Hammerport

Although he had his own batch to draw from, Mr. Omega cocked his head to one side in disbelief. “How the fuck,” he said quietly, “can you not have lots of needles left, you stupid bastard? Didn’t you stock up when you had the chance?”

Mr. Alpha replied, “Jesus fucking Christ, I’m sorry, alright! If you hadn’t been giving me the shittiest time on the planet about Morgana then I might have remembered! It’s always your fucking fault but somehow, some fucking how, you pin it on me! You’re a top bloke, I mean it from the bottom of my fucking scrotum.”

Mr. Omega primed himself to fire back a most profane volley at the whiney, young twat but a scraping noise like claws on a blackboard beat him to a reply.

The Clothmen turned towards their captive to see that Grimmer had managed to launch the sofa across to a balcony that was fucking missing a fucking balustrade while they were arguing about fucking needles. He said, “Sends her love, gents,” and then eased the sofa backwards off the balcony as if pushing away gently on a child’s swing.

But it was no swing and Mr. Omega ran to the balcony mouthing the word “no”, the lenses of his overbearing glasses filled with the milky whiteness of desperate eyes. He was stunned to discover that Grimmer and the sofa were nowhere to be found when he peered over the edge. Five floors down, there was no trace of Grimmer’s suicidal descent. No interrogation subject. No chintz sofa. No, just no.

They raced back to Grimmer’s home but what they found was an empty house that seemed quite different from the one they had evicted Grimmer from. It now had all the appearance of a disused property that had been uninhabited for some years. It was just like one of the many other abandoned buildings that were frequented from time to time by abandoned people. Someone had shat on the bathroom floor a few inches away from the toilet, as if the toilet was too much trouble to reach. Litter was sprinkled across one of the bedroom floors like evil confetti made of shiny crisp packets and used fluorescent condoms. A rotten window frame had invited a howling, cold wind into the house, which filled the forsaken maisonette with unsettling, disembodied whisper. A small gap, a break in logic, a mistake in process: that was all that was needed for something to enter and penetrate… or for something to escape and expand.

Head in his hands, Mr. Omega said in Grimmer’s living room almost tearfully, “Holy giant mother of cock, you had to go screw it up again, didn’t you?”

It was an unrepentant Mr. Alpha that shouted, “What the fuck? You know I’m not the knots guy, I told you again and again. I don’t do fucking knots, please listen to my fucking words, read my bloody lips. No more taxes, I don’t do knots. I don’t know the first thing about knots and shit like that. I didn’t go to fucking girl scouts! I suppose you did and got all the fucking badges.”