I wake with a start, moving my hands gingerly. Frost coats my face, and my jacket - my eyelids are frozen shut. With difficulty, I try to pull them open, and they come apart in a scattering of frozen crystals, the ice sprinkling over my face. I raise myself up off the ground on one elbow, grimacing against the glaring sunlight - I am on a hill, it appears.

I push upwards and clamber awkwardly to my feet, ice cracking and falling to the ground as I stand. I have no idea where I am. All I can see is endless frozen hills, horizon to horizon; not a tree in sight, not a jetstream in the sky, only hills coated in frost stretching out forever. Those, and the sun. The sun is a searing lance of pale fire burning across the sky, hanging just at the edge of the horizon: an incendiary star suspended in ice. Despite the sheer strength of its searching gaze, no heat reaches me, standing as I am in ski jacket and jeans, teetering on the precipice that separates land and sky. Instead, a cold chill reaches me: there is no cloud cover, just distant wraiths of mist hanging at the edges of the great blue expanse above.

I am exposed to the deathly chill of space, that bottomless vacuum of stars like the one that transfixes me on this hillside. I shiver, feeling suddenly alone. I am on my own. I unzip my jacket, searching its pockets for anything of use. The breast pocket is empty, as are the inside pockets. However, the right-hand side yields something unexpected: a small packet of mints. I'm feeling hollow and empty, so I unwrap the packet, take one out and place it in my mouth. It tastes refreshing, cold like the frozen wasteland that surrounds me, but with an aftertaste of slight staleness. I chew thoughtfully, placing the packet back in my pocket, and begin to walk, hoping for some sign of civilisation.

My name is… my name is strangely irretrievable, lost in broken folds of memory. Descending the hill, I frown in consternation, trying to recall what I am doing here in this surreal bleakness. I draw a blank - my mind is foggy and unclear. All I can remember properly are the events since waking up, the chill swirling around me. Everything is incredibly sharp and vivid, the edges of everything cutting into my vision.

I start up the incline of the next hill. It isn't particularly tall, or steep, but then again, neither are the rest of them, from what I've seen. I can't think why I wouldn't be able to remember anything, but perhaps that's why: I can't think straight about not thinking straight, which hurts my head, causing me to not think straight. I shake my head to clear it, instead revelling in the sensory experience provided by the crisp, clear air. It smells fresh, and clean of pollutants and dust.

I crest the hill, and look back. I see no difference from the view that I received from the other hill, except for the footprints marking my passage from the last summit. I turn back to the sun, hanging blindingly in the sky, and stop. I feel a sudden urge to hear something besides the unnatural silence, and open my mouth to speak. I can't bear the absence of noise.
I attempt to call out, and stumble back in surprise when an alien call unlike anything I've ever heard emanates from my mouth. I crease my brow in a worried frown, and attempt to speak again. A broken note sings out into the sky, pure yet somehow twisted. It sends chills down my spine, a primal tone of loneliness. I realise that I haven't heard my voice in ages. I attempt once more, this time trying to sing. And I do.

A chilling, emotional tune winds its way through the air, scything through the sky until the music fills the world, or at least it seems to. I take several slow steps, turning to identify the source of this strange sound; for my mouth is once again shut. I feel an urge inside me to move, to the tempo of the music. I begin to run, the music propelling me up and down the twisting frozen landscape, dancing on the clouds. The cold wraps around me like a cloth, fluttering in my wake like a torn ribbon, and I move fluidly through the frost and the glaring light, time appearing to speed up.

Not once does the sun dip in the sky over the hours that I must run for: instead it remains in the one place, perpetually burning with a chill, surreal light. I live in the moment, eyes closed, yet dancing along the crests of the hills as if possessed. I feel so detached, but somehow flooded with life. The song brings in fresh melodies, intertwining choral voices mixed with dramatic strings and quiet, fast drums.

There is a break in the song as I skip a step, taking a leap through the air. A piano begins to play softly, with a violin, or possibly a flute, in the background. I spin, flying over the frozen hills as the music draws me along. The main melody returns, and begins to build steadily to a dramatic crescendo.

I can hear the music building, reaching a climax, the steadily raising pitch and culmination of sound giving me a sense of something approaching. In fact, I think I can just about begin to see something in the distance. A city appears vaguely, shimmering in the glare of the sun, insubstantial as a heat haze, with three twisting edged spires rising from the ground like the claw of some great buried monster, lying in wait.

I strain to see, but with horrifying suddenness my shoes skid on the wet grass and my feet fly from under me.

I slam into the ground, winded. I cry out in pain, hands stinging - they are cut where the icy grass has sliced into them. I try to wipe them on my shirt, but the blood keeps coming. I let out a gasping sob, and I realise that the entrancing music has stopped. I push my hands together to attempt to staunch the bleeding, but the dark red liquid runs down my arms into my sleeves.
It seems impossible that something so beautiful could turn this quickly into a painful reminder of the harsh landscape that I now find myself in, but it has. And as I push myself to my feet, I find that my hands are no longer bleeding. In fact, my coat is once again coated with frost. Footprints are notably absent in the grass around me, and as I plunge my hand back into my pocket I find that the packet of mints is unopened. I am back on the hilltop where I started.

I sink to my knees in shock, crying with surprise. The half-glimpsed city is gone. The sun- no, the utterly alien blaze of light that lights the sky on fire - still searches across the hills, spearing me. The air is still bereft of cloud. The land is still empty of anything but frozen grass and endless hills. I look upward, and see the blue of the sky darken to a near-black above; the chill of the empty void still reaches for me. I shiver, and hug my arms to myself, tears running down my face. But to my horror, some of the tears are not water.

They are blood.

And what is worse -

The blood is not my own.

2: Chapter One

Doctor Andrew Jamieson moved across the lab, dancing to the music. It was a composition of his own, a sweet symphonic piece, full of dramatic violin and quiet piano at turns. By his own admission, it was the best he had written so far - but he was no musician; he did not want to be famous; well, more accurately, he did not NEED to be famous. For Dr Jamieson was world-renowned for his fantastic discoveries surrounding the world of the mind, the neural network connecting physical to spiritual, the control frame for the body. He was no musician, he told himself. He was a scientist, and a good one, by all accounts. It was merely comforting to know that if anything ever went wrong, if he was ever disgraced, then he could easily be a composer, a musician. People would forgive him for whatever atrocity he would be convicted of (for Jamieson had many skeletons in his closet), they would by necessity, once they heard his fantastic rhythms and melodies, his crescendos and glissandos, his fantastic use of key change and his unparalleled mastery of chords. But for the moment, he was a scientist. With flowing movements, as natural in his laboratory as a panther in its own habitat, he spun, twisted and flicked his wrist; picking up an electrode covered in yellow spots, and with a flourish he deposited it on the bare forehead of the sleeper on the bed in front of him. The sleeper was strapped down with thick bands of leather, as much as one would restrain a madman, brass buckles fastening tightly, but not cruelly. Dr Jamieson wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t even a bad man. He was a very nice, agreeable person, extremely affable and friendly, but the more observant would spot a nervous twitch in his left eye, several frown lines on his forehead, and perhaps the scar on the side of his neck. The scar had been obtained many years ago, in the first of the doctor’s many regretful decisions; a patient had woken up, attacking him with a scalpel, and he had been forced to engage his security measures. However, this was not before the woman in question had sunk the scalpel several inches into the area just above his shoulder. It still itched occasionally. The scar was the reason why Jamieson had taken to using the leather restraints. However, he was not worried about the current incumbent of the bed: enclosed by these thick white walls, covered in slightly stained tiles, she appeared to be asleep. Asleep in a strange environment, perhaps, but dozing nonetheless. Her brow was carefree, her thoughts clear, he saw as he took a cursory glance at the greenish monitor, but with a jolt he realised that the auditory centre of the brain was sparking. He rushed over to his small portable radio, a wooden, lacquered relic of years gone by, and switched it off. It was the only discrepancy in the otherwise sterile, clinical room, which was all white, black and the occasional green from the monitor hanging from the ceiling on a metal arm. It was crowded, certainly, with high tiled surfaces upon which various apparatus rested, and a dull metal trolley holding a rack full of syringes containing green sludge that glowed faintly in the almost phosphorescent light- not to mention the metal jointed arms that hung from the ceiling like some insane octopoid spider, clutching at their precious monitors, implements and wires. Jamieson spun this around to reach a cylindrical device with a glass sensor on the end and the words ‘VENTROSO MEDICALS’ stencilled roughly on the side. He lowered it to the sleeper’s forehead and pressed a button, heralding a persistent high beeping. A wire running from the cylinder to the monitor plugged into an oddly-shaped socket on the side, and he spun it round to see the readout, which showed a regular square wave, standing out black against the glaring green of the background. He breathed a sigh of relief and sunk back against the wall. He had been afraid that the music had permanently disrupted the brain patterns. However, there was only a mild deviation from the norm, which he fixed easily by resetting the memory loop. A trivial problem, he thought to himself, yet one that if unchecked could have developed into a dangerous anomaly; dangerous for both him and the sleeper. It hadn’t been prudent, he decided, to bring such a personal item to work: apart from being illegal, it could have spelled disaster for his experiment. Jamieson resolved to destroy the radio, or at least purchase a headphone on the black market. He knew that he would end up doing the latter; he had got into such a habit of using contraband that he felt unable to stop, and in any case the radio held sentimental value for him. The lacquered surface still reminded him of his dead wife. Doctor Jamieson occasionally felt mildly guilty about killing her, but to be fair on him it had been necessary. 3: Chapter Two

Jamieson was just one of many scientists in the Guild, but he was somewhat higher-up in the grand scheme of things. He was a Lieutenant, but he would have been a Major or even a Colonel if things had worked out differently. He knew full well that he was as talented as anyone above him, perhaps more. He was as famous as any Colonel, in any case, and the only reason he hadn’t been promoted was because of the peculiar ranking system offered by the Guild. Before Jamieson could become a Major, one of the current Majors (There were eight) had to either die or be promoted, leaving a vacancy which Jamieson could fill. All the Majors were young, so he highly doubted the chances of them dying, but the Commander-In-Chief was approaching seventy, so it was likely he would retire soon, meaning that a General would have to be promoted, and then there would be a place for a Colonel to fill, and then one for a Major, and then Jamieson would receive his promotion. The doctor was not ambitious, not by any means, for he was already extremely well-known. He didn’t need money (He manipulated the scientific fund register via use of a neural drug inserted into the Bursar’s decaf – the perks of being an expert in the mind, thought Jamieson), but he did feel that being so distinguished he deserved a higher-up post. With this in mind, he pulled on his grey-brown jacket, hanging his lab-coat on the now empty hook, and walked out of his small laboratory, taking care to first hide the radio in the secret compartment in the lining of his coat and second to lock the door behind him. If anybody broke in while he was out it could potentially spell disaster. Disaster for the would-be thief or journalist willing to take a risk, at least, as the room was equipped with an extremely high-tech defence mechanism that did something unspecified (but he suspected extremely gruesome) to anybody attempting to enter without his permission. He had purchased it from a man who, while shady, had an extremely well-founded knowledge of exactly how to kill somebody and leave no trace. On three occasions now Jamieson had returned to his lab to find the door forced and several scraps of what appeared to be skin lying about the floor. However, he thought to himself as he paced briskly down the corridor, if his higher-ups ever caught wind of it then he would be the one in shreds on the floor. He had effectively killed the three with the machine, and the law was not lenient. Even his possession of the antique lacquered radio would be enough to get him a sentence approaching twenty years in prison, and that was if he was lucky. The hall down which Jamieson now paced was very different to the stained tiles of the lab; it was instead a richly furnished environment with mahogany panels in the walls and a slightly tarnished red-and-gold carpet. Pictures on the walls depicted famous Guildmembers. Jamieson hated these, finding them in bad taste. After all, scientists should not have to dwell on the past. That was the job of the Curators. Regrettably, they were necessary for the proper etiquette. The doctor’s house was halfway down the hill upon which most of the city rested, being a large, fine stately home. For a scientist this wasn’t particularly good, preferring a clean, clinical environment, preferably in the Spire itself. He could see it over the rooftops, between the skyscrapers of the Inner City, accompanied by the Spire of Art and the Spire of Policy. The Spires were the three pinnacles of the City, the places from which the whole nation was run. There were similar Spires in other cities, he knew, but none quite as impressive as these. The Spire of Science, where Jamieson worked, was a seven-hundred-metre glittering tower of glass and steel, the top covered in solar infusers, satellite dishes and aerials of one kind or another. These controlled the state radio, the air traffic, the aelevators and the construction robots, to name just a few of the many things that the Spire enveloped – on the inside it was much as the doctor’s private lab, all slightly stained white tiles where the cleaners had not quite managed to remove whatever liquid had been spilled, glowing green dialogue boxes, softly beeping boxes with wires coming out of them and sharp implements on trays. The Spire of Art, where the Curators, the Artists, the Actors and the Writers worked, Jamieson did not know much about, but it was a darkly beautiful creation of constantly changing material that operated according to an algorithm created in a collaboration between the Commander of Science and the Commander of Art. The fabric of the Spire merged from glass to cloth to metal to wood, from blue to red to green, but so slowly that it was almost unnoticeable. The shape of the thing changed too: at the moment it was a cone, with two twisting horns of glass in a double-helix, one blue and one red. They merged halfway down the Spire into a purple blend that fused into a strange light-sucking black at its base. Jamieson saw it primarily from a scientific perspective, often wondering about the complexities of the algorithm, but he supposed that others might see it as beautiful. The final Spire, that of Policy, was usually the tallest (although since the Spire of Art constantly varied, it was never the tallest for any long period of time), and was the workplace of the Politicians. They ran the emergency services, policed the country, determined laws and taxes, and managed the general to-do of daily life. Jamieson found the building rather sinister, made as it was; from a distance it appeared to be a plain cone, black on one side and white on the other, but up close it was revealed that it was covered in a strange writhing pattern the intricacies of which hurt the eyes. The doctor stepped into the private aelevator that rested on its pad in front of his house. The doors closed behind him with a soft ‘whump’, a whining signalled the engines starting up, and the whole pod rose off the ground and began to drift sideways towards the city centre. 4: Chapter Three

I sit, paralysed in shock, as dark pearly drops of blood slide down my forehead and over my cheeks. I feel frozen to the spot, unable to move. I am like the frost that coats the ground, crystalline and oh so fragile. With a determined effort I turn my head, terror struck into my soul, only to shriek and jump back in fright, brushing the blood from my hair and stumbling backwards down the hill, tripping over my own feet in my haste to get away. Hanging directly over where I had been sitting is the body of a man. He wears a torn black jacket and a dirty greyish scarf, with black denim jeans and large boots, a rope slung almost casually around his neck, extending infinitely upward into the sky. His eyes stare blankly, pupils reduced to points, and blood drips out of his mouth. That same bodily fluid is already coagulating in my hair, plastering it together and to my head like some sticky half-liquid scab. I bend over and scrub my forehead on the grass, not caring if I cut myself – my own blood seems infinitely better at this moment than that of the hanged man. When I am done, I stand back up and look around, but to my surprise the spectral vision has disappeared into the aether. I am once again alone in this endless frozen landscape. I feel, strangely, so much more afraid, now that the man has gone. With him there, at least there was something else apart from me. I look upwards to the sky, but see only a fantastically beautiful but cruelly cold gradient of blues, moving from a near-white by the sun to a deep blue-black directly above. It is toward this blue-black that I now look. It appears as if a bottomless pit opening above my head. I feel so alone suddenly, and I realise that I too am hanging, clinging to the skin of the world with the soles of my feet, stuck upside down to a giant orb of rock floating in the empty vacuum of space. I long to let go with my feet, to fall into that void, to disappear into that black expanse of nothingness, but I know I can’t. The force that holds me here is as sure as any restraint holding me to a bed. I blink and shake my head, clearing my thoughts. They suddenly feel fuzzy and incomplete, like I’m missing something, my mind clouded with humongous nebulae of stardust and broken molecules, reality the planet that I am clinging to. I need to get a hold on my thoughts before I drift off into the space of my mind. Because that space terrifies me. With an effort I clear my head and try to begin walking again. I make slow progress, trudging over hills with my boots crushing the thinly intricate ice crystals. There is a sense of something broken, of something lost: I wonder if it had something to do with the hanged man. He was, after all, the first thing deviating from the norm (discounting the strange mirage-like city) that I had found in this place. I didn’t recognise him; he was a nobody to me, a stranger passed in the street and immediately forgotten. Somehow, though, I felt a connection to him, like I had been through what he had been through – like I had been hanged with him. I still felt the heavy weight of his blood on my forehead, despite having wiped it away. His corpse hung in my mind, blaming, unforgiving. I wondered who he had been, what he had done, why he had been hanged. All I really knew was that the sight of him had sparked something in my head, something that hurt my mind trying to see it. It had been something, it struck me, so monumentally important, that against it I had felt as insignificant as a gnat to the vastness of the universe. It was as these thoughts turned over inside my head, in a turmoil, that I came across the goat on the hillside. 5: Chapter Four

Jamieson, spurring the aelevator pod along with quick bursts from its thrusters, soon reached the Inner City. The Inner City consisted of almost solid office block, albeit with six straight aelevator shafts radiating out from the Spire Plaza where the three colossal cones stood. The aelevator shafts were large open spaces not unlike old roads, but with the entirety of the space below reserved for pedestrians. Numerous private aelevators sped past at varying heights, including one or two Multiple Person Carriers, or MPCs as they were commonly known. Descendants of the old public buses, these ferried numerous people around, most often Privates, Corporals and Sergeants (for anybody bearing a higher rank was in all likelihood going to own a private aelevator pod like Jamieson’s rather sleek own). Plebes rarely entered the Inner City, and if they did they tended to be either going to one of the Spires to enlist as a Private or performing some plebe-specific job. For instance, Jamieson had had his aelevator custom-built by a plebe engineer; nobody in the Spire of Science seemed to know how they worked, despite having been the ones who originally invented them. Jamieson manoeuvred his pod with precision into his own designated parking space, the docking clamps engaging with a loud magnetic clang. He unstrapped himself from the seat, opened the doors with the button to the side, and stepped out into the Plaza. The Plaza dwarfed everything around, being almost half a kilometre across. It had to be, to accommodate the three huge Spires and still leave sufficient room around them for pods to comfortably pass. Jamieson strolled confidently across the patterned stone toward the Spire of Science’s sliding doors, passing one or two people he knew and nodding briefly to them as they went by. Inside, the lobby was a Spartan affair, bare and metallic, but none of the Scientists cared; they were too focused on practicality to notice aesthetic details. Concrete pillars supported the roof, and metallic strips in the floor glowed with a soft light, illuminating the space. The doctor moved over to the nearest conveyance tube, strapped on the helmet provided and clutched at the handles embedded in the sides of the very cramped box. The tube fired upwards at a terrifying speed, Jamieson with eyes tight shut and muscles tense against the sudden G-force. The tube began to slow, and stopped at the three hundredth floor, depositing Jamieson neatly in the Mind section. This was his place of work, where he felt most at home. Two dusty windows on either side of the tube allowed gentle rays of golden light to spill into the small circular chamber that the doctor now found himself in, three doors leading off into other rooms. The Department of the Mind was always quiet, small motes of dust hanging in the air. Jamieson liked it here. It was a far cry from the hustle and bustle of the Inner City, or even from the beeping instruments in his lab. There was a sort of muffled silence, and as Jamieson stepped forward his footsteps seems muted, like the sound of a book closing softly. Over his head, a circular screw opened, not dissimilar to the opening of a camera shutter, with a soft whirr. A pair of goggles floated out, sinking slowly but steadily through the air until they reached Jamieson’s eye height. He reached out, deactivating the hoverpod fixed to the side, and put them on. He saw the usual: the dialogue box opening up, the little ‘Loading’ indicator off to the right, and then there was a jolt that nearly knocked him off his feet. He steadied himself, years of practice only helping a little with the severe shock that came with starting up the system, and removed the goggles. The room was almost unchanged, but as Jamieson stepped to the window, looking out, he saw that familiar sight – the other two spires, the city, and then the endless blankness that came with countless hills coated in frost. He turned away, almost reluctantly, for there was room in Jamieson’s mind for some appreciation of beauty. As he saw it, the absence of people made the city a masterpiece, more beautiful than anything the Guild of Artists could create, even with their visionary minds and fantastic grasp of material manipulation. Those frozen hills, that blank expanse of nothingness coated in crystal shards – that was the most stunning vista he had ever laid eyes on. He turned towards the doors in the wall, and pulled the middle one open. His face was lit up with a searing blaze of light, as if some huge conflagration was occurring beyond. He stepped forward into his own mind. 6: Chapter Five

++Begin++ (17:52:46; [Coderead: error 455.]; PhaseThree=SubsetTwo{Eleven Five Five Nine}; break) (17:51:49; Disk‘~”336-engage; PhaseNine#######Five; break) (35:22:22; Disk‘~”557-engage; PhaseFour=SubsetNine{Eleven Eleven Eleven Eleven Eleven Eleven Eleven Eleven DISK READ ERROR) ++End++ ++Reset++ ++Repeat++ ++Begin++ (17:52:46; [Coderead: error 455.]; PhaseThree=SubsetTwo{Eleven Five Five Nine}; break) (17:51:49; Disk‘~”336-engage; PhaseNine#######Five; break) (35:22:22; Disk‘~”557-disengageErrorFiveThreeTwo335%%% CODE ERROR) ++End++ ++Reset++ ++Repeat++ 7: Chapter Six

When Jamieson returned later that day he found that somebody had broken into his lab. There were shreds of skin strewn around the floor, and occasional bloody smears streaked the walls.

He felt nauseous just looking at it. He didn’t want to think about whoever it had been, what they had meant to other people, what grief it would cause to the families of this person, and all because he wanted to preserve his honour, it was his fault, all his fault.

Jamieson trembled and had to steady himself on an instrument tray.  Shaking his head to clear his mind of the circular depressive thoughts, he stood up straight, with a pit in his stomach, and moved over to the patient strapped to the table.

As far as he could see, she was still asleep, though stirring slightly. He spotted the cause almost instantly: a splatter of blood lay across her face. He took a cloth from his pocket and wiped it from her forehead, taking care not to disturb her. Her frown cleared quickly, and Jamieson felt some relief that at least his experiment had not been disrupted.

He took out a mop, and spent several stressful minutes clearing up the scraps of flesh that lay about the floor. He carefully wiped the bloody smears from the walls, shuddering whenever the sticky red liquid came into contact with his flesh.

Jamieson was not a very brave man, and couldn’t stand the sight of blood. When he had been stabbed by his now-dead wife he had fainted almost instantly, and had only found the courage to detonate the little bladed nanoexplosives he had injected into her bloodstream far later, after he had had the wound cleaned and bandaged.

He remembered when they had retrieved her broken corpse, covered in tiny lacerations where the blades had spun through the skin. He remembered how it had been his fault, all his fault, and he deserved to die he deserved to die he deserved to lie in a pool of coagulated blood like she had, deserved to be torn to shreds like the four intruders had, to be strapped to the bed like his patients had and to have his mind stripped and burned like only he could do to himself.

Like he did to himself every day, in the dusty room in the Department of the Mind in the Spire of Science.

Jamieson stumbled, snapping out of his momentary self-absorbed trance. He quickly moved to one of the trays of instruments, selected an anti-depressant pill, placed it in his mouth, and swallowed. He instantly felt a lot calmer, a dose of oxytocin and serotonin invigorating him and banishing any stray thoughts to his subconscious.

He sat down on a stool in front of the large life-support machine, and tapped the display panel to wake the machine up. Something buzzed to life, and the panel lit up from the inside, tiny LEDs creating a slightly fuzzy readout before him. Jamieson had cobbled this part of the device together from the remains of an old 3D printer. He smiled at his own ingenuity, lifted the lid and placed a picture within. It was that of a small girl with a baby goat. The doctor had been mildly surprised to see the goat beforehand, since goats were increasingly rare these days, but he supposed it was possible. He had no idea of the patient’s background, only that she fell within the specifications he required for his final experiment. There was a sound of pistons firing as the lid was closed, and the mental download took effect.

8: Chapter Seven

Okay, now is the point to admit that I have no idea what is going on.

The goat is a small one, with a little red ribbon tied around its head. It stares at me with a look in its eyes that reminds me of something-

My mind explodes with pain. Great blue arcs of electricity burst across my vision, glowing white with sheer force. My eardrums register the feeling of two spikes being driven into my head with sledgehammers. My bones feel ready to tear themselves from my body, my teeth crush into each other as if forced by a trash compactor, my entire being a searing, burning, white-hot vessel of pain. Just as I am almost overwhelmed, I close my eyes, and the pain shuts off. I collapse, eyelids squeezed together.

I dare not open my eyes. The fog clouding my mind has cleared somewhat.

I remember.

I’ve got to get out of here, got to find that sorry excuse for a scientist and wring his neck for doing this to me-

Something nudges my head. The fog crowds back in and coherently thinking about things is hard again. There is a bleat. Tentatively, I open my eyes a fraction, and spears of pain shoot through my mind again. Evidently that’s not a good idea. I move my hands forward and encounter the soft fuzzy body of the goat. It bleats again. I like it. I want to keep it.

So I pick up the goat, clutching it to my chest, and hug it for a bit. It’s nice. Its wool – fur – whatever it is – feels funny against this backdrop of freezing harshness. I block out all other things and hold it. I feel strange; warm and fuzzy. Sort of like the goat. It smells like warm animal, but I sense that it is cooling down quickly. It bleats in a forlorn manner.

I want to take care of it, so I unzip my jacket and place the goat inside, close against me, and zip my jacket up again. It struggles, briefly, and pokes its head out the neck of my jacket under my chin. It bleats again. I laugh out loud, the fur tickling my throat. I want to look at it, because it’s just cute, but I’m scared of the searing pain.

I remember, however, that the goat wore a ribbon about its head. A red shiny ribbon. The thought makes me pause. I can recall that ribbon, being given that ribbon and told something monumentally important.

Perhaps, I decide, that is what’s causing the pain. The goat just makes me feel happy. It struggles slightly and bleats. I feel a small tongue licking the underside of my neck and realise that it’s trying to eat the lapel of my jacket. I decide to remove the ribbon and put it in my pocket. With one hand, trembling slightly from the memory of pain, I untie the ribbon. My other hand cradles the creature beneath my jacket. The ribbon nearly slips through my fingers, a cold breeze trying to snatch it away, but I put it into my left jacket pocket. Ribbon left, mints right, I tell myself. It would be better to have the ribbon in the right, because that would be easier to remember, I feel, but it is what it is.

I open my eyes, and am happy to see that I am no longer experiencing visual torture. Instead I can see the goat clearly. It has cream-coloured fur, and a wet black nose. I think it has a cold. This marvellous deduction is backed up when it decides to sneeze on me. I feel cross for a moment, but when it looks up at me with large, pleading eyes, I relent. I will care for this goat. I shift my grip, and begin to walk again.

9: Chapter Eight

That burning wasteland is always happening now for me – because it’s inside my own head. My own mind, laid bare for me to see, events replaying themselves constantly. The present before the past, the past before the present, everything happening at the same time.

In any case, how could I forget that one horrific moment?

I’ll get to that later.