Flinch

I guess it all started when I was twenty-three years old, although I’m still not sure what it is.It’s a difficult thing to explain. It started out as apathy, but it evolved and became something more than just not caring about the world around me. It became… I don’t know. Losing interest maybe? Maybe ‘becoming self-contained’ is closer.

It began as a ghost in the back of my mind, hovering around, just there on the edge. Gradually, it started to feel as if someone was slowly closing a door, shutting me off to the little things; I found myself slowly losing whatever interest I had in the shows I was watching on TV, the words I was reading in books and magazines. It was at work where it really began to manifest into something more palpable. Things I had to do as part of my job began to lose whatever little meaning they had in the first place, and I began to question why I was actually doing them, what was the point of it.

From there, I soon found myself sitting in the office wondering why I was working to simply exist; I made enough to pay my bills, but not much else. I didn’t make enough to live. I was working to be a statistic, a series of numbers on an accountants computer somewhere; so I wouldn’t be on the dole, so I wouldn’t be looked down on, so I could fool myself into believing I was doing something worthwhile with my life, that I was working toward something other than my next pay packet and the next round of bills.

But no one else seemed to get that.

I asked a workmate about it.

Ever wonder if you’re just working to pay bills?, I asked him.

Did you see Eastenders last night? was the reply I got.

*

As the weeks rolled on, I could feel the reason slipping out from under me. The mundanity of the daily routine seeped through my skin, slowly deadening whatever feeling I had toward the job and the people I worked with. Of course it had always been there, but now, for whatever reason, I was starting to actually notice it. At home it was more of the same; the TV and radio became background noise, the books and magazines just part of the furniture. Day in, day out, I’d trade my home routine for my work one at the same time each morning, and then trade them back when I came home. On the bus to work, I would look around me and see the dead husks of people going about whatever passed for their lives, the veil in front of their faces still untouched, still going through their daily dance, like robots of some kind. Every day, I would watch them go by. Every day, I would feel something shift and close up inside.

Every day, I’d wonder what the hell was wrong with me.

I was scared. It was like someone was literally closing me off to the world, piece by piece, until only my eyes were left, watching, some detached part of my mind analysing everything around me with clinical precision. But I couldn’t turn to anyone. I tried, but as soon as I opened my mouth, the subject was changed to something they wanted to talk about, another of their seemingly endless list of woes, so I did my duty and listened to them.

Because, of course, your problems are never as important as anyone else’s.

Pretty soon my fear died, and I was left with the craving for a feeling.

*

I still went to the pub with my mates, maybe out of some residual sense of loyalty to them, or maybe it was because it was just part of the weekly routine, I don’t know. If I thought I could forget what was happening to me for a few hours, I was wrong. All it did was make me even more aware of the fact that there was something very, very wrong. Every time I sat with them, I was on the outside of this little group, looking in, desperate to be part of it. It got to the point where I was sitting in the corner, just watching the city, listening to the same tired stories, rolled out for the new people that had joined us.

One of our regular drinking mates, Andy, had this ‘talent’ of attracting younger people to our group (largely to get into their knickers, of course); they found his ‘deep’ knowledge of music and pop culture entrancing. To me, they were desperately searching for something to mould and shape their lives, desperately trying not to be a part of the MTV generation, and falling into a sub-culture perpetuated by the very thing they were tying to escape; Cobain-worshipping morons force-fed opinions by marketing men not interested in anything but making you buy into an image. They were kids playing at being cynical.

I rolled those words around the inside of my head, with the thought of throwing them out at the next group of kids that joined us, but I didn’t, because that’s all they were: just words.

But there was one girl who came along, a blonde with bright eyes. She wasn’t interested in Andy. She wanted to talk to me. So I did the dutiful thing and talked to her, words just falling out and filling the void. Every time I looked at her, I tried to bring some kind of feeling out of myself; I tried to tell myself that she was pretty, that her eyes were lovely, that she had nice tits, but nothing would stick. They would’ve just been more words, hollow and meaningless.

She weaved her fingers into mine as she talked. I made an excuse and left.

I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I told myself it was because it was going somewhere I didn’t want it to,

that I didn’t want to get tied into any kind of relationship, that I was trying to generate a feeling a feeling of some sort.

I looked at my hand as I walked, tracing the outlines of her fingers against mine.

I’d hardly felt her touch.

*

The weekend was a blur of random thoughts. I wandered around my flat just touching things, feeling surfaces, contours and shapes, trying to reassure myself that what had happened with the girl was just some random event. The more my fingers brushed over things, the more their presence became less real, less substantial.

I told myself it was down to my repeated touching, I was taking them for granted. I was being stupid.

The following week was another bite of the routine.

Friday night came round. The same faces, the same stories. I sat in the corner quietly until I felt a nudge.

The blonde, Sarah, was sitting next to me. I gave her a hollow apology for the previous Friday, but she brushed it off.

It’s a shame, she said, About last week. I quite fancied going home with you.

She watched my face for a reaction, and I gave her the one she was expecting. I made a conscious decision that if she wanted it, I’d be going home with her, if only for a change to the weekly cycle I was locked in, something that would shake me up and out of this state.

The night flowed along with all the flirtatious banter you’d expect. I was hiding behind the alcohol, determined to forget everything that had happened, and let myself get swept away in the atmosphere of those few hours. We ended up back at hers, sober enough to know what we were doing, but enough drink inside us to hand the blame over to it the next morning. And we got down to it.

The thing about sex is, when you boil it down to its most basic components, it’s nothing more than a simple, repetitive, physical act. The real thrill, the real excitement, comes from looking into the eyes of the other person and seeing how much they want you at that moment. There’s nothing like it in the world. All their defences have fallen away, and you’re seeing them in their most private and intimate form. It’s the one thing, the one single moment in life that actually makes sense.

Christ knows what she saw when she looked into mine.

Next morning, I woke up with the faint echo of voices. As I swam back toward something resembling clarity, I realised it was Sarah in the next room, talking. I went into automatic; pulled my shorts back on and opened the door as quietly as I could to try and find the toilet. I stopped in the middle of the corridor when I heard my name mentioned.

Yeah, she was saying. I’m tellin’ you, he was like a machine. I mean it was good, but it was so- Yeah, cold.

I thought her rating my performance would spark some primal male urge in me.

Neither did the next thing she said.

Of course I want to see him again.

*

So I had a girlfriend, and we did the things boyfriends and girlfriends do.

I met one of her friends a week and a half later.

This is Jen, she said, introducing the brunette next to her. My girlfriend.

I eyed them both calmly, a yawning void where giant white ball of shock should’ve been.

That’s not exactly right, Jen said. We’re friends, and we have sex.

That was where the shock should’ve been had a few drops of confusion thrown in.

I was thinking that Jen could maybe come back with us tonight, Sarah said.

And that was where the euphoric mix of male fantasy and raging hormones should’ve kicked in.

Sure, was all I could muster.

That was the night I realised how far I’d gone.

Two beautiful girls trying to pleasure a dead hunk of flesh.

The last embers of frustration glowed and faded inside me.

*

For the next few days, I was ‘on-loan’ to Jen. She called me, we met up after work, and we fucked. It was the first time I’d ever cheated on someone; although, I don’t know if it can be called ‘cheating’ when Sarah knew about it and actively encouraged it. They talked about me like I was a toy, something they could get out of the box and play with whenever they felt like it, but not even that could spawn something inside me.

Sarah took me to meet some of her other friends. They were around the same age as her, every bit as middle class as her. If there was anything left in me that could generate feelings, it would’ve churned up something approaching revulsion. Angsty kids with fashionable haircuts, and trendy clothes, desperate to make the point they were nothing more than empty souls wandering the earth with no purpose, all of whom would end up being bank managers. I figured all that out before they even spoke. When they did finally pipe up, I felt the hole that would have been my smugness.

Sarah made the introductions, but the names just passed through my head like a breeze.

We’ve all known each other for a couple of years, she explained as the night unfurled. We all share an interest in…sharing our more carnal desires. We like to explore sexual avenues with each other, if you like. She talked some more about her friends, and what they got up to, but I was just looking out of the window, nodding whenever I thought it seemed appropriate. A chubby kid who couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted to be a Goth or a skater nudged me and asked me for a light. I told him I didn’t smoke, so he turned back to his conversation. Another one, a skinny kid with a bad attempt at dreadlocks, kept staring at me, desperate to prove something; I glanced at him once, holding his gaze long enough to make sure he knew that I didn’t care. The girls, Sarah and Jen aside, paid me no interest at all. The novelty of meeting someone new had soon worn off.

The chubby kid seemed to have something the rest of them confused with charisma. He dominated the conversations, and when he spoke, they listened. To me, he sounded like he’d listened to one Nirvana song too many. His words just blurred into one long mumble, but something jumped out at me, one particular statement:

I feel like…nothing, he proclaimed. There’s just a great big emptiness in me. I’m not even sure if I can feel anymore.

I plucked the cigarette out of his hand and pressed it against my forearm.

Everyone fell into a silent shock.

I didn’t feel a thing.

*

At work the next day, I couldn’t seem to tear my eyes away from the burn on my arm; a single, small mark, framed in pale white. I ran my fingers across the skin; it was something that broke the monotony of the day, a central point that the rest of my life blurred around. I had no Tyler Durden-style pieces of philosophy to throw around about this. All I had was a scar on my arm, and people asking me what had happened.

My girlfriend did it, I told them. She’s a bit kinky.

*

We lay in bed the following night, talking. She leaned over to get her cigarettes, lit one and lay back on my arm.

Would you do something for me? I said, the words escaping.

What?

The fag…

You want me to, uh… She climbed on top of me before I could say anything else. Where?

I pointed to a random spot on my chest, eyes never leaving hers, and said here.

Her eyes glinted as she leant forward. The glowing end of the cigarette touched my skin, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from her; I could see seeds flowering into a new experience. Her fingers brushed against the burn mark, a tiny gasp coming from her. She looked at me expectantly. I pointed to another spot, and she dutifully pressed the cigarette home. She bit her lip like an excited child as she waited for me to point again. I watched her closely as I picked out another random spot.

We like to explore sexual avenues with each other, she’d said.

Her excitement was obvious now. I was on my way to becoming something new she could brag to her friends about.

Another notch on her bedpost.

*

I met them all again that weekend; I could see in their eyes they didn’t know what to make of me anymore. I’d broken out of the little box they’d chosen to file me into. It didn’t really change the atmosphere or the amount of conversation exchanged between us, though.

It was almost half an hour before I noticed her.

A dark haired girl, Sarah’s age, sitting in the corner, watching the world drift by through the grimy pub window.

Something made me speak to her, just a simple greeting. When she looked at me, though, it was like looking into a mirror. Her eyes were every bit as dead and frozen as I felt. We spent a few moments deciphering what we were looking at, before she turned away again. Of all the moments she could’ve chosen, Sarah decided that was the perfect time to pull me into her conversation; she mentioned some film we’d watched earlier in the week that I could barely remember the title of, but all I wanted to do was talk to this girl again, to…get answers? I don’t know.

When I turned my head back, she was getting up to leave.

You leaving? I asked her.

Yeah, she answered flatly, and squeezed her way around the table.

I watched her go through the door before I followed her.

Hey, I said.

What? she replied.

I wanted to talk.

About what?

No words came until she turned away from me. You know what.

That made her look at me again.

I can’t give you answers, she said. I can’t tell you what’s going on.

But you understand. You know what’s happening to me. To us. She looked at me, her eyes cold and dead as ice floes. Let me buy you a drink, I tried. Please.

*

I put the drinks on the table. When she reached out, I noticed the scars on her wrists. I must’ve stared too long because she said I know what you’re thinking. It’s nothing like that. And it’s not a fashion statement, either. It was to see if I could feel it.

And…?

What do you think?

How long have you… I asked.

About sixteen months. You?

Couple of months or so.

My mouth opened to ask another question, but the next voice wasn’t mine.

Hey! There you are! Sarah. We wondered where you got to.

When she sat down, I tried to muster something resembling annoyance.

You’ve met Karie, then? Sarah asked.

Yeah, we were just having a chat, Karie said. Seems we may have something in common.

Just remember, I saw him first, Sarah said, smiling.

I looked at Karie. She’d been practicing; her smile almost looked real.

I have to go, she said suddenly. When I looked at her, she said Sarah’s got my number.

I watched her go. Sarah was talking, but I was only half listening.

…said I’d clear it with you first, though, she finished.

Clear what? I asked.

Terry wants to know if he can come home with us tonight.

*

There was something strangely odd about watching the chubby kid, Terry, screwing my girlfriend.

Watching his backside moving up and down in simplistic bread and butter fashion should have opened up some primal male instinct to push him to one side and then show him how to do it properly. Sarah was making all the right noises at the right times to keep him going, but I couldn’t understand why she just didn’t stop him, and then tell him what she wanted. She’d done it with me the first night we were together.

Watching his cheeks puff out and his face turn red as he went about it should’ve made me laugh, just like him going down on me should’ve produced a shiver of revulsion; I couldn’t even generate some small-minded sense of pride when I made Sarah do far more than just make the right noises.

But when she got the cigarettes out, Terry’s eyes widened, and when she pressed another one into my skin, he almost prolapsed where he lay. I suddenly thought back to Karie’s arms, and leant over to where Terry had left his necklace, a razor blade on a cheap silver chain. I handed it to Sarah and traced a line across my chest. Without hesitation, she pressed the steel to my flesh and followed my trail exactly.

It was only when she looked down at the thick red line she’d made that she had a reaction; she got off the bed, picked up her cigarettes and lit one, her hand visibly shaking. She walked over to the window; her naked form was framed in the soft moonlight, trembling. I watched her for a moment longer, realising what I had just done to her, before dragging myself off to the bathroom to clean myself up.

*

By the time I was finished, Terry had moved off to the couch to sleep for the rest of the night. I went back to the bedroom to get my clothes and found Sarah smoking on her bed.

You okay? I asked her.

Yeah, she said quietly. That was a little bit… She laughed once and shook her head. She took another drag as I spoke.

Sorry, that was…something I just had to do.

I’ve never…been that far before. I mean, we’ve tried a lot, but… Jesus!

I sat down next to her and put my arm across her shoulders. She leaned into me. You didn’t even flinch.

I…might want you to go further, I said hesitantly. I felt her tense.

You should talk to Karie, was all she said.

*

So, you freaked out Sarah, eh?

I looked at her lifeless eyes as she spoke, seeing myself reflected back.

She’s a pretty game girl, you know, she continued. She’ll bounce back for another go. She did with me.

How long’ve you two known each other? I asked.

A few years.

And she doesn’t know about…

What’s wrong with me? Sarah’s pretty kinky, you know? More than the others. When I asked her to do this stuff to me, she really took it to it. She says it’s brought us closer.

But not close enough to share everything.

How would you explain it?

I leant back in my seat, and blew over my cup. We both watched the people wandering by the café window.

Do you find yourself doing that more now? she suddenly asked.

Watching people? Yeah.

I wanted to be like them, you know? Normal.

Now?

She looked around herself thoughtfully. I don’t know anymore.

*

We’d spent the whole day like that, just talking, sharing experiences. We were like our own mini-support group, but minus the release at the end of the session. I’d like to tell you that all this helped in some way, that sharing my burden had helped to ease it, but I can’t. We were both far too gone for that, and there was no easy way back.

At the end of the day, she just looked at me and said: Wanna come back to mine?

*

We lay in bed that night, sweat gluing the bedclothes to our skin. For most of the time we’d been there, we’d explored each other’s scars and lesions; fingers tracing the outlines and indents they’d left in our flesh, like wordless stories of everything we’d tried to make ourselves feel; hers were more extensive and varied, and one in particular ran down from her belly to the inside of her thigh. When I reached the end of it, my baser instincts took over.

Automatically, I asked: Was that okay?

Yeah, she said. Jesus! Even when we’re like this, we can’t throw off what’s expected of us.

I flashed a hollow smile, trying to make it look like a sign of affection. She just looked at me.

I propped myself up on one elbow, and looked over her scars again.

How far have you gone with this? I asked, tracing one out with a fingertip.

With Sarah, it was just a sex thing.

That’s not what I meant.

She nodded and said Pretty far.

How far do you want to go?

*

We started small, with razor blades, cigarettes, things like that. Each time, we ended up having sex, not through any particular kink we shared or erotic desire we might have derived from this, but simply because it was expected of us. For some reason, we still felt bound by certain conventions of the world around us; two people inflicting various wounds on one another was generally some bizarre sex thing, and so, on some primal, subconscious level, we decided we filled the image. Even though we’d essentially become strangers to the society we walked through, we still couldn’t think outside its boxes.

The first weekend together like that, I ended up in casualty.

We told the doctor that it was just a sex thing that got out of control.

If we’d been able, I think we’d both have been questioning his total lack of surprise at what we’d told him. But, of course he’d seen far more interesting things than someone with a razor sharp knitting needle sticking out of his side, almost scraping the bottom of his lung; it was arrogant to think otherwise. He was surprised that it didn’t do more damage than just a hole.

Lucky, I suppose, I told him.

He agreed and told us to give it a rest for a while, let the wound heal.

That night reminded us that we still had lives to live, a pretence to maintain for the outside world. We decided there couldn’t be any visible evidence of what we’d done to each other. Too many questions and not enough answers. So, faces were out of the question. Anything else was fair game.

We also realised we had to be careful. Where we were going could be dangerous, and I didn’t fancy another hospital visit.

So we bought a book on anatomy.

Karie took it on herself to be my nurse for the next few days. Maybe she wanted try and make herself feel some compassion, I don’t know. Changing my dressing, she looked at the hole in my side and said If I had a dick, I think I’d stick it in there.

Her tongue had to suffice.

Afterwards, she said That do anything?

What do you think?

*

The catalogue of abuses we inflicted on each other grew and grew over the following weeks. Some of the things we conjured up make my skin crawl now. Some of it was just plain humiliating, and some of it would make you physically sick.

Some of the things we did, though…

We stopped having sex quicker than we expected.

Before long, we were only doing it with Karie’s friends on the few occasions they joined us.

To them, it was nothing more than some kinky sex to brag about; to us it was all just the means to an end of some sort.

None of the things we did to them helped. No feelings, no emotions were stirred up, even though we could pinpoint exactly what we should be feeling. There was no sense of remorse, no guilt, no shame.

Nothing.

Looking back at it now, I was surprised at how far Karie let us go, considering they were supposed to be her friends.

There was a girl Terry was sweet on, called Maria: I ended up going home with them both one night, and had anal sex with her right in front of him, then ejaculated in his face. I cut my wrist and smeared the blood between Karie’s legs before a kid called Tom went down on her. A girl called Jill, with ginger dreadlocks, licked the scars on my back made by a Stanley knife with her tongue stud, and then told me what she wanted to do to me; when I told her what I wanted to do to her, she threw up in the bathroom.

But when it came to Sarah…

She joined us more than a few times. When she saw the ever changing patterns of scars on our skin, she became turned on; following the lines with her fingers and tongue, I could see something flaring away in her eyes: a desire to join us, to copy the maps that we had drawn on each others bodies. I wanted to let her all the way in, to see if it would stimulate something in me, maybe some feeling of disgust at bringing someone I thought I might actually be able care about down to our level.

I thought of several things we could do to her. At work the day after she first joined us, the world buzzing around me as normal, I was thinking about candle wax poured under the fingernails, coat hangers heated up and forced under the skin and countless other things we’d already tried. But Karie wouldn’t go for it.

As she stripped off that night, she said I can’t do that to her. I watched her clothes fall to the floor, then looked at the marks above her backside where I’d punched in the staples. I cared about her once. I couldn’t live with myself if we did any of this to her. She sat on the bed next to me. Her fingers brushed against my chest where the heated needle had been.

I love you, I tried.

I want to try longer needles this time.

*

This was never about love. You have to understand that.

What we did to each other wasn’t about that. It wasn’t about caring for each other, or having faith, or trust, or even desire. It was about need. We didn’t love one another then, we just knew what had happened to us, and we knew we had to fix it somehow. Maybe it was a dependence we’d developed. The nights we spent locked away were like a drug; the time between our sessions seemed to get longer every day, and when we were together, the moments we spent seemed all too fleeting. We became nothing more than toys to her friends, things to fool around with when the TV was dull, or they got tired of playing with themselves. No matter what we did to them they came back and they took whatever pleasures they wanted, physical or otherwise. But ultimately, all we really ever had was each other.

I tried to hate her.

I think I love her.

After all that time together, I don’t think I can feel anything else for her.

At least, I think it’s love. I’m not sure.

But about a month ago, something happened that makes me question everything.

I finally did it.

I flinched.

2005

THE EYE OF SARCRE

A few people have asked to see my ’semi-successful’ pitch to Abaddon Books for their Twilight of Kerberos series, so here it is…

THE EYE OF SARCRE

Captain Tarsien Dexel is a wanted man. Along with his crew, he’s managing to lie low in Frieport but he’s sought out by Dawn Kaare, an archaeologist and former lover; she calls in a favour and charters his ship for passage to the Sarcre Islands, where she and a team can investigate some ruins more closely. Dexel and his crew are reluctant to return to the islands, however: located there is a village from where the founders and leaders of the much fabled Pirates Guild operate – and there’s a lot of bad blood between Dexel and the Guild. But, his sense of honour invoked, the captain agrees.

The morning of their departure, Dexel is woken by his first mate who informs him that the Frieport authorities are on their way to arrest him due to the ‘indiscretion’ between Dexel and the daughter of a Councilman a few nights ago. As they leave the inn, a strange man, Armol, interrupts their hasty departure and requests passage to the Sarcre Islands, but the approaching militia prove to be more of a concern for Dexel. After a narrow escape, the captain and his crew set sail.

Once out at sea, Armol is found hiding in the cargo hold; Dexel goes to throw him overboard, but is alerted to the wreckage of another ship. They bring the only three survivors aboard, one of whom is Silas Stonebridge, another pirate. Stonebridge explains that, like Dexel, he has been maintaining a low profile to escape the powers that be, but agreed to take some missionaries on a pilgrimage to the Sarcre Islands. However, on the journey, something attacked the ship and destroyed it, leaving him and two of the missionaries as the only survivors. Armol claims that he is a missionary, too, following the others to the Islands, but Dexel remains suspicious.

Once the ship drops anchor, Stonebridge turns on Dexel and attempts to take him to the leaders of the guild, but the captain turns the tables and he, and his crew, take Stonebridge to the founders. Leaving the archaeologists and the missionaries, the crew trek across the islands, encountering various strange creatures along the way, before finally arriving at the village of Neuport – only to find it destroyed, the population slaughtered.

The crew reflect on what could have happened, and, analysing the evidence around them come to the conclusion that they were attacked by the Ke, the strange alien race that live beneath the islands, and who have lived in harmony with the villagers for years.

Dexel and his crew trek back across the island. Arriving at the archaeologists’ camp, the humans are suddenly surrounded by Ke soldiers, but rather than slay them, the aliens invite the humans to accompany them to their garrison, hidden in the jungles. Dexel leaves his crew behind to gather supplies, and heads off with Kaare and Armol to try and find out what happened to his former home.

The aliens claim the destruction of the village was in retaliation for the theft of The Eye Of Sarcre, a precious artefact used in some of their shamanic rituals; the Eye has been retrieved within the last few days, and is due to be returned to its rightful place. Following an angry outburst, Dexel is imprisoned. Kaare and Armol, though, leave him to cool down and learn more about the Eye, both for very different reasons.

Locked up with other human prisoners (sailors who had arrived at Neuport just days before), Dexel puts the pieces together and realises who stole the Eye. Freeing the other prisoners after his release, Dexel confronts Stonebridge and learns the truth about the ‘theft’ and his real reasons for leaving Neuport. Stonebrdige leaves with the other prisoners and their ship. Claiming the other missionaries were killed by the Ke, Armol elects to travel with Stonebridge and return to Frieport.

After Dexel, his crew and the archaeologists, set sail, they’re stopped by a ‘sea monster’; Ke appear from the creature’s belly and board the ship, demanding to know where the Eye is – someone has stolen it from them again. They order Dexel to retrieve it for them, threatening to destroy every human in Twilight if he refuses. Heading back to Frieport to confront Stonebridge, they find the residents reduced to nothing more than strange phantoms – Stonebridge included. It soon becomes apparent that Armol is the one responsible; he’s able to harness magic far more naturally than most people, and can easily unlock the power of the Eye for his own nefarious ends.

Fighting their way through an army of shadow creatures, Dexel and his crew track Armol to the home of a Councilman where the captain narrowly defeats him. Seizing the Eye, Dexel is assaulted by visions of a war yet to happen – a war against the Ke. This gives Dexel (and the reader) the first hints that he may have the ability to harness magic directly, and that he has a larger part to play in the destiny of Twilight.

When Dexel recovers, the people of Frieport are restored, Armol is dead and Dexel realises he’s in the bedroom of a Councilman’s wife – almost the exact situation that caused him to flee so hastily at the beginning of the story. However, the Councilman chooses that moment to enter the room and Dexel realises that his stay in Frieport could be longer than he had planned…