Garratt's Garret - the attic home of Steve Garratt's speculative fiction

A flash fiction short story for my best friend Ben Seal, who celebrates his 49th birthday and everything it means to be truly wonderfully weird. Humour with Heart. Get full access to Garratt's Garret at garrattsgarret.substack.com/subscribe

"Entangled" by S. M. Garratt is a poignant and thrilling science fiction tale that explores the deep, Sapphic love between two women, Sam and her partner, set against a futuristic backdrop.In the year 2120, Sam and her partner, both survivors of failed marriages, find solace and love in each other. Their bond is tested when Sam is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Desperate to stay together, they undergo a radical procedure at Entangled PLC, a company promising to merge their consciousnesses. The process is excruciating, but it binds them in ways they never imagined, sharing not just thoughts but physical sensations and emotions.As they navigate their new entangled existence, they experience the world with heightened senses and a profound connection. Their journey takes them through moments of joy, pain, and discovery, from the intimate sharing of a simple meal to the vibrant chaos of a Berlin nightclub. However, the procedure's side effects and the looming shadow of Sam's illness threaten to tear them apart."Entangled" is a story of love transcending physical boundaries, exploring the depths of connection and the sacrifices made for love. It's a tale that will captivate listeners with its blend of emotional intensity and speculative science fiction, leaving them pondering the true nature of love and identity. Get full access to Garratt's Garret at garrattsgarret.substack.com/subscribe

Photo by Steve Garratt - Bloodywood O2 Academy BristolThe Imagineer for notorious Metal band The Hive plans a final curtain call worthy of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.Thanks for listening to the Oort Cloud sci-fi story podcast - Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Get full access to Garratt's Garret at garrattsgarret.substack.com/subscribe

Are Physicists funny? Should particles be named after attractive assistants? Are Herman Miller Chairs faster than other chairs? This story tackles all the big issues and very little else. Get full access to Garratt's Garret at garrattsgarret.substack.com/subscribe

David Lynch has died. So much creativity and mastery has died with him. A couple of years ago, I did an MA in screenwriting, and as part of that, we had to create a short film. I was inspired by a David Lynch short called “What Did Jack Do?”. It's so Lynch, dark, funny, weird and pushes a few boundaries and buttons… I loved the subversion of genre and ridiculous narrative. It is everything I love about Lynch. Unflinchingly him to the very end. I’m not putting this here because it's like Lynches film - It's simply my way of saying he touched me; I just wasn’t able to do what he does so effortlessly… because making a complicated SFX-filled dystopian crime short is really, really hard in your 6m square homemade studio… but I like to think he would have approved of us trying. Get full access to Garratt's Garret at garrattsgarret.substack.com/subscribe

Get full access to Garratt's Garret at garrattsgarret.substack.com/subscribe

This is a little more Philosophical than Science Fiction, although I promise it really is Science Fiction; you just have to wait and see. For me, the Prophet explores how our perspective, our way of life, and the things we see can influence our perception of religion. Would love to know what people think. Get full access to Garratt's Garret at garrattsgarret.substack.com/subscribe

This is the first Short Story Podcast from The Oort Cloud. A Substack Publication that focuses on Philosophical Science Fiction. To find out more about the Oort Cloud, writer S M Garratt subscribe at https://theoortcloud.substack.com/ - The Oort Cloud accepts submissions via Substack - for more details email info@smgarratt.com Get full access to Garratt's Garret at garrattsgarret.substack.com/subscribe

When Belin awoke on the morning of his death day, the suns were shining. Through the hole in the roof of his cell, the sullen orange sky was intersected by vast rings of graduated silver-blue dust and rocks, unchanged for a thousand years. The planet Or was continuously bathed in the muted glow of twin red suns, creating a permanently dimming daytime as they died a tragic, ten billion-year death. That was nine billion, nine hundred million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine years, and ninety-nine days longer than Belin had left to live.The rings had always held more meaning for the people of Or than the suns; they had worshipped them for nearly as long as they worshipped the moon before. The mother moon sacrificed herself for the whole planet. An act of selflessness that inspired and defined the peoples of Or. The destruction story guided them to greatness, chastised them into humility, bound them in love and finally embraced them in death. It was to these rings that Belin found his fate bound, soon to be returned and united whether he wanted to or not. Today, he was to be launched from Or and pitched into the rock-strewn melee of the rings via the tiny capsule poised on the gantry outside his cell. He would be ground into dust in the rings to join with millions of his fellow Or’ians, most of whom had joyfully travelled to the rings before him. For Belin, there was no joy in joining the rings. Sadly, he had a new truth thrust upon him, which caused him to reevaluate the religious significance of the rings.And now he believed in something else and had told others about his truth, so he had to die!Belin never intended to become a prophet, and, as was his notional understanding of the nature of prophecy, this was the same for all prophets. After his first revelation and initial unsolicited spiritual awakening during his brother’s wedding, Belin sought other prophets to share notes with, to find guidance and maybe even a way out. But right from the start, all he saw was death. Prophets died often and quickly on Or.His brother, of course, had tried to kill him immediately. The result of a non-conformist spiritual revelation during a wedding instigated the immediate annulment of the marriage. Followed quickly, as was the custom, by the death of the bride and her family and the banishment of the unfortunate prophet by the Royal Ring Regiment, a zealot sect within the Or military charged with the defence of the one true Religion. As is always the case with defending a religion, this is done simply by exterminating any other ideas, philosophies, prophets and gods that are foolish enough to make an appearance.Thanks for reading The Oort Cloud - Science Fiction Stories! This post is public so feel free to share it.Under normal circumstances, the swift right hand of the RRR is enough to end the matter when the ideas are ejected from the planet in tiny, perishable silver capsules. However, on this occasion and to everyone’s surprise, the death of his wife and her family caused his brother to undergo a war spasm (even though he had shown no inclination towards military work previously). With the frothing frenzy upon him, he split the Bridal table asunder (Belin had never seen anything split asunder; it was impressive) and attempted to penetrate Belin’s thorax with the resulting splintered plank of vintage Oakl. Unfortunately, having no control over his war spasm because of his lack of basic military training, Belin’s brother exploded, spraying the retreating guests with an exotic marmalade of his inners. Whilst this unfortunate incident saved Belins life, he was far from safe and knew he had to take swift action to avoid being labelled a heretic by the RRR.He said his goodbyes to family and friends and rushed to burn his house and belongings. Finally, as was the custom, he urinated a circle around his ruined home to ensure the ground was not cursed for all time. The Hounoured Thexal and his assistant bore witness and scribed in the “Book of Dawn” that everything was done according to the scriptures. As DayTwo began (With no nights, days blended seamlessly into one another on Or), Belin was chased from the town by fourteen elders who threw assorted tainted fruits, cursed vegetables and a number (not disclosed) of blessed RingRocks. These are essential to ensure the spirits (whomever or whatever they are) know they are not wanted here. The streets rang with fervent chanting: “The ring and its Mother Moon are all powerful; they cannot be split again. What was split will never reform; what is formed cannot be broken”. The frantic Elderly throng sang in the high-pitched, kerning voice of the religious as Belin ran, stumbled and slipped out of the town of his birth to find himself alone on the long road.Belin had never stood on the long road before. He had seen it once when his father had taken him for his “orientation day”. This is the ritual coming of age for all men of Or, where he would see for the first time the ring within the ring—the line of rocks, hills, walls, fences, scrub, and dirt track that delineated the boundary of his home town and the rest of Or.“This is the ring within the ring, Belin.”Standing atop the viewing mound on the outskirts of the village, Belin gazed upon his entire world. His father drew a ring slowly through the air, indicating the rough but clear line surrounding the village.“In the ring, within the ring, we live in peace and harmony. We have rules within the ring; we have our homes, we have jobs, and we have our lives within the ring, within the ring. We strive for the ring, we build, and we learn for the ring; we are the ring, and the ring is us.” Belin listened intently to his father’s voice, mesmerised by the strange, poetic words from a man who, up until this day, had only said words that related directly to the task at hand, as all fathers do. His young mind struggled to understand the metaphors and the spiritual power of the words, but even at ten years old, Belin knew these words would shape his life, and that shape would be ringular.“NEVER…” the tone of his father’s voice cut through the child-fog, the grip on his arm tightening. “NEVER STEP OUTSIDE THE RING WITHIN THE RING”.His father let the words hang in the air. Belin patiently waited for them to descend to the dusty earth before he asked the question all boys asked on their orientation day: “Why?”His Father struck him hard across the head with his ornate Goloonga, as was the custom. Even though he knew it was coming, it still shocked his young mind. His breath escaped faster than he could control, forcing a strangled hiss out of his bone lips. Belin fought against the primal instinct to run. If he did, he knew it would be at least another year before he could ascend to manhood.He fell to the floor, his mouth full of dust and his head full of stars. Grit spitting, he pushed himself onto his knees. His vision swam, rocks separating and rejoining as his five eyes rolled in their sockets. His Father, stood statuesque in front of him, stick in hand. The intricate patterns on the Goloonga told the story of the Mother Moon’s sacrifice, the years of turmoil, fire and death—the eradication of the oceans, crops, water and all creatures bigger than a Stalynx. The intricate inscriptions detailed the planet’s rebirth and the formation of the ring within the ring. The Goloonga, so often a thing of play in his youth, now swung threateningly between them, moist with a streak of his blood.“Ask again, son. Ask again.”Belin didn’t want to ask again, but custom demanded it; the scriptures demanded it, the Ring demanded it, and given the magnificence of Mother Moon’s sacrifice, how could he not offer up his simple skull?He fought back the tears, sucking dust-caked snot back through his slit nostrils and stared definitely at the elegant gnarly, nobble-ended pole.“Why, Father… WHY!”His Father swung the Goloonga high in the air. His extended arm drew a blurred arc that seemed to fill the sky above Belin—briefly blocking out the rising and waning twin suns Faxor and Smeril while tracing the Major and Minor rings. The Goloonga held its place in the rocky sky, the gnarly nobble end now positioned precisely where Mother Moon gave up her life and consumed the meteor. His Father and the Goloonga are frozen in time before crashing down, down, DOWN… Smashing into the ground in front of Belin.Silence.Belin stared at the ritual stick buried into the ground. He would be dead if it had struck him, and that, of course, was the point.“Because my son, my new-man, you must never tread the long road.”“And where is the long road, my Father, my old-man?”These words signalled the final phase of the ritual. His father glowed; his son had been reborn, and his time as a parent was complete. He looked down on the young Belin, now a man. Through the dirt, snot, blood and tears that smeared the cracked crystalline skin of his son, he could see that his sacrifices, the years of casual torture in the name of religion, had been successful. He gripped Belin by the shoulders and drew him up. Mud, dust, stone, and rock cascaded from him, miniature landslides over his torn clothes.As he dangled from his father’s strong hands, Belin shakily lifted his grazed inverted knees onto his father’s broad shoulders and, placing his hands carefully on either side of his parent’s split skull (to avoid separating the plates, causing instant death), pushed himself upward. Until, at last, he was fully grown, man on man, standing on his father’s shoulders, completing his religious journey from child to adult.Belin breathed deeply, his eyes scanning the horizon. He had waited his whole life to see the long road; it was everything. He had feared this moment, but he had been excited about it. He had played it down with his friends but also spent hours meditating on its meaning, how it would change him, and what he would do. But he had never suspected the enormous, soul-crus

“Baby, you and I don’t have enough time to see all the sights of the universe”, dismissed Delores Moon as I fumbled under the drive control panel of the Viceroy’s Elongi Special. Of course, she was right, but probably not for the romantic reasons I imagined she imagined. Our chances of getting away unvaporised were practically zero unless I learned to hot-wire this spaceship fast.However, practically zero was considerably better odds than we had less than half an hour ago, chained together in the aptly named ‘death row’. (I appreciate that sentence requires some additional explanation).Death Row is a grand name for the four shabby but overly secure cells hidden beneath the Viceroy’s palace in the sprawling market city of Beb Al’Shroud. A tiny rancid jewel of a planet in the local Muntap’s crumbling empire. (I say empire; it’s three planets and a moon, but who’s counting?). The cells are “secure processing” for anyone unlucky enough to get caught. From here, they will transfer us to something (perhaps ironically) called The Grand Court of the Free, where a Justice Guard will prosecute us for our crimes (even if nobody attending knows what they might be). Anyhow, anyone who has had a run-in with the paranoid Viceroy’s Royal Guard will tell you (if they can still talk) that the Guard prefers accidental death by beating over a traditional court system any day. Hence, the nickname for our current residence.In fairness to the three enthusiastic guards who had recently processed me to the point of unconsciousness, I doubt legal proceedings could ever be their modus operandi. On reflection, it was probably the use of the phrase “Modus Operandi” that got me so righteously beaten in the first place.I digress - let’s start with me coming around on the floor of my little corner of death row chained to a seethingly hot (in both senses of the word), Delores Moon.“About time, sweat stain, I need to piss, and I can’t get to the can without you coming along”. She yanked up our hands joined in holy custody, to evidence her statement.I shook my head to try to clear the stars from my eyes and the bells from my ears. That was a lot of information for a man lying on an unknown cold, slimy floor, nursing a mild concussion and a not-so-mild hangover.“Won’t that ruin all the mystery between us?” I quipped, hoping to come off the rakish side of cocky. However, all I got for my efforts was a sharp tug, more rough stone floor and a forced landing at her feet whilst she perched upon our cell’s well-used throne. I attempted to sit up but found the boot she had planted on the side of my head, still attached to her foot, somewhat restricted my movements.“Face down, eyes shut, no peaking b***h!”It was at that moment, with my head squashed against the vintage piss-infused flagstone that I fell in love with Delores Moon.I didn’t tell her; it wasn’t the right moment. Instead, I enquired about some basic where, what, whys to help me better understand our current conjoined predicament. Apparently, there had been a meeting of some minor activist group (there are several hundred in Beb Al’Shroud), which had been gate-crashed by some heavily armed opponents of this aforementioned unknown movement. Their bullet-focused arguments against this particular theological position aroused the interest of the punch-hungry local Guards, who welcomed the distraction from traffic duty with their usual enthusiasm. In the end, Delores and I were the only two people the honour guard had found still moving in the destroyed Ben Nova Souk.“But that doesn’t explain why I’m in a cell rather than a hospital bed eating Grapes.”“What the f**k are grapes.”I knew it wasn’t necessary, but a part of me loves explaining obscure Earth cultural references to anyone who will listen. Delores didn’t love to listen, preferring instead to kick a compact collection of my soft parts while repositioning her undergarments. The sudden oxygen impasse this created gave me a galaxy of sensations, including stars and a brief but total blackout.When I came too for the second time in ten minutes, Delores and I were in a more customary side-by-side configuration on the bench/bed. The handcuffs clanking romantically on the metal frame between us.“Sorry,” we said together. This cracked the first non-violent smile I had seen on her face since we met. It was a beautiful, if somewhat metallic, grin, her full-set titanium grill glinting in the harsh blue cell light.“I don’t much like cocky mansplainers, but… I didn’t mean to black you out again.”“I get that a lot!”Her brow furrowed.“I come from a high Oxy planet, which means down here it doesn’t take a lot to send me to sleep.”She seemed satisfied with the explanation. It wasn’t 100 per cent true, but I hoped it would do.“I’m Delores, Delores Moon.”“Hi…I’m Bernard St Clare.”I wanted her to say “The Bernard St Clare!” but she didn’t, so we sat silently, contemplating our parents’ naming choices. Until our internal ruminations were suddenly shattered by the external screams of a nearby prisoner as he became intimately acquainted with the sharp end of a minor law or two.“We need to get out of here”, I stated obviously.“No s**t”, she agreed. We clearly had a lot in common, which was a real positive, considering how I felt about her.Until now, I knew I hadn’t come across as the most capable short-to-medium-term prospective partner. However, I was sure my expertise in escaping near-death situations would impress me.“Have you got a hairpin?” I asked in a wry yet knowing way, popular with criminal types the solar system over. She responded with a look so shaven and beautiful at the same time that I was forced to adjust my zero-G compression pants to make some room.“Are you finished?” she rolled her eyes, with just a hint of intrigue… probably.“Okay, no hairpin. Have you got anything sharp and metal?”She spat her grill at me so fast it bounced off my jaunty moustache and landed moist in my hand.“I assume you don’t want this back?”“If it’s a choice between grill or life, I choose life”.God, she is hot.What I did next is not for the faint-hearted, so if you are squeamish, jump ahead a couple of paragraphs… look for the word lubricant…Thankfully, Delores had invested well in her dental ornament, which was as sharp as it was strong. I like to think she was impressed more than grossed out when I used her incisors to sever my left thumb from my hand.“What the actual…” she thanked me as my now defunct thumb slopped to the floor. Her mouth remained open as I slid my reduced fist through the cuffs, thanks to a good squirt of red sauce for lubricant.It didn’t stop bleeding. I offered up the blood-covered mouth knife.“Are you f****n’ ill or something?” she spat whilst pulling away from me so fast she nearly banged her head on the ceiling.“Cloth?” I whimpered.Thankfully, she was a doer rather than a thinker. She tore the lower half off her shrapnel blouse, revealing a custom Hericulian Anti-Stab bra underneath.“Nice bra”, I quipped as I wrapped the fabric around my mutilated hand, making a bloody glove.“Don’t get creepy…” she snapped.“Or handzey?’ I joked, waving my remaining four fingers.My brutal act of denturation finally broke the ice, and she cracked a metal-free smile that I will never forget. Now, finally connected we took a moment to check out the cell.“No windows.”“No air vents or grates.”Delores stood up so fast that I’m not proud to say I flinched in fear, but her energies were focused on our front door, which took the brunt of an elegant rattle-and-kick manoeuvre. The door rang like a Beadles bell, warning mourners that a twin box of tortured space heroes was getting delivered very soon.“Worth a try,” she shrugged.“Worth a try,” I smiled, “No obvious route out, so what’s left that can be moved or used?’If you are enjoying this story, please share it. A second scan culminated with us both staring at the still-warm throne in the corner.I clapped my hands in that overly optimistic, “Let’s get a chivvy on” way, much loved by harassed mothers of toddlers the universe over, followed by a jovial “One way in, one way out!” for good measure.Delores, wiped some inadvertant blood splats from her face and scowled at the nominated obstacle to our freedom. Perhaps hoping her furrowed face would have the same effect it would in any bar in the universe and make the toilet f**k off and leave her alone.“Seriously?”“It’s the only way,” I said.“You’ve done this before?”Big question. It made several assumptions that would be critical to address if our escaped-based romantic partnership was going to work. Firstly, the truthful answer is no, and as far as I’m aware, nobody has done this before. However, as a lover of all things vintage Earth, I had seen an ancient movie or two, and right now, a scene from a comedy called Trainspotting was forming the foundation of my plan.“I know a guy; he told me about a guy who was in a cell with a guy…”(I know, I’m lying… it’s a habit when I’m with a beautiful woman).“Cut the crap.”Poor choice of words, considering how this plan begins and ends!“It’s only held down with a couple of bolts at the back”.“What the f**k are you? A space plumber?”This hurt my feelings a little. Firstly, it sounded like being a space plumber would be bad; Secondly, being a “space plumber” made no sense. You can’t plumb space; it’s a vacuum; why would you put a vacuum in pipes? Where is it going? Who’s it for? I’m a plumber who “works in space”, a very different beast. Again, I chose to hold my inner monologue in situ and went with wry smile number 5; it has a pleasing amount of teeth (and I knew she liked teeth) and, I like to think, it downplays the moustache which can come across as a little ostentatious in the wrong light. Toilets, from my professional experience, are always the wrong light for a moustache.“Are you high or mad, or high and mad?”AAAAAAAGH!Another scream, followed by silence, then a worryingly enthusiastic round of applause from an appreciative audience

T    e    s         tTest i    n    gA B C                                    The letters are still.  Hello.  Can you read me?My name is Michael Perdita (the label of my jacket says so), and I’m trapped in space.Perdita is not my surname. It was given to me; I lost mine… somewhere. I want you to know so you don’t waste time looking for a Michael Perdita.I lost my surname… somewhere in Tuesday… a Tuesday…Perdita: You can look that up; it means something in that way only words can. Ever changing. The weight of their meaning carves visible channels in space. I forget what it means; maybe I haven’t been told yet.  I needed it though, need it though. A name is important when you are writing. The words are important, and the name is important.It’s important to get these words down out of all the words that surround me.To fill a space. So, they can be found. I was given this name to help. I was given this name by the Tailor.A name to mark my place in space.Words to mark a space. Me.  Here for you to       findSorryTo be clear… by space, I don’t mean the black void, stars and satellites; I’m not an astronaut… I’m trapped in regular, everyday space. The kind of space you find under your floorboards, at the back of a cupboard, inside the inside of things.  Inside that.Does that      help?    Sorry                     be patientThis is harder than it looks. Hard to get things in the right… order.  Hard to move words in space.            A start             I need to begin.A beginning. There are many, but this one follows my heart, not my head. I don’t know why that matters, but the Tailor told me it does.“Have to stay connected to the heart!” he said, will say, I’m not sure.“Don’t lose yourself in your head,”                     less          space in the heart. That’s important.Sorry…  Start           nowLondon, Tuesday 17th December.Stories should never start on a Tuesday, but don’t let that put you off – it’s just Tuesday, not the end of the world.Except, of course…it is… was…                      for me.It was a bright, clear Tuesday morning, fresh and crisp. The new air snapped in my lungs like Christmas crackers.  That first cold breath of a new winter. The one you take when you step out of your door. The one that tells you Christmas is coming. Air to tell the time. Temperature to tell the time. I never realised everything told the time… before.Before, when there was a before and an after.Weird how little space Christmas took up in my head. Weirder how much space it takes up now.     Trees, Turkeys, people and presents…so many presents.Sorry. It’s hard to stay focused. You must learn, retrain, retain, and reprogram to survive in space.Hard to stay focused          on        one present.Imagine a street with infinite houses in all directions. I mean, all of them, even the directions inside the directions. Inside, inside, and inside again, forever. Clocks and compasses fold in on themselves endlessly. Time is fractal.  Is it?No! Time is the exhaust fumes of a car called space, which runs on gravity.Its Tuesday              sorry!This Tuesday morning, I stepped out of the tube station—it was my regular one -Piccadilly, the one with black statues above and gold trim below. There are tiles and tiles of white, blue, and red. The space inside is round, round like a… merry-go-round filled with people, not horses—everyone leaps into the whirlpool, gets spun around, and spat out onto the street under the black statues. The regular wash of routine and human traffic leaves a stain in space.The statues above are black. I like them. They’re solid. Around them, the stains of people stretch thin. There is a hum here… I’m told that’s music—a deep resonating wave, unchanging yet constantly modulating. I can’t listen for long; my brain mourns what it’s lost. Music is hard to lose.I like the tube stations. The round tunnels and tubes. They have permanence.Built into the deepest foundations of London. They are spaces I recognise. The walls flicker and fade, tiles dissolving and reforming. The posters jitter, giving strange life to the people trapped selling toothpaste for all space.  But the tunnels are solid. I can pass through them. It keeps me grounded in the bad spaces between the good ones.Sorry. I’m Michael.I’m Michael. I’m good at IT. Actually, that’s not true. To be good at something, you have to have passion, and by default, passion is something I was not programmed for; ironically, this probably saved my life. Passion drives emotions, which fill the heart, which lacks the space of the head and breaks easily.I read science magazines for fun. Again, this was probably at the root of my survival. I hate sports except for an irrational love of Manchester United, which I have frequently tried to give up, but when I was small, I needed something to care about, and that sufficed. It's amazing what we fill the spaces in our minds with without even knowing.Now I know.There is so much space in there filled with so much junk. We are all hoarders. People can’t stand the echoes from the space in our heads. That’s what drives us. Cats, dogs, and dolphins all luxuriate with the space inside their heads. They float around in it, celebrating the joy of empty shelves.  They aren’t driven to fill them with…. things.I work, worked… in a Private Equity Firm in London. I do, did statistical analysis. That’s not true; nobody does statistical analysis. I make computers do statistical analysis.  I force numbers down their throats until they spew out the right information, like numerical Fois Gras. If people understood what information really is, they would be as outraged by the sight of a bloated hard drive as they are at a goose’s liver.Sorry          it feels important to say          be gentle with information.I’m Michael Perdita; I force-feed computers information, then get paid to keep them alive. I used to.In my office, I’m the guy who tells everyone to switch it off and then back on again. Not because it’s my job, that’s Ian, but nobody likes Ian. He’s cultivated an air of such disdain and disregard around himself that someone scratched out most of the word support from his office door, so it reads Ian FSuckson IT …….t .They may have focused harder to get the spelling right if they only knew how permanent that was.Maybe I’ll fix it when I’m in that space.Maybe I already have.If my last name was Suckson, I would have become a teen suicide statistic… Ian is, was, hard.  I lost my surname… it wasn’t Suckson. I wouldn’t have survived that.I was on my way to the office. I had just got off the train, the underground train. Piccadilly with the tiles…up the escalators, to the black statues, in the street.Outside in the street, the people were bustling and charging along their paths towards their destination. Briefcases and bags, shopping… who shops at 08:42 am? The clock on the massive screen tells me it’s 08:42 am - I remember thinking, “Who shops at 08:42 am?” She was laden down with bags from a shop with a blue logo, a cold blue on brown - colours stay, words do too, but only in books because books sit for a while in one space. Bags travel then disappear- I could find out which shop, but then I would have to retrace my movements and follow hers. Her with the bags, remember, who shops at 08:42 am?I don’t know who she is, was, or will be, but she is the last face I saw, so she’s burnt into my mind - our paths crossed. Our paths collided. It’s all of a blur. Her bags with the blue logo blur as they flew, fly, flown upwards and sideways, backwards and forwards all at the same… time. As I tried to sidestep, I accidentally passed through her leg, which was trailing behind her. I could see it turn a corner; it went for miles. A spaghetti leg that, if I followed it would take me all the way to her      breakfast.  Too fast, slow down; you need to understand the        moment.This moment, my last, or first or just another of the many that I was pre-destined to experience, happened at 08:42 am in London on December 17th… Tuesday. F****n Tuesday.Nothing good ever happens on a Tuesday.She was, is, and always will be middle-aged. Blonde, attractive, in a busy way, a way I always liked. There was something pleasantly angular about her; if we had met under normal temporal conditions, it’s safe to say I would have fancied her. Or it's safe to say, as she is the last woman I have ever seen, I have grown to fancy her. She has grown in my mind; she has a special place in my heart. It’s safe to say she would have ignored me.I am bland in a new house magnolia, choose from one of these three options for your unique kitchen experience kind of way. I am part of the masses, the great unnoticed. The invisible millions who make up the non-player-characters of the world. We blend in and spread out, staining the world off-white with our vanilla snail trails of apathetic banality. That’s why she didn’t see me.That’s why we collided.I apologised in the way Englishmen do—some Englishmen did—without thinking, like the apology was in front of the thought; it left the mouth long before the rational understanding or conception of the incident formed in my brain. I read in a magazine that your brain can 3D scan a space before your eyes have registered the objects within it. In the same way, an Englishman will issue an apology before the incident has finished. It’s a scientific fact.It’s called an autonomic reaction. It’s more autonomic to an Englishman than breathing. I didn’t know this … but now I do.It's programmed into us by parents (from my experience, the more northern, the higher the sensitivity) who always apologised to their parents for never quite achieving everything their parents didn’t achieve for themselves. From where I am, it looks like so much wasted energy. But that is now, this was then, or maybe it’s the other way around and I hadn’t learned anything yet. I turned, and the woman was already moving away, her arms flaying around, like propellors on a plane, painting t