In space, the banshees sulk.

And sealed inside the deactivated and lightless life-support pods, without oxygen, or warmth without, in point of fact, life, something slumbers patiently because when your sleep is eternal, you learn things like patience.

Humans, with their soft bodies and multiple addictions, food, water, oxygen, daylight, social interaction and stimulation, are not creatures well adapted to space travel, never will be. The only way you can get a human even a step off the planet is with a small fortune’s worth of machinery and knick-knacks.
Their being up there, in absurd, clumsy life-support costumes is not a testament to either their brains or superiority. A man on mars is not a triumph of the human spirit, any more than a cat in the ocean is a testament to felines.
Some things just shouldn’t be where they inexplicably are.

Some things however, were born for interstellar travel, born waiting, born in a place so inhospitable to them, born in such absurdity, that flight to the stars is very truly ascension.

The I.S.S Mithras glided gently through space though its lights were off and its engines had gone cold, it was animate still.

* * *

His Imperial Majesties Customs and Excise
Report #0985
Port: E14-78-65
Planet: A700

The missing I.S.S Mithras has been detected entering the outer boundary of the territory at fifteen hundred (Imperial Standard Time). Attempts at contact were unsuccessful and the ship appears to be almost completely deactivated, with only minimal electrical activity detected, this could be accounted for by any number of small apparatus still in operation on board the vessel.
Giving out no heat or comm signals, the ship was detected entirely by accident when the freight vessel Conifer made a visual sighting.
No damage to the craft can be found on our initial scans and we are not yet aware of what fate has befallen the crew, or what caused the I.S.S Mithras to break contact six months previous.
I have dispatched a retrieval craft to bring the ship into port, and with your permission will begin a more detailed examination.
I am hopeful that the mining equipment will be retrieved undamaged, this being the case, when combined with insurance pay-outs for the lost crew, and fuel savings made from the ship being in black-out, we can expect still to make a satisfactory profit from the vessel that more than compensates for its delay in arrival.
The potential loss of the communication equipment is regrettable.

Victory to the Empire

Junior Officer M. Hilder

* * *

E14-78-65 was a busy mining port, and sifting through even a week’s worth of its outgoing communications prior to the black-out had been a thankless task.
Finding anything even possibly suspicious, on a death-trap planet where everything and anything was toxic to human life was like trying to find a needle in a pincushion.
At the time of blackout there were seven different outbreaks of plague, two of which were as yet undocumented by Imperial science, four crashes, three gas leaks, the entire northern wing of the port was in lock-down after the unpleasantness with the union who had had to have their air switched off. The lights had failed forty eight times, and on a planet with no sun that meant a couple of fatalities every time, the eternal winds were in the habit of disrupting communications on such a regular basis, that no one had even noticed the port was, from a filing perspective… gone.
John stared at the files before him, an easy third of which were contenders for the loss of the station and he couldn’t help but wonder if the loss of just one port on A700 really warranted all this hassle.
But hassle for John was not hassle for his employers, two units an hour was not hassle, compared to the potential loss of an entire port.

* * *

In fairness, space is a big place, and it’s not that nobody noticed or cared when A700 vanished off the proverbial radar it’s just that when you’re running an interstellar empire, a small planet can slip through the net. You have to prioritise, the tentacle things that had invaded Section H … the tentacle things that we had invaded in Section LK, internal politics, economic turmoil, these things keep you busy.

So it was a big Eventually when the alarm bells started sounding in the heads of government officials.
A700 had gone AWOL, and it was a billion miles away from any tentacles.
Two years and four months after the I.S.S. Mithras had broken contact and vanished, people started to ask questions about planet A700, questions like “Where has it, and it’s population of nearly one hundred thousand actually gone?”

* * *

The military vessel came out of orbit to land at E14-78-65, it’s landing thrusters were the only source of light, scanning equipment having largely made headlights redundant on spaceships, they’re generally left off except in unusual circumstances.
There was a huge echo as it touched down and the landing bay was plunged once again into darkness until somebody could find the switch for the external lights.
It looked at first very much how you would imagine an abandoned port to look but then… you noticed how tidy it was, and perhaps you would think to yourself that this is in fact not how an abandoned port looks. It was in good repair, it was clean, no sign of any violence, it looked in fact in much better condition than it ever had been during its functional career… but it was deserted.
The team was no invasion force, it consisted of a pilot, a team leader, two marines, a customs officer, a clerk from the Accounts Department of Imperial Mining Concerns and a junior health and safety Observer, whom the marines had instructions to shoot in any suspected instances of misbehaviour.
“Can I smoke without exploding the planet?” asked the pilot, already searching for his lighter.
“Scanners say the air outside is non-flammable but non-breathable… “
“Let me know when it’s home time.”
The military personnel had been woken up earlier than the others who were only now emerging from their life-support pods in their dressing gowns.
“Well,” muttered the accountant, “The sooner we figure out why everyone is dead the sooner we can all go home… Where are the spacesuits?”
The atmosphere was almost breathable, but not quite, and the auxiliary atmosphere in the port was switched off, so the whole team were obliged to put on the huge unwieldy imperial-issue spacesuits.
“If this all turns out to be an April Fools prank like on G545, I won’t be impressed,” muttered the customs officer as he tried to work out where his legs went into his suit.

* * *

Naturally (or unnaturally as the case may be), something was watching, something whose opinions about the need for light could be described generously as “ambivalent”, but more realistically as “outright hostile”, something that was quite content to stare through the pitch black at the clumsy humans stumbled out of their craft searching for the on-switch on their torches.
They staggered at a snail’s pace with their arms outstretched, groaning as they did.
Vlad signalled to the two revenants beside him, perfectly preserved thanks to atmospheric conditions that made the usual processes of decay almost obsolete.
Perfectly comfortable with neither strong gravity, or any need to breathe, they leapt gracefully towards the humans who were, unsurprisingly, perturbed to see two glassy-eyed corpses appearing suddenly in their torch beams, speeding towards them with the grace of ballet dancers.
The soldier-humans fired their weapons, because humans are slow learners, as the dread creatures closed inevitably in on them.

* * *

The Health and Safety officer was staring at the ceiling, or would be, if he still had his torch. He didn’t want to move, he was fairly sure that one of the marines had shot the Team Leader by mistake, he was certain that one of the guns had jammed and the… well let’s say “zombies” had torn the marine easily to shreds. He had tried to run, never a good idea in a suit five times your own bodyweight and the last thing he had seen was his torch smashing as he hit the ground.
His radio hissed static, it was probably broken, he wasn’t going to announce his presence by trying to find out. This was definitely a health and safety issue of some kind or another. A foot hit the floor mere inches from his head… he began to suspect that he was no longer staring at the ceiling.

* * *

The pilot was what is known as a “class two”, which is to say he had undergone an eight week educational camp were he was trained in such arts as Martial Economics, the result of which being that he knew, for example, that an imperial scout team cost eight hundred thousand units, once one took into account equipment, training and likely compensation pay-outs, that customs and H&S officials were ten-a-penny whilst an Imperial Scout Craft cost one hundred and twelve thousand units.
In short, the pilot knew when he could abandon a combat zone without getting into very much trouble.
By the time that the first marine had died he was already fifty feet in the air. When the radio died he was already approaching the portal out of E14-78-65.
Had the portal been open, he might have even got a medal.
Vlad tutted at the damage as the ship burst through the portal before turning into a fireball.
* * *

Harry, the accountant from Imperial Mining Concern, woke up in what was probably a cell, but a well-lit one with an oxygen supply. His suit was gone, his companion from Customs was unconscious on the floor, his companion from Health and Safety was hanging upside down from the ceiling, gagged.
A tall, pale man in a suit stood in the doorway.
“I’m afraid we had to silence your friend… Most of us here consider Health and Safety to be culturally offensive, somewhat akin to abortion on your own worlds I suppose.”
“Where are…”
“Your soldiers have transferable skills, they’ll be put to good use. No harm done really.”
“You ripped off one of their heads.”
“That’s much less barbaric when we do it, since they invariably survive.”
“What are you going to do with us?”
“I would like,” said Vlad, “To offer you a promotion. We, that is to say Planet Castle, require an ambassador from the Empire, if we ever want to get our mines operating profitably.”
“Pardon? The planet what?”
Vlad rolled his eyes “Don’t be slow. We have taken control of the mining planet formally known as A700, the former inhabitants are all dead. They have not, however, allowed this to hold them back. We have spent the last several months bringing the mines up their full operational capacity, and have been long awaiting Imperial envoys so that we can commence trade.”
Harry was no fool, “Did you say… full operational capacity?”
“Of course.”
“But the mines have never been at full…”
“Yes, but they’ve heretofore been operated by living humans. You may as well have been getting penguins to drive your combine harvesters on JK67224. We don’t breath, we don’t expire, we require neither warmth nor food nor light, are immune to all pathogens, injuries do not injure us, we do not sleep… and unlike your kind, we rather like it here.”
“You do?”
“Of course… a planet without a sun, where the dead can walk free from prejudice and achieve our full potential without fear of decay or incineration. This is our Promised Land.”
Harry was well aware that the Mining Concern would take a dim view of someone stealing a planet from it… but operating at full capacity? When all was said and done, it was worth more now than it had been when they owned it, and sub-contracting was hardly uncommon.
There was however one glaringly obvious issue…

* * *

“Stupid people.” Said the Ambassador through the telescreen.
“I’m sorry… you say they eat stupid people?” Bernard could smell a PR disaster a mile away.
“Nine tenths of the empire are, you realise, stupid people, they won’t take to the idea.”
“No, no, no, I mean really stupid people, they’ve never been educated in any form, the vampires breed them right here on the planet, they’re really no different to dolphins or other reasonably smart mammals. And they don’t even need to execute them, the herd-humans are able to live out most of their natural lifespans.”
“… Be that as it may…”
“And the bottom line Bernard is this, there’s really noting you can do about it, a zombie is worth twenty humans in a fight here, and most of your weapons don’t even work on them… think of the cost of an invasion.”
“But look Harry… Vampires… well, they’re a little bit evil aren’t they?”
“Most of their anti-social behaviours were the result of the society they were forced to live in, unable to come out in the day time, forced to feed upon ordinary humans, hunted high and low. With their physical needs met, they are as civilised as anybody else in the Empire… which is to say, not very, but enough to get along.”
Bernard could feel his resistance slipping away. After all, nobody had complained when werewolf population had migrated to the moon…

“Indeed I will speak truth to you;
For I am truthful and cannot tell a lie”
–Hermes, God of Liars (Homeric Hymn to Hermes 11. 368-386)

It was a good sort of bed really, which is to say that Annabelle quite liked it, her mother hated it, which is why it was in the spare room. Well it was actually Annabelle’s room but Annabelle had been away at uni and in a deft political move her mother had annexed it and declared it ‘spare’. Thus began the ruthless pogrom against Annabelle’s things and the involuntary repatriation of anything her mother didn’t like from the main house to the spare room. It had become a ghetto for old instruments, jackets, unwanted gifts and boxes of things that would be organised one day, but not today. And the bed.

Annabelle sighed and hefted her suitcase up onto it; a small cloud of dust rose up and filled the room with the musty scent of old furniture. The bed was a sturdy wooden affair with hideous dark brown sheets and what looked like carvings of animals standing upright round the frame and along the bedposts, the pillows were mismatched in colour and ranged from a swampy green to fantastic bright blue. It was the kind of edifice that would look familiar and comforting even if you had never seen it before in your entire life. Annabelle tried not to think of the civilisations of dust mites probably contained therein, after all, anything capable of supporting that much life couldn’t really be that bad for you.
She looked closer at the scratched and heavy frame the bed, it seemed to be depicting a group of anthropomorphic beavers dancing around bonfires and waving weapons in the air.
There was always a strange feeling about coming home to ones room after a long absence, a feeling almost of going home but arriving ‘away’, Annabelle pondered this peculiar sensation as she continued her study of the room, and it’s various and many new accruements.
An old snare drum stood propped up in the corner, and the cupboard was full of fake fur coats (Annabelle briefly wondered how many fluffy toys would have had to die to make that fake-fur) and on the room’s only shelf was a precariously balanced pile of books gathering dust, she looked closer, too discover that a great many of them were big hardback editions of the Narnia Chronicles.
Annabelle was one of those girls who are affected by magic kingdoms and talking otters in much the same way that other people are affected by crack cocaine and heroin. Within an instant she had all of the books she could find down and laid out on the bed. Annabelle loved things like Narnia because it was always so much more realistic than day-to-day life, it followed the sort of common-sense logic that was obvious to the human mind. Good triumphed, Evil was vanquished and the talking beavers wanted to be your friend. People in fairyland understood the simple things like that.
This is what the Real World was like, this is what Annabelle’s world was like, a world carefully maintained by a bodyguard of hot chocolates, warm baths and not going into certain pubs after seven o’clock. When life presented a problem, Annabelle would ask herself: What Would Gandalf Do? Not that Annabelle was naïve, she was well aware of the cruel realities of existence, she just looked at them in much the same way that the rest of us look at swords and sorcery ergo: something silly and quaint that will go away if you only patronise it enough. In Annabelle’s eyes no criminal was so big and tough that he couldn’t be broken by tying him to a chair and being nice to him for seventeen hours, Human Rights Act be damned.
She sat down on the bed without bothering to unpack her suitcase, and started reading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe with the hungry devotion of fanatics everywhere.
In the Narnia books, the little children who find their way into the magical land by means of a wardrobe, return to discover that virtually no time has passed at all, and that despite being away for years they have not aged a day (This is convenient as their parents may have justifiably been suspicious to find four post-puberty teens hiding in the room where their children had been sleeping). This is true of those in the Narnia Chronicles, but not of those who read them, who often disappear into the land of Narnia, and don’t return for aeons. Meals, work, family, all are thrown by the wayside till the reader finally pops back out the other end of the book. So it was with Annabelle who very quickly choose to devote the rest of her evening to re-reading the Chronicles in all their glory and reminiscing about the favourite tales of her childhood. And so it would have gone till 4 am when no doubt she would have passed out, and woken at noon the next day in the fashion of students everywhere, only one of the books was missing. ‘The Magicians Nephew’ was nowhere to be seen on the bed, the shelf or anywhere else. It was now three in the morning and Annabelle was in no mind to quit now, or to skip one of the books, she had started reading the entire chronicles in order and by damn she was going to finish them. Thus began the second search of the room, boxes were upturned, cupboards emptied and the shelf checked and re-checked one hundred thousand times, but no book was yielded. Annabelle was in that strange state of mind the sleep deprived find themselves in, and was absolutely determined not to rest till the book was found, and eventually found herself rooting around beneath the old bed.
There was barely enough room to squeeze under it, but squeeze under she did, and started looking at the debris; various old boxes surrounded her, that she kicked out behind her to search later, and ahead was a small wooden chest, she reached for it, but found it out of reach, she edged forwards on her stomach, grunting as the carpet burnt her elbows, but still the chest was just out of reach.
She closed her eyes and made another fierce move forwards, banging her head on the top of the bed repeatedly and groping blindly ahead for the chest. Eventually she stopped, not because she had given up, but because she had bumped face-first into what she assumed was her coveted prize.
“Ouch!” she yelped
“Shh!” said someone. Annabelle instinctively started to apologise before the full ramifications of that sunk in “Sorry I… What the hell?” She jumped upwards, banging her head and quickly falling down, before kicking and screaming wildly
“Shut up! Shut up you idiot!”
“Mum! Help Jesus Christ! There is someone under the bloody bed” Annabelle entered a blind panic as she tried to turn around and squirm back the way she had came, but she was in a small enclosed space that was un-conducive to frenzied struggling. A strong hand grabbed her by the ankle and yanked her backwards, Annabelle screamed so loud that her throat hurt and kicked with her free leg, it made contact and someone yelped in pain and let go; in seconds Annabelle was desperately crawling back again, she could hear a commotion behind her:
“There’s another one, grab him”
“No, No, let me go, I’m not with her I swear”
“Get the searchlight! She is going that way” Two hands grabbed her legs this time and dragged her painfully backwards, even more took a hold of her arms. She screamed and kicked and swore, convinced that something terrible had happened, that she was having some kind of fit or hallucination. She couldn’t see her attackers, who had pulled her upright and were shining a torch directly in her eyes.
“Yeah she is one of them all right, sneaky beggars, they’ll try anything to get in, pack her into the truck.” They manhandled her into the back of truck, and left laughing as they slammed the door. Annabelle was huddled up on the floor hyperventilating, there were no lights except those occasional beams coming from outside where she could still hear fighting and shouting.
A voice spoke in the darkness “great, bloody great. We get right up to the edge and then some genius panics and alerts the guards.”
“It’ll be straight back home now, you mark my words, after all that too” chimed in another
“Back home, ha! If we’re lucky back home…” This last voice didn’t finish audibly but faded into a bitter mumble. Silence returned to the van, apart from the staccato breathing of Annabelle. She felt as though the room where swirling around her, and vaguely remembered being sick as she passed out into unconsciousness.

She awoke in what looked like a cross between a jail and a waiting room and a barn. People and animals were strewn out everywhere, some on chairs, others on the floor. Annabelle had been slumped in a chair adjacent to a pair of badgers, who stared at her with quiet menace. Three burly men guarded the door in blue uniforms and armed with truncheons, the smell was overbearing. It smelt like people had been living in this room for days, which was in fact the case.
“Woken up has she?” snarled one of the badgers,
“Sick in the van weren’t she,” replied its partner
“First it gets us caught, and then its sick in our van”
“As if this place didn’t smell bad enough as it is,” Annabelle could possibly have coped if they had asked her to come on a magical quest to free the land from the evil Troll King, but having a pair of articulate badgers complaining about how she smelt was altogether more than she could handle. She screamed. “Oh bloody hell not again,” said the badger.
The guards ran over and shook her till she was quiet again before walking away muttering “They come here and don’t speak a bloody word of Narnian, useless idiots,” Annabelle was no great expert in the body language of badgers, but she was quite certain that they were staring at her smugly. “Slow on the uptake isn’t she?”
“New to it, isn’t she?”
Annabelle was about to tell them to stop talking about her as though she weren’t there when two wolves and a faun entered the room wearing guard uniforms, the faun pointed at Annabelle and the wolves approached, one growled “follow us,” and she was inclined to do as she was told.
The trio bustled her down a cold grey corridor and into a tiny room with no windows, and a desk with two chairs. The faun sat down and indicated for Annabelle to do the same. The wolves stood at the door snarling menacingly. None of them appeared to be about to burst into song.
“So,” snapped the faun, “What’s your name?”
“Annabelle, look I don’t know what…”
“Shut up!” barked one of the wolves. The faun scribbled this down on a bit of paper, before continuing, “Annabelle is it… and where did you come from?”
“England?” the guards exchanged a knowing glance
“England eh? And travelling with no passport or luggage… What is it eh? Thought you would come and steal some those good Narnian jobs eh? Reckoned you had messed up earth so bad that you would come ruin here as well?”
Annabelle had been feeling overwhelmed since the first moment of her arrival, and nothing was changing “Look,” she pleaded “I just got here by accident, I never meant any har… did you say Narnia?”
“Don’t play innocent with us sunshine, just playing hide and seek were you? We’ve heard that one before!”
“But… Narnia?”
“Yes, the Democratic Republic of Narnia, and yes, this is Customs and Immigration, and you are in a lot of trouble young lady,”
“But Narnia? With the lion and Mr Tumnus and all that?” There was a sharp intake of breath from the wolves and the eyes of the faun widened “I knew it!” whispered one wolf to another “She’s an Aslanic Fundamentalist”
“Disgusting,” said his counterpart “I sometimes think the Ice-supremacists had the right idea… I mean not the cancelling Christmas or turning people to stone, but she was right about stopping all them foreigners getting in.” Annabelle tried to speak but was repeatedly hushed into silence. The faun took several notes before rushing out of the room. The wolves then escorted her back to the stinking pit of a waiting room, with a comment to the guards to keep an eye on her.
She slumped back down in the same filthy chair; the badgers were still there though now their eyes were on an old television in the far corner. It was a news programme following a parliamentary debate.
A stoat in a blue suit was shouting at a unicorn, a subtitle said ‘The ruling Jam Today party debates the immigration problem with the Jam Yesterday Party’.
“It is a fact,” said the stout, in the tone of voice one uses to assert facts without proof “That 30,000 sons of Adam and daughters of Eve come into this nation every year, stealing all of the jobs, and living off the welfare because they refuse to work!” The Unicorn countered quickly and smoothly “What absolute nonsense! Now I admit there are a few bad apples but the vast majority of those people are productive members of Narnian society,”
A faun from the Jam Tomorrow Party chimed in with some nonsense about the vast contribution they made to the economy, but no one listened to him, the stoat was back on his soapbox, yelling “And what about the immigrants who are Aslanic Fundamentalists? Coming here and trying to wage war on our world, in the name of some loony religion invented by an English novelist!”
“The vast majority of Aslanists are peaceful moderates,”
“Nonsense!” retorted the stoat “We are talking about a people that believe in establishing an entrenched monarchy by force, a monarchy based on outdated notions such as discrimination against Minotaurs.”
The telly was switched off and a communal groan went up from the inmates. Suddenly in burst a group of burly trolls, they moved with incredible speed, surrounding a bearded man in a red jacket, forcing a black bag over his head and then dragging him from the room before he had a chance to resist. The door had slammed shut again before Annabelle even had time to register the event, the badgers started to chatter excitedly: “There goes one! Cor, there goes one!” Annabelle finally got up the courage to speak, “There goes one what?” The badgers looked at her as though she had just fallen from the sky, “An Aslanist of course, believes in the Chronicles doesn’t he? Thinks a great big lion is gonna come out the sky and kill us all, establish a heaven on earth… Dangerous sorts, you stay clear of them,”
“But… Aslan… He was the good guy in the Chronicles!” The badgers positively guffawed at this: “Yeah if you believe that imperialist claptrap you’ll believe anything. Look, darling, the Chronicles weren’t meant to be taken literally; you can’t just go popping out a wardrobe and trying to build an army, overthrowing the legitimate sovereign,” The second badger came in where the second left off “I mean really, who voted for him do you think? That stuff is all war and nonsense,”
“Very well,” replied Annabelle indignantly, “Why did you come to Narnia then?”
“For a better life of course! But come on, I mean, you have to be realistic about these things; Noble lion kings? What relevance does that sort of stuff have?”
Annabelle didn’t hear the trolls sneaking up behind her, so engrossed had she been in conversation, she didn’t notice them at all till the black bag went over her head. She tried to scream but the wind was knocked out of her as she was roughly hoisted off the chair, she could hear the badgers crowing behind her “There’s one! She was one! I thought she had that way about her.”

Annabelle was forced into a room, with the bag still on her head, they pushed her into a chair, and then a gruff voice said, “So… Where is Mr Tumnus?”
“I don’t know,”
“Don’t lie to us, you believe in the Chronicles, and come waltzing through into our world at the dead of night, you mean to say that you don’t know where the most dangerous Aslanic terrorist is hiding?”
“No, I swear,”
“Then why did you come here?”
“I was just looking for something and fell through!”
“Looking for what”
“One of the Narnia Boo…”
“Ah ha! And then you were going to repeat the 7/11 attacks on the Snow Palace? Hmmm?”
“No, I swear”
There was a gruff muttering from nearby, and without warning she was lifted off her feet again, this time thrown into a cell, where they removed her sack. It was a tiny dingy room, with the bearded gentleman hunched in one corner.
It fell into virtual darkness as the door slammed closed. She stared in terror at the man in red, who was grinning disconcertingly, he winked and pulled a face at which point Annabelle diverted her gaze and stared at her feet.
“Ho, ho, ho?” he offered meekly.
“Don’t,” she said
“What?”
“Talking badgers, Stouts and unicorns in parliament, magic fairy lands and immigration control, fine. But if you claim to be Santa Claus I’ll choke you with your own beard,”
“Fine,”
“Good,”
“Because I’m not Santa, I’m Father Christmas. Ho, ho, ho,” Annabelle did not respond, but instead started picking away at loose paint on the wall of the cell.
“Oh come on,” He said, “Some people spend good money on drugs for a day like this!”
“I didn’t want to come here,” he sighed loudly and said:
“Yes you did, why do you think Narnia has so many illegals sneaking in all the time? Escapism! You earthlings are always off into other lands, that’s what the Chronicles of Narnia were, immigration of the mind. If you think it’s bad here, you should see Middle Earth, hundreds of tourists all trying to throw national treasures into a volcano! It’s a right old state.”
“So how do you fit into it all?”
“Me? I’m an Aslanist! Lions, Witches, Wardrobes, that’s me. I’m the first fantasy you all learn, course this lot won’t be having me, realism is the fashion now in Narnia, and my outmoded ways are the enemy, Ho, ho, ho!”
“So what now? What happens to us?” She said her voice shaking,
“Look,” he replied, “Realism is just another nonsense fantasy, there is no such thing as normal. There is nothing wrong with make-believe, but you’ve got to meet it halfway, you can’t fall back on the welfare of a magic-kingdom. At it’s heart, fantasy brings us closer to the important truths, it doesn’t divorce us from reality it reconciles us with it,” before he was able to finish the faun and his wolves appeared at the door, “Get up and follow us,” he said, and again she was rushed down dark corridors, and then, outside, into a forest.
A chill wind blew through the darkness, and Annabelle became afraid, what were these people going to do?
They halted by a huge oak tree, with an opening in the roots, the faun removed a bit of paper from his pocket and read:
“Annabelle, you have been found guilty of Illegal Immigration by an independent tribunal, and it has been decided that you will be deported, back to Reality,”
The wolves growled and started pushing her towards the dark opening in the oak tree, but Annabelle pushed back, this time she had something to say: “There’s nothing wrong with people trying to seek out a new world… not as long as you’re trying to do something real there… I’ll be back, with the correct papers, and then you had better watch out, because it won’t be all sugar-plumbs and…”

There was silence. They had pushed her through.

It is four in the morning when my phone rings. There are only two reasons in this world why someone would wake me up at four in the morning:

1. Somebody has died
2. Somebody wants to

I’m a peaceable sort of guy, I just don’t like being woken up. I thought I should start on this note of trivia, so that what I actually said when I picked up the phone made slightly more sense to the uninitiated reader.
“It had better have been somebody I liked.”
“Is that Samuel Morris?”
“This is he.”
“You’re fired”
Now I’ve got to admit I was surprised. Not surprised that I could be fired, my superior intelligence and stunning good looks often bring me into conflict with jealous employers, but surprised because in this day and age ‘New Writer’ is a synonym for ‘Usually Unemployed’. Now from what little I remember of my rights I’m fairly certain that an employer can’t fire you without first giving you job. Of course with the rise of capitalism in our small nation it can only be so long before a company can pre-emptively fire someone legally, but right now I’m fairly certain that they can’t.
With this in mind, and also the fact that it was four am I chose to respond with a firm “up yours” before hanging up the phone and that, I said to myself as I drifted off into sleep, was that.
Needless to say I was surprised to find the P45 slip waiting for me with my mail the following morning.

Apparently one Mr J. Hover had terminated my employment with Elysium Incorporated, and this entailed an “immediate suspension of privileges”.
Well, clearly these people (whomsoever they were) meant business, though they didn’t seem to require any active participation on my part in the affair, so I didn’t worry myself too unduly. I made myself a cup of tea, picked up the paper from the floor, and walked out into the garden to spend the morning relaxing and puzzling over the strange occurrences of the previous evening and today.
The weather was particularly fine, the birds were singing. If I had been asked what was the last thing I had been expecting, I probably wouldn’t have said “the house to explode”, but this is because I really hadn’t been expecting it to happen.
I can’t help but feel, as a writer, that some form of descriptive prose is owed to my readers at this point.

Kaboom.

Funnily, the first thing you notice about explosions is not the fire or the noise, but usually the wall about fifty odd meters away as you go careening towards it.
Thankfully I have a long garden or I may have been thrown through the fence rather than landing safely in the compost heap just before it.
I rose shakily to my feet and looked behind me just in time to see the pillar of fire snaking away back into the sky. Where once my house had stood was now a dark and smoking crater in the ground, and if you think that’s strange just wait till I realise that I hadn’t spilt my tea.

“Good lord!” I said, noticing that I had somehow managed not to spill my tea.

And with that revelation you are now (perhaps) as surprised as I was. Well, not quite, because I could hear something ringing in the compost heap. A few moments frantic digging uncovered an old fashioned bright red telephone… now you’re as surprised as I am.
It started to ring

“Hello?”
“Hello, is that Mr Samuel Morris?”
“Who is this? What’s going on? My house just exploded.”
“Nothing to worry about Mr Morris, standard procedure we assure you.”
“Who in hell is this?”
“Not quite”
“Pardon.”
“Who in heaven. This is Gabriel, secretary to J. Hover. I’m just calling to talk you through the procedure.”

A bolt of fire leapt from the sky and incinerated my car in the front drive. This might have escaped my attention had the house (which would normally obscure the view) not been vaporised mere moments earlier.

“My car just exploded.”
“Yes as per the terms of your termination, we’ll be confiscating the company car…”
“What are you talking about?”
“…As well as the company mind body and soul.”

The line started to go crackly and a strange noise could be heard. I looked up, I ran, I dived, a forward roll and…

Kaboom. There goes the compost heap. But somehow I was not only unharmed but I also still had a full cup of tea. Which is two points for me I guess. I took a nonchalant sip as I observed the cinders dancing in the air. One of our few contributions to the environment reduced to carbon… Typical.
I heard someone approaching from behind, and I confess, wasn’t entirely surprised when an obsidian claw tapped me on the shoulder.
“Mr Satan I presume?”
“Actually it’s Ms Lucifer, but you can call me Lucy… aaaaarrrgghhhh my face.”
That was the sound of me throwing my scalding hot tea in her face, and this is the sound of me running like the dickens.
Someone shouts from behind: “You’re only making this harder on yourself…” But I’m already out of the driveway and round the corner, pelting down the pavement as fast as my slippers will carry me.

You no doubt think my story implausible, and yet I still haven’t dropped the weirdest bombshell of all.
No more was I than one hundred meters down the road when I see the number 42 bus arrive… exactly on time.
You have read perhaps that things such as this do not take place in the real world so I forgive your note of scepticism. All I can say is that this did not take place in the “real world” of our naturalist literature but only the world that actually Happens (Which in my experience accommodates far stranger things than our ‘realistic’ writers could ever bear to imagine).

The bus driver looks only slightly less demonic than the Princess of darkness whom I have just encountered, but at least he is headed into town, where (I hope) that I will be harder to strike down with pillars of fire… Surely Mr Hover wouldn’t want any collateral damage?
I’m surprised to see the ticket prices have risen to £6.16 but fortunately I appear to have some fifteen odd pounds in fifty pence coins littered about my person (amazing what builds up in a dressing gown pocket) so I pay for my ticket and go to sit at the back of the bus.
Thursdays eh?

The bus journey was relatively uneventful with the exception that I changed seats once to get a better view and an old lady that sat in my previous chair seemed to catch the black death… Like I said, relatively uneventful. I got off the bus, pushing my way past the men in full bodied quarantine suits and set off towards the civic center. This, I decided was a job for the Citizens Advice Bureau.
I imagine I must have looked quite a sight when I walked in, wearing nothing but my dressing gown and being singed as I was, I presume it was either this or the fact that I no longer appeared to have a reflection when I stood next to the mirror in the waiting room that earned me such a peculiar look from the receptionist.
“Can I help you?” The question sounded rhetorical, she seemed to be asking herself as much as she was I. “I’ve been fired… Twice if I’m any judge.”
“OK… Who was your employer?” Straight to the crux of the problem this girl was
“I haven’t a bloody clue.” She gave me that look which customer service people often give, it was the look that said ‘I had better go and call the supervisor.’
“I had better call the supervisor,” she said.
She waddled off and I was left waiting in the reception area, above the desk was a huge copy of William Blake’s ‘Newton’. As I stared idly at the picture Newton suddenly looked up and winked at me, but at least this was nothing unusual. That bloody picture winks at me every time I come in here. I stuck my tongue out at it… A man in the waiting area got up and moved a few seats further away. I looked again at the painting and now it was doing something unusual, Newton appeared to be beckoning to me with his finger; so checking to make sure the receptionist was nowhere in sight I hopped over the desk and walked closer to that strange picture, but still Newton gestured for me to come closer, taking a deep breath I drew my face right up to the painting. It was then that Newton whispered something that I remember even to this day:

“Order has a beginning, a middle and an end, only Chaos is forever… By the way, Blake said you might want one of these.”

And as he finished speaking Newton handed me his black umbrella, a huge and unwieldy thing; Even to this very day, if you go and look at the original painting of Blake’s Newton (or indeed any copy of the picture) you will notice that the black umbrella is missing, let this serve as proof for the disbelievers of my tale.
I looked at the umbrella it was easily three times the size of a standard one and jet black, as if light could barely escape its surface. “And what,” I said, “Should I do with this?” Newton responded by quoting the humorous epigram of Lord Bowen:

“The rain it raineth on the just.
And also on the unjust fella,
But chiefly on the just
Because the Unjust steals the Just’s umbrella”

You can rely on cheap copies of eighteenth century paintings not to talk a bit of sense.
“Look,” I said, “I’m in a bit of pickle right now, isn’t there something you can…” But I didn’t have time to finish, the receptionist had returned with the supervisor who interrupted saying: “You’re not supposed to be back here.”
“Where did you get that umbrella?” Said the receptionist I just mumbled an apology and walked back to the proper side of the desk. Newton winked one last time before returning to his static state. “Did that painting just wink at me?” said the supervisor, “Don’t be ridiculous,” I quickly chided
“Yes you’re right… How silly of me.”
“He winked at me.” The supervisor gave me a long and appraising stare before saying: ”You had better come into my office son.”
He led me out of the reception into a hallway where he promptly tied a ball of string to the door before continuing on his way, it seemed strange at first but as we walked down the seemingly endless labyrinth of halls and passageways it soon became evident why he needed to do this. Finally we arrived at his small office.
“So,” he said, “Why don’t you explain to me exactly what the problem seems to be.” So I told him about the phone call, the P45, the exploding house, car and compost heap, I told him about Ms Lucifer and my hurried escape, though I did not tell him about the bus in case he thought me mad and had me expelled from the building for wasting his time. The supervisor lit a small clay pipe and took notes while I related my story, when I finished he spoke: “Hmm, very strange, very strange indeed… Well we have a form that you’ll need to fill in.” I was somehow unsurprised to hear that the Bureau had a form for this sort of thing.
So I filled out the form, making sure to complete section on compost heaps in detail and noting particularly the telephone calls and strange appearance of Lucy. Just as I was finishing the paperwork the black telephone on the desk rang, the supervisor picked it up and spoke briefly:
“Hello…yes…they are? …I see… I will, thank you.” At which point he got up and excused himself from the office, leaving to me to wait and puzzle over the days event. At this point I glanced out of the window and saw several men in bowler hats and suits standing on all fours and grazing on the lawn, nearby was a little placard saying: ‘Staff Training. Do Not Disturb.”
My eyes continued to wander; in one corner of the office was a small filing cabinet, with the second to bottom drawer labelled ‘Stealth Taxes’, unable to resist I walked over and took a peek inside and would you believe it! There amoung scraps of paper, small change and pencils was the missing left sock from my favourite pair, “Ninjas,” said the supervisor, making me jump. He had returned so fast and quietly that I hadn’t heard him, “Pardon?” I stammered
“Ninjas… That’s how we get them.” He pronounced, closing the filing cabinet sharply and sitting himself back down. “What does the government want with my left sock?” I asked,
“The same thing it wanted with your wrist watch Mr Morris.” I looked down… My watch was gone! “How did you… “
“Ninjas.”
“Why don’t you just buy socks right from the shop?”
“Then we would have hundreds of right socks that we don’t need, can we get on please? I find tax terribly dull.”
“Yes of course.”
“Now, it turns out that a representative from Elysium Inc has just now called into the Bureau… Hmm… very grave situation indeed Mr Morris, I’m afraid they have you guilty of breach of contract, incompetence, failing to turn up for work… They seem well within their rights to fire you.”
“Woah! Just a minute there,” I interjected, “I’ve never been employed by Elysium Inc, this is what I’ve been trying to tell everyone. They can’t fire me from a job that I’ve never had!”
The supervisor looked at me quizzically over his glasses, “I’m afraid they have the paperwork here in this very building Mr Morris, your great, great, great, great, great, great, great uncle Abram twice removed signed all of the necessary paperwork and it is quite legally binding.”
“Great, great, great, great, great, great, great uncle Abram?”
“Twice removed.”
“What great, great, great, great, great, great, great uncle Abram? “
“You really should keep track of your paperwork Mr Morris, I’m afraid that he signed a contract that placed himself and all his descendents into the service of Elysium Inc for perpetuity.”
“Nobody ever told me anything!”
“It’s all outlined in the Employee Manual.” He placed a big black book on the table embossed with the words ‘Employee Manual,’ it looked somehow familiar, and yet I had never read this book in my life, I told the supervisor as much and he looked at me as though he heard this sort of thing all the time, you could be forgiven for thinking that I was the 9th one in today
“I’m afraid, Mr Morris, that it is your responsibility to read and understand the contract, the precedent has been established since Hover Vs Lazarus in early B.C.” I tried to interrupt but the old guy carried on unperturbed, “I note here several violations of the dress code throughout your history.”
“What dress code?”
“Well… It’s a bit embarrassing, but I think you’ll find you’re not meant to be wearing a… certain item of underclothes, all laid out quite clearly in Section Genesis of the contract.”
“Now look,” I said rising from my chair and wielding my umbrella in a menacing fashion, “How on earth was I meant to know about this, there are thousands of books in the world, how can they have expected me to guess that this one was any more relevant than the Koran, or Alice in Wonderland?”
“Well it’s all very well saying that Mr Morris, but they have managed to keep up their end of the bargain, they sent their man from Nazareth just as outlined, if they didn’t have any problems I don’t see why you should have.”
“But they made their end of the bargain without telling me!”
“Ah, Mr Morris, there you are,” I turned around suddenly in response to this new voice, and saw to my horror that Ms Lucifer was standing in the doorway with two smartly dressed gentlemen, I had been blocked in.
As you can imagine this is far too much for any reasonable chap to take on a Thursday morning, and I swung my umbrella in frustration, only to hit the fire alarm. I heard a small tinkling of glass followed by a deafening ringing, and then, water started to pour from the ceiling. It seems that I had managed to trigger the omnipresent sprinkler system; instinctively I opened the umbrella and then noticed to my surprise that all other parties had fallen to the floor, wailing and writhing.
“I’m melting! Meeeeellllttttiiiiinnnnnngggggg” Ms Lucifer screamed. At first I suspected some kind of demonic aversion to water, but I then realised how silly this assumption was, in fact the sprinkler system was simply one of the older versions that used sulphuric acid instead of H2O. They had mostly been replaced in Britain nowadays with the newer models (political correctness, health and safety, going mad as usual) that used water, but clearly the Citizens Advice Bureau had not caught up with the times.
Taking advantage of this unexpected good fortune I jumped nimbly over the puddle of Lucifer and escaped into the hallway… but curses! The acid had dissolved the twine and I would need to find my own way out to the exit.

Nothing ever turns out to be easy does it?

The distinctive aroma of melting shoes reached my nostrils, it occurred to me that I might not have very much time, the umbrella however was holding strong, I suspect that this is because it was fictional in origin and could only be changed by the repainting the original or some such thing.

I picked a direction at random and started to run, from every door I passed came that noise which is familiar to all Englishmen, the sound of civil servants melting.
I took what seemed like a thousand turns, but each one just led to a new hallway, a new set of doors, my shoes felt lighter on my feet… I pushed a door open and went in.
I saw a kettle, teabags, a small microwave and the various other accruements that signify a staff break room.
I considered for a moment that if I stopped to make a cup of tea I may not escape from the building with my life, but did I really want to escape into a life that wasn’t holding a cup of tea?
I did not.
Going as fast as I could I managed to throw together a mug, forgoing milk or lemon in favour of a small dash of sulphuric acid. If you have never tried to make tea indoors whilst holding an oversized black umbrella I suggest that you try it, it is a life-changing experience.

With this accomplished I dived back out into the hallway and continued on my way, my next turning took me into a huge circular chamber.
There was no sprinkler system in here, and the walls were made from ancient stone, lit by flickering torchlight. Sat in the center of the room, at a small desk, was a Minotaur wearing a bowler hat.
His stubby bovine fingers were struggling to operate an abacus, it seemed he was doing the accounts.
“You want door Eckssseeeee.” He said
“Door Eckssseeeee?” I responded, raising an eyebrow. He pointed an arm built like an oak tree towards a door on the other side of the room marked with a big XII. “of course,” I said, “Door Eckssseeeee,” and dashed from the chamber as fast as I could without spilling my tea.
The door took me down a long corridor, eventually leading back to the reception area, I was saved, and not a moment too soon… But alas!

Outside the building sat a series of vans with flashing lights marked with the words “Elysium Inc”. Trapped again! Or was I?
Turning around I took a running leap at the painting of Newton, just as men in white suits burst through the doors…

SccchhhllllllurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpPOP

… I found myself outdoors, before a rock in a clearing bathed in sunlight and colour, except for to my left where the beautiful seen seemed to slowly dissolve into darkness.
Upon the rock sat the figure of Isaac Newton, built like a Greek god and seemingly absorbed in a chart that he worked upon.
Newton looked up and said, “It never seemed to bother me when hanging in a gallery… but now you’re here I feel somewhat naked.”
A soft breeze blew, the only noise in this rather embarrassing moment. He was indeed naked, it never seemed that awkward when he was just hanging there on the wall, even when you stared at him, but now I was here… well, I felt as though I were interrupting.
“Perhaps,” he said, “You should leave… no offence, but you’re no oil painting.”
He was right, of course. Holding my breath I dived in a non-specific direction and closed my eyes…

SccchhhllllllurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpPOP

…Oh bugger. I was in the Tate Gallery. If I received a penny for each time I had gone to the Citizens Advice Bureau and somehow ended up in the Tate Gallery I would have seven pence by now.
The building was empty, and the normally shiny white floor and walls were bathed in darkness, though this wasn’t my first concern, my shoes were burning my feet.
I quickly removed them and hurled them across the room as the last lines of defence on the soles dissolved into nothing.
A great deal of time appeared to have passed since the Bureau, as there was a very distinct ‘middle of the night’ feel to the place.
So there I was, in the Tate Gallery, London, miles from home and with nothing but an oversized umbrella, a cup of tea without milk and no shoes. Anyone who has had to fill in an Arts Council Application form will know how I felt.
Suddenly I hear a voice calling out from the darkness, “Oi! Do you mind? There are works of art in here.”
“Pardon?” I called out, not quite able to place the location of this newcomer,
“I said there are works of art in here you little oik, you can’t be throwing old pairs of shoes about the place as if you own it.”
An old middle-eastern man stepped into my view, almost from nowhere it seemed. He looked strangely familiar, with his full beard, turban and sharp, penetrating eyes. He was wearing a nametag that said:

‘Hello, My Name Is Omar Khayyám, Here To Help’

Of course, who else was I expecting to meet in a famous art gallery in the middle of the night? Nobody, that’s who.
Omar Khayyám, mathematician, cynic and poet-philosopher. I was mildly baffled as to what a man from 11th century Persia was doing in the Tate Gallery but that was really an easily answered question: He was telling me off for throwing my shoes. Obviously.
He gave me an appraising stare before saying, “Ah ha! I wondered when you would turn up, rumour has it that you’re a wanted man.”
“You know about that?”
“Of course I do, I’m a guard at the Tate Gallery!”
“Shouldn’t you be… dead?”
“Yes,” He muttered, “But I hadn’t finished some of my paperwork and they won’t let me into heaven till it is all done… but of course now I can’t find any of it. Typical bloody bureaucracy,” He started filling a pipe in a distracted manner before continuing, “Anyway, enough of my woes, looks like you’ve been getting yourself into all sorts of trouble with the Authorities. Been shirking on contractual obligations, or so I heard.”
Naturally I protested, and so while Omar Khayyám puffed away on his pipe I explained the whole story with the phone call, the P45, the exploding house, car and compost heap, Ms Lucifer (but not the bus because I didn’t want him to think I wasn’t taking the affair seriously), the Citizens Advice Bureau, the umbrella, the fire alarm, the painting and then rounded it all off by explaining that this was why I had been caught throwing my shoes about the Tate Gallery… As far as excuses go, this one was quite justified I felt.
“Well,” he said, “Looks like you’ll be needing this” and handed me a bottle of obscure-vintage wine.
“Thanks?” I said, accepting the bottle but thinking that perhaps he hadn’t understood the full extent of my problems.
“Did you know,” he grumbled, “That I was forced to perform the Hajj to prove my loyalty to the state religion?” This rang a bell in my vague knowledge of history, “Yes, I vaguely recall,” I replied.
“Well look,” he said, “in the end I thought ‘Bugger This’ and I wrote my own book, that’s your problem. You haven’t followed his rulebook, but you haven’t written your own either. They reckon ol’ Mr Hover’s greatest fear is that some day Satan will stand up and say ‘Never mind Boss, I forgive you’, think on that.” And then he disappeared in a puff of fresh air.

I finished my tea, got up and started making my way through the eerie darkness of the gallery, eventually reaching for the bottle of wine. The old bugger had already drunk half, but I popped the cork and had a mouthful.
A voice echoed through the halls behind me:

“Oh come with old Khayyám, and leave the Wise
To talk; One thing is certain, that life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.”

I looked back, but unsurprisingly the room was empty.
“So,” I thought to myself, “Writing my own story… bloody hell… going like that you could start and finish anywhere.”

And then I wondered off, drinking wine from the bottle and did whatever it is that new writers do when no one is reading them.
Notably, I left the next page blank.