Everything Happens For No Reason - Chapter 1

Episodic novel writing?

I know I put the sitcom pilot scripts of this idea up a few months ago, but I don’t think I’ve given you the long form version that I think I started writing in lockdown (or thereabouts).

One of the things I am tempted to do on Substack is copy the Victorian way of writing novels where you’d basically put out one pamphlet a month and spend the intervening time trying to write the next chapter and make it make sense. If it’s good enough for Dickens and Dumas then it’s good enough for me.

I hoped that I’d get enough paid subscribers on here to make that workload workable. As much as I appreciate those of you who have coughed up some cash, I am nowhere near that point. But what the fuck? I might do it anyway. Come along for the ride if you like. Or just keep reading the free stuff. I one hundred percent get it.

Maybe my payment is the friends I make along the way.

I have made no friends on Substack. Or off it.

Anyway, this is the first bit of the story and like any good heroin dealer I am going to give you the first hit for free. If you like it let me know in the comments. If you hate it let me know in the comments. If you’d like to see more, then maybe pay to sub - I will have to try and sell the idea to an actual publisher so can’t give it all out for nothing.

Maybe this one works, maybe it doesn’t. But it’s nice to give it an audience, so give it a read so it isn’t just a load of code sitting on my laptop.

• Everything Happens (For No Reason)

• By Richard Herring

“Why don’t you ever hang your fucking towel up?” exploded Yvonne, surprising even herself with the intensity of her anger.

There was silence followed by a muffled, “What?” from the bedroom.

He hadn’t even heard.

“You’ve left your towel on the floor again!” The rage more concealed this time, but still gently seeping through clenched teeth like halitosis made of hostility.

Another beat of heavy nothingness was broken by a hestitant, “Sorry?”

The blood rushed to Yvonne’s head and fireworks flashed behind her eyes. Not even an apology. A question asking if an apology was the appropriate response. How fucking dare he?

To be fair, a genuine apology wouldn’t have been much better at this stage of proceedings, but that’s hardly the point.

“I was going to do it later,” Gary shouted, perhaps realising his error and foolhardily trying to close Pandora’s Box after opening it for the briefest little peek.

“You never do though,” came the response, much more whiny and less outraged than she had intended.

“Does it matter? Nothing’s going to change because I’ve not hung up my towel.”

“Not for you maybe. But I have to waste my valuable time picking it up.”

“Did you have something special planned for those two seconds? You’ve wasted much more of your valuable time lecturing me about it.”

He knew she hated him saying that. It wasn’t a lecture to just point out a self-evident truth. What kind of lecture would be that short for a start? If a lecturer turned up and said “Hang your fucking towel up… that’s it. Any questions?” then they’d be out of a job pretty quickly. Why did Gary keep saying things that he knew would wind her up?

“I’M NOT “LECTURING” YOU….”

In moments like this she genuinely felt like there was no point carrying on. Every impulse inside here was to just throw away the last seven years as if it was nothing, walk out the door in her dressing gown and slippers and never come back. Even though she knew in an hour or so they’d be laughing and having fun again and she wouldn’t quite be able to remember why something as insignificant as a damp towel on a wet floor would have made her want to walk away from everything she had and the man that she more or less loved.

He wasn’t all that bad. There was just the thing with the towels… And the dried-on mixture of stubble and shaving foam he left caked in the sink. And the specks of piss on the floor. And that was just the stuff she could see from where she was standing.

Oh, and the splatters of shit on the toilet that he seemed to think that the Crap Fairy cleaned up. Poor Crap Fairy having to constantly explain that she was a good fairy, but she just dealt with faeces… especially galling given how great she was at that job.

But outside the bathroom he was a perfect boyfriend.

A perfectly adequate boyfriend.

She looked at the little fluffy, soggy turd of a towel on the floor and whispered to herself, “All right, fuck you. I’m not going to do it. I’m leaving it there til you fucking do it. However long that takes. I am not your fucking mum.”

She exhaled and stepped over the towel and headed for the shower. Then stopped, huffed, stepped back and gingerly picked up the towel between her thumb and forefinger and let it fall, like a heavy-handed symbol of her shattered dreams, into the laundry basket.

She turned on the shower. Water gathered around her feet. Yeah, he never cleans the hair out of the little trap thing in the plughole either. But that’s it. As far as the bathroom goes, that was all that he did wrong.

She wasn’t going to let any of this spoil her special day. Bottle it up. Push another ghost into the containment facility. It’s very full in there, and there’s weird warning lights flashing and the sound of metal being stretched to its limits, but there’s always room for one more.

And look at the positives; at least he showered. Gary was always clean. Not everyone could say that about their boyfriend.

She got an apology. A half-apology anyway. He’d said sorry in a Quasimodo voice after stuffing a cushion down the back of his shirt. She’d given a reluctant half-smile, mainly at how desperate and pathetic this was, but it was enough to shatter the ice and allow the relationship to continue to the next impasse.

He was a nice guy. He’d taken the day off work so they could go out for a lazy, boozy lunch. They’d walked up to the local shopping centre, to the row of mildly trendy chain restaurants each dedicated to the food of a different nation.

“So where are we going? Or is it a surprise?”

“I thought I’d let you choose.”

“You didn’t book?”

He looked at her as if she was mad. “I don’t think you can, can you? They’re all pretty much the same anyway… pretending to serve street food from some exotic location. Which poverty-stricken people do you want to bogusly emulate for more than they earn in a month?”

She laughed. “We’re doing something special tonight though, right?”

“Maybe.. But come on, thirty-three isn’t that big a deal is it? It’s not an important one.”

“What you talking about? I’ve got to my Jesus age… I’m now as old as Jesus was when he died.”

“But have you achieved as much?”

“Arguably not. But he was born at Christmas and died at Easter, so I’ve got at least three or four months to catch him up. Also, his dad was God. Nepotism played a big part in his success.”

Gary wasn’t listening now though, which was a shame because Yvonne thought that had been an excellent joke. His phone was ringing. He looked up at her wincing with faux-apology.

“C’mon, I thought you’d taken the day off.”

“It’s not a day off. I’m working from home.”

He answered the call.

“That’s what working from home means,” explained Yvonne to nobody. “Not working. Not at home. At most you do some emails over breakfast.”

“I’ll be in it as soon as I am sitting down,” said Gary to whoever it was who was working from work. He chuckled and raised his eyebrows to Yvonne, “Some prick has uploaded a virus in Reading.”

She didn’t care. “I took the day off.”

“You’re self-employed, it’s hardly…”

“Hardly what?”

“It’s just not the same.”

“It is the same, Gary. Just because I’m not earning as much….” She checked herself. “I don’t want to get into this. Not today. Let’s eat some pretend foreign food and drink cooking lager out of an unnecessarily fancy bottle. Which place though?”

“Your day, your choice,” chuckled Gary. “It’s not like it makes any real difference.”

Yvonne looked at the dozen restaurants in front of her.

“Eeeny, meeny, miny mo….”

They entered the Yerevan Caravan with a little trepidation. It was a new place on the block that neither of them had ever been to or even heard of before. It promised Armenian street food and inside slightly dour-faced waiting-staff, wearing a parody of traditional Romany costume were carrying trays of food and drink to a smattering of slightly glassy-eyed couples and chubby businessmen. Instantly irritating balalaika music was piped into the room and at the entrance was a mildly authentic-looking brightly-painted gypsy caravan.

“They’ve committed to the word play,” observed Gary.

“Yerevan Caravan? Is it word play?”

“Or is it a very short poem?”

“Is Yerevan a person or a place? Are people supposed to know….?

A waiter whose costume made him look a bit more like a pirate than a gypsy interrupted and wearily informed them, “Yerevan is the capital of Armenia.”

It was clear it wasn’t the first time he’d had to say this. It was clear that he’d had to say it to everyone who came in so far. And it was clear that although the restaurant had been open for days or possibly just hours he already wanted to kill himself.

“I don’t think people know that though, so….” Offered Yvonne.

“Two?” he interrupted.

As they followed him, it suddenly struck Yvonne. “Oh no, it’s communal tables. Can I pick a different place? You always end up sitting next to some random weirdo… oh!”

They’d just arrived at their huge table which was empty except for a solo diner sitting at the opposite corner to them, with a big chunk of disgusting, bony flesh in his hand, which he had just taken a juicy bite out of. He looked Yvonne square in the eye and proclaimed, “The lamb’s feet are fucking awesome.”

“Do lambs even have feet?” Yvonne wondered out loud. She looked away, annoyed at the invasive eye contact. But she had to look back. This man was mesmerising and not in an entirely positive way. And he didn’t look like any of the other customers. He was overweight and mildly slovenly, but had an exquisite pointy beard and seemed to be wearing eye-liner. His eyes shone and seemed almost lilac. And he had on a green tunic that somehow reminded Yvonne of the clothes that Captain Kirk wore when he was off duty.

Was he a member of staff on a break? If so why was he eating like a slob and swearing at strangers.

Yvonne felt intrigued, disgusted and afraid simultaneously. “Let’s go somewhere else” she whispered. But Gary was already sitting down and had his laptop out and was typing away rapidly and almost randomly, as if he was auditioning for a job working with an infinite number of monkeys. Which would be a stupid job to apply for. They’ve already got infinity monkeys working there. They’re not taking on anyone else. One more is going to make literally no difference.

Gary held up his index finger to Yvonne in a gesture that said both he’d just be a minute and that she shouldn’t interrupt.

“I swear Gary,” murmured Yvonne at a volume she supposed was too quiet for him to hear, “Sometimes I want to smash that fucking laptop right into your head and grind the broken glass into your face.” She felt like doing it too, just to show him.

“What the fuck!” exclaimed Gary. Oh no, had he heard? He looked up at Yvonne. “Guildford is on fire. Everyone’s being evacuated. Honestly, I am away for one day…”

“My whole life could be on fire and no one would notice,” thought Yvonne. Though a sarcastic groan from the lamb-foot eating stranger made her wonder if she’d uttered this self-indulgence out loud. Had she lost the ability to know if she was speaking or thinking?

Gary’s phone rang again. He looked at the screen with trepidatious glee. “OK…I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“Good surprise or bad surprise?”

Gary answered the phone, “We’re in the one with the caravan.”

“Who is it?” This really wasn’t like Gary, and Yvonne was suddenly worried that he might have done something stupid like book a stripper. Or worse someone to serenade them with an accordion. Or a string quartet. All of this was so mortifying that it made her feel a little bit sick just imagining it. The reality was worse.

It was Ewan.

“Gaaaaaaaaaaaaay!” he shouted from the entrance.

Gary glanced at Yvonne and weakly said, “Surprise!”

She looked back in disbelief. “Bad surprise then….If he’s got an accordion, you’re chucked.”

“Hey?”

“Why have you invited him?”

“He invited himself.”

Ewan was now at their table. He was a large and imposing and hairy man, almost buff, but having spent too many evenings in the pub, like a slightly off-the-boil thirty-something Oliver Reed.

“Happy Birthday Yvonne. You don’t look a day over 40.”

“Oh Gary, you booked me a clown. Red nose and everything.”

Ewan’s façade dropped for a second. “I’ll do the jokes, Yvonne.…. “

“Will you? Let me know when you’ve started.”

“I’ve started, so you can finish,” Ewan said and laughed at his own non-joke. He turned to someone behind him, “You know, like Mastermind.”

Such was Ewan’s swagger that Yvonne had not even noticed he was with someone else. Hidden by his barrel-like frame was an exquisitely pretty, slightly hippy, young woman.

The girl shrugged. She didn’t get the reference.

Ewan remembered himself, “Oh shit guys, this is er..”

“Sara,” said Sara.

“Sarah,” said Ewan attempting to make it appear he had said the name first by getting in quickly and loudly, like he could somehow defeat the speed of sound.

“Sara,” corrected Sara, “Hi!”

“This is Yvonne and Gaaaay,” said Ewan.

Gary laughed, “I’m Gary. He likes to make that joke because those two words sound similar.”

“And also because he’s gay,” added Ewan. “It works on two levels.”

Gary laughed along with this, even though Yvonne was pretty sure he was neither homophobic, nor thirteen. What did he see in Ewan? Did he like him because he made him look good by comparison? Because every time they saw Ewan, Yvonne just thanked her lucky stars that at least she wasn’t with someone as moronic as him. Gary had his faults – right now he was pulling out his nostril hairs over the table they were about to eat at – but it could be so much worse.

Or was Gary one person with her and then a totally different one with Ewan? Did she know the real Gary at all?

“Nifty to meet you both. Happy Birthday, Yvonne!” chirruped Sara.

“Oh, you’re Australian,” noticed Yvonne.

“No, she’s not,” laughed Gary.

“Course I am, you doofus,” countered Sara.

“I’m learning so much about you.”

“Not known each other too long then,” observed Gary, chuckling at his friend’s predictability.

“Not very long. About five minutes,” replied Sara.

Gary and Yvonne laughed.

“No seriously,” said Ewan, “She was looking a bit lost and Billy-no-mates at the tube station so I said, “Do you want to come to a birthday party?”

“And I said, “You’ve got some balls, but you’re pretty spunky…””

“Guilty as charged. One leads to the other.”

“So I said ”Sure, why not?””

“Why not?!” exclaimed Yvonne. “Possibly because he’s a complete stranger who might be a sex criminal. I’ve known him for seven years and I’m not convinced he’s not a sex criminal.”

“I’m a very positive person,” explained Sara, “And the universe rewards positivity. I like to say yes to every possibility.”

“And I’d just like to thank the Universe for that.” It was clearly taking every human effort to stop himself punching the air with glee.

“You see, I believe everything happens for a reason,” said Sara, as if she genuinely believed she was revealing some unimaginable new philosophy to these world-weary thirtysomethings.

“Well, you’re obviously wrong about that,” countered Yvonne.

“Yvonne!” interjected Gary.

“No, it’s my birthday and I’ll call bullshit if I want to. Because the truth is that everything happens for no reason…. Life is a random load of shit and then you die. No offence, Sara.”

“None taken,” lied Sara.

“I think it’s a good attitude,” Yvonne continued, “Not to sit back and let life pass you by. And without being patronising, at your age we all thought like that. But a few years of not sitting back and not letting life pass you by, actually teaches you that it is best to just sit back and let life pass you by. And if life looks like it’s going to stop for a chat, you find it’s better to turn out the lights, hide behind your sofa and pretend you’re not in until it’s gone.”

And that’s without being patronising, is it?” said Gary. “Can you try it again whilst being patronising?”

“I’m saying I think it’s good, what you think,” insisted Yvonne, “I used to be the same. When I was… how old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“Nineteen?!– Jesus!” She looked at Ewan with even more disgust than usual, but he was looking extra pleased with himself at this new piece of information. “But just think of the logic of what you’re saying, Sara. I mean, what does it mean, “everything happens for a reason?””

“It means everything happens for a reason.”

“But if everything happens for a reason, then logically, someone must be orchestrating all of it, like God.”

“Well, not God exactly, but something…. Like fate.”

Yvonne scoffed. Gary tried to intervene to shut this down, but this train was already rolling down the tracks. “It’s not fate. Our lives aren’t preordained. If they were, what would be the point of living them? If it’s all mapped out. If you weren’t doing this you’d be doing something else. And you’d be claiming that that was your fate.”

“But I am doing this. So it IS my fate. Fate brought me here for a reason.”

“Ewan brought you here for a reason,” Yvonne, “And you don’t need a crystal ball to work out what that is.”

“Though I do have spunky crystal balls,” Ewan boasted, though even he realised that that didn’t sound entirely positive now he’d said it.

“You have to be doing something at any given time,” insisted Yvonne, “Like when you’re shaving your arm pits you’re not saying, “This is my fate!” Or when you’re waiting for a bus. Or pulling out your nasal hair at a fucking restaurant table.”

Gary’s hand darted away from his face, “I was just scratching my nose.”

Sara persisted, “Well obviously not everything happens for a reason. But the big stuff.”

“Don’t you see, it has to be everything or nothing? It’s all linked.”

“I don’t accept that….”

Yvonne checked herself. She knew this girl had done nothing wrong and it didn’t take too much analysis to realise she was lashing out at a stranger because that was easier than confronting her own problems. She also wished someone had bashed this kind of crap out of her when she was a teenager. Life isn’t a film where you’re the central character. You’re an extra at best. A supporting artist briefly in the background of the life of someone who is actually doing something worth watching. Nobody cares about you, you’re not in control of 95% of stuff that happens to you. You’re probably not even in the film, not even in the crowd shots. Or you got cut out for overacting and ruining the shot.

“I thought this was supposed to be a party…” interjected Ewan.

“You were wrong, it was supposed to be a romantic lunch.”

“Who says we get things going with a little bit of the old nose…” he couldn’t think of the euphemism,”… cocaine? Nose cocaine. That’s what I call it.”

“No can do, buddy,” said Gary, “I’m officially at work.”

“Not for me either,” said Yvonne, “I’m cocainey enough already.”

“Sara? Fancy a trip to the disabled loo?”

“To the dunny?”

“Yeah, the Universe is giving you an opportunity…”

“I guess…”

“I know you believe in positivity.”

“Don’t feel you have to do everything he suggests,” pleaded Yvonne.

“Fuck it! Why not?” said Sara. Yvonne’s lecture (and this time it had definitely been one) had just made her more determined to throw herself into the arms of fate.

As they got up to go, Yvonne attempted to argue that one reason why not would be because the disabled loos were only for disabled patrons, but that wasn’t really much of a counter to grasping life and strangers by their crystal balls. and this pair of mismatched strangers were already giggling and touching each other before they got through the door of their sordid drugs and sex toilet.

Gary looked like he might be about to do his Quasimodo apology again, but his phone rang.

“Sorry I have to take this… Hello… Sorry I can’t… hold on.” He headed to the door for better reception but turned to say. “Just order me anything…. Maybe not the lamb’s feet… Hello? I can hear you now. Yes, this is he…”

Yvonne exhaled and her shoulders dropped. She looked for a waiter to get her a drink, but the pirate who’d brought them in was chatting up a waitress who at first glance looked like she might be meant to be Princess Leia.

“Happy fucking birthday, hey?” said a voice.

Yvonne looked up to see the pointy-bearded stranger, who she’d actually managed to forget about, staring at her with what might have been sympathy. Or lust. It was so hard to tell those two apart. Was she autistic, she wondered, or were men just impossible to read. Or maybe very easy to read as they just had one setting. It had to be lust.

“I’d thank you not to listen to my conversation,” she bristled.

“It was pretty hard to avoid.”

“That’s as maybe, but I have no interest I talking to you, so I’ll bid you good day.”

The stranger shrugged and laughed, “All right, Jane Eyre. But I’m not going anywhere.”

Yvonne pretended to scan the menu and hoped the eggy silence would continue til Ewan and Sara tumbled out of the toilet. Even a coked up, newly-fellated Ewan would be better than this.

“Do you ever wonder what would have happened if you’d taken a different path?”

Yvonne slammed down her menu, but it was just one sheet of laminated card so it made less of a dramatic thump and more of a pathetic woompf.

“Listen, I’m an atheist, so whatever you’re pushing….”

“Nothing you wish you changed?”

“I might have sat at a different table.”

“Stick or twist? It’s a risk. Maybe if you took a chance you’d get a better job, better boyfriend… but what if it came out worse?”

“You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you’re not happy with him.”

“I could do a lot worse than Gary.”

“You could do a lot better.”

“Oh, and I suppose you’re about to suggest yourself,” she gave a hollow guffaw.

“Oh Christ, no. You’re really not my type.”

“Right, pretending you’re gay, but amazingly I’ll manage to convert you.”

“Get over yourself! I’m not gay. I’m not anything. I am an immortal, interdimensional being composed of smoke and fire. The idea of communing with a bag of meat like you is frankly disgusting… I’d just cook you for a start. But if I was going to try it then I’d definitely go for someone with bigger tits…”

He looked appalled with himself and then added apologetically, “No, I wouldn’t really. I was trying to do banter. Mammary glands are just grotesque. I’ve been a bit sick in the back of my throat.”

“That might have been the lamb’s feet. Look, my boyfriend will be back any second.”

“No,” said the lilac-eyed lunatic with absolute certainty. “He won’t. Not in this one.”

“Well shut up anyway…. Waiter? Waiter?”

There was no waiter. But Yvonne couldn’t resist a final shot. ”And for your information, I’d stick. You never twist on 17.”

She said this with triumph, but immediately understood what a telling indictment this was of her life. Was that really where she’d ended up? But she didn’t have time to dwell on it. Because suddenly the stranger exploded into blue flame, intertwined with whirling spirals of wisping smoke. Tiny Catherine wheels of sparkling glitter fired appeared from nowhere at random, as if the air was being alchemised into silver filings. And though every single inch of this man was instantaneously alight, or rather transformed into fire, the temperature seemed to drop.

The vague shape of the man was still discernible and his facial features were visible in the midst of the conflagration. He seemed unperturbed, possibly even vaguely amused, putting Yvonne in mind of those self-immolating monks who had burned themselves in protest of something or other. Yvonne found herself mildly embarrassed that she couldn’t remember what. After all the trouble they’d been to.

In a second though she had gathered her wits. “Fucking Hell,” she screamed, “What have you done? Help! Why isn’t anyone helping him?”

People had turned to look, but with faces of confusion, rather than horror.

She grabbed a fake-artisanal pottery jug of water from the next table and threw it at the flames, but it turned to ice or crystal and fell to the floor and shattered into fractals, which melted and snaked away like mercury…

“Like I said,” a voice came from the furnace, “Not really into mammary glands.”

Yvonne continued to scream, “Why is nobody helping?”

As she looked around at the other diners, bewildered, the stranger quietly transformed back into the human version of himself. A menu on the table had caught fire, but he casually patted it out with his hand. He coughed to draw attention from the hyperventilating Yvonne.

“I only revealed my true self to you. They just saw you throw a glass of water in the face of a stranger. They think you’re mental.”

She heard someone whispering, “Thank God we didn’t end up at the table with the weirdo.”

Yvonne tried to make sense of what had happened and concluded that this had to be a dream. She grabbed a glass of water and threw it in her own face, confident that that would wake her, but the dream, if it was one, continued. She smiled weakly at everyone else as the cold water dripped off her face.

“All right, well I’ve clearly lost my mind. Maybe Ewan slipped me some acid somehow.”

“You’re not mental,” said the recently burning man, “Not all that mental…. You’re the chosen one.”

“I’m the new Jesus?”

“Wow! Leap straight to that, David Koresh. You’re my chosen one. The one I’ve chosen.”

“For what?”

“To dick around with for a bit.”

She didn’t know why, but she decided just to relax and go with this. It clearly wasn’t happening, so she might as well enjoy herself and treat it with the flippancy it deserved, as her brain disintegrated and reality collapsed around her.

“Who are you?” she asked. The man seemed genuinely delighted to be asked this question. He closed his eyes and centred himself, then opened them again, looking at her with a sense of mystery so serious that it was all she could do to stop laughing in his face.

“I have been known by many names at many different times…” he began.

“Oh God,” cringed Yvonne, “You’re not doing the many names at many times speech, are you?”

“Well…”

“Bit cliched mate. I expected more of you. Or assuming that I’ve created you due to being in the middle of having a stroke, I guess I expected more of me.”

“Be quiet. To the early Muslims I was…”

“Simon? Did the early Muslims call you Simon? Or Rick? Rick Harris?”

“No, just listen.”

“Was it the Space Cowboy? Maurice!?”

“The early Muslims called me...”

“Rumplestiltskin? Flipper, King of the Sea?”

“You asked who I was…”

“Did the ancient Britons call you Merlin. He’s always in there.”

“The ancient Muslims called me a Djinn,” said the increasingly agitated superbeing, very quickly, so she couldn’t interrupt.

“I’m not listening.” She had her fingers in her ears.

“The Guanche of the Canary Islands called me Guayota..”

“I don’t’ care about any of that. I’m calling you Ian. Ian Snell.”

“Ian Snell?” said Ian Snell, too surprised to be annoyed.

“So add that to your list – To Yvonne Pidgeon of Shepherd’s Bush I was “Ian Snell”.”

“It diminishes the dramatic impact.”

“Don’t care. That’s my name, by the way. Yvonne. Nobody has ever called me anything else. Well apart from Janet Bedfield from 2c. But, if anything, it was her that was the cockwomble.”

“I know who you are,” said Ian. “I’ve been waiting for you. Specifically you. Not the other loser yous who went to the other restaurants.”

“Other Mes?”

“You were right Yvonne. Everything happens for no reason. But the thing is EVERYTHING happens…. for no reason.”

“I’m not following.”

“Have you ever seen the film, Sliding Doors?”

“Yes,” said Yvonne.

“It’s shit, isn’t it? Just total bollocks. Makes me furious…”

“I quite liked it,” she apologised.

“Look the quickest way to explain this is to show you.”

Ian scanned the table, looking for something, but like he wasn’t exactly sure what. Then he picked up an empty beer bottle, licked his fingers and picked at the spout. He cursed and then rubbed his thumb against his next two fingers, like he was trying to get a plastic bag open. He still seemed to be having trouble. “I hate these things,” he mumbled to himself, “Hold on. Hold on, got it. Are you ready?”

“For what?”

“It’s going to get very hot, very cold and then very hot again. And in the middle, it’s going to go a bit Total Recall.”

“I’m going to have three breasts?”

“No… two are bad enough.. you’ll see.”

Ian Snell then pulled apart the opening that he had managed to tease apart and a tiny puff of smoke or mist farted its way into the room. Yvonne was going to laugh at this weak-ass magic trick, but then Ian thrust their heads and bodies into the aperture he’d created and enveloped them, as if he’d pulled an infinite, invisible sheet over them both. The restaurant disappeared from view and suddenly they were nowhere. Not in the partial vacuum of outer space, but in the total vacuum of the space between Universes. Yvonne didn’t have time to take in any of the absence of everything, because the minute she was through this stretchy portal every fibre of her being was wracked with searing pain. It was as if every nerve-ending in her body had been dipped in the hottest chilli sauce in the world which had been blended with cystitis. Also there was no air and she gasped like a fish arriving at a surprise birthday that had been foolishly organised on dry land.

She tried to shout an expletive, but in the space between the Universes no one can hear you scream. Also, you can’t scream.

She did notice that Ian was entirely unaffected by this journey though, if anything a little bored, even though so far it had probably only lasted milliseconds. But notions of time were very hazy, because time did not exist here, which she would have realised if she’d looked at her watch.

At least things were cooling down now. For a tiny instant the pain subsided and the temperature was normal and she just had to contend with regular cystitis that she’d had when this started. But then it got colder and colder and she felt her blood freeze in her veins. Her lungs were empty and her eyes were coming out on stalks. It should have been scarier but she was thinking, “Oh, that bit of Total Recall.”

The heat returned, her blood melted and then boiled and just as she was sure she’d explode, the Yerevan Caravan drifted into view in her peripheral vision, rushing towards her at speed, seemingly from every direction. She was forced violently through a tiny fracture in the fabric of the Universe and knew in that moment what it felt like to be a pimple being squeezed. It wasn’t much fun from the pimple’s point of view.

Everything shook violently from side to side and as her head lolled to the left and then the right, it felt as if her brain was moving out of her skull and then back in again.

It took her a second to compose herself.

“Oh boy,” she exclaimed.

They were back, pretty much exactly where they left. Ian was sitting at the table, his food in front of him, he started picking at his lamb’s foot and smiled, “That was fun, right?”

“Not in any sense at all. That was not cool, Ian. Not cool. It was horrible. And you should get consent before taking someone through a wormhole… Plus we haven’t even gone anywhere. You are a fucking stupid prick.”

She wagged her finger at him angrily, but something flew off it and landed on the table. She looked at her hand and it was dripping with thick and gloopy blood. Oh great, she reasoned, that little rollercoaster ride through nowhere had excoriated her.

But no. Her skin was still there and unbroken. The blood was not hers. The room was coming into focus now and she saw the other diners standing at their tables, holding their hands in front of them in surrender, backing their way to the walls.

She supposed that they had just witnessed her disappear into nothing and then slide back into the room, like a calf slopping out of its mum’s cow vagina. She addressed them calmly, “Don’t worry, I come in peace.” She held up her other hand, which she saw also gloved in blood and baubled with something that might have been some chunks of brain.

She looked to Ian for an explanation. He pulled a daft face, sucked on a lamb toe and pointed to the table in front of her.

Someone was lying face down amongst cutlery and broken glass and smashed bits of something or other. His head had been battered so hard and so repeatedly and his skin and eyes so badly gouged that he was basically unrecognisable But Yvonne knew who it was. She knew the clothes, what remained of the hairstyle and she recognised the sticker on the huge broken bit of lap top keyboard that was embedded in his temple.

The sticker said, “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” But that probably wasn’t going to work for this issue. Definitely not for the laptop, the bloodied pieces of which were scattered all over the vicinity.

Not for Gary either.

Yvonne howled with grief. Gary was dead.

“What have you done?” she screamed at Ian.

“Me?” said Ian innocently, “Are you crazy? I mean obviously you are, look what you did.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You did this. We all saw her, didn’t we?”

Some of the other diners murmured in agreement, but most were too scared to engage with the unhinged Laptop Killer, lest they become her next victim. They were also really wishing they’d just gone to Wagamama’s as usual.

“Why are you doing this to me, Ian Snell?” Tears were rolling down her face.

“I have to be honest,” he replied sotto voce, “You’re finding this a lot less funny than I anticipated.”

“What the fuck is going on?”