He surfaced with a deep breath and a torso in his arms. Kicking back to wet land he deposited it at the steps of the church. A second dive gave him the legs and a third yielded a head. Whether any of these matched to the body was a question for another time.

Finally when he could bear no more of his frail burdens, Stephen collapsed in the centre of the church under the weight of several skeletal limbs. He breathed hard and heavy and started shivering.

Sid came in, humming the tune from singing in the rain and peered down at him. “You look like shit man. I can barely tell you from the rest of your friends”
Stephen was about to reply but sneezed five times in a row instead, with a terrible cough following.
“I don’t reckon it’s too smart a thing to make the ultimate sacrifice for a bunch of dead guys” Sid told him. “You need to get warm again. Try huddling and sharing body heat. Maybe some fluids too.”

Stephen tried to crawl up. Sid picked up a miscellaneous arm and proffered it to him “Need a hand?” he asked.
Stephen batted it away and sat up. “Need fire” he wheezed.
“I’ll get wood” said Sid, sticking his hand down his crotch.





Eventually, with aid of some paraffin found at the back Stephen started a small fire in the centre of the church. Several spindly chairs provided kindling, which allowed him to eventually start burning the pews. He huddled and shivered around the blaze as close as he could, with his front burning and his back freezing. Occasionally he would get up and pull the bodies he had rescued further away as they began to smoulder from the heat. Cremations weren’t environmentally friendly anyway. Once the fire had settled and he was finally warm he wrapped himself in a cloth from the pulpit. His body and eyes closed in on themselves and he fell into a deep sleep.

It had been days since he had slept, maybe weeks. Time didn’t mean much anymore. Nothing meant much anymore. How did nihilists get up in the morning? This city was empty, just like all the other villages and towns were empty. Vacant in the day and hollow in the night. That wasn’t how the films all said it would be. Stephen would almost welcome the discovery that zombies or vampires were gathered round campfires telling the story of The Tanned One. Little fleshless children shivering in fear over his sinister ability to absorb vitamin D from the sun. Didn’t that make him a star vampire? Earth was just one big mosquito circling its prey.

Yep, the sun had baked him brown all right, what with all his travelling. He was pretty half baked himself, and took another drag as he drawed his ass up the stairs. The view from the top would be sweet and he could say goodbye to Mr Sun, maybe apologise for sucking so much.

He made it to the top and stood at the edge, staring into the abyss. Nothing started back. There was no way he could win a staring contest with Nothing. He sat down, legs dangling off the edge and took a bottle of Makers Mark out his bag. Then he lay still for a very long time, watching the sun set. His breathing grew harder and harsher as the sun sunk lower and lower. And was gone.

He thrust the bottles neck to his mouth, drank deeply then smashed it on the edge. And with this jagged edge he made his mark. Then he made it symmetrical. And lay back and waited.

He closed his eyes and then opened them

He closed his eyes

He opened them. And blinked

“Hey dude” said the face leaning over him.
“Hey” He croaked. It was the first word he had spoken in a week.
“You look like shit”
“Thanks” Blink “Who are you?”
“I am God”
“Really?”
“Nah, just screwing you about”
“Oh” Long slow pause and a long slow blink. “Who are you then?”
“A manifestation of your baser impulses. An externalisation of your oh so Suppressed ID. Call me Sid”
“I don’t understand…” Try to blink. Eyes stay closed.
“Ever seen Fight Club?”
“That’s your explanation?”
“Do you understand?”
“…Yes…”
“Then it’s a pretty damn good explanation. Now let’s stop you leaking away”

The newly named Sid took a lighter from Stephens pocket and took the joint from his mouth.
“You must be wasted man, only drama queens cut across. Onwards and upwards is where the action is.”
“How are you moving things?” Stephen whispered.
“Pretty active imagination you got there” Sid flaked the ash from the joint into the wounds and spat on it. Stephen didn’t feel it. Then Sid smashed the bottom of the lighter and poured some fluid into the mix. Stephen didn’t feel it. Then Sid lit it up. Stephen felt it.




Stephen awoke and found that he was too tired to open his eyes. If he waited long enough his lids would rot away and it wouldn’t be a problem. He listened to the murmur of the flames and realised with relief that the hammering of rain had ceased. How bad would the flooding be? He didn’t have the energy to worry about it. In fact it seemed he didn’t have the energy to feel anything right now. He certainly didn’t have the strength to answer Sid when he called out Stephens’s name.
“Stevey baby! Don’t go dying on me”
Stephen felt Sid lean over him and bend down
“Don’t worry man. I learned CPR by practising on that rather foxy lady’s head over there”
Stephen’s eyes shot open and he stuck his hands up to fend away whatever might be there.
“Thank god the devil and bob you’re alive dude” Sid said. “Figured you went for the big sleep there”

Stephen struggled to his feet and looked around. The fire had almost burned down to grey ashes and all the bodies he had saved had mainly dried out. A few had been too close, with burned hair and singed suits and dresses. The sight made him feel guilty. So did the jumble of body parts that he had carelessly thrown about. He walked over and spent some time trying to match them together, arranging them neatly.

“How bad was the flooding?” he asked while he worked.
“Got pretty wet and wild” Sid replied. “Water came creeping up right to the door and what with you sleeping dead I fought we were done for. But then it just all of a sudden stopped, like someone turned off the tap”
Stephen smiled “Maybe I haven’t been wasting my Sundays after all”
Sid rolled his eyes “Yeah yeah. And then a great beam of white light anointed you and you went to paradise to de-virginate forty young nubile women”
“Look around” Stephen replied “We’re in a church and we’re safe”
“Whatever you say Noah. But you gotta ask yourself, who sent the rains?”
Stephens smile fell.
“Plus you have been digging up a hell of a lot of dead folk. That’s gonna put you in the naughty book”
Stephen deflated in his entirety this time. “Can you blame me, for wanting to see reason in all the things that have happened to me?” he said quietly.
“Sure, same ways I can blame drunk girls in short skirts and easy slide aside thongs for getting raped. Plenty of blame to go around and you’re the only one here to take it”

When he had finished arranging everything and everyone as nicely as he could, Stephen looked outside. As far as the eye could see there was brownish muddy water, covering the city in its murky embrace. As Sid had said, it was right up to the doorstep of the church, and it lapped at his soles and kissed his toes. Stephen looked back and wondered if the water would go away anytime soon. As far as he knew, the city’s drainage system was working ok. Doing nothing felt wrong however, and he realised with a start that it was creative Wednesday. Years of habit made him suddenly feel very restless.

He looked around the Church, searching for some vague task that would distract his now buzzing mind. All that was really there however, was Sid, a pile of ashes and about thirty nameless bodies, along with Jenny and her father John. With a smile Stephen noticed that one of the arms he had saved seemed to be gripping something he recognised. It was his notebook, where he had been attempting to give these bodies faces. Now he actually felt up for doing so, and so walked over and gentry pried the cold fingers apart from it. He wasn’t gentle enough however, and broke off the middle one

“Oh Snap!” Sid exclaimed “That dude would be flipping you the bird right now if he could”
“Hmm” Said Stephen, and started writing; Joseph Coal was a typically withdrawn man, who often mused upon the nature of his own character. It was this inner musing that caused him to be withdrawn, hence he was perfectly suited in his employment as a night security guard for the nearby Shopping centre.

“Are you going to write about how he lost his finger, and how his arm became detached from his body? Not even in that order”
“Plenty of time to give him plenty of past” Stephen said, not looking up from his writing.

And that’s how he spent his day, writing and thinking up an imaginary community. Everyone would know each other, if not personally then through a friend of a friend. People had jobs and hobbies and hopes and fears and little personal ticks that helped to make them seem like people. Such as how Joseph was missing his middle finger from a bizarre mini-golf accident, yet constantly had the urge to place his wedding ring there. It took a long time of course, or lifetimes. But trapped as he was Stephen didn’t feel he had wasted his day, and by nightfall he could remember all the names and most of the histories that he had given to his new community.

“You’re a regular Mark Twain” Sid commented
“You mean I capture the quintessential turn of the centenary America through a rich and detailed portrayal of its inhabitants?” Stephen put his pen to rest and stared at the thick callus on his finger.
“Nah, I mean you’ve outlived everyone you care about”
“Thank you” Stephen yawned. “I think I will go to bed now”
“Try not to hang yourself dude”

That night Stephen dreamed. Usually he only dreamed when he was drinking, small fractures convalescing into some vague shape, but this was whole and perfect. He dreamed he was in a large theatre, sitting in a big red chair. All around him there were people, with blonde hair and blue eyes. They were naked, and out of their backs poked thin hollow bones. These bones twisted down, over their shoulders and to their wrists, where they wrapped around the arms of the chair. Thus they were tied and held there by their own bodies turning traitor. It looked as if they had been bound this way for some time, as thick layers of dust covered them from head to toe.

But how their eyes stared, so intent on what was going on in front. They were not even spared a blink, and through the grey dust gathered on their faces, shining white chalk lines were drawn by tears clinging to cheeks and falling from chins. But what was the object that had so fully captured their gaze?

Upon the stage, bathed in sickly yellow light stood a lone male figure. Strings from above ran down into him, and with slow ponderous movements pulled him about stage. Carefully he made his way from part of the stage to the other, looked around, and with a shake of his head walked to another spot.

This dull scene was repeated for some time until a trap door opened behind him and another figure rose up. This new actor grabbed the strings of the first and pulled them viciously and enthusiastically, making the first flail and dance. There was much energy and little thought behind the movements, and the first actors face was a picture of exhausted recognition.

A 3rd actor entered from the right, this one female. Delicately she moved towards the two. The puppeteer stopped his jig, smiled and made his charge bow impossibly low, so that his nose touched the ground. Then he pulled out a knife, with which he cut the strings. The captive man fell limply to the ground and his master leaped down the trap door, headfirst like a diver into water. The other man pitifully tried to reach up to his strings and pull himself to his feet, but no part of his body seemed to fully work, and he jerked about like a poisoned insect.

Standing over him, the woman held out her hand, and with great difficulty pulled him to his feet. There he rested heavily upon her, but she bore his weight, and started to slowly dance. He tried to mirror her, and though his movements were awkward at first, soon there was an ugly symmetry to them, that grew more and more beautiful and intricate to see. Unheard music swelled and they danced about the stage in perfect unity.

Suddenly there was a deep rumble. With a crashing crescendo from out of the ground there burst a great phallic worm. Higher and higher it rose, running parallel with the strings. Once past the curtains its unseen head let loose a terrible cry, which was joined by a scream that abruptly ended. The limp strings turned red as ruby jewels of blood ran down them and to the ground. It dripped onto the two dancers, who wiped it from their eyes and stared dumbly up. The great beast descended, and its bloody maw crashed into the two, engulfing them in their entirety.

The curtains came down upon this scene and a sign lit up. APPLAUSE it decreed, and seeing none of the captive audience could oblige, Stephen dutifully clapped his hands.

“Wake up, shit for brains”
Stephen opened his eyes and closed his hands in a single solitary clap. Sid joined him and started clapping loudly in his face.
“Come on man, no time to sand the morning wood”
“Why, what’s happening?” Stephen asked. But then he remember before he was told and let out a groan
“Today is my day bitch. It’s all about me. You had your fun trying to create a utopian society yesterday, and now its time for me to totally dis it”
Stephen sighed. He wanted to keep writing, but the fact was he needed to get some more supplies. He was hungry and in need of a shower.
“Ok” he said, once again rising up. “Maybe the water’s receded a bit”
“And if not,” Sid chipped in, “Then I have cunnilingus plan”

“Oooooh A pirate’s life is the life for me. Yo ho ho and a masturbating nun. To live in a coffin’s such an irony. Yo ho ho in a two holed bum”
“Could you sing quieter please? It’s fairly confined in here”
“Whatever you say, captain sensible”

The two of them sat in the large coffin that Stephen had figured was John Taylor. It had been floating a short distance away from the church in the muddy water that now covered much of the city. Stephen found himself oddly grateful for John’s large build. The casket must have been specially made and reinforced, and so was a great deal more spacious, sturdy and watertight than what normally would have been the case.

And so it was that they had turned it into a makeshift boat, which Sid had christened The Floater. He had even saw fit to give it a figurehead, or fingerhead as the case was, and Joe’s snapped digit proudly and rudely gestured the way forward. Stephen rowed with paddles made from pew parts and The Floater cruised serenely along the grey brown waters, its dark brown mahogany bobbing gently.

The flooding had been even worst than Stephen had feared, and many buildings were completely submerged. The city looked like a very dull Atlantis, with many banal mysteries sulking beneath. But that wasn’t his biggest concern. “Everyone will have been washed away” he said sadly, staring down into the water.
“Boo bloody hoo” said Sid “Let’s get going. I want to get back to the flat and collect some shit”

The flat had an interesting history, most of which was unknown to Stephen. Of course it wasn’t really a flat at all, Stephen had the entire building to himself, but he only really used one floor and thought of everything above as the attic and everything below as the basement.

When he had arrived in the city and decided to stay he had slept in various buildings-mainly hotels. Staying in a home which had once housed a family made him feel like an intruder, and seeing old pictures, framed and displayed on walls saddened him. On the other hand he didn’t like to stay in one place very long, it felt like he was stagnating. Then there had been the incident on the rooftop, where he had met Sid, who encouraged him to find somewhere to make home.

And so he roamed from building to building, until by sheer happenstance he came across the flat, on the north side of the city. It had stood out from other buildings, with its iron shutters in some windows and brightly coloured curtains in others, but what really grabbed Stephens’s attention was the light, faintly visible through some tasteful venetian blinds. And so he had decided to investigate.
“Dude, nice digs” Sid commented when they walked through the iron door. Further investigation revealed that the place really did have a light on, a single lamp in a room that was filled with books and an armchair. It was revealed that the place was off the gird, which of course had gone down years ago, and instead had its own separate generator.

In fact, evidently its previous occupant had been an apocalypse fearer, and the whole place had been furnished and stocked with this in mind. It had its own running water and plumping, using rain and a water purification system. It was stocked with a huge array of tinned foods and other such supplies, like medicine. In one of his more paranoid moments Stephen had gone on the pill for a few weeks, believing that it had something to do with the disappearance of everyone. Vicious mood swings had eventually made him stop though.

In short, the place had everything he could ever need, and it wasn’t long before he had settled in completely. And while he would never come to think of it, or indeed anywhere else as home, he could tolerate it, and it seemed tolerance was the only existence available to him.

And so he found it strange that when they arrived in the north end and at the flat, seeing it stood relatively undamaged brought a feeling of pride to him. What was to thank for this, was the wall, his wall. It had funnelled the worst of the water away and only the first floor lay underwater. Curiously the highest point of the wall was the perfect height to be used as a marina and The Floater was brought up next to it.

“First one to touch dry land claims the prize!” Sid shouted, and got ready to make the leap to it. Feeling oddly competitive for once, Stephen angled his vessel so that they approached backwards, giving him the chance to be first.
“Mutinous Bastard” Sid declared. He leaned forward and yanked off the Fingerhead which he then threw towards the wall.
“There,” he said as the coffin was brought up and they both disembarked. “Now neither of us will be emperor”

Stephen heaved the coffin out the water so it wouldn’t drift away, and walked along the side of the wall. At its corner it roughly aligned with an open window and he carefully pulled himself through. It was dark inside, and cautiously he flicked a nearby light switch to see if the power was on. Nothing happened
“Generator must be fried” he said
“Either that, or you’ve just set yourself up for a nasty shock, if you know what I mean” Sid commented. “Now come on, let’s get the shit”
“What’s the shit?” Stephen asked, though he already had a fair idea as to what it would be.
Sid went ahead into the lab and Stephen followed him. When he got there he was thrown a large empty bag.
“What?” he asked.
“Come on you primitive screw head. My name is Sid, and this is my Boomstick!” Sid happily waved the pipe bomb about and tossed it to Stephen, who fumbled desperately before catching it and placing it gently in the bag.
“Why do we need these?” he asked.
“It’s my day fool” Sid replied. “And what do we do on my day?”
“Blow shit up?”
“Damn straight!”

The Floater was a lot lower in the waterline on the return journey, weighed down as it was with Stephen’s tinned foods and Sid’s pipe bombs, but again John’s great mass allowed it to be. They journeyed deeper into the city, occasionally having to pick up the boat and scrabble over tall buildings when the way became impassable by water.
“Where are we going?” Stephen asked.
“Where we need to” was Sid’s reply.

Where they needed to be, was apparently in the middle of nowhere. Though there was no part of the city Stephen had never been to before, he wasn’t very familiar with this particular area. He scanned it quizzically. “And this place is?”
“Oh, nowhere special…except the answers to all of our problems ever!”
“Really?”
“Well yeah, kind of. Mainly it’s where we’ll be able to drain the water away. Tell me kiddo, do you know anything about SUDS?”
“What?”
“Sustainable urban drainage systems, shit for brains. If you did, then you’d know why the water hasn’t gone yet”
“Why?”
“Maybe if you paid more attention in drainage class, you’d know that this is the lowest sunk point of the city. Therefore it housed the central drainage canal, where all the run off water flows to from all the other drains and roads. If only those fools thought to utilise SEA projects, to provide drainage that more closely mimics the natural landscape prior to development than traditional piped systems. Those poor blind, short sighted monoculed fools” Sid shook his head sadly before continuing. “Anyhoo the point is, basically I think some large round object was rolled, or washed away down here, and it was big enough to block the whole master canal”

Stephen frowned. “Like what?”
“Stop asking questions and start making connections. What big ass round object do we know of that could have rolled all the way down”
“You don’t mean….”
“Bingo, the Lego death star!”
“Oh. That doesn’t seem likely” Stephen stared hard at the grey water, but it was too opaque to allow him to see any tiny interconnected plastic bricks poking out. He shook his head sceptically. “I know it was pretty big and I used super glue to help it all stay together, but I never actually finished it. The laser bit was never completed”
Sid’s eyes gleamed. “Exactly!” he said. “Look there”

Stephen looked at where Sid indicated in the water. Several bits of light floating debris gently circled and if he stared hard enough he fancied he could see a tiny whirlpool, like an aqueous tornado.
“That’s where the water is seeping in dude” Sid said. “Through its unfinished anus. “All we need to do is blow this thing good and proper and all of it should drain away”
“Is that why we have all the pipe bombs? You knew this from the start this was happening” Stephen felt quite angry “Why hide it from me? Why hide anything from me? What’s the point?”
“Dude, surely it be a case of you hiding things from yourself”
“Don’t say things like that” Stephen said irritably. It worried him greatly that Sid could know things that he couldn’t. It didn’t seem either right or real.
“Anyhooters” said Sid, ignoring Stephens sulking “Let me just switch on my targeting computer and then we’ll get this show on the road”

Sid tossed something small in the water. Stephen crouched down, fearing an explosion, but an eventual cautious peek over the coffin showed it to be Joe’s finger. Sid must have reclaimed it earlier. Another thing Stephen didn’t know about. It swirled around a bit before gradually settling right in the middle of the tiny whirlpool, and pointed straight down.

“See” said Sid. “It’s showing us the way. Now would you be so kind as to do the honours” He handed a pipe bomb to Stephen, who stared at it, before eventually twisting the top and throwing it at the finger.

They waited a bit, and then BLOOSH, the explosive went. Bits of Lego came sailing through the air and there was a great inrush of water. Stephen worried it would pull them in to the hollow core, but it seemed that it had been very near the surface indeed. As the laser part had been slightly concaved in on itself, it had the effect of trapping a small amount of water in it, like a pond. Now it was gone only that body of water had drained away, and Stephen saw the edges of the rest of the Death Star poke out of the surface. Between them lay a great black hole of air, an impossible void in the grey sea around them. Cautiously Stephen paddled up to its edge and peered down. Great and sinister echoes resonated from it. He had forgotten how big it was. Then again he had spent the better part of a year building it.

“Well how are we meant to get down there?” he mused out loud.
"We don’t. They do” Sid hefted the bag of pipe bombs to Stephen.
Stephen picked a stick out of the bag but Sid shook his head. “Come on dude, it’s the motherfuckin Death Star! No sense in going in all half assed. Throw the whole bag in”
“Won’t this be kind of dangerous?” Stephen said.
“And awesome” Sid countered
“What’s the time delay on the explosion though?”
“No idea. But we’re both still in one piece so it must be enough”
“Oh well. Here goes nothingness”

Stephen twisted the top of the stick, thrust it deep into the bag with the rest and threw the whole thing into the void. Then he grabbed the pew and rapidly paddled away as fast as he could to the nearby rooftop of an almost submerged building. Just as he leapt from his vessel and onto the dry ground floor of the penthouse, a great and terrible noise erupted behind him. He turned slowly.

The skeleton of the Death Star now circled in a huge spiral around the water, parts of it crumpling as they were smashed about in the torrent. Other objects too were revealed, chairs, tables, grandfather clocks. There a car, there a shed. They were all being mashed about and sucked down; as if the city’s silent mouth had finally opened its gargantuan jaws to consume itself.

It seemed insatiable however, and it foamed and lashed and roared as the chunky soup of the city rushed to fill it. Stephen looked down and saw that slowly, oh so slowly, the water level was going down.
“Reckon this’ll take a while” Sid said, and lay back to take a nap.
Stephen however, could not tear his eyes away. It seemed to him that the end of the world had come, and all would be devoured. But did this creature have a taste for flesh as well?

It was only at the very end, several hours later, that he saw the answer was an emphatic yes. The water wasn’t more than ten feet high then, and Stephen could just about make out the crater he had blown in the ground that all of everything was falling in to. At first he thought he had imagined the shape as it was sucked in, but it was followed by a multitude of others. Flailing arms and legs, like one in the act of drowning, all into oblivion they went. The bodies he had dug up but had failed to save, they were all going and gone, for now and ever more. Finally the water abated to a calm flow, and the maw of the abyss gave a great gurgle as the tiny shape of a cot death baby fell in, signalling the last of the human feast.

Sid awoke from his nap with a snort, and joined Stephen at the very edge of the building. They both sat down. Stephen turned to Sid with a haunted look, and Sid winked back.
“Déjà vu eh?” Sid said with a laugh
“So it seems”
“Ah well, buck up chuck” Sid patted Stephen on the back, causing him to almost fall off. “At least normality has resumed itself”
Stephen nodded solemnly. “Thanks to you”

He stared at Sid. “Tell me. How did you know about this? The central drain and flooding and everything” And how come I didn’t
Sid waved downwards, where the last of the water was trickling away. “What can I say” he said airily. “I know my holes”




Stephen went into the video store and greeted Derrick. “How’s your new job working out for you?” he asked politely. Derrick told him it was ok, but he wouldn’t get his staff discount until he finished his training. He also had to wear this stupid badge. He showed it to Stephen.
“That’s too bad” said Stephen sympathetically. “Still, you have to pay for those night school courses somehow”
Derrick conceded that this was true, but truth itself was like a blade, the tighter you held on to it the more it hurt to do so.
“It’s a bit early for philosophising” Stephen said. “Even if that is your study choice” He nodded to derrick and made his way around the store, looking for a suitable choice as tonight’s entertainment