They Talk To Me, Chapter 2 Timmy regarded me with eyes of mythic cryptic amber, sneezed, stretched and kicked the kitten absentmindedly with his back legs. My coffee went cold and my fag went out. Birds sang in my neighbours tree and early fingers of sunlight stroked the kitten causing him to past out. Maybe! I thought, I'd upset someone who'd gotten a key to my flat and had developed a deep understanding to the things that make me tick. Maybe someone at the book shop, the owner my employer but no I don't think so she could barely remember my name. There was no one else, my boss, my cats and the girl behind the counter at Tesco. I was startled from my introspection by the sound of the cat flap in the kitchen. Normally nothing to fear, other moggies regularly visited, I could hear the regular pad pad of a weighty cat approaching across the wooden floor of my kitchen, the sound paused at the door to the living room. Did I need a weapon? This cat could be satans own tiger sent to drag me to hades, I reached for the telly remote it would have to do. Armed with my vorpal television accessory I slowly swivelled my head, really wanting to be the girl from the exorcist at that moment but having to concede that my body must turn as well. I saw the apparition! The well built and handsome doe eyed ginger tom from the other evening was regarding me with unabashed amusement from the kitchen door.

They Talk To Me, Chapter One It's all my cats fault, I should have known he was a spy for them. It was a Tuesday morning my toothbrush went missing and turned up two days later in the airing cupboard. The following night between 3.15 and 4.42 I sent fourteen messages to various friends and associates, the messages consisted of strange garbled letters and symbols that would have made a cryptographer smile. I came home from work the next day and was greeted by an enormous doe eyed ginger Tom cat sat on my door step. Now, I love cats, sometimes more than humans but this one had a message attached by elastic band to his collar. It read " we are watching you, join us or suffer the consequences", I suppose I could have gone straight to the police but I didn't because the note was written in the language of Mordor, as in the Lord of the rings, and took me an hour and a half to decipher it using the 1962 edition. I know how sad I must sound even knowing what that language looks like but someone had gone to a lot of effort and the script was beautifully done. The following morning someone had drawn crop circles in my kittens litter tray or more precisely the mystical symbols off the front of one of my Led Zeppelin albums. I took pictures on my mobile and noticed I'd sent eight messages to my local Chinese takeaway, at 3.23, requesting egg fried rice spelt flied I can't stand the stuff. Timmy my luxuriously fluffy black and white cat was washing his newly adopted brother on the rug in front of the telly when I noticed his collar was missing on inspection it had, in fact, been replaced with a fine silver chain which bore a crystal shard mounted on a silver rose. It was 7.30 on Sunday morning, I'd had enough, head spinning I made a coffee and rolled a fag. For the first time tendrils of fear caressed my mind, was I losing my sanity?