I scanned the room while my host put the kettle on. The sight of the myriad smudges and smears on the walls gave birth to imagined bugs crawling coldly across my skin. As I scrambled for a way to politely refuse any food or drink from the whistling man in the kitchenette, my eyes happened upon a plaque that was affixed to the moulding above another door, one that led perhaps to the bedroom or lavatory. The plaque was carved from a wood that was cayenne-red and was so thickly varnished it appeared wet. The word NEITHERNOR had been scorched into the wood by someone skilled in the art of pyrography. Each of the ten characters was modelled in Blackletter script. Given this, regardless of Neithernor’s meaning, I obviously couldn’t help but hearken back to Alighieri at the Gates of Hell.

“Milk and honey?”

I’d grown so lost in my contemplation that I first mistook my host’s query as an offering from Paradiso. Glancing sidelong, I discovered that my host was holding a tray upon which both these condiments were standing. I took my tea straight. It was bitter and the cup smelled as though it had been wiped with a dirty rag.

I held my breath while I drank. I might have spewed out some banal chatter, I cannot recall. My next memory was of asking to be directed to the lavatory. I was peculiarly hopeful that it existed behind the Neithernor door, but it was at the end of a stout hallway.

Closing the door behind me, I splashed some cold water on my face, and panicked over what my next move would be, for I now felt nothing at all like a visitor and more like a double agent on some life-or-death mission. Using the room for its true purpose, I stepped back into the living room in time to see a bird-like woman pressing the NEITHERNOR door shut behind her.

“Vera?” I was surprised at how breathless my voice sounded. She turned to me.

How time had ransacked my cousin. She stood before me dressed in a soiled white smock, her hair concealed beneath a knitted cap like a patient in the thick of her battle with cancer. Her face had slid from delicate to skullish. Of her complexion and the state of her teeth I shall not speak.

“Come join us for tea, Vera dear,” called my host, rising to collect another stinking cup. Only then did it strike me that I did not know his name. The question leapt to the tip of my tongue but died there. The last thing our motley gathering needed was gaucherie.

We sat and sipped and inhaled second-hand tobacco smoke. Vera gave me a lone glance. Furtive and fearful at first, she rectified it, or rather attempted to, by hitching the corner of her chapped mouth into a kind of grin.

Distressed, I asked her bluntly if she was well.