He arrived at the safe-house, expecting it to be dark by window and locked at door.

Jack’s long experience of such domains led him to believe in its claim to possess a secretiveness unplumbed by both police and crooks alike. Despite his own shortcomings, he was equally unplumbed. A spy, by whatever cause he stood, was outside the law... both sides of the law. That was not to say he would have been kept out of prison, if caught...but, even so, his identity would be preserved until being sprung from behind the bars by higher authorities and more knowing concerns than the police or common judiciary. Even when incarcerated for insanity, Jack was confident of his long term freedom as a sane person...

The welfare of every nation depended on his anonymity, even that of enemy nations. The job was part and parcel of a greater plan, a cog in a complex of unseen moving parts which even (or especially) Jack did not fully comprehend.

Whatever his expectations, the supposed safe-house was alive with a party in full swing. All the Windows blazed. Even from the chimneypots which were high upon the staircase smokestacks, spotlights searched the night sky...reminding him somewhat of the recent war, when sky-craft had been witnessed hovering close to the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

He decided he must have the wrong address. He had no address written down at all, for obvious reasons. Even the meticulously learned directions with which his mind had been troubled for several nights was lost in a mishmash of other considerations: such as the non-aligned codes in which the directions had been wrapped, the various and sometimes unpronounceable passwords, the convoluted briefs each one of which contradicted the others and last, but not least, the forged currency rattling in his heavy pockets which no country in the world had turned out to recognize. Such money-without-meaning meant he was beset with a belly-seeking hunger, a stiff-tailed tiredness, an all-consuming despair, a nagging requirement for solace and security. The safe-house, in this light, did not promise much, if anything: only, perhaps, the remains of a hot and cold finger buffet that the party-goers had already rifled.

He took his doubts in hand and rapped smartly on the front door. Looking around, to see if the other houses in the suburban road showed signs of awakening at the noise, he was relieved that their darkly squatting shapes did not budge, not so much as a wink from a careless tweak of black-out curtains. So sleepy was his concern, he did not immediately see that his knocking had caused the door to swing wide on silent hinges.

The hallway was strewn with bodies, either dead or drunk. On beginning to clamber over their tangled limbs, he realized that some were indeed dead, others drugged to the green eyeballs. Some of the latter groaned, staring glassily as they dreamed of a ghost treading on their toes. One of them, he half recognized.

The steep stairs leading to the upper storeys, whence he could hear the strains of heavy rock-music and mindless laughter, had been left unlit. The carpet seemed to move underfoot, as if his tread had stirred a latent flickering life-force in its weave.

The party noise ceased, as suddenly as the cutting out of a piece of hi-fi equipment. The party, he surmised, was a tape-recording of one: useful front for a safe-house, a party…nobody would suspect that secrets were at the heart of a midnight thrash. He felt more at ease with the situation. He must have had the right address all the time, despite the misgivings of memory.

But what of that residue of humanity littering the hallway? To demonstrate to any intruder that the party was wilder than was good for them? In other words, to discourage gatecrashers? Why the unlocked door? Obviously a double bluff, or even a triple one.

He rattled the loose change in his pocket, counting it with his sensitive fingers. Comfort could be gained from coins, whatever the currency. After all, people only believed in the potential of the coins in their pockets, not in their intrinsic usefulness as artifacts: and if everybody began to believe, the power effectively became real.

In the silence, he could hear the insidious drone of sky-craft, constant and underplayed. That was strange since, outside in the road, there had been no sign of them. It could of course be the house’s central-heating system, carelessly over-hauled. Jack shivered. That could not be right, for it was colder inside than out.

His heart froze in its tracks. Someone was using the stairs from the other direction. Slowly, purposefully, furtively. Some of the bodies in the hallway must be sitting up: he could hear the shuffling bottoms. The front door swung back and forth in a fitful wind, punctuating the ever-reducing silence with a snare-drum beat.

Then a voice spoke (as voices often do)... neither from above nor below. A deep voice seemed to emanate from the very sloping wall along which the makeshift banister had been strung.

“Password?”

A simple question which, in normal circumstances, required a simple answer, as long as one was in the know. But which of the many passwords currently buzzing around, was his mind meant to use? He plumped on one: “Miser.”

He said it with a conviction he did not really feel.

The resultant renewal of silence was stunned. He was being assessed, mind and body. The password was no doubt being keyed into some computer...

“Ok proceed!” eventually sounded from the wall.

With a certain amount of relief, he continued to tread upstairs, each step no longer sensitive to the touch of his fect...deadfalls to secure haven in the upper reaches of the house.

“Wait!”

This time the voice was inside his head, as if he were wearing a pair of well-balanced earphones. He felt his bare ears in disbelief.

“Let’s see the colour of your money, miser.”

He had been in stranger situations so, with no further ado, he withdrew a deposit of loose change and held it out in front of him. With the other hand, he grabbed the floppy banister to stop himself losing balance from the alteration in his payload’s distribution.

The whole house seemed to judder to a halt, as if it had indeed been in imperceptible motion all the time.

Eventually, he reached the attic where a parade of slot machines sat flashing wildly, eager for their own jackpots to drop. His coins did not fit. Despite this, white pods dropped into the winning troughs, like grains of snow that had been boiled bullet-hard. In one spy scenario, Jack had been told to pop one in his mouth and suck it...

The bodies in the hallway were things-with-souls inside coffins of flesh - one looked like him, bubbling gently at the lips - he saw them through the squint-hole in the door - none of his coins fitted the slot in the door, so it remained locked - eventually the house flew off with a tongue of flame roaring from its coal cellar - hovering for a while before moving across the city, with the glint of a pilot’s goggles upon the chimneys - none of these thoughts fitted, being cogs in a mechanism far beyond the understanding of those that constituted it - he staggered to the bus station where he could doss down for the rest of the night - until he realized it wasn’t himself in the cockpit of his skull - he fingered the loose change in his pocket, gaining a precious moment of consolation by so doing - “My dear sir,” he addressed the person in his head - but it was not quite right - there came no answer - he withdrew by feel the shiniest coin from his pocket and saw reflected a face with its eyes so sunken the green brain could be seen pulsing instead of the twin eyeballs - he lay on his back in the gutter and placed two old copper pennies upon his dimming sight - listened to the droning of the night - the hordes of gatecrashers on their way to the next party - the rustling of other spies pretending to be people - he wished he’d tried that finger buffet when he had the chance - what finger buffet? - “My sir!” he jabbed with his tongue - but it was still not quite right – the meaning of the mind and money – by means of money - mean with money - “Miser,” he whispered - then wondrous release - beyond even a triple bluff -evidently imprisoned within a time loop with the keys thrown away - reprogrammed to be a police spy in a drug bust - Jack’s sacred anonymity thankfully preserved -

He arrived at the safe-house, expecting it to be dark by window and locked at door.


(Published 'Premonitions' 1994)