Chiral The virus took the poor boys breath first, and raised his temperature. His elder sister was terrified for him and hadn't moved for the month he'd suffered. Even the heat from the candle by his tucked tightly bed poured beads of stinging sweat on his forehead. It began with the yellowing rash of both arms, and soon his neck had caught fire with an itch too. The coarse towel bedding was sanding his delicate skin down as he grappled sideways for each breath. The virus was now becoming his legs. His chest was dancing to the arrythmic beat of the fever, and soon funny feverish ideas had made their way to his head. His curled claws followed the itch up his neck, as the virus escaped like a curl in a carpet. Soon the virus had guards at all posts in his body. His chest decelerated. A calm cleansed the room. The boy sat up after two months of disability, missing his slippers as he left the bed. The first thing his sister felt was the young boys razor sharp and unforgiving gaze. Then a forced kiss, hard and violent on the forehead, more gum than lips. The boy was healthy again. The sister lay convulsing, her last sight was of her brother beast kissing their mother, grinning wildly, with eyes like barrels of an old and wise shotgun. The boy had the virus, now the virus had the boy.

Clasped Hands Both of Peter’s hands were sealed tightly together like an oyster, held a foot in front of his pumping chest. His hands were so tightly forced, that water could be kept between them in an orb. He was dapperly dressed in a well-made sweater grey suit. All the buttons and folds were perfectly in place, and perspiration burst Rorschach test marks symmetrically on his tensed form. There was a box between his hands, that he knew nothing about the contents of, only that he is to keep it safe. His mind drove wildly as to what it could be. What he saw that convinced him he had to keep the box in his hands safe, was indescribable. The things the wrinkled thing did when handing the box over to Peter were instantly persuasive. The thing had evidently come a long way with the box, and the sounds it was making didn’t need to be English for him to understand. Peter gritted his teeth as he ran franticly from safe spot to safe spot, until a drop of rain hit his forehead. This threw peter into a ball on the ground. His hands were tight between his legs, legs were bent and his cheek hit hard against the pavement. There was a long scratch up his cheek from the pavement over his eyebrow. The contents of this box had to be kept safe. The wrinkled thing was covered in scars and was bleeding too, for this reason. Peter slid his face closer to his knees and peered through his fingers: SEMPER INANIS He read. It didn’t matter what was in this box, he had to keep it safe. People threw coins at him as they passed him, tightly curled in a soaking ball of sweat and rain. He stayed there for a few weeks, after slowly rolling into a nearby alleyway. A shopkeeper had soon become quite concerned, and began bringing sandwiches out, that he found uneaten unless they were put right underneath his mouth. The suit material on him was nothing more than cosmetic and he was vibrating with the cold, the shopkeeper wrapped him in a blanket. This was the only time Peter had said anything: “Tighter” he gargled as he was wrapped. The only strength he had was in the blanket he was wrapped in, his skin was torn and thin like papier mache. He bent over Peter and peeled back the blankets and parted his weak legs as he croaked in protest. He found the box clasped in his limp hands, it was a three inch cube that had some Latin written deeply into it. The box was poorly carved untreated wood, and was tarnished dark brown with the thousands of tight fists that had clasped it. The shopkeeper was a jeweller, quite familiar with Latin. SEMPER INANIS: - “always empty” Like the curiosity of any human being, his thumbs were led to the loosely hinged lid to open it. The Shopkeeper jumped as Peter stood up sharply. His head hanging back, like strings had brought him up only by the neck. A loud crack of a whip sounded as Peters arms spun in a flash and clasped the box tightly shut with the shopkeeper’s hands. The force of this had broken bones in both their hands. Peter’s head slowly rose from a twisted hanging position, and his jaw began to drop, just a little further than the elasticity of his cheek muscles could comfortably bear. There was a slight tearing of the skin at the corners of Peter’s mouth; a possession had overtaken him like puppeteer had slipped his arm into him like a glove. The puppeteer evidently had very large hands. Peter mouthed three words, as a siren sounded the same three from the ground below his feet, far below. IN MANUS NUNC With each word, the jaw was snapped back so hard that teeth crumbled, as the thumb of the puppeteer often missed the upper jaw. Peter’s eyes looked like toothpicks were in place, they were being held open by a possessive mechanism. His eyes were spinning left and right madly and were purple with burst blood vessels. What the shopkeeper saw next was indescribable, and instantly persuaded him to keep the box safe. ‘In my hands now’ he translated.

Adamant If I stand still the oncoming car won't hit me, I must ignore the chill as it traces my spine. If I close my eyes this road could be empty, I'm starting a movement of standing still in a line. If I clench my fists, Loved ones will forget me, If not, the only thing it will take will be time.

The observed It was a time where people knew about the stars, what they were, the names they had been given, and why they were there. It wasn’t long before the majority of people noticed the disappearance, when 4 of the 7 stars that made up what they called The Cross constellation vanished. Children with their new telescopes had them permanently positioned on porches. People with binoculars would sit out at night, bringing their radios out with them. Others would rush home from work and sit where they could and just watch. They didn’t all disappear at the same time, and people would talk about where they were when the second star disappeared, or the third, a few months later. I was washing up and gazing at the sky when Alioth went! Now people had been learning the names. I was watching from when Dubhe disappeared, I knew it wouldn’t stop with one, and I’ve seen them all vanish since! The news gave coverage of what was known purely as a ‘Phenomenon… of interest to those intrigued by the night sky’ and nothing more. Behind huge white caution-stickered and triple-locked doors, heated discussions went on. The feeble government-funded telescope and spectrometer equipment they had was telling them very little. Luckily, thanks to poor education, people were generally only familiar with only a few constellations, but actually large clusters of stars in that region of space were disappearing. They had been over the past year. The first thing that the scientists had noticed was that the longer it took for the star to disappear, the further it was away. The light from the furthest of the stars were taking longer to reach our observation. The stars were being lost at the same time. This situation was of course a far spikier one. With stars light years apart from each other blinking out at the same time, there was something going on of a magnitude that technologies hadn’t yet calculated. Perhaps its a super-massive black hole? Dark matter annihilation? Nothing seemed to fit. Then the stars started to pop back into view, in the same order they’d popped out, and with the same gaps in between. Calculations were made. The stars had been blacked out for almost a year. The first thing the government thought of doing was to contact any possible civilisations in that part of the universe for answers. That is when this story reached us here on earth, and there was a global panic. This was the first time we had been contacted by another civilisation, and there were still arguments for us being alone in the universe. We were told the stars around us were disappearing, and that it happened on approximately the 12/12/2012. This threw us right off our meals, especially when we heard that it had been a year… We all remembered the 12/12/2012, as this was only a couple of days ago, certainly not a year. The sceptics and the not-so-well-educated among us put it down to there being such a huge gap between our two systems that sometimes time actually stops. They were almost right. The messengers from the distant civilisation had taught us all sorts of things: new technologies; ways to better consume pure energy from soil; renewable energy that amazed us completely, too. We now had telescopes. Well, they did what telescopes used to do, but they could see far-reaching systems of biomass and type 0 civilisations. One messenger had become over-friendly with humans and had apparently told us a little too much. He got into a great deal of trouble when he mentioned the final third. The messengers had contacted us after a major discovery they had made into the division of the universe. We were in one third, contacted by others in another third. There was a further and final third region. The messengers had left our region for a while (but were always welcome back). One of their kind had stayed here, convincing his kind it was necessary for observations. He was the first to notice the messengers region of space disappearing. Time had passed, and the region the messengers had come from had started to go quiet. It was a difficult region to pinpoint, but a few days passed and he had become certain. Exactly the same thing had happened where he had come from. It was then that he decided to spill the beans. You weren’t the first area we saw fade out. We watched the other third disappear for a period; and the second time they did, you disappeared simultaneously. What is happening is that time is stopping for a period. Time stops, and so light can’t escape, and so it looks like a vanishing. It works much like a black hole: time stops, with a massive surge of gravity. So with the three regions in the universe, one is stopping every third period, you are stopping every sixth. We enthusiastically sat and learnt a lot from both of your stoppages:, what happens to matter at absolute zero; what happens to light, and gravity. You don’t feel a thing too, once the stopped period had ended, you carried on as if nothing had happened. I’ve just witnessed my region disappear, and it is the fourth period now. This means that four periods ago we stopped too. There’s going to be a point when all thirds of the universe are going to stop simultaneously. This time will mark the end. The messenger didn’t make it back by the 12th period.

Crumbs My imagination is churning fleshy kaleidoscopic sketches of what form stands behind my door. The body of the monster seems heavy and unstable, like there are too few legs to support its body. It seems the thing is struggling to breathe. I'm sitting in the furthest reaches of my room, with my head craned at full the length of my neck. Staring agonisingly at the door. The smell is indescribable, and chemical like fresh bath water. Not like nature. The sound it was making was like a howling, only broken up into shorter sharper bounces. The door opening stopped my lungs. There it stood, bare pale skin, flat slab like feet. Hairless face and arms, and wrapped in bed cloth. It swung it's fat limbs towards me, stood on its hind leg. Bared it's teeth grotesquely before grabbing my tail, and yanking me upwards. It is agony to be hung by your tail. I shrieked and shrieked. Ah well, now I'm outside in the rubbish eating cereal boxes again.