“Yes abso-bloody-lutely”

  Says sax woman when I ask her if she could take me to the hospital. She rings a small, golden bell she’s holding and I realise that we’re on a boat going down the river where I can see trout wiggling through ice water, salty black water from all the chip fat. We pass through the clogged vein and the buildings lean in over us with yellow eyes as if to warn us that the wind will pick up this evening. I ask sax woman where the boat came from and she asks what the last thing I remember is and I say I don’t know and she says –

“kids.”

  But she agrees and asks what time my appointment is and I realise I’ve left my watch in an abandoned attic I had visited three days ago to return the death mask of a naturalist I had never met. I tell her we should go now so she pulls out a long, thin pole made from a silver birch and a warm wind blows down from the orange sky that has a fog descending from it ready to cuddle us up and scratch our eyes bloody.

  She dips the pine into the semi-water and tells me to watch my head so I duck down and nod to a family of four who are staring at us with their ice creams. She asks me how the job hunt is going and I’m about to tell her that I’ve managed to bag an interview in a restaurant where they let you cook photographs into nosh, when suddenly a bank next to us buckles and all the iron railings snap and it tumbles into the river and I’ve got no idea why. Everyone jumps out and waves of humans spray out onto spires like foamy mess and it’s a right old mess and somehow sax woman scrapes and roars the boat into arching its way back like Pluto cos other buildings start wobbling like something is barging through them and the concrete crashes into the sludge and I hear someone crying that they just have one more email to send and then they’ll head home but I shrug because to be honest I always thought that place was a pub. Sax woman asks if I’m alright but before I can answer we’re already swooshing down the river in the opposite direction going under and over the city streets like a tube line because apparently the plate of Earth has been altered by someone, somewhere doing something. We woosh and I feel a red orb forming in my lungs that spits out the odd flat note into the warm twilight which turns to maddening chorus as passers by occasionally try to join in and the odd barista tries to steal my voice to sell. It’s not long before the boat slides up the bank of a beer garden and we both smash out of it. When I wake up, it’s to the sound of sax woman and her golden bell and somehow all her clothes are fine. She looks down with bird eyes and says –

“You know I could always try and get you a job at the Mars House, they’re always looking for people in your situation.”

  I can’t decide whether to ask what the Mars House is or what exactly my situation is when suddenly the hospital passes us by right through the city centre, crashing past cars and pedestrians and I sigh because I’ve seen a lot of people losing their jobs and heads today. Sax woman lights a cigarette and tells me to run for it so we give chase through the traffic and confused orange air and see that a huge centipede is carrying the hospital on its back and heading North past broad marsh and up by market square. I tell sax woman we’ll catch it if we go up Maid Marian way and she gives me a look that says this is statistically unlikely but she must hear a news report about processed meat being 45% percent more likely to give you an odd sounding heartbeat because she suddenly decides to follow my twitching feet as I start legging it silly. Luckily sax woman is part bird so she can carry me a lot of the way and we eventually curve round and hop onto a speeding, pearl limo. The driver is barely conscious and I see the pile of java beans and nod at sax woman –

“Barista.”

I grab the wheel and sax woman directs me through the streets and the traffic cos all the orange sky has tumbled down into a fog. People have started lighting fires on top of the biggest buildings so that the birds don’t fly wrong. Unfortunately this means sax woman takes one look upwards and decides to fly up too, in case her adoptive mother is gliding among the flurry.

  So here I am, left to my stale machinations, to plunge the limo through the zebra crossings and down the grey path and through the neon signs in a rush that smells like burnt caramel and frying tongues until I hit a slanted patch of concrete just right at the junction and the limo flies like a pine javelin, dematerialising and leaving my panting, naked body to fly through the air among the crowds of people dancing to try and scare the centipede away and it works and he starts to move and I’m still flying into its great black legs but the hospital doors on its back shoot open and I’m just about land and roll and land and vomit in anxiety but I land and spin endlessly like dust in the shine of a star that’s just died and I close my eyes and open my eyes and I open them again and sit up but instead of a hospital it’s a crowd applauding.

  They’re obscured by darkness and shifting like a coat of rotting meat I once saw someone sleep under but every one of their eyes is a sapphire and my head is banging but I turn around to bright studio lights I my face and a set that looks like an unsalted talk show and a tan-men tan man shouting ‘Ikimashou!’ I stumble upwards, helped by two men who are each dressed like Peggy Mitchell and I’m shoved into the sapphire space light that trembles with the movement of insect chaos. The tan-men tan man brings me over and welcomes me and says I’ve been such a good sport to turn up to my appointment and he says he’ll give me the grand prize fund If I can remember what the appointment is for. I can’t remember so I piss myself a bit and then tell them that processed meat is 45% more likely to give you an odd sounding heartbeat. They’re all impressed nonetheless but I hear the wave of applause rise in sympathy as tan-men tells me I’ve lost out on the prize fund. I apologise cos I can’t even remember what my appointment was for and I get the impression that something is very wrong but he tells me to come backstage after the adverts have been on and I tell him that I was in a boat. This shocks him and he pulls a face at the audience as he reveals that he has a tail coming out of his spine and everyone laughs hysterically until the sound tears me apart inside and makes me go mountain rock craggy but tan-men says I’ve been a fantastic guest and that childhood trauma is always best left unattended and that I’ve been a fantastic guest and is there anything else I’d like to say to the good British folk at home  and I look at the eight cameras that zoom in on my face and I realise that all the tech is being operated by tiny centipedes and as the ice light passes over the crowd I realise they’re shifting because flowers are blooming out of their skin and the hallowed breathing of the monolith we’re riding is shaking the molecules and I feel myself begin to dissolve and I just look at the camera and the host asks if I’ve got any poignant way to end the evening, anything left to say to the folks at home back in the chaotic and I think and ask if anyone can lend me bus money cos I’ve got an interview to get to.