UNFINISHED UNFINISHED BUSINESS: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

John le Carré appears to have left the Circus with unfinished business: one more novel. But he left that truly unfinished, meeting the ultimate deadline all writers face, and his son put a final coat of paint to the piece on his dad’s behalf.
   I blogged about this in the Central Registry. Short version…

 

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Are you prepared to track down the comic book adaptation of the movie of the opera of the pizza of the book?
   Will you discover, many years later, that a revised version of the sacred text was uncovered at an archaeological dig deep in the forests of Pern? Are you keen on the Michelin Restaurant Guide to the Inns and Taverns of Mordor…
   What is the output? It is whatever you find and in that inexact order. I’ve read ’em all, and then I’ve gone on to read some more.

 

*

 

In the case of le Carré, my order of reading was all over the place. I started with his Karla Trilogy, conveniently collected in an inconvenient tome – difficult to read while trying to perch coffee in mid-air.
   It’s a hard-won skill.
   So the core Smiley story, I read in order. Later I found books leading up to that trilogy and away from it. But the one-volume trilogy really is its own creature. The earlier stuff is the earlier stuff.
   Imagine skipping The Hobbit and reading Tolkien’s main body of work. You get by. Along those lines. Later, it’s up to you to decide if you want to visit the start…so you can genuinely go there and back again.
   I worked my way through le Carré, vaulting over his out-of-place novel: The Naïve and Sentimental Lover. Still can’t bring myself to attempt that nonsense again. The author’s books are not all Smiley books, and you can just about skate around the chronological reading order with a degree of dexterity and little chance of slipping.
   Now, on belatedly learning of its existence, I have another tome to add to the le Carré archive. It is his last novel, and I will read it last. (The book I skipped STAYS skipped.) Read the last one last? You’d think this is the way of things, but often it feels like a luxury. What is the last book, after all?
   If an author travels to an earlier point in a series, writes a prequel, then dies…that’s the last book written, but the first in the series. Tricky. Then there’s the series that runs after death, written by other hands steering a shaky tiller as the franchise sails choppy seas. Awkward.
   Yes, there’s the variation on that course of action: other hands step in mid-way through a sentence after the author’s death. Tying off loose ends at best. Necrophilia at worst. And there’s the reader variation…
   The reader dies before the book series tolls its last bell. Looking in your direction, George R.R. Martin. How many readers fell by the wayside, toppled by the Reaper’s scythe, as they tried to play the Game of Tomes?
   This also reminds me of authors who are bombarded by needy reviewers using the old terminal illness ploy. Could you send me your latest epic in manuscript form? Leukaemia is a bitch. Two entirely unconnected statements leaning against one another. When the author sees through the ploy, it’s a case of over that author’s dead body.
   You think this doesn’t happen? That’s akin to believing famous literary competitions don’t flout their own submission rules. Aw, bless your dear heart. The competition is now open and receiving published books…so why are publishers throwing raw manuscripts at the judges?
   Tsk.
   Unfinished business. Harsh to say this, but, on occasion, it’s better if a writer dies before starting the next book in the series. That’s a solemn tombstone of a thought. I won’t trouble you with examples. You’ll find plenty out there.
   What of unfinished books, from the other direction? I’ve been down this wayward path before, but not often. If I start reading a book, I finish reading that book. With few exceptions. Rarely, I’ve started a book I knew I just couldn’t finish. Still a mere handful of stories, after all those hours searching the stacks.
   Yes, sometimes it is a dusty piece of toil to turn a page. But turn a page I must. So much for books that I score off a list. The authors are scored off, too, lest I repeat the dusty toil anew. Let us draw a veil upon those boring reading experiences. “Experiences.”
   Time passes and, eventually, the final volume in a series arrives. If it is the final volume. We can say that with certainty in the case of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. After a gap of unknown proportions, I finally settled on the last tome in the tale – The Tempest. What surprises are left, there?
   It has 3D glasses! Fucketty-fuck! Are you shitting me?! And not the modern kind, either. The red and green variety of optical delusion is on full display here. Didn’t see that coming. Alan Moore, credited as himself and not as THE CREATOR, most likely for reasons of tax, would be very familiar with gimmick items released alongside comic books.
   He wrote for 2000AD, which started life with a Space Spinner attached to the front cover. I imagine a young Alan in short trousers and long grey beard, regaling all in the streets with the news of an astronautical accompaniment to a weekly periodical of scientific-fictionalised purpose and intent.

 

*

 

It is an ancient author-er,
And he stoppeth one of three.
“By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?”

 “With my cross-bow I shot the albatross. In 3D. Special Anaglyph visual aid free with each issue. Made with high-grade recyclable cardboard. And degenerate plastic. Which doesn’t actually degenerate. Dolphin-Friendly in non-liquid areas.”

 

*

 

Anna Glyph is the type of superhero character you’ll find in an Alan Moore story, along with Polly Amory, Sid E. Reáltime, and Judge Dread. Wait. I think that last one’s been done. I expect a sense of finality in the final volume of a story…not 3D glasses. Surprising.
   And that leads to the point about the final story being a fitting end to whatever series you are reading. We have the interwebs now, and the information super-country-lane. In Tolkien’s day, there was none of that.
   Just two fans, having that conversation. What happens if he dies before he finishes the saga? There was no internet. It was possible that fans didn’t know the entire story was readied in vast chunks at the printer, putting Tolkien ahead of George R.R. Martin in the Game of Tomes.
   Even if Tolkien published part one without finishing part three, popping his clogs, kicking the bucket, and letting a wizardy pipe fall from his hands, his son Christopher would have stepped in to wrest the type and type the rest upon his death. Ah, but this takes us on a short trip to another point. Is a member of the family the best choice for continuation of the legacy?
   You’ll have to try that stew on your own. If you don’t like the recipe, add salt. Online critics do, with ease.
   Works published after an author’s demise take on an atmosphere they wouldn’t otherwise – if you’ve heard the news, that is. The existence of the very last le Carré tome never crossed my mind. I noticed it by chance.
   So, yes, I ask myself if this final book, written in a body’s declining days, will show the faltering storytelling of a declining mind…or maybe le Carré was pin-sharp to the end, and merely ran out of hours. How much mood is altered, tone shifted, atmosphere distorted, knowing another’s hand stepped in to tie the last shoelace and close the door on the way to the printer?
   Adam Hall dictated Quiller’s last literary moments from his deathbed. Yes, to his son. Does it get more dramatic than that? Hard to say. Adam Hall knew it would be the last book. Time was against him – a feature he employed to keep his fictional spy on the edge.
   For my money, Hall gave us the perfect sentiment on which to end a series. Raymond Chandler did that, too. Except, once he was finished with The Long Good-bye, he resurrected a screenplay from the 1940s and furnished one last-gasp of an effort: Playback. The detective Marlowe resurfaced out of a cinematic past just before his creator died.
   Death isn’t the only thing that leads to unfinished business. You lose track of authors. They disappear for a long while, and you become busy with other things. Then a coincidence carries you back in that particular direction as you march between the digital shopping stacks.
   Oh. There’s that series. How did that go? (Wanders casually down the leaf-strewn information super-country-lane.) Damn. Looks as though I have unfinished business with that series, those characters, and the words of yon author.
   That’s the point. There’s always something new to look at. Even if the new thing bypassed you when it was new…and now sits in a heap of autumn leaves. Night draws in like a cloak with the wind at your back. Catching up on unfinished unfinished business, reading, gives you something to do when the hint of a chill rises and the weather turns with the promise of changing seasons in the sparkling air.

EMERGENCY BLOG POST NUMBER ONE. DIVE, DIVE, DIVE!

According to the International Treaty Safeguarding Universal Clichéd Sounds (ITSUCS), the official requirement denoting the noise of a klaxon is aroogah! Placing multiple aroogahs in the same sentence indicates the diving of a WWII-era submarine.

   I’m taking the blog below periscope depth to avoid collision with an incoming blog post. What happened? To use the parlance of Adam Hall in one of his thrillers, I picked up a tag. She followed me down several shadowy streets, her purpose unknown. I was struggling to think what this meant. Were they onto me? What did they want if they were? And what did they want if they weren’t?

   The only thing this fugitive could do was look into matters. Look and report. She wanted me to look. Was I going to play her game? A word caught me. Hazard of being a writer. The word was look. And the tag was thrown out by Kacey Vanderkarr.

   She’d been in a bit of a mood concerning her writing. (Koff Drama Queen koff.) I chipped in and told her to buck up. No good deed goes unpunished. Stephanie Diaz tagged Kacey in a game called LOOK. Kacey, in turn, tagged Missy Biozarre, yours truly, Chris Stocking, Martha Allard, and Melissa Keir.

   Yes, Kacey is stalking a guy named Stocking.

   She tagged me by insisting she was talking to me and that I couldn’t be mistaken. Surely she means the other RLL. You know. The Venezuelan rocket scientist of the same name. I occasionally receive payment for satellite launches.

   Determined to kill off my reputation as a curmudgeon, Kacey persisted. First, she dragged me to a BLOG NOVEL. Then she tagged me, and Twitterated the fact. I just wanted to stay on the chilly throne of my own personal DEATH STAR. And I’d have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those darned pesky kids.

   Jinkies.

   Here, as they say, is the skinny…if you are tagged, run a search for the word LOOK in your work in lack of progress. (Koff koff.) Work in progress, I should say. This simple rule almost wriggled me off the hook. Unfortunately, I used the word.

   If the word LOOK appears in your fiction, copy that paragraph and the surrounding paragraphs to your blog. Tag other writers in your blog post, and let them know they were invited to participate in the game. That’s all, folks.

   Kacey thought she was being sneaky in telling us that we don’t HAVE to participate. That this is not REQUIRED by LAW. See what she did there? Naughty scribbler. She extolled the virtues of sharing unpublished writing with the teeming masses. Or, in my case, with the 0.75 people who regularly read this blog.

   Well that’s that. I’m out the door. Have to walk the dinosaur. See you.

   What’s the problem? My personal carer Dr Anton Phibes is scouring the Seven Seas for me as I type. He’s there to prevent my releasing stories ahead of the game. It’s not good for me. Kacey thinks it is. She means well.

   I’ve had to turn my blog into Das Boot to fire off this literary torpedo. Not Das Boot. The Nautilus. And there’s no torpedo to launch. The only weapon available is ramming speed as I approach the vessel occupied by Dr Phibes.

   If only I hadn’t used the word LOOK. But the scene in that story deals with looking and not looking. She wanted him to look. Was he going to play her game? There’s a peculiar link to the BLOG NOVEL I participated in. I created a character called Jess. And I ended up writing about another Jessica in the BLOG NOVEL. Small world.

   Other considerations? I couldn’t just drop a chunk of the story on you. This blog has a minimum requirement of 1,500 words. Kacey wasn’t asking much. Just share some unpublished fiction with 0.75 readers. Interrupt your regular blog posts to do so. And give the audience an excerpt that’s long enough for your blog. Ignore Dr Phibes and go for it.

   Anything else? Yes. The nature of the excerpt fell under scrutiny. I hope I don’t get that Venezuelan rocket scientist into bother over the publication of this non-scientific data. Genteel readers, and Dr Phibes, look away now. Think of the horror Kacey Vanderkarr has unleashed…

   Before I do that, I must tag some people. Kacey tagged five. I could cheat and tag Kacey, forcing her to blog another excerpt. That would be evil of me. Evil and wrong. There’s probably a rule against that sort of thing. So I’ll leave off those already tagged.

1. Karen Woodward. Canadian author and blogger supreme. Tagging Karen flushes her out of hiding, forcing her to reveal a work in progress. If she used the word LOOK.

2. A.M. Supinger. Insecure Writer with a Chris Hemsworth fixation. If she takes up the tagging challenge, expect her to respond with fiction opening Look at Chris Hemsworth.

3. Kellie Manasseri. Another writer who goes around calling herself Mrs Hemsworth when she thinks no one is listening. If she takes up the tagging challenge, expect her to respond with fiction opening Only Mrs Hemsworth is permitted to look at Chris Hemsworth.

4. Michelle Simkins. Originator of the 2012 BLOG NOVEL, Bloom. She created her own Jess in that story as I was creating mine elsewhere. Michelle is a keen photographer. I’d expect her to look at stuff, and to stuff the word look into her fiction.

5. Jennifer Merritt. Worryingly, Jennifer was once charged with the heinous crime of Livestock at Large. I know – any excuse to use the word heinous.

6. Anyone else who wants to throw fiction out there.

Now to our tale. This cycle of stories is bundled with blog posts in the first REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE collection. Here’s an excerpt from MIRA E. The tale is the INCIDENT BEFORE. (I note the irony of the hidden meaning in MIRA. Spanish for LOOK.)

   “It is not looming. I can’t show you my scars easily. There’s a barrier to overcome. If I go topless, that’s something I’m getting past. And if you’re gay, I’m not really giving anything up on a plate. Flashing to a queer doesn’t count. So all the angles are covered.”

   “Fuck.”

   “Want to see my scars?”

   “No.”

   “Tell me about the new thing. Around my neck. Mysterious gift.”

   “Deviant distraction. The beachcomber hauled it out of the pebbles down by Chlarson Lake. Passed the piece on to the witchy woman in the bauble store.”

   “She’s a Methodist. That’s practically witchcraft in my house. Methodism. One step up from Stanism.”

   “Huh?”

   “Worship of your dad, Stan. That’s Stanism. A lot of housewives around here wouldn’t mind bumping your mom off and consoling the guy. My mom has the hots for your dad.”

   “Uh, please. Your mom…”

   “Is not the most stable of people. If she’s stable, the horse bolted long ago.”

   “Will your horse be okay down there?”

   “Yeah. Good question. Maybe we should bring the horse up here. Where everything is safer. In the den of the axe-murderer.”

   “Where’s that coming from? What’s your point?”

   “You are obsessed with saving women.”

   “I can’t save them. There are news articles. Pieces of a jigsaw. Sometimes, all the pieces fit and the killer is brought in. Doesn’t make the jigsaw whole.”

   “Where do you bury them all?”

   “In my scrapbooks. Those go back years. So unless I’m guilty of killing random women when I was five, or in negative numbers, I am not the killer you are looking for.”

   “I don’t think you odd, just for lamenting the loss of those women.”

   “Could you cover your breasts with your arms, then show me the scars…”

   “I want to break a barrier.”

   “You broke a barrier when you told me you hurt yourself. I…”

   “Well you can already see my breasts through the clothing. What difference does peeling a layer make to you?”

   “All the difference. I’ll be looking there and not at your scars.”

   “Ah, so not gay after all.”

   “I’ll look away. Hold your blouse up to your chest with one hand. Figure something out.”

   “Oh. You like to leave something to the imagination.”

   “Yes. I do. Don’t sell it to me cheap if it’s precious. I’ll think it cheap. And don’t offer me a moving target that stops for show.”

   “You might just be a little above average in the ordinary guy department.”

   “A little. I could more or less live on that crumb of discomfort.”

   “Either that or you are a MAJOR leg-man.”

   He didn’t look away. Instead, Zeke closed his eyes. There was a rustle, and shifting of position on the bed. Squeak of springs. Now he trusted her not to mess around and embarrass him. He was embarrassed anyway. Could you be more embarrassed? If so, what did embarrassment matter?

   It didn’t matter at all.

   “Okay. Here you go, sport.”

   He opened his eyes. As arranged via international treaty, her breasts were covered by the blouse. Held against Jess by her right hand. She raised her left arm to show the inner surface. The scratches were short and thin. He considered the cuts the only shallow things about her. Damage markers. Precise. Uniform. Silence. Looking. More silence. Then…

   “What did you use, Jess? Laser?”

   “Sold my Atomic Death-Ray. Semi-blunt knife. I sterilised it.”

   “The cuts look…”

   “Yeah?”

   “Machine-made.”

   “A knife is a machine for cutting.”

   “Did you feel anything?”

   “Stings.”

   “I mean, emotionally.”

   “No. Didn’t work. I wanted to feel more human. Whatever that’s like. All I felt was stinging. Made me think of Darcy, in her rubber room.”

   “She’s happy there, they say.”

   “I didn’t do this to feel happy, Zeke. To feel something. But not to feel happy. I heard Darcy did it to feel good about herself. To experience happiness. That’s sick, twisted, and fucked.”

   “But doing that to yourself is okay if it’s about feeling anything but happiness.”

   “Yes, Kettle. Pot thinks that. Your turn. Blushing. Come on. Show me your scars.”

   “There aren’t any.”

   “Did you lie to me?”

   “No. I didn’t lie. Jess, I hurt myself to make sensation go away. That didn’t involve cutting.”

   “Oh. I thought hurting meant cutting, because it meant cutting to me. Go on.”

   “I can’t get into this with you. It’s sick.”

   “Fish through my pockets, will you? I’ll show you sick. My knife is there.”

   “You aren’t going to cut yourself in front of me…”

   “Why not?”

   “You’ll bleed everywhere, for one thing.”

   “Minimal blood-loss. Guaranteed. I’ll pass it off as woman’s trouble.”

   “Yes, I can see how that would be woman’s trouble. Vaginal bleeding from the armpit, and all.”

   She laughed too loudly at that. He went for the knife, taking his eyes off her. Peripheral vision told him that she’d dropped the blouse. He kept his head down and examined the cutting machine. There were three blades.

   “Oops-a-dandelion.”

   “Dropped something?”

   “My blouse. You?”

   “Pair of testicles.”

   “Well it’s high-time now you’re almost sixteen.”

   “The big November birthday. Could you put your blouse back on?”

   “And risk being cut, with blood everywhere?”

   “So what about bandages?”

   “I brought stuff for that. Try the other pocket.”

   “You should have cut yourself once. Ragged. At least you could explain that away somehow. Multiple scars generate multiple questions.”

   “No one will know. Will they? Are you going to tell?”

   “Only the newspapers. Are you wearing your blouse?”

   “No. I want that barrier to go.”

   “Next time. Okay?”

   “Oh. There’s to be a next time? On that promise…”

   “Notion.”

   “It’s a promise or I just sit here topless until your mom walks in.”

   “You’d never do that.”

   “Doing it now, sport. Of course, you could wrestle the clothes back on me. But you’d pretty much have to look, to do that.”

   “The alternative would be closed eyes and a lot of fumbling. Next time. Maybe. Depends.”

   “Close enough for a promise. Look away, then, you pervert.”

   Rustling. Bedsprings.

   He looked, saw her in the blouse, then looked away. She might as well be topless, in that garment. This was going to be a long hour. With the cheese thing at the end of it. Extra rations for Jess. And…ah, the time.

   “Are you staying for supper, Jess?”

   “I like riding home in the dark. Experienced professional that I am.”

   “Another contest coming up.”

   “The biggie.”

   “Might even lose a prize. Will you stop cutting yourself before competitions?”

   “What’s the point of that?”

   “If you fall off, and hurt yourself, you’ll have to be examined. The cuts might come to light.”

   “Then I’ll deal with the problem when a problem arrives. What about you? Oh, no scars.”

   “One of these blades is sharp.”

   “Yeah. Sometimes I think about using that one. I reserve it for enemies.”

   “Will you cut me, Jess?”

   “Sure.”

   No hesitation. Absolutely. He rooted around in her pockets and found a wad of cotton wool and some kind of medical tape. There were sticking-plasters. He’d expected a field-kit. Something that would hold arms together.

   “Just to see what cutting feels like.”

   “Yeah. I said sure. Take your lumberjack shirt off. If your mom bursts in, we’ll pretend we’re getting it on.”

   “In a way, we are.”

   “Ooh, deep mysterious layers to you tonight. Here, I’ll unbutton the top two. Evidence for your mom. Unless you’d like to unbutton me. Be my guest…”

   “No, you’re my guest.”

   “That’s right. Local hospitality. The host’s blood is laid open to the sky.”

   “We should sit on the floor.”

   “You should lie on the floor. So you don’t flinch and lose an arm.”

   “Okay.”

   He lay in line with the bed, sliding the swivel-chair under his desk. Jess stood over him as he squirmed out of the lumberjack shirt. Just a guy in jeans. She looked to her left. The bed she’d vacated. To the right, the desk. And his 1974 scrapbook. Over the desk, a shelf with more scrapbooks.

   She knelt by his side, making much of the action as she took the knife from him and became a killer. Cocking her head, she strained to hear the wooden warning of shoes on the stairs. The light goldened, heading for gloom. Not yet.

   “No scars, I see. Talk about that.”

   “I…hurt myself. Just to make stuff go away.”

   “How did that work for you?”

   “Thought it did, actually. Then I had to start over.”

   “So…details…”

   “Ah, no. I just hurt my bones a little more, to see if it all made sense.”

   “How severe is the pain you need to throw yourself into, to dislodge the stuff from your head?”

   “Turns out, pretty severe.”

   “No cutting, though.”

   “So far.”

   “Coward.”

   “No. The pain I went for…wasn’t exactly cowardly.”

   “Tell me.”

   So he told her. Minute by minute, her eyes grew colder with disquiet. His voice held steady. Her heart pounded on her head’s door. Let me in. There’s been an accident. You’ve accidentally fallen for the wrongest guy in the town. Walk away. Crawl if you must.

   “Jess…”

   “Oh. I take back the cowardliness. But that was the start, you say.”

   “Then…”

   And he told her the rest. She warned herself not to waste time fighting back tears. If she started that battle, she’d lose. Instead, she went to the numb place in her head and read some indigestible books. On a timer, she packed that routine away and found the words to soothe the poor guy.

   “Zeke, that’s fucked.”

   “Yeah.”

   “Zeke.”

   “There’s more.”

   “Okay.”

   And she sighed at that. Slight shake of the head. She unfolded the wrong blade. The sharp one. Just to be sure, she tested it on her palm. A bead of blood burned red there. Jess was surprised by that. A ruby, glistening, putting up its own tent. Attracting customers to the Blood Fair.

   “What?”

   “I just fucking cut myself.”

   “Hardly bothersome, to you.”

   “It is. I used the wrong blade. The really truly sharp one. I always test, just to be sure.”

   “Then the test worked. Now you’re sure.”

   “I’m not sure of anything, Zeke. Your story distracted me.”

   “Though I note that you didn’t cry.”

   “I’m not the crying kind. That’s why I cut myself, remember. To feel. I must feel the world wobbling on my shoulders before I’ll cry. What is it you are trying to escape from?”

   “Intensity.”

   “So you do intense things to counter the intensity?”

   “I guess. When I was younger, I was the kid the older guys allowed along for the ride. Some of them went to Vietnam.”

   “Not your war, Zeke.”

   “I wanted it to be. Now it’s not. So I hurt myself. Today I thought I’d…”

   “Best not say.”

   “Just to forget being vegetarian.”

   “Hell, I forgot being vegetarian. Didn’t cost me blood.”

   “Hesitating? Cut me.”

   “After what you told me, about escalating things. Maybe switching to a knife isn’t a good idea. You read about a lot of these murders. Read a lot about these murders.”

   “I read all about as many of the murderers that the law catches as I can. Right now, I think someone came back from Vietnam and didn’t get the usual treatment he liked over in Saigon.”

   “Huh? You mean prostitutes.”

   “Yeah. I spoke to one of the guys who went to Vietnam. He said…some of the guys who come back don’t actually come back. They’re different.”

   “How?”

   “They are exposed to stuff they wouldn’t normally encounter here. When they return, these guys want more of the same.”

   “So…”

   “They’ll roughhouse a whore, some. Beating a prostitute here is a way of getting back at Uncle Sam for sending guys over there.”

   “That last girl who disappeared. She wasn’t…”

   “As far as we know. Living two towns over. Who could say for certain…”

   “This isn’t going to stop. The bleeding, I mean. My stupid cut.”

   “I’ll get some paper from the bathroom.”

   Jess put her knife away while Zeke dashed to the bathroom. He caught sight of himself in the mirror. Shirtless. Do something about that, idiot. He grabbed the whole roll and nipped across to his room. Jess sat on the bed, holding her hand up. Zeke grimaced.

   “Here, oh menstrual one.”

   “Stupid thing to do, anyway. Could we meet somewhere in the middle, sport?”

   “How?”

   “I live a little more, and you live a little less. We settle the balance.”

   “Maybe. Press this into your hand. Keep it there. You should go to the bathroom and run cold water if this doesn’t work.”

   “It’s not a ruptured artery, calm down. Are you upset, Zeke?”

   “By what?”

   “I don’t know. Nixon’s resignation.”

   “That annoyed me. A President, toppled by his enemies. But President Ford made things right.”

   “So you feel better because a crook was pardoned.”

   “Vietnam bothers me. And the Russians.”

   “Not the Dutch, though?”

   “Why the Dutch?”

   “Just choosing people at random.”

   “Don’t you need a permit to make fun of me?”

   “That’s the Zeke I know. Where do I apply for that permit?”

   “On the other side of midnight, over the hills, far away. Just next door to here and now.”

   “Could you do that with your imaginary pipe? I’m busy not bleeding to death. Ah. I’m staying to supper. How do we explain this?”

   “Paper.”

   “An axe made of it? This was no paper-cut, Watson!”

   “Oh. I showed you my…”

   “Careful, young man.”

   “Badge. CNA.”

   “Canadian Nautical Alliance?”

   “The Campaign for Nuclear Armament. Here.”

   “Where do you dig them up, Zeke? The pin is quite shar…argh! Fuck.”

   “Make a fist.”

   “No use to me.”

   “You have to climb into your sweater. Without blood-trails all over yourself. Close your hand and shield the cuts.”

   “Uh, yeah. Practical. Okay. We’ll agree to dress.”

   He tidied himself, recreating the image his mother would remember. Jess did her best to avoid spraying the walls with blood. Zeke sat in his chair. Jess plonked herself on Zeke’s bed. She extended her left hand for inspection. Blood smears.

   “You have some on your throat.”

   “That’s because you, young man, are Wampyr.”

   “Normally I don’t wear the cloak.”

   “Undead giveaway.”

   Jess moved her left hand to wipe the blood. Using her right hand would just bloody another five digits. Her left hand brushed the five-pointed star at her throat. Things quietened, after that. The adventure was done.

   “I guess that’s it for cutting ourselves tonight.”

   “Or doing what you do. Don’t do that, Zeke. I’m worried you’d injure yourself.”

   “Worried I’d injure myself when I hurt myself.”

   “It’s the escalation each time. Looking for a new layer of physical pain to take the mental pain away.”

   “And your own escalation?”

   “There isn’t really escalation in my case. Repetition. Once a cut heals. You are…”

   “Looking for something bigger than the thing you are looking for…”

   “I want to feel. That’s a small thing. You want to shut out the world. That’s a big door you are hunting after.”

   There were moments of tidying. An imaginary pipe was waved around. Laughter. Chatter. Creating a certain mood in the run-up to the cheese thing. He opened the door. Nodding, he beckoned his friend Jess. She followed downstairs, stopping halfway. He looked back at her silence. Light dawned in her eyes and fell from her tongue.

   “My hat.”

THE 11TH OF SEPTEMBER, 2001.

America did not create a monopoly on emergency telephone numbers. Nor did America have a monopoly on the system of arranging dates. For the younger persons in the audience, a lesson or two from the time of the fossil.

   Telephones were once quite mechanical. They have altered somewhat since those early days. I imagine the Victorian-era mobile phone was the size of a street-urchin or very small pony. Mechanical telephones had no dial-pads or touch-screen dial-pad simulators.

   After much experimentation, there was, simply, the hole-punctuated disc. A dial. Through the holes, visible, fixed to the machine, sat printed numbers. The user placed a finger in the numbered hole and dialled. All the way around to the stop-bar. There, the user’s finger halted. Recording the number. Select number, dial, release. Repeat.

   Not immediately, eventually, the question was asked. We must have an emergency system; what is the emergency number to be? Something you can find easily in the dark, or a smoke-filled room. We’ll use the number 9. To make it difficult to dial for help by accident, we’ll use the number 9 three times over. Dial 999 in an emergency.

   In a fire, seconds count. If you aren’t out of a burning building inside one minute, tell yourself you are dead. The one-minute fire rule. Worth remembering before you are caught in a burning building. You have one minute in which to take action leading to the rest of your life.

   Act. Your possessions are unimportant. Let them burn. Use a small fire extinguisher to beat back flames on your way to the exit – that fire extinguisher you bought is not for fighting fires. Don’t stay there thinking you are in control. You lack the training, experience, and equipment that’s racing along roads to get to you. The small fire extinguisher buys time as you head out. Don’t use it to waste time by staying. And don’t stay to dial for help inside the building. Get out first, if you can.

   In America, the emergency number assigned was 911. Which brings me to the ordering of dates. Day, month, year. It is the year 2000. I am in the United States of America. Entering the country is a slow, empty, shambolic affair with bodies all over the airport.

   To add to the confusion, once I’m officially inside the land of the free, the official hands me my ticket. She says it’s my exit pass. I am to give my pass to no one, as it allows me to reach the street. As soon as the paper is handed to me it is seized by another female official, and I’m steered in the direction of daylight.

   That’s my first experience of America. Being mugged by a government official. This is a pastime enacted upon almost all American citizens with alarming frequency.

   My low-tech, no-tech, passport was stamped. That was pretty much it – I was in. I had a low-tech camera. Film. Old-core and hard-school, or words to that general effect. I’d looked into digital cameras. They didn’t quite cut it back in the day.

   On my travels, I stopped to buy even more film. As a precaution, I used traveller’s cheques. The woman inside the kiosk asked me to alter the date notation of the cheque I signed. (To her, it must have been a check I signed.) Would I place month before day? Certainly. This brought up an additional security feature I knew nothing of, as the woman’s colleague explained various methods of authenticating the cheque.

   The year 2000. Before the flood. After the flood, getting into America was much more time-consuming, though far less shambolic. Far more regimented. I would reach America with electronic safeguards hanging over me.

   My fingerprints would be digitally scanned and I’d be photographed. Before, I’d have queued with my luggage and stumbled into daylight. After, I was the star of my own high-tech show. Getting out of my own country was the hardest part, before.

   After, getting out of my own country was still the hardest part – just harder. Everything went in trays. I developed a deep awareness of all the metal objects on my person. Shoes went. Fluids were a problem. No one demanded a blood sample, fortunately.

   My own people were paranoid, in the old days. I had my passport removed from its handy pouch, on the off-chance that something was amiss. Certain things don’t change. They intensify. Before, everything seemed low-tech. Basic passport. Film camera. Traveller’s cheques. Paranoia.

   After, I had a high-and-mighty high-tech passport that was introduced to satisfy American requirements. Though it proved more high-tech than that of the American who drove me on a covert raid into Canada. We exchanged notes on our new passports, and laughed. Paranoia.

   Also, after the flood, my high-tech bank card was universally accepted in the Land of the Free. Farewell, cheques for the traveller. I took ten times the number of photos with my digital camera, in contrast to what I’d managed with film back in the day. Before the flood. After.

   Before, I was able to carry a miniature first aid kit in hand luggage. Scissors. A knife. After, I’m surprised I was allowed to have clothes. With enough patience and diligence, a zip-fastener can be improvised into a garrotte.

   The flood. A fine Tuesday in September, 2001. This is a date I would write as 11/09/01, and not 9/11. The 911 means nothing to me as an emergency number, as that is 999. That dial is long-gone. I am used to hearing Americans cry DIAL NINE ONE ONE! in movies and on television shows. But I would never call that number if I had an emergency, unless I had an emergency in America.

   To Americans the date is 9/11, and chimes with the emergency response number in the States. The flood. Washing the old world away. Removing the th in 11^th. Americans speak of September 11. In the title of this piece, I’ve placed 11^th before September. I am from outside the USA, and my perspective is not that of those within the USA.

   My perspective, on the day, was unusual. It related to my fiction, and resulted in this anecdote. Which I thought I wouldn’t write down. I watched the television news. A skyscraper collided with an aeroplane. Another skyscraper collided with another aeroplane.

   The world was an interconnected place. Not as interconnected as it is now. Going back into the depths of the past, long before 2001, news was news. Not even remotely immediate. Something would happen on the other side of the world. A map went on display. Not a computer graphic. Actual paper or card. No disaster footage. That would take time to reach the news studio. Next day, perhaps. A day beyond that. Genuine film reels, flown in on sub-sonic aircraft.

   Newsreaders read the news off pieces of paper. The autocue took time to spread. Nowadays if a newsreader reaches for paper to read from, that’s a ploy to show the newsreader is quoting directly from a source. Then it’s back to the autocue for the rest of the story.

   When the autocue fails, newsreaders flounder. It’s painful to watch.

   Well, this 2001 footage is part of the immediate world. Connected. It’s afternoon in Scotland. Morning in New York. Footage filters in. There are people, filming. Chatting away. Some social function. Unwittingly capturing events in the background.

   Do I pay attention to the visual? No. It’s the audio I’m listening to. People are saying things like HOLY SHIT and FUCK. Phrases of that nature. Later in the day, the footage is assembled into a more coherent story. If you can call it that.

   I notice one of the most stunning pieces of editorialism in the history of news reportage. There’s the familiar footage, for those who came in late. And here are the familiar voices. The swearing is left in place. That’s how big the story is. There’s no attempt to silence those upset voices. There are concerns greater than the danger of permitting unbleeped expletives to pollute the airwaves.

   Relaying that information to you is not the purpose of this anecdote. The World Trade Centre is hit by hijacked aeroplanes. Domestic flights. Not in the air long. Laden with fuel. (It was not my intention to make that last line a play on words.) Moving fast. Going in low. Missiles cloaked in the camouflage of pretend-hijackings.

   Other targets are under consideration. The Pentagon takes a strike. It is designed to survive unimaginable amounts of damage – the designers imagined it, and planned accordingly. Another vehicle comes down hard in a field. Countable lives are ended, and countless lives are altered.

   What’s my impression of all this? It can be summed up in the thought I kept to myself for over a decade, when I watched the first skyscraper crumble and fall. Contaminating lungs with an insane cocktail of substances.

   If you’ve read my short story collection, you’ll know that I abandoned several plotlines. For those who haven’t read my comments on abandoned stories, I’ll summarise. I decided to write a spoof about the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret plot to destabilise Fidel Castro’s beard.

   Turned out, there was such a plot. I abandoned the tale. You can’t make it up. Then there was the business of the Provisional Irish Republican Army’s mortaring of Heathrow Airport. My idea. And there was the matter of writing a story about the actress Kim Basinger winning a certain gold-clad movie award.

   In Scotland it’s Tuesday afternoon on the 11^th of September, 2001, and I watch aeroplanes hit the World Trade Centre towers. Over in America it’s Toosday morning, September 11, and airplanes hit the World Trade Center towers.

   I’d never considered the Twin Towers to be great pieces of architecture. The gaping hole in the sky left by all that destruction made me feel something was lacking – a something I hadn’t much liked. But that something was a huge part of the landscape. I regretted the loss of human life well ahead of the loss of the structures – but I did feel the loss of the unloved structures all the same.

   Down the first tower goes, and I have that thought. All across Manhattan, people must be thinking, and saying, and yelling SHIT and FUCK. That’s if the Manhattanites, and Brooklynites, and other borough (or boro) inhabitants can find the expletives to yell. Some of them can’t even reach for the swearword in a moment of crisis. All they have is numbing wordlessness. But I think this.

   Someone has solved the engineering problem.

   Many of you sitting reading that last line are probably having a WTF! moment right now. A degree of explanation is called for. I went to write about Fidel Castro, but Uncle Sam beat me to it. The idea of Kim Basinger’s winning that coveted trophy was mine alone, and I let it slide as perhaps a bit too fantastic. I was glad not to have tackled the P.I.R.A. story as some awkward questions would have been asked of me concerning Irish terrorist activity.

   There was one other story in my collection of ideas, that I filed away for later use once I developed superior research and planning skills. A crime-of-the-century thriller. Man with a grudge threatens a major American city with the destruction of a skyscraper. He wants money. If he doesn’t get money, a piece of architecture will be reduced to rubble. Five buildings are threatened.

   To make good on his threat, he blows a building. Mayhem ensues. The race is on to find him and stop him before he takes down another skyscraper. That’s pretty much it. With a few twists thrown in, and the weak spot of the story being how he gets the money out. If he’s even after the money at all, given that he holds a grudge.

   I think of possible targets. Chicago is the home of the skyscraper. However, the adopted home of that structure is New York City. Specifically, Manhattan’s iconic skyline. So I have the target city. And the building threatened? A fictional one, newly-constructed.

   Older skyscrapers were ludicrously over-designed for safety’s sake, and didn’t fit the bill. The Empire State Building survived an aeroplane strike in heavy fog. So my target had to be a young skyscraper.

   Seeing images of the Empire aeroplane strike coupled with watching a Robert Shaw movie, The Taking of Pelham 123, jolted my mosaic mind into action. It’s hard to take a building down with an aeroplane. Why would you want to? Madman. Money. Getting the money out is hard. Madman doesn’t care about that. Pelham is about New York, underground trains, hostages, and cash. My idea is about New York, skyscrapers, destruction, and cash as a lure. The grudge is the thing.

   In my head I think over the problems this story will cause me. I tend to keep stories in my head, and work on them over long periods. Who is the villain? Is he acting alone? How is he financed? What sort of time does he have on his hands? Where does he operate? What are his destructive materials like, in terms of cash-cost and portability?

   The plot is empty unless he can blow a building. So how hard is it to bring one down? Not how easy? How hard. It’s easy given the right materials. But hard to transport those materials to the site unseen. Where are the twists, that allow the story to seem plausible?

   How much mayhem is caused by the loss of one building – and does said mayhem affect the madman’s chances of bringing down a second building on the same day? (What is the timeframe? With the first explosion, time is against him. He may even be identified before the second blast is triggered.)

   Can he cover the distances required, if manually activating devices? That being the case, will Detonation One affect his chances of initiating Detonation Two when transport infrastructure takes a hit? Does he rely on remote detonations? Is he in the city or not? (A puzzle element the heroes mull over. To satisfy readers, he must be present.) At most, he has a day in which to strike. Will he threaten famous landmarks as well as the fictional one I’m planning to destroy?

   Coldly, how do I solve the engineering problem?

   I consider a building under construction, and the ability to plant explosives there during construction. This is pure fantasy on my part, and I believe it will be the hardest part of the story to pull off. (Let me come back to this one.) On top of that, I think about missiles.

   And I think about missiles aimed at the street-level of a building, taking in the crowds down there as well as attacking major supporting columns. You have to knock out a hell of a lot of supporting columns to be in with a chance.

   I think that the story needs a lot of engineering research to make it work. And I don’t have what it takes to construct such a tale. Not in 1989. So I file it away for future reference. The World Trade Centre is hit. It’s 1993. That business of blowing out supporting columns with a big bomb down in parking just isn’t cutting the mustard. I think things over.

   The story had been in my head for years. Did it need to stew a good while longer? (I kept slim*thriller in my head for a long time and hardly wrote any notes until I committed to the novel. LYGHTNYNG STRYKES was around for years before I dashed the text down in under three months of mad typing.)

   Those terrorists couldn’t solve the engineering problem, and left too much evidence into the bargain. Unfortunately, solving the engineering problem at parking-level leads to the propagation of more evidence – not less. You’d have to go in and individually target the columns, aiming for simultaneous strikes. And people would see you as you went about your business. See you. Disrupt you.

   So could the villain of the piece use workers unwittingly, to assemble packages that are in fact bombs? My ideas grow more and more far-fetched. I don’t mind, too much, as I plan to use deception to allow for plot-twists. If a building goes down flaming, how does it go down? The villain may pretend to use one method, delaying his identification and capture. In the immediate confusion, he gets away with that. But he’s fooling no one. Further investigation will uncover the truth. Again, it’s a matter of the timeframe. (Pre-planned explosives, with a missile follow-up. All in one day.)

   That story doesn’t look as though it’s ever going to be written. Not after the 1993 incident. I just can’t see a plausible way out of the engineering problems I’ve set before my villain. Abstract though they are. The more detail I add, the more my story will be steered into the realm of the plausible. Casting the fanciful aside.

   Up we go, to the year 1995. A villain with a grudge, painting himself as a hero, decides to blow up a symbol of Federal power in Oklahoma. Timothy McVeigh is not well-funded. It takes a few thousand dollars to assemble the fertiliser-based bomb that he places in his truck.

   McVeigh’s bomb does not completely demolish the building. I dismiss the use of a truck-based device from my story as one of the options. The office block isn’t a skyscraper, but I see all sorts of blast problems. It’ll have to be a missile, after all. I stubbornly stick with the notion of attacking the base of a structure. Always the base.

   Timothy McVeigh kills and injures a huge number of people. The building is finished as a workplace, and has to be demolished shortly after. Post-blast, McVeigh is arrested in the time it takes to watch a movie. Too much evidence is generated, and that later links to the arrested man.

   Initial news reports indicated a definite domestic vibe coming off the incident. There was a desire not to leap to the conclusion that America’s enemies were responsible. In the end, it was quite clear that McVeigh was America’s enemy.

   I think over the use of the truck-bomb. For New York, organisation is called for. I remember the Irish tactic of parking a car so that it occupies a space to be used for the bomb-carrying vehicle on the day. That way, you don’t screw up your own plans through lack of parking. Depending on CCTV coverage, the ploy may inadvertently generate more evidence.

   For New York, and my disgruntled villain, parking is a no-no. Fuggedaboutit. I may use an isolated vehicle bomb driven by an unwitting helper, but that’s not going to bring one of those mighty buildings down. It’s merely a distraction. I write other tales, and think I’ll never get back to the skyscraper story. Ah well. (I completed stories I thought I’d never get back to, so hope existed nonetheless.)

   There I am, on that Tuesday, watching America under attack.

   The first tower crumbles. Someone has solved the engineering problem. Of course. Don’t go for the supporting columns at the base of the tower. Use your missile to attack the upper reaches, and weaken the whole damn thing to the point of critical failure.

   With the first tower down and the second tower hit, it’s obviously only a matter of time. My idea of doing a skyscrapers-in-peril story crumbles with the collapsing buildings. I resolve not to write the thing. It joins my Fidel Castro tale, the Kim Basinger piece, and the Irish story – all on the scrapheap of my imagination.

   And there the matter rests. I can’t see that anything is gained from telling anyone this tale. So I decide not to. Later, the lunatic notions come out. Some top secret outfit went in, and planted explosives during the construction of one of the buildings that collapsed in the wake of the attack. Then covert demolition was triggered. Hey, that idea sounds familiar. It’s mine. One of the options I considered. Could it have happened?

   Bullshit. I was more than a decade ahead of that game and had a hard fucking time convincing myself it could be done in a realistic manner. The idea of pre-planning a building’s destruction during the construction phase, or fitting explosives inside the skyscraper during a post-construction maintenance phase, was all a bit much. Even by my outré standards. I couldn’t make it work – and that was BEFORE I considered any hard-nosed research on the idea.

   How do you plant the explosives in the building, and maintain them? You’ll need safeguards to prevent premature detonation – in whole or in part. And you must ensure that routine building maintenance does not uncover anything untoward. To say nothing of selection of an explosive that will not degrade appreciably over time. A zero-maintenance device. That pesky timeframe again.

   Did I invent the idea of a conspiracy to destroy a building based on explosives planted inside that building during its construction? I have no evidence to support this. If anyone can find a story or TV/radio documentary with this theme running prior to mid-1980-odd, then I am not the originator.

   I will reluctantly accept that I may be the originator of the idea – though you are all reading about it here for the first time. It is impossible for any conspiracy fans to have used my idea as a source for the mounds of speculation generated immediately following the destruction of the World Trade Centre. That speculation was not my doing. Perhaps there is a piece of source fiction that inspired me, also used by assorted conspiracy types. That seems likely.

   Every avenue I concocted, for my villain to exploit, was sheer fantasy. Missile aimed at the street-level. Okay, run with the idea. Where does he get the missile? He steals it. From? An army base. Not from an airport, which never occurred to me. The missile would be my axe, with which I felled the base of a tree. Always the base. Couldn’t get away from that notion.

   Daunted by the prospect of so much research, and wary of dropping a technical manual on readers, I decided I’d handle various story elements in an offbeat way. A missile would be stolen in-flight. During a test. The target information simply altered. (This was a massive cliché, doing the rounds in movies.)

   How hard is that? Hard. Constructing a story isn’t as hard. Cobble together various missiles from history into a super-missile designed to act as a greater threat than any threat faced, and test it. With an explosive warhead below nuclear level, for the test.

   The end of the Cold War didn’t end missile development. So, as the years dragged in, and I didn’t write my story, the missile idea remained. It could easily be a remnant of an earlier design-phase. Hell, we designed, tested, and built the damned thing. Might as well install it.

   I wanted to write a techno-thriller without the tech. Why? To get the ladies reading. Not just the gents. So the switch in target data of a live missile flight…would have relied on nothing more complex than a magic act. Fanning the deck, and forcing a particular card on the mark. Everything would have been written in those terms.

   Even so, I failed to answer a host of pesky questions. He gets people to collude in his plans unwittingly. How the hell does he manage that? It’s nonsense. How does he successfully take charge of the money? Well, that’s not his game. He has a grudge. The money is unimportant. It’s all about the destruction.

   Are you feeling the chill, applying those questions I asked of would-be fiction to what happened in the world of cold, hard, fact? How did they make money off the atrocity? On the markets, remotely. How do you get people to collude in your plans unwittingly? Pretend it’s just a hijacking. Really, it’s all about holding some grudge.

   I’ve written of my influences. One of those is Adam Hall’s character, Quiller. Hall concocted a 9/11-ish terror plot called Solitaire for Quiller to stumble through. Hall did that years before the actual event, and, perhaps fortunately, died before he could witness reality on television. I read that book years after the event, and it was another nail in the coffin of the idea that I could write about my cold statement.

   There’s no spark in me to switch locations and alter the story. London lacks the forest of skyscrapers required, though makes up for that in terms of symbolic landmarks. When the Irish bombed the City of London, a great deal of damage was caused. Nothing like the damage I would inflict, with my fictional madman running loose. I keep an eye on the news, but the story is gone.

   Writers, chroniclers of fanciful notions that we are, occasionally stumble upon reality. Life, imitating artifice. We dedicate ourselves to telling stories. Some strange people dedicate themselves to the construction of fertiliser-based explosive devices.

   To the extent that, in camouflaging the intent behind the purpose of purchasing fertiliser, the bomber sets up a farming business – as happened in Norway. There’s precious little defence against semi-organised lunatics of that stripe. I think over these things. Become a bomber myself in all but name, for the sake of fiction. I try not to hurt anyone.

   Why tell this anecdote now? More than a decade elapsed. The world’s most wanted man is dead. News reaches us in a way that is far more interconnected than was the case in 2001. (Or 1991, 1981, 1881…) I wondered if I’d ever see anything to equal or eclipse the footage I saw on that calm September day.

   And, in 2011, I viewed an event that put the collapsing towers in the shade. I watched, lost for words, as some poor Japanese bastard’s house floated by in a sea of slurry and debris. The house was on fire. That summed up the tragedy. As the footage came in, image after unbelievable image staggering my senses, the material revealed that we’d become far more connected in terms of putting a picture together. But we’re still just as fragile.

   It is only since I began blogging that I found myself talking extensively about the processes behind my writing. I thought of my 11/9 anecdote. No, I didn’t feel the need to tell that story. Perhaps writing about my writing would encourage others to take up writing. Or, at the very least, to take up reading widely.

   In the first half-year of my grand adventure in self-publishing, I contacted authors – published and unpublished. Some I asked for help. Others I assisted. In talking to two American writers who seemed joined at the digital hip – creators of The Stranger Diaries, Kacey Vanderkarr and Missy Biozarre – I gained more help than I gave.

   Through them, I decided that I had nothing to lose in recounting the tale of a lost tale. We don’t all react the same way in a moment of crisis. That’s what keeps our species going. I watched a skyscraper fall, and my ludicrous piece of fiction jumped from the back of my mind to the front of the queue.

   That cold empty statement about the engineering problem. Others would have watched 9/11 and started planning the clean-up in their minds. Running through a list of materials starting at Asbestos and ending with Zinc, or something more fanciful at the Z-end of things. Nothing cold about that.

   Later, naturally, I gradually absorbed the human cost. Standing in New York, looking at the gaping hole, the construction site, I knew that I’d never talk about my remote televisual World Trade Centre experience and the coldness of thought. I stood in the shadowless shadow of buildings no longer there. Of lives unlived, children unborn, potential unrealised, and dreams unfulfilled.

   Give my cold phrase up to the world? No. A covert raid in Pakistan does not change my mind. Ten years down the line, I don’t change my mind. Starting to write about my writing, I don’t change my mind. I confront fear in a young writer who follows me on Twitter. After helping her, I wonder if there’s anything in my own work that’s being held back. That’s pretty much where I came in.

   In years to come I might just be able to wrap my head around the thought of a giant wave smashing into Japan, causing all sorts of problems for nuclear reactors. Yes, I might be able to wrap my head around that. Though, seeing mourners in radiation suits one year on, somehow I doubt it.