Part II - Final Cycle - Scene I

A knock followed. Punctuating the shrill mechanical sound of the doorbell. It would be heard from outside, there was no need to knock, it was obviously working. Whomever had their finger pressed against the small white button on the other side of the door was either paying no heed to the sound, or merely chose to augment it. One knock first, then brrrrrrng. Now two knocks. 

brrrrrrng

A frenzy of knocking.

“For chrissakes,” Adam moaned, forcing his eyelids apart. Sleep kept them momentarily.

The doorbell again, more knocking. 

“Adam, are you in there?” The voice from beyond the door was muffled but recognisable. He had heard it

twice

once before.  

Adam moaned inwardly and forced himself to sit up, reaching for his chair and pulling it beside the bed before pushing himself up from the ivy and on to the chair in one well versed swoop. The chair coughed noisily as his weight bore down on it and the wrought iron framework creaked slightly. He glanced briefly at his prosthetics and decided against it. He didn’t know what time it was, but he was bloody tired and once he had seen his visitor away, he would be going back to bed. Sleep could claim him once more and for however long it wished, he had no urge to fight it again today. 

He wheeled himself over the uneven and sodden floor, covered in earth and vegetation, through into the living room, moving toward the front door that almost seemed to vibrate with the force of the fist bearing down upon it from the other side. His dream was all but forgotten, the harried knocking and ringing sending it clean from his mind as soon as he awoke, yet tendrils of

ivy

clung on to him nonetheless. 

He dragged them with him from the bed. 

Wait. This isn’t as before. 

The sun outside barely penetrated the thick vegetation on the windows. Vegetation which had forced it’s way into the room and wound around the rest of the flat. The wall that separated his apartment from his neighbours

oh god there was so much flesh

was covered in cracks that more vegetation had pushed it’s way through from next door. Dark liquid seeped from every hole, solidifying before it had a chance to reach the door. The whole apartment smelled of dark rot with a cloying underlying sweetness. He had time to check what he wore, to make sure he was presentable. A t-shirt, covered in stains. His boxer shorts similarly gross. 

He shrugged to himself. 

You’ll do. 

The jar of black was still in the hall, yet it was in pieces. The black substance had worked it’s way across the floor and it stuck to the wheels of his chair like tar. If he looked closely, he could see small white bodies lazily wriggling in amongst it. He didn’t know what they were and he didn’t think he did wish to know. He moved his chair forward another wheel rotation to bring him up to the door and realised that he had now got some of the black substance up to his hands. He brought it close to his nose and 

no chance you’re not doing that again, why do you have to sniff everything

opened the door. 

“Hello Mr Campion! I trust you are well? You look well.”

The tall man and the short plump woman were standing just beyond the threshold. The woman still looked as though she was just about to be placed in her coffin for an open casket ceremony. She had her hands behind her back and an expression on her face that should have been next to the definition for happiness but there were a few things wrong with it. Adam didn’t wish to dwell too much on that visage. It was the man he was interested in. 

“You live downstairs,” he said.

The tall man smiled and performed a little bow that may have appeared comical coming from someone other than him but, again, was just creepy, actually. He reminded Adam of a spider in human form. His limbs were all just a little too long, his fingers almost spindly. His eyes were deep in his sockets and he looked like

he was at the end of stage four cancer

he was very ill indeed. 

“That I do. You’ve got me bang to rights guv.” He glanced sideways at the woman beside him, emitting a small titter that sounded like a moth caught in a jar. She also laughed, a most unpleasant sound. Adam wanted them away. 

“Okay, well thanks for helping me the other day, but you can both leave now I’m busy.”

The tall man frowned and once again exchanged a glance with his partner. 

He put his hands up in a mock gesture of surrender. “I am sure I know naught of what you speak,” he said, frowning. “I am here representing the Maringian Agency once more Mr Campion.”

“I don’t have it yet. I’m still working. I’ll have it for you very soon. I just need to -”

The woman shushed him as though he was a child, putting a plump finger to her bow-like lips. When she moved it away Adam could see that the tip was stained red from her heavy lipstick. She still had one hand behind her back and now removed it, pushing it’s contents towards him. It was a large folder, brown in colour and tied with string. 

“We have you covered Mr Campion. We are not here in a retrieval capacity, but rather that of the delivery of…this.”

“And what is, this,” Adam nodded to the folder that the woman was now pushing towards him, but made no moves to take it from her. 

“We have been tasked with passing this to you, so that you may continue. You can then pay what you owe, and we’ll all be square.” He smiled benevolently at Adam, leaning in closer. He stunk of stale tobacco and his eyes were yellowed. He winked, slowly, before drawing back again. Not before Adam caught sight of something moving underneath his skin. 

The folder was pushed towards him again. The woman now taking a step forward. Something was on her hairline, a small black speck. Adam’s eyes were drawn to it. 

“I’m not in the habit of taking things from strangers,” he said warily, eyes not leaving the small black speck that seemed now to elongate slightly, moving down the plump woman’s forehead. It looked like

I bet if I were to stand up, lean in to her and give it a big old lick it would taste like

the ‘honey’ that Denys had passed him. That now seemed to grow and take on it’s own malevolent form in the hall alcove. 

It was running from her scalp. Another droplet joined it. 

“Ah, but we’re not strangers!” The smile grew even wider. Adam thought if it grew any wider it would fall off his face. “You know me, I live downstairs!”

“I wouldn’t say I know you.”

“Just fucking take it," he snarled, leaning in with such speed and ferocity that Adam started back, nearly pushing his chair over backwards, his heart missing one or multiple beats. The man’s face was a mask of rage, yellowed spittle flayed from between his teeth, covering Adam’s face and t-shirt. 

Then, almost as though it had never happened, he was standing back, smiling benevolently. 

“Please,” he said. “We have other things to attend to. Your neighbours are also behind, and we need to discuss repayment terms.”

The woman now threw the folder into Adam’s lap, and it was all he could do to wrap his arms around it before withdrawing back inside. He shut the door as quickly as he could, wishing to look upon these two no more than he had to. The last sight of them was of them both leaning in towards the door, right arms up and fingers open, waving slowly. The black stuff now covered more than a third of the woman’s face. 

He was back in his living room, the folder on the table amongst all the drawings and paintings he had been making. An empty bottle of whisky lay on the floor amongst the empty beer cans. A plate with the remnants of some door he must have cooked himself, but had no recollection of doing, was fuzzy with mould in the centre of the sofa. The whole room was filled with an unearthly green light, little from the windows, mainly from the overhead light, the bulb scorching the vegetation that attempted to grow upon it. Ivy hung in long tendrils, nearly reaching his head. It grew from somewhere behind the couch and drew itself over the cushions and down into the bowels of the furniture. It had even managed to grow over some of the drawings he had discarded there earlier. How much earlier he didn’t know. 

Story of your fucking life. Do you know anything?

He shrugged at his own inner voice. No. That was the answer to that one. Correct. Take a sweetie from the jar and sit the fuck back down. 

Already sitting down pal old pal. Careful you don’t sit too far down. That’s only one step from the slip slide down town. 

One step? I can’t fucking walk.

Oh sure, you can, you just choose not to. Pop your dancing legs on pal old pal and come with me. We’ll paint the town green and still be back in time for the sweetie jar. We’ll take all those fucking sweeties and slide over each other till we’re sucking our own dicks beneath the ground. 

Adam shook the voice from his head. There was a lazy deep buzzing sound from somewhere, and he guessed the kitchen. The door was shut and there was a thick line of what looked like moss along the bottom between the wood and the carpet. He didn’t want to go in to the kitchen. Then again, looking around, he didn’t see that he had to. 

He had everything here. 

On the table, along with his artwork and manuscript, next to where he had dumped the folder, was the two bottles of vodka and the three remaining beer cans. There was also, he was surprised to notice, both of the phones sitting there and what appeared to be a new jar. Filled with amber. More honey. From Denys? There was a small note underneath, scrawled in a nearly illegible script.

Mr Adam, to sweeten the taste. 

It was no coincidence that it had been placed in front of the vodka. 

There was a glass left over from the whisky. A little dirty but the alcohol would kill anything, he supposed. It was good at that. He poured a generous measure of the vodka and unscrewed the jar. It must have been fresh, but he still didn’t know where

bodies full of holes small bodies crawling across the surface meat on ropes thrust against the wall again and again naked scarred flesh and a litany of filth I nearly couldn’t stop myself from laughing yet all I could think of was how she could eat so much of that boreholed flesh some of it wrapped in what is that a uniform from somewhere but oh god how sweet that honey would taste now that I know where

it came from. 

He stirred it in with the end of his brush, not caring for the small flakes of paint that now floated on the surface of the pale yellow liquid. 

He tentatively took a sip and then gulped it down. Relishing the sweet fire in his belly. 

Pulling himself fully up to the desk now, Adam opened the folder and took out what was within. 

The rest of the manuscript. 

It was time to finish it. 

Part II - Interloper V - Scene I

I am the interloper.

This is my tower.

I am Adam.

This is not my tower.

I belong here. 

I do not belong here. 

Silence like a cancer grows.

I have always been here. 

We have always been here.

For Ivy. 

In her infinite rapture. 

Turn around. 

“Turn around.”

Adam turned around. There was nothing. No form. No mass. 

No light. 

There was nothing. 

Yet below. 

So far below. 

He couldn't hear it. He was so used to hearing it. There was such sorrow in it's abscence.  No machinery grinding in the darkness. 

Not yet.

His hands were tied and the phone was shrilly ringing, demanding him. He heard it above, he heard it below. Behind. 

He tried to turn, yet was unable to move as his arms were secured to the railing in front of him, the ivy twisted across his fingers and woven around his wrists, up his bare arms in spirals. It dug into his skin, welts of blood where each tiny spine broke through. He peered closer as he wriggled his arm, disconcerted to see that the ivy in places seemed to break through his skin, whole tendrils disappearing within. 

Beneath. 

He could feel it. Inside him. It constricted around his bones with every move he tried. 

Glancing up, he could see the familiar green infused skylight, the sunlight diffusing down through, casting mote ridden arcs of daylight across the iron and ivy. Somewhere above he heard a door slamming open and closed, although erratically, as though caught by a wind that only blew up there, with everything around him still. Almost too still. It was as though he inhabited a photograph.  Nothing moved. 

Yet the phone still rang. He had to get it. He knew it was for him. 

Gritting his teeth, he pushed himself away from the railing. His legs and feet weren’t secured to or by anything, so brought up first one knee into the bare balustrade, then the other. He pushed out with his legs, transferring all the power through them that he could muster. At first there was nothing. No give, no movement. No pain. 

Only on the fourth attempt, his fury increasing, the rage fuelling his muscles, did something start to give. A wet tearing sound, the small spines from the ivy tendrils detaching from his skin, spots of blood falling freely through the static air. He was empowered by that give, and pushed firmer. Harder. 

A couple more times. 

Then. The agony. 

The tendrils that had pushed themselves beneath his skin started to get pulled out as he pushed against it. He was freely hanging now, only his fingertips snagged around the side of the balustrade under the railing. He pushed still, his jaw aching with the grit in his teeth. Blood flew around him. His own blood. It arced past him in a crimson loop, and he fell to the bare wooden floor. 

He screamed in pain. 

The phone answered him, and he stood, turning to answer it. Ivy hanging from his skin, that in turn hung in damp strips where it had been readily detached. Yet now, he didn’t feel it, as a numbness spread through his body. On unsure legs at first. Yet a few steps towards the telephone and he felt stronger. He could stand. 

“Hello?” He lifted the receiver. 

“Hello?” A child’s voice. A girl. He knew it. He knew her. 

Violet.

She had spoken to him before. Yet she was different now. As though this was an adult speaking with his daughter’s voice. 

“Hi…did you mean to call me?” It was all he could think of to say. 

“Yes,” the voice said. “I heard you scream.” There was no emotion in those words. No infection. Somewhere beyond the voice he heard the ocean.

“Just now? I’m sorry. There was some pain. It was sore. Was it loud?”

“Not really. But it wasn’t just then, although I did hear it.”

What else is that I can hear, it sounds like

“An engine. You can hear it to. It’s with me just now but it will be with you soon.”

“What do you -”

“Don’t interrupt. It’s rude.” Again, no emotion. This was a simple fact. Adam had interrupted, and it was rude. “But I heard you scream earlier. You scream all the time. You scram when you’re asleep. You scream when you’re awake. You screamed when you saw what she did to her children. What she was still doing to her children. It’s why you’re here again.”

“I don’t follow.” There was a sound now, not just in the phone. Somewhere below. 

“Silly, you know where you are.”

He really didn’t.

A sigh, the exasperated sound of a child trying to explain something to an adult, mimicking the reverse. “It’s only when you’re sleeping but you don’t go to sleep just when you go to bed.”

A deeper rumble far below. 

“She’s going to be coming up again for you. It’s your fault and she’s really mad with you. I should be too, but I’m not.”

“Why is that?” Just play along Adam. I’m sure it’ll be time for your meds soon and someone will wake you up and help you along to your nice cell with no hard edges and the nice ambient music. 

“I wasn’t born like her I think. And other things. Mainly though it’s -”

The line cut out dead. Silence.

He was about to put the receiver down when something spluttered from the earpiece. The sound of someone struggling to speak through a mouthful of water. Someone struggling to breathe. 

“Hello? Hello!?” Adam gasped into the mouthpiece. “Are you okay?”

More choking and spluttering and then a different voice to the one that had been before. 

“Turn around.”

No.

He dropped the receiver. There were footsteps on the stairs. Perhaps two floors below. Or less. A sound like the growling of something animalistic, but that could have been the machinery that had increased in volume far down below. He walked to the railing again. Nothing he hadn’t done before.  What he saw when he looked over the edge wasn’t unexpected, yet it chilled him regardless.

There. The flash of her face. Again. He saw her hand below on the railing of the floor directly under his. It moved with incredible speed. Towards the ascending stairs. 

She was coming for him. 

He moved towards the stairs furthest. The ones that took him up. He climbed, taking two at a time. The door slammed with increasing ferocity far above. The further he climbed, the hotter and more humid the air around him became. He was increasing his speed, hauling himself up via the railing. Pulling himself. Willing himself up. She was gaining on him and he heard her directly behind. The machinery increased in volume. A great rhythmic howl. 

It was important he reached the door. He knew little of what was beyond. He remembered the arm on the floor, the one that twitched and threatened to move towards him, a hand like a fleshy crab pulling it’s swollen grey load behind it to the interloper who had dared to enter the room. 

“Turn around!” She cried. It cried. It wanted him to look at her. He wouldn’t give it the satisfaction. 

I can make it, he cried inside his head, yet he didn’t believe that. 

A hand took firm grip of his ankle and pulled. He lost balance and fell forwards, hitting his head on the iron stairs. The bridge of his nose burst. More blood. Yet he was still numb, and felt nothing. 

She pulled him with unnatural strength and he fell down three steps. He had been so close to the top. He was in sight of the door. It opened and closed. Slamming and banging. Beyond was sunlight so bright. He saw it there. Behind the door way. It was sitting up in a chair in the centre of the room. It twitched and shook almost spasmodically, with a speed and erraticism that was supernatural. It stood and shuddered towards the door. Pulling it closed one final time. 

“I need you to turn around and look. I need you to see.” The voice gurgled. He couldn’t place it. It was a girls voice. It was a woman’s voice. It was mingled with something darker and much older. 

He clawed forwards with his hands and gripped the stair, pulling himself up. 

“No,” he gasped. “I need to get up there.”

“He doesn’t want you like this. I need you. I need you to see.”

“No,” he said again, but could follow it with nothing. He had nothing left to say. 

If you have nothing, the voice, now inside his head, demanded, then the least you can do is scream. 

“Wake up,” he said instead. “Dammit Adam, wake up.”

“That will do you no good here. This is mine.”

This is 

MINE

“Wake up for fuck sake WAKE UP”

MINE

NOW TURN

AROUND

A hand on his jaw, such strength, pulling his head around sharply in a near one hundred and eighty. He saw just for moments. A face, so beautiful and yet as one one with something else. Something mechanical. A fusion of flesh and machinery. He knew in that instant that he had made it. He had produced this. 

She was at once his and not his. 

He was reminded of a story he had once read. The final section he had been given intruding upon him as time slowed down, near to the point of stopping completely. It shouldn’t have followed him in here, yet he supposed it belonged here more than it belonged anywhere else. It could well have been birthed here after all. It was time. Hours wrapped in seconds and held in ransom to an impossible value. 

THE TOWER

Her mother had sought it, and she didn’t know why, but now she, Ivy, sought it. 

And she was here.

Yet the tower wasn’t important, and she thought no more of it. It was merely one of it’s shapes, and now she was inside, it ceased to matter. 

She was standing on the first landing. The stairs she had climbed behind her, and she at once knew that was where they would stay. Each stair she climbed would be forever behind and below her. For to be here was to go up. Only up could she wrap her fingers around that which she sought. She knew it would delude her until that moment. Yet she knew that when she took hold of it, she would never let it go. She would pull it towards her and she would force it to look at her. 

There was a great distance between her and that moment, and she had only just begun her journey, although she had felt also that she had lived it enough for two lifetimes. Perhaps that was what she was doing, for she wasn’t just doing this for herself…

…but for her sister.

Violet had been her twin, and as babes they had been impossible to tell apart. Their mother loved them both equally but through poverty and an instability she had been afflicted with, she had not seen fit to keep Violet. The ocean had adopted her, of this Ivy knew, and had taken her to it’s bosom. She saw her sister at night when she slept, and her sister spoke to her, much as she was doing now. 

“Go upwards to our mother, and ignore what you may pass. Below as you ascend starts up time itself, irrevocably winding towards inevitability.”

She was doing as she was asked. Only after climbing did she hear the machine, deep in the bowels of the tower. Her hand went to her face, feeling a slight hardness within her cheek. She ignored it and climbed, occasionally looking out over the banister. 

Then, once she did that one time over all others, and she saw him looking down at her. She knew she had to go faster. He wouldn’t wait. 

But she would catch him. 

And so she did. Adam saw her and she was beautiful. In her infinite rapture. Just as she broke his neck and he awoke.