Bruse considered this and finally said. "I don't think it'll wash. Tachnically, you are still registered as human. If you'd renounced your native species you would have been alright, but no. Sorry."

"What if I did renounce my nativity?" Gwendolyn asked, tapping the table top thoughtfully.

"That would be a court case in itself. Too much hassle for you, too complicated, and I know you said you'd like this tribunal to be over with as soon as possible."

Gwendolyn nodded. "Honestly, I'll do whatever it takes to get off with a small suspension. I'll be good, and I'll say anything you like." Gwendolyn paused, choosing her words carefully before she spoke again, unsure if she wanted to hear the answer. "How long do you think I'll get?"

"Three months at the very minimum. At worst, I think you could get a permanant expulsion. I think, if you're very lucky and play it right, you might get away with about nine months. Maybe twelve."

"Ok. That sounds... well, yeah, it's not good, but it's ok. It's just Mark I'm worried about, my partner. He'll kill himself if he's left on his own for too long. He won't even mean too, he'll just have an accident or something. It's like we've been working together for so long I'm scared he won't be able to function without me." Bruce gave her an odd, wondering look, mouth twitching as though he wanted to speak but thought he might regret it if he did. Instead, he started to write in the notepad.

"Right... I'm going to do a little statement for you, and then you can have a look at it and see if there's anything you'd like to add. When we've both agreed on something, you need to sign it, date it and I'll do the rest. You might get away with nine months, but don't get too hopeful."

"Right. Ok," Gwendolyn said, and helped herself to a glass of water while she watched Bruce write out the next year of her life.

*

The Visor chuckled appreciatively as the gigantic eagles swopped to the ground in front of him, and deposited Mark at the feet of the black haired and moustached villian.

Mark got to his feet rather shakily. "You git! What happened to letting me find my own way to you?"

The Visor shrugged. "It was getting boring. I'm losing out on my beauty sleep just being here with you."

"Fuck you." It seemed like a good idea to say that when it was still inside his head, like something Gwendolyn would say. Outside, it seemed a little bit childish and pretentious. The Visor seemed to enjoy it though. He laughed, and fingered his moustache.

"Very good!" Mark noticed that his slight German accent was getting stronger. "Such wit you have for a little fellow. But enough of wit anfd games, come and see my magnificent machine..." The Visor put an arm around Mark's shoulders, and pulled him over to the centre of the room. Mark used his free hand, the one not trapped by the Visor's huge meaty arm, to try and tease his gun out of his coat pocket.

"I'll take that. I can't have that sort of thing near my beloved machine. Heaven knows what sort of damage it might do!" The Visor took the gun away from Mark and flung it into the corner with a flourish. It went off, once when it hit the ground and once when it bounced, and both of the Visor's eagles dropped down dead.

"Oh, dear," the Visor said, licking his lips. He giggled nervously, then carried on guiding Mark to the middle fo the room, where a huge metal thing churned and shrieked as it went about whatever dastardly work it was doing.

Mark started to struggle again as they neared the centre of the room and the noise grew steadily louder. "What the hell is that thing?"

The Visor grinned and gestured with his free hand. "My amazing, glorious, fantastic temporal genetic manipulator machine! Fifteen years spent perfecting it, and now you little RCI agentettes come a roving and you try to take it off me! Well, I don't thin that will be happening any more, do you? Now your friend has gone mysteriously missing and you... you..." The Visor chuckled. "You'll see what is going to happen to you. Oh, yes!" The chuckle became a cackle. "Telpedo, activate the manipulator beam!"

A fat, purple haired gorgon leapt up and switched on a button, suffering an electric shock as she did so. "Bugger..." said the Visor, and went up to the control panel himself, to poke ineffectually at it with a stick. "Now, you... what was your name?"

"Mark."

"Yes, you, Mark. You stay there. Just while I get this bloody thing switched on and then you're going to be sucked into the eye of the machine."

Mark scrabbled around on the floor while the Visors back was turned. "I don't think so." His hands had closed around the gun and he was now aiming it at his enemy, a grim look on his face."

The Visor turned. He looked a little bit surprised to find a gun in his face, and his eyes bulged out of his pale face quite interestingly. "I don't think that's a good-"

Mark pulled the trigger.

"Shit," Mark muttered as he tugged open the gun to look inside and found that it had no more bullets in it. The Visor let out a triumphant 'Ha' noise and clamped his hands around Mark's throat. Mark bucked and kicked at the villians balls, and the Visor fell into the machine with a yelp of surprise and pain, leaving Mark to stare into the abyss of metal, mouth hanging open.

"Bloody hell. That was easy." He sprang off to the control panel to try and switch the ghastly machine off for ever, but found his way barred by two clones of the Visor, or maybe it had been a clone that he had just thrown to his death and one of these two was the real Visor, or maybe it was neither of them. Either way, it didn't really matter about the details right now. He neatly side stepped, but managed to trip over the long black cape of the Visor on the left.

"Oi! Watch what you're doing with the cape! They cost an awful lot to have dry cleaned, you know," the Visor on the left snapped as he fell over with Mark, and tried to kiss him. The other Visor tried to pull Mark to his feet, but Mark tugged on his cape too, causing him to fall down like a domino. Unfortunately he was being uncomfortably crushed underneath the two Visors, and found he couldn't breathe.

Mark strained to push out his head from between Visor one's thighs. "Get. Off. Me!" he manged to gasp, grabbing on to the lever that switched the manipulator machine on and off.

Unfortunately, tugging the lever down made the machine run even faster.

"You bloody idiot! We're all going to go into the machine," squawked the second Visor, the slightly smaller of the two. Sure enough, the intense power of the spinning, churning, writhing, metal contraption was dragging them all across the slippery floor. Mark started to swear under his breath again, and kicking, managed to get his arms and one leg free. "I don't think so, you're coming with us."

The second Visor grabbed Mark's ankle and dragged him back. Mark whimpered, pulled himself away from the clones again, slipped on the laminated flooring and slithered into the path of the machine.

Then there was a large explosion.

*

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!!" The writer put her head in her hands and screamed. On her stereo, The Sword Of Damocles blasted. "What happens next?" The writer demanded of Rocky and the cat, Fluffy. "What happens after the large explosion? Tell me!" She snaps her fingers with sudden inspiration. "Perhaps I could leave it there...? No, that would never work. Why am I talking to myself?"

*

Mark was aware of a blinding flash of light and a familiar surge of music. Suddenly he found himself in a red and cream painted room with a dark floor, too stained to tell what colour it had been originally, and tasteful mahogany furnishings. He felt instant recognition, and looked round to see the writer perched behind her desk, listening to the Rocky Horror Picture Show Soundtrack, with a glass of some alcoholic concoction in her hand. She was chewing a pen. "Hello, Mark," she said gaily and turned the music down a little. Meatloaf quieted down a fraction.

"Oh, God. Why have you brought me here?"

The writer grinned. "Why not?" she giggled. "Actually, I'm terribly sorry about this, I'm a little drunk. Mark, I think we should have a little chat. I've always felt that you're not a particularly strong character, and with Gwendolyn gone and starring in her own story for a year, I don't think you've got what it takes to carry your own story."

Mark opened his mouth, but the writer held a finger up to silence him. "Shhh. I like this bit... now then, where were we? Ah yes. Now look, I'm terribly sorry, I know I could give you a new sidekick until Gwendolyn comes back, but I just don't think I have the mental resources for that right now, so... I'm going to have to let you go. Awfully sorry. I really, really am."

"Oh. Gosh. I always thought you liked me."

The writer stood up, put the wine glass down on a pile of books. "Of course I liked you but... you and Gwendolyn were a package, and... this is a hard thing to say to anyone, and it's a worse thing to say to character you created and nurtured and loved and I'd cry if I had any tears left, I really would..." Mark just had time to register that the writer was singing these words vaguely to the tune of 'Eddie's Teddy' when his right hand decided to slap her, without any prior discussion with his brain or any other part of his body. It was rather satisfying to hear the sharp thwack of skin on skin.

"Stop it!" he shouted.

The writer clapped a hand to her injured cheek and raised her index finger accusingly. "I created you! You can't slap me. That's not fair. You can't develop your own sentient character now, there's no point."

"You just sacked me!"

"Yes, I did. Sorry. I really am." She paused, nibbling on her lip, eyes downcast. "I think you'd better go now, don't you?"

The writer watched as Mark flounced out of the room. Her mouth opened slightly as she noticed a glimpse of a spangly stocking below the leg of his jeans. Seconds later she was alone again, or as alone as she could ever be considering what was going on in her head. She took a sip of her cocktail and sat down at the keyboard again, gazed into its murky depths.

*

(Ten Months Later)

Gwendolyn walked up to the doors of the Red China Institute, a suitcase in each hand, butterflies in her stomach at being back. It had been so long, so long living in a normal life, with a normal job in a shop, or in her case, Starlight, a rival secret agency who owed her a few favours. She put a hand on the doors as she entered, closed her eyes as she soaked in the ancient and timeless atmosphere of the place. She place the suitcases on the floor just inside the hall and took a final look at the outside world, at the blue sky and the wheeling, screeching birds.

She knocked on Amish Benzal's door before she even headed to her quarters. He had sent her a note a few days before, requesting that she drop in on him before she did anything else when she returned.

"Ah, Gwendolyn... how are you...?"

She smiled. It was nice to be back. Amish's ellipses danced around her like strange pixies. "I'm very well , thank you. It's nice to be back."

Amish Benzal steepled his hands together and regarded her.

"What's the matter?"

"I think you should sit down, Gwendolyn... How is the outside?"

Gwendolyn sat down, her heart thumping. She was suddenly aware that she had started to sweat, coldly and sickly through her thin t-shirt. "Very fresh, sir."

"Good... And I hope, after this, we won't have to suspend you again. Next time it's likely to be permanant..."

"Yes, I know."

Amish watched her. Gwendolyn smiled reasurringly. Her boss raised an eyebrow. "Coffee?"

Gwendolyn nodded. She folded her hands in her lap, and wondered what he could have to tell her, as Amish picked out two mugs from the cupboard under his desk and filled them both with coffee, handing her a little jug of milk and a some sachets of sugar.

"Gwendolyn... there is something I have to tell you, I'm afraid..."

"Ok."

"Mark's gone."

Gwendolyn stared up at her boss, unaware she was dribbling half swallowed coffee all over herself. "Gone?! What do you mean 'gone'?"

Amish sighed and looked aorund his office as if for inspiration. "He's... been recalled by the writer. She obviously wasn't happy with his performance without you... so she has retired him."

"Retired??!" Gwendolyn jumped to her feet, knocking the coffee all over herself, Amish, and Amish's desk. "Retired? I'll retire her!"

Her boss reached for her hand across the desk to try and calm her down. "No, you won't. You'll only get yourself into worse trouble and if she decides to get rid of you as well... well... you're a straong character. Red China needs you."

Gwendolyn picked up her suitcases, and turned to march out of the door, licking coffee off her chin. "Bollokolls to Red China," she said.

"Where are you going...?"

"I am going to get my partner back. Although I might unpack first. Do I still have the same room?"

Amish nodded and fished in his special drawer of lost and useless things for the key.

"Come on. I haven't got all day. I want to pick my suitcases back up and flounce out of the room before I lose the moment." Gwendolyn sat back down while she waited and poured herself another cup of coffee.

Finally, Amish came up with the goods and tossed her the key. Gwendolyn jumped back up out of the chait, spilt the second cup of coffee all over herself, picked up her suitcases and flounced out of the room, tripping over a set of unused ellipses as she went, cursing (Gwendolyn, not the ellipses).

*

"Hello! I'm Gwendolyn. I'm the girl who got suspended for hitting Colonel Calthorpe over the head with a bottle of scotch, well, it didn't actually have scotch in it at the time, but it was the thought that counted, I suppose. Hi!" Gwendolyn sat herself down in the red plastic chair in front of the Compatability assessors ebony desk. The compatibility officer looked at Gwendolyn as though she was afraid the girl might suddenly sprout tentacles and throttle her with them.

"Yes? Can I help you at all?" asked a small orange penguin, a glove puppet.

Gwendolyn grinned and bent slightly in order to address the glove puppet. "Actually, I am here to look for a new partner. My last one was recalled by the writer, you see." She wondered if she could make her grin any wider.

The officer stared at her impassively, while the glove puppet continued in a squeaky, castrato esque voice. "What sort of thing were you looking for?" The officer reached under her desk with her free hand and brought out a folder, which she flipped open at random to reveal mugshots of various RCI agents, complete with profiles and histories and CVs.

"Erm..." Gwendolyn looked at the folder, suddenly caught out. She had no idea you could just pick a partner. She and Mark had been saddled otgther for five years, completely by accident to begin with, but they had grown on one another. She frowned as she perused the file. "Does no one in this place have a computer? I can't help but thin it would be a lot easier to do all the admin if you had some. And it would take up less space."

The compatibilty officer stared at her as though she had just vomited up a purple unicorn upon the floor. Gwendolyn forced another smile out of her straining face, and decided to shut up.

"Have you found anythin you like the look of?"

Gwendolyn glanced down at the folder in her lap. "No. I've never had to choose a partner before. To be honestm it will only be a only a temporary measure while I get my old one back - I night need some help, so I wondered if you could find me one."

The penguin clapped it's hands togethr happily. "I've got an idea. Why don't you tell me what sort of qualities you're looking or in a potential partner, and I'll have a look throught the files and let you kniw if I can find anything to match?"

"Ok." Gwendolyn sat there for a moment while the penguin gloce puppet looked at her expectantly with its little beady black eyes. "ould I have a piece of paper please? And a pen?"

"Of course," said the glove puppet. The offier grunted as she betn down again and thrust a handful of used envelopes at Gwendolyn, along with a chewed biro. Gwendolyn smiled her thanks and iwiped the saliva and a few odd specks of blue fluff from the pen.

Tapping the pen gently against her left arm (she struggled to resist the urge to start chewing on the pen herself), gwendolyn pondered exatly what attributes she was looking for in a partner. Well, she had to be clevr, know her own mind, be able to give someone a mouthful if needed, be well versed in an obscure and preferably dead language, be able to hit someone over the ehad with a plank of wood. What else? She had to be able to hold her drink, sleep with anyone she fancied on a whim after getting them drunk, able to foil dastardly plans in a variety of interesting and amusing ways, and be able to line dance.

Anything else? Gwendolyn nibbled on the end of the pen ansently. It might be nice if she had had a hard life, series of dodgy boyfriends, possible miscarriage or similer baggage, alcohol problem to give her character a bit og an edge. She loked up. The compatibility officer was pretending to type a letter with one hand, but actually watching her as she went about compiling her list.

"I think I've done..." Gwendolyn hesitated, and then held out her little hseaf of papers. The officer (or rather her glove puppet would) would probably laugh at her when she saw the list of atributes. The officer snatched it from her, as the puppet stared at her with the beady eyes, seeming as though it was snickering at her. The Officer stood up and went into the adjoining room.

"Wait here! I will be a few moments," the glove puppet squawked as the woman wobbled through the door, leaving Gwendolyn to marvel at her outfi, which consisted ofa garish orange dress, pourple tights and a darker orange belt, as well as black four inch heels with bows on the toes. She was just getting onto wondering if the compatibilty officer was actualyl a man when she (he?) returned, cluctching a sheaf of notes and a small folder. She spilled htese onto the table and Gwendolyn looked at them for a moment, not daring to look inside.

"There you go, according to the records and my consultation staff, that's your perfect match. A young woman, recently come onto the singles books, lost her business partyner to a curious accident. twenty five, very bright. You'll like her."

Gwendolyn glanced at the officer, then cautiously lifted the corner of the folder.

"Excuse me. I thin there may have some mistake..."

"No. No mistake. I don't make mistakes."

Gwendolyn sat back in her seat, a relieved and incredulous smile, one of the few genuine ones she had smiled all day, spread across her face. "This can't be right. You've... this is me. You've chosen my file."

The compatibility officer looked stunned, her flabby face turning into a pout, while the glove puppet gesticulated wildly, stubby arms waving in the air. "Well... that wouldn't be too bad, wouyld it? Surely? I mean, if that's what you wrote, and that's who your ideal working partnership would be with, I don't see what is wrong with it. You'd ger on very well>"

"It's me! I can't go and save the world with myself. Surely its against the rules or something. You know, my terms of employment and that kind of thing."

"What about having a custom build Mary Sue made?"

"No!" Gwendolyn slumped back in the chair, even through she couldn;t actually recall ahving got out of it, and massaged her temples. "Are there any other compatibility officers?"

"Only me."

"I suppose that explains why you're a globally recognised and respected department." She looked round the office in despiar. "Alright. If I make out another set of requirements, would you go and find me a partner who isn't me? Similar to the one i already did, but, you know, not me."

The glove puppet shurhhedm which Gwendolyn decided signified acceptance. She pulled a few more bits of scrap paper to her and began to write.

"What about these?" She asked, pushing the scraps of paper to the officer a few minutes later.

The officer squinted at them for a minute, scrunching up her nose. "Perfect," the glove puppet squeaked, "I know just the person."

*

Half an hour later, Gwendloyn wandered down a corridor in the vast depths of the RCI building. This was the campus on the other side to the one she lived in. This dingy white grey hallway was the home of the Robotics and Inventions unit, the area of Red China that dealt with robot aliens and mad scientists. Someone had writen grafitti on the wall - blurred and fuzzy, Gwendolyn could make out words like 'vampire' and 'robot' and blood bath fest' and 'Mars'. A poem on the wall, a quote from an old film. Gwendolyn stopped and looked at the sheet of paper in her hand, illuminated by the shadowy half light of the dirty bulb on the ceiling.

'Farne - flat 22T, R & I. Bring chips'

Gwendolyn knocked.

A short girl, slightly plmump, but still on the right side of being fat, yanked the door open. "Yeah?"

"Hello. I'm Gwendolyn. You're Farne, right?"

Farne blinked, lookedd own at the piece of paper Gwendolyn held in her hand. "Are you one of Verdigris's lot?"

"Verdigris? No. I'm here about the job."

Farne blinked again. She seemed to do that a lot, and gwendolyn was surprised to find that it was rather reassuring. "Oh... you must mean the partnership?"

Gwendolyn nodded.

"Oh.. come in, please. Cup of tea, glass of wine. Vodka? Oh dear, I'm in a hell of a mess. I was boired out of my skull so I was going to sit down and read shakespeare in my jammies..." Farne flew around the room, picing up books and peculiar bits of metal, and cat toys. "Oh, gosh, all Verdigris mess. He can't clean p after himself you know. No fingersd, if you kow what I mean."

Gwendolyn sat down on a cat haired sofa, which she dthought might be beige if only someone would take the time to brush it. Funny, Farne didn't strike her as a cat person. More the sort of person who would buy a cat because of it's adorable little face and big baby eyes, then forget to change its little tray and have the cat walk out in disgust five months later.

"Would you like me to come back later?"

Don't be daft!" Farne had open a bottle of Vodka, and was ferreting around trying to find glasses.

Gwendolyn coughed, in what she hoped was a polite way. "Um... I think I@d prefer a cup of tea. I'm not supposed to drink in the institute. I've been to court."

"Really?" Farne was staring at er, eyes wide and shining with delight. "You've got a drink problem? How... urbane."

"Cheers..." Gwendolyn glanced round the room, dirty white walls and gunge in the corner. "So, what happened to you? Why are you on your own?"

Farne perched on the sofa beside her, and shrugged, her slim pale face contorting as she thought ut her words. "I left my old partner. She was Canadian," Farne said, as if that explained everything. "I just thought, you know, time for a change, time to get out there. I want to get out of this stupid department... what do you do excatly?"

Gwendolyn was jerked out of her comtemplation. She had been hapily listening to Farne's monologue when the girl sudden;y stopped. "Oh... I specialise in Temporal Distortions, people fiddling with timelines, that kind of thing, changing things that have already happened."

"DOn't you have an admin team for all that. The ones that keep all the universes in check and all?"

"Yes... but the're only management. I'm a field agaient..." she trailed off. "Ot I was. I've lost my partner, so I've gone kind of freelance now."

Farne tried to follow Gwendolyn gaze, but whereFarne's point of view ended at the wall, Gwendolyn's travelled, onto a better time and place, where ashe wasn't in this silly mess, before the writer took ark away from her. "What happened?"

Gwendoyn explained, about Mark being retired byt he writer, and about her trial and about the mission she never got to finsih, leaving Mark on hsi own. After she'd finsihed, she said, "Well? Thee story of Gwendolyn Carvetti, what do you think?"

"I'm in. It'll be fun."

The two girls shook hands. Farne was grinning again, reminding Gwendolyn faintly of a laborador that had been let off it's leash and allowed to run around a beach, sticking its nose into filth and wagging it's whole body along with tis tail. "So... how do we go about getting your friend back then/"

"Well, that's the thing..."

*

The writer was dancing around in her study, waving a purple scarf around her head like a feater boa, twirling her arms and kickig her legs in the air like a jeans clad can-can dancer.


Presently she sat down at her keyboard and began to write. The story had been niggling at her for a few hoursa, but she had ignored its plaintative voice in order to go out to the shops and buy a new album, and also to have a glass of wine while she waited for te muse to really strike her.

*

It was winter, probably even Christmas. At the very leastm, it was just befoe or just after Christmas. He walked through the nineteenth century streets, young boys hawking apples, snow falling, ladies rushing to and fro in long skirts and bustles.

He stucj his hands in his pockets and began to trot through the white powdered streets. He went briskly, and he didn';t feel the cold.

There was sudden;y a big sigh from somewhere in the sky, a painted blue with cloluds drifting lazily, a winter sun bleeding through the blue lik emilky egg yolk. A voice muttered something, a voice that seemed to echo through the world. The man in the overcoat looked up, hands still in his pockets.

"Oh, this isn't working at all... it's bloody dreadful. I don't even know what I'm trying to do here..." The voice seemed to some nowhere and yet everyhere at once, a 7rich and warm, reassuring voice. "Look, I'm sorry.... you're an interestign character. I'll keep a record of you and get in touch, ok?"

With tthat the sky closed over the voice, and the man in the overcoat went along on his way, only to be swallowed up by the growing blackness.

Somewhere....

*

"So, how is this going to work then?" Ebveryone looked around, but looked downat the sound of a polite cough.

Gwendolyn looked down at the cat. "I don't know. Sorry."

Verdigris took a pause to link his right paw, and then glanced up at Amish. "Well? This portal thing is your babu, tell me how it works."

Amish looked uncomfortable. "It's a... Literary Transportation and Sympathetic manipulation device. To activate it, you need to attune to the writers thought s and what the writer is writing or thinking about at this actualy moment, and then you're personalities will be able to bleed through into her stories, causing you to actually be there, but she won;t notice you and you won't be part of the plot unless tou make yourselves known."

In response to the blank looks, he conyinued, "You won't be noticed by either the reador or the writer unless you draw attention to yourself. You probably will have to draw attention to yourselves in order ti investigate and find Mark, but hopefully the writer will think she's just writing a story of her own imaging, and she won't realise that we are manipulating her." Amish smiled and looked aorund the room, hopefully, at the three bemused faces.

Verdigris flicked his whiskers. "Great. Did anyone else understand that?"

"I think so." Gwendolyn was looking at the machine - not really a machine, just a small red leather bound book. "I don't get how you built it, or how it works, but I think I understand what it's supposed to be able to do..." She glanced up at Amish, her eyes narrowed slightly. "How the devil did you build it, if you dont mind me asking?"

A secret smile, faintly shilling, lit up Amish Benzal's face. "Now that would be telling, wouldn't it? I'll just say it's based on a type of interdimentional warping."

"WHo tought you to do that? I had no idea that humans had that kind of technology." She looked around at FArne and Verdigris. "What? I'm not hman - I have no shame... I just don't like people saying that I'm not."

Verdigris yawned. "So? I don't care. One allien, one human and one cat - formidable super hero crime fighting team, or what?"

Gwendolyn turned back to Amish. "Hang on. If you... you're not human?"

Again, that small smile lit up her boss's face. "Nope."

"Bloody hell, you got any other little secrets taht you decided not to tell me, I mean, being my supervisor and all, I think it would only be fair."

Amish was silent, appeareing to think. "Can't think of anything, or at least, nothing that can be revealed at this point in the story."

"So... how alien are you, exactly?"

"Mostly." They all waited for him to say something more, but he didn't, just stood there, seeming to challange them with his deep purple glinting eyes, which Gwendolyn had always thought were a bit odd.

It was Verdigris who broke the silence. "Ok... are we going to get on wtih this or what? I hope no one is thinking about opbulishing this drivel, because it's taken us sixteen pages to get tot hsi point in the non story and if it goes on for much longer, I'm in serious danger of dying of old age before the end. I'm a cat you know. I mean, I have various non feline qualities, like being able to talk, bt I'm still only going to live to be about twenty. Can we get n a bit, please?"

Amish picked up the book. "Of course." He held the red book out to Gwendolyn first, who took it after a seconds hesitation. "What's it going to feel like?"

"Probably lik ea transdimensial cellular shift."

"Ok. Great. So, I bit like travelling in time without the machine aspect of the phrase 'Time Machine'?"

"Yeah."

Farne and Verdigris looked at each other, their near identical green eyes sparkling with fear. Gwendolyn smiled at them. "It's fine. It's just a bit of... shock."

"I wish you'd mentioned this bloody book before I agreed to come with you," said Farne.

"That's not how it works. You're not supposed to know what's going to happen before you embark on your fantastic adventure. If people knew about how awful things can get do you really think Bigwig would have bothered? Or Captain Scarlet? Or that bird out of King Kong?"

Farne shrugged, but it seemed she couldn't take her eyes from the little red bound book. "Well..."

Gwendolyn held it at arms legnth. "Activate it, would you? I can't bear the suspense."

"In a moment. There's just one more thing you will need..." Amish went back to his desk drawers and rooted aorund a bit, evebtually digging out a small device that looke very like a mibile phone, mainly because that's what it was. "Here - it's a-"

"Transdimensioanl communications device?" asked Gwendolyn.

"How did you know? When you've got to whereever your're going, give us a call - I've set my office extension to number one on the speed dial. Let us know where you are, if it's somewhere really awful I can call you back and we'll try again in a few mintues."

"Ruight." Gwendolyn licked her lips nervously, vaguely wished she had tken up smoking before she came out. "Where am I going?"

"The writer's' mind. You'll be taking a trip to whatever fictional world is buddling away inside her rotten little head at this very moment, which is why it could change in a matter of minutes." Amish smiled and laid a hand on her arm, squeezing gently. "God help you."

Gwendolyn smiled back, and was surprised to feel a tear springing into her eye. "Thanks. Go on then. Do it, before we all lse the nerve."

*

The writer stripped off the cardigen, and moaned slightly. She stared at the black type on the screen of her computer as she folded her legs underneath her and flexed her fingers in what she hoped was a busy looking manner. Uninspired, she gazed artound her red draped rom, pulled the curtainms back a little more, and considered changing the view outside her window to one of a post Victorian bohemian France instead of the image of modern streets, complete with people scurrying to and fro, intent on various menial tasks.

She pondered the white screen again, and wondered if it might be worthwhile having another break for three hours, tahn having a cup of tea, followed by a further three hour break before sitting down to write anything. But there was something in her head that wouldn't budge.

Sighing, she turned the music on, had a short pause to dance rather frantically for a few minutes, and then plonked back down in her, exhuasted and with her fingers twitching.

*

The light was dim as Gwendolyn opened her eyes. "Oh..." she started as she picked herself up, and then decided that it might not be a good idea to start talking to herself out loud in a dark house. A dark and silent house. She sat up and looked around. The room was dark, lit by candlelight, but she could make out the grey rain filled light filtering in through the grimy bluish curtains and there were lamps and a sofa and what looked like abr alonf one wall of the room. She wanted to say 'Oh, shit' but she bit her lip, and instead reache for the communicator Amish had given her.

"Amish? You there mate?" Her head pounded with the words.

"Don't mate me, Carvetti. Where are you?"

Gwendolyn glance about her agin, not sure what to say. "It ;looks like an old house. It's raining. It doesn't seem too scary."

She heard a sig on the other end of the line, and Verdigris and Farne talking to each other. "Don't underestimate the writer, Gwendlyn. Have you seen anyting living?"

"Not unless you cound the spiders, no." There was something teasingly familiar about the room and the house, though, and it wasn't good. She felt as if she had visited it in a dream, or somewhere she had lived in a previous existance. There was no sound though, no people that she could hear, She stepped ot the window, and saw how bog the house really was through the marks on the window and the swishing rain. There were some lights on, but they too were dim and there was no movement or shadows behind them that indicated life. In a house this big, who ould tell?

Amish coughed. "Can I send the othetr two through?"

"Yes. I thikn we'll be alright. If it gets too bad, I expect there will be a portal somewhere around here, so we can slip into story."

That was the good thing about fiction. Gwendolyn had never worked in the literary department before, but she had an ida f the basics. Every story was somehow connected to another staory, eiither by the same writer, or another. Most pieces of fiction had more than one link. Just looking at the house, Gwendolyn could see portals to two of the writers previous stories, and two or three stories by other people that were similar in some way to this one. "The butler in the ballroom with the dagger...." she muttered

"Sorry?"

Gwendolyn laughed. "Sorry, Amish. This place... it looks like the Cluedo house."

"That's probably not a good thing. Hundreds of stories branching off from that one idea, and non of them particularly good."

"I don't thnink we're going to get anywhere nicer. I've been living inside this woman's head for a lot longer than you havem, Amish, and she can come up with some mighty hundingers, I can tell you."

There was a pause on the other end of the line. "She knows you're there, Gwendolyn."

"I know." Gwendolyn knew an attempted character shift when she felt one.

"Up to you. I can recall you, or I can send these guys over. If I send them over, you will be on your own. I won't be able to generate enough power to een talk to you."

It was just an empty house, but it had the potentaill to be so much more. And who had taken the tme to light all these candles?

"Ask them. If they don't want to come through, I@ll come back and we'll try again later."

She heard a brieh spate of mumbleing, while Amish spoek to her two companions. She heard Farne's slightly annoying, high pitched voice rise in what sounded like an affirmative, and a second later a shimmering figure apperae din the room beside her, n top of the pool table.

"What kind o moran wastes money on candles when he has perfectly good lamps?" asked Verdigris. He looked around the room before falling over and being violently sick on the green fabric.

Gwendolyn came over and stroked his fur while he was coughing out the rest of the mucus spittle. "Oh, god... Verdigris. I should have warned you better. You've never done a moleucasr transfer before have you?"

"Have I bollocks! I'm from the streets of Nottingham. Bloody hell."

She smiled. "You get used to it."

"I bloody won't. If I have to do this agian, I'm going to die. On purpose. And stop fondling my tai, you pervert!"

Gwendol;yn abrubtly let go. "The portals are better. The more similar a story is to another one, apparebtly the easiler it is to shift between them. This world is probably nearly as far from our world as we can get, which is why Amish found it so hard to get us into the writers mmind."

"Frigging jargon..."

At that moment, Farne arrived. She seemd to take the trip a lot better than Verdigris had, and even better than Gwendolyn did. She arrived standing up, at least, and clung to a lifesize suit of armour, her eyes closed whle she gto her breath back. Gwendolyn scowled.

At last Farne opened her eyes. "Wow.. my great granded used to live in a house like this. He was one of the manservants."

"Really," said Gwendolyn, rhetorically.

"Yeah. Til he got shot for trying to usurp the mastr of the house and murdered several of the guests at a dnner partu." Both of Farne's companions gave her a withering look.

"Let's not talk about that now. I'm just expecting Tim Curry to waltz into the rom in a pair of suspenders in a minute," said Verdigris, tail twitching.

"Don't tempt her," replied Gwendolyn. She picked up a small metal figurein from on top of one of the bookcases. It was some kind of angel with devils horns and a tail. It also appeared to be either naked, or wearing a skin tight garment that was very inapproprate for an angel.

Suddenly the grandfather clock in the corner of the room chimed and they all scrreamed, the cat jumping a full metre in the air andf fleeing behind Farne in terror.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.

And nothing else happened.

When they had all got their breath back, Gwendloyn sprang to the door, heavily wooden and silky to the touch, and pulle dit open. "Come on! I'm not going to let this house freak me out. Let's go and do some exploring."

"I knew it would come to this. I'll give her exploring, I'll explore her leg with my claws. That'll teach her to go knocking around an old house in the middle of the night." Verdigris, nontheless, trotted aftern her, eaving Farne to glance warily at the grandfather clock, and eventually follow the other two out of the room.

They found themselves face to face with a large and ornate staircase, carpeted with some rich and brightly coloured material that had now faded into a shadow if its former glory. Verdigris bounded up the stairs, crouching down as he neared the top and peering over into the blackness of th landing beyond. Nothing. Not even a quickly moving shadow flitting into darker shadows. Not even a figure at the end of the corridor, staring at him intedntly and beconing him forward. He looked down at the dim and nrvous looking faces below him. "It's ok."

The woman came up the starirs together, Gwednolyn probably a footstep ahead of Farne, who dropped down beside her cat and peered through the bannisters.

"What are you doing?" asked Gwendolyn. "If this place is empty, I propse we should go back down to the bar and get smashed." She ignored the looks the cat and Farne gave her and pushed open the nearest door, shutting it again a second later with a squeal and pressing herself against it as if to keep it shut. "Oh my!"

"What is it?" asked Farne.

"You don't want t know."

"Is it anything to do with I said earlier?" asked Verdigris.

"Not exactly, no..." Gwendolyn eased away from the door, expecting it to burst oen aagin at any moment.

Farne went up to the nearest door on the other side of the stairs - the mirror opposite of the one Gwendolyn had opened. She stood with her hand on the doorknob, while Verdigris and Gwendolyn crept up behind her.

Farne opened the door to the same near complete darkness. She could make something out in the shadows - something like a piilar.

A voice said. "Come inside." It was a gentle and educated voice that seemed to come from nowhere. There was a rustle from deep inside the room and Farne slammed the door shut before the kind and seductive voice coudl tempt her.

"I think our next step is to find a potal and get out of here."

"Not so fast."

"Oh, for heavens sake..." said Gwendolyn, rolling her eyes skywards.

The speaker was a female butler, holding a gun at arms length. She had blonde hair piled into a bun at the back of her head, a skirt that was just below her knees, and was dressed like a cross between a maid and a butlers, with a sort of black fitted jacket and a wiastcoat. She didn't look mad, or obscene, or particularly murderous. But Gwendolyn found she couldn't take her eyes off the gun. "Who are you?" asked the butler-maid. Her voice was trembling, and although she had her head held back in a look of defiance, her blue eyes were wide with fear.

Gwendolyn stepped forward, arms held out to signify that she wasn't athreat. "I'm sorry. We're travellers. We found ourselves in your house by accident. It's quite alright, we are going to go in a minute. There's no need to take us to see the master of the house, absolutely no need."

The butler wavered. "There isn't one. Not any more."

"What happened to him? Or do we want to know?" piped up Verdigris.

The butler looked surprised, and stared at the cat. "He's dead. I had to shoot him. Something is happening in this house. You are right... if you can't help me, you should go." She looked beyond them, at the door they had jjust opened. "Have you opened any of the doors?"

"One or two," said Farne.

The butler instantly went pale. "They will be restless. The raven will want feeding. And did you disturb... them?"

Gwendolyn knew who she meant. Those creatures behind the first door she had opened. "Yes. Sorry."

The butler's gun hand wavered. "I have to look after them all," she said. "Since it happened, I've worked so hard to subdue these poor... things, give them each their own part of the house. I try to keep it all under control, but it's so hard. And people are attreacted to this house, and when they come, they find their way into the arms or the claws and they die, and I'm only one person." She sat down heavily in a chair, and Farne went to comfort her, which was instantly a mistake, becasue a second later the gun was trained at her face, and the butler was gripping her arm fiercely.

"Help me. The three of you, together we can patril this house and keep people safe we can have our own parts of the house. Work shifts. Don't you see? We can make it work!" Her eyes her shinging with a horrid, tired feverishness. Farne stoodd still, not daring to struggle.

Gwendolyn moved forward, and the butler's death grip on Farne's arm tightned. "Don't."

"I won't. I want to help you. Tell us what happened."

"The history of this house is too much to tell. But if you stay, and you will stay, we can mend it... make them better, or at least help them and keep them here so they can't spread their horror into the world."

"They?"

The butler laughed. It was a bitter and hollow sound. "All kinds of they. Those two doors hold the first of many secrets." Gwendolyn kept looking at the gun, thinking that the burlet's grip on it was tenuous enough. If only her concentration woul waver for a few seconds it would give her chance to snatch it and allow them all to run. Probably the woman had another gun shoved up the back of her tights. It sounded a likely scenario.

"Alright, Evangeline. That's enough." Gwendolyn's nerves were so strung out at the sound that she creamed, clapping her hand to her mouth to stop it. The gun went off and Farne screamed too, while Verdigris shot back down the staircase, only to run back up again, mewling in fright, with a large dog at his heels, red eyes rolling in its head. Farne, Gwendolyn and Verdigris huddled togeher, peering to the end of the hall to where the strangers black shadow could just be seen. The butler had fainted at the sound of her gun, whioch she had probably nevcer fired befor ein her life.

The stranger stepped out into the candlelight near the stairs. "Poor Evangeline." He looked down at the slumped figure temderly. "You couldn't help me carry her back to her room, could you? They have a habit of getting out."

"Who the hell are you?" spat Gwendolyn. The new arrival raised one eyebrow and flicked a fleck of spittle from his leather jacket.

"Calm down. I haven't got a gun, I'm speaking nice and quietly, and I'm not wearing tights, or suspenders." At the final words, he looked at Verdigris, who pushed himslef further into the gap behind Gwendolyn's legs and the wall.

"Tell me who you are, first. Then we'll see."

The man sighed. "Very well. My name is Charlie Smith. I'm a reasuring and knowledgeable gestalt figure."

"Charlie Smith?" Farne queried.

"It's not my real name, of course. I dont' have a real name. But it's nice and reasuring, don't you think?" He stepped forward, and they all shrank in fear. Charlie bent down to take the butler's pulse. Then he bent down to retrive the gun, and held it out to Farne. "There you go. You can shoot me if I try any funny business. Now you, what's your name?"

"Gwendolyn."

"Gwendolyn. Charming. Would you be so kind as to helo me carry Miss Redding back to her room, and then I suggest we have a little dinner and a chat. And on't talk to any of the other.. guests."

*

Half an hour later, the four of them were seated at a grand wooden dinner table, spread with white napkins and two sets of cutlery per person, ornate wine glasse son the table. Gwendolyn had refused any foor, and Farne had followed suitm but Verdigris was tiucking happily into a chicken leg and purring his pleasure. Their host nibbled on a chicken sandwch, and watched the three guests warily. Three of the wine glasses wee full of a sweet white wine, that Gwendolyn had chosen at the back of the cupboard and then opened herself, after wshing her and Farne's glasses.

She took a sip of the wine and stared at Charlie equally warily. "Ok. Tell us. What has happened here? Why are you here?"

Charlie sipped his wine while he thought, and then stroked hs dark stibble reflectively. He had taken the jakcet off to reveal a pair of suit trousers and a plain black shirt. "I'll start with me, I suppose I'm the guardian. The guardien of this house, and the things in it. That oart of what Miss Redding said was true. There are creatures from many different stories living in this house, and it's my job to keep them all in order."

Gqwednolyn looked at her wine glass, at the colours, crystallised pale yellow and green. "These creatures... are they just the writers creations, or characters from other stories?"

"Both. Miss Redding belongs to the writer, the Raven is Mr Poe's character What you saw is a bit of the writers and a bt of someone else. There are three spaceships in the basement, all from different planets, adn currently there are five murder mysteries taking place in this same house, just different parts. It is also haunted by a variety of different ghosts, and approximatey four peope are going mad, beleiveing themselves to be alone in this house and in the univers."

"Sounds like fun," asid Farne.

Charlie smiled.

Gwendolyn poured herself more wine, offering it around the table. Farne shook her head, and Charlie held a hand up to demur politely. "And what does that make you?"

"I told you what I am. I'd quite liek to know how you cae to be here. I've got every creature in this house catalogued, eveen the abstracts things that don't really exist. How did you arrive? I should have alarms warning me when there is an intruder."

Farne and Gwendolyn looked at each other before Gwendolyn spoke. "We come from another universe. One created byt he writer, but different from yours." However, that wasn't quite true. Things were similar. Charlie himself looked like Tiayln, a man she used to know before she and Mark returned to Earth and settled into their life at Red China. Charlie spoke like someone else, someone equally familiar, although she couldn't place him, but he looked like the man who genetically her second father. She wondered if there another version of herself in this dreadful huse, some hussy with black hair and vampire teeth, or a frightened little girl being hunted by a demon. And Mark... perhpas Mark was here too, in this other universe.

"We're lookingf for a friend of mine. He was retired by the writer because of his chacter. This house is the first place we came to from our own world."

Charlie pushed away his plate and steepled his fingers together. "I see." He paused, as though about to say something more, but then sank down into thought.

The door burst open. A young woman, naked, with her dark hair billwing out behind her, was screaming as she tore through the dining room. She was followed by a snarling hump backed man with cropped and bleached hair, salivering and apparently wearing a purple dress.

Charlie rolled his eyes and smiled faintly. "Sorry. Excuse me," he said with a nod. He opened the door at the other end of the dining room, allowing the woman to slip through. "That way, up the stairs," he said, pointing.

"Thanks," the woman gasped before running through the door. Immediately Charlie shut it and draw a bottle of perfume from the table near the door, which he sprayed in the creatures face. It stopped, sniffed the air, wrinkled it's nose, and burst into tears. Charlie csnapped his fingers.

Farne screamed as the chandelier cam crashing down on top of the hump back man.

Gwendolyn leapt up. "What-"

"Every night. Every night he trie to kill her." Charlie pulled the remains of the chandeliar off the vcreatures body, and together, he and Gwendolyn dragged the body out of the room and throught the door he had run through.

Charlie dusted his hands. "Now, I think you had better go befor one of you gets killed."

"What about you?" asked Farne.

"I belong here. My story is here, with them."

Gwendolyn touched his hand briefly with hers. "I'm sorry."

Charlie smiled at her, and Farne didn't like the look of tenderness that passed between them.

"Smith!?"

Charlie started at the voice, his composure gone. He shrugged off his sudden fear and drew himslef. "Yes?"

"I need you up here. Bring your new... friends. I have plans for them."

"No, I'm sorry, Gwendolyn," he said, as he picked up the gun that still ay on the dinner tabel where Farne had left it.

She sighed and walked through the door as soon as he gestured to it, indicating that Farne was to follow her. Verdigris left his chicken bone and went to follow them, but she shook her head slightly, and the cat stayed where he was on the table, likcing his chops, and trying to shrug off the bib that Farne had put around his neck while he ate. Then they were gone, leaving the cat alone.

"Are there any nice dark old mansions? This is really clouding my judgement. I mewan, whenever I end up in a lonely old house in the middle of nowhere in the futue, I' going to like 'uh-oh, what going to happen?'"

"I told you, you should have got out of here," muttered Charlie, walking behind them, hte gun poised. His body was clearly being controlled by whatever was upstairs. Probably a maniac with a meat cleaver and groupies.

The door swung open slowly, creaking, as they had both known it would. "Go on in," said Charlie softly.

Gwendolyn went in first. She felt it was her duty to do so. The room was brightly lit and windowless, the light coming from two overhead strips of artificial lighting, bookcases and an old fashioned radio set along the wall. There was a dark green sofa in the middle of the room opposite the bookcases, just in front of a large red curtain that separted the room into two halves.

"Well, aren't these two pretty? And so clever, too. Well done, Charles."

The huge woman propper herself up on one green sequinned clad elbow and gestered for them to sit beside her. "I think I will have the eyes from this one, and the hair from the other. How delicious! Charles, do stop standing there with that gun. You're making me nervous as though you like it to go off. Put it down."

Charlie put the gun in the cupboard, and went to the womans side, looking away from the daggers of hate Gwendolyn was looking at him with. The woman swung her legs off the sofa, and Gwendolyn saw how shapely they were as they poked out from the flimsy green material she had draped herself with. It was quite grotquese, seeing this woman with a quivering and jelly like mound of fat from the top of her head to her wobbling bottom, with the legs of a woman half her size and probably half her age. They were a slightly different colour to the other exposed areas of the woman's flesh, a healthy brown so unlike the sickly pinkish yellow of the rest of her complexion.

Farne tried not to shudder as the woman reached out and stroked at a piece of her long golden hair, shutting her eyes and smiling, probably imagining the same locks being on her own head. She turned to Gwendolyn and looked into her violet eyes. Gwendolyn held her stare, looking into muddy brown, and vaguely cowlike pits, which seemed to glow with an inner fire.

Neither Farne nor Gwendolyn noticed Charlie creeping up behind them.

Gwendolyn got the hypodermic first. Gasping as the needle pierced her arm, but not having time to do anything before the dose hit her and she collosped, her head hitting the soft cushion of the sofa and bouncing off. Farne kicked at Charlie and turned to run.

"No, sweetie. You're staying right here," said the woman, who grabbed her arm while Charlie plunged a fresh hypo into her arm with a flourish, so practised was he at injecting any visitors to the woman's mansino. She was a creature of terror like any other, and it was his job to keep her under control, but she was stronger than the others, and they all rented rooms in her house, nowing that they wer safe and that they would have someone to care for them until the time came to live their story. She could control minds, and could cal people to the mansion when she desired it, and she ha an immortal mind and the desire for a perfect body, and no one lived long enough to run screaming into the night from her house.

Only those who lived there, waiting dormant in the writers mind for their stories to be told, or living out their retirement years in peace after their narrative had taken place. But for Charlie, the butler who could never reveal his true name, whose job it was to be caretaker of the house, and whose likeness was a feature in so many stories, but never him himself.

Charlie carried the limp bodies into the second half of the room, and strapped Farne and Gwendolyn to the metal operating slabs, while the woman busied herself abot getting her equipment together. Quite why Farne needed to be unconcsious just to have her hair cut off was anyone's guess, but knocking people out seemed to be part of the woman's regime and it didn't seem semsible to question her. Not with that gigantic huge sharp knife she had in her hand anyway.

Mirabelle threw the carving knife over her shoulder, and instead seclected a very thin and delicate scapel with which to remove Gwendolyn's eyes. She arraged this, along witha swab and some sterilising fluid, on a little tray next to Gwendolyns slab. "You'll have to put my eyes out for e and slip hers in when I've cut the out," she said. "I won't be able to see." She chuckled. "after that I will put my eyes in the girls head. I'd like them both to see how beautiful they've made me."

"Yes, Mirabelle." He looked down at Gwendolyn and thought of her eyes and the way she had smiled at him. He could still feel the soft pressure of her hand on his. No other girl who had come to this place had done that. None had touched him so deeply inside, and he'd stood by and let them be killed, not that he could have done anything to stop her. But then, none of the other girls had had a cat.

His mistres caught his look. "Oh, dear. We're not getting all sad for the pretty girls are we?" she clucked her tongue and went back about her work, sharp scissors for Farne, morphine for Gwendolyn for when the time came.

She turned on the lamp above Gwendolyns head, then the one baove Frne's. She didn't need the extra light, but Mirabelle liked to get a lcose look at what she was doing. Charlie saw the small shape creeping in the door, a ginger cat intent on keeping himself as low down on the ground as possible. He said nothing He didn't even allow a small, hopeful smile to cross his face. She could make him kill Verdigris if she knew he was there, make him kill the only rthing that stood btween Gwendolyn and disfiguration, possibly even death, if the pain was very great. He imagined his body moving to her command in slitting the cats throat and tossing the body into the corner to be disposed of later, or made into a nice stole for his mistress. He kept silent.

Verdigris had hidden under a table ocvered with a clean white tablecloth, and was crouching therem watching everything. Charlie oculd see the glint of his green eyes. He summoned up enough of his own will to wink at the cat when Mirabells's back was turned, and the cat blinked back, slowly.

"Do you think I'll need the saw?" asked Mirabelle.

"I shouldn't think so, ma'am."

Mirabelle shrugged and turned away from him, putting her hands on her vast hips and surveying her tools. She pulled on a white lab coat over her green dress, and pulled on a pair of bright green rubber gloves. Charlie saw Verdigris shoot out from his hiding place, but didn't say anything. He didn't know where the cat was going, and wondered if he was fleeing.

Mirabelle turned to him. "Don't just stand there! Come along, and hold this one's eyelid's open. So she was going ot do Gwendolyn first. He took the girl's head in his hands.

"Step away from the girl, you bitch." Both Mirabelle and Charlie glanced up in shock as the voice rang out over the tannoy system that was rigged up inside the house. Charlie was stunned because the voice was so similar to his own, his accent. Mirabelle wheeled round, dropping the long thin scapel that she had been holding, and thn wheeled straight back round to fac Charlie, he rmouth open. She pointed at him. "You?"

"No, ma'am."

"No, Ma'am." The voice was echoing him, and a small shadow crossed the room and something jumped up on the table.

"Oh my god!" Farne was awake and stared at the apparition on top of the white table.

It was Verdigris, but he was unrecognisible, in tiny golden spangly coat, wearing small stockings on his feet with suspenders and a doll sized basue. Completeing the outfit was a hat with a feather in it and a b;ack and pink feather boa. As they watched, the cat flung off the golden coat. "Come on then, I'm taking requests. I;m thinking I could doi a few little numbers and then we could all have a nice sing song and an orgy. It would be much nicer than hacking bits off each other, wouldn;t you say?"

Twirling the feather boa around his head, Verdigris started to sing the first thing to come into his head, which, unfortunately was the first thing that came into the writer's head, which unfortunately happened to be 'Wire to Wire' by Razorlight (well, I've namedropped way too many songs from the Rocky Horror Show in this damned thing and it looks like it is started to border on an onsession). Mirabelle steppe closer to him for a better look.

Upon finisheing his song, Verdigris did a little dance along with a high falsetto note and launched himself at the womans fat head. She screamed, as he dug huge red rivlets into her skin with his claws. Mirabelle screamed and flailed under him, but the cat was stronger than she anticipated. "Charles!! Charlie boy, com and save me. Fucking kill the cat!" she roared, grabbing for him with ehr own red manicured claws, but missing every time as he was too quick for her sluggish arms.

Verdigris jumped clear of her, so he could see both irabelle and Charlie clearly. "No you don't, lady. No one is going to kill me." But he looked up to see Charlie advancing towards him with a large meat cleaver in his hand. He looked back at the huge woman on the floor beside him, struggling to get to her feet, and shot inside the front of her vile green dress, stealing himself against the sharp smell of stale body odour as he burrowed about between the thin material and the woman's skin. He could see light in between the threads, and Charlie's hesitating siholete.

"Bastard! Get the little shit of my sodding three thousand dolar dress," howled the mountain of flesh as she bashed at him with her huge hands. He shot out of the other side of the dress, and as Charlie lunged at him with the cleaver, Verdigris ran to Farne's slab and tugged at the strap holding her arm fast. She saw what he was doing and pulled the gun out of his basque, wheere he had been concealing it, and shot Mirabells sveeral times, but at least five and no more than six.

Verdigris wen about freeing his friend, pulling the straps free with his teeth, while they waiti=ed to see f the woman was alive or dead. Charlie was no bother. He was standing in the middle oif the room, holding the cleaver above his head, and seemed to be in a state of shock.

"|Charlie? Are you alright?" shouted Verdigris, while Farne set about removing the starps that held the still unconcsious Gwendolyn to her slab.

Charlie's head twictched, as though he was trying to turn to look at Verdigris. "I don;t know. I think she's dying, and she;s trying to keep a hold of mybody, but it isn't working, and I can't get control either..."

"Then drop the bloody cleaver! Can you do that?"

"Is Gwendolyn alright?"

"She's fine, just drop the bloody cleaver!"

Mirabelle mumbled something through the blood on her lips. Charlie turned around and flung the cleaver at Verdigris. The cat tried to duck. The huge knife struck the sla that Farne had been lying on appeared to bounce off it, but a second latert there was a scream of pain. Mirabelle smiled briefly and her chest ceased to move with her breathing.

"Verdigris! You bastard," Farne put a hand to her cat's head. He was writhing in pain and trying to lick at the jagged stump where his tail had been sveered. "I'll kill you dor this, you bloody tosser, you can help me fix him up. Oh, Verd, it'll be alright. I promise. We'll reattach it." She was sobbing now. Charlie, now back in control of his own body, credpt up to her, and tried to put a hand on her shoulder. "get off me before you kill someone else!"

Charlie was surprised to realise he was crying. "No, Farne," he aid. He put a hand on her shoulder again and swungher round to face him. "We have to do something about that stump before he dies of blood loss." He picked up the hypo again, refilled it with a morphine dose. Verdigris decided to bite his hand while he was injecting him, all the while glowering at him with hateful green glowing eyes before he passed out, too weak and shcoked to even utter onscedntites.

"I;m so sorry." Farne gave him the same look, but helped him as he went about fixing up the cat. It didn't take long, and then Verdigris's tai, or what remained of it, was all bound up and cauterised. "It's lucky it happened here..." said Charlie, trying to make a joke out of it and ailing miserably. Farne took up a potision next to the cat;s bed whil ehe slept off the anesthetic and Charlie went thought the details of what sort of pain medication he might need while the wound healed.

"You seem to know an awful lot about all this."

He couldn't catch her eye. He had helped with too many of Mirabelle's 'operations' for him to count. Legs, face, fingers, skin, nose, all replacements, all the poor doners requiring care after the surgery. "Yeah..."

They sat togeter in silence, Farne watching the cat to make sure he was still breathing. "Why hasn't she woken up yet?" asked Charlie, indicating Gwendolyn.

"She's only part human. No doubt whatever you gave her in that injection has affected her more badly than it did me." She gave him that bitter look of hatred again. Charlie sat on the slab previously occupied by Farne and watched Gwendolyn. She looked peaceful and her body moved gently with her breaths. Regulkar. Heartbeat was regulat too, but really he had just wanted an exse to touch her. Perhpa sshe would never wake up. And maybe that ws a good thing after what he had done.