Monarch-Man

March 3, 2015February 28, 2015 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 25 Comments

“I am a winged creature who is too rarely allowed to use its wings. Ecstasies do not occur often enough.” Anais Nin

It has gone midnight when I cross the park but he is quite visible by the street lamp. Stick limbs. Wild hair. The sickly-sweet scent of honey. He is filthy and beautiful, this Monarch-Man, my Emperor of Flies.

I have been following him for months now. Sometimes it feels like my whole life has been lost to his search. Rather, it has been lost to my search for him. He takes no part in my hunt. I would be surprised if he knew that I sought him at all. But I had, I have; from the first moment I set eyes on him, crawling from the tube station.

I alone watched him tumble through the turnstiles and into the street. He reached the curb on his side of the road at the same time that I did on mine. I could not have said what it was about him that made me stop and stare, but stare I did. For a second he lingered there, hovering on the spot between pavement and road. Lifting a bare foot, he seemed to test the air, as though tasting the city with his soles. Then his legs gave way beneath him and he fluttered to the gutter.

He looked small at the roadside, smaller even than I was sure he was. His coat was much too large, and I was reminded of a child wearing his father’s clothes. In another life he might have been carved from marble; smooth lips, blonde hair, eyes vast and shadowed in the hollows of his face. But he was no classical beauty. His skin was pale and marred with fatigue. Hunger had made him lean, and in a darker street I might have mistaken him for a woman. A taxi braked beside him, its headlights in his face, and for one moment his eyes shone like gold. Then he recoiled, his hands flying to his face, and the taxi drove on.

I saw him many times after that first encounter. Perhaps it was chance. Perhaps it was that face. I can see it now, upturned to the street-lamp, bathed in the orange glow. I see his tight lips, his dusty skin. His eyes are like two orbs of polished stone. I see myself in them a thousand times over, growing larger as I approach through the park.

The third time we met was at rush hour. That day I had waited for him, and I thought my heart might burst when I saw him stagger from the station. A dozen men and women swept after him, throwing his face back at me from the polished toes of their black shoes. It was the evening commute, the streets busy, and his reflection was a hall of mirrors in their gleaming footwear. I am not sure that he saw himself, whether he can see at all, in fact, but I saw. Standing outside the large bank on the opposite side of the road, I listened to the drone of traffic and the chatter of conversation and the raw voice of the Lebanese singer on the street corner, and I saw his face a hundred times over.

When I think back to the dozens of times I have seen him, it is easy to imagine the world fast-forwarding around me. I see streets filled with blurred shapes as people speed home, streaming through the city in a black tide of business suits and smart shoes. Traffic becomes one long course of light and motion; a film strip racing on a reel. Everything stretches and grows, even the dying sun melting in the sky, except for the man on the pavement, my Monarch-Man, the Emperor of Fractured Faces.

The Lebanese singer frequents the station at least as much as me. I suspect she does well for herself there. On those occasions when we are both there at the same time, her songs carry clearly across the street, made stronger by a microphone, and I imagine her voice is the wind. Sometimes I turn to her while passion spills from her mouth. Her eyes are usually closed while she sings. Seeing this, I close my eyes too and allow myself to be carried away by her voice. The sound is heat and flowers and dry summer air. I can smell roses, taste honey on my tongue. When I open my eyes again, I am always staring at the man in the gutter.

I fancy that I can smell roses now. It is not an impossible notion, in the park, and yet I know rose-beds are not the source. In thirty seconds I will be standing underneath the street lamp beside him. It will be the closest we have ever been to each other, and I imagine it is honey making my throat stick. Outwardly he is no different to the dozens of other homeless men and women whom I have encountered throughout my life in the city. His clothes are soiled but well-cared for. This close, I can see that rips in his jeans have been neatly stitched. The jeans themselves are faded almost to death. As I marvel at the needlework at his kneecaps, I wonder if he stitched them himself, or if he knows someone who fixes them on his behalf. I wonder how much the jeans mean to him, and when the last time was that he took them off. I wonder if I have ever cared about anything as much as he must care about the denim on his legs. I know that I have, because I have found him.

He smiles as I swarm in his eyes, this Monarch-Man, my Emperor. I smile back. Slowly he turns from the street lamp to face me. His arms are thin, bare bones really, concealed inside the loose sleeves of his old coat. I do not know for sure that the coat is old but it looks it; beige and filthy and treasured. He shifts slightly and I think I glimpse colour; a vivid flash revealed by his collar. I glimpse other things, too, under the coat, under the flesh, too much for me to take in all at once: the flailing limbs of a drowning spider, an egg as it cracks and drips with bright yolk, the sound of the egg’s shell as it breaks open and the crunch of mandibles and a cloud of butterflies, swirling silently over a flowering field. In the face of him, and in the fractured surfaces of his eyes, I am annihilated a million times over.

I realise I am cowering on the floor. My heart rages against my aching ribs. The first I feel of his touch is his hand against my own. I know it’s not a hand in the true sense, any more than those are fingers clasping mine, but that is what I can liken it to most. His fingers slide up my arm, dry and smooth like velveteen laces, until they come to rest beneath my chin. They hover there briefly, stroking my neck, their featheriness soft against my skin, before gently lifting me upwards. Then he takes my hand again, and together we dance around the street lamp, and the night whispers with wing-beats.

~ Thomas Brown

Broken Banquet

December 16, 2014December 16, 2014 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 20 Comments

The forest is starving. Overhead the sun dies, bathing the branches in the pink glow of dusk. Walkers do well to avoid these parts but John knows them like the lines of his own face. His trade depends on them. Allerwood Jam sells as far as Netley, so it seemed only natural that his wife and he should move close to the forest’s borders, when they finally decided to settle down. They first met picking raspberries in the bracken behind what is now McCready’s farm. Grace loves natural produce at least as much as he does. Out here, on the outskirts of the village, they are free to live a quiet life, largely separate from the rest of Lynnwood. Almost twenty years later, they have not looked back.

The ground crunches beneath his boots as a wind sighs through the trees, rustling the few leaves and testing the branches. Their creaks carry on the air, a hundred groans bringing the forest to uneasy life. Knotted faces with deep grooves stare at him from the hollows of trunks and on more than one occasion he fancies he sees movement through the black glassy trees. The trees are weary of the winter and he is no different. He can hear it in their creaks as surely as he feels it in his own bones. Stepping around a bend in the path, he emerges into a small clearing.

This is one of his private places. There are several, in the vicinity, from where he harvests fruits and berries the year round: rhubarb in the spring, blueberries and raspberries when summer is high and blackberries in autumn. Sometimes, if the winter is mild or he gets to them early, he finds apples too, but not often, and not this year. This year there is only cold, and death.

He found the rabbit not far from here, almost two weeks ago. Ribs had pressed visibly against its thin underbelly, its black eyes trapped behind a layer of frost. One of its paws had snapped clean off. This in itself was not shocking; he has grown used to such sights over the years. It was the sudden similarities between this dead thing and his daughter that had weighed heavily on him.

The ground is sparse, save a carpet of thin roots, winding their way into the earth. Moving to the edge of the clearing, where the barren undergrowth makes something of a return, he begins his hunt. He cultivates beetroot here, where the shade is weak in the day. The root is hardy, even against the bitter frost. He slips a knife from his long overcoat pocket and begins to scrape at the soil. His fingers are white, or blue. It is hard to tell in the fading light.

He will find the beetroot and return home, before the coldness truly sets in. He left the house first thing this morning and hasn’t seen Bianca since last night, when he tucked her in for bed. He thinks of the rabbit again, and shivers.

Bianca loves beetroot and he won’t disappoint his little one so close to Christmas. Boiled, pickled, in sandwiches and on salads. He would bring her an armful, if he could find it, to keep her strength and her weight up. For several minutes he goes on, his efforts fruitless. The leaves are here but he cannot break through the earth to the taproots. Determined, he takes to stabbing the soil with the knife-blade.

A flash of purple leaps from the earth. His hopes leap with it, only to be dashed when the thing squirms violently from his touch. The fat worm lingers for a moment before burrowing away. The encroaching cold nips at his flesh as, wrapping his overcoat tight around him, he rises from the ground. It is too late now. He will have to return tomorrow, with daylight and a spade, and dig properly.

His teeth chatter, his breath white on the air, as he turns and strides from the clearing, alone except for thin trees and thinner shadows stretching from their trunks.

Grace’s breath clings to the window; a delicate whiteness that turns the glass pane foggy. Her eyes crease then soften as a shadow at the forest’s edge steps out towards her cottage. Its confident stride bears it purposefully closer and she fancies she can see John’s face; the warmth of his brown eyes, his sleek black hair and delicate lips, offset against that proud jaw.

The wind howls, the trees shiver and the man is but a shadow again.

“Mum?”

She turns from the window as Bianca’s bedroom door swings open. The cottage is old, its layout mostly confined to the ground floor. There is an attic, where they store furniture, and a small basement filled with their jams. When Bianca is older they might have to address the issue of space but, for now, the build suits them well.

“And what are you doing up, young lady?”

“I had a dream.”

Her daughter stumbles sleepily into her arms. Her pajamas are deceptive but, pressed against her, she is as hard as ice. Bones protrude where there should be soft flesh as she trembles in Grace’s arms. Kneeling down slowly, she reaches out to sweep the hair from the girl’s eyes.

“Let’s get you some blankets to warm you with.”

“No, I’m not cold!”

“Well let’s find some blankets anyway, for me, then. You can tell me about your dream.”

“I was lost in the forest.”

“And what were you doing out in the forest on your own?” she asks, carefully pulling the throw from the sofa. Bianca stands unmoving while she drapes the throw around her daughter’s shoulders.

“I was looking for Dad. It was dark but I could see everything below me clearly. I felt like I was flying.”

“Did you find him?”

“No, but I saw other things, moving between the trees. Swarming like ants, or the spiders you sweep from under my bed. All arms and legs and they were covered in blood –”

“Bianca –”

“But they were, and when they looked up their eyes were wide and white, so white –”

“Nightmares aren’t real,” she comforts, leading the child over to the glowing fireplace. “And besides, your father will be back soon.” The fire smolders in the hearth. Chunks of charcoal bake in its embers. Already the girl is starting to feel warmer in her arms. “Forget it all, it was just a bad dream.”

“It wasn’t bad.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t a bad dream. I could feel everything, like it was all me. I was in the trees and the ice and the blood of the things below –”

“Bianca –”

“Cold but hungry –”

“Stop, Bianca. That’s quite enough of that.”

They sit together by the fire for a while longer, toasting their hands and feet, before she sends the girl back to bed. Not until the bedroom door clicks shut does she move, returning from the crackling fireplace to her previous post at the window. Snow has started falling, blanketing the night-time forest in a crisp white cape. Although she has stood at the window a hundred times before now, she decides the forest looks different tonight. She sends a thought to John, wandering somewhere beneath the old aller trees. She wishes he would hurry up. The beet doesn’t matter anymore. There are other days to forage. It will do more harm than good for him to linger in the dark.

III

He will be home soon, if he picks up his pace. In a matter of minutes he could find himself looking across a steaming casserole and a generous pint into Grace’s face. Even after twenty-two years, she is no less beautiful than the first day they had met.

He has always felt different to other people. The world is moving faster than he can keep up with. Their traditional ways are almost dead, but the village offers some respite. Here, between the trees, they are free to be themselves. Grace understands this. Tired, hungry and alone in the cold, he has never missed her more.

The wind whines through the treetops, carrying with it a flurry of snow and ice and something else that Midwinter’s evening. He turns in time to see an owl as it soars overhead.

The bird is beautiful. It glides silently, like a ghost, its creamy feathers stark against the blackness of the night sky. There are not many left, now, here or anywhere; ghosts in more than just appearance. Perhaps the cold has driven it here. Perhaps its business is not so different to his own. The night-time forest is full of hunters and their prey.

He is about to resume walking when another shape catches his eyes. Pale against the black night and thin enough that he had taken it for outstretched branches, the silhouette springs from a tree onto the passing bird. The owl’s scream pierces the woods as it is snatched from the sky.

“What –”

A mass of shadows erupts from the undergrowth around him. Limbs flail like leafless branches, skeletal and pale in the moonlight. Moans of relief rise over desperate gasps. He turns to run, but makes no more than a few steps before long fingers find his neck. They are a woman’s hands, stained red, reminding him of Grace’s fingers, all those years ago, their tips coloured bright with raspberries. Then other hands grasp his arms and the softness of his stomach and he crumples to the earth, blanketed by a frenzy of feverish activity.

Grace has just set a saucepan of water to boil when something scuttles overhead. She shouts as she jumps, knocking the pan to the floor. Warm water spills out, running quickly into the wooden cracks, but her attention is fixed on the ceiling. There is movement in the attic; a definite scrabbling, as though something small is seeking entry to the house. If the squirrels are back, there will be blood on her hands this evening.

Bianca does not seem to have woken, at least. She offers a silent prayer of thanks. It would do the girl’s childish imagination no good to hear the noises petering down from the above.

After a minute of silence she stirs, and in ten steps has retrieved a broom from the utilities cupboard. The broom feels reassuring in her grasp, like it belongs with her, and she it. There isn’t much in the world she can’t shift with this broom, she reminds herself, or else beat senseless. Moving to stand beneath the attic trapdoor, she brings her weapon of choice to bear on the old wood.

Three thuds reverberate throughout the cottage before the trapdoor falls open and a thin ladder slides out. Peering upwards, she places a foot on the first rung.

With a splintered crash the cottage door blows inwards. The window shatters and her world with it, shards of ice and glass scattering across the room. The ceiling spins as she tumbles from the ladder to the floor, her heart hammering in her chest. The cold rushes inside and, with it, a dozen figures.

She guesses a dozen, but there might be more, the room seeming to blur around her. She does see thin arms, long-fingered hands and pale skin made pink and blue from the cold. The icy air fills her eyes and mouth, and with it the sweet tang of spoiled meat. She has smelled it once before, when their dog had crawled beneath the cottage to die three years ago.

One of them hovers by the doorway, neck stretching as it seems to scent the air. Eyes flutter as its mouth opens and in a moment of sickness she feels its hunger inside herself. The room is still spinning, her surroundings stretching, the open mouth gaping wider and wider until there is nothing else but the blackness of its throat, impossibly black, an abyssal blackness with no end.

She has heard tales of the Gluttons, had been warned about them when she was a young girl, but she had never taken them seriously. Perhaps it is the nature of the hungry, to forget. She had heard that before, too, at the Christmas market one year. Witnessing the stark truth of these bony limbs, these wasted arms and mouths dark with old blood, she knows she will never forget again.

She seems to feel their hands on her all once. The famished throw themselves over her, claiming her for their own; joined by every thumbprint, ever finger, every palm wrapped tightly around her skin. She burns with their cold touch. Light flickers overhead as faces swim before it, and she imagines the winter sun, speeding low through the sky, its dappled light fractured by the treetops. In this moment she is one with these ghouls, made whole by their beating hearts, their desperate breaths; their endless hunger on this, the longest night, when the stomachs of every man, woman and child roar in anticipation of the coming festivities.

It is their human hunger, and it is the hunger of the trees around her. Branches bite her arms, and the back of her neck as she tumbles into the cold outside. It is the ravening winter, gnawing at her eyes and hands and the soles of her feet, and the insatiable night, stripping her of sight, of self, of any awareness save that of appetite. She screams, and her voice is voracious. She howls and her song is hunger. She moans and the swarm moans with her; a chorus at once nourished by the abyss and obliterated by it. She lives and dies and feeds in the darkness.

~ Thomas Brown

Shooting Stars

September 30, 2014September 23, 2014 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 20 Comments

I smell the burning varnish used to coat the stalls long before I first notice that the stables are ablaze. My initial thought is that someone is having a bonfire. I sometimes light bonfires myself, when the pile of broken fence slats and posts behind the tack room grows too great. Those fires smell of burning varnish too. The chemical tang of solvent fills my throat.

After several minutes of the smell, I am drawn from the kitchen, where I was cooking myself dinner, to the conservatory. I cannot remember how I came to be standing in the kitchen, or what I was cooking, but that must have been what I was doing. It is then, as I move towards the glass, that I see the distant glow of flames in the darkness. My chest tightens, but I do not move. I can do nothing except stare, transfixed, at the uncertain orange in the night.

The house sits at the top of a hill, where it has a clear view of the paddocks and the surrounding countryside. Mine is the only house for miles around. I have seen many things, standing at the conservatory windows, but never this. Even as I watch, the flames scatter higher, the tips of their tongues licking the moon and the stars. Most of the stars have vanished. The same chemical that fills my nose and mouth gives off a dense black smoke, through which even starlight cannot shine. The stables were recoated recently, to protect them from the coming winter. The coat was fresh. The smoke makes monstrous clouds before the moon.

From the cool, bright confines of the conservatory, I might be watching a television screen, or peering through space into a different place where there is no glass, no pale spotlights, no lace doylies or marble Olympians; only blackness and heat and the savage light that comes when these two things collide. The paddocks that I have fenced off and knocked down and re-fenced for twenty years flicker ominously. Jumps and their poles cast long-legged silhouettes across the ground. The stable walls lose definition, sagging on their frames, slumping softly, cracking and becoming black before drifting hotly on the wind; new stars, made for a blacker, more noxious night.

I realise that I should call the fire brigade. The telephone is in the hallway, at the bottom of the stairs. It will take me moments to walk there, lift the handset, dial the number that will bring fire engines, but my legs will not move. Even before I hear the screams, I know it is already too late.

The wild sounds stir me to movement. My hand slides to the key on the coffee table. Automatically I open the door and wander outside. The wind is strong. I can feel it against my face, see it as it toys with the flames. The taste in my mouth is poisonous, the breeze cold, my cheeks wet. I realise I am crying.

I first see them as I wander down the hill. It is not a long walk from my house to the stables, but it feels like forever in the darkness. I marvel how anything can burn for so long and not be consumed. I wonder if time is passing or if I have died and am forced to endure this endless conflagration forever.

The first of the horses bursts like a fireball from the stables. A bright orange mane of another kind streams from its hair and back. It does not seem like my horse anymore; this burning mass of muscle, fat, bone and primal terror. I cannot see its eyes at this distance, but I know they are white, its mouth frothing, if the froth has not been scorched away.

A second animal tumbles madly in its wake. It emerges from the next stall but does not make it far before crumpling to the ground. The smell on my tongue accrues a meatiness that is not altogether distasteful. Licking my lips, I turn to the hedgerow and dry-heave.

Three more of the horses scatter like cinders into the night. Theirs is the screaming; fire-song composed of ash and agony. I realise that I should call the fire brigade. The telephone is in the hallway, at the bottom of the stairs. I wonder if I have died, and found my way to Hell. Over and over, the giddy screams of the horses pierce my ears.

My feet guide me to where the nearest of the horses fell. It does not look like a horse anymore; reduced to a smoking heap of charred blackness. There are glistening spots, which I assume are bone or some other internal structure made liquid and shining by the heat, and protruding sticks that might once have been its forelegs. The wood-fires behind the tack shed go much the same way, when they burn themselves out. The iron nails that once held the fences together grow black and white and twitch like slim maggots. Perhaps the horse and the nails are not so dissimilar after all. Perhaps we are none of us so different; metal, flesh, warped wood and old bone made up of the same base structures, atoms and molecules revealed now, unmasked by firelight, released by heat into the sky, stardust to stars again, like barbequed meat on my tongue!

At some point, when the fires reach their zenith and begin to quieten, I find myself walking back up the hill. In the hallway, at the bottom of the stairs, I lift the receiver and dial the fire brigade. I tell them I was sleeping, and when I woke my stables were ablaze. There is nothing else I can say.

The sight from my conservatory is much different, now. The fires have almost exhausted themselves, but there is still a bright glow, a smouldering redness in the night. I imagine it is the fire’s pulse, beating low, almost spent as it licks its lips and yawns and succumbs to death. I close the conservatory door, to keep out the cold and the smell, but the smell has already saturated the house.

Shortly, the night will fill with screams again as the fire engines carve blue flashing paths through the vast night. The darkness seems bigger now, emptier without the fire.

The smoke is thinner too, almost run out, and I can see the stars again. They wink down at me from the coldness of space, and I imagine they are my horses, some skeletal, others plump and round-bellied, running through the night, manes and tails and thundering hooves alight and glorious.

I do not think I will ever stop seeing my horses, galloping overhead. I will never forget their stench, burned into my soul and the walls of my house. And when I turn in for bed, and close my eyes, and fall asleep, I will hear their mad whinnies again; this nightmare, luminous and alive.

~ Thomas Brown

Distant Shores

September 24, 2013September 23, 2013 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 25 Comments

“It’s not what you call me, but what I answer to that matters the most.” – African Proverb

The nightclub vomited its occupants onto the cobbled streets. Laughing figures tumbled through the cold, some falling to the pavement while others sought to sate themselves on warmth and food, drawn to kebab vans like chimpanzees to weak, wounded prey. Their shrieks filled the night; wild, simian noises that would not sound out of place in the hot darkness of the jungle. She knew those sounds well, and the mindless acts that followed; cannibal-banquets partaken by those same primates, orange eyes staring from beneath low brows as they licked clean the pink bones of their own.

From the narrow alleyway across the street, Oyotunji watched as one girl, dressed in shiny leopard print, fell to her knees in the road. Bent low she began to heave, a cocktail of stomach lining, sangria and hot digestive juices spewing from her lips. The rank aroma carried through the night.

“What?” shouted the girl, when she finally stopped heaving and could speak again. Her glazed, unseeing eyes challenged the world. “Come on, then!” she screamed, struggling to her feet, “have at it! Come on!”

Stepping back from the street, Oyotunji huddled deeper into her fur shawl. It was an intimate, elderly gesture; the last frail twitch of a small sparrow, but then she was an elderly woman. Her lips pinched as tight as the mouth of the alleyway in which she stood.

“I cold,” she said suddenly.

“You not cold. You don’ feel cold now. Not for many year have you felt it touch.”

Wambua stood a little way behind her. In the darkness her twin brother was almost invisible, except for the fur draped over his shoulders; a matching leopard skin that gave him some substance in the shadows. She did not need to see the aged contours of his face to know how he was feeling. His discontent sang in her heart, her blood, in the jelly of her bones.

“I don’ feel cold like dat. I feel cold for dem. I feel cold for bein’ here, in dis grey place.”

A flicker of lightning, vague and indistinct, flashed overhead, illuminating the slumped, misshapen street. Opening her hand, Oyotunji felt for the rain that would inevitably follow. She knew it was the same rain that fell back home, she knew the air around her was the same air, the clouds the same clouds. And yet they were not. These things were different here. Pollution clogged the sky, saturated the earth and the wind. The city was a watering hole, where once her brother and she would have come to slake their thirst, now tainted; corrupted by twenty-first century carrion.

The first fat drops found her palm, and she realised she was not comforted.

“We have slept too long, sister, and missed many things. De British Empire has grown rotten.”

“Dis is de Empire we once feared?” She gesticulated wildly, arms, little more than bones, thrown to the sky. Lightning flickered again, followed by thunderous discontent. “Dat cannot be. What has happened here?”

“De world is spoiled meat, crawling with flies.”

Even as her brother spoke, Oyotunji smelled again the woman’s sick, heard the mad laughter of the inebriated, felt anger rolling like waves through the night-time city. More screams carried on the wind, and she remembered the troupe of chimpanzees feasting on their own. Inspired by those screams she remembered other things too; man as he forced himself into her on the river bank, the raging faces of the white folk as their weapons spat death into the village, Wambua’s body, limp where she clutched him to her wounded chest. As they had lived as twins, so they had died a twinned death, and were reborn together when the rains next fell; brought back by Africa to slake their desert thirst on the lifeblood of those who had despoiled the land, dealt death beneath the burning sun.

“Do not despair, sister. Dis place look grey, you speak truth. But look deeper, look past stone an’ noise an’ misery an’ you got some’ting more. Some’ting you an’ me both know.”

“An’ what be dat, brother of mine?”

“A jungle,” he said, his eyes shining like discs in the darkness. “A man-made jungle, Oyotunji.”

“A jungle?”

“Hear de roar of de people as dey struggle to make themself heard, each man an’ woman de hog, de antelope, de buffalo –”

“An’ we de cat.”

He nodded, and in the darkness of the alley a mouth of yellowing teeth appeared. She smelled them as much as she saw them, rotten and real; a sharp, pungent smile in this city where everything else was synthetic and stale. Together their mouths knew more life and death than the rest of the city combined.

“Exactly, sister. We de leopard. We will stalk de street like shadow, invisible, an’ in dis grey, decayin’ place we will have our retribution. Dey dug us from our sleep in de earth and brought us here, to dis place where dere is no earth, where de wild is silenced. So we will speak for de wild again. We will roar –”

“An’ it will be bloody,” whispered Oyotunji. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked, and she cocked her head, eyes closed, savouring the sound as it reverberated in the hollows of her head.

When she opened her eyes again, her brother was standing beside her. He screamed first, and in the flash of answering lightning she saw his face, tortured by the angst of a continent, a land with no outlet for its pain except the voices of the dead things in its soil. Then she joined him, her own voice rising leonine into the night, before brother and sister eschewed their human shapes, wrapping their flesh with real fur, and fled together through the streets in the guise of great cats; Mother Africa awakened, and alive.

~ Thomas Brown

Lady Crocodile

July 16, 2013July 11, 2013 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 20 Comments

‘Your Winnie,’ she mutters, pressing harder with the face wipe. ‘Your dragon, your beautiful dragon girl…’

Sitting before the mirror at her dressing table, she doesn’t recognise the woman staring back at her. There is familiarity in the face, as there is familiarity to be found in anything if a person is subjected to it often enough, but that is all. Still, she keeps looking. She must look, every night, before Seth turns in for bed, desperately studying the features that emerge from beneath her makeup. The ritual of recognition is on-going.

The bedroom is dark, save for the light from the first-floor landing, which spills through the open doorway. It is easier when the bedroom is dark, as though that makes it all right; as though it is acceptable that she cannot properly see herself when she can barely see anything else. Canned laughter carries through the house, and the sound of audience applause, as Seth’s own evening ritual comes to its close. Soon he will ascend through the house, as if chasing the vestigial laughs, the sound of company, until they lead him into the bedroom and are silent.

The evening had begun like any other. Dinner was ready for when Seth returned home from work. She had cooked lamb, rubbed with rosemary and a selection of other herbs. She ate silently while he told her about his day. She nodded when encouraged, smiled when he smiled, laughed at his jokes.

He told her the lamb was nice, that his ‘dragon’s done herself proud with this one.’ They drank wine; his white, hers red. He said the white went with the vegetables. Her palate favoured the red; rich, velveteen flavours in her mouth, against her tongue. She agreed with him regardless.

Seth loves it when she agrees with him. He says it shows their unity, that they are two made into one. ‘In sickness and in health. Till death do we part. My Winnie, my fierce, beautiful dragon girl.’

She turns her attention to her lips next. Pulling a clean tissue free from the box to her right, she dabs it to her mouth, as though kissing it gently good night. Her lips have not kissed anything gently for a long time now. Seth does not like his love gentle, and on the occasions he does press his mouth against hers, it cannot be called a kiss. Once, before all this, he might have kissed her in the proper sense. There had been tenderness then; enough to tempt her from her family home into his arms.

She presses harder, then begins rubbing, until all of the lipstick is gone. Underneath, her lips are thin, and slightly raw. The tissue comes away red and streaky in her hand.

When they had both finished eating dinner, the dragon washed up while her white knight took the wine into the front room. Heat seared her hands as they dipped in and out of the sink. Drowsy with wine and the silky, sudsy water on her skin, she thought things that she had not dared to think before. ‘What ifs’ uncoiled themselves in her mind; fiery thoughts roused and riled.

Staring into her bright, shining eyes in the dressing table mirror, she remembers every slight, every wound, every wicked word intended to belittle her. This is not love, she thinks. She dares to think it again, giving voice to the doubts that have for a long time now been hatching in her head. This is not love. It was never love. She is no better off than when she left home; lost and lonely and unloved by a world that does not know the meaning of the word.

She remembers the feel of his hand against her face, the sound it makes; a ringing slap that sinks beneath the skin and seems to burn. His dragon, scorched!

She thinks of all these things, as she had thought of them at the kitchen sink, her eyes fixed firmly on the wedding ring by the taps. Her hands had moved automatically through the water, her mind caught up in a twister of realisation. So much pain, she thought, so much upset for so little; a small piece of jewellery and their names on a certificate. God, she was sure, played no part in this; an ancient force dead to the modern world. But there were yet more ancient forces, not dead but sleeping, and they stirred now, suffused with heat and hunger –

Tears cling to her long, black lashes, before breaking free and running down her face. Most of her make-up is removed now but she does not stop wiping. She covers all her face from her forehead to her neck, and with every wipe she feels more familiar, less false to her own eyes. And what eyes, she thinks, reaching to rip off her fake lashes. The lids come too, peeled clean above her sockets, revealing mad, majestic orbs underneath.

Silence falls suddenly over the house. As her opened eyes regard themselves in the mirror, she hears Seth at the bottom of the stairs. He comes perhaps to slay her with his lance, to penetrate the folds of her flesh, to pierce her in her most vulnerable place until she is stilled beneath him, and he spent.

She wipes harder, with less care, and it seems to her that every movement sloughs skin from her face. Her flesh smears like concealer, revealing new skin underneath. The tissues tire quickly, turning red and rancid in her hand. Their remains litter the dressing table, and in the mirror, her new face; sharp and scaled. His dragon girl, a woman!

He reaches the top of the stairs, and she senses him on the landing. Then she sees him in the mirror, a silhouette in the doorway. His body blocks the light.

‘You’re cold again.’

‘I’m fine,’ she says, still staring in the mirror.

‘Come off it, I can see you shivering from here.’ Seth moves into the bedroom, his silhouette reappearing by the window. The cross-framed sheet of glass stands open; the bedroom exposed to the black sky, the silver stars swallowed by that blackness so that they barely seem to shine at all. ‘What have I said about leaving this open at night?’

He is still talking but she does not hear. Time seems to stop as she considers him; not Seth but a silhouette, featureless and without meaning. He is nothing. It is nothing. She feels herself shaking as she considers what she has given to him. Every smack scalds her skin, embarrassment sears her cheeks, abuse burning between her thighs until she can barely contain the heat inside her. Her mouth stretches into a silent scream, jaws wide, like the dragons of old. Lipstick and lashes, for lamb!

‘– to make an effort. You know I love you, Winnie? Your knight in shining –’

She rushes at him through the darkness. They stumble into the en-suite, half in and out of the bedroom. His head hits the smooth white of the wash basin and he lies still beneath her. Heat spills from her mouth in hurried words.

‘Lamb,’ she breathes hotly, ‘lipstick and lashes, for lamb!’

His eyes flutter, head lolling on the linoleum, and she wonders if he can see her, if he recognises that she has changed now. Her breath rattles in her throat; a beautiful, crocodilian croak, which seems to say I am a woman and you have wronged me. Then her mouth closes around his face, jaw loose, like that of a great snake. Her teeth sink into his skin and he burns beneath her, this modern knight, this meat, this man.

~ Thomas Brown

Damned Words 2

June 1, 2013March 7, 2018 ~ TheDamned ~ 35 Comments

Betrayal
Dan Dillard

It began with one.
But bolt by bolt and rail by rail,
Walls he could not scale.
Leaving was to no avail.
The bastard.

I didn’t mean it as a snare,
At first, it was not a jail.
He had his way, but didn’t care
And now I laugh, I sit and stare.
I watch as he wails and calls
Begging me, “Tear down the walls!”
I will not.

He will pay with dread and deal with pain.
The love I gave him not in vain.
The cage I built, his blood to stain.
He won’t make this mistake again.

Shiny, Pretty Things
Nina D’Arcangela

Obediently loyal, begging of my affection. Shining vibrantly, fools each one. Seeking my notice among the many. They cling to the side, perfection in every space; none dare lag behind. Repugnant they are.

One does catch my eye, not the brightest, not the flawless; but the least refined. Standing in front, lacking shimmer; displaying the audacity to perch to the left, head skewed slightly off kilter. Perhaps one of these fools is deserving. What use have I of minions made perfect? Give me the challenge; I will break him to my ideal. Yes, this one may be indeed be worthy.

Sworn
Joseph A. Pinto

I thought you would follow, but the willow reed swallowed me whole
At least that’s the excuse you sold…
I’d been too busy tightening bolts
Preparing for traffic that would never come.
On the opposite end of nothing now
I’ve teetered upon this sharp edge far too long
Waiting for that willow reed to part
A path once cut through it; I suppose now it’s gone
Should my bridge someday be crossed
Unlike that lost, forgotten route
I’ll keep to tightening bolts, even if my hands get torn
The willow reed once led the way, at least
So you’d sworn.

Cheap Champagne
Tyr Kieran

My vision blurs as if mocking the slur that hindered my tongue for the last hour. On the balcony, the cold aluminum railing burns my cheek, but serves to support me while I regain balance.

I’ve drowned out our honeymoon night, but she kept feeding me full glasses.

Agony hits and I collapse.

My new bride ignores me as she packs a suitcase on the bed.

“Help.” I moan. “It hurts!”

She steps out onto the terrace through the open sliding door and squeezes my face in her hands.

“Yeah, poison will do that, Dear. Thanks for the life insurance.”

Harvest House
Thomas Brown

Each day, when morning breaks, the gates unlock. Blue-eyed boys and blond-haired girls hop, skip and jump, crack silly jokes, kick chequered balls into an empty sky. A bell rings and they rush inside; Tom, Dan, Joe, Little Hunter drink juice, help themselves to biscuits, laughing, throwing punches, wiping crumbs from round their messy mouths.

After lunch the children play inside, read stories (Nina sings), fall fast asleep, and then, in that calm, soporific state begin to change. Skin shivers, splits revealing shells, long insect legs, click-clacking tongues; by night a horrid, hungry hive trapped inside this, their steel penal-nest.

Once Upon A Troll
Blaze McRob

This was once a peaceful place, the bridge above my home wooden and old. No one used it. Ah, except for the occasional foolish school child taking a short cut home. Tasty little creatures for a troll such as me.

Then they put in the steel girder bridge so the train could run over my home. No Damned peace now!

Tonight is a special run. The train will be filled with people.

The rivets are so easy for my strong fingers to turn and remove. Just perfect.

Falling into the middle of the river, the train will run no more.

Sealed Promises
Leslie Moon

All my living fears buried, banished, bolted
contained beneath earth’s seas.
Bound are the monsters was their promise to me.
***
My logic sneers, “Is the box today’s illusion?”
Placate and pacify where set in stone is a new dependence
and false security they can’t deny.
***
Their promises fit neatly in those little pill squares.
Now that the voices have gotten louder where do I run?
Their hot breath growing fouler.
*
Red eyes at morning taunt my blinds.
Does no one heed the warning?
Make room in the canvas sack, seal out the sounds.
Give my reason back!

The Greatest Fraud
Daemonwulf

I see a world that no longer is, one in which I cannot live. Just as today, and each before, my mind closes another door. But like a movie without an end, the fire takes me back again. Life and death whiz past my head, I hear a thousand screams of dread. I taste the blood upon my tongue, and smell the burning of the young. While blades of green replace hot sands, I watch my life pour through red hands. I now know it was a war of swine that caused me to cross this bridge in pine.

The Library

May 7, 2013May 7, 2013 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 30 Comments

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them.”
– Ray Bradbury

The sexton of Barnestone Cemetery hears the hum of nearby street lamps before he sees them, lighting up the road like an airport runway. Their activation might be a nod to the whole city, which seems to shine brighter, bearing down on him and the shadows in which he stands. The darkness scatters from around him. Alone, he drowns in light.

Windows illuminate even the tallest buildings against the backdrop of night, interposed with glowing billboards, bearing pixelated faces with wide, white grins and hair the colour of gold. Skyscrapers scratch the clouds. The roads beneath are no better; red rivers of brake-lights stopping-starting by the bright glow of the street lamps, which shine harsher than any lamp should, flashing, always flashing, burning spots into his eyes, his soul, like a strip of old film reel, grown hot and ashen–

He turns sharply from the city, his hand shaking where it grips the metal gate. Flakes of black paint rub from the railings, floating slowly to the ground, as anger wells inside him. He can only imagine the sight he must make; a solitary figure, small, barely a speck on a patch of grass against the enormity of the city around him. And yet it is the little things that he misses; the stars in the sky, bedtime stories, the owls, which he had once used to watch for through the window with his father and a pair of black binoculars. Stars and stories mean different things now; glossy magazine spreads, lurid as the lights around him. The owls mean nothing at all. There are pictures online, if anyone knows to search for them, and footage from old documentaries. He even found bird bones once, inside an old oak tree. He buried them where Rowling rests, in a grave by the north gate. That which he once thought fitting now brings a lump to his tight throat.

He focuses on the flakes of paint and their delicate descent, his anger slowly settling with them. His grip on the railings relaxes. So much is dead. So much is gone. The world, the word, everything that mattered now mad, or meaningless. The old ways are almost forgotten. But he remembers. He remembers the rituals, the rites, in this place where they might still be found, if one only knows where to look.

Returning to his work, he secures the cast-iron gates with lock and key. Chains snake through the bars, which he shakes, to make sure they are secure. Moving along the railings, he repeats this at the north and south entrances. He has worked in the cemetery his whole life, as his father did before him, and is intimately familiar with the grounds. When he reaches the east gate, he does not lock it but stands and stares a little longer through the bars. The city blurs, light running down his cheeks, and it is several minutes before he comes to himself again.

With the gate ajar, he turns from the railings and walks slowly back through the headstones. Sirens scream in his ears, traffic roars, and above that the digitized voices of a hundred adverts, proclaiming their products to passers-by. He laps the graveyard twice, depositing flowers at certain graves – roses for Hawthorne, lilies for Stoker, a basket of poppies for Faulks – before turning back toward the mausoleums.

The squat, grey buildings mark the hallowed heart of the cemetery. Approaching the closest, he climbs cracked steps to the entrance. The weather has done terrible things to the architecture, which has suffered – bled marble blood – beneath electric storms and acid rain. It is still more beautiful than anything in the surrounding city. He supposes he has always seen beauty in dead, ruined things. Now he appreciates them because he must. Because there is nobody else. Because otherwise they mean nothing, and the sad, sorry world has won.

Unlocking the rusted gate, he slips inside. Strangely, it is not the cold that he first notices, or the dark, but the silence. Only his boots continue to make sound, where they scrape against smooth stone. For a minute he descends through total darkness, feeling his way along the walls. He moves slowly, so as not to slip. Fingers find grooves they have found many times before, then he sees faint light ahead; the fire from the brazier he keeps lit here. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he steps into a small chamber. Words drift through his mind: sanctum, sepulcher, tomb. The fire paints shadow shapes across the walls.

He approaches the sarcophagus, which dominates the center of the shallow room. The cold, or perhaps the silence, prickles his skin, but he is not uncomfortable. Quite the opposite, he stares down at the lid and the human shape engraved there. It is a knightly figure; proud, learned, like no man or woman he would encounter now. People no longer talk to each other but at each other. They curse and croon; incoherent sounds for an incoherent age. Fuck flows like poetry from furious lips, except they do not know the meaning of poetry, have never heard it, never read it, can barely speak let alone read. Language is lost, buried beneath a weight of blasphemies, generations buried with it, bones broken beneath text speech, abbreviated brutality, bound conscious to the internet, the Ethernet, the Ethernot, no sense, no individuality, no life at all beyond the small black mirrors in their palms, the bright, gaudy billboards outside their apartment windows–

Movement at the bottom of the stairs makes him turn. A man is standing by the brazier. He is followed by an old woman, and moments later two more. Gradually the room begins to fill, until a dozen people stand around him. There is no need yet for conversation. He thinks they look sad, and excited, and tired, although he could just be seeing himself in their faces.

When the chamber is full and everyone still, he removes the lid from the sarcophagus. The lid is made from marble, and it takes six of them to slide it from its place. Once, he thinks, as he applies himself to the task, it was a sin to disrupt the dead. Now it is required; a necessary necromancy, such that the written word might live again, that they might read, as writing was intended to be read. Together they lower the lid through the silence, resting it carefully against the ground. Reaching through the grave dust, he places his hand in the sarcophagus. When he lifts it up, he is holding a book.

There is no speech, no revolutionary jargon or ancient incantation. It is enough that those assembled can see the book, with its worn spine, faded font and tired, tattered pages. It has been a month since they last met; a month trapped in their wayward, prostituted world, and the sight of the volume is a visible weight from their shoulders.

As he opens the book to the first pages, some people sink cross-legged to the floor. Others perch on short statues, or lean against the walls. Firelight captures attentive faces, and in that moment, seeing their eyes shining back at him, he feels one thing, so powerful it is almost overwhelming; the rare, quiet rush of relief. They are a group; his group, the last literary coven. If it is necromancy to commune with the dead, to raise written spirits from their tomes, then they are necromancers; not death-dealers or charlatans but people, just people, who would read together and remember in this graveyard, this forgotten place, this library for the dead.

“We read,” he says quietly, remembering an old quote from a book buried now beneath a grave marked Lewis, “to know we are not alone.” Then he opens his mouth, draws breath, begins reading from the pages in his hands, and twelve people listen patiently, and for a chapter or two in a cold, dark tomb know peace.

~ Thomas Brown

Heed the Tale Weaver: Celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Damned. Through May 7, 2013, upon each new post, a comment you will leave. A package of ghoulish goodies tainted with an offering from every member of the Damned awaits one fated winner – glorious books, personalized stories and eternal suffering at your feet. Now Damn yourself, make your mark below! But remember insolent ones, you must leave a comment, a “like” will not earn you a chance at our collection of depravity. Do not make the Damned hunt you down.

Damned Words

March 26, 2013March 7, 2018 ~ TheDamned ~ 64 Comments

Enter. Sit before the Tale Weaver.
Heed: true beauty tis not in the eye of the beholder
but in the minds of the Damned.
Open yourself to us…

A Picture Paints 100 Words, by Dan Dillard

The knob creaked as I gave it a twist. The ancient sound of metal on metal made my ears ache and slithered panic up my spine. Funny it should do that. That anything was able to do that to me in this stage of the game.

It was brilliant that I even found this place, so fitting to my plan. Her body tucked ever so well into the old crematorium. The drugs working their magic until after I lit the burner and the flames licked up, tickling her with devilish hunger. My favorite part was yet to come. The screaming.

Poisonous Hope, by Tyr Kieran

Imprisoned behind an unlocked gate of decorative iron, I watch the world carry on without me. Each day I remain in captivity works on my soul as bacteria would on a slab of uncured beef. The breeze that swirls in and out of my chamber taunts of life’s sensations that could still be mine. Yet, intangible chains bind me to a rotting corpse while the sweet poison of hope corrodes my chance at eternal peace. It’s too tempting to ignore. I cannot rest, cannot let go. So, I wait for receptive prey to venture in and unknowingly forfeit their future.

Sacred Charge, by Nina D’Arcangela

Day after day I have grasped you, clung to your surface, held you as though you were yet a remnant of her. Many the night I sat below you, gazing upward; wishing, hoping, never praying. Have I made you my false idol? Perhaps. But in your solemn stance, you guard over all that was precious to me, how can I blame you? But I do. My mind bleeds for what should have been, for the chance never to have seen you. My tears shed upon your unyielding beauty only add to my remorse for what lies beyond your sacred charge.

Refuge, by Joseph A. Pinto

Refuge; before these iron gates I tremble. Words, long forgotten, muttered upon this unforgiving draft. Weary fingers graze lips; memory languishes. A song cries. Lost, what once remained. Balm to my wounds, these iron gates I clutch. To twist this handle, to enter into that which I have denied myself. A thousand angels mock my arrogance; their light I have shunned. Tell me godless thing, who haunts your starless nights? My thousand lies expired at last; hollow, barren, crumbled within. Shadows beckon; so soon shall I dance. Refuge beyond these iron gates; blackened tomb. Condemned both by heaven and hell.

Vacuum, by Leslie Moon

You ask me to grasp this? Enter something into which I cannot perceive meaning. Is there a way through this dim portal? Will I come to the end and find a vacuous self? Strain into a haze with no return?

Ask me not to open this sepulcher of doubt. Free my way, menial I will welcome. To touch this skeleton of all my fears, a repugnant notion. You bid me- go, no gentle nudge. I am plummeted to the world beyond my fears. Where all I cherish is missing. All I long for is past. All I was is gone.

Sleeping Dogs, by Thomas Brown

Higher and higher the dog-king climbs, advancing up the stairs. Where the brickwork fails, he catches light; small glimmers in the dark. Dawn illuminates the countryside, and at its heart his tower; a Gothic spike, a splinter, driven deep into the hills.

Steps crumble, break beneath paw-hands, and then he is outside. The rooftop glitters, wet with slime and sunlight on old stone. He crawls to where the guttering clings tightly to the slate, and where the new dawn sees his flesh, his broken face, his lolling tongue, it hears him laugh, breathe rancid breath, then turns him into stone.

Inner Sanctum, by Blaze McRob

From down the hall, the words do come, and with them now, a screeching hum. As door does open, telling all, that deep fears wait at beck and call. But now must I with no noise crawl, or parents both will make me call, out in the night as they will beat, the stuffing out from my small feat. For in my bed I am to be, and not in hall the place for me. As radio for this great show, within my soul is not to grow. But Inner Sanctum does arrive, and three year ears in story dive.

Welcome Home, Baby! by Hunter Shea

Shirley, I’m coming!

The words came out as, “Sssrlleee, mmmm cnnngggg!”

One foot stepped on the other and my forehead slammed into the grated door. It should have hurt, but then again, all the should haves were dead and gone.

Unlike me.

Unlike the other shambling wrecks in the cemetery.

Do I look that bad?

I twisted the iron knob. I’d been able to breathe last time I’d been here. I came to bring flowers, talk to the air.

The door opened with a steady creek.

Shirley!

Her skin slid off her face. So what? We had each other again.

Veneration, by Daemonwulf

The shrieks of the ageless faithful defile him, seeking restitution from an eternally deafened heart. Their history of torment, revealed in screaming admonition, scrapes the frozen memories and claws at cold, darkened walls, struggling for a chance to be heard.

Theirs is a multitude of ignored voices; immeasurable lives ending as grist to be chewed by holy teeth.

He slams the door as the suffering faithful yearn for salvation, choosing instead the false prophecies he utters in glorious silence.

Crying out for redemption, they clamor for their promised reward, only to find sanctuary within the warming shit of their God.

Route UB1

February 26, 2013February 25, 2013 ~ Thomas Brown ~ 34 Comments

Long weeks working. Rain still falling. Heavy droplets, water crawling down bus shelter, dark skies bawling. Another day is done.

Through the grey a bus approaches, teeming inside, full of roaches, human insects, tired voices, “Ticket please,” one grunts. Franz knows the feeling; hating, hurting. Sick of service, new-world weary. Inside bright. The windows dirty.

Loose change. Find a seat.

Near the front, two ladies talking, behind them, a young boy squawking, rows of faces, soulless, gawking. What’s the world become? Tongues are wagging, swear words snagging, at the back three young men bragging. Stealing-shouting-almost shagging. How drunk they were last night.

Starting, stopping, people walking. Motion sickness, long face balking in the window, movement rocking: Bus Route UB1.

Through the city, every evening. Sniffing noses, heavy breathing. Bus vibrating, stomach heaving. Heart hammering against his ribs; an ancient, tribal drum.

All around him, buildings sliding, melting in the rain, subsiding, streaks of grey, rainfall hiding the city’s sobbing face. Lived for ten years. Worked for thirty. Bones are tired, his body hurting. To cut his wrists, his hot blood spurting: a man can dream. He can.

At the back, the young men shouting louder, voices starting harder, jostling they assess their larder. Bus filled with easy prey. He knows the sort; no school, no teaching, fathers gone, their mothers breaching as they spawn more screaming offspring, red between the legs. The bus route is their hunting ground, their web where helpless victims found, like flies stuck to the city, bound to the monsters this world breeds.

Outside the road runs black with water. Under doorways, people loiter, waiting out the never-ending rain that will not stop. Clouds were black at six this morning. Raining since the day was dawning. Since he stepped, pale-faced and yawning, into another day.

Before his eyes, the young men changing. Altogether, outlines blurring. Faceless shapes, new limbs emerging. Monsters in men’s skin. Arms are growing, bodies breaking. Snap like pencils. Sounds like choking. Sucking. Slurping. No one worried, not awoken, dead to this, their world.

From the back it slowly reaches, twelve long legs, thick, dark like leeches bloated on a diet of human peaches; female fruit. Franz watches as the creature prowls, he listens to its high-pitch howls. Once-hoodies, now great fleshy cowls, beneath them glittering eyes.

The monster of Route UB1 drags its large bulk, must weigh a ton, between the seats, no need to run, it knows it has already won, its prey with their returns –

– day-passes, singles to the city, hopeless, tired of living, life is gritty, pointless, shitty, he asks himself, what is there to be done?

What can be done against this beast, which on soft female flesh it feasts, and when encounters men, at least will beat them black and blue? This creature has not always been, not always was, not always seen, but in this time, grown dark and mean, has found a place to
feed –

– and breed, a human brood lusting for food and heat and life and dark corners to do dark things, now brave and bold, the human beast of Bus Route UB1.

~ Thomas Brown