The Weight of Time

The day that Old Man Godger found the clock in his gardening plot was the day that everything changed.

            Till then, the people of Idyllsham Village had been different. Before, the days wound on, one after another, interwoven into a timeless, seamless patchwork; existence like a quilt: warm, comfortable, a shroud. If someone wanted to pop round for a cup of tea and a natter, they would. There’d be no, Oh, look, is that the time! on behalf of either the host or the guest. Things just ran their course. Things just worked.

            In this community, the elders of the village were known as Rumplefarts. When you entered the period of rumplefarthood, you started to grow a beard. And that was the only sign of your seniority. People lived for ever, you see, peaceful as children. Even the older women grew whiskers, but they didn’t even notice them. It was said that a whiskery maiden proved dividends in the bedroom, when a rumplefart's blood was full of hot summer and he wanted to take up the position of the donkey and the plough. Those whiskers gave you something to hold onto.

            The men and women were equal here; they divided half their time between their garden plots and half their time sleeping, napping, smoking ‘merryweed’, or idling indoors. Old Man Godger could often be heard laughing from the little hut on his plot, blue wreaths of smoke rising from above the swing-set on his porch, him chortling away at some amusing thought.

            Godger’s wife was called Pamela. She worked in the village nursery, teaching the rimples. Rimples, it should be explained, were what the village-folk called the children. The rimples grew up and changed as they started to go through rumplehood: a tricky period in which emotions were charged, voices dropped, and they became what Godger referred to as ‘pesky little ‘tater-headed buggers’ who’d scrump from his apple orchards and turf up his turnips. These rimples eventually changed again, growing into wise old Rumplefarts and entering the time of eternal childhood.

***

            One day, Pamela was teaching the rimples about the legend of the rimple moonies, whom their people were said to be descended from. ‘One night, on the full moon, eons ago, a strange bush began to dance and sway, This bush had come from a single unknown seed that had blown in on the West Wind, and as the bush started to grow, beautiful blue berries fruited, growing fat and succulent.

            ‘And now, under the full moon, these berries began to fatten and engorge on their juices, until they fell to the earth – as children!’ The rimples, sitting on the carpet transfixed, gasped. ‘These rimple moonies then feasted on the other fruit trees from which they sprang. The fruits were sweet, and soon they became full. And so they tasted knowledge. It was sour. They’d had just enough to know they should not eat any more.

            ‘These foundling rimples then built a village around the bush, which still resides in the centre square of the village. In time, they realised that the sun was of greater use than the moon. The sun had filled that original seed with its vitality. But the moon had made it dance with joy. So every year, on the full moon nearest the winter solstice, they celebrate Rimples’ Eve, staying up all night, dancing and drinking mead, and feasting on sunflower loaves, poppyseed and pumpernickel breads, nettle soup, spiced carrot and parsnip pudding. And sometimes it’s said that the Rimple Tree in the centre of the village begins to dance, too, after they’ve offered it mead and bread. But then again, it’s always Old Man Bardletrump who professes to see the bush dancing, and we all knows that Old Man What’s-his-Trump likes a drink more’n the rest, don’t we?’

            The children all laughed. ‘And that’s how you became,’ says Mrs Godger. ‘You are all rimple moonies.’ She beams down at them, from where they sit on the carpet. ‘Right,’ she starts, patting her lap. ‘Time to go ‘ome! Best be headin’ off now, children.'

            The children sigh and moan from the carpet, heads in their palms.

            ‘Now now, rimples!’ she scorns them, playfully. ‘You’ll get another story tommorah!’

When Pamela closes the door of the school and plods along the lane home, she sees her husband clipping nettles and collecting blackberries, wrinkling his rosy face up in an effort of deep concentration as he filters through the berries, searching for the fullest, most turgid fruits. He’s perched on the bottom rung of his little stepladder, and some of Pamela’s rimples are filing past him on their way home. Up the lane, he sees a dark outline: two no good young rumples dart into the bushes, knowing he’s spied them.

            As the rimples file past, he says, idly, ‘Rumples should respect their Rumplefarts!’ He pauses, getting his fingers around a particularly thorny stem of the bush. ‘Yes,’ he continues, eating an especially juicy berry, wiping his purplish fingers onto his denims and slobbering violet-coloured spittle. ‘We Rumplefarts have spent many an afternoon idling and gomping (that’s what the Rumplefarts called gardening) in our gomping-plots, and we’re wiser’n we seem. There’s nothin’ that can’t be learned through a bit of idle thought and hands on. Nope, there’s no hurry; people are like churned butter: if you heats ‘em up too much they begins t’ melt!

            Godger then realises that the rimples have long gone, but as he looks up the lane he can see one of them waving back at him. He squints and then smiles, then steadies himself as he climbs another step to reach some just-out-of-reach blackberries. ‘That’s right,’ he begins, under his breath, ‘those rumples should-’

            Something whizzes past his face and then a blackberry squelches against his cheek, several others whipping by with little zipping sounds over his head. The juice splatters, cool, on his skin, and Godger leans into the direction of the impact, still holding onto the top of the stepladder. He topples over sideways in a perfect ninety degree arch.

            ‘Damn you! You little swines!’ he hollers. He curses from underneath the ladder under his breath as the rumples, struck with surprise and glee at this almost unprecedentedly perfect gag, laugh and scatter up the lane. ‘You bloody – you little – rumple-turds!’ he shouts after them. ‘You come back ‘ere! I knows who you is! I seen you!’

            Pamela sees her husband rolling around on the dusty ground and hurries over to him. ‘Oh, Neville! Are you all right, my dear?’

            He gets up onto one knee and pushes himself up, dusting off the knees of his trousers. ‘Yeah, I’m fine. But those little beggars won’t be if I gets ‘em!’

            ‘Neville-Bunglethatch-Godger!’ she scorns. ‘Watch yer tongue!’

            ‘Sorry, love,’ he says. She glowers at him sternly before noticing the bruised squelch of berry on his cheek. She dabs at it, wiping it away, pursing her lips in amusement. He touches his cheek. ‘Ouch! It smarts!’ he says.

            She giggles. ‘Still, was a good shot, eh?’

            ‘You’re not wrong,’ he says.

            Looking absently up at the sky, something suddenly grabs Godger’s attention. ‘Pamela. Pam, love,’ he says, pawing his hand absently towards her, fixated. ‘What’s ‘at?’

            A harsh wind starts to scowl, sending Pamela’s hair up into a flurry. She reaches into her handbag and pulls out a scarf, tying it around her head and knotting it under her chin.

            As she looks up at the clouds to which Neville points, she can see what her husband is so captivated by. The clouds have darkened; they twirl around into a great funnelling knot. Thunder bellows out and lightning streaks the sky. Then a hole appears in its swirling centre, tiny from way down where they’re stood. Godger suddenly points up at the cloud, his finger tracing the trajectory covered by a small object as it descends in a perfectly straight path towards the ground.

            ‘Did you see that?’ he shouts in astonishment. ‘It’s fallen near the gomping-grounds! Quick, Pamela.’

The two of them hurry up the lane towards the plots, and the clouds begin to evaporate away into the usual flecks of cumulus that float across the sky like grazing sheep.

            ‘What on earth was all that about?’ asks Pamela as they arrive.

            But a strange noise has distracted Godger. He kneels down to inspect, and in amongst his cabbages he finds a silvery object about the size of a side plate. He puts it to his ear.

            Chick-chuck, chick-chock, he murmurs, chiming the sounds.

            ‘What is it?’ asks Pamela.

            ‘I’ve no idea,’ he says. He takes off his jacket and bundles the object into it. ‘We’ll not tell anyone about it, will we, darlin’?’

            ‘No, we won’t,’ she says, scratching urgently at her whiskers.

***

When the two of them get in, Godger puts the nestled bundle of cloth onto their dining room table, whilst Pam sits down in the guest-welcoming room. With trepidation, he peels back the four corners of the parcel. Sitting in the middle gaping up at him is the object, its big clear reflective face framed by silvery metal, and in the middle of it are two thin lengths of some strange material which seem to sweep around, carving out the spaces between twelve regular demarcations.

            ‘What could it mean?’ he asks himself.

            He puts it to his ear. Chick-chuck, chick-tock, tick-tock…. He holds it up in front of his face and notices that there’s a third little arm that’s swishing round particularly quickly. ‘Well, I’ll be rimple moonified,’ he mutters under his breath. It’s like the blasted thing’s alive, he thinks to himself. He turns the object around and puts it to his ear. He can make out regular clicking noises: a faint tick tick tick, followed by a less regular crink. Just then the door sounds with a few knuckled thuds.

            Pamela, looking out of the window in the other room, says, ‘It’s Old Man Pickles.’

            ‘Oh, what’s that grumpy old bugger want now,’ he burbles.

            Godger puts the object back in the cloth and parcels it up. Opening the door with a great grin on his face he hollers, ‘Hello, friend! Come in, come on in.’ Pickles enters into the porch-way. ‘What can I do for you?’ says Godger. ‘Cup of ruby sapphire tea? Mint and fireflower broth? Sweet red cabbage cordial?’

            ‘Oh, some tea would do lovely,’ says Pickles.

            ‘Great, Pam’s in the front room if you’d like to go make yourself comfortable.’ Godger goes into the kitchen, clattering as he fiddles through his cupboards and larder, fetching jars, cakes and his big copper kettle.

            But Pickles had seen Godger in his gomping-ground. He’d seen the vortex, and he’d seen him bending down investigating something in his patch. He saw the object fall, whatever it was, which Godger had obscured inside a bundle of cloth. He can hear Mrs Godger prattling about in the front room tidying, so he takes his opportunity to snoop. The door to the room opposite the welcoming room is slightly ajar – somewhat suspicious, being that Rumplefarts always leave their doors open or unlocked. He pushes it open slightly and it creaks open. No sound comes from the kitchen, so he enters, peeping round. After he scans for a few seconds, he notices an unusual bundle on the table. He’s curious.

            Creeping in, he unfolds each corner. He gazes upon the strange miraculous object. Quartz, it says at the bottom of its glass face. Strange word, he thinks. ‘Godger?’ he calls out.

            ‘Sorry, friend?’ Godger says from the kitchen, taking several warm spiced buns from the kiln.

            ‘Godger, what’s this?’

            Old Man Godger’s blood seems to stop circulating, his heart fluttering like a little one-winged butterfly. He goes briefly dizzy. Oh no, he thinks, catching the sideboard with one hand and propping himself up, breathing slowly and collecting his thoughts.

            He shuffles towards the dining room and appears at the threshold, pale as a ghost. ‘Oh, that,’ says Godger, staring at Pickles as he inspects it.

            ‘Did you find this?’ says Pickles. ‘Tell me, did this thing come from that storm?’

            Godger stumbles over his words. ‘Y-yes, it did. I – it’s so insignificant, I’nt it? And how many people saw that storm? No one would have to know about it.’

            Pickles scrutinises him. ‘Godger, this thing is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It’s not of our kind, whatever it is.’

            Godger, with his pleading puppy eyes, says, ‘Well, what do you think it is?’

            ‘I’ve no idea,’ says Pickles gravely. ‘But I’m gonna find out, so help me.’

***

Pickles took the object from Godger’s possession, just to examine it a little. The next morning, Pickles was rudely awakened by a tremendous clattering noise. It sounded like a song-thrush was being violently shaken in a tin, and it was crying out in terror!

‘Well crimple my rimple!’ Pickles roars, falling out the side of his bed. He can hear the bloody thing all the way from the kitchen, where he’d left it the night before. Rumplefarts are notoriously idle in their wise years, unwilling to rise until the sun is at least a touch off its rise-point, near the zenith. It was only just lightening outside, and Pickles was not used to this unusual light. He shuts off the alarm, taking a few seconds to inspect the object before bashing it on its top.

‘Right!’ he says. He huffs back to his room and climbs into bed, and is so disturbed by the whole ordeal that he sleeps in till down-sun. He gets up, has tea and then goes straight back to bed again, sleeping fretfully until morning like a feverish child.

***

The next morning the alarm goes off again. ‘Cursed thing!’ he mutters into his moss-down pillow. The sound continues crashing on as he lay there with his hands over his ears. He throws the cover asunder and storms into the kitchen, bashing the object again to shut it up. He grabs it, puts on his slippers and patchwork jacket and leaves his cottage, forgetting to close the door behind himself. He notices that he is the only person awake. Not even the birds are stirring, and the only sign of life is smoke rising from a still-smouldering fire-pit from one of the cottages on the other side of the village. He marches toward Godger’s house and crashes on the door.

            Godger opens the door a few minutes later, Pickles still making a hullabaloo and disturbing all the snoozing rumplefarts, rimples and rumples. ‘What on earth are ye doin’?’ says Godger, rubbing his eyes.

            Pickles thrusts the object into Godger’s chest. ‘‘Ere, you can ‘ave this bloody thing back! It’s woken me up twice now. I don’t know what it wants! Am I supposed to feed it? Give it water? Tell me!’

            ‘Calm down,’ coos Godger, ‘You’re spouting nonsense, Pickles. Get inside before the neighbours turn you into rumplefart pie.’

Pickles enters and sits down in his welcoming room. Godger enters with a pot of ruby sapphire tea and pours two cups. ‘Now, what seems to be the problem?’

            Pickles takes the tea and sups it. ‘It’s this bloody thing,’ he says, looking up and holding Godger’s eyes. ‘I think it’s a demon. It cries – for no logical reason. And I don’t like how it looks at me.’

            ‘Pickles,’ Godger says, ‘I think ye’ve cracked!’

            ‘Listen,’ says Pickles, supping his tea and collecting his thoughts, ‘Look at this. See this mark, here, see? The seventh one.’ He points at the clock-face. ‘It went off at this point yesterday and the same point today. How does it know! It must be. It must –’

            ‘It must what?’ says Godger, amused.

            ‘Be measuring something,’ Pickles finishes, whispering the words gravely.

            Godger leans back, sipping his tea. ‘Measuring?’ he says, idly. ‘Like ye’d measure out water when making mead, you mean? But measuring what?’ He feels suddenly dyspeptic. He takes this as a sign that he should have something to eat. As Pickles sits there entranced by the object, Godger grabs some herby bread from the kitchen. He comes back with half a loaf and sits down, cutting a slice and biting into it. ‘Hmm,’ he says. The bread is a bit too thymy for his liking. ‘I tells yer, in these times it’s getting hard to tell the rosemary for the thyme,’ he jokes.

            Pickles half-smiles at him. He didn’t get the joke, if there was one.

***

Over the next few days, Godger and Pickles tested the object more. They gave it a nickname: clock, because they wanted to clock the bugger one. They surmised that it was indeed measuring something. But, still perplexed, they decided to hold a town meeting. Everyone from the village came, even the little rimples. If they were going to decide what it meant and what they should do next, they’d all have to knock heads and see whether they could get a spark.

            A few elders did a headcount and there were only 126 of the 128 villagers accounted for. ‘Pickles,’ says Old Woman Bunting, ‘Mrs Cornthresher isn’t here, nor her ‘usband.’

            ‘Oh?’ says Godger to Pickles at the front of the hall, when all of a sudden Mrs Cornthresher bursts in through the door. ‘Come! Come quick!’ she cries. ‘It’s Benjamin. He’s not waking up.’ A great silence overcomes the room.

A great fear hangs above them, pinching the air from out their lungs.

           

***

Benjamin Cornthresher is one of the most senior elders of the village, and when they go to check on him he’s cold as pantry air, his skin the pale colour of pâté glaze. From this moment on, the villagers realise that things have changed. They are no longer immortal. New words, such as death and time, can be heard spoken in the shadowy corners of the village, and everybody starts to take a much greater interest in this clock. So much so that they take the thing apart to see how it works, erecting a larger model version of it in the village square so everyone can see it whenever they want to tell the time.

            About a month after the Cornthresher episode, Pickles knocks on Godger’s door. He is now Mayor Pickles: he asked Godger to run against him but the latter refused. Godger is now a ghost. He stays in his house all day, refusing to go out, and just reads his copy of the Daily Hail. ‘Those rumples are getting worse,’ he’d say to Pamela. ‘They’ve no respect for their rumplefarts anymore.’ Both of them feel a great unease about the time ahead.

            Godger and Pickles talk about all manner of things. Mainly the future, a word that is new to Godger. Before, it had only been – well, now, of course. They didn’t have a word for time previously. They just existed. Trying to explain time to them before would’ve been futile: it would have been like trying to explain yeast extract to someone with no taste buds. They’d probably have just tried to tar their roofs with it.

Before he left, Mayor Pickles, now dressed in suit and tie, holding a briefcase at his side, says to Godgers, ‘And for goodness sake, man, will you talk in RP, and stop all this accent business? It’s stupid.’

‘Right-o,’ says Godger despondently, seeing Pickles to the door. Right-o, he thinks to himself. RIP.

           

***

Over the next few months, Godger becomes more and more paralysed. His hair starts to grey, where before it was a rich chestnut brown. Rumples begin to taunt him from outside, and his patch starts to die. Pamela cries herself to sleep at night, mourning the ghost of her husband. One night, on the night of Rimples’ Eve, Godger cannot take it anymore. He goes outside to see what festivities are taking place, but what he sees makes him nearly die.

Across the way, Old Man Judders is with Mrs Peppers. She chortles to herself, making deep moaning noises, her legs in the air as he holds her in an adulterous embrace. He looks to his left down the lane and he sees two young men brawling, before one hits the other around the head with an empty bottle of mead, guffawing. There is a rumple in his patch outside his house trampling his now browned lettuces, and another is squatting, drunk, in an attempt to help fertilise the earth.

His mind now floating somewhere outside his skull, he wanders down the lane in a daze until he comes to the village square. Several young rumples are standing around the Children Tree, and they are splashing it with some liquid from a canteen. One of them pulls out a box of fire-sticks and strikes it. He gets flame, and holds it up.

‘Stop it!’ cries Godger. ‘Stop!’ he gasps. The young men turn round, staring at him. All of a sudden, Godger loses his footing and goes down sideways. A strange pain burns in his chest. It becomes immense, as if his heart is molten and could explode at any second. He hears footfalls, and then he passes out.

***

Godger? Godger?

Godger awakens from his bed and looks up to find a towering figure cloaked in a cape staring down at him from big blue watery eyes, a long grey spurt of beard erupting from his face.

            Who are you? asks Godger.

            I am the Wizard, replies the tall figure. The Wizard of the Future. And I come bearing a vision for you. The stranger sweeps out his arm and then turns his head, beckoning Godger to look outside his window.

            From out of nowhere, strange columns erupt from the ground, spurting fumes. Huge structures, like black churches, their walls laden with innumerable little grease-marked windows, rise up from out of the ground where the cottages and plots and verdancy used to be. And now little shops appear on street corners, and strange objects on four wheels go put-putting down the street.

            When Godger looks back at the stranger, he is now dressed in a top-hat and suit, his shoes polished to a gleam. There’s more, he says.

            Godger looks out of his window again and now he can see futuristic buildings: huge, glass-fronted structures jutting off in strange angles, scraping the clouds. Flying cars file past in lanes, the veins of this metropolis. In the centre square of the village, Godger can now see a museum where the town hall used to be. What’s in there? he says.

            Oh, replies the figure, now dressed in a brightly coloured foil suit, exhibits, mainly. Just describing how naïve your people once were. They look upon you as archaic, quaint. They call this period – your current stage of existence – the pastoral. They regard you with utter disbelief, as if you are a different species to them.

            Godger’s eyes grow big and heavy. He looks back at the figure, but he is gone. Where he was stood, there is now a pile of dust. He looks outside his window again, but the cityscape has gone. What he now sees sends shivers of fear into his body, his muscles quivering on his bones like superheated threads of metal: the sky is a deep orange, and there is nothing but a barren dusty landscape, as far as the eye can fathom.

            Godger gets out of bed and leaves the house, standing on his porch overlooking the infinite aridity of this desert. A dust devil blows pointlessly across the landscape in the distance, and pink- and red-hued clouds wander in the boiling sky. Godger then hears a noise that distracts him.

He looks to his right and sees a small child, dressed in a faded vest, shorts and sandles, digging in the dirt. The child, a little girl, looks around and notices him. She surveys him, squinting with one eye. ‘Hey, I know you!’ she says, laughing. Then she stops, her tone grown suddenly serious. She holds the stick up towards him, threateningly. ‘You can’t let this happen,’ she says.

Her eyes become black as oil-slick. Then, with a ruffling noise, she bursts into the air, her black wings lifting her higher and higher into the lifeless sky.

***

When Godger wakes up, he is in doors. Pamela is sitting on his bed-side, stroking his forehead gently, and her eyes are puffy and teary. ‘Hi, honey,’ she says.

‘Hullo,’ Godger manages, weakly. ‘What ‘appened? Am I – I’m indoors.’

‘Yes,’ she says, stroking his little white fringe. ‘You’re safe indoors. You had – they say it’s yer heart, darlin’,’ she says.

‘How long was I asleep?’

Pamela swallows, looking tenderly over her husband. ‘You were asleep for two months, darlin’.’

Just then Godger hears some voices downstairs. ‘What day is it?’

‘It’s a Monday.’

‘Then shouldn’t you be with the rimples?’ he asks.

‘They’re downstairs,’ she says. ‘They’ve come to see you.’ She points at the bedside chest. Godger turns and sees some marigold flowers. There is a big card open, too. He can make out several scrawled messages done in crayon, the signatures drawn in childish hands. ‘It’s lovely,’ he says, smiling.

‘Yes,’ says Pamela. She starts sobbing uncontrollably.

‘What is it, darlin?’ murmurs Godger.

‘It’s just that – nothin’ means anythin’ no more. Does it? Things are…’ she pauses, sniffling and wiping her eyes, ‘They can’t be redeemed.’

Godger looks fondly up at her. ‘My darling,’ he says, grinning. ‘What is the measure of a human life? I always thought our lives were perfect. But they weren’t. We were children before. This way is better. This is how it should be: a measure of the two.’ He coughs and sputters, his throat raspy and tinny. ‘A measure of the two,’ he continues. ‘Progress and leisure. Just don’t forget how to – how to be a child. This is how it should be. This…’ he gasps, shuddering, and his final breath leaves his body.

Pamela wipes her eyes, and she hears footsteps coming towards the door. Pickles knocks. But Pamela does not respond. Pickles can hear her sobbing inside, so he lets himself in. He sees Godger’s lifeless body.

‘Oh, Pam,’ he says. She gets up and hugs him. He holds her tightly, looking over her shoulder at the once great man. ‘Neville never changed, did he?’ says Pickles.

‘No, he didn’t,’ she sniffs into his starched collar.

When Pamela and Pickles go downstairs, a few rimples gaze up at them. They look briefly sad, before Pam smiles down on them. ‘Right then!’ she booms joyfully. ‘Who’s up for some colouring!’

She sits with the children as they play. Looking back at the mantle above the hearth, she sees the little silvery clock. It seems to gulp in gravely, swallowing time. She returns her attention to the children, but then notices something in the corner of her eye. A single rimple is sat by the window beneath the sill gazing up at the clouds idly, daydreaming.

At the End of Summer Comes the Fall

A lighthouse stands on the coast, miles from the nearest town, wind-battered in the scowling gale. It beams blindly into the night, warning any incoming ships of the warring sea: a bright command to not approach the white breakers that thrash and foam beneath the chalk cliffs.

Inside, a lighthouse keeper watches over the little port. He keeps guard over the people of the village inland. He sits in his study drinking tea and watching his black and white television set, the squall of the sea-wind reduced to a faint hiss passing through imperfections in the window, like a slick tongue of cool breath.

As the man sits there flicking through the channels, observing the ancient images of laughing celebrities, advertisements for butter substitutes and indigestion tablets, and smiling women sat beside thick-haired men driving convertibles, he hears a noise from the lighthouse crown. He immediately mutes the television. 

I swear it came from upstairs, he thinks. He supposes he’s hearing things, but it was a single low thud, against the rattling wind. He’s sure of it. As if something had flown into the crown of the lighthouse. Worried, he creeps upstairs to investigate, bracing himself for a maelstrom of wind, expecting to see a glass slat missing from the thick dome of glass.

But all is calm, apart from the wind lapping against the lighthouse outside, now reduced to a low rush as the periphery of the storm begins to pass overhead. He sniffs. An odd smell lingers in his nose: sour, like gone off milk. And then he hears the noise again, startled. He twists on the spot, mouth agape as if his mandible has been cracked open. He searches the dome frantically, as the beam of the light’s eye pulses steadily into the night.

And then comes the noise a final time. He looks up and sees the outline of a limpid thing covering the dome, one wing splayed out as it raises the other into the darkness. It comes down and the glass cracks. The thing swipes a second time and the panel falls through. And then it pushes itself off violently from the dome, shrieking, taken into the updraught.

The man falls down, covering his ears, and crawls to the low wall, girded above by the fractured eyeball of glass. Wind howls in through the break in the sphere. He fumbles for the cross inside his denim jacket and grasps it in his palm. Holy Mother of God, he says in his head. God, protect me! But then, from somewhere out there in the dark, he hears a terrible sound, like a hurricane being channelled through a keyhole. The cry is so piercing that he holds his ears again, but still his bones quiver inside his flesh, resonant with the note of fear.

Something white materialises, rushing towards the dome. It breaks through in a halo of glass. The searchlight stops pulsing. The sea-bleached teeth find their purchase.

***

The village is a place where once a great race of hunters lived. A noble race, stewards of the land, respectful to their quarry. But then came the age of greed. Now is the time of the great darkness, all memory of the time before vanquished for ever. Fear rules this land, and all people are too afraid to venture into the old places: the forests are forbidden. There’s nothing there but ghosts and goblins, the village women tell their children. And wolves. The most fearsome, giant wolves. With blunt, bone-crunching teeth, bigger than butchers’ knives, ready to chew their tender hides to gristle.

            One night in the village, a young boy named Lucas lay sleeping, his dreams wracked with terrible visions. He dreamed of the lighthouse keeper, who had disappeared only a few days earlier. He saw him screaming for his life and protecting his face from something. Then he saw a vision of the ship that had run aground the night after the lighthouse keeper disappeared. All fourteen souls on board were unaccounted for when a search party went to recover the fishing vessel the next morning. The lighthouse keeper was nowhere to be found. All traces of the fish-stock were gone, too, and the men reported that an unearthly smell seemed to linger on the deck, some acrid aftertaste stinging their nostrils.

            Lucas stirs, turning over in his sleep. He is inside a cave, a floating perspective consumed in the cavernous dark, and he can sense that something is stirring. He sees a grey sac, swelling on the surface of the water like a pustule, rolling over and over, accumulating into a moist and pallid cocoon. Tossed about in the increasing violence of the waves, it’s washed up onto a platform of rock, like some sinister offering. Lucas can now see that something is awakening inside, growing, pulsating, its milky limbs tracing their blind trajectories across the inner surface of the sac. Lightning illuminates the cave and the crackling storm outside booms and bays. The flabby seal of the grey mass starts to tear.

And now, the thing, previously cocooned in its slime, breaks through the limpid seal. It wriggles out onto its stomach, finding its bony feet, its two soft pallid wings slowly stretching out into the cool draught of the cave. Eyeless, sexless, its teeth like shards of bleached bone or alabaster, it snaps and snarls in agony, its cries drowned out by the sea squall. Furious at its pain, unable to express its agony in words, it calls out the name of its maker in a series of howling cries and terrible screeches, some breaking out into the mute beyond of ultrasonic.

            The creature blindly traces the outline of its birthing place in high-pitched clicks, and then it lurches its head upwards, making a single jump towards the roof of the cave. It holds on to the slick-rock by its limb suckers. As the lightning pulses, Lucas can make out remains littering a platform: the carcasses of sea-trout, bream, mackerel and other fish. And larger bones – unmistakeably human.

            The creature hangs there, shrieking above the sea squall. It seems to pulsate whitely, the illusion of reality breaking as the dream heightens. And just before Lucas awakens in a patchwork of sweat, the creature turns its gaze toward him, and he sees its face. Small black fleshed-over patches stare blindly where its eyes should be, and its mouth is stuffed full of shards of haphazard teeth.

Lucas shoots back into consciousness, transported from dream-visions to the moonlit emptiness of his room. Sitting there, breathless, he can feel a dampness in between his legs, and the faint odour of urine fills his nose.

That’s when he decides to find the creature.

***

When the sun rises Lucas is ready, sitting on his bed and watching the light peer up over the horizon in a faint red blaze. He has even prepared a note for his mother and father, which he leaves on his pillow:

Tell Granddad and Brother not to worry about me. Father, I shall bring back the body of this beast, and you shall find your boy a man. And Mother, I just want you to know I love you the most. Tell father not to try to find me – I will do this for you both. With love,

                                                                                                                                                                                                        

                                                                                                       Lucas

The task of killing the beast lies before him. He takes his father’s best hunting blade for protection. He also takes a length of rope – about forty metres – to lower himself down to the cave. He packs a lunch of pork pie, pickles, celery and a small loaf of sweet-meal bread, all tossed into a shoulder sack. He puts on his fur boots, gloves and hat and takes the oil-lamp from the cabinet by the front door.

By the time he has reached the edge of the village, Lucas can hear the rising cries of sea birds. As he turns back, he sees seagulls, whirling and wheeling above the mist-enveloped buildings in the slowly lightening morning sky. They wait for their chance to snatch, sniffing out the unusually thin catch that will soon be displayed in the market square.

Walking down the path to the coast, Lucas starts thinking about something his father once said: One day, you’re going to have a title, son. And the only person who can decide that for you is yourself. The man you’ll become is the man you make. And then he thought about the livelihood of the village: the hunting of game and fishing, the culls, the superstitious old wives’ tales. And the fear: the fear was the thing that most unsettled him. How everyone was so afraid of the old forests, of their own shadows – of each other. His father talked of bravery: he’d show him what true bravery meant!

Idling like this, Lucas eventually reaches bridge that crosses the river, about a mile from the shore. He follows the bend in the river for a while and then heads up into the cresting hills that rise on the headland above the water. He can still recall vividly from his dream a vision of the coast: he remembers a single apple tree, thick with blossom and perched a few feet away from the craggy outcrops. And now, as he walks along the cliffs, the sea booming against rock and chalk somewhere beneath his feet, he can see in front of him that very tree.

He approaches it and sits down, resting against it. Taking off his pack, he takes out the pork pie and bites into it, satisfied. He then takes out the celery. He chomps into it but chews it idly before spitting the pulp out and sitting there. Lucas then hears a low thud, and another. He looks around him and sees that the apples are starting to fall. He stares up in wonderment at the fruit-laden tree, then he plucks one from a bough, wiping it on his shirt before sinking his teeth into the sweet crunchy flesh. He takes a couple more and stuffs them into his pack.

Once full, he sits there deliberating briefly, looking out at the slightly overcast sky and the endless sea. He wonders what awaits him down there. Whether he should turn back. But it’s thoughts like that that make the boy, he thinks.

He stands up and takes the rope from the pack, tying it around the tree twice and looping the end into a figure-of-eight knot. He then tightens the other end around his waist, knotting it, and steadily inches his way towards the edge of the cliff. He gazes down at the sprawling sea beneath him and has to steady his nerves. He calms himself with reassuring words and breathes through his nose. And then, he closes his eyes, holds the rope tightly and takes one step back, onto his right foot.

His foot slips and he plummets, the rope too short and snapping clean just before he hits the water. Lucas has the vague understanding that he is under water, the world drowned out in incoherent murmur. And then everything goes dark.

***

When he awakens, Lucas is inside the cave. He has shivered himself into consciousness, it seems. He feels around him and his hands describe the vague outlines of jagged objects: bones – animal, and human. And, sitting there, entombed in the darkness, he can sense somehow he is not alone. As his eyes sharpen to the darkness and his other senses become attuned, he can hear every drop of water in the cave, can feel the shudder of every wave breaking on the cliffs outside. And he can detect the low breathing of something else apart from himself, just in front of him. It lingers there, foul-smelling. In the darkness, something approaches, and as it does Lucas can make out the faint outline of a pale skull, the holes of two black eyes peering blindly out at him.

The boy remembers his pack. He fumbles around him. Please be here. Please be here. And please don’t be broken. Aha! He’s found it. He reaches inside for the lamp and, miraculously, it is still intact. He ignites it and holds it up in front of the beast. The creature recoils, lurching off into the shadows, clinging to the roof of the cave and making terrified noises. The boy laughs to himself, feeling superior to the dumb beast. But then he realises it is just scared. He lowers the flow of gas slightly, and the lamp burns just brightly enough to illuminate the darkness surrounding them.

‘Are you scared?’ he coos. ‘Are you frightened?’ The boy feels terrible. ‘Don’t be frightened. Honest.’

The creature begins to tentatively climb down the wall. The boy holds out the lamp and, gradually, he can make out the creature approaching in the darkness. It looks like some great oversized albino bat, with two beady glazed-over eyes like cataracts, and a mouthful of jagged teeth that seem to grin out at him, glinting like silver. It sniffs at the lamp, and the boy reaches out to touch it. It recoils slightly as he does, but eventually the boy touches its face. The skin is cool and damp.

‘There, there,’ he says. He reaches down towards his bag with one arm and fumbles inside. His hand trembles over the sheathed hunting blade then rests on something cool. He brings it out: an apple.

‘Here you go,’ says the boy. ‘Not everything you eat has to be flesh.’

But then the creature lurches back, screeching. Loud voices rise sonorous outside the cave, and suddenly the entrance is illuminated. Several men in a small boat plough in, and at the prow is the boy’s father. ‘There’s the beast!’ he roars.

Lucas runs to stand in front of the creature, but the creature swipes him away.

‘Kill the beast!’ his father hollers. They subdue it into a corner with flame and volleys of stones. The beast defeated, the father produces a spear from the boat. Mounting the platform, he approaches and thrusts it into the creature’s torso, piercing its heart. It screeches in fear and confusion as he thrusts it in deeper and deeper, breaking the metal point off inside its body. The creature convulses and heaves as its final cry echoes throughout the cave, as if the rocks have absorbed the sounds of its anguish. Its mouth hangs open emptily. Still holding the broken spear, the man turns towards his son.

‘Son,’ he cries, ‘you had me and your mother worried sick.’ He holds out his arms, out-stretched. But the boy is reticent to accept his father’s embrace, still horrified at the creature’s cruel and pitiable death. ‘Come son,’ says the boy’s father, staring into his eyes. ‘Come. Your mother is expecting you.’

***

The village is uproarious with their return, the folk amazed that the boy is still alive, and incredulous as to the existence of this monster. What happened? What do you remember?  Is it true that the beast breathed fire? When the men lift the carcass from the cart, cries of astonishment were heard, and one old lady faints cold.

‘Look at that beast,’ cries the boy’s father. ‘Look at those teeth, and then tell me of this creature’s innocence.’ His gaze shifts to the boy, then back to the crowd. ‘It is a beast, I tell you! Beast!’ he roars.

The men hang the creature upside down from a gibbet, and it stays on display in the market square for several days. It hangs there, wings slackened, slack-jawed, and its pale skin begins to darken gradually with rot. Lucas goes out each night just to stare at its lost camera-hole eyes, its dead expression.

They cut it down once the townsfolk become bored of it. They quarter it and then whittle it down into bits, carting the remains to the four corners of the outskirts of the village, deserted spots on the edges of dark and ancient forests where terrible wolves are said to prowl. They scatter the remains, and in time four orchards grow there, flourishing on a meal of spoiled flesh and unearthly bone.

The apples gradually become known for their sweetness. But so unnaturally grey-green, and prone to ripening too quickly.

Each autumn, after harvest, the village has a market fair, the air filled with the scents of sweet pickles and preserves, fruits, breads, salted meats – and yet still, occasionally, there comes a sickly scent, seeming to drift in on the sea wind. It over-layers all else, carrying the faint but unmistakeably sharp odour of sour milk.

Bondage

Dedicated to the good friend who helped me to better this, and who offered her praises - a most important thing...

The first time I was clasped onto his wrists and ankles, he was an African. Now, as I bite my iron-cold, rust-tender kiss into his flesh, he is a non-presence; a small black spot under the thumb of the sun. I clasp him firm, shackling him ore-steady to the others in the chain-gang. But whilst I am inanimate – immaterial in the grander scheme of things, you might say – consider my brief part in this picture; after hearing my story, you might look upon me more kindly.

            You see, I have witnessed the strangeness in these beings, and while I’ve no greater purpose than to bind the blackskins in metallic bondage, I am not the hammer-wielder: I have no choice. I was forged this way; it was beaten into me. But the blackskins are indifferent to my embrace.

            The one whom I bind was once known as Akwambe, but now he is #102. I remember the first time I really bit down into him. On the 23^rd day of the voyage, halfway across the ocean, Akwambe pissed from his cage onto one of the English slave traders.

            They snatched him out of his detritus-filled piss-hole by his wrists and ankles, and as they were about to tie his hands with rope and throw him overboard, the Captain ordered the men to stop.

            But as the sun beat down onto the galley and the whip cracked into his gashed and gushing back, I could sense behind the anger of his gnashing teeth a deep resignation; the subservience was sunk deeply into his grey eyes, which were embedded into his skull like two matt stones.

            Akwambe gazed out listlessly at the ocean and saw two wheeling birds circling the boat, stalking its cargo but hesitant to land. His torture was lifted briefly by the sight of these two seabirds, flying together on high. But then one pecked at the other and it wheeled away, down towards the water, looking nonplussed and downhearted as it rested on the surface.

From that moment, as his limp raw body was taken down and the men clasped me back round his wrists, I knew the future of the whiteskins and the blackskins – for I am ageless, old and present as Time. And as they stuffed him into the heatbox, I bit into his swollen wrists, thankful at the warping heat of the noon sun. But I love him so: he is all I have, and I have come to know him better than the rock of ages. He is the song of the Earth.

But now this African is no more; we are in America, but he is not an American, either. The date is March 10^th 1865, and in one month the Thirteenth Amendment will be passed, and he will be a free man, unchained from the iron vice of bondage. Justice is coming, he thinks, but behind that veneer of pride he is terrified: blown like cotton fluff in this new wind, freedom feels as solid as a breeze; a breeze that blows the seed ceaselessly through the ages.

And though the shackles will have been stripped of him, they will remain: a scar – a memory – still heavy as iron. And I will live for ever, trapped inside the rock of his experience. Blowing there, carried in the wind.

           

***

Walls hear everything, they say. In that case, you’d think the roof would have fallen in by now, the walls long crumbled in despair. But walls are indifferent. Not to Fang, though: he is the one I wall, and he is good. He sometimes sings to me when he’s lonely – ancient Chinese folk songs. But I do not swoon. I must remain stiff.

            Fang was born seven years after I was erected. The ones before him did not sing to their walls, but remained as cold as edifices themselves. Fang has gone from cot to mattress on the floor in that time, which I count to be fifteen years. I guess you could say he’s always been on his back. You can see the age in the yellowing of his smile, not just in my skin. When he smiles it looks like an old man has stolen his teeth, like death is favouring his teeth years before claiming the rest of him.

            He travels two hours out of the Province every day by train to work in a factory. I make that 72 hours each week, judging by clock-time. When he comes home, he changes from his work clothes and goes to watch TV with his young brother in the next room. I can hear the muffled echoes of cartoon chases and comical explosions through my plaster. There would be seven of them, but mothers must keep some secrets. And so must walls. After watching TV, he eats his noodles alone in his room, cross-legged like a Buddha on his mattress. Then he sleeps, wakes up, gets the train, works, travels back, eats, and sleeps. Each day is like this: plain and flat as plasterboard. And, like plaster, he can fill in the holes and cracks.

            A few days ago, I saw him reading a book he’d lifted from his young brother’s nursery. It was a picture-book on the American slave trade. As he turned each page, I could make out images of black people, like Fang but skinnier, bonier, and they were shackled and enchained – by the neck, by the wrists, by their feet. Fang stared at one picture for a long time and then began heaving under his breath. Although he never read – he could not read – he knew about America. He closed the book huffily and threw it onto the dusty floorboards.

            That aside might seem unimportant, but it brings me to the next part of my story: whilst I cannot see all, only what shelters inside my four walls, I can see Fang’s dreams, and dreams are all. Last night, as Fang lay dreaming and lightly stirring, I saw a vision. He was in a large, ventilated room that was full of people; but these others were shadows, and he was alone.

            As Fang sat there on the line that whirred whitely past him, he stared fixedly ahead. When his superior saw this, the man approached.

‘Fang! Why are you not working?’

Fang did not stir.

‘Fang!’ The man struck at him with a length of bamboo.

Fang jerked his gaze away and glared at the man with bared teeth. He reached towards the line, towards one of the tiny white electronic appliances. His hand thrummed like a hot sphere of molten steel as he wrestled with thrusting the gadget against the wall, but then he froze.

            A vision had dropped, a dreamy ghostly pall, into his sleeping brain. A ship tore through water, all sails outblown, and on the sun-baked deck a man was tied to the mast. As the whip cracked and cut bloodied white streaks into his black flesh, the man turned his head, his face a-grimace, and the man had a Chinese face. He voicelessly screamed.

Then Fang was back inside the factory, his anger-contorted face melted into a frightened blankness, his hands holding the object in the air absently.

            Fang started awake – startled, breathless, sweaty – and pulled the sheet from his bare clammy chest up to his chin, the sound of water still in his ears, even though he’d never seen the ocean in his entire life.

            But still the waves seemed to lap and rush in the darkness, washing and breaking silently against my four walls.

***

Call me Nameless. I was born nameless, and Nameless is my name.

           The future is dead now. We are all predator and prey here. We are animals once again, broken through the veneer of humanity, and human flesh is now only worth its weight in protein content. Savages roam the wastes looking for women, victims – slaves. One must be ruthless as the Wolf out here to survive now. But I am not like the others.

I live by the coast with my son, Red: he has red hair, a dusting of red eyebrow. But, unlike the colour, his nature is not violent. He is alive, though, and he is my son: there is no other truth. The coast is the only vaguely living part of this country: the interior is baked, scorched, the barren scrub shit-and-toil land of the Crow.

            We never knew whether it was the warming planet or the nukes. Probably both. But anyway, I don’t care for ‘we’ anymore. There is no longer any we in these lands. There’s only me and I. And my son. I would die for him. I have killed for him: seven men, all of them beasts; monsters clothed in human skin. And yet he must be alone. He must remain alone, for we are alone. I have taught him to trust nobody, for only the blade and the pistol bear truth here.

            For the last seventeen months, we have been heading north from Virginia up the East Coast. We’re headed for Canada, eventually: we figure the nukes probably didn’t get that far north, and it’s milder up there. Heck, shit might even still be growing up there!

            I am like a Chinese hermit, but I must be. You have never seen a mother forced to consume her dead infant. I have. And I have seen far worse besides, believe me. By the campfire hearth, I tell my son about the stars. Once upon a time, they meant something: stories, navigational aids, an unknowable and distant collection of suns in which to take consolation. But now they only seem to mock with their beauty and their tranquillity. I hold this last truth in my heart with bitterness, hesitant to confuse my boy with such nihilistic poetry. But the stars are meaningless; it can’t be glossed over. One day he’ll learn that for himself. Just hold on to the Pole Star, I tell him. That’s the only useful one. I also tell him about the animals – what variety there once was! But animal books are useless, too, for now it’s just the Crow and the rakish Wolf that rule this land, the latter skinny through the paucity of life, death now no longer a commonplace here; but everywhere still regardless, the landscape itself pregnant with decay. And when a bird does split the sky, it is not the Hawk – not even the Lark. I now no longer even recall the sound of birdsong.

            One day, twenty miles from Washington, following the Potomac, I shout at my son to get down and keep quiet. We lay with our chins in the dust as a growing beat deepens in the earth. Hooves, galloping. I look to the distance and see several people on horseback. Horses, I think. How are they keeping them alive? I tell my son I love him, and I tell him to close his eyes. I take my pistol from its holster and press the barrel softly up against the back of his skull, rustling his red hair like feathers. I glass the coming stampede, waiting.

            ‘Halt!’ I hear.

            ‘Daddy!’ says Red.

            ‘Quiet, son.’

            ‘Halt there, I said!’ the rider cries out again.

            I raise my gun and aim it at him, at which point the riders’ horses canter to a stop. They raise their rifles at me and pause, deliberating their next move in the silence.

            ‘Drop your gun, sir,’ says the man.

            ‘If I do, you must promise me you’ll not harm my son. If you do –‘

            ‘We’ll not harm your son,’ says the man. ‘Now drop your gun.’

            I hesitate, the gun trembling in my hands, and then I shakily extend my arm and drop the gun. The man unreins himself and climbs down from the horse, approaching me. I look into his ashen face as he approaches, expecting to see a maddened toothless sneer, but what I see is a calm. Two eyes glare out like cold steel. He extends his hand. I take it, standing up. I reach for Red.

            The man pats my shoulders down, smiling, and then I tend to Red, swatting the dirt from him. It falls from him like dust from a beaten rug, the particles glinting like diamond dust in the dimming light.

            ‘Who are you?’ I say.

            ‘From the Commune; two miles that way.’ He points to the horizon. In the dusk-light, I can see the smouldered remains of Washington somewhere far in the distance. In the foreground, in the direction to which he points, I can make out a walled mound, surrounded by torch-lit outposts.

            ‘Commune?’ I say, sputtering and choking dust.

            ‘Yessir,’ he says, regarding me perplexedly. ‘You sound surprised; you didn’t think you was all alone out here, did ya?’ He grins.

            The dust falls from me and is swallowed in the breeze. We stand there – Red and I, the man, the others on horseback. It suddenly seems the whole world has burst in upon me, biting down toothless.

            The river babbles and gurgles. The sun pours down its last onto the darkening landscape.

***

i am in the room i am on the bed i take off my blouse and skirt and knickers the smell of my Beyoncé perfume spuming up into my nostrils as my blouse rubs against my perfumed wrists i tell him it’s Britney Spears he likes it he tells me it reminds him of bubblegum and parma violets and makes his dick hard and i think good you fuck and he oggles my little tits like i’m a fourteen-year-old girl and i take it all the words dead to me and i laugh and he says ‘bitch, what’s funny’ and i say ‘nothin’ and he says ‘yeah, nothin that’s what i thought, nothin’ and he says to get on the bed so i get on the bed and i spread my legs i look over my shoulder at him and he tells me to look playful and start to touch myself and moan so i moan but i am not getting wet so he says ‘bitch get wet for me, are you wet yet?’ so i think of Tom

           

I am twelve and he is fifteen.

Tom: I say his name in my head, and I can recall the reflection of the trees rippling the water’s surface, the afternoon sun cocooning us in light. He is stroking my hair and he fingers the fringe from my eyes, tucking it behind my ear. He brushes my cheek with the back of his left hand, and with the other he caresses my earlobe between thumb and index finger. He kisses me and then reaches his hand down towards my panties. I trace my hand after his, then grab onto it. ‘Stop,’ I gasp. He stares into my eyes. ‘Baby, it’s okay. You can trust me.’

He starts to play with the hem and then strokes the inside of my left thigh, my toes tingling and my nerves dancing with ecstasy. He strokes me through my panties and then kisses the skin of my thigh, working his way playfully towards that inexorable point where the world crashes into a watery oneness, rushing, and floods through the back of my brain like an ocean tide pulling at my entire world, at everything, crashing down over me.

I close my eyes as his finger slowly enters me and he whispers, ‘Baby, you’re good. Are you enjoying this?’ I moan quietly yes, and I mutter, ‘Just go gentle.’ And he says, ‘Baby –’

          baby, you’re wet for me now huh? he says as he fucks me holding me by the calfs legs splayed out i thought you’d never arrive i’m gonna make you come you want me to make you come huh, you sexy whore? i think about crying but everything is numb everything has always stayed numb and i can’t cry i just take it and say ‘yes yes yes fuck me hard like that daddy’ as he heaves and shudders and then arrives inside me in a pathetic tepid sputter rolls onto the bed and says ‘the money’s on the side bitch’ and i go to the dresser and down the glass of whisky he’s poured and he gets up and stands behind me looking at me in the mirror smirking eyeballing my tits and his own ugly pock-faced mug and he rubs my shoulders i shrug him off and throw on my clothes and escape out the door like hot wind

            And I’m on the bus now, looking out of the window into darkness. Not into the distance, exactly, and not at the foreground. Not even into myself, my own head an impenetrable bright glare. Just into space. And then a voice across from me says, ‘Are you okay?’

I turn my head after a few seconds and say, ‘Huh? Were you talking to me?’ It belongs to a black woman, sitting there with her son. Her eyes are big and concerned, and I can’t believe she feels empathy for me. Her son hunkers down beside her, staring out at me scared through his whites-swollen eyes.

‘Yeah, I’m okay,’ I say, smiling numbly and staring off into the distance.

‘It’s awful cold out,’ she says. ‘You be careful.’ She gives me a smile, full of sadness and despair, like she can see the heavy shadow that hangs in bunches, like tattered black rags, from my small pale form.

            ‘I will,’ I say. I look at her son. He’s sitting there quietly, still gaping at me from those innocent eyes. ‘You’re very handsome for a young boy. What’s your name?’

            He stares straight up at his mother shiftily. She nods at him. ‘The lady asked you a question.’

            He looks back at me. ‘Akwambe,’ he says quietly, a small smile holding his mouth like a single segment of orange, his little cheeks going pink and bunching up.

            ‘That’s very pretty,’ I say. ‘That’s – very pretty.’ I turn to look back out of the window, smiling to myself. We are crossing the Thames, the lights of London looming in the black water; a luminescent fortress breaking the blackness of the night sky, and holding back the stars.

Note: Please feel free to comment - this is my fourth draft, and it would be great to hear your thoughts for suggestions and/or improvements! :)