Chimp-Smirker’s smile froze. Glassy-eyed, he turned on the heel of one quarter-brogue and marched stiff-legged out of the rest room.

Alex turned back to the mirror. “I can’t believe I just did that,” he told the whirling blind spot where his reflection should be. “Someone must have spiked my—” He looked at his hands again. The redness had faded and the pain was trickling away. And his face: he raised a finger and gingerly touched the tip of his nose. It merely ached. “Psychosomatic. That’s it,” he mumbled to himself. Focussing his inner eye on the swirling gear-mesh at the heart of the evil mandala: “Fuck. Someone spiked my coffee. Trying to screw me over, make me lose my shit at work, lose my job, too. Who? The fuck. Go home and call in sick tomorrow. Work out who’s got it in for me later. Fuck.”

Was it just his imagination working overtime, or was he feeling oddly thirsty—for something thicker and heavier than water?

A tiny freaked-out voice gibbering in the corner of his mind (the same corner of his mind that nudged him to hide behind the sofa while watching monster movies on TV as a child) prompted him to check his smartphone for that day’s sunset time before he moved. And so, he waited out the remaining quarter-hour until full darkness, shivering in the least-filthy toilet stall, telling himself that even though it couldn’t possibly be true—Where were his fangs? How did he sign up for the opera cape and the widow’s peak?—it wouldn’t do to risk another case of psychosomatic sunburn and mirror-blindness.

• • •

GETTING HOME SAFELY GAVE ALEX MORE TROUBLE THAN HE might have anticipated, even taking into account his newly acquired stepping-on-the-cracks-in-the-pavement aversion to daylight. When he tried to take the lift down to the parking level it stopped at the lobby and he was politely directed elsewhere by uniformed security. “I’m sorry, sir, there’s been some sort of attempted forced entry. It’s probably just those bloody hippies from Occupy, but we can’t take any chances.”

“But my bike’s—”

“If you want they can call a car for you at Reception, sir. You can collect your bike in the morning. Right now we’re in lockdown, just in case one of them made it into the building.”

His head spinning, Alex made his way instead to the underground atrium level, and out through the door into the shopping center. Sunlight didn’t filter down this far; you could live like a mole. He stumbled towards the DLR station, hoping he still had enough credit on his Oyster card.