Fiction

A pile of dogs was spotted this weekend in the park. It was a bit like John Carpenter’s The Thing except all the dogs were happy and wagging. I walked past slowly, unsure whether or not I was in danger. I was not, it turned out. The dogs began happy panting and the wagging became more intense and bizzare. I moved toward the dog pile and lifted my hand for a sniff, the universal sign of getting to know a strange dog. This dog was very strange. I watched as it tumbled closer to me. The nearest dogs heads with tongues wagging and the furthest dogs whining to be closer. ...

It started slowly, insidiously. It was a little like hair. Growing in the cracks and crevices underground, away from the sunlight. You saw it on the tube - platforms, tunnels - but a glance and then it’s gone, you ignore it. It was fine, so fine that it moved with the barest of breezes. Sometimes when you couldn’t detect a breeze. It was cleaned away, but would soon come back. Within a couple of days at first, then a day, then it grew back in a few hours. People started to notice then. Well, the people that cleaned started to notice. The billions of commuters and tourists didn’t notice, it looked like hair, it was mixed with hair, there was nothing to notice. ...

‘What happened to your eyebrow?’ the customer asked. Julie looked at him, wondering whether she should make a badge with the answer. ‘I knocked my face on my sink when I bent over to pull my socks off. Yes, I was drunk. Yes, it hurts. No, I do not want you to kiss it better.’. Every time she answered the question, she gave a different answer. Her mother had asked her yesterday and ‘pulling my socks off’ had been ‘pull out a tampon’, it had also been ‘tickle my pet crocodile’, ‘tie my shoes’, ‘pick up magic beans’ and ‘switch off my vibrator’. ...

‘I promise you, ‘ she said, thrusting a finger at me, ‘you’re going to die.’ She was factually correct. I would, at some point, die. However, it wasn’t going to be because of her and it certainly wasn’t going to be soon. ‘I’ve been in touch with the Police, they think you are a criminal.’. She said, still thrusting, her face screwed into a mask of disgust. I didn’t believe her, there’s no way she went to the police, besides, what she didn’t know, is that I had already been to the police, I went to hand myself in. She’d got under my skin and made me believe that I was, in fact, a criminal. Turns out the police don’t agree, you can’t be a criminal if it’s between two consenting adults. I felt a bit stupid leaving the police station if I’m honest. But it was also a huge relief to know I wasn’t, in the eyes of John Q Law, a criminal (well, not about this anyway, the night I spent in Soho three years ago ended with marginally criminal activity, but there was no where open and I really needed to go). ...