Shit!

What was that?

Some movement to one side of me, my body being forced away from itself, like a whiplash, and sideways and up and sudden.

The sun comes on.

I'm lying in the field. I'm lying on my back, and Eliot is standing to one side, dragging on his shirt. He's still holding the feather, except its not black any more, it's cream now. A dull cream.

'Fuck!' he says.

What was that?' I ask. 'What happened?'

'Nothing.'

His voice is tight, controlled, on the edge of anger.

'Nothing happened, do you hear me? Nothing!'

'It was a dream. It was like a dream.'

'Yeah, well, it wasn't my fucking dream.'

'Whose dream was it?'

'Shut up!'

'Whose dream was it?'

'Fucking Uncle Slippy! I always knew there was something up with him. Fucking pervert! This never happened, right? This never happened.'

'It never happened.'

I get up. My head is still buzzing with a distant colour. Eliot is already walking away from me. I pick up the net and the jar, to follow him. It's only then that I notice,

'I ought to have you two shot,' says Uncle Slippy. 'Do you know what you're messing with? You are messing with crazy stuff. Fucking kids! I wouldn't mind the stealing, long as you know what you're stealing. You're stealing my fucking pleasures!'

'We brought you the beetle, didn't we?' says Eliot. 'Brought you a Compass Bug.'

I hold up the jar for Slippy to see. He takes it off me.

'Stupid kid!' he cries. 'That's a male. I've got a thousand males. It's the queen I'm after. Males don't find nothing but females. It's the queen that finds the treasure. You won't get nothing off me for this. Nothing!'

'But…'

'You know the rules, do you? You know the rules of Vurt? Everything you take out of there, you have to give something in return. What did you give, eh? What did you give?'

I'm looking at Eliot, but he won't look back at me, he just won't.

'Nothing, Uncle,' he says. Says it quietly.

'Well you did. It's the law. And you'll find out one day, God help you.'

He hands the jar over to Eliot.

We don't see much of each other after that, not for a few weeks anyway, and with school starting and all that. But it's more than that, of course. It's an unspoken thing. I know Eliot is angry at me, like it's my fault. Maybe it is, I'm not sure. When I do bump into him, he's hanging out with lads his own age, and usually this Valerie girl is with him. He puts his arm round her. Kisses her. It's good. I'm glad. Maybe I can start my own growing up now.

One thing I notice, he's still got the Compass Bug with him. It's dead, of course. Beetles don't live very long, do they? He keeps the dead thing in a matchbox. Keeps it in his pocket. He says to me that he's never going to throw it away, not ever. He reckons it's his way forward, his pointer. He says his needle is really spinning now, spinning fit to burst. That's good, as well. That's something. I can understand, or at least, I can say I do.

And all his new friends, and this Valerie, they all call him the Beetle now. That's his new name. The Beetle. That's good, isn't it? It suits him.

'Come on, Beetle,' says Valerie. 'Let's go do that feather.' Eliot pulls a feather out of his jacket. It's a blue one. He waves it in my face. He's laughing at me. I don't know where he got it from. And they set off together, him and his mates, and I don't know whether to follow or not.

FETISH BOOTH #7

Having experienced various exasperations both personal and professional in the past year, none of which this narrative need dwell upon, a certain Janus Fontaine, former pop star, decided to end his life. Being of a famously dramatic nature, he chose a special date and time to stage his denouement: the stroke of the year's final midnight would be his orison, the cheers of a drunken crowd his mourning song.

He had no specific means of removal: no loaded gun, no carefully knotted noose, no dissolving of pills. Nothing so crude. Rather, he would lay himself open to circumstance. Somehow or other, the New Year's Eve celebrations would finish him. That's all he knew.

Apart from the ending, Fontaine's final day was well planned. At nine in the morning he awoke, heavy with last night's wine. He had a sliver of beef lodged behind a molar, which he niggled at with a furry tongue. Ten o'clock found him showered and shaved, and sprucely dressed as though for a business appointment or a romantic assignation. He took a late breakfast (full English with extra toast) in the dining hall of the Hotel Abyss. It was the first meal he had eaten outside his room.

He had arrived here from Manchester, only a week ago, and had refused all calls from the housekeeping staff, saying he could not be disturbed, even for a change of sheets. The occasional meal was to be left outside his door, along with copious amounts of alcohol.

As you can imagine, the sudden appearance of the guest from room 417 caused much speculation. He seemed normal enough, as he sipped his coffee and perused the morning's news. Some of the older staff remembered him from his better days, when the hair wasn't so thin, nor waist so thick, nor eyes so dim, and the voice not so bereft of song. One of them even approached him for an autograph, which was gladly given. Fontaine then paid his bill in full at the desk, and ventured forth. He had no luggage with him.

Informed that the occupant of room 417 had now left the hotel, the unluckiest cleaner in the world was assailed by a terrible stench of decay. The hotel room as battleground: all the towels were stained with excrement and blood; the bed-sheets thick with dried semen; the obligatory watercolour landscapes hacked to ribbons; the screwed-down television smashed to pieces, as were all the mirrors. Broken wine bottles glittered the carpet; cigarette smoke mapped every drift of air. A slew of pornographic magazines covered the bed.

Ten thousand pounds, in loose notes, lay on a bedside table, with a brief letter thanking the staff.

By this time, Janus Fontaine was pushing through the crowds on Tottenham Court Road. London town, the seething city. A palpable expectancy that was easy to get lost in. The people were too busy buying cameras, camcorders and dictaphones to recognize him. Janus was captured on a thousand lenses as he walked along, but only as just another face on that momentous day.

He wandered along aimlessly, allowing the crowd to carry him into the maelstrom of Oxford Street. He visited five or six stores during this period, spending some time in each one. He didn't buy anything. The longest time was spent in one of the larger record shops. Only two of his seven albums were represented, and those only in the 'Rock Bottom' bargain section. Eventually he reached Marble Arch and Speakers' Corner; he listened, for a while. Then he took a light lunch at one of the better hotels on Park Lane, using a tiny sliver of the large roll of cash he had folded in his pocket. His last resources. The waiter couldn't stop looking at the lone diner, and eventually got up the courage to ask if he really were 'Janus Fontaine, the pop star?'

Janus smiled.

'Oh, my mother will be thrilled when I tell her.'

A time to take stock.

The Encyclopaedia of Popular Music has little to say about Janus Fontaine, unable even to give his real name. He was born in Manchester. His first single, 'Plastic Flowers', was a number-one hit around the world. As was the follow-up. Even the third single did well. Following a marketing scandal, his fourth single, 'Pixelkids Come Out Tonight', reached only number ninety-five in the charts. His fifth, 'Sooner Than Summertime', along with the album (his second) of the same title, disappeared without trace. Nothing was heard from him for ten years, when he started a long, arduous come-back campaign, this time as a serious, adult-orientated artist. He made a series of critically acclaimed albums for a small, obscure record label. None of them sold very well. Current whereabouts unknown.