THE GATHERERS WERE packed around the circular paddock, each trying to crane the neck longer than the next neck. The mixture of clothes was not the most surprising factor, although the costumes in themselves seemed to pay scant regard to either sex or size. More striking than anything else was the gatherers’ division between radiating spokes: equally spaced spokes that appeared as if they had been removed from a bicycle-wheel and replaced around its outside rim - whilst the creatures which these gatherers watched could roam willy nilly inside the otherwise empty wheel. Such freedom for the performing creatures grew more random by the minute, with most of them demonstrating signs of intense rutting heat.

One gatherer was myself. I had been awoken early that morning by the locked door downstairs being slammed back and forth on its hinges as if someone wanted to make entry to my house or -perhaps a more frightful thought - exit. I rushed from my bedroom, tossing my night-covers into a dark corner, only to find the kitchen occupied by complete strangers, consuming an unrecognisable breakfast.

“We’ll soon be off,” one of them grunted through a mouthful.

“Who are you?” I asked in a lather, but so surprisingly calm in the circumstances, I wondered if I were still dreaming.

“We could ask the same question.”

“But this is my house...”

“Who says it isn’t?”

“I’m asking the questions,” I maintained.

“Well, that isn’t a question, is it?”

All the time I was pulling on my day clothes, the only ones to hand when I had so inelegantly jumped from the bed.

“It you don’t hurry up, you’ll be late.”

“What are you lot doing in my house, anyway?”

“Steady on, old chap, don’t lose your rag...we know this is your house now, but we were all haunting this place before it actually became a house. And we intend to give you a real treat - a trip to a memorable gathering.”

I spotted that some of the floorboards had their nails missing.

“You’re taking me to a gathering?”

It seemed the only thing for me to do - humour them - whilst maintaining the advantage of being the one asking the questions.

“Take things for granted - wait your turn - bide your time. After all, stoicism is better than bobbing your head about like a funfair target. Rest assured it will be a gathering to end all gatherings.”

By this time, breakfast had been gobbled up. I had very little food in the house, so these ‘people’ must be with meals-on-wheels who had eaten all the meals themselves - and perhaps swallowed the wheels whole, too. What was more, constituents of the breakfast itself appeared to gobble and drink each other up.

The gatherers, of whom I eventually found myself to be an unwilling member, stood within the various bespoken compartments around the paddock with no rhyme or reason to the divisions. The ‘people’ who had come through my floorboards were not among us gatherers but ranging about the ring with other creatures, at first sniffing at each others limb-pits, then acting like a full catch of live crabs in a fisherman’s basket.

I had now wholly convinced myself I was taking part in one of those dreams which, whilst it prevailed, seemed to be endlessly real but, on waking up, was found to be ludicrous - then entirely forgotten however hard one tried to recall it. The fact I could rationalise this so easily from within the dream was suspicious. However, I shrugged oft such self-doubts and determined to watch the show, dream or not.

It was then I decided that the empty spaces between the actual gatherers were gradually becoming filled up. In fact, the sight of the creatures within the inner circle proved to be so popular, new gatherers were pushing from the back so as to obtain a better view, some climbing on others’ backs, a few even erecting six layered pyramids. A few gatherers played all manner of dirty tricks to obtain a better view, leap-frogging between divisions.

Meanwhile, the creatures themselves gathered around the inside edge of the paddock, in their turn, for a better view of the original gatherers’ antics, but I had vanished by now. I knew I could get back into my house, because of the secret route via the coal bunker which I had often used as a child - and thankfully the floorboards, as I recalled from earlier that day, no longer had the luxury of being nailed down.

But, upon lifting the bunker’s latch, a crawling, clawing sea of lobsters and limpets spilled out, sucking the pink flesh from beneath each other’s soot-blackened carapaces. And, during the final fleeting vision, I saw my own erstwhile body gobbling and guzzling itself up, amid distant applause from fantasy creatures and other such monsters: followed by the blackest possible watches of the night, in which I asked: “Is this death or a dream of death?” Whatever the case, I welcomed the soothing cyclic qualities of utter dark silence, orphaned by my own body as I was...gently eased from the shell, yes, thankfully taken out of myself by the unspoken pleasures of Fantasycon.


(Published ‘The Fantasycon Reporter’ 1996)