Gull-shit-splattered everywhere – like a real-time Jackson Pollock.

Oyster shell … Oyster shell …

?

She walks slowly up the road scanning the tarmac and the pavement. It isn’t a long road. She looks for the oyster shell. Nothing. No sign of an oyster shell. Where is the oyster shell?

Avigail closes her eyes for a moment and tries to recall exactly what happened on her earlier journey up Trevor Street.

She plays an edited version in her mind.

Nope. Nothing.

It couldn’t be considered ‘normal’, surely, to be so oblivious? So unaware? So absent? So absent that an oyster shell can fall from the sky and hit a client on the head? For an oyster shell to fall from the sky and hit a client on the head and draw blood?

Do I trust them? Avigail wonders, slightly paranoid.

Wang Shu and Ying Yue?

Are they trustworthy?

Is this a prank?

A joke?

A set-up?

Avigail needs to be perfectly normal. She needs to be the most normal, most present, most effortlessly functional person in every situation, in every environment.

Avigail longs to conform to the wider culture ABSOLUTELY.

Even though she is secretly at war with the algorithm.

Even though she secretly calls other human beings ‘fleshies’.

Even though she secretly makes abstract tapestries which attempt to depict the ruah hakodesh.

Even though she secretly thinks the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus gets a bad rap.

Even though she makes her own foundation by combining three different foundations and a fragrance-free hand cream.

Even though she sometimes wears sequins during daylight hours.

Why do I always get found out?!

For the smallest, the most insignificant of breaches, dammit?!

A car sounds its horn in the distance.

Avigail opens her eyes and sees a car driving up the promenade, and beyond that, beyond the mew of gulls, the roar of the sea, beyond all these – beyond the honking car – she suddenly

CHING!

feels the spaces between things.

Space as substance.

A slight shift in perception.

Like the feeling of disorientation when you are just about to swoon …

Something utterly insignificant greatly magnified

and rendered dreadfully significant.

Oh no, no, no.

Avigail shakes her head.

Oh no, no, no.

Not here! Not now!

Don’t let this happen again!

The quiet in sound – the energy in space. The movement in stillness which is the hallmark of …

of …

Don’t utter it!

Don’t name it!

Don’t give it the opportunity … the elbow-room!

Avigail will not be appropriated.

No.

She will resist!

She will stand her ground!

She refuses to be hijacked!

Here!

Now!

At approximately 2.45 p.m. on Trevor Street in Llandudno by … by … by …

Argh!

NO!

The Transcendent One!

Duh, duh, DUUUUH!

The oyster shell! A hoax! A simple ruse! To bring her out here so she might be devoured, be consumed by Ein Sof!

A helpless offering.

A rebellious hors d’oeuvre.

Avigail tries to turn but cannot turn. The something-in-nothing, solid-in-space, quiet-in-sound energy – the awareness – the tiny adjustment – the shift – is consuming everything, entering everything, transforming everything but leaving all things exactly the same. Ah, such omnipresence, such savage-quiet-gentleness, such irreducible implacability …