Bubba Moon’s People were scooped up by whoever scoops people like that up, and Chrissy left town with her son. I asked Pleasant not to send anyone after her. She’d suffered enough, I reckoned.

Pete Green was introduced to a team of psychiatrists who were very curious to find out what trauma had led a grown man with all those unusual scars to revert to his eleven-year-old self overnight. They told me they didn’t dare reunite him with any old friends for fear it would traumatise him further – but maybe at some stage in the future…

That suits me fine. Pete’s my best friend, and I’m not going anywhere. This is my home, after all.

The Button

omewhere in the distance, a train rattled on its tracks.

Conor sat in his kitchen with the curtains drawn, the lamp on the table casting its searing eye over his handiwork. It was the size of a shoebox, and wooden. Heavy. Inside were things he did not, could not, understand. There were gears and levers and finely balanced cogs and symbols painstakingly etched into it all. He didn’t know what they meant, didn’t know what they were for, but he had seen them in his head for as long as he could remember. Transferring those symbols to metal and wood, after all these years, was… well, it was wonderful. It was a relief. It was like he’d been tense his whole life, every muscle knotted and his teeth gritted and his eyes screwed shut, and now suddenly he was relaxing, and a strange sort of euphoric calm spread through him.

He took a screwdriver from the junkyard of tools on the table and fixed the lid in place. His hands were covered in nicks and cuts. He had run out of plasters days ago. Some of the cuts still stung. There were particular gears and symbols that required blood. He didn’t know why – he just knew that they did. He saw it in his head. He always had. This device, this box, these designs, these gears and levers and symbols – they had always been a part of who he was. This was all he thought about. It was why he didn’t finish school. It was why he couldn’t hold a job. It was why Cathy had left him. This device had ruined any chance he’d ever had at happiness – but here it was, finished. A wooden box with a big red button on its lid.

Conor straightened his back. Vertebrae cracked. How long had he been sitting hunched over like that? How long had he been sitting here? He became suddenly aware of how full his bladder was, and how empty his stomach. He needed to go for a walk. He needed fresh air. Was it even daytime? The curtains were closed and everywhere but the table was in darkness. It was night. But what night? Was it still the weekend?