The Instructions

Then my phone buzzes. I answer instinctively. The voice at the end sounds tiny and remote.

Without introduction this authoritative yet barely perceptible voice instructs me to "Catch the spider." A particular species, I don't catch the Latinate name, but I'm informed despite its delicate size. It's poisonous and loose in my house. "Easy to spot as it's luminous green."

My heartbeat quickens, I haul in a lungful of air. I'm not usually afraid of spiders, in fact, I like to let them roam freely in my house.

The tiny voice as distant as it is is full of authority, giving me detailed slightly irritating methodical instructions and I march uneasily in and out of rooms hurling furniture about, looking into the darkest recesses of cracks and corners. "No, not there, you're wasting time, you're too slow, you're not taking this seriously enough."

Now sure enough, I can hear it, limbs scattering across the floor. Unexpectedly it's frozen, momentarily motionless, somewhere in the room. Now this tiny electrical fury drums it's feet as it scurries somewhere in the room around me. I can somehow sense the pulse of its thoughts.

Wherever it is, this uninvited guest, this creature which has invaded my home is doubtless making calculations, planning something unknowable. This creature is far more agile than I expected and what I've quickly discovered, smarter than me. It's waiting and worryingly appears in control of events. What's more it's full of poison. As far as I know there's no known cure. I should leave while I still can. I'm already short of breath and feeling faint.

But the voice on the phone is running out of patience: "It's gone you idiot, don't you realise how serious this is? Listen carefully. You can only aprehend the spider by nipping its hind legs between your thumb and forefinger. It will play dead and once in control you should place it on the palm of your hand to await your instructions. You will only have one chance and if you hesitate..."

Something draws me to a picture on the wall, a line drawing of a figure wide eyed standing by the gate of a walled garden, the path leading to a house on a hill illuminated by a black sun. The figure appears to be locked out or perhaps waiting for something. On the gate, the phrase "Mon Dieu" is inscribed. It looks like the rough drawing of an adolescent, rendered in black ink.

I start to remove the picture carefully. My prey is immersed in its cryptic mathematical dreams. I hold the phone to my shoulder and the voice is silent now as I attempt my manoeuvre, more difficult to carry out because of my cricked neck, carefully nipping its hind legs together, watching its body stiffen into a protective claw as I place it on my hand. Suddenly I hear, "Careful, careful, if you get this wrong you ruin everything," and I realise I'm already bitten. The pain is dull but I can feel the venom shoot through my bloodstream and start trembling as if my body is going to go out of control.

The Hat

From what they could deduce, he awoke one morning to discover everyone around him was speaking in a language he couldn't understand. Of course it destroyed his career. Words became at first unbearable to him then tiresome, in time insignificant. He turned to reading in panic, scanning his eyes along the stems of words studying the physical construction of symbols, their maze like passageways of edges and curves. He fixed his mind with formidable force as if willing the blank pieces of an inverted jigsaw to overturn to reveal colour, shape, form no matter how pretty, banal or profound the significance. A simple conversation would grip him with such fear he could barely maintain composure, retreating into solitude to make sense of his... illness. But even his thoughts were becoming obscure, elusive like tiny fish slipping through his fingers. At first he was convinced this aberration in his health would pass. Here was an accomplished spy and codebreaker who could no longer engage in simple conversation or read a newspaper let alone fathom the multilayered riddles of the narcissists and tricksters who inhabited the great game of his espionage. He could trust no one. These elite shadowy figures were not only unpredictable but extremely dangerous. It was a torment and anxiety he had never known in his life. A searing hot bolt had split him to the core. What little we know of him at this stage of his life, indeed, any other for that matter, is limited. All that exist today is his hat which remains neatly placed in the centre of his desk. The drawers of which are completely empty, of anything which might shed more light on this mystery. Did he attempt to immerse himself in linguistic studies in the hope of finding a solution to the madness which tormented him? Fail to detect meaningful phonetic patterns in people around him? Lip reading was futile. There are disturbing accounts of him holding his hands up to his ears in the faces of colleagues and howling like an animal.

Suitcase of Limbs

I unlock my suitcase. It's a large receptacle yet surprisingly light considering it's full of carefully arranged prosthetic limbs. My eyes fix on the artificial head which looks very different to my own yet somehow familiar. A long thin face, with dark features and black tidily cropped hair. The eyes are closed as if meditating on some intense purpose. I lift it out of the case studying the intricately sculpted forms, marvelling at the porous texture on the base of the neck which appears to allow blood flow. Would such features be a suitable substitute for my own? The thought of momentary blindness, deafness, speechlessness, seizes me with fear. For now I return the head to the suitcase I will carry with me for days to come and apply the artificial legs. I find I can run effortlessly, as if gliding down the stairs out into city streets and beyond into the autumnal freshness of the country. I see a work colleague ahead, running along a leaf strewn lane. Gliding past him, waving hello, I grip the handle of my suitcase no longer in any doubt about the promise of its contents.

Doctor

What was really odd was the way the doctor was looking at me through her little square glasses. "You are really ill. You should be fully aware of how serious this is. How close to death you are." She was smiling so intensely I could see the arches of her gums framing her teeth. "However, the antidote I have for you should result in a full recovery. She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out an egg. "Eat this raw."

SOS

Chapter 3: SOS

I make my way to the hotel, up the narrow lanes of the town, open the door of my room. No sign of my companions. It's empty of furniture and my luggage. There on the wooden floorboards, on a bed of stones is a clay replica of Africa. In the centre is the monumental stump of a tree, prehistoric in form yet easily the size of the Congo. Did such a tree exist? It's been modelled as if cleanly sliced through; aeons of growth are rendered in the delicately textured clay. I lean down and poke at the surface of the land with my finger. It's still damp and falls away beneath my touch revealing tiny insects which disappear into cracks between the stones.I pick up my phone but the battery is dead. By the window is a plant. I pull it from the pot revealing, neon roots. I plug the plant by its luminous tendrils into the mains socket of the wall. It doesn't allow me to phone or send text messages but controls on the stalk allow for Morse code. Is it still in use? I begin to type SOS.

Growing Horses from Seeds

A winter sunset breeze carries me through low dark farms down mud lanes and puddled dirt tracks. I’m amazed at my speed. I windmill my arms and legs wildly to stand upright. I’m face to face with the glowering face of the man who calls himself the Farmer.

A pungent stench of cowdung and urine fills the air. I dig my hand into the pocket of my shabby jacket and hand him the two precious seeds. They’re small, almost shell like yet priceless. I can’t recall how they came to be in my possession but I’m guarded and wary. Can I trust him? The big fingers of the Farmer contrast with his delicate manner as he studies the seeds in quiet awe, gazing at their intricate texture. He quietly reassures me he will grow me two horses from the seeds. We both know it is an illegal practice and should he be discovered he will be punished severely.

I nod in assent, complicit, and turn, lifted by the delicate suspense of the twilight which carries me back down the lane into the black expanse of the moors. In my quiet elationI'm impervious to the chill of the sky.

I return to meet the Farmer. To my horror, half of the flesh of his face appears torn away, exposing the teeth of his skull. He has in his heavily accented anger been “rumbled” by a local judge and made to confess his crime. One of the seeds, he says in an appalled tone “had taken root and been destroyed”. However, unknown to anyone a horse has been fully grown from the second seed he smuggled to a nearby farm. He points along a lane winding along a windswept hill in the cracked green light. I turn to begin my journey.

The Cranefly Tenant

The low evening sun spills across the sky like wine and vast cornfield tides shimmer in the twilight. I stand on the brow of the hill exhilerated by the coastal suspension of the breeze and feel little fatigue despite reaching the end of my journey. Now I can just make out a small house from the road shrouded in the undulating silhouttes of trees. I'm certain this is the place.

A window light is just visible. I hadn't anticipated inhabitants. My pulse quickens with anxiety. I should continue to follow the road into the valley but instead negotiate a dark narrow tree lined path towards the light, kicking stones as my footsteps seem to march ahead of me. I marvel momentarily at my displaced footfall and quicken my pace, following it through the unlocked entrance through cramped corridors up a staircase to a wooden door.

Is anyone here? I enter the very candlelit room I had seen from the road. It's empty. I'm immediately struck by a sense of profound peace. This humble well cared for wooden room with its little necklace draped mirror, floor level bed and delicate single window could withold blasts of starfire and the unimaginably destructive chill of space.

Carefully sealing the door shut behind me I look to the window overlooking cornfields seething in shadow, the moonlit sky a limitless force of vacancy. The vast nightwinds flying low over oceans of night had come for me but here I'm standing secure behind a fragile weather beaten pane of glass defying them.

They whisper: Leave this place. Stay and you will meet your downfall. Yet I turn away; the tiny womblike warmth of this candlelit room seems an infinitely appealing prospect.

I'm suddenly drowsy, so unburden my small ruksac and recline on the soft floor level bedding in the centre of the room to contemplate my surroundings. Considering its small size I'm surprised by so many apparently locked doors of varying sizes.

A cranefly springs erratically around my head in quiet vibrations. Perhaps it's protesting against my uninvited entrance, announcing its status as sole tenant of this room. I watch it flail in trembling spirals, a miniature helicopter on stilts, listen to the mathematical oscillations of its logic. Until, like the sprung mechanism of an impossibly delicate watch, it spins a coiled trajectory and lands gracefully on the window, as if taunting the night, spreading its limbs like a sacrifice.