The M.O.D

This is my first novel that I have written. I have no idea if I am any good or not, but friends have enjoyed it. Please critique.

Death stalks the land. Or at least it’s trying to �" even a hobble might do. For Naomi Flaking, her first job wasn't quite what she expected. An angry dead mouse, drugs and now an insane priest is out for bloody revenge. Naomi has to stop them and only a corrupt Queen, a dirty old man, a zombie and a blue-blooded mime can help her.

Bradley Burns shuffled his feet in the dark alley. It was moist in the non-existent air, pretty quiet, and the fading light overhead meant no-one could spot him. 'S good concluded Bradley. Bradley didn't like the idea of anyone finding him here, he was well outside their patch and even his toes knew it. If one of hers caught him here with this, he fumbled the tightly twined brown pouch in his pocket, he'd be.. cor, well everyone knew what she was like. Bradley had never made her acquaintance and he had no intention of doing so tonight. Nevertheless agreeing with his body's jitters, he pulled himself closer to the wall for comfort. Where is 'e? wondered Bradley, looking out to the deserted street ahead.

Bradley lit a new cigarette to ease his nerves, blue smoke rolled around him as each silent moment lolloped loudly around in his sweaty ears.

“Do you have it?” a sharp, commanding voice said right beside his ear coldly. Bradley spun sharply dropping his cigarette and looked into the voice's face, losing even more colour in his own. Cripes! One of them!? It can't be! What if they caught this one with it? Crumbumbles. Bradley instantly cursed his own desperate greed taking this job. If her lot found out..sod that, if they found out I'm a goner. The face in front of him drank all the fear Bradley could sweat from his wiry frame. “Aye” Bradley replied nervously, holding the twine pouch out, trembling. With a quick smile the hooded voice snatched the pouch from him and snapped the twine off reverently. The hood paused, examining the contents like a cat would its prey before, seemingly satisfied, dropping a small velvet bag into Bradley's fear frozen hand, still outstretched. The hood shoved its nose deeply into the pouch, sniffed deeply at the contents. Bradley let his smoke fall out of his mouth onto the cobbles below. Crap.

“Delightful,” declared the hood happily to itself, completely ignoring Bradley. Delightful wouldn't be the way Bradley would ever in a million years put it. He knew Madje's Beefeaters searched every nook and cranny of your clothes on Reaper's bridge, especially if they thought you were a weasel. Bradley felt the deceptively heavy weight of the velvet pouch; blimey that's a good one, his more shrewd side thought, his more cowardly side tried to make itself heard, howling: let’s just run. Far away. Now. The hood, muttering to itself, began to leave without another word. Bradley's heart slowed for the first time in a minute as the Hood walked up the alley before it paused. Gulp.

“One word and you may..count on it,” said the hood, more of confirmation than actual threat.

“Never,” mumbled Bradley, fully meaning it. Apparently satisfied with the fear in Bradley's voice the hood turned the corner and escaped into the murky street ahead. Bradley glanced at the velvet pouch and saw a faintly embossed cross glaring right back at him.

Never, absolutely crumbumbling ever.

§

“I’m afraid to say that there is nothing we can do my dear; it’s terrible, and I understand how you must feel at the moment.”

Dear!? Naomi forgot the gravity of the news the plum voice of doom was sharing with her, fuming instead at being referred to as some simpering damsel in distress by this chauvinist dinosaur. Ok, so she was in real distress, and she had made noises over the phone which may- if one construed their thoughts in such a chauvinist way- may have seemed like a simper; and yes, she could not deny the reality of her phallic-free biology (for once) but I will not be called dear!

Momentarily lost to herself in petulant rage, Naomi briefly wondered who had the time to think, evaluate, and debate such things at a time like this with yourself? Her grip tightened on the phone to replace the lack of grip she was taking on her life.

“But you can’t do this to me!” fumed Naomi as loudly as she dared without rousing the attention of anyone in the house. “I am ever so sorry my dear but there is little I can do in circumstances such as these; terrible times I'm afraid,” replied the vacant phone with such sincerity usually unseen outside corporate social responsibility departments or dinner parties. Naomi’s heart sank as the full stop, which was being drilled into the first page of her glorious new career before it had even started to be written, dropped its terminally point self on her head. Fudge.

“If it’s any consolation” - it sugaring wasn’t - “be thankful you didn’t start here a few months ago my dear, and then have your life upturned down. Please do take care, and thank you for your interest in Gamble Brothers. Good day to you and for the future, as much as it can be.”

The phone clicked remorselessly silent. Naomi was left staring impassively at her bedroom wall opposite her from the window, alone. A few crickets with no tact chirruped outside in the garden. Naomi was, for what might be the first time in her life, speechless. Her world had just gone completely and utterly, horribly mad.

Only few days ago Naomi had been living her gilded dream. Fresh from graduation at Snodbridge (All Mallards College no less) and armed with a investment banking job at Gamble Brothers, the biggest (and highest paying) bank in London, if not the world, Naomi's only concerns were about which new clothes and shoes to buy, accessories that would allow her to manipulate and control any male in the office, and strike fear into her uglier (they would be) office sisters. Now all that was gone because Gamble Brothers had sugaring collapsed. Collapsed! How could they run out of fudging money? They have stolen my life from me the ingrates! Fools. In truth, Naomi was holding back her fear and sadness with an impressive level of arrogant rage that made an observing fly think that now, probably, wouldn’t be the best time to explore the ripe curls and waves of her luxuriously styled blonde hair.

Naomi turned and looked at the tiny village around and below her from the house. She was supposed to be leaving this hillbilly hovel behind. A new life free from the humdrum monotony of country life was finally here �" and now it was gone. The safety of her college's glamorous ball seemed an eternity away. Reality had hit Naomi across the face with a broad halibut of horrible mockery. Naomi had hated country life ever since she could remember. She had always put this down to her Father’s insistence that it would be a good idea for the family to spend every Saturday - come rain, shine, or Antarctic blizzard - rambling through the flat and coma-inducing boredom of some non-field or duller-than-paint-drying wood, for no reason, it appeared, other than to ruin her hair beyond all elegant recognition, and break her and Harry, her brother, into passive submission. And it was always raining in this damn place Naomi cursed, the dark clouds above beginning to cry their tears of mocking laughter down upon her.

How could this have happened? What did I do to deserve this? The Universe shrugged at Naomi's internal protest as it watched her. The Universe answered this perennial plea of the desperate and terminally condemned with a sincere reply it had settled on centuries ago, all to save time explaining things: ‘Because' (and it's not my choice, the Universe added �" no wait actually it is but, oh hang on..I'm missing something here..hmm). Naomi was devastated but, holding her head a little higher as the rain dribbled down her window, she vowed defiantly to not cry. Barely a minute passed before Naomi’s tears began to fall in time with the rain outside.

“Naomi!”

‘Gnrrrrrrrr...’

Naomi rolled like a restless beaver in her goose-feather stuffed sheets as the low daylight began its regimented Sunday march through the fog that had erected a last stand outside her curtains. Her head felt terrible. Why had she listened to Emily, her only passable, remaining friend (if you could call Emily that) in Millicent, that a trip to the Soggy Biscuit (1908 Winner for the 'Most Mildly Amusing Public House Name' in Wiltshire �" no one remembered why) would be the swift cure for a bad knock and all that. With a sharp scowl Naomi joined in the Sunday communion prayer with legions of people around the world and vowed, once again, never, ever to drink again as she fought back the urge to throw up. Pulling her pounding head up, Naomi’s lip gloss and foundation had formed a small, sickly effigy of herself on the pillow. Naomi plunged her head back into the pillow mask, trying to avoid the inevitable second call.

“Naomi!!” cried the achingly, perfectly-tuned-to-rattle-a-child-out-of-bed, shrill call of her mother again. It was as welcome as the shipping news must have seemed to the Spanish Armada halfway up the English Channel. Naomi's thoughts, such as they could be gleaned beyond the grip of her almighty hangover, were swimming in a mixture of reflective despair and bafflement at the news yesterday. Digesting the news had been a difficult enough task. One she was dreading with all her soul from telling her parents. Their child, the star daughter of the keystone family of local (severely local) high society, the one who had been destined for great success was now hobbled before she had even begun to crawl from beneath the belly of the Flaking family name and its overbearing, success-laden reputation. Naomi had imagined all those faces of her ancestors must be forming a collective raised eyebrow and mutter of that dreaded word, disappointment, at her; ready, as any Flaking would be, to pounce with their derision and shame the moment she confessed to her parents.

Punching her mattress as she half-contemplated suffocating on the pillow, Naomi had been dreading this more than anything else in her life, even more than when she had failed to be picked as first chair for the violin at Poorly’s school for Girls in Year 10. Even, yes.. even more than having to tell her Father that the very expensive ceremonial cake they had imported from Switzerland for Naomi's graduation (double first, History of Art) would be needing extra icing over certain pieces. The exquisitely carved cake, colourful as it was, had clearly been destined for another, more risqué, ceremony, one that probably involved whips and leather masks that were certainly not a part of Naomi's graduation. It had taken weeks to get the sweet raspberry filling smell out of Naomi's mother’s hair, who had performed an Olympic winning dive as she fainted, with the grace of a drunken penguin getting out of a sunflower-oiled bathtub, face-first into the, er, icing-sugar dusted bosoms. Naomi had been impressed, until her mother defiled it with her theatrics about how well the white chocolate teats had survived, perfectly pert, all the way from Zurich.

Damn. The bedroom wall was still very much in front of her, much to Naomi's vodka-laced chagrin. She had spent the last ten minutes in vain trying to teleport herself to Fiji away from parents, away from careers and away from this sugaring hangover. With no immediate prospect of magical powers or Armageddon, Naomi knew that she was going to have to face the music. Such an odd phrase when you think about it she thought, having always liked the thought of any music beyond Harry's woeful guitar efforts. You’re just trying to delay the inevitable mocked her subconscious at her as Naomi rolled over onto her front. Shut up before I have another sugaring shot for breakfast Naomi cursed back silently as she covered her face with her hands. Her subconscious, however, was going to have the last laugh and she knew it: another call from her mother and her Father would drag her down with a tirade at her disrespect, disobedience and all-round youthful laziness. And that was hardly going to help the failure bombshell digest. Sigh. At least this time, Naomi considered with a wry, macabre smile, she would remove her mum’s breakfast omelette before mother Flaking attempts to find out her head size in Spanish egg with matching shell frills.

§

Naomi was perched mournfully on the end of her bed. For once, a beautiful day had elected to show a bit of leg from behind the grey clouds that usually molested Millicent. It had been six weeks since Naomi had told her parents about the collapse of her career. They had taken it better than Naomi thought they would; her mother hadn't fainted and the bottle of whiskey that her Father had opened for elevenses before Naomi broke the news was still going. Of course Harry had burst out laughing at her over the table when he had found out, guffawing in the most annoying possible way only a younger brother could; well until the spoon Naomi had expertly thrown had given him a well deserved black eye. Naomi suspected her parents were in denial about their unemployed daughter but she was happily taking the bliss it offered over the bulbous amount of sympathy, which was really just polite guilt-tripping, and lecturing she had expected.

However, Naomi knew the unexpected supply of placid truce from her parents was running itself down with each passing ground-hog day. Initially brimming with self-confidence as she fired applications to all the banks she knew of, Naomi had resigned herself to a rank level of pessimism. With no replies, not even rejection letters, Naomi's Father had suggested she might broaden her applications beyond the banks. Obviously Naomi had refused in public, defiantly declaring that she would not just give up on her dream (and the pay level she knew she deserved), but in private, she had applied for all manner of jobs: law, advertising, retailers, even to some of the government positions her less ambitious and soon-to-be-a-lot-poorer-than-me university acquaintances had applied for. To Naomi's horror, the wall of silence had been just as impregnable as the world of finance. Fudge, fudge, fudge!

Naomi, still in her silk pyjamas, hauled herself to the window and looked out onto the morning air brushing across the back lawn. A fat chaffinch was happily chirping as it played about in the autumn leaves that had begun to fall from the tree her childhood swing still hung from. Blast! The rock Naomi had thrown only just missed its bulbous body by a few centimetres, the bird seemingly unaware of her petulant malice. Since being marooned in Millicent, Naomi had gathered a pile of sharp missiles on the bookshelf beside her window for dealing with such 'serene' moments in life. “Oh how pretty!” muttered Naomi bitterly to the idyllic world in front of her. The fat chaffinch began chirruping its irritating mouth more loudly as another, rather more malnourished sibling landed in the leaves to play beside it. Scowling viciously, Naomi grabbed her grandmother’s favourite, poorly-conceived copper mug �" it had a handle, if you could call it that, which even a baby couldn't put its fingers through �" that Naomi had been given in her grandmother's will (great, thanks; now what about the ermine shawls and your collection of pearl necklaces?) from beside her reserve rock-pile and launched it into the air with all the accuracy of the first-team lacrosse player that she had been at school. With a satisfyingly loud what-the-hell-was-that set of squawks and shower of feathers Naomi jumped back onto her bed, resuming the miserable wallowing self-pity that had occupied her every waking moment since the phone call. A loud thunk echoed from downstairs broke the sickeningly sweet calm of the perfect day that suffocated her.

“Naomiiiiiii, get the mail would you petal!” ordered her mother from the sitting room. Sigh.

With the begrudging stir of a defeated sulker, Naomi dragged herself downstairs, morose creaks of the oak boards hollering out as she thumped heavily downstairs, silently protesting at doing anything at all with each disconsolate, trudging step. Her mood, however, changed rapidly when she realised what had fallen through the genuine gilt-edged (her mother's idea) letterbox. In front of her lay, like baby Moses, a large, heavy-looking black envelope, sheered in silver around the edges with her name on it. A bit nu-romantic Naomi thought as she picked it up, but it had to be a job reply. Maybe it was one those magic-circle law firms that her Father had tried to get her into - Murder & June? With a returning sense of power and joy that she had sorely lacked in recent weeks, Naomi opened the envelope with a crackle as the glue parted, revealing a dusty, ivory letter inside, which read:

Dear Naomi Flaking,

I was delighted to read your letter of application to our organisation. You are invited to an interview (at your expense) at our office on the 19^th of November, 2012.

Yours Sincerely,

Vivek Moody G.R., MOD

M.O.D

Naomi's heart deflated in an instant. It was a reply from one the blasted government jobs she had applied to in desperation. Not exactly the path to riches she had dreamed of. And it was the civil service: full of people who resented her upbringing and would revel in the suffering of daddy’s poor little rich girl. Tasting the bitter dislike in the centre her mind, Naomi contemplated burning the letter outside before her parents found out.

“Sugar this,” muttered Naomi as she went to slip the letter under her top �" but it was too late. “What is that you have there Naomi?” her mother half-asked as she snapped the letter with the unnerving pace of a seasoned village busybody from her daughter's hand. Naomi watched as her mother scanned through the letter quickly, turning her minuscule pout into the tiniest of thin smiles as finished it.

“Oh, but this is brilliant news Naomi! I am so pleased, the Ministry of Defence is a highly regarded place for one to work,” announced her mother, secretly unfurling the flag of relief to respectable society behind the warmth of her yes. “Are you not pleased?” her mother added quickly, looking at the blank, uncommitted stare on her daughter's face. “You must be! Where is your father? He will be most proud to hear of this!” she chirruped in a similar manner to that fudging bird outside according to Naomi's ears. Sighing, Naomi smiled weakly as she relented to the inevitable. “Oh, it’s excellent news.”

“Well, with any luck, they will take you on in these most difficult times my child and we can put.. these difficult events behind us.”

“Yes mother.”

“Bernard!? Bernard where are you? Naomi has news! Where has the doddering fool gone I don't know”. Naomi's mother looked back down at her morose, brooding daughter, now sat on the stairs, playing with a curl of her hair.. “Now Naomi, it may not be quite what you were hoping but a government job will bring you many worthwhile contacts �" and dashing men,” said her mother with a jovial tut as she swatted away Naomi's hand from her own, which was now deeply embedded in her daughter's hair, handing Naomi the letter back the letter, stroking her child warmly.

Naomi rolled her eyes with a thick pout of dissatisfaction. Her mother raised one eyebrow sharply, but then softened to a smile and gently stroked Naomi’s left cheek, darting off to find Naomi's Father. Resigned to her fate, Naomi re-read the letter once more. The cheeky sugarlumps were asking her to pay her own way too! Ok, so money wasn’t an issue for any Flaking, but the thought of paying for an interview only served to confirm Naomi's fear of the penny-pinching drudgery in public service. It certainly didn't cry out a salary that would keep the horses (Grace and Matilda) that she wanted to buy next summer. Ha, I probably couldn't even afford the shoes they would need, let alone buy a pair of decent ones for myself. Ergh.

In scorn at the prospect of a life of dull, brand-free penury, Naomi dropped the letter dismissively against the towering grandfather clock beside her and made for the kitchen while her mother was away. Hmm. To celebrate her 'success', there was always a chance that some of the late-night salvation cigarettes, which her Father hid around the house from her mother, were about.

It was at that moment (one never to be repeated because the Universe liked unique things �" if only because anything that started with a 'U' must be good), as Naomi's feet left the carpet for the smooth floor of the kitchen, the light of the warming sun's brilliance glanced a perfect blow off the bronze cogs and dimes in the grandfather clock behind Naomi, creating a shimmering golden blanket that filled the hall with its radiant warmth. If Naomi had stayed but a moment longer she would have seen the silhouette of a skull lightly engraved over the whole letter. (Far away the Universe held back a fit of unseemly rage and if anyone could see him, tears. And people wondered why it didn’t listen when nobody appreciated his hard work and dedication to timing on dramatic effect! Honestly, you just can’t get the audience these days. Now the Aztecs, they knew how to appreciate a good bit of sunshine...).

But Billy the cockroach had seen it. Surprised by the sudden flurry of daylight billowing through the hallway, Billy had taken a peak from his shelter around the floorboards beside the grandfather clock. The skull’s eye-holes swivelled as best they could on flat paper to look at Billy as the cockroach walked on top of the letter, pausing in the middle of it. Billy didn’t know what he saw and couldn’t tell anyone because cockroaches couldn’t talk - could they? Billy wasn't sure.

Cockroaches couldn’t talk Billy's mind replied to him.

The skull agreed, nodding with its grin.

Cockroaches can’t see.

The skull nodded again.

Billy pretended the last few seconds of his blissfully uneventful life so far had never happened.

The skull winked. Good boy.

Confused, Billy cocked a leg and relieved his anxiety upon the letter.

$

Naomi frowned at the small stain on the letter and folded the letter back into the black envelope under her snow-white coat. A gust of sharp, Autumn wind almost stole the envelope, yet she grabbed firmly at the slipping parchment before it could be torn away. Naomi readjusted her hat and re-composed herself. She stood staring up at the sanguine pitch black door in front, guarded from both sides by imposing white pillars that were all too common (when surely the point was differentiation? Naomi did not get it) to houses in the west end of London. An aura of staid, perennial power and a hint of arrogance emanated appropriately from this government building, Naomi reasoned. A crack of lightning was fighting in vain against the smog of light-pollution that had enveloped the city in these early hours of the morning. Naomi rolled her eyes at such a cliché (That's it! The Universe thought, I can’t work with these people any more!); it was as if the old city knew how to add poorly constructed suspense from a Youtube-budget horror film. Naomi was restless and yet the rain didn’t bother her, in fact, she had relished seeing an it-girl with ripped tights and tartan rimmed sunglasses losing the battle with the English weather.

Naomi refocused upon the black government door and double-checked with the letter before politely, yet firmly, knocking. The door reverberated with an echo, indicating that the cost of the door was lying about its omnipotent looks. A shadow monetarily eclipsed the light inside before the door was heaved open, momentarily startling Naomi's eyes with onrushing light that deafened the early husky dark haze that she stood was standing in.

A short, dumpy woman with a friendly, aged face smiled down at her. It was a face that, Naomi knew, begged to offer tea. “Come in deary, get out of that horrid weather before you freeze! Come. Come” cooed the soft, brittle voice whose owner ushered Naomi over the threshold into the M.O.D. “Why thank you” said Naomi politely, smiling back at the suspected tea-profferer as she elegantly stepped into welcome warmth inside.

Naomi sat on the corner of a plump, green sofa that dominated the reception room. “ Tea?” asked the old lady. Ha, Naomi thought. “Oh Please, black-no sugar,” replied Naomi sweetly. “Oh one for the strong! Now you just wait there and I’m sure Mister Cod will be along shortly, he loves punctuality” winked the old lady before setting off to fulfil, Naomi surmised, her perennial destiny. Naomi watched the stereotype grey hair and fuddy flower dress disappear down the hall in front of her. Only the rather striking neon-pink lining behind the apron, which wouldn’t look out place at a rave, bemused Naomi. I suppose they take all sorts, she guessed. Naomi smiled to herself without humour and took in the room around her. Classically decorated, the room conformed to her government expectations. Slightly worn furnishings, large lights hanging from the ceiling, and paintings from a dubious (though glorious as her Father often recounted) colonial past. The room reeked of government so hard it was if it had been put on. Though perhaps that was the point. To one side the wall was dominated by a badly drawn painting of dogs chasing rabbits in a hunt. Terrible.

Naomi ran her fingers through her rain-kinked hair. She hated waiting, especially for an interview where the nerves had to be fought off in a mini-war with the self before the battle of impressing the would-be employer. Not that she ever failed. Despite this, Naomi's nerves quietly jingled in time with the china of tea cups that was coming closer toward her again from beyond the hall. Naomi looked at the hunting do �" ugly thing- and used the remaining sheen of cracked oil to smooth her hair to regain something passable beyond the wet tramp look that could be all the rage in the tabloids �" not something Naomi fussed herself with. Not until she was famous anyway.

“Jus' coming lovee!” cried out the aged, happy call of the old lady still out of view. Naomi liked the simple normality the lady presented in this place. Tea silver-service every day had a great appeal. Naomi may, just may, she realised, begin to warm to the idea of working with such quaint charms. Only public sector pay was terrible, a gilt-edged voice inside her reminder herself. Sinking back into the chair for a minute, Naomi felt the warmth of the old carpet through the edges of her heels. It felt suitably imperial, if fusty. The only word one could possible use would be: comfortable. Perhaps, she mused, life might not be so bad after all in the public service if the comforts are ok.

“Naomi Flaking?”

Mildly startled out of her thoughts, Naomi rose out the chair and quickly turned to the gruff voice that had boomed out her name sharply. Naomi looked down to see a small, 5ft man; one who had clearly mugged and stolen the voice of a disgruntled Army officer at least twice his size. The man peered up at her like a vet for a moment underneath a shock of respectable red hair. From the waistcoat to the deeply black suit (the kind of black that looked like it had been woven by blind tailors in a cave at the centre of the earth), the man brought forth a dusty authority from within him that more than made up for his vertically challenged existence. His expression quickly changed from the quizzical to a broad smile, and he brought forward his hands to greet her. The handshake's cold surprised Naomi.

“So lovely of you to join us” said the gruff man mockingly, though Naomi wasn't wholly sure if that was directed at her. Out of the corner of her eye, Naomi saw the tea in her mug reverberate to the man’s voice. “Flipping foul day innit? Apparently I should ask 'how are you', ha! Of course you are, you're bloody young” he exclaimed before Naomi had a chance to reply. “Flipping tea,” he cursed at his own cup gleaming in a treacle-like mess from the swirl of his own clearly self-satisfying biting quips. Naomi noted the very brown colour of the carpet and thought that the Tea lady had clearly invested a little bit of time making her own life easier. “Right, well we can't be bloody dawdling I suppose. Follow me Flaking,” said the man with a curt nod. Naomi grabbed her bag and followed man down the hallway.

“I am Randolf Cod, Mr Cod to you from now on, and.. blast, what does this flipping thing Vivek wrote say now?” cursed Randolf, glaring at what must have been writing on his hand. “Oh yeah, ha! First impressions inspired you girl?” said Randolf, resting a bitter, hazy gaze on Naomi’s eyes as if panning for gold in a pile of fool's gold. Naomi was taken aback at the foulness of Randolf’s tone. Randolf was not the pin-stripe civil-service smoothie she had expected. Nonetheless composed, Naomi launched into her award-winning, job-securing script. “Yes, excellent Mr Cod and thank you for seeing me so soon” Naomi beamed politely back at him. A sparkle caught the dark eyes of Randolf as he sneered at her false enthusiasm. Had she past or failed a short test? “No the pleasure, which I haven't seen in so long I may as well be a girl like you mind, is ours. Ha, that saying, it is bloody odd to see someone so young and.. well of your gender wanting to work here girl,” said Randolf, chewing on what looked like a nicarette stick that had appeared in his mouth.

Of course Naomi thought that Randolf was referring to the 'jobs for the Boys' that she knew was always being thrown in her way. Naomi hated any sense of sympathy for it. Any girl who couldn't beat a man was either stupid, sappy or in -yawn- love.

“Oh not at all. I suppose it has always been a thing for boys- I mean men- to want to work in defence,” she ventured as Randolf steered her through another worn corridor up to a large green office door.

Randolf paused and turned with a suspicious look engulfing his scowling gaze, boring deep into Naomi's eyes. Naomi wondered if she had somehow offended him as she tried avoid fully directly at the rude old man.

“Defence?” Randolf toyed with the word as if Naomi had offered to sell him a chocolate teapot. Naomi could feel a warm pit in her stomach slowly opening with nerves again. Randolf's scowling look began to unsettle her, but Naomi held firm through the bastion of her finishing school habits, drilled to instinct by the School. Still stationary, Naomi tried to fill the conversational chasm. “Well you know, this being the Ministry of Defence sir, careers like this may seem to put off (I can't believe that I am saying this) girls like me?”

Randolf’s gaze quickly changed from inquisitor to one of bitter warmth with a hint of amusement re-filling his hollow cheeks. Evidently Naomi had pulled her interview back onto the tracks. “The Ministry of Defence?” Randolf said, laughing to himself and then swept his hand in an arc around the unsuitably cramped hallway like a conductor. “What have they bloody got you in for? You've been had.” The wayward nerves in Naomi's stomach now gave way to a rare feeling in her life: creeping fear. “This ain't Ministry of Defence girl..not as such. This” �" Randolf tapped the wall with a wizened hand �" “is the Ministry of Death”...

...with absolutely no lighting, atmospheric or special effects to add to the drama whatsoever, apart the admittedly grim shine of Randolf's teeth as he grinned. Once slighted, the Universe was quite the big sulk really; and he never forgot �" ever.

$

Naomi looked out onto the lingering fog smearing itself against her reflection. What had just happened? Ministry of Death? The very idea was preposterous! Preposterous being the right word in this situation as her Aunt Mildred form Gollyford would nod approvingly. Mildred had been one of those unflappable women raised to shine with their double-barrelled names and never falter in public. How Naomi yearned for the denial of reality talent that such an upbringing could have afforded to only the very rich, politicians or referees. Aunt Midlred would have politely laughed at Randolf's obvious, yet poor joke, promptly dismissing the MOD as full of cranks. Yet here was Naomi with a large, gilded black box from the MOD with her name engraved in ivory against the black lacquer casing. A skull with a cross of keys �" the Ministry's oh-so subtle symbol spat Randolf- dominated the box, which stared back at Naomi with tiny red glowing pupils; pupils that Naomi had tried in vain to find where they had been powered from. Naomi didn’t find such things unnerving at first. Her feelings had quickly changed from suspicious bafflement to a minor rage when she was certain she had caught the skull's eyes, Naomi swore she just knew, trying to gauge her bra size at Didcot Parkway. With a plastic bag now firmly wrapped around the pervert box, Naomi sank back (mere millimetres, this was economy) into the railway chair and began to toss the ridiculous salad of events that had just occurred to her at the.. MOD. She couldn't quite bring herself to say its full name again.

Randolf had been brutally frank, though Naomi had still thought it was all one big absurd test. She replayed Randolf's words once more in her head. “The Ministry of Death has been in operation in one form or another since any poor bugger can remember. We've been working in the shadows of this country at least as far back as 200BC, where the records get lost by the Romans blah de blah or sommin like that,” said Randolf, lighting a cigarette with a match on the well-worn middle of the no smoking sign that had apparently been nailed to his desk. Naomi remembered herself sitting on her chair with the feeling of having her fortune told round the back of the Poundshop. She didn’t believe a single stupid word of what she was hearing. Randolf’s gaze across the solid desk of his seemed to agree with her radiating sentiments. “I know this must all seem rather strange but we rarely need to recruit publicly for positions within the MOD.. but more on that later,” added Randolf all-too hurriedly. Naomi made a mental note to be certain to ask why. “I’m sure you're wondering what the hell we do then.” Naomi simply nodded. “Well I can-” Randolf looked once more at the elusive script in the palm of his hand and began to laugh “-bloody hell this is tripe but it's too funny not to share, ha! I can tell you that 'we aren’t in the business of killing, but are most definitely in the business of death',” said Randolf, smiling at what apparently, judging by his tone was a gross understatement. Randolf's eyes seemed to agree with her embarrassment at the prose but pressed on, twiddling with one end of his navy grey moustache. “I’m sure this may seem flipping strange but the best way to explain this to you girl is that the dead are very much..what’s the word? Alive, I suppose,” Randolf continued, eyes sagging with annoyance at the notion. Naomi was unconvinced about what Randolf meant, or his sanity, and pondered making a dash for the door. Was she on reality tv? Randolf continued without regard for his bewildered charge, getting up to stride around the room in full smoke-pumping lecture. “The dead are not strictly alive of course; no, they are damn-well dead. However, it seems that some daft soul- no names- up there-” he gesticulated upwards with what Naomi in a less bizarre conversation would have noticed was conveniently his middle finger around his cigarette “-decided that there is indeed an afterlife of sorts in this world.”

“The Afterlife? A land of the dead?” replied Naomi with as much Aunt Mildred uncertainty as she could manage to grasp in her annoyed and confused mind. Some interview!

“Yer, it's where our other selves, or whatever they are. Sod it, it's all in the pack girl. You look like you can read,” said Randolf, tossing her a black box that had been perched on his desk. Naomi caught it firmly. She frowned at the box in her hands as if it were a bomb, which seemed to amuse Randolf in-between thick cigarette pulls. Randolf sipped his sloshing tea and continued the lecture beside the fire glowing grimly in the hearth. “I'll try and keep it simple as I know it sounds barking girl. It bloody well is, if that's any consolation. Anyroad, The land of the dead is split according to wherever you come from. Styx, Valhalla, or heaven, whichever you want to call it, each country has its own.” Why Naomi was dignifying this surreal conversation she didn't know, but continue she did. “You mean to say there actually is a heaven?” said Naomi in a manner as if asking whether Santa Claus was fake (sorry about that).

“Ha! Unfortunately, yer of course; although it’s probably not what you might imagine girl,” replied Randolf, watching her reactions carefully through a cloud of disgruntled smoke.

“What does that mean?” enquired Naomi, getting more annoyed by the minute with what must be the oddest, crackpot interview technique ever devised in the world.

“Well it's not all rainbow and sunshine happy la-la land dear,” said Randolf, with a feigning skip of mockery at the notion. “To be honest, it’s a bit drab, mild and for some reason, pale pink at the moment- think Blackpool without the lights at dusk after a Stag weekend and you might get me” said Randolf with a hoarse chuckle to himself as he stabbed his cigarette out onto the desk in a well-burnt spot.

Naomi held on to her cup firmly and, being quite sincere and logical, promptly refused the ridiculous nature of what the rude little man was saying to her. Right well, it was time to see how are he could spin this stupid story. I'll beat him at this interview that's for sure. “So, what does the MOD do?” asked Naomi with a look that she hoped conveyed clear dismissal of what Randolf was saying.

“We-” said Randolf returning to his sardonic theatrical conductor poise “-are the thin grey line between this, the land of the living and the land of the dead.” Naomi frowned. “The MOD’s remit girl is to prevent the return of Undesirables to our side, the land of the living. Get it?” said Randolf, watching her confirming nod with a glare. “You don't believe me do you? Good. Ha, I don't need any more insane people in this funny farm. It'll all become clear Flaking. Follow me,” said Randolf, offering the doorway at the back of the office to Naomi. Naomi got up from the leather chair with confident poise to follow the suspected madman into God-knows-what stupid next test he had in mind. Hopefully two burly men with straitjackets. Or, failing that: Aunt Mildred. As they marched down the poorly-lit corridor, Randolf continued to unfurl the so-called MOD to Naomi. “We work Day and Night, round the country, monitoring and recording the deaths of all British people. We highlight the bad eggs and then prepare to watch out for threats of escape from such Undesirables back to Blighty.”

“What exactly do mean by Undesirables?” asked Naomi, keeping a firm pace with the rather sprightly little man.

“Undesirables..ha, well they are the dead who we would rather never see come back. Ever. You know. Murderers. Serial Killers. Politicians. Bankers. My first students. Once they are Judged, we stop them from ever returning, ” said Randolf with a flick of his moustache as his words echoed around them, seeming to bend the light with their underlying venom.

“Come back?” asked Naomi more coldly. Where the hell are we going she wondered disdainfully as she followed him past one faceless green door after the next.

“The bond between the lands of the living and the dead is permanent for some damn reason. I know, think about plumbing and you'll get the idea. We stop the leaks, preventing any floods by the dead,” said Randolf wryly as he led her across a giant entry chamber to another ubiquitous hallway; his words fading into the dimly lit, far away sides.

“Leaks?”

“Aye, yes its been bloody Agreed since..well it has always been Agreed - for some blasted reason I don't know, as I wouldn't have to do this damn job - that the dead are allowed to visit the land of the living once every flaming year,” said Randolf unwavering in a more serious tone. “Call it what you will: The Day of the Dead, Halloween, Christmas, Easter..., all over the world these days are going on and it's the primary 'sacred responsibility'-” he bit into this notion with such a roll of sarcasm in his eyes, Naomi thought they might fall out were it not for the large bags underneath them “-for each MOD around the world to stop Undesirables returning through these damn ritual events.”

Naomi's mind was racing at the insanity of what Randolf was saying, but she knew that she could bow out at this trick or test. Wait till her friends find out about this new interview technique! No wonder the Goverment's up sugar creek without a paddle she thought, glancing at Randolf's clicking of his dark green boots.. which had neon sole underneath them...?

“Like who exactly?” enquired Naomi quickly after Randolf turned with an impatient look over her silence, which she parried with her sweet, politeness smile. He smiled back. “All sorts girl,” he replied, then catching her questioning eye, relented to divulge more as he reached for another cigarette. “Well there are the obvious ones: Most Roman Emperors, the drunk guy who asked for well done toast before the Great Fire of London, Mary Queen of Scots, Jack the Ripper, Hitler, Elvis-”

“Elvis!?” interrupted Naomi with an embarrassingly high pitched blurt of surprise. Damn it, that was a test, she was sure of it.

“Oh yer..the things you find out about people once they're dead.” Randolf let the idea float unsettlingly for a moment. “Well, you’d be surprised. Nice ditty or two for the pub though,” said Randolf dismissively, arriving at a new liquorice-black wooden door that he gently knocked upon, slightly out of breath from the flight of stairs they had just climbed, the trail of his smoke hanging back down like a guide rope.

“Why do the dead want to come back?” Naomi could not work out the hidden part of the test �" Elvis an Undesirable? What did that mean? This was enough codswallop that was just too ridiculous for any fudging job. Naomi's usually cold, logical (and slightly selfish) mind was getting to frustrated with Randolf's tripe. She would have to put a stop to this and go home in a minute if he didn't fess up. I'll give him one more stupid question she thought. One more and that's it. He can shove his Defence, stinking f**s and stupid bloody neon boots.

“The hundred pound question girl. The bane of my life and one that Frank can bloody well answer,” said Randolf, stubbing his cigarette out on the door that had a 'no smoking Randolf' sign at his exact eye-level on it. The writing shone out in the gloom in bronze and peach lettering, which happily ignored the surrounding plethora of black pockmarks that had been extinguished over the years �" or days given how many this man smoked Naomi guessed.

“And who is Frank?” asked Naomi leaning against the cool stone that had taken over from the wooden plush décor and wallpaper surrounding that had trailed with the mall the way towards this door. She let her right heel hang slightly from a grateful warm ankle. How far had they walked in this building? Naomi tried to picture the townhouse she had entered. This was certainly far larger.

“Frank is..well what’s the right word..,” said Randolf lost in his own thoughts as he fumbled with the blue door's handle, grabbing a torch beside it as he pushed it open. “Ha, I know, I suppose you could say he's an ambassador, or a turncoat; though don't let him catch you saying that.”

Naomi looked at him with a cynical frown that demanded an explanation. She had already worked out that Randolf was one of those people who liked to think that they were clever when they clearly weren't. And no one is cleverer than me old man. But Naomi didn't know that Randolf was in that small minutiae of people who knew that other people knew that people like him knew that they were cleverer than them.

“Frank's dead.”

Dead!?

With a crackling glow of the torchlight blowing through into the entrance, Randolf called out a greeting. “Frank! We have candidate,” he said loudly, fumbling for a piece of nicotine gum in his trousers.

“Maseltof! How absolutely delightful!” called a high-pitched, rambunctious voice from within the gloom that engulfed the new room with its cheerfulness. Naomi could barely see her eyelashes, let alone this Frank. “Sorry. Yes, living eyes need light. Sorry. Let me see.. ah yes..here we go!” The room erupted like a supernova, forcing Naomi to shield her blinded eyes. As the flashbang faded, Naomi saw that they were stood in a richly decorated room with four spectacular tapestries, each carrying a scene of some sort of battle, adorning each windowless wall. Aside from the tapestries the room was bleak. A stone desk engraved from long ago with what seemed to be a vibrant species of flower growing on top was the only furniture that Naomi could see. But that was not what gripped her attention. Near to the desk stood Frank. Dead Frank. A tall, heavy-set man with a thick, extravagant plume of swept back mid-length dark hair and a moustache that would have rivalled any grown in Movember. Frank immediately skipped, actually skipped, over to meet them, where he quickly bent in a bow, taking Naomi’s hand with an utterly freezing cold one of his own, and blew a kiss upon it daintily, though Naomi felt nothing.

“A pleasure to meet you..” said Frank, tilting his head to Randolf, who muttered ‘Flaking, Naomi’ in between angry chews. “..Naomi! So glad that you could join us here today! There is so much to do, I can not wait for you to start.”

Naomi resisted the urge to snatch her hand away from the icicle kiss. His hand and lips were amethyst blue and the ridiculous sunglasses the man called Frank wore were freaking her out as they lingered, sparkling a mirror (no bad thing she noted, seeing the smooth waves of her own hair) of herself into her eyes. This test was going too far. Dead? No flaky, grey skin. No bones and definitely no stench of a corpse she thought, remembering the smell of her grandfather and the home that he was in was like. In the back of her mind a fire burned. That's it, I've had enough. “I’m sorry but you do not seem very dead to me Mr Frank” she said sternly back to his happy face. Frank tilted his head and drew back up to his full, and rather large height. “Well now, haven’t we a confident one here? How rude Randolf!” said Frank, though more cheerfully than Naomi liked.

“Rude to you sounds good to me Frank. Besides, that's something we could do with in this boghole. Anyroad, Miss Flaking here came for answers and a wee bit of..proof,” said Randolf, cogs turning in his mind darkly as he smiled. I'm watching you old man frowned Naomi.

“Oh really? Charming! I see, well Naomi-” said Frank reaching up to his sunglasses with a thespian roll of his hand, “-now, do you?” he said with a flourish as he tore the sunglasses away in a flourish, lunging his foundation-laced face almost fully into hers.

To her credit, Naomi didn’t recoil at all, which Randolf appreciated with a grudging thin smile. Before her stood the empty mines of Frank’s sunken eye-sockets with two brilliant red rubies shimmering from deep within them, which flicked toward her in eerie beauty, each like a torch dropped down into well. Well that's a new one thought Naomi as she looked on deep into the brilliant eyes, dissecting them coldly with a frown. Apart from the time that her brother had swapped her Grandfather’s glass eye for a squidgy red nose on red nose day.. but this was hardly the same thing. It was too real. But dead? Anyone could get a pair of designer contacts these days. She wasn't falling for this so easily. “Cool. Nice lenses you have there” Naomi replied smiling back at Frank with a dismissive upturn of her eyebrows.

Frank pulled away haughtily, looking shocked at the ambivalence of Naomi but more so at the lack of any fear in her determined, controlled face. How odd, he thought. “Well I never, what has become of young ladies today? Are you suggesting I, who has been dead for over a hundred years, am a liar? How very dare you! I must say, where do you get these people Randy?” Naomi felt a pang of guilt at the scorn she had just poured on, after all, a blind man at the very least. And Randy? Brilliant.

Randolf dismissed Frank’s concerns with a quick wave as he flicked another piece of gum into his mouth. “Don't call me that. Well Flaking, you are quite the trooper aren’t you? A very strong spirit. You'll bloody need it round here. You need more proof, don't you girl?” he ventured between thick chews, popping a bubble of gum like a kid as he smiled at Naomi who didn't approve. Stop calling me girl you ugly old fart!

“Well red contacts and a man who's spent too long with his hands in the freezer are hardly the sign of the living dead. Mentally unstable, I might give you that,” replied Naomi sarcastically, long giving up on any prospect of a job with the bonkers men in front of her, folding her arms. Was she cold? The hairs on her skin stood free away from her arms with a thick tail of goosebumps. Well I'm certainly not intimidated by these weirdos, reaffirmed Naomi to herself.

Randolf shared a look with Frank, whispering something inaudible to Naomi's keen ears. “Oh. my. Do you think so Randy? Is that not that a bit too soon?” replied Frank with a sucking in of thoughtful air, hands on both broad hips. Randolf looked Naomi around. The 'around' look she saw on neighbours at the cattle market weighing up a prize calf. “Stop calling me that,” said Randolf irritably. “Though one’s like this always need a wee bit more.. convincing. Oh yes, I know your type Flaking,” said Randolf waiving a yellowed finger in the air at her. He should really file his nails noted Naomi as she scowled at the protruding, scraggly finger.

Before Naomi could add to this by give him another acerbic reply, Randolf grabbed a pair of Bright neon pink gloves from behind Frank's desk and threw them with venom at Naomi. “Here, put these on,” he demanded with a tone that implied it wasn't up for debate.

“Why?” asked Naomi, nevertheless slipping them on. Hmm. Surprisingly comfortable thought Naomi, feeling the warmth return back into her hands. Only the warmth seemed to be flowing from her fingers and then through her palms..? Sugar. Where was that draft coming from? Her warming hands had only served to remind the rest of her interview (assets and weapon defining) dressed body how cold it was. Naomi ignored her protesting body and concentrated on out-frowning Randolf. She had by now utterly forgot the surreal reality that she had come for a job interview only two hours ago; and was now trying to prove this stupid 'dead' test was not going to defeat her.

“Because Flaking, we're going to the Land of the Dead, and your time hasn't come yet �" or probably anyroad,” said Randolf, quickly checking for something evidently important concealed in his inside pocket. Probably more of those rank cigarettes guessed Naomi as she rubbed her arms, annoyed at what her ears were having to tolerate. Brrr. Just give up you sad old man. I'm not going to fall for this, so put the heating back on! “And how exactly are we supposed to be doing that then?” demanded Naomi flatly with a shiver, revelling in the certainty of nonsense in the back of her mind. Randolf scratched his now red and veiny nose. The world went black for Naomi. Had she still been conscious, Naomi would have been shocked to hear the crackling shot of Frank’s pistol behind her.

$

“Ow! Bloody hell woman!” cursed Randolf reproachfully, rubbing his cheek where the burning impression of Naomi’s hand was raising like freshly bread baked by the devil on his acne-scarred cheek.

“There was no need for that! And you're lucky you're not even an Agent yet or I'd have you bloomin' sent down for insubordination!” barked Randolf as he rubbed his singing skin. Frank was giggling to himself in a safe, anti-slap radius that he had drawn invisibly from Naomi.

“In any case, it was Frank who bloody shot you, not me” added Randolf with a glint of accusing, spineless glee at the man mountain behind Naomi. The malevolent rage of Naomi’s floor-burning turn caused Frank to recoil into a mock-shield from her. Naomi was incensed. Well she had every right to be! She had just been shot �" no, murdered! Drawing upon all excess capacity for one-upmanship that she had learned by having a younger brother, Naomi ignored the mock-cowardice of Frank and returned to her make-up mirror examining the mess of what was left of her left side (the good one; it always was when men did something wrong). It had taken Naomi a few long moments to find her eyes in the new haze that had enveloped her. Immediately in non-panicking Flaking fashion, Naomi had found the burgeoning hole where her left ear most definitely should have been. All wet, gooey-sorry no- spongy, Naomi felt the warmth of her own blood caress her fingers; and what also unfortunately could only be the light throb of her own brain. Ergh. She had to fight the urge to wretch and, far more importantly, conceal her true panic from Randolf and Frank, who would not see the fear of a Flaking in distress before them. Admittedly, Naomi even had to allow her mouth to hang open when she felt her newly acquired air-conditioning vent begin to reseal itself around her finger. At least that's what she thought it was doing. Aunt Mildred always said to never argue with a scab. And Naomi was not in the least bit intrigued to know what exactly what was going on around there. She simply allowed whatever was going on to calmly nudge her finger out from where no finger should be. You just died, Naomi couldn't help but re-tell herself. The whole thing was a clusterfudge.

Randolf had half-expected Naomi to faint on arrival in the Land of the Dead; but Naomi had long held true that she would never act like a simpering b**b. It was Randolf’s mistake to pat her hand when she was coming�"to that had resulted in his new facial tattoo.

Naomi had always resented the wafer-thin veneer of politeness that masked such sexism in those acts. She had always been an ardent feminist, determined to challenge male 'dominance' wherever she could. Though she was not one of these bra-burning, hairy-pitted vegans that gave feminism a bad name. Girls like Lucy Chavsworth at school, who spent her days preaching against the natural rape by men in their leafy quad and her nights carving Russian dolls out of potatoes. Vegans. No, Naomi reasoned long ago, feminism, real feminism used sexual power with the stupidity and the dribbling fawning of simple men for pretty legs as a perfect, lazy weapon that brought easy rewards. The female body was the best weapon of mass destruction to have ever defeated men �" one only needed to know how to use it. In Naomi's case, this had become weaponised when her chest had swapped regular flour for self-raising in her teens.

Naomi relished the pure power that a woman could use from her, and in her own case she knew, exquisite appearance. An excellent tool, far more powerful than any other, and one worthwhile lesson she had learned from her mother. And that was secondary to my intellect, Naomi often added to herself. Poor Lucy though. It hadn’t surprised Naomi when they found the late Lucy in her room. It had taken the coroner three days to find the cause of death - a rather oddly shaped potato jutting from where no potato had previously been (outside of Norwich). Even now, Naomi could not watch a baked potato being split without a wince.

No, instead of fainting, Naomi had, post-slapping Randolf, instead found herself hearing the gentle slosh of water. And there in front of her, on what her hands and eyes had worked out was some sort of wooden boat, stood a tall cloaked man, holding what looked to be a scythe at the stern of his boat. A skeletal hand came out from with the forlorn cloak.. and waved meekly at her. Was she going mad?

“What �" who is that!?” demanded Naomi, scrambling away from the figure; not very far though as the edge of the tiny vessel quickly dug into her back. She stared angry and slightly (barely she would say later) terrified, watching the faceless cloak stare back at her..happily. At least she thought it was.

“Flipping hell. Remind me to put me specs in my bloody case Frank,” said Randolf, irritably picking gobbets of desiccated Naomi from his glasses like unwanted hairs.

“Randolf! What is that. Right now!” said Naomi sternly again, casting an accusing finger at the skeletal cloak, whose occupant just stared back at her in a blank way; one that was more than mildly disturbing in a fat pervert, not axe murderer bearing down on you kind of way. For all its foreboding, it reminded Naomi of one of those things that you found in the pound shop at Halloween.

“Hmm?” muttered Randolf in reply, more attentive of satisfying himself that Naomi's debris would no longer congeal further into his clothing than what she had to say. He glanced over at the cloaked skeleton without interest.

“Oh that...”. Randolf seemed to contort; half embarrassed, half-irritated “..THAT, well now how's your theology girl? What ta say..hmm”. He stroked his moustache as he lit up a slightly damp cigarette in the incandescent gloom. “Well I suppose .. well it may seem like a crock of the brown stuff but that-” he said pointing his finger at the now waiving again cloak- “is God.” Naomi could feel her braincells pause.

“God!?” Naomi's mouth snapped, the words registering across her synapses with all the shock of the Women's Institute turning up at a nymphomaniac conference's foam party. God, the second-second hand skeleton?

“Yes Naomi, the glorious L--”

“Pain the bloody arse if you ask me,” trundled Randolf over Frank abruptly. “Of course it's not the almighty per se” said Randolf, casting his arms back comfortably around his head as he lent against the port side of the boat. “It's his- what's it called again Frank? You know all that old guff better than me. Megablon? Metatron? ..Metatron! That's it. After he puts you back together with all your innards where they should be �" though check, cos he often forgets what's where �" he takes you down the river to Styx..or 'Heaven' if you'd like,” said Randolf with a hollow laugh.

Styx? A long forgotten lesson about Greek mythology tried vainly to come to Naomi's mind. Being originally too boring, it failed and left Naomi frustratingly ignorant. Naomi was..well damn annoyed more than disbelieving right now. She knew enough about religion thanks to her mum forcing her to Sunday school. But God's voice? That? It would make even Millicent's fanatical vicar cringe. She looked at the Metatron with frowning disdain. His cloak was haggard. Some of it was so worn it had holes in it �" she was certain one gap even had a Fairtrade sticker from a banana covering it. Even the scythe looked dowdy. Naomi suspected that it was made of foil. She couldn't see its feet but she was certain there wouldn't be any thing on them. Carrier bags possibly? Ridiculous. Randolf caught her gaze with sympathetic rolling eyes of worn-out-at-explaining-this-to-too-many-people exasperation.

“I know girl. Personally I feel it's poor taste keeping him on like this.”

“Meaning?”

“Well it's hardly what you would like to see when you finally die is it? Your first moment in the afterlife? It's embarrassing,” sulked Randolf. “Imagine it: there on the battlefield or saving some gorgeous, fully-figured..perky damsel in distress (Frank sniggered) and you get killed, only to be greeted by a face so vapidly pathetic he looks like he should be on the back of a milk carton. Awful,” said Randolf grumpily scowling at the Metatron, who seemed to be genuinely jolly to have company on his little black boat. Naomi looked around the austere ocean that surrounded them, and then up at the sky, looking for something to please wake her up from this inane dream. In the distance, she saw lights and shapes of buildings outlined against the pink sky that hung high above them.

“This is the Metatron?” said Naomi, disbelieving. What this is, is ridiculous, Naomi's conscious pounded into her brain along all her neurons.

“Yer, I agree girl. Apparently He has been like this for going on a hundred years.” said Randolf taking in another thick drag, disgruntled. “You know Death? Well obviously you don't know him yet but you know who I mean. All big skeleton, powerful..slowww..voice and proper fear-inspiring scythe? “Well Metatron here-,” he said the name as if he had found more than just snot in his nose- “is his brother. Bloody inbred one and all if you ask me. He was brought in to replace- replace!- his brother to make people feel 'happier' about dying. I know, what a crock of piss,”concluded Randolf, eyes wide and nodding with Naomi's disbelieving stare. “Poor taste Up There” he added, looking up miserably with a sneer and spit over the side of the boat.

“Well I think Metatron is just delightful” offered Frank in justification. “Soo much better than that old, bad-tempered angel. Honestly, you never had to deal with him and his superiority complex. Very unsettling after you have just suffered the worst trauma of your life,” he added, folding his arms.

“Was he really that bad?” asked Naomi, trying to avoid looking at the Metatron's lack-of-face face, which she was sure would somehow remind her of a kicked puppy.

“No! He was born for this job,” said Randolf excitedly. “Giant, fear-inducing bones; flaming red eyes burning the sin out of your soul like this!” said Randolf pulling his eyelids wide as ashen teepees. Naomi coughed, felt a little bit sick seeing the back of yellow-tinged old eyes.

“Oh yes and he was stylish. Fetching vermilion midnight cloak with sparkly sword covered in the beautiful blood of the ancients.”

“Well a bit more foreboding than that Frank, but he wasn't all: 'Hi, welcome to your afterlife. Have a nice stay' like that skinny runt suggests. Death had gravitas,” nodded Randolf sagely to himself.

“Really?” said Naomi for once agreeing with Randolf, rolling the idea of a giant skull with blood-dried sword in her mind. She hadn't died before (well I probably still haven't, and this is all a stupid dream but anyway) but Death seemed like he would be far more appropriate than meeting the jolly Metatron once she keeled over. Naomi was certain she would be one of those refusing to let her body go if this diet-Death was there to greet her.

“Terrible colour clash though in my mind. Red and black? Very gaudy if you ask me” added Frank with a conspiratorial wink, his terracotta eye-shadow gleaming. Where did he get that from? Wondered Naomi. Sighing, she avoided looking at the Metatron, who had somehow thought bobbing his head along to a song was the right idea at the moment. Randolf meanwhile gazed out beyond Naomi across the barren black sea, hands flapping from one point to another like an angry teacher at the lectern as he spoke.

“Apparently, He got the idea from some PR- don't ask me what that is- joker who kicked the bucket in London a few years ago, and recommended that he should 're-connect' with his 'audience' as people were losing 'love' in him these days. Having Death as your greeting didn't put the 'love of God' into you said the Dead in some flaming survey that He let that meddling bugger carry out. Death put the fear into you too much- too much I ask! Apparently it just doesn't encourage people to be faithful any more, even when they're already dead! What does it matter? You're dead now, there was no need to change things. Honestly, I told him after his last outing as the nice guy with 'love and peace' and all that; people weren't going to take him seriously any more I told him- up here or back there,” moaned Randolf with a flick of a sad end of his f*g into the water, which fizzed briefly and then sank into the night with a silent pop.

Crackers. Absolutely insane. Naomi's internal sensibilities had had their brains turned into a mush cut into a thousand pieces of bemused confetti. Well no more. She drew herself into a haughty imitation of her mother, opened her mouth to scold the idiocy of the present situation.. except Randolf interrupted her with the grace of those who love the sound of their own voices.

“Anyway Flaking,” barked Randolf. “What do you think of Styx? First impressions?” he asked, nodding half absent-mindedly at the buildings that were slowly closing in front of him out of the haze. The question took her away from the idiotic Metatron. She turned, silently cursing that she couldn't deal her haughty card but still dealt firm authority into the spin upon her sleek heel into the damp wood beneath them.

Heaven. So this is it. It wasn't quite what she had imagined, or anyone for that matter, she mused. If that was heaven it certainly wasn't the fluffy white clouds of angels that Mildred had painted to her when she was five in one of her too-frequent visits. Aunt Mildred had painted, and at length with the aid of Father's claret, a chalky, half-baked vision of heaven to her growing and alert ears. Naomi had sat there clutching Mr Wuffles (and how she missed him! Maybe he was here..) with all the grip she could manage as Mildred droned on, dredging ever deeper into the goblet. It was when Aunt Mildred began talking about oiled, winged eunuchs with big, blue eyes that Naomi firmly believed later on that she had taken her first mental scarring for life.

Naomi held her head high and smelled the still, slightly-off air, hoping to convey magnanimous poise across to the boat's crew, if you could call them that, as she surveyed Styx. It reminded her of Slough. Or what Slough might be if she ever had the misfortune to go there. In fact that felt a bit harsh. Styx, to Naomi, seemed to be the illegitimate child of Durham crossed with Slough. Focusing her eyes (her contacts felt odd, scratchy) a giant, bleak city of rake-thin spires and and lumpen towers loomed over other squashed buildings. Each tower glistened with the glass of diamond soft rain that fell amongst the feint sun. A select few black towers, dominating the skyline as Durham's Cathedral did, oozing power with their blunt and well-kept masonry rose high into the pink sky between the canopy of deliberately dowdy brown rooftops. Styx carried an aura of unfriendly contempt over it, which Naomi found �" well oddly dull. Yes, that was it; it all seemed a bit morose for her liking. The heaven she had envisaged with Sunshine, white wings and clouds in her mind it wasn't.

“Quite something isn't it?” said Randolf, seemingly revelling in her face's obvious displeasure; and disturbingly close enough that she could smell the horrible odour of his smokes as he shuffled up the boat's edge next to her.

“Well I wouldn't go that far,” replied Naomi coldly, folding her arms critically, edging away from him.

“Oh and why would that be luvvie?” Inquired Frank softly, legs crossed as he spun his fingers in his hands at the prow.

“Well.. I mean look at it; Big black towers, probably filled with big b-dark people in big black gloomy clothes, and probably say 'one' and 'thou' a lot in a grim and not too pleasant way..”

“meaning...?” said Randolf picking a final piece of Naomi's skin out his forest green cloak. Naomi noticed how unkempt it was. Not in an 'I don't give a damn about clothes way', more of a way a child keeps a toy long past its use, right into adulthood. It reeked of sentimental value.

“..well its just all a bit- drab and non-heavenly to me. Sorry I know I should be more..impressed but I don't like it. Sorry,” she said firmly.

“Oh now darling, well it always takes a shine to new faces �" and so does Metatron. He doesn't often meet many breathers apart from us, well, living agents. And the Almighty. Plus I know Metatron hasn't spoken to Him in decades. Personally, I think he might be bored of being the ferryman,” added Frank stroking his broad chin thoughtfully, genuine concern painted in each burning eye.

“Bored? The voice of God gets bored?” Naomi suspended the existing- and slightly underwhelming- madness of her surroundings momentarily. This was supposed to be the Afterlife. How could it be so drab and boring? The voice of God on a ship to heaven should be thrilling. But it felt like they had hired a prized entertainer for the kids' party only for the drunk balloon-animal maker to turn up instead. The whole mystique of the afterlife was wearing off quicker than her brother's cheap aftershave. And they hadn't even reached Styx yet. The Afterlife..it just seemed like such a joke! If only the people behind Intelligent Design could see this, they might have given up and formed the largest knitting society man has ever known instead. (The Universe didn't approve. Knitting was hard, and he had yet to manage threading a needle this millennium. Practising getting meteors through Saturn's ring had just not been helpful).

Cowed, Naomi sank down against the boat side as the Metatron steered them towards the nearest dock. Naomi looked down into the bottomless water that washed against the boat silently without so much as a ripple. Some death this is, thought Naomi. But why wasn't there a reflection?

$

Treacle.

The whole of Naomi's body reeked of burnt treacle so pungent even her grandfather would have left it for mould. She was back in the cool and more sumptuous anti-chamber of Frank's office, startled and slightly depressed at the great revelation of the God and the Afterlife. Was she that vain and pompous? Surely not. Naomi groped around her head, feeling for the healed hole where only her memory could vouch for her being shot. And then there was that queasy feeling of her mind being stretched like a trampoline as, well.. God's work apparently fixed her.

“Drink?” Randolf proffered a large green tea toward her with a conciliatory tone. Naomi took it gingerly. She was very thirsty and a good brew helped in all situations. As Naomi clasped a large gulp (she never slurped) down her throat, she followed Randolf's eyebrows shooting up in pure bafflement.

“Well, I never saw absinthe drunk like that before.”

The welcome warmth Naomi had thought descended from tea leaves was a ruse.

Fire! The word echoed in every pore of her body. Naomi ran toward Frank's ornate sink and buried her gagging mouth under the tap as fierce and fast as she could manage. Her mouth hadn't felt this bad since her college dinner dared her to eat a tablespoon of custard powder before the lacrosse Ball.

“Are you ok darling?” said Frank patting her gently.

“Nrrrk.”

“Oh you'll be right as rain in a moment girl, warms the heart” said Randolf with a worryingly happy gleam as he took his own rather large swig out of the absinthe bottle. “Frees the mind after re-incarnation. Back to sobriety in a spit. Don't have caffeine or you may come through too quickly again.”

“Grrn”.

The only sound that followed was a light (and somehow graceful, noticed the Universe) thunk.

Clang! The cage rattled under the black velvet cloth in distress from its fashionable placement atop a white granite pedestal. Naomi looked closer, her vision having returned to single objects from the chorus of sights that the absinthe had conjured for her. Naomi felt the painful jangle of the cage's hard metal deep in her skull. Why did anyone drink? She leaned in to peer under the cloth..

“Careful Naomi!” Frank warned quickly, sweeping a gentle oar of an arm in the way to abruptly block her inquisitive intentions.

“Leave it out you blithering baby, she needs to see one not like you up close,” said Randolf. Naomi saw warmth hidden within the gnarled confines of Randolf's speech. No matter what Randolf uttered, Naomi had quickly concluded the pair were a long- married couple, congealed together in bickering like any other.

“Relax, I shan't get too close.”

“See? She's sensible enough. Now slowly..”

Naomi barged passed Frank, whipping off the velvet in a flourish that startled Randolf. Behind it, Naomi had revealed a gleaming bright orange cage, and immediately dropped it as she placed her hands as hard as she could against her ears. Nonetheless the banshee shriek pierced past like an elephant through ricepaper. The din was horrendous; and probably the last thing she needed right now!

“Ah SHUT UP! Shut up you mangy thing!” yelled Randolf at the cage as he banged it into silent submission with a glaring neon pole that looked like a giant ladle. The cage shifted with fulsome rage and submissive hate. Greeting Naomi was a terrible and pitiful sight. The sunken eyes were shallow and coarse with dark, malevolent red pupils stabbing out from their pinpricks at her. Defiance glowered out from the mouse's face. Without shaking its spiteful stare she was disgusted at the weather skin that rapped around the dishevelled bones, which protruded like candles from a cake in broken, distorted directions. The near-fleshless body would make most models feel fat. What a ghastly creature thought Naomi, ignoring her own impulse to tear her eyes from the writhing angry famine before her. The mouse glared back with venom. Naomi's eyelids parted company with her eyebrows when, for all the world, the wretch poked its tongue out at her and cursed with a short squeak that couldn't be civil language in any part of the animal kingdom.

“Git!” snapped Randolf, smacking the cage much to the mouse's annoyance. Naomi glared at the snivelling creature. No mouse or man pokes anything at a Flaking.

“Is it dead?” asked Naomi before Randolf could jab his lemon-hued ladle into the cage.

“Well clearly.”

There was an animal Afterlife too? Suddenly all Naomi could think of was a goldfish being flushed down the loo. Good God.“But how is it still, well, you know, alive?” she asked, prowling around the cage like a cat. The mouse followed her with its hate.

“Ah yes, well with my rather skilful intuition, I have managed to craft this wonderful cage on your side of the world to ensnare their souls before they can depart and shake free,” proclaimed Frank rather proudly.

“In any case this-,” Randolf poked the cage with the smooth edge of the ladle, “-sums up what we do here girl. Of course we don't worry about microscopic vermin like this bugger. We catch our kind before they can run about causing mischief.”

“Personas non grata” winked Frank.

“Right..” Naomi looked at them without assurance. From what she had seen so far, The great policemen of Purgatory they were not. Despite his size, Naomi wouldn't trust Frank to harm a fly. And Randolf seemed more likely to suffer a collapsed lung than chase anyone down.

“Well, brilliant. And what happens when you do fail?”

A chill fell in the room across her hands, even seemingly dimming the lights down a fraction.

“We do not fail” said Frank with sudden coarseness. His tone was laden with a certainty that demanded no follow up. Naomi, however, was not one to be pushed about either. She kept walking around the cage, running her hands across the bars to emphasise her comfort �" well that's what she hoped anyway. The mouse and her fingers did a tango of near-bite and retraction as she went.

“But surely you must? Well I don't mean fail outright, but there must surely be someone, somewhere who must have got away?” she added with a small smile at the Agent's hardened faces. Telepathic cold stares were exchanged from the silent duo; the interchangeable looks of experienced tradesmen dealing with an outsider to their craft. Naomi felt like she had asked two upteenth generation farmers if cereal could grow their fields.

“We don't fail,” re-iterated Frank with a void emotion. Naomi found the lack of warmth wanting and slightly off putting, if impressive. It was if Frank and surrounded each letter with its own black hole.

“We've had hundreds of years at this, and no-one gets away. And we can't let that happen in any case. Ever girl. Ever,” added Randolf firmly.

“Can you imagine it darling? All those awful, terrible people coming back into our lives again; many were ghastly enough the first time!”

“Bleeding true enough. Though they will always try to escape the buggers. And we're always here to stop them,” said Randolf as he carefully lifted the latch off the cage door serving raw liberty to the mouse who glared at him scornfully. Naomi forced herself not to take a step back. What was he doing? The mouse made no move.

“From aeons past to now doth they try to reclaim what God hath given them,” said Randolf with an as yet unknown eloquence to Naomi as if reciting a treasured poem. “Well that's what my old hand used to say anyroad.”

“Come again?”

Randolf spat on the floor in front of him. “Right. I'll slim it down for you. Once upon a time, the Almighty, our ever-present dear leader, set the rules of life up.” Randolf smirked at Naomi's clear hatred of his patronising tone, but continued. “The rules were all quite obvious. Gravity, dark matter, how things come to spawn life, evolution from there on in, death, ya de yadah. Well, being the Almighty, and being all infallible, the Creator didn't think-” A look from Frank made Randolf pause “- I mean, didn't foresee that the gift of sentience might lead to some bugger trying to break them.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning? Ain't it obvious? I thought you were smart girl.”

“Randy, there's no need for that. What he means to say, Naomi, is that people are people. We want things at times that we can't have. We also want things at times we shouldn't.”

“Ha, yer. And that includes dead gits, no offence intended Frank, wanting to come back to life instead of remaining bloody dead.”

Naomi was confused. But what did that mean?”

“You two are still talking drivel. Why is that such a big deal?”

Rnadolf rolled his eyes as if he had, and probably indeed had, explained this on countless occassions.

“If somebody can break one of God's laws, then they prove that he's infallible. If they prove that God's infallible. Well, you won't need a clean shirt in the morning.”

“come again?”

“The final bloody curtain falls girl! The end of days. Armageddon. The End of Time!” said Randolf, waving his hands in the air, irritated. “We all go down the sink with the breach. End of. Boom.”

“So the dead coming back breaches this infallible law and causes the world to end?”

“That's right dear.”

Naomi was certain this was the plot of a film she had seen.

“And we can't have it happening again.

“Hang on, again!? What do you mean again?”

“Bloody mess that's what. It's happened before. Well the last time anyway.”

Naomi let out a long sigh. “Well go on, cough up one of you, how on earth can the end of the world have already happened once?”

“It has flower, you know your Big Bang? That was generated by the End of the world.”

But how can it be the end? IF it's the end, then that's it, end of.”

“Ha, if only girl. The Almighty's a sharp one, I'll say that. Yes the end of the world has already happened, but the blighter bleeding fiddled it.”

The look on Naomi's face was so cold to the idea of accepting this it would have given frostbite to volcano.

“Well I'm sure this will be a good one. How can God, the omnipotent Almighty, 'fiddle'?”

“That's exactly what happened. A rather ingenious loophole apparently. According to the annals of the Ministry, the Almighty created a new world at the exact same moment as the old one annihilated itself.”

“It was a fix girl, a crafty one. Devious. One I'd be proud of. The Almighty took the backwash of its muckup and poured it into this one. Hey presto, they're no longer fallible in the old world because they're no longer in it. Ergo, their infallible again.”

As the mouse attempted to chew its way through the cage's bars, Naomi tried, and it was try, to allow the bonkers apparent reality of life percolate in her mind. Immediately a thought grasped its query around her.

“But if happened once, how do we know it hasn't happened before?”

Randolf and Frank looked genuinely impressed.

“That's the brain I hired! I won't lie to you Flaking, at least not about this one, we simply don't know. Our stellar brains up there could have burnt the shirt with their iron a billion times before and we wouldn't bloody know.”

“How can we? The past world ended.”

“Or worlds,” chipped in Naomi. Frank nodded grimly, shaking the cage until the mouse let go of its pointless attempt to gnaw to freedom.

“Ha! Yep, or worlds Flaking. Anyroad, it doesn't bloody matter-”

“It doesn't matter? How many times the world has ended before!?”

“It doesn't bloody matter. What does matter is that this one doesn't end.”

“But if it does, surely it doesn't? It seems God can just pop another one out with a click.”

“Possibly.”

The way Frank said 'possibly' paused Naomi in her sneering.

“The thing is dear, we don't know. What if it doesn't work?”

“But God's infallible.”

“Yer, but in this world girl. What if the Almighty doesn't make it happen. Has an off day..”

“Oh please. An off day!? How can God have an off day?

“It might happen,” said Frank.

“Unbelievable,” was all that Naomi could manage in reply. Randolf wasn't even looking at her, engrossed in building his next cigarette. His whole body was fuming. But it was believable Naomi told herself. Right now, you are staring at a dead mouse, caged by a dead man, having been on a barge with the Metatron.

“Yep, sure is girl. But that's why we have to do what we have to do. If the rules get breached, especially this one, then that's us all playing the roulette wheel.”

Something still didn't sit right with Naomi.

“But why do you get to break it? This mouse? How does Frank, sorry, get to exist?”

“A very, ah, good question,” purred a happy voice from the doorway. Naomi could only see the silhouette of a man.

“Sod off William,” replied Randolf with a firm draw of his cigarette. There was annoyance laced with hate in his eyes. But that was nothing compared to Frank's. Naomi felt his whole body darken and become colder beside her, his eyes flaring in pure rage, the end of the cage he was holding bucking in his grasp.

“And it, ah, appears you have a vermin problem, added the voice. The disjointing pause irritated Naomi more than the clear arrogance in its tone.

“It's in a bloody cage William.”

“I mean, ah, your lumbering manservant, Cod” replied the voice with obvious glee.

“Get lost Tortfeasor,” snarled Frank.

Naomi watched as the voice stepped forward into the centre of the room. Its owner, whose face was locked in broad grin with perfect white teeth, was a man, roughly 30 to Naomi, with long blond hair and pointed nose. Naomi was usually a fan of black, but he was covered from head to toe in it: black shirt, black cloak, black boots. Everything was pointedly dark about him apart a small pin above his left breast pocket. It was a small white rose that seemed to hold his luxurious outfit together. Every part of Naomi instantly disliked the intruder. Well almost. The intruders hazelnut eyes locked playfully on Naomi and she felt the warmth, that warmth flow across her body. Despite looking like a bad extra villain from Shakespeare play, Naomi knew, thank you body, that he was very handsome. And the look on his face said it all: he knew it. Naomi was abruptly brought out of her errant thoughts by the intruder drawing a glistening dagger out from under his cloak, which he pointed at Frank.

“Or perhaps, ah, you should disappear zombie. It's not as if you, ah, should even exist.”

“Put it down William,” said Randolf in a flat manner as if he was repeating himself.

The gun itself was menacing yet somehow beautiful. It's wooden handle gave way to a long midnight blade whose hilt was a growling skull that screamed out the black blade from its mouth. Dotted around the whole thing appeared to be tiny gems, saffron, green and blue in tone as they caught the light.The weapon chilled Naomi more than its owner did.

“Go ahead and try. See where it gets you,” dared Frank, his tone laced with impending violence.

William Tortfeasor's grin beamed at the three of them, before giving way to a roll of his eyes, tucking the gun back inside his cloak.

“My, aren't you, ah, a grouchy oaf today. So unseemly when we have a, ah, guest,” said Tortfeasor, who turned to face Naomi, his hands now high with a welcome. “Welcome to the Ministry my lady. However did you get lumbered with this crank and his dog?”

Naomi didn't reply. She simply glared along with Randolf and Frank.

“Shy are we? Please, ah, forgive the lack of manners from these ingrates. Allow me to, ah, introduce myself, I am Captain William Tortfeasor,” he said offering his hand. Naomi glanced at Randolf, whose reluctant intake of breathe unfortunately also inferred that she had to return with her own hand. As she did, Tortfeasor tore off his glove with his other hand, clasping his surprisingly warm firm grip around her hand.

“And who might, ah, you be?”

“Naomi Flaking.”

“Agent Flaking, William,” Randolf added, though without much enthusiasm for speaking to him. Naomi noticed the glance over from Tortfeasor to Randolf wasn't all it seemed. Behind the glowing confidence and stupid, broad smile there was something darker, and something old. Naomi could see all the bruised marks of lingering resentment and hate behind Tortfeasor's eyes. It didn't surprise Naomi that when she looked at Randolf's, there behind his own apparent calmness was equal loathing and contempt.

“My, and she's had the misfortune to join you has she? Most unfair,” said Tortfeasor, turning a mock sad smile back to Naomi. Naomi pulled her hand free, not wishing to share another moment of contact with him. Tortfeasor watched it go with a small flash of annoyance, which soon gave way to his smile. “Unless, ah, of course, you have decided to dispense with your, ah, dog and replace it, Cod.”

Naomi heard the cage slam down with its prisoner's squeak behind her. Frank moving forward with heavy stomps to confront Tortfeasor only for Randolf's to come forward and stop him.

“Heel,” taunted Tortfeasor with a snorting laugh, delighted at the anger in front of him. Frank swore with a word Naomi didn't recognised, but Randolf's hand held as if it were a girder. Randolf took one last puff from his cigarette, throwing it at Tortfeasor's feet. Naomi smiled as the butt started to singe Tortfeasor's boot, who hurriedly flicked it off.

“Hey! Mind where, ah, you throw those foul things Cod. These boots are, ah, worth more than your dysfunctional existence,” snapped Tortfeasor. “Why don't you, ah, give it to your pet to chew?”

“Sir!”

Before Randolf could reply, a small thin, equally darkly-clad man had shuffled into the entranceway, offering a polite, snapping salute. Naomi could only see his slight frame; the haze of burning lights behind him hid his face.

“Yes?” snipped Tortfeasor at him, annoyed with the unwelcome interruption onto his stage.

“A..situation is emerging sir,” said the thin man in a hushed tone, carefully avoiding exposure into the light of his face.

“Bah! Very ah well. Duty's bell calls once ah more Randolf,” said Tortfeasor turning sharply to Naomi, cloak flowing all around him.

“A pleasure,” he said with a bow low enough that Naomi could make out the slightest bit of hair-dye just failing in its job at his roots. Ha!

“All yours,” she replied shortly, to which Tortfeasor smiled broadly.

“Very good. Adieu!” said Tortfeasor with one hand waving in the air as he made for the door. Naomi mentally dug a spoon into the back of his head as he left. She felt the loom of Frank approach behind her.

“What, apart from being a self-absorbed loathsome bore, does he do?” said Naomi after Tortfeasor had left. Annoyingly, a primal part of her thought he was a looker, but rudeness and darkness go hand in hand as Naom'is grandmother used to say. Naomi was proud of her snap judgements of character. And Tortfeasor was a man who would steal the umbilical cord from a baby.

Randolf and Frank smiled together at the rapid conversion to dislike by Naomi. Had they asked, she would have volunteered that only a cheetah driving a supersonic jet on steroids could have been slower but the Universe wasn't up for jokes right now. This was serious drama this he thought, munching on a nearby comet.

“He.. he is, regrettably, part of another section of the Ministry,” said Frank, feeling the adrenaline contract from his arms as he let the dead-catcher sag against his leg onto the floor.

“I apologise. I would rather have dealt with these things later but there's no sense now.”

“So..”? Demanded an impatient Naomi, hips held firm. Randolf sucked his teeth in displeasure at the thoughts he was fermenting.

“Billy Tortfeasor is head of a part of the MOD that was set up during your Second World War. Mistake by the Minister back then I say; scared of dead Nazis marching across the channel and the like. In any case, worse still, he never disbanded them unlike the other Ministries agreed to do so. Political landmine I can tell you. And that ain't the worst of it.”

“Now they can't be shut down at all Naomi. Apparently Billy's Father, his teacher and first of them, made it a clause of his section's founding that their status was beyond revocation to prevent double agents shutting them down. Bright b*****d.”

Naomi felt like she was getting somewhere though they were clearly very reluctant to discuss what this other section did. Naomi was fast learning she had to push the boulders of her questions uphill to get a fledgling straight answer. Randolf could see the thirst for knowledge gnawing at the edges from her pupils.

“Essentially Billy and his blaggards do what we do �" but in a completely different way.” Naomi watched Randolf pull onto his new cigarette deeply with some pain in his eye.

“They, what's the way to put it..well they, the bloody 'Specials' as they like to call themselves, don't catch the dead girl. They kill them. Or murder them to be exact.”

Silence hung from Naomi. What? How? And was it wrong that the logical part of her wanted to know how on earth you could murder someone who was already dead?

“All of them. No questions asked and no answers ever given. A breach occurs and they use it to eliminate as many Dead as they possibly can stretch the case to,” added Frank. Naomi kept her lips together for a moment gauging the gloom in his eyes. Horrified but fascinated, her look urged them to divulge more.

“What do you mean by kill..how?”

Frank took a big sigh at this, a tearful weight clearly rolling across his mind. Naomi felt a pang guilt in her chest. “Darling they are legalised killers, murderers. A death squad.” A butterfly crawled innocently around his feet. In vain it seemed to flutter up at Frank; but he was oblivious to this apparent naked kindness. Had he noticed, the butterfly was trying to tell him the Secret of Life. In a code handed down from caterpillar to butterfly for generations. For all butterflies they tried in vain to find someone, anyone who would understand them. Nice one God the Universe had laughed at that. She fluttered again but it was to no avail; the light blinded the three giants to her glorious revelation. Vainly she abandoned Frank and tried to call out to Naomi's feet instead. She hadn't counted that the designer heel above could move so quickly. A dainty, thought not deliberate, crunch buried the Secret of Life for another day.

“Really? How do you kill the dead?” asked Naomi cruelly, clearly forgetting that a giant dead man was talking to her right now. Utterly glued to the morbid detail, she paced round the table to the bubbling volcano of Frank.

“Look luvvie, it's not something I want to get into” he responded as she came uncomfortably close up to him.

“But how can anyone kill the dead?” demanded Naomi (she was riven with guilt later on) missing the shaking of Frank's weathered face right next to her.

“It just...”

“Just...?” Naomi asked impatiently and blindly ignoring the carnival of moral bells in her body trying to stop her putting her feet any further in it. Randolf behind considered that the after-life seemed to do all sorts of straight thing to virgins faced with a death they were never meant to see.

“It just isn't right,” continued Frank quietly. “It's against the Lore, well the Old Lore. What gives them the right to play God and grant anyone the True Death? Darling, there's already one to deal with without fiddling snakes like Tortfeasor to worry about,” he snapped. Naomi merely scowled at another hurdle thrown in her track to the expansion of her knowledge. Still blinded to the obvious, she readied another barrage of questions. True Death? I must know!

“Well I just don't see the problem then, after all, you work with them.. so it can't be that bad,” she ventured, calculating that moral equivalence would singe Frank.

“Well-”

“Well what? The dead are dead aren't they?”

“Yes but it doesn't mean we don't care dear.”

Ah.

The clang of her brain's memory catching up with her tongue caused Naomi to throw up inside her head. How could she be so sugaring pigheaded?

Randolf smiled darkly at her realisation as he made a new rollie from his weathered pouch. This was the good stuff, he thought happily, selfishly stealing a moment a peace away from Naomi's faux pas (He would never admit he knew such a pair of words out loud). This leaf he saved for special moments of..what was it? German weren't it? Schauder..? Sha.. oh sod it, it was good to watch the girl squirm in silence for once. She was coping well. Very well compared to the last ones; and she might, if she can handle all she's learning, make a bloody good agent. But even so, bright new flames need to get caught in the wind a few times, as the Minister put it. Drop 'em down their own well of crap and see if they crawl out smiling Randolf had offered instead. The Minister never did quite get that one he remembered, as Naomi grovelled in apology with an embarrassed and upset Frank. Randolf knew he would be fine. Mostly. And things haven't even got interesting yet, Randolf said to himself, pulling hard on his cigarette until it singed his fingers in a way that he always found comforting.

$

Naomi was exhausted. The train belched with giant dollops of steam into the cold air at Millicent station. The echoes of departing feet flurried around her. At least she had a job. What the fudge was she going to tell her parents? Yes, Father, I'm in part of the 'Thin Grey Line'? Yes Mother, I will stop your Father-In-Law from returning at all costs? Her whole world had been taken by Randolf,squashed and then beaten into the mould of an upside-down cake. And then burnt. This was insane. She pulled her sumptuous crochet hat over her eyes as she heard the bellow of her bellicose Father having sighted her. Good to be home though, thought Naomi's body. Shut up she cursed herself, and flashed an actress's jovial smile at her Father. This could be.. interesting.

Naomi watched the pea circumnavigate the oak plate. What on earth had possessed her mum to buy, let alone use, them? The Flaking wood was only laid out on special occasions. When her parents married; Naomi and her brother's birth �" it signalled a big event to the.. well to her Father and mother anyway. Her Father would routinely subject every guest to an endurance test as he recited the history of every etch and groove to their poor, unwilling ears. Even the politest of polite from temperance society took a triple on the rocks after that experience. It had become tradition for Naomi's boyfriends to have their first need, not desire, for alcohol after that talk. Still, a traditionalist was her Father, one to hold to any custom she confirmed with a heavy scoop of Great³ Aunt Bridget’s chilli and banana mash (served accidentally at their wedding reception. Apparently the recipe had been handed down from generation to generation. And Naomi believed in evolution. But for such a travesty to be passed on was surely defied the merits of natural selection.

Naomi watched her mother give her brother a scalding look as he thought about drinking the gravy from his plate with his tongue. Naomi winced as Harry exposed a finely worn label under the plate as he had tilted it towards him. It clearly read 'Pennyland' to any keen eye. It still wasn't her fault Harry in 6^th form had decided to turn his dinner party into a Greek wedding after she force-snogged him in front of his girlfriend. Stating that the Flaking's kept it in the family was a bit cruel. It did lose Harry his hot date for the night. But then Harry had burnt Mr Wuffles' tail. One minute with Harry nearby and Naomi almost prayed that she was back at the madhouse of the MOD. Ha, her parents were so proud of that too. Not that should could say much, Official Secrets Act and all. A good job they said; very respectable her, mother reiterated over and over. Despite the discomfort in her heart, Naomi knew it was a battle she had already lost. There had been no other letters. The Thin Grey Line it was then.

“Stop playing with your plate! Naomi dearest, please do go on dear about the Ministry” her mother said, trilling 'Ministry' as if it were royalty. “Well you know, it's like any Government job mother, all pin strip suits and serious, solemn faces. Lots of grand painting about in the office though,” she added, positively, catching her mother's reproachful eye.“Well I say, I think it is fully smashing Naomi,” added her Father with a self-absorbed smile as he swilled his whiskey tumbler. “Yes, firm and stable too my girl. Learn from your sister boy” he finished with a jabbing finger at her disinterested brother. Stable? Ha! A filthy, chain-smoking old git and a zombie with an appalling taste in fashion? You haven't a clue dad! The whole world is fudged up. Even dying doesn't get you out of it. That's what she wanted to say..but she didn't.

“Yes Father,” she replied with extra-false sweetness.

“Marvellous! Another step forward for the Flaking name, and one that you have with my utmost blessing darling.”

Naomi concealed her mirth. She recoiled back into the memory of Frank's room. How had she not she babbled on about the slaying of the dead to a guy who was dead? Randolf had even tried to warn her before her tirade against the dead. The cranberry-like tears that lolloped from Frank's eyes when she realised burnt her heart as if they were lava washing against her skin. It was horrid. Naomi felt mortified and wanted the to ground to swallow her whole, but when did the Universe ever do what you wanted when you needed it too? (Actually, He had been watching; and he had considered bending time for Naomi, but settled on making popcorn from dark matter and watched her flail instead for that cheap dig. He was funny like that at times). No, Naomi had to endure the guilt of hearing Frank blarp sadly into a yellow silk hankie like a broken-hearted yeti.

“Naomi! I say, Naomi girl, do you hear me?”

“Yes Father. Fantastic,” she said automatically. Her Father had been doling out the pride of the Flakings for the last twenty minutes. Pride in this? Bah. She stabbed violently at the rolling pea and caught it firmly on her fork.

“You see boy, Naomi has achieved a great move for our family. A might pair of boots - Ha! oh ho ho, or heels I should say, for you to fill,” he finished with a crass, overblown wink. God this was torturous. Flaking history waded into every conversation with her family. It was like being trapped in a snow globe with a blue whale.

“Yes boy, you'll be dead before you know it,” she snapped in a crackshot of old sibling baiting for the comfort of nostalgia.

“Naomi! Now this is the last meal we shall have together before my dearest daughter departs, and I shall have peace at this table!” said her Mother haughtily, hands resting in a worn grove of seasoned matriarchal experience on her ample sides. Her Father eye-balled the knife in her hand and wisely thought the better of speaking. Usually Naomi hated family dinner, yet now she suddenly felt...sad? Perhaps the comfort of home was beginning to wrap round her as sumptuous duvet. Despite everything, she knew in the thimble well of her heart she should.. would miss them. Well enough to write them a Christmas card anyway.

'Prang' the old phone rattled in the sitting room behind her.

“Who the devil could that be?” said her Father, irritated. He hated interruptions, especially into any time he was speaking. Naomi's mother scuttled into the sitting room, tails of her long dress fraying into the air with sways of her own disapproval.

“Naomi darling, it is for you,” she called back politely in her puhblic speeking voice.“One thinks it is the Ministry,” her mother added with a broad smile as Naomi took the phone from her, glad for the pin to make its mark in the Flaking bubble.

“Yes?” Naomi said without acknowledging the disapproval of her Mother behind at Naomi's apparent lack of manners. Her mother was eavesdropping so close, Naomi could smell the Chanel No.5 on her.

“Hi petal, lovely to hear you! As much as I hate to interrupt a family dinner party, Randolf asked me to give a call and, oh, well it was-

“Do you need me?” interrupted Naomi, relieved that Frank seemed to be back to warmer ways.

“Oh? Oh yes indeed. Immediately I'm afraid. Sorry.”

“Right. Not a problem at all Frank Of course. Now?” Naomi said loud enough for Harry and her Father to hear, allowing a thin smile to arch into each sharp corner of her cheeks. Naomi leaned closer, covering the phone from the spying of her bemused Mother behind Naomi had still not forgiven her when, after one espionage foray too far, Mother Flaking had sent a giant valentine's card to Naomi's would-be boyfriend at University. Naomi had returned from cheerleading (probably the single most useful and laziest refinement to her man-dominating skills. The mere mention of it brought out a particular sheen from any Y-chromosome carrier's eyes) practice that evening to find a black rose smeared on her door from her very much ex-boyfriend Adam Smeet; and a horse-drawn carriage with Adam Smith, the sweaty 'king' of the 'Doxford Klingon Empire' (er, sci-fi club), riding across the bridge to greet her. Poor Adam (Smith) hadn't counted on Adam (Smeet) being so enraged that he would drop Ketamine concocted in his chemistry lab into the horse's pre-ride oat-bag. It had taken two fire engines to rescue the very happy and comatose mud-caked steed from the river bed. Even Naomi learnt a few swearwords in Klingon she would rather forget when they pulled Adam out. It was public humiliation and a Grade A foul up that her Mother merely batted away as 'trying to help'. From then on, Naomi took any boy calls from the phone box in the next village �" 10 miles away.

“Oh but Naomi, your brother and sister-in-law haven't even arrived yet,” implored her Mother with a most unhappy sigh.

“Well come now dearest, what is the meaning of this?” added her Father, bristling his thick brows together in an ominous mountain peak that showed more of the barrister in him.

“Is that your dad? Oh have I upset them?”

“Sorry Frank- Yes Father. It's the Ministry they need me now..er, duty calls?” she volunteered.

“Right now?” Mr Flaking's lips flapped brazenly at the idea.

“I'm afraid so” replied Naomi solemnly. “They are very firm.”

“Firm!? It's not quite like that dear-”

“Outrageous!” snorted Naomi's Father.

“I'm so sorry but this is my first job Father. I can't be anything less than willing,” she tried with a tilt of the head.

“Hello? Naomi? I'm sure you can stay for at least another wee-”

“Pardon? Yes Frank, sorry to keep you. Yes of course I'll be there. Please don't let Randolf know I'm still on the phone.”

“But I'm sure he wouldn-”

“Yes of course. I will stop wasting time. Yes, immediately Frank.”

“Immediately? But my darling dear.. surely there something you can say? Arthur?” implored her Mother, crestfallen. They hadn't even started to dessert

“Oh no! Your mum does sound rather upset-”

“Absolutely Frank! Yes now. Right now. Sorry. My parents will understand.”

“Really? Well if that-”

“ Yes. Goodbye Frank. See you soon,” said Naomi hanging up, feeling the loss of confusion reverberate back down the line to her from the baffled Dead.

“Naomi Flaking, I demand you explain what is going on to bring chaos to my table” snapped her Father with a misgiving pull of the face. Naomi turned sweetly, returning to the dining room to face him with a syrupy smile. It was the kind that usually melted money from his wallet and into her hands every time she needed it.

“Father please, let me explain..” she began soothingly as she walked round to him with a disarming hug. She could already feel the rage subside beneath her Father's richly threaded shirt.

* * *

Scratch. Something glimmered. Hands groped around for unseeing eyes but found none where they expected them to be. Blast! Cursed the Shadow, was this how it was meant to be? The shallow glaze of the moonlight broke through the trees, disappearing into the otherwise silent black hole below.

The Shadow breathed. Old and yet new air filled its mouth. It smelt like Strawberries. How long had it been? Even air was overpowering! It had never suspected this! The Shadow moved carefully, twitching across the forest floor towards a burnt stump. The Shadow stared for a while and felt around the stump's knobbled body. Yes! Yes, this was it. The Shadow began to dig deep with a flurry of mud and grass everywhere shattering the silent night. Deeper and deeper, the flying debris chaos reigned for five minutes before it abruptly stopped. With a smile visible only to the night, the Shadow was pleased. It was still here.

I am ready.

* * *

This was easy. Naomi's slight feet smugly pounded the mock earth on the treadmill. An echo chorused around the cool, dank basement chamber that served as one of the Ministry's training rooms. It reminded her of the crypt below her college's gargantuan cathedral. Around, between expertly timed breaths, Naomi noted the fading ornate faces carved into the ballasts above. Somehow allowed inside, or never chased out, unwelcome birds glared at her, appearing to contemplate a bombing run.

Beside her, Dr. Thespian frowned, muttering at an underling beside him who was furiously writing on his clipboard. Dr. Thespian's squinty eyes occasionally sent silent orders to the unnamed nervous blancmange below. Tall and thin, Dr. Thespian radiated an air of expected authority common to, from Naomi's experience, most medics. Did they get taught modules in stereotypes?“Time Flaking. Acceptable,” said Thespian without much emotion and certainly not joy. Curt could have been his middle name. Naomi had already waged in her mind a two letter replacement to that name was probably more likely to apply. Near breathless, Naomi allowed her heart to readjust itself from the ill-tempered treadmill as the sound of its track slowed down.

Ha! Thespian probably thought she was a weak little posh girl. A silver medal (not gold, grr) triathlete at College, Naomi had always been very good at sport. A 'buzzing thoroughbred' as her Father put it to any and all, interested or otherwise. Naturally her Mother disapproved. Sport was a boy's pursuit; one unbecoming of a sophisticated Lady. One that may put off an interested suitor. Ignoring the pre-suffarage values of her mother, Naomi enjoyed the nickname from the boys- Praying Mantis- she had for the tone of her body. A name she lived up to on and off the field. Still, being a silver medallist grated her. Damn Greta Grobavic! Built like an Icelandic volcano and destined for Olympic glory, only Naomi's reluctance to resign her femininity stopped her from the protein-shake duel to gold with Greta. Of course, at least she still had her Silver medal. The Nandrolone she had slipped Greta in the University Olympics forced her to to quit altogether. The beard being even a bit too much much for the tweed-neck Dons to believe it belonged to a scientifically-affirmed woman. Even Naomi stayed away from putting her name to that one.

“Why thank you Doctor, it's been years since I ran,” lied Naomi sweetly to Thespian, who barely registered her existence behind his crescent-shaped glasses. Thespian remained clinically blank as she downed the water handed over by the blancmange boy.

“Indeed Flaking. You scored adequately against Ministry requirements.” Adequate? Ha! He's lying.

“Is that it then?” Naomi had ran, lifted weights, swam, and even toed-to-toed with Frank in a ring, much to the giant's amusement. This was more like the Army to her than a Ministry. Naomi knew that she should think more laterally, yet she still couldn't shake her preconceptions. Randolf slid away from his dark perch on the side wall, ambling up to Thespian with nonchalant steps that simmered through the stone.

“All good Doc?” he asked, wafting away a plume of smoke. Naomi, imagined the steam train of smoke he would make on the treadmill for the five seconds his lungs could cope. Thespian looked at Randolf as if he was a boil.

“Indeed. Physically she would seem sound.” Physically? Hey! Naomi scowled at the the physician.

“Not ruddy bad Flaking,” said Randolf to her with a smirk at Naomi's infuriation by the slight to her perfect capability.

“Physically and mentally, I bet I've done better than anyone in these tests,” she dared. This caused an earthquake of emotion from Thespian. He raised one eyebrow slightly higher than the other.

“Haha, good girl! Well I'll be the judge and jury of that” said Randolf, laughing. “Doc tells me your meat is passable girl, that's all. Time to see how you can use it, and then we'll see what's what.”

“Indeed. She is discharged to you,” said Thespian, face fixed, alongside a nervous glance from the blamancge boy, at Naomi as she sarcastically curtsied.

“Enough fooling Flaking. Now lets see..” Randolf re-lit his next cigarette with the butt of his last one “..you're a country girl aren't ya? Have you ever shot someone?”

Naomi squinted down the barrel of her gun; neon fingers felt the trigger teasing her grip. Steady. She held her breath. Slowly Naomi squeezed..steady..Bang! Across the sparse floor a giant China doll with an Evil Smile (Frank had added handlebars) pirouetted as a pink blob ricocheted off its belly and nearly removed Frank's third rib as he swerved out of its flightpath.

“Almost there dear,” murmured Frank with a slightly nervous smile as he retreated behind a desk away from Naomi. The whole room had begun to look like misshapen pizza with pink blobs and neon scorch marks littering the room as unappetising toppings on the smooth brown brickwork. “Nowhere near again girl! Again,” ordered Randolf with a hint of glee at her new hardship in his film director's-like chair beside her.

“It's not me! It's this, this contraption,” complained Naomi, arms sagging for a moment in frustration. The gun was unnaturally heavy for its diminutive size.

“Poor workman..” sang Randolf, laughing to himself. “If you can't stop a standing doll girl, what use are you to me against a rebellious Dead?”

“More than your fat smoking face,” Naomi whispered under her breath.

“Hmm?” asked Randolf, daring her to reply.

Naomi said nothing and re-focused the gun on the damn blasted doll that smiled back at her like Metatron did.

“Go on dear, I know you'll get the hang of it soon enough,” chimed Frank. Naomi glared at Randolf; then with irritation, slipped back into the shooting trance, feeling the cold gun close to her nose. Breathe Naomi. Slowly she aimed.. the China doll laughed back her, stupid handlebar grinning face.. Naomi hated moustached anything more than anything else (well right now)..she felt for the trigger... held her breath tight..Fire!

“Becaw!” screamed a terminated bird above, feathers dissipating like petals caught in a blizzard. The wayward pink shot had sailed into the air and somehow found one of the bulbs in the long uplight above that the robins had occupied. The added darkness covered the full rage in Naomi's eyes. How could she not do this!?

“Oh darling, it will come soon, don't worry,” said Frank staring up at the swaying light, twisting his lips with concern. He carefully moved away from any possible collapse on his head.

“Quite. We can't all be perfect straight away ay girl,” said Randolf happily, knees cracking as he stood up. He was enjoying her lack of skill in contrast to her usual confident high-mindedness. That's posh girls for you, thought Randolf. Naomi felt the patronising pat of one of his craven grey hands on her shoulder. She shook him off with irritation. How could she be so bad?

“It's not me, it's this damn thing; the sight is off or something,” she protested. Frank stepped forward and took the gun from her sharply. To Naomi's surprise, Frank disassembled and re-assembled the whole thing before the final feathers hit the ground around them. Naomi gawped as Frank aimed without looking at the doll and fired three salvos, two perfectly into each eye and one right in the place where no-one wanted to be hit. Naomi's lower lip hung loose, refusing to resume normal service. Damn it!

“Hmm. Seems fine to me I'm afraid dear,” said Frank softly, wrapping the gun back into Naomi's arms hands. Before she could reply a bell trilled loudly from another room high above them.

“Ah tea! About time. I'm bleeding famished. Don't worry lass, you'll get in the swing of it after a slice of Ethel's mandrake cake,” said Randolf happily, motioning his head head for her to follow him, Frank having already hastened out the door with a song in his voice. Naomi hesitated.

“I, er, think I want to keep practising. Alone.”

“As you will gal” said Randolf with a shrug.

“Hit one now and there might be some cake left before Frank finishes the lot,” echoed Randolf's fading voice from outside the practice Gallery. Naomi was in no mood for cake. She had to win.

Alone, the chamber felt even more cavernous to Naomi. Each misplaced shot decorating her vision taunted her pride. If a dead guy like Frank could do it, then surely she could. Turning to face her foe, Naomi re-aimed..the doll stared, smugly looking down upon her with both holes in its eyes laughing..you're for it this time in your fudging face...Naomi steadied her hands with a scowl..felt the trigger firmly this time..Bang!

Naomi ducked just in time before the errant pink blob removed her teeth.

“Blast!” shouted Naomi, cursing the Ministry and their stupid sugaring guns.

“Bravo! but I cannot ah blame you for missing.” Naomi spun to find Tortfeasor striding into the chamber, head to toe in a new, Edwardian gentleman's ensemble of rich black clothing. A soft mocking clap of both leather-gloved hands trailed in front of him.

“What of it?” snapped Naomi, re-loading the gun and contemplating a new target 'doll' at the same time. Tortfeasor grinned at her annoyance. Naomi hoped that he could not see her discomfort at his presence.

“Why ah well my dear, Randolf does like to make people ah crawl before they walk. Why walk when you can run I say.”

Before Naomi could respond, Tortfeasor pulled a long, slender silver gun from within his midnight jacket. With his gaze fixed on Naomi, he pointed the gun at her, making Naomi heart freeze, and then past her head. Tortfeasor's gun fired silently, unleashing a bolt of garish purple light that blinded her in the low light; its explosion reverberated around the room, sending the remaining robins out from the Gallery in a panic. As her vision returned, Naomi turned to see a mound of stuffing where the doll's head should have been; foam pieces rolled, sticky and thick, around its carcass to the floor. Naomi looked back at the grinning Tortfeasor, who proffered the handle of the shiny gun to her.

“I believe you don't ah agree with training-grade implements,” he said smiling. She took it without a word, still distrusting him. But the training-grade phrase pulled her open at the soft spot of her pride. Training-grade? Briefly, Naomi swore she saw a gleam of red run across his opaque pupils. No wonder it was going wrong. Before she could object, Tortfeasor spun her around and held her hands against the gun. She felt his warmth and well-concealed strength, however repulsive, through his gloves. The gun itself was heavy yet confident; a sense of real power grew in her mind. With Tortfeasor's assistance, Naomi pointed the gun at a comrade of the executed doll.

“Go for it, breathe,” purred Tortfeasor close to her ear. Naomi didn't let her discomfort show. To shrug him off would signal her inferiority to him. She had used a similar technique when a boy had grabbed her off the dancefloor, right before she kneed them in their nadgers. In any case, Naomi was fixated on finally beating the grinning, stupid damn dolls. She felt the trigger..just right, so comfortable..she pulled backed slowly, itself melting away smoothly with her finger..bang! The dolls head imploded like a watermelon supernova in an almighty burst of amethyst light that illuminated the room. Hot doll's stuffing fell around her like wedding rice. Ha! Take that! No-one beats a Flaking!

“Bravo, bravo Ms Flaking, a ah crack-shot I dare say,” said Torfeasor with a firm pat on her back as he let her go. Naomi smiled, pleased. This was more like it. She wanted to show Randolf and Frank immediately.

She examined the silver gun like a hunter inspecting their just-hewn spear. The beautiful shine belied the power within. Why hadn't she been given one of these? A worn engraving on the handle amused her, what's that? She fiddled with the gun in the light until she could make out a vague 'WT' etched in. She scoffed to herself at Tortfeasor's shameless vanity. Her eye caught a trail of lots of groves, squashed tightly together, there were so many, along the base of barrel. They didn't seem to serve a firing purpose.

“What are these?”

“Well-” began Tortfeasor's calm smile in reply but it was forced to morph into a giant O as a cream pie exploded like a grenade across the back of his head. Gobbets of clotted Cornish cream flew along the floor, scooping up feathers and dolly stuffing as they went.

“AARGH my hair!” exclaimed a furious Tortfeasor, turning to the doorway of the Gallery to confront his assailant. Tortfeasor would have looked menacing apart from the cream that had formed a Santa-like drippy beard around his face. Naomi sniggered and for a moment, was certain that she had caught the departing shape of the blancmange boy racing away from the doorway faster than light itself. Apparently she had underestimated the nervous blob beside Dr Thespian.

“Impressive shot there you could learn from girl,” said Randolf entering the room, blowing a blue haze of smoke through the eye of his tea cup as Tortfeasor venomouly vented his foul rage into the air. “That doesn't mean you have to try again on me,” added Randolf without alarm. Naomi saw that she had held Tortfeasor's gun pointed at his head almost absent mindedly. How odd. “Sorry.” she apologised, lowering the gun quickly.

“Oh calm down William. It's your fault for not keeping your eyes open in the back of your head. And I would lose that damned thing before Frank sees you with it. Long memory his girl,” said Randolf in caution as Tortfeasor mumbled bitterly, consoling his ego with every fresh wipe away of sticky cream. “I am going to ah maim whomever had the disrespect to do this!” raged Tortfeasor. Oh my.. of course! Naomi's conscious came thick and fast to the fore She threw the gun across the floor toward Tortfeasor as if it was infected. The gun cried a dark echo with every bounce in protest of its new, lowly position as it clattered on the ground. The notches! They could only be one thing. Naomi felt a pang of guilt envelop her spine at the thought of it. How many had it ki-murdered (She was the daughter of a lawyer and knew the difference)? Too many she conceded, as her fingers and eyes recollected the array of cut marks so close to her eyes. Each one a victim. Watching the gun settle, Naomi's ever observant mind added that even the deep cuts probably had new ones layered over them like bandages. A chill cut through her. Tortfeasor's amoral vanity had made them. A sick vanity that Naomi for the first time felt with a touch of fear inside, despite the knotch-creator's current dairy status. The gun's barrel gleamed at her as she looked to it, laughing at her guilt. Oh you loved my power it screamed gleefully, taunting her. And in truth, she had.

“Luvvie, you still in there?” Naomi gave the gun a satisfying kick further away before Frank eclipsed the them as he stepped back into the Gallery, licking some cream off his finger. “Oh there you are! Ergh, William. Slip on the stairs?” said Frank with a grin of his own.

“My arm!” Tortfeasor snapped coldly at Naomi. He had finished scraping the biggest blobs of pudding from his head, revealing a strawberry pallor of anger. Thick cream dribbled onto the floor from an end of his cloak. “Over there where you dropped it,” said Naomi with a point at the horrible thing. The sooner it and its owner were away from her the better.

“How dare ah any strike me! I assure you ah they will pay for this!” he shrilled, hateful eyes darting spitefully at the three of them in-between jabbing points as he retrieved it. Tortfeasor reminded Naomi of an angry scorpion, its tail twitching at some predator. “Oh Bill lay off, high spirits from tea upstairs. Go clean yourself up before the cream starts to congeal,” chortled Randolf without so much as hint of disguise at his satisfaction at the child-like strop from Tortfeasor unfurling in front of him.

“Pah! Irrelevant! This place has ah rescinded to the dogs,” growled Tortfeasor as he stamped towards the door to make after assailant. “They will pay for this!”

“Don't forget to try the pie Tortfeasor. It's rather good dear!” cooed Frank with a faint, graceful wave as the scowling shadow passed him. Tortfeasor froze on the spot. Naomi swore she could see shadows re-merging around him like an oil-slick on the floor. The lighting was far too atmospheric to the imagination in here. Incandescent, Tortfeasor let the rage steam off him into the sauna of the room before resuming his angry march without so much as a glance back behind him. It would have been eerie or even intimidating if he hadn't stood in left-over pie, leaving a trail of angry cream in gloopy footprints across the floor. Couldn't have happened to a nicer jerk, thought Naomi.

“Frank, I've told told you not to goad that spiv.”

“Randy luv, he needs to cheer up,” said Frank with an upturned nose dismissively in the direction of the doorway.

“Frank's right. He deserves every pasting he gets from what I have seen of him” said Naomi.

“Now Naomi girl, technically I can't have you talking about an Officer of the Ministry that way. That's insubordination,” said Randolf with a smile that really said the opposite.

“I don't care, that man is no superior of mine. Not with that murdering thing” replied Naomi, feeling the heat of her anger across her lips at the guilt of the pleasure she took in shooting Tortfeasor's gun.

“Suits me,” said Randolf, rolling a satisfied cigarette with a shrug. A healthy dislike for authority - apart from his - always spoke to his heart.

“In any case dear, as much as I like to pour scorn or cream �" oh wasn't that hilarious- on Tortfeasor, we have matters to attend to,” added Frank. Aha! They had seen her shoot, reasoned Naomi. Was she finally going to go..er..hunting? IT certainly didn't seem the right word, but she was at a loss for another.

“Yep. That's right girl. No time for training in this job. You've had more than most. And that's even with a tea break, which you daftly turned down. Time t'learn on the job and see if your bum's still wet behind the ears.” Naomi was lost on the tangled metaphor but it didn't matter. Action! (Later on, Naomi would look back at her training in the same way that First World War soldiers reflected on the promise of it all being over by Christmas).

Frank and Randolf leaned in, almost conspiratorial in poise were it not slight wiff of cake, smoke, and cologne.

“Naomi darling, we have a live one!” Frank trilled quietly, bright eyes darting left to right with false seriousness.

“Attempting Frank. Attempting that is, without permission, that's for sure,” added Randolf with a frown at Frank. “World ending if the Lore's broke and all that girl? Something stick between those ears? We shall see in any case, no time to fanny about. Let's go.” Naomi glanced up to see a recalcitrant robin gesticulating a rather obscene display of its privates above that she would rather have never seen. No matter, she was finally going to get pass the fluff and see what this 'thin grey line' was really about. And about time too.

* * *

It was as solid and heavy as ever. Cold too. Yes, the metal felt strong and purposeful in its hands. It was time to begin again! So much work to be done. But first: Vengeance. How dare they have stood in my way? My Divine way. Ha. They had no Right! They think that they could defy me? The creature gripped the object tightly in the night and began its hulking march towards a pale orange glow in the horizon. A nervous tweet from owl rang out nearby. My work is never done �" thankfully, concluded the creature. It was finally time to finish what it had begun.

* * *

“Re-animation is what we call it girl,” said Randolf as he stuffed a smooth, nobbled yellow sword underneath his rustic cloak that Naomi had not seen before. It looked well-used. “We have to stop them before they get a sniff of crossing back like our Frank has here,” he added patting Frank's cannon that drooped in the dead man's hands.

“Yes luvvie, this is the bread and butter of our day.”

“But how come Frank hasn't broken the Lore then? He's dead �" sorry Frank.”

“Don't worry about it Naomi. I have permission.”

“Bit of a leg-by if you know your cricket,” said Randolf. Naomi didn't but she guessed the gist of what was about to be said. “Seeing as Frank works for the Ministry, he doesn't count as a dead under the terms of the Lore.” Naomi didn't looked convinced. “How does that work though?” Randolf only answered with a shrug.

“I don't make the Lore girl. I just keep it and the whole bloody circus going. Anyroad, we're going out 'there' to stop some dead person becoming like a Fuddha.” Naomi was becoming less convinced about the power of the Ministry. Why did they decide? The mention of Buddhists seemed to have rankled Randolf, who frowned as he fixed a pack firmly to Frank's back.

“And don't get me started on bloody monks. Re-incarnation is bad enough when people aren't looking for ways to make it happen. Idiots.”

“Meaning?” Naomi found his dismissive, high minded tone annoying.

“Ha. Faith! People can say what they bloody want and think about it and all that but when it causes me over-time because a damn dead- sorry Frank- believes he has a 'divine' right to come stumbling back into this world. Ah it's just a mess girl. Nothing worse than a believer,” said Randolf, trailing off as he caught her look, which said: 'but they are right, there is a God. They can believe'.

“Look. I don't make the rules, I make them happen. Otherwise it's buggered-up for all of us. And I haven't retired just yet. You'll just have to ask the good Creator why,” said Randolf bitterly as he twisted with a new rollie in his hands. Ha! Naomi found the cop out a weak and weasely way around the issue. Someone here must make decisions or know who made it about who or what could come back and why. What about Frank? It seemed far too easy for Randolf to simply say that the Lore could be bent for one man. She made a mental note to follow it up later.

“And that's before you get the big-heads and wonky society bigwigs..celebrities you call them now.. who convert to some new ology cult as if that gives them a right to immortality. It's a mare at times I tell yer.”

“Oh yes, big egos can be awful darling,” interjected Frank with a knowing nod. “John Lennon was a sweety, but Freddie Mercury? A diva darling, an absolute devil to keep on the other side.” Naomi was slowly becoming used to the idea of dead celebrities. She wondered for a moment, who would be the worst? Oscar Wilde? Soldiers? Hitler? I wonder what monarchs must be like, she thought. All that power and then bang, your future afterlife was being decided by a zombie called Frank and a grumpy Scrooge of a man. Naomi wouldn't be happy, that's for sure. A new question interrupted her thoughts.

“Well in any case. How do you know who 'they' are?”

“Ah gal, well that's the tricky and, dare I say, fun part �" not a foggiest.”

“Yet, anyhoo.”

“What does that mean?” She tapped her heel on the stone floor impatiently as if dealing with two school boys.

“It's just like any crime. We find out that some thing's 'going down' (Naomi cringed as Randolf used his fingers for the quotations) on the Other Side, hunt down who's behind it, who's involved, and stop 'em.”

“Before they hurt themselves,” added Frank more soothingly. A drop of condensation hit the floor beside Naomi's feet. So they were glorified bounty hunters with a badge from God. Great.

“We must go. That's why I knitted these gloves especially for you dear” said Frank with a broad smile, pulling out a pair of dainty tangerine gloves from his pack. Marvellous. Naomi knew what that meant; she was going to die again. The whole idea troubled her body instinctively. And too right it should, she thought unhappily. It's not normal to die on a regular basis. Travel sickness had taken on a knew meaning to her.

“Lovely-er colour,” she managed examining the gloves as she took them. In fairness they were quite beautiful once you got past the garish shade. Smooth and embroidered with a feint pattern, she felt the welcoming cashmere inside like the enveloping touch of her first duvet. They fitted perfectly. Naomi was impressed with Frank's workmanship, though she would never let on. Still, lovely gloves don't make up for the fact I'm about be murdered again does it? Maybe not! A clever thought brewed into a sharp smile in her mind..I wonder..

“How about I do it to myself this time?” she announced to clear horror in the pair's eyes. The humour evaporated from the room and just as quickly from the agents' faces.

“Good heavens no!”

“You can't ever, and I mean ever, do that girl,” said Randolf, finger wagging violently in the air. She knew Randolf really meant it as he had let his unfinished cigarette fall out from his hand to do so.

“Why not?” She didn't relish the idea of being murdered every single time she needed to clock-in to work. It was a new form of commuting that didn't sit well with her mind or her tummy (bowels just isn't ladylike is it? And stomach was a word she always felt a shoddy description of something that was more emotive and intelligent than it let on. Naomi was convinced there a second brain down there).

Frank stepped forward with his round face projecting a serious pull of the eyebrows, and took her hands coldly yet with intended warmth radiating emanating from his own.

“It's against the Lore dear, one of the first rules.”

“ Lore! Why does the Lore have to apply to us? I bet you break it. Frank being here breaks it,” she responded without much care. Her body simply didn't want to die again. It gave her, rather reasonably, the willies. Randolf made a mental note of the worrying turn in her language as he knocked aside Frank's hands from hers. The discussion was over.

“What matters is what is gal. The Lore is the Lore. We abide. We use it. We never debate it,” he said firmly. Stupid Naomi thought. Who makes a law that that makes every single day a nightmare for your underlings? Local council bosses probably, but this was supposed to be God's work. She tapped her heel irritable on the black stone floor. This, this 'God' had a lot of answers already to make. Or is it the Ministry? Ha I bet Tortfeasor doesn't let anyone kill him! Of all the swirling thoughts, Naomi knew that she would have to find this one out.

“Oh Naomi dear, I know it is not exactly a stroll beside the lake” said Frank in sympathy.

“More like a permanent hangover,” spat Naomi, folding her arms and jutting a pout of defiance into the awkward air. Randolf smirked as Frank continued to re-sell Death to her.

“It can even be fun!” trilled Frank with a small clap of self-delight at his new avenue of dscourse. How could dying being fun wondered Naomi. Sugaring zombie, it doesn't bother him; he's already dead!

“Oh yes, I personally prefer a nice smart shot straight through the temple. Avoids mess,” said Frank with a big wink, whose jollity was skewered by Naomi's frown.

“A bullet is still a bullet!”

“Ha, well it can be interesting that's for sure,” said Randolf with a quick snigger. “Just don't forget what you're doing.”

“Meaning?”

“Well, back when I was your age - cor a while ago that �" how old are you? 15?”

“21,” came the seething reply.

“Blimey. Anyroad, my old bass's way was to get blind drunk, straight down with his lethal homebrew, and I mean lethal, and bang! You'd wake up on the other side dry as a nun and no hangover,” he said happily with a dirty laugh. Frank tutting with disapproval.

“Now Randy, let's not involve Naomi with your..your less civilised notions shall we?” lectured Frank to the grinning old man, who appeared to be recalling a certain nun, or a woman dressed as a nun, if Naomi's instincts were anything to go by. “Ignore him. The main thing dear is to always wear your Brights and you will be fine no matter how you 'go through',” said Frank, giant fingers etching log-sized quotation marks into the air once more. “That's the agreement in the Lore.” To emphasise the point he pulled out a small yet ridiculously thick, green ochre book from within top. Etched on the front in bright black letters was 'The Lore'. Naomi didn't have a lawyer for a Father for nothing. There had to be a way around in it somewhere. As soon as they were back she would be all over it with Flaking legalese fervour. But back to the Brights..

“So it is all due to the these colours?” she said, turning the gloves over on her hands.

“Precisely luvvie. With these beautiful things on God knows that you're one of us and doing his bidding. A bit like a flare or a signal-”

“You'll stand out more than a hot t**d in an igloo,” said Randolf, happily interrupting. Frank froze at the ghastly image. Even Naomi had to laugh.

“Er-yes quite,” said Frank recovered his oratorical stride. “With your Brights on, God will see you as an Agent of His and will let you straight through, tickety boo,” he finished with a soft wrap of his knuckles against his gun.

“Hmm ok, make sense I guess,” replied Naomi, toying with an idea that had begun to dance together in the more Naomish side of her mind.“So any blow, any way how and you'll be fine?” she asked innocently. Randolf rolled his eyes, believing that Naomi wasn't getting the point. “Aye, here look.” he said, handing her his gun and stood back, arms wide. Damn. Naomi had wanted to surprise Randolf with a shot of her own. Was he actually that quick under that grizzly face?

“Go on, give me your best. One and only chance girl. Blow me away” taunted Randolf, laughing dirtily. “Randy!”

Really? Did he just say that like that? Naomi felt the trigger burn in her fingers with an impulsive itch.

“Go onnn gal. What's the matter? Shoot me!” demanded Randolf, waving his hands to goad her.

“Ok,” answered Naomi softly.

The gun fire echoed round the room. Frank leaned over and looked down at the now-corpse of Randolf. “Yes well very good Naomi. A bit, well a bit higher next time perhaps. I think that might be a sore one to fix” he added as they both looked at the gaping hole where Randolf's crotch should be.

“Yes sir” said Naomi coyly with a smile and salute of her free hand as Frank saw the shadow of her firing hand raise and then pause half-way.

“Now Naomi I must-”

Bang.

* * *

“Two weeks- no two YEARS without pay!” stormed Randolf's angry voice, scarlet in the face like a drunkard's nose.

“Well you did say to shoot you,” replied Naomi sweetly.

“I said to shoot me, not me junior you flipping harpy,” he snapped, stomping around her, finger dangerously waving its ragged and still repairing nib close to her eye. Naomi didn't flinch as spittle flew around her.

“Calm down Randolf” offered Frank with a soothing pat on his colleague's shoulder. “You did ask her to shoot, and she's only learning.”

“I'm sorry Randolf,” said Naomi with less sincerity than you could fit in an espresso. Finally. She was enjoying this.

“Sorry Sir!” blasted Randolf. He looked down and began to pull back his hand before a small voice came up from his crotch.

“Ere. You relax guv, or I'll leave you a woman for this ride. And then you try and explain that one” chirped a low and distinctly non-threatened voice with a slightly Scouse twang in Naomi's mind. What the hell was that? Grumbling, Randolf moved his hand away another millimetre but then thought the better of it. In consolation a new rollie was begun as he crumpled his face in clear unhappiness. Naomi looked up at Metatron, who was working on a hole in her head that Frank had shot with clinical accuracy as she had shot him. The speed of the dead man's hands despite his size unsettled Naomi. Camp of otherwise, Naomi knew that there was more to Frank than nice smells and warm words. Only the brief encounters with Tortfeasor had momentarily dissipated the jovial performance.

No voice came forward from Metatron but he did pause to touch the top of his faceless cloak. Naomi lent as far away she could without pulling his fingers away from her head and saw a creature helping Metatron tie a stitch in her head! She couldn't help herself as she pulled the creature around by the nape of its neck to face her

“Ay, ay! Wae what you doing Miss?” protested the creature. Naomi was face to face with what looked like a cross between a dwarf and a rat. The little man was a ball of hair with tiny angry eyes. He had a short floppy flat-cap and polka-dot red breeches that sank into his beard. Naomi would have dropped it if she were a simpering girl. Naomi wasn't. She held him afloat in front of her eyes as he hung there, legs wriggling.

“Naomi! Be kind to the gnomes! “ said Frank.

“I thought you said it was just Metatron?”

“Oh yeah bloody rickets here on his own? That makes wae a lot of sense. Bah,” grumbled the gnome as he crossed his arms, annoyed at the slight. Bemused Naomi put it back down on her shoulder. The gnome cursed her under its breath as she felt its feet digging into her neck as it clambered back up the as yet unfinished edifice of her head.

“Let em at you girl,” said Randolf happily resting by a spare oar on the deck, his hands still probing to make sure nothing on his patched-up crotch had been missed. Why would God's voice need a spare oar? It bugged Naomi, it really did. “You need to let them fix you or you'll be properly dead in no time round here. And that means it's a one way ticket, so leave off.” Naomi would argue but her tummy felt like it was going retch all over the deck. Damn dying. Her head was killing as the wound's stitching began to pop out, leaving fresh hair and new flesh behind. “Actually, thinking about it” said Randolf as he got up, pushed Metatron away from Naomi and then took the gnome off from her head, lowering himself down to her eye-level. All of sudden Naomi's nausea began to get worse. “ You're never going to shoot me like that again are ye girl?” he asked as the gnome swore and wriggled in his hand. Metatron looked distressed but didn't move. Naomi was feeling worse. Fast. She could barely make out the glee in Randolf's face as the sickening faintness took its hold over her. She could feel the stitching the gnome had started pull loose. Her mind was turning to cheese. Painful, soggy cheese. “Nur-” she managed and fell forward onto her knees.

“Randolf! Stop it” said Frank. Metatron looked on, arms folded in some form of less-than-jolly feeling.

“Never what?” said Randolf nastily, toying with the gnome who wriggled and complained about the growing imperfections in the stitchwork. Naomi began to dribble.

“Nr..”

“No what?”

“Nr..sh..r” Naomi finally managed with as much effort as she could muster. Satisfied, Randolf placed the gnome back on her head before the stitches fully gave way. “Flipping idiot,” grumbled the gnome as it hurriedly set back to work, pulling its flatcap hard down over its head. Metatron darted forward to assist it but was sworn, electing to slink away beside Frank instead. Her brain felt like it had been sat on by an obese hippo. Naomi's blurred vision began to return and saw Randolf smiling above her.

“Two weeks docked and mark my words, I'm being kind girl,” said Randolf sternly, offering his hand to her. Naomi was in no state to argue and took his hand, staggering back on to her feet. Frank reached out kindly to hold her steady with a small, sad shake of the head at Randolf who ignored him and went to resume his seat beside the oar whilst rolling a new cigarette.

After a few more minutes the gnomes, satisfied as any surgeon, jumped off the boat and into the black river below, each saluting Naomi and Frank whilst sticking certain fingers up at Randolf as they left. Above, Naomi could not see a single star against the pink chalk hue of the air, but at least her brain had come back together.

“Here! You bloody left my skin flapping you gits!” shouted Randolf as he peered into his trousers. A fading giggle appeared to sink into the water after the gnomes. Naomi fought every imaginary impulse her brain could make to conure an image of Randolf's member, and instead thought of mud. Mud was pleasant. Ah Millicent mud. Safe. Clean. A gnome re-emerged from the river, took one look at Randolf and flicked its middle finger up at him. Randolf darted forward to the boat's side.

“Buggers! I'll have you for this!” cursed and threw his half rolled cigarette at the gnome, entirely missing it, who smiled and gave him a double fingered salute as it sank away beneath the water. Naomi liked them already.

“Randolf! We have little time for this,” said Frank with a firm plea for calm. “The City is coming close.” All three watched a small reflection in the water becoming larger by the second before the buildings and noises of Styx soon reached across the water to them.

“Bloody blighters!” cursed Randolf, spitting over the boat with one hand still covering his crotch. “Bah, fine. Right, Naomi let's see how you cope with some real work; and for my arse's sake, don't say another word without Sir before or after it,” demanded Randolf grumpily. Randolf was clearly a masochist of the foul mood thought Naomi. Great. First day on the job and already she was beginning to regret everything. Metatron, back in his seat, pulled hard on his aft oar bringing the central White spires came into Naomi's eyes as they veered closer to a desolate dock. The details of Styx seemed more sharp and vivid this time. Naomi could make out the sombre sheen of the attempted-to-be bright houses, as well as the piercing light blue of the windows etched into central white towers.

“Enough gazing girl, time to find a vagrant,” barked Randolf as the boat ran closer and closer to a vacant jetty. Actually, they all were. Naomi found the idea of dock without boats rather strange. But where would they go? Naomi glanced back at the ever expanding black water, which blended into a blur with the pale pink sky. She turned away from it. The whole thing felt put on and wrong to her. Perhaps it was because she was alive. More likely, she thought, was that Styx wasn't quite anyone hoped it to be. No wonder they wanted out.

Metatron came forward and Naomi watched as he threw a rope around a post.. and promptly missed. The boat slowly crashed into the decking as Randolf launched a tirade of foul-mouthed abuse at the poor angel, who cowered from his shaking fist. As Naomi watched Frank gently but firmly escort the foul mouthed Randolf off the boat largely against his will, Naomi stuffed her gloves into her cloak pockets and clambered past the sad-looking Metatron with a thin smile of 'thank you', taking Frank's now free hands to pull her up onto the jetty. The deck felt firm beneath her feet. She had stepped onto heaven.

Marvellous.

* * *

An axe was just right agreed the Darkness with itself. Elegant yet simple, it was the satisfaction of a good job well done that came with every sacred stroke that the Darkness loved. Ha! You couldn't strike an axe properly without justice. Above it, a crow called out in panic and flew quickly out of the woods. The Darkness' gaze followed its flight as it made for the distant warm village lights just visible through the treeline. And they though I could be stopped. Fools! How dare they question the Righteous? How could they fathom what was Divine? Ungrateful wretches, they didn't see the land needed to be cleansed of Sin! How many times must I do God's work before only that which is Divine remains? The Darkness bent down and touched the cold, dry earth, feeling each piece of dirt run through its fresh hand. A hollow memory of sinners, screams and the scent of heretical blood burst along its mind. The Darkness could feel each story rekindled in its mind. My Law, by Right! It is Destiny affirmed the Darkness to itself with a smile. They can never win, fools. But how many of the impure had spread? So much to be done. Lost in its thoughts, The Darkness began to march toward the village lights. If there had been moonlight, even the trees would have seen the ancient dried blood on the axe and fled.

* * *

“I don't care about how much they bloody threaten you,” shouted Randolf, stabbing a finger into the terrified young face in front of him.

“B-but I don't know anything sir! I swear! Why would I lie?” yammered the lean young face with little self-respect. Naomi, fascinated, was still examining the boy's pleated clothes and stiff collar. It was as if he had walked out from her Great-great aunt's sepia photos.

“Look, Camilla knows we are here - she always does - so drop the bloody act Albert and give me the name of who, how they did it, and bloody when,” demanded Randolf, hissing through clenched teeth.

“I-I don't know Sir! I cannot bequeath nor impart that which I do not have,” cried Albert, eyes darting all around Randolf's stony face, caught in a terrible flavour of fear Naomi that had not ever tasted before. It didn't sit well with her, nor clearly Frank, judging by the worry on his grim façade, but they both remained silent. Randolf slid his glass slowly out of his way on the table, which made the boy's lips quiver. Oh God, no..yes: he's going to cry, realised Naomi.

“Williams, Williams,” said Randolf, clearly indifferent to Williams' distress. “Give me what I want before things get interesting for you.” Wiliams' dry eyes shot from Frank to Naomi in search of help.

“I don't know!” he said as loud as he dared to without attracting attention. Naomi could see that he was beginning to panic; his eyebrows twitched in spasms like scared skunks across his sweating brow.

“Then things will have to get interesting,” replied Randolf, eyes locked on Williams' own. As if on cue, Frank stood silently from beside him, a small smile across his broad face loomed on the quivering William below.

“You know Frank don't you Williams? His nickname's an interesting one isn't it?” asked Randolf, squeezing each word with an implied imposition of pain in the not too distant future. Frank walked behind Williams and rested his shovel like hands warmly on each shoulder, which to Naomi looked just like one of those hitmen in those Mafia films Naomi's brother loved.

“Hello luvvie,” said Frank, gently rolling his fingers on Williams' shaking shoulders. Williams winced at the clear weight of the paws adorning each of his bony shoulders. Naomi could feel the fear emanating from every one of his trembling, desperate pores.

“Y-yes I do, er Hi” he said, offering a small, pathetic smile up the man mountain behind him. “But I still do not know sir,” implored Williams back to the smiling face of Randolf. The pace of his words seemed to sing into Naomi's ears like a runaway train as Frank lent some of his own bulk upon him. “I-I have no inclining nor desire to know! All I want is peace in my afterlife, away from the silliness of others. I have no care for Fluffy or anything of the sort!” Williams froze, mortified. Momentarily he was lost in a spell of slipping terror as he stared into Naomi's eyes. She smiled back at him sweetly, which really didn't help.

“Fluffy ay?” repeated Randolf, stroking his chin thoughtfully, the other hand rolling its fingers lightly on the table. “Well that'll do. Thank you for being so cooperative Williams” he added, finishing with a light wave at Frank. Petrified, Williams immediately grabbed his top-hat and cane and stumbled out of the chair as if on four legs not two. “Th-Thank-you sir!” he said with a nervous smile at Naomi and then at Frank. It vanished when he returned to Randolf's gaze, causing his body to take over and take the fearful mind out the door of the pub as fast as possible. A thick peanut hit the back of his hat glaciating his body in an instant as he reached for salvation of the door handle.

“One thing treacle,” cooed Frank, crushing another nut in his hand to dust. “Aiding and abetting illegal reincarnation is a crime against the Lore, Albert Williams. Let's not see you not find out the penalty darling,” warned Frank more viciously than the sweetness of his high tone implied. Nodding without looking back, Williams unfroze and continued his brave assault out the exit as fast as he could. What a wimp thought Naomi as the door flapped with the venom of his quick escape. The pub had paused to stare at them. Their faces, the ones that Naomi could see, were uniformly hostile.

“And that was loud enough for all of you!” said Randolf with the raised voice of a teacher. The awkward silence hung in the air like an unwelcome deceleration of unrequited love. Slowly, the normal volume re-materialised as if the whole Williams interrogation had never happened. Naomi didn't like the amount of eyes on them, but she ignored it as Frank sat down with a creak beside her.

“Fluffy?” Naomi asked with questioning disdain as Randolf rolled another smoke. He really should stop smoking so much. I barely know him but teeth aren't meant to look like burnt French mustard.

“I'll explain..outside” said Randolf, eyeing the pub around him with caution. “Come on,” he added, nudging Frank to move. Naomi followed the giant dead after Randolf as soon as he had finished neatly resetting the table before they left, much to Randolf's annoyance.

Outside the air was quiet; remarkably absent of the pub's noise to Naomi's mind. Above, the pink haze was shifting into a darker shade. She saw Randolf glance up as he lit a match on Frank's arm. “Randy! Stop doing that.” They began to walk towards a more busy cross-road at the end of the murky street. Naomi had to admit, the pub action gave her new respect for the Agents. Perhaps it wasn't all amateur cakes and silly coloured gloves.

“So, this Fluffy?” she began trying to avoid falling behind Randolf's quick steps. The old man had gained a gear in Styx. Or at least some Cod liver oil.

“Good question,” replied Randolf, playing with his cigarette as if it were a manifestation of his thoughts. Naomi could tell Randolf was more comfortable here than he seemed back at the Ministry. The walk and posture were more of a confident man than a grumbling old loser in some Government department. His eyes had the dark light of purpose within them. The same couldn't be said for Frank, whose face seemed preoccupied. Naomi couldn't help but notice how often Frank's hands seemed to trace its way back to his concealed weapon. Naomi followed Randolf's gaze into the throng of dead that they were approaching. The buildings around her still seemed out of place. Haphazard and yet strong, Styx all seemed very thrown together. People's shadows began to flick about in the dimming haze like badly connected lights. Styx felt like it had been assembled by builders on a Friday afternoon before a Bank Holiday weekend. And that wasn't the only thing that had gotten under her skin. Naomi had felt the walls in the pub and found them solid to her fingers yet spongy to her mind. Her body instinctively distrusted the place; but it would, wouldn't it? I'm technically dead her mind affirmed to the more simple flesh below �" or was it the body soothing her mind? Since coming in, she had felt like she was suffering from phantom limb syndrome. Dying was still very virgin to her yet she was determined not to show it Randolf or Frank on her first case.

“We don't know girl, or at least no one is telling �" yet,” said Randolf with a coy puff of smoke past her left ear. Ergh she grimaced, wafting her hand.

“This always happens darling,” said Frank leaning in. “Conners, tricksters and all sorts of silliness about 're-birth' back to the land of the living. It's all so senseless.”

“You mean people like that Williams guy are trying to cross ove- back?” Her mind felt frustrated at being utterly ignorant for once. It was like the pieces of her jigsaw at home had been scattered by a bomb and she had to grope for each morsel of fact and information with her eyes welded shut.

“Well, some do Flaking. There's many a happy deceased here, but there's always a few stirring things up. Causing mischief and playing with the weaker-

“More delicate” interjected Frank with a soft smile.

“Whatever. Aye, well they are open to the darker minds in this place. It's not like everyone turns into hari-krishnas or hippies when they drop dead,” said Randolf with a spit, flicking his rollie off the wall. “Ha, no, there's ones who go off when they die! Without them I'd be having my feet up with a pack of Lamberts in no time,” he said dismissively and bitterly at the idea as they headed into the throng of the bustling street. Naomi avoided looking at any faces as she and the dead passed by one another. They eventually rounded a corner, ducking into a side street and moved on. Naomi cursed a choice of heels as they went. Not exactly what you need with cobbles is it? Ahead, she caught sight of two children playing. Their Victorian-type dresses filled her heart with an unusual affection. One smiled at her as they walked by, hands squeezing a red ball deeply in awe at the size of Frank. The chill of realisation only flowed through Naomi's blood as they continued past. Dead children. She didn't turn for fear of catching their eyes, staring straight forward until she couldn't hear them playing any more.

“You see Naomi dearest it isn't that simple” said Frank with a comforting hand on her back, clearly more aware, or at least more sympathetic than Randolf at her discomfort. “We know the mouldy peaches from the good ones. And we usually know when they are coming in. We know exactly where they are all the time once they are here,” he said with a confident nod. “It is the ones who go in good and come out well.. naughty that keep Randolf and I busy all day” he added, his free hand waiving at another staring, astonished child. Naomi knew it made sense. Who could tell what happened to you when you came here? Free from obligation, past relationships, families, or even old social norms? The ideas oddly appealed to her. It was then that the sharper side of her mind clasped itself onto a hole in Frank's explanation.

“What about the, well the really mouldy ones?”

“Always after more Flaking aren't we?” said Randolf without looking at her. Was he impressed or annoyed? They crossed over into a quieter street and headed through a darker side-alley, which felt colder to Naomi.

“Yes, always. And?”

“Ha. Well yes those buggers. I'm sure you can guess many an infamous one or two. There's no room for them in Styx; certainly not on my watch, that's for sure. Deviants the lot of them! They're locked up far away from any chance of crossing-back or doing harm to the odd, I can't believe I'm saying this, good dead people around here.” said Randolf in full policeman's tone.

“Where?”

“Purgatory” replied Frank with a hint of despair.

“Is that another city?” she asked, images of a barbed wire lined prison camp coming to her mind. Purgatory: the land of damned. Her Father always said her Uncle was heading to it before too long.

“Actually, it's a twenty minute trek in the west-end, past that mime artist we saw back there. And no you won't find it before you even think about it” said Randolf reading her mind. “It's protected by Lore and 'none shall pass 'as they say... well not on your first day anyway, so forget about it girl” he said with satisfaction, knowing that the red-tape barrier would annoy her. They, it was always a they wasn't it? Who was 'they' anyway? Naomi always found it was 'they' who stopped all the fun. And 'they' were always allies of her Father from the day he said no to her about a pony ('they' said it was spoiling a girl, as if), to taking the comfy chair last Christmas ('they' said it was up to the king of the castle to pick where he parked his rump); Naomi had an instinctive loathing for the 'theys'. If she ever met one, she would punch them square in the nose for every young adult in history.

“They're a bit like bananas darling” chimed Frank. “If you keep them too near, they'll turn anything around them bad,” he said knowingly as he raised the pink, delicate knocker of the town house they had picked out of, what appeared to Naomi, numerous identical ones that lined this unwelcoming street.

As part of her brain went off to wonder who on earth would spend their afterlife as a mime, the majority of Naomi's frontal lobes pored over her nagging desire to find Purgatory. Naomi always hated things being held back from her. 'We'll see' was the only phrase her parents could use to make her cry when she was just two. A rebellious streak, which Naomi was wholly proud of, was sown in the womb long ago. Ha, just like when old Mrs Wilmslow, head waitress at the fish restaurant in Flurton, a hamlet two miles from Millicent, had the misfortune to encounter it. When Mrs Wilmslow had clipped Naomi's ear for spending too long on her break with Erik the washboy (an attractive Iranian, despite the name, lad if there ever was one), Naomi just couldn't let it go as most underlings would. It had taken several rants and a vat of disappointed spittle drowning Naomi from Mrs Wilmslow's furious lips for Naomi to begrudgingly, and without a sliver of sincerity, apologise to the moribund haddock. Personally, Naomi thought the excrement that she had secured from George at the Llama farm was far better stuffing for their sausages than any pap that Mr Wilmslow had forced into the villagers' throats. Yes, Naomi may have almost ruined the Wilmslow's business, but the whole village knew, at 16, she wasn't one to retract her claws. Much to Naomi's amusement and her mother's shame, it was still a tradition every Christmas for one plucky Flurton child to hang a stool-laden sausage wreath outside the Wilmslow cottage door.

Naomi flicked her nails together in frustration as they waited in silence outside the door. She had to find this Purgatory. The possibilities were too enchanting. The door in front of her began to loosen its bolt and locks. Its owner was home.

“Oh it's you Randolf. And Frank!!” beamed a jolly and tall woman as the door was answered with a cautious tilt, and then fast swoop as the knockers were identified. “My pleasures! You scallops come, come for a brew,” the woman ordered as she ushered for them to come inside. The woman gave Naomi a sizing smile as if she were a prized ham.

“My, and aren't you pretty too,” said the jolly woman as she stepped forward, kissing both of Naomi's cheeks as she gave her an Arctic hug that Naomi disapproved of. She never liked being touched without permission.

“Er, thank you...?” Naomi managed with a disgruntled check for wrinkles around her new work-dress as the woman set her free. This wasn't supposed to be touched, let alone hugged!

“Olivia honey! Now get inside you fools,” said Olivia with a seductive laugh as Randolf and Frank greeted her warmly. Naomi couldn't place the accent, an off Welsh that chimed with the countryside that didn't sit wholly with Olivia's more metropolitan sharp, pencil dress. It was the way that it was also combined with what looked like farmer's jacket that jarred with Naomi's eyes.

Closing the door behind the agents, Olivia led them into a homely house and motioned them to sit round a black oak table, dominating the dining room except for the low-burning orange ochre flames that crumbled into one another in confines of the fireplace. It was then that Naomi added another thing to the her 'random things about heaven' list: even though there was a fire, and they had stepped inside, there was a distinct lack of temperature. If Naomi had a thermometer, she would need one that could measure bland. As the agents sat down around the table, Olivia hurried out and returned with four steaming mugs before Naomi had a second more to think. Olivia moved quicker than her middle-age frame would suggest. The cosy, frilled curtains and a knitted puppy framed above the fireplace seemed very... nice to Naomi. But like too much make-up fake tan and mini-skirts, the place was trying too hard. It didn't feel right. Or was just normal? Naomi felt her mind was doing strange things. Her thoughts kept on having more a voice of their own. Hmm.

“White with one and three quarters isn't Naomi?” said Olivia with an innocent smile at Naomi' stunned surprise. Naomi felt naked for a moment. How did she know that!? Randolf grinned beside her as he began to roll another cigarette.

“Olivia, don't frighten the fresh meat here” he said warmly- well, for him anyway- until the smile was wiped from his face and teleported to Frank's as Olivia smacked the cigarette out from his hands, tobacco spilling into Randolf's tea as he swore.

“Well I hope you haven't been teaching her all of your unseemly habits Randolf! Really, it'll be the death of you. Should have been a long time ago too,” said Olivia, scolding the irritated Agent with a teacher's tut. Randolf began to, but then thought better of, complaining; consoling himself with a sip of the tobacco-infused tea instead. Naomi was certain Randolf was praying some of the nicotine had been distilled within it. “Flaking: this, our delightful and moralising host, is Olivia Halfpenny” he announced through a thick, grumpy slurp. “Olivia is one of our best pairs of eyes and ears in all of Styx. It happens, she knows it.”

“Oh now Randolf let's not go too far”said Olivia as she pulled a free chair out, taking the fur shawl off its back and draping it around her neck before sitting down beside Naomi, still examining the virgin Agent with wide, salmon-pink eyes. The dead's eyes darted all around Naomi, interrogating every sinew and follicle. Olivia seemed particularly fascinated by Naomi's hair. What was she looking for? Naomi wondered, moving her chair ever so slightly away Olivia, and adjusting her posture to conceal any potentially obvious awkwardness.

“Olivia knows what's going, who's going on it and what they're thinking about it before any one's braincells bash together with an idea.”

“Please. You're too much sometimes Randolf. I only help where I can,” said Olivia, stirring her cup quickly with a delicate smile.

“And you always do,” said Frank with a light pat on her arm and a more than professionally happy smile to Naomi's sharp eyes.

“Charm aside, you never make a social call boys. To matters of the Ministry. Nothing particularly out of the ordinary �" Oh, and how you will learn what is honey-” said Olivia, pausing to throw her comment at Naomi with a smirk, “-which should trouble me. But no matter. How may one help?” she said with an air of frivolity yet the look in her eyes began to team up with a business-like frown across her barely wrinkled face. Naomi couldn't guess Olivia's age, anything from thirty to sixty was possible.

“Fluffy mean anything Liv?” asked Randolf, rolling his unusually free, non-cigarette holding fingers on the table. The mere mention made Olivia's eyes roll dismissively, if not relived. “Oh that.. another Easter egg fad. Nothing serious,” she replied with more annoyance than concern as she scraped a finger of her own along the table's edge. “Indeed,” replied Frank. “But one that may have, I simply can not believe I am about this without any true corroboration, worked dearest.” This caused Olivia to sit back and fold her arms contemptuously at the suggestion. Her face didn't need to vocalise its disbelief.

“I'm sorry. Easter egg?” butted in Naomi with a frown of her own as she folded her arms. This ignorance was more annoying than being killed! Hmm, her mind wondered aloud to her, how many people alive could genuinely claim that as a comparative?

“Pah Easter eggs, Green Fuddhas, lumps of the True Cross, Chunks of the Wailing Wall, they're for mugs and come and go quicker than my dinners” snapped Randolf irritably.

“Oh really Agent Cod, must you besmirch my home with your ghastly images alongside your foul fumes,” chided Olivia.

“Reincarnation substances dear,” explained Frank to Naomi, his face a picture of disdain behind the steam of his mug. “Things to help” �" Frank flared his nose irritably at the word 'help' �" “people like Frank and me to get back to being people like you,” said Olivia more seriously and stronger in tone. There was real anger infused into her face now.

“Old as my boots them,” added Randolf. “There's always another one; they keep coming and bloody coming. Promising a return to any fool who'll believe the shyster selling them horsesh-” he trailed off quickly into incomprehensible mutters that bubbled tea in his mug as Olivia's wide eyes glowered, ready to pounce at any release of a swearword.

“How do they work?” asked Naomi, her imagination needed something to work with. And the more questions she asked, the less likely was required to try the tea out politeness.

“Depends on the substance honey, they pop you through the Lore's wall and back into the breather's world- how much does she know?” Olivia asked suddenly, trailing off with a meaningful search in Randolf and Frank’s eyes. What was she hiding? Actually, what were those two sugaring hidiing?

“Ha. Less than she thinks she does,” answered Randolf with a smirk that Naomi returned with an evil pout, cocking her head like an annoyed child (Naomi would hate to be described like this but that's what she was mused the Universe, who had resumed following this mortal episode after a collapsing star had faded out of its existence).“Basically, there are ways and means girl to cross back over when you fu- flipping shouldn't. Remember the rules about suicide? It's not only reckless putting Lord knows what in you- it can be bl- harmful too. Not that I should care, mind.”

“How can anything harm them? They're dead.” Naomi missed the slightest twitch in Olivia's face at her use of 'them' and 'they're'.

“Well, it can seriously hurt you in all sorts of nasty ways depending on what you take,” added Frank creaking on his chair as crossed his legs. “But what's most serious, as I'm sure you are aware darling, is that it is against the Lore. And that's the real danger we care about.”

“You break the Lore honey and you break God's authority.”

“Boom,” reminded Randolf, throwing his hands up and knocking his tea in the process.

“Of course nobody ever gets that far Naomi. They usually fall apart due to the silly, nasty reanimation concoction that they have taken, or we catch them, or..” Frank hesitated.

“Or Tortfeasor's lot get them. Permanently,” said Randolf ruefully, lightly dropping one hand on the table as it were a guillotine. Naomi could see Olivia's discomfort at the mere mention of his name. The fog of confusion around her mind was beginning to forge, step by step, a map of the paths and streets of what truly transpired in Styx. If they didn't stop the dead for their own good, then Tortfeasor would eliminate them. Naomi felt revulsion as his laughing face ran across her mind. This was swiftly followed by a knot of guilt as her conscious, ever helpful, recalled the doll being blown to smithereens by Tortfeasor's gun as she fired it. Naomi promised herself to give Tortfeasor a shot, if not a whole clip, in the crotch the next time she saw him. Or an acid-laden cream pie even.

The departure of Olivia's joy and the grim faces on the Agents had left the room feeling cold. Candles seemed lower to Naomi. And even the dog in the picture seemed upset.

“That said about this Fluffy, it does trouble me now that it brings you here, like this. It seems to be getting worse boys; they're not just getting these new ones �" they're getting more powerful with each use. All with the consequences of course,” said Olivia solemnly. Naomi wasn't able to wholly follow what Olivia meant, turning her to Frank with a questioning look.

“They are addictive Naomi” said Frank to her with his hand patting Olivia's hand. “To misplaced souls who haven't found peace here yet, a taste of breathing seems to be all they want, even a fleeting one” he said with sadness.

“Like a bunch of crack addicts girl” said Randolf grimly. The Dead were junkies? Styx was riddled with a burgeoning drugs problem? The idea seemed preposterous.

“But no need to worry Naomi, that's why we are here to help,” said Frank, trying to bring some sunshine of hope back to the room with his massive, if put on, smile. Olivia smiled at him, squeezing his hand that was still wrapped around hers. There was definitely history there; of that much Naomi was sure. Randolf looked clearly uncomfortable around it as well; although he probably was born uncomfortable around women. Did he have a wife? It didn't seem likely to Naomi, and there was no ring on Randolf's finger. “Ah well Liv, much as I like to moan about the damn arses around here, we need to find the fu- bloody Fluffy maker and bring them t'book before someone implodes or starts dribbling to death again in public, the Minister throws a wobbly, and Billy's goons make a call.”

“You don’t need to remind me honey,” replied Olivia with a fire of hostility engulfing her eyes at the mention of Tortfeasor’s name once more. The mugs sat quietly still on the table in front of Naomi, but she could feel another conversation in a language she didn't know was going on around her. She felt blind and hated it. After a few long, silent seconds Olivia sighed, appearing to accept defeat in the foreign conversation.

“Camilla will know about it,” said Olivia with a shake of her head.

“Undoubtedly,” replied Randolf calmly, clearly wanting more.

“Well I can get a picture. A name at the very least I'm sure. But you'll be lucky to get them before she does these days,” said Olivia with a wisp of challenge to the Agents that Randolf dismissed with a c**k of his head. Frank seemed passive and distant to Naomi, lost in deep, heavy thought. Who was Camilla? And can I please stop asking questions by myself at times? Quiet you she told her mind. It was getting far too vocal inside her head. Her own thoughts, ones that she knew were entirely her own, were enough.

“Of course she will Liv. Damned if I care about that,” said Randolf without much love for Camilla to Naomi's ears, whomever she was.

“Haha! Well honey, she’ll have already had you followed here, mark my words. And onwards �" you can be sure of that,” replied Olivia, staring hard at the table as she gathered their mugs, irritated at Randolf’s apparent carelessness. Naomi's, despite smelling perfect, remained untouched as it sloshed past her face, Olivia didn't seem to mind, and trailed inviting steam irritably behind Olivia into the kitchen. Naomi felt a battle had been lost somewhere by Olivia, but Naomi was not sure why. What had been the cost? Either way, their visit was clearly over as Olivia strode back in without looking at the agents, fixing a false smile as she went to the front door and unbolted its locks, all of them. Sugar. Seven locks seemed a bit paranoid to Naomi as they groaned open. Who could hurt you that much when you were dead?

“You get me what I need and I'll worry about Camilla, Liv,” said Randolf as he stood with a quick shake of his cloak and a tap for his cigarettes in his pocket. Olivia glared at Randolf without much enthusiasm for his continued existence in her house as she opened the door.

“Thank you is what Randy means my dearest, beauty and bravery as always,” said Frank more gently, adding a slight bow as he scooped up his backpack and re-set his chair daintily under the table. Naomi followed suit, minus the cringing bow.

“Always honey, always a pleasure to see you! And you too Naomi, my pretty girl-,” said Olivia, taking Naomi's hands, which Naomi still had to fight against her instinct to pull away from the ice-cold grip “ -you must come again. I barely heard anything about you and so nice- ha! If that’s the word- to see a girl in the Ministry,” said Olivia with a wink and a peck on either side of Naomi's face as she hugged her. Naomi, drowning in some sort of animal shawl, managed a muffled and uncomfortable “yes” in response.

“Oh we'll be back no fear Liv. You know how to reach me,” said Randolf swinging a rebellious new rollie into shape as he stepped into the street outside. Frank and Naomi folded out behind him. Olivia looked at each of them with a clever smile on her full lips. With a slight curtsy (that felt aimed at Randolf in the manner of a middle finger) Olivia watched them go a few paces, scolding Randolf once more as he lit up, before she turned back inside. Olivia became stone-faced as soon as she closed and hurriedly bolted the door behind her. Only a forensic owl with a passion for pupils would have noticed the feeling hidden, but nevertheless there, in Olivia's pair: terror.

“Before- yes I bloody know you Flaking- before you give me or Frank another game of twenty questions about this bloody place gal, we're gonna show you something,” said Randolf through a haze of smoke as he led the trio down a cobbled path that wound down from this street that adorned a top of a slight hill. Naomi, annoyed and wishing to answer back, nevertheless could see Randolf's mind calculating something that might be worth her while. She remained quiet, careful to ensure that none of the cobbles took her down for a tumble. Naomi looked up Frank who still seemed like he was back in Olivia's house. Naomi didn't wholly trust Olivia, but she couldn't think why. It felt wrong in that house: too nice, too clean and far too perfect. It was just like a witch's gingerbread house (not that Naomi read children’s books still of course). What was it her Grandmother used to say? Where there's a pat, there's cow? Naomi had never considered her Grandmother anything more than senile but the words fell into place vividly with a satisfying thunk of appreciation from her genes. Who was Camilla though? A drug kingpin? Or Queenpin surely? Another burning need for information had joining the swollen queue in her new life. A loose cobble jolted her out of her own thoughts with a curse that made Randolf chuckle. Naomi shrugged off Frank’s assisting finger, mentally sticking her tongue out at Randolf. She couldn't bear it. She had to know something about Camilla, pain in the bottom or otherwise.

* * *

Olivia felt relieved as the last bolted sank into place. Each closed lock made her visibly more comfortable. They still didn't know. Good. She had to let Camilla know before the Ministry got any further. If they could get there first there was still a chance. Olivia caught her own panic-stricken look in the mirror across from her. Her face looked so tired. Those selfish idiots! They had no idea how much danger they had placed Styx in. The breathers wouldn't care for excuses. She hated to think, let alone say it, but Camilla was right about this one.

“Miss, ah Karina.” The voice would have drained Olivia's blood if she had any left. Oh God! But how had they got in? She stood frozen, one hand still on the last bolt of the door. The edges of her eyes saw the shadows encircling behind her. Part of her mind tried to force her fear-stricken body to turn but it was too late. Tortfeasor's associates were not known for patience �" or mercy. Outside, an amethyst leaf rolling on the cobbles, the sole disturber of the barren silence before it settled, content with its new place on the floor.

* * *

“Beautiful isn't it?” said Frank, sucking a deep breath of self-satisfied non-air through his glistening lips.“Yes, it's magnificent,” replied Naomi and for once, meant it. The park stood proudly against the city-scape as a violent splash of fantastic colour and natural beauty amongst the mass of white towers and stifling dull buildings. Above, birds of some sort (Naomi thought they were all flying rats) floated and dived around the central fountain. Gold and rich with jewels, the brightness of the water dazzled Naomi's eyes each time she saw it reflect the decaying pink light. Paths flowed from the fountain like rivers in perfect lines, which carved a maze of neatly kept trees and flower beds that were dotted all around. Naomi found the slight purple tinge to all the plants and trees a bit sickly, yet the macabre vibe was beginning to grow on her. Around the park, couples, groups and individual dead circulated the paths below with barely a whisper. Thankfully Naomi couldn't see any children this time. How long had they been here staring over the park? Hours? Minutes? Time seemed a foreign concept to her. Her own world felt a dream away from the splendour of Styx's central park.

A scratching noise turned her attention to an emaciated squirrel that had bravely ventured toward them from another bench. Its only reward was to dodge a cigarette-end bullet flicked from Randolf's hand. As it scampered away, tiny red eyes twinkled swear-words like the angry mouse in Frank's chamber that day..week ago…? Naomi wasn't tired but her mind felt decidedly unhinged. Come to think of it: she wasn't thirsty or hungry either. Was her body in fact here? She tried to shake off such thoughts and focus on what she wanted to know. Focus brain: who is Camilla and why the fudge are we in this, admittedly splendid, park?

“Come on then, why are we here? What do you want to show me” asked Naomi’s obedient mouth in a child-like annoying way that always gets heard by all ears around it.

“Because Mort Park is about the only place Camilla's ears are likely to be deaf girl,” answered Randolf with scorn. “And that's how I likes them.”

“You said no more questions but you two are limiting me to them! Who's is she then?”

“Camilla knows everything around here darling. Ever since she came and took charge from the Barons she has ruled the roost,” said Frank, his perfect brushed hair flicking gently in the evening air, although Naomi couldn't feel it. Who was this woman? Clearly powerful, so she must have been famous once. Naomi's brain rifled around the edges of her memory for a suitable name but came back annoyingly empty-handed. Logic demanded a daft-sounding response. She hated how Randolf must delight in teasing her with every grope into the unknown.

“She’s the Queen of the Dead?” The idea seemed like a bad fairy tale. Frank’s lips wobbled unhappily while Randolf laughed (which was annoyingly regular now) to himself at her suggestion.

“Ha! She wishes. Not far off de facto, mind. Anyroad girl, people change when they cross over. Some come nice some come… well Camilla's got a bit between her teeth that's for sure.”

“Sounds like just the person you need in this place. If she's such a problem why haven't you done anything about her then?” asked Naomi irritably.

“Well it’s not all paradise in bloody paradise Flaking; or else I wouldn't have a job here to do and my, wouldn't that be nice! All the same, the batty cow makes my life easier without her knowing it �" that's why.”

“Before her,” continued Frank after interrupting with a polite, lecturing cough, “there was always a minor crisis or something foolish going on that threatened the collapse of world. Public figures demanding their 'lives' back. Squabbles over who was more important than who, and who was allowed reincarnation rights and who didn’t deserve any. There was no order and there had never been really. Sometimes it could boil over and get out of hand Naomi. Big egos, silly tiffs, they all led to the same thing: blood,” he said with what Naomi felt was a touch too much condescension. Yes, Naomi did feel like an ignorant child in this place, but she definitely hated being patronised. Some called it arrogance, Naomi called it self-respect. But a giggle from Frank silenced her oncoming protest.

“Oh Randolf, do you remember when we found Charles the First tied to the fountain with his bottom painted blue by John Lennon?” Randolfcburst out with laughter and almost fall off the bench with a hacking cough of smoke and spittle. “Haha! Mercy me, try telling an Emperor, a bloody Emperor girl, he can't slaughter a thousand watching subjects because he was beaten in a recarn competition by a hippy. Brilliant times girl, you should've been there!” said Randolf happily, wiping a tear from his eye. Naomi wish she had. A King beaten by a scouser? Questions, like a perennial pox, bombarded Naomi's mind. Was there more than one Styx? Was everyone whoever died here? Was Jesus here? Do the dead wash their bottoms? No! Naomi slapped her wandering consciousness. Focus. Camilla.

“Very, er amusing” she said, hopefully with an air of sophisticated, reserved dignity. “Who is this Camilla then? I can't say know who you mean” she stated, folding her arms. Frank looked surprised at her. What? Was I meant to know?

“Well she came to this Styx (A-HA! Noted Naomi's detached memory- so there was more than one..blimey) in 1997 luvvie...” Frank left the year hanging in the air, expecting Naomi to bite with recognition. Her memory raced. Nothing! Randolf looked at her expectantly. Was she being stupid? What am I missing...think Naomi..

Oh.

A face and the year came together in a thunderclap of realisation. Her!? The Tyrant of the Other Side? Naomi couldn't believe she was hearing her own lips. “Princess Camilla!?” she blurted out and, to her immediate horror, saw the serious nods from both men. “You mean to tell me the People's Princess is now moonlighting as the Queenpin of heaven!?” The idea was utterly indigestible in its ridiculous. This place was ridiculous! Frank's stupid cravat and Flowered shirt were ridiculous. As far Naomi could recall, The Princess had been as gentle and kind as anyone as anyone in that position could be. And now Naomi was supposed to believe that her death had turned her into Boadicea.

“Hush girl! Don't let one of her ears catch you saying that. The Lady's got quite the temper and a bloody memory as long her terminal reach,” warned Randolf, mockingly or serious Naomi could not tell, as he leaned closer to her ear. Naomi's nose had long since concluded that this was never a good prospect to her orifice or how events were about unfold.

“She's flippin’ sharp mark my words girl. Not just a pretty face,” he whispered. “Came in and found out all the owners of the big reincarnation supplies in Styx. She took them out faster than I can piss on a cold night.”

“How?” Naomi managed through disconcerted, pursed lips. Her eyes trying to blind themselves at that nocturnal image. What was it with this man and phallic related phraseology.

“Charm, wit-” began Frank warmly, until his partner interrupted him.

“Bullied and beat threatened and killed,” added Randolf sharply with a look of venomous mirth at Frank.

“Yes, well persuaded, I would say for certain Randolf. She quickly took ownership of all official reincarnation in Styx. Now everyone obeys her or misses out on going back. Ever. At least not officially anyway,” said Frank trailing away into thought. If Naomi had been less surprised she may have noticed his discomfort hiding in that 'Ever'. Her mind was still beating back the sadist thoughts of her subconscious trying to concoct a vivid image of a naked Randolf drawing a yellow angel in the snow. Eurgh.

“Aye something made her flip, that's for sure. Always been a Queen-to-be... must do funny things to your marbles,” pondered Randolf. “And it is Queen Camilla to anyone meets her now. Just you try and call her Princess and see how long you keep your larynx. We haven't had this much trouble at the Ministry since Fuddha.. You know that reincarnation Monk from Yibet? Apparently he's still running the Styx over there, or so I hear.”

“Fuddha's a tyrant here? That's insane!” Naomi felt part of humanity was being betrayed. Fuddha! The fat little statues with a big happy face? Naomi had bought one with Felicity when they went backpacking in Thailand. Peace and love was his meaning. How can you abandon your life’s work just because you died? Fuddha probably wouldn't be happy to know I used his statue to hide my cigarettes either, thought Naomi guiltily. The dead seemed to go mental when they landed here. No wonder they're not allowed back!

“Aye I know. You lose your trust quickly here gal. Anyroad it's all a balancing act; if they keep things in order for us, well the enemy of my enemy is my w***e.”

“I, er, see..” said Naomi slowly. “So what do they think about you? The Ministry?”Randolf splutter a ‘Ha!’ laugh that Naomi only ever heard from the misery guts in the local pub.

“We are about as popular as the idea of sharing Randy's underwear.” said Frank.

“Hey! Nowt wrong with 'em,” snapped Randolf, slightly wounded.

“Camilla and her kind do not like us darling. And certainly not me. They feel we have no right to meddle in their affairs. Especially if its what makes them powerful.”

Naomi frowned. Before she could inflame the situation with a poor question about how homosexuals serving in the Ministry are regarded by the ancient dead, a doe-eyed, black Labrador burst through a bush beside them and dropped a soggy black envelope in a puddle of drool into Randolf's disgusted hands. Kicking the dog away from him, Randolf carefully tore the damp top away, pulling out a thin pair of glasses with tape holding the frames together. Randolf quickly began scanning the letter inside.

“Olivia. Balls. Quicker than I thought for once. This isn't good. She's bloody worried Frank. Something’s off,” said Randolf.

“She didn't seem herself Randy.”

“Well?” Naomi asked almost irritably after watching Randolf sat still for half a minute in silence, buried in the letter's message. Randolf ignored her. One look at Frank told Naomi that she genuinely needed to be quiet for once.

Randolf almost snapped to attention out of the bench as he finished the letter. “Jimmy Shawcross” he said venomously, crushing the letter in his hands as he looked to Frank, whose eyes shook like ruby boulders at the news. “Him? I warned him the last time. Very annoying.”

“You're tell me. Bloody sod should know better by now. They never bleeding well learn” said Randolf angrily, stomping off already.

“Come on luvvie, let's go,” said Frank to Naomi. Jimmy, whomever he was, wasn’t a welcome inclusion into their lives. I wonder what else was in that letter, wondered Naomi as the trio hurried down into the park below.

Spotty the Labrador panted, watching the Agents leave him by the bench. A warm well of red wine brewed in one dozy eye. No reward. Alone. Sad. The thoughts flashed openly across his broad, sad face for anyone to see. Suddenly, Spotty pricked his nose and sniffed, he turned around with J.O.Y. A warm beef fillet stood sizzling below the bench. The Universe gave himself a pat on the back as Spotty dug in, tail wagging furiously. The Universe had always liked dogs, especially the droolers.

* * *

Tortfeasor readjusted his leather gloves, checking his reflection against a puddle sunk into a gap in the cobbles beneath him His hands still felt repulsed and cold from contact. Those fools. Randolf and his filthy zombie were so dense. They always followed the breadcrumbs without questioning how the loaf was made �" or questioning the baker either. Bakeress in this case, Tortfeasor corrected himself as he looked back up at Olivia's newly silent dark house. He looked up to see dusk falling against the white towers dominating the centre of Styx. Things were worse than they seemed; a lot worse. This made Tortfeasor happy. Fluffy, honestly. Which wretched wretch in this wasteland comes up with such dreadful names? But, names aside, difficult times made Tortfeasor's services indispensable, and his methods… .acceptable without many questions. At least not from anyone who mattered. With a slight, dainty wave, two large shadows beside him began followed him silently as he stepped on the puddle with rippling glee.

“Jimmy! Open the door luvvie!” shouted Frank, fist berating the door as it wobbled under the strain of his blows. Naomi held the lantern firmly in the air; one that Randolf had ‘borrowed’ from a shop on the main street. Weird. It felt like she had stepped backwards in time. The ivory flame hung brightly in the air; yet, no matter how close, she felt no heat against her cheek. Frank had stopped her from putting her finger into it.

At least some things were making sense �" if that was what you could call it. As they wandered from the park into the maze of streets and alleys, Frank explained you saw what you saw in Styx. If you were a Victorian you saw it as Victorian. Edwardian if you were Edwardian. Or Medieval if you went further back. Smoke and mirrors was the order of the day. What about revenge? Naomi had to admit she was surprised when she asked about slavery and other crimes. Surely the afterlife was a great time for settling scores? Randolf had annoyingly chuckled at that, revelling in her naivety (Naomi managed to 'accidentally' topple on a cobble and knock at least half of his precious tobacco all over the floor �" oops). As Frank and Naomi had watched him curse, angrily picking up what flaky scraps he could, Frank said that: “Death was a great leveller darling”. Nothing that used to matter did any more. The afterlife was yours to make what you will. Naomi argued this was utterly stupid. What if you knew who had killed you? Frank just looked back at her..well frankly. You won’t understand until you cross, he said. Naomi was still trying to bury the thought of ending up here as far away as she could. It was more like Alcoholics Anonymous than Paradise.

Randolf stopped Frank pounding again with a careful lift of his colleague's fist as he cupped his own hand against the letterbox.“Jimmy! Open up you toad. I'm not here for you for once! I have more important things to do. Don't make me waste my time breaking bloody in!” The door answered with silence. A few seconds passed before Naomi heard Frank loudly un-holster his gun, cranking heavily on the safety, which Naomi was sure would take both of her hands to shift. As if the gun could talk telepathically, Naomi heard a bolt loosening quickly with a tremble behind the door. It opened carefully without enthusiasm or a hint of a choice.

“Good boy” said Randolf, ramming the door open into the face of the poor opener who yelped as the agent strode inside. As Naomi crossed the threshold behind Frank, her nose was hijacked by a strong, eggy smell - sulphur? - mixed with a cocktail of rich spices that blinded her sinuses. It reminded her of the dodgy curry house’s kitchen back home. Inside, Jimmy, identified, by having the most frightened look, sat with a dishevelled man on a dilapidated couch in the poorly lit hovel. Green wallpaper peeled sadly from the grimy walls. The whole room, such that it was, felt like a banquet of pity. It was a sorry place and not one Naomi cared to stay long inside for.

Frank closed the door behind them, revealing a skinny man cradling his nose with a whimper at the sight of Frank's scowl. The place fitted the bill. Frank had explained before they laid siege to the door that Jimmy was a reincarnation or 'recarn' addict. He had once been a famous guitarist apparently. Naomi didn't recognise him at all. Now, Jimmy was apparently the foremost authority on illegal recarns due to his abundant first-hand experience. Whether snorted or injected, involving a sacrificial dance around a boiling cauldron, Jimmy was, as Frank explained, the litmus for all those craving their next fix of the Breather's world. The sunken face and slight green tinge to his skin didn't get much sympathy from Naomi. She had never had time for addicts; a loss of control was weakness to her. As if you couldn't tolerate drugs and do well. Half of her university, academics or otherwise, was fuelled on one herb or powder. And that's if you didn't count alcohol �" which Naomi did.

“Jimmy darling, how are you? Spiggott and Lord Shaftesbury as usual I see,” said Frank like a matron over naughty boys caught stealing from the pick and mix sweets in the local shop.

“Neva betta Frank. We's alright ain't we fellas?” said a sweating Jimmy with a high, nervy tone.

“S'right” chirped the balding man from the wheezing sofa.

“Indeed Sir” rolled a nasally, estuary voice - who must be Lord Shaftesbury with that accent thought Naomi- as the skinny man ambled, nose held in the air, to the sofa. Randolf pulled up a small, dirty chair backwards and relaxed atop it in the middle of the room with a broad, happy smile to his class. Randolf took out a small, ornate bauble with orange liquid inside and began toying with it from one hand to another. The three men's eyes followed it like predatory hawks.

“Jimmy, you and your bloody Rabble, I expected better,” said Frank slowly, calmly as the bauble swung like a pendulum in front of the Rabble. Randolf lent back with a creak and smiled at them again. “S'no need fo' this Ran- Misser Cod!” added Jimmy quickly, catching Randolf's raised eyebrow, which quickly cooled down again as Jimmy corrected himself.

“Ha, polite as any thief isn't he Frank?” said Randolph. Frank, leant stoically against the door, nodded in silence. His eyes seemed to be twitching a glance at the flask as well. Naomi didn't like to see that look in Frank's eyes.

“Do you know why we're here Jimmy?” asked Randolf without a shred of doubt that the Rabble did. Jimmy squirmed and avoided his gaze. “Haha… never kno’ do I Mister Cod! We never kno’ nowt and yous always pickin' on us! We ain't done nowt wrong 'ave we Spig?”

“S'rite” growled Spiggott, who went pathetically meek under a second of Randolf's focused stare.“Jimmy, Jimmy- let's drop it for once. Whenever a horse s***s you and your Rabble are the first flies to eat it, we all know that.” “Ay! there's no need fo' that. Abuse that is. That ain’t legal!” complained Jimmy hoarsely. God he was whiney, thought Naomi. Terrible grammar too. Good English wasn't exactly what a lead guitarist needs though he better not have been a songwriter as well. “Save it Jimmy. No excuses, there's something new, something goood that works on the street. And if you want this-” Randolf waved the bauble at him “-then you let me know who, what and when,” demanded Randolf. Naomi could feel a mix of craving, hate and fear radiating from Jimmy as he squirmed, fighting some internal war.

“Ain't heard of nowt! None o’ us have. We're on the good now Misser Cod!” Randolph laughed in derision. “We is!” lamented Jimmy. “None of that illegal stuff n’ more. Only what's allowed and got fair n’ square,” he blurted with a bout of unaccustomed defiance. Randolf glanced to each of the Rabble for another answer. None was given. Suddenly he kicked the chair out from underneath him and strode over to the dirty sink, uncorking the bauble and teased the orange liquid inside right to the lip. The Rabble wailed with curses so loud Naomi had to cover her ears.

“Want some of this Jimmy? Ministry-grade of course; and utterly exclusive to Breathers. Even Camilla can’t have tried it.” The Rabble murmured excited and incoherently between themselves as they debated their next move. Naomi re-covered her ears when Randolph let a drop float dreamily down into the sink below. Shrieks from the addicts went up once more like fireworks. “Is this necessary?” said Naomi to Frank, but he was too busy burying his nails into the wall to notice. Naomi could see the gleam in Frank's eye reflecting the bauble. Fudge. Was it that appealing? Naomi didn't feel right with the baiting. The Rabble were clearly loathsome, but they didn't deserve being squeezed like this. And Naomi was sure Randolf was enjoying it.The Rabble came out of the debating trance and looked at Naomi for the first time; quite filthily too as her Mother would have put it. “Oo ain't you pretty! What's yo name?” said Jimmy with a nasty brown and yellow smile, but then yelped as Frank strode forward out of his own haze and clipped Jimmy around the head lightly (which from Frank, was anything but). “An officer of the Ministry to you Jim Shawcross, and one you will show due respect” ordered Frank sternly, finger wagging at the cowering Jimmy. Naomi caught Randolf looking at her with displeasure. He clearly hadn't enjoyed his baiting-cum-theatre being cut into. Well sod him.

“Enough Jimmy, tell me what I want or it's no Ministry recarn for you. Who has the fluffy!? Have you got any here? You have haven’t you you scrot!” said Randolf, raising his voice into a crescendo of foul temper.

“No!” flailed Jimmy against the background curses of the remaining Rabble. “Never heard of it! Never touched it! Never tried it!” Ah thought Naomi as Spiggot and Lord Shaftesbury sighed swearing at him- even they spotted his mistake.

“You are a liar Jim Shawcross” said Frank coldly. “A liar I cannot, no, will not stop Camilla from dealing with this time,” he added with a detention-passing tone. A cloud of terrified worry whipped across the faces of the Rabble at this as they glanced from one another in fear. Naomi, however, was impressed. Clearly, this Camilla knew what she was doing in this mad house. Still, she couldn't shake the image of a drippy, ditzy girl who simpered on yachts and schmoozed playboys as the Camilla she knew. How could she be such a terror and tyrant now?

“S'no fair! We ain't done nothin' wrong!” cried Jimmy again, hands clasped in prayer. “You're a liar Shawcross, do you want this or not? Last chance and this time I bloody mean it!” said Randolf loudly, wobbling the bauble over the sink precariously between just his bony thumb and forefinger. Lord Shaftesbury, who had been scratching the padding out of the sofa in tension, made the unwise move to charge at the sink, only to rebound back into a painful heap on the floor by a single, log-like finger stuck out by Frank into his onrushing chest. “We kno nuffin! This is not right Sir! We can help, promise! S'no fluffy here!” the pleas came, fusing into a horrible single wail as Randolf raised the bauble still higher, condemning its contents should it smash into the sink. Randolf pulled his lips taught for a moment. Naomi saw the cogs calculating in his mind quickly. Randolf held his breath. Then, before she knew it, Randolf flung the bauble onto the floor, glass flaking into bubbling orange goo that began to dissipate into the filth. Ergh! Naomi was appalled as she watched the Rabble scramble like rabid dogs onto the floor, licking at the orange liquid, jostling with one another like famished dogs.

“My God” she uttered without intending to as she stepped back towards the door. “They're pathetic” said Randolf, surveying the dribbling hyenas in front of him. “But they know nothing luvvies” said Frank sadly. Naomi could see he wanted to pick them up, help them but something held him back.

Abruptly a suspicion crawled across Naomi's mind and made itself centre of her attention.

“Why did Olivia lead us here then?” she asked, frowning. Randolf pulled a grim face. “Hmm, good question for once girl” answered Randolf as he pondered for a moment. “She never gets things bloody wrong,” he said, looking at Frank whose sadness at the Rabble turned sharply to a stoical look of deep concern. “No. We should go. Now.” he said quietly. Something was gravely amiss said the feeling in Naomi’s stomach. She could feel it in her toes. Without another word Randolf motioned her to the door, both pausing as Frank bent down beside the incoherent Rabble, sniffing a bit of orange re-carn on his finger before wiping it on the floor (upon which Lord Shaftesbury pounced at the last drop). “Don't worry about them Frank, let’s go. Olivia.” demanded Randolf impatiently. Frank looked at him with a blank, stone-like expression Naomi hadn’t seen it before and it worried her. Frank shook his head as stepped away from the Rabble and hunched his way out the door past Naomi and Randolf without a word. Before she left, Naomi took one final look back at the Rabble. Jimmy glanced up at her with a hysterical smile, orange goo foaming atop his ravenous lips; his red eyes fading into a ghoulish pink that Naomi was all too happy to get away from sooner rather than later. Turning away, Naomi welcomed the coolness in the dark outside like a hot shower. She almost dropped the lantern she had just re-lit as Randolf's angry voice pounced on her.

“Never interrupt me like that again gal, you hear!” he blasted with a firmness that seemed to make her body obey by cowering, which she wasn't proud about. How dare he!?

“Bu-”

“No buts! What do you think this is girl!? This isn't Alice in bloody Wonderland or some flippin’ fairy story! This is Styx and I don’t have time for you to get squeamish and ignorantly moralising about it!” ranted Randolf as they marched quickly away from the Rabble's hovel. “You’re on my clock and my leash and don’t you forget it girl! I can't have you plonking your 10 inch heels of wisdom into things when you haven't got a sodding clue. Not one flaming clue.” The surrounding street walls echoed with his temper. Leash! Naomi reddened and boiled at the idea, matching Randolf’s angry look with a burning one of her own. Leash! I am no one's pet, and there was definitely nothing wrong with my heels!

“Randolf: calm yourself. Naomi was only trying to help” said Frank trying to dampen the heat with a bit more song in his voice as he stepped in-between the immolating agents. “That's not the point!” snapped Randolf, boots pounding the pavement. “You just do what I say and speak when I say Flaking - got it?” he said shooting her a challenging look, daring her to say anything that wasn't acquiescence. Naomi kept Randolf's fast pace, eyeballing him. It was the best her surprised body could mount as a defiant defence. And Naomi was never one to back down. Naomi was about to fly into her own temper when a shaking glance from Frank twinkling eyes seemed to pacify her. She didn’t know why.

“Yes Mister Cod” Naomi replied angrily, letting the letters drop like falling icicles. “Good” harrumphed Randolf with a nod to himself, going back to rolling a new f*g, crimping it hard with leftover fury in his teeth. What the hell was his problem thought Naomi. What a grumpy git! What had she done to deserve that tirade? She was furious with Randolf as they marched on awkwardly without speaking.

Frank smiled without happiness to himself as he wafted smoke out of his face. Naomi let the lantern flail quite wildly, imaging each shadow she cast bashing stupid Randolf and his stupid f**s into the gutter. “We need to move quickly Randolf, this isn't right” said Frank with clear worry more than simply electing to change the subject. Randolf stopped walking, sucked his teeth and letting his f*g droop in his mouth with wobbling thought. He looked at Naomi whose own eyes swore angrily at his wrinkled gaze. Naomi's cold look morphed into a snarling frown as she watched a small, devilish smile break across his lips.

“You're right Frank,” said Randolf, blowing a thick plume of smoke at Naomi's face. Ergh! “Well Flaking, since you are so keen to get involved all the flaming time, how about you pull your bloody weight?” “Oh yeah?” she replied childishly. Ha! Bring it on thought Naomi as she folded her arms. The idea of proving him wrong was all that she wanted in the world right now. She wasn't, however, prepared for what Randolf was about to say.

“I want you to go and see our dearest Queen Camilla, see what she says about Fluffy and who's been using it, while we go and see Liv. Think you can manage that girl?”

“Of course Sir” she said cheekily.

Actually Naomi was quite delighted if a bit unnerved. Camilla! Camilla had intrigued her from the start and she suspected she was far brighter than Randolf- not to mention a real princess too. Mother would be proud that’s for sure. “Are you sure that's wise?” asked Frank stroking his smooth chin with utter concern, clearly alarmed at the idea. “Her Majesty doesn't even know her, she may-sorry dearest-be insulted.”

“What? Why?” asked an infuriated Naomi, hands now firmly planted on hips. She was sick of being treated like a child by one and a baby by the other. Idiots! She would show them both. “Ha! A breather's a breather to her Frank. You know that,” replied Randolf with a disgusting brown spit onto the floor. “Besides, Flaking is Ministry and I won't have that woman thinking she's above us. I like the idea of winding her up with a novice (Naomi just about contained her spasm of rage at his patronising smile at saying this). She needs to start remembering who calls the real shots around this place,” added Randolf with a thick, strong puff on his cigarette. “Sure you're up to it Flaking? Can you handle the fat end of the s**t-stick?” Frank tutted at Randolf's graphic bad language. “Of course I can; where is she?” answered Naomi confidently, smiling as she shifted fully upright into a model-like pose; holding the lantern like a weapon. At last, she would be free of this grisly crude dolt, thought Naomi. Somewhere inside, a fear of meeting a tyrannical Queen was trying to sensibly gain some space in her conscious, but lost out to her single-minded desire to, as with anyone, prove Randolf wrong.

“Good. If you g’back to the market, look for a mime �" yes a mime,” he said again, seeing her quizzical look. “He'll show you to her lair.” Naomi needed the wry smiling nod from Frank to believe her own ears. A mime!? “Perfect,” she managed in reply; half-sweetly, half clearly thinking this was some sort of terrible joke from Randolf. “I shall be fine. When and where will you catch me up?” she said with a sugary smile that begged Randolf to rise to it. He didn't.

“Ha! Brilliant,” laughed Randolf instead. “Let’s see if you live up to your own ideas Flaking. Back at Mort Park fountain before dawn. And not a flipping second after or I'll ground you for good.”

“Yes sir” replied Naomi with a mocking salute, winking at Frank as she spun on her heels and made off for the market blissfully alone. Time to show these idiots how get things done properly she told herself, pulled her own collar close around her neck despite the absence of any cold.

As Frank called after her not to be afraid and waived goodbye to her swinging lantern, he couldn't shake the worry from his preened eyebrows. “I am not sure that was wise Randolf” he said diplomatically.

“Arrrr, you’re soft Frank! Don't worry about her. If she falls flat on her face then all the better. Young-guns are too c**k-sure. And she’s a Jessie too,” said Randolf, dabbing out his f*g with small hiss under his boots. Anyroad, Olivia was far more worrying he confided to himself. Randolf hadn't felt the chill of actual fear in his armpits for years. His body knew something; he felt the handle of his own gun as if to sooth it �" or him. The air was uneasy. It crawled with impending trouble like a caterpillar on crampons across his dry skin. Randolf had been in this game long enough to have the instinct of a veteran canary in a mineshaft. Something was brewing; and, for once, he didn’t mean in his own rusty bowels.

* * *

Aha, ha! Oh yes! murmured the Shadow to itself, dribbling as it did. The blade was sodden with dew but the Shadow was happy; it could feel, feel the coldness across its new flesh. It was working!

Had they forgotten me?

The air felt foreign to it:; thick with sin, mused the Shadow. In absence the flock wonders foul it surmised, red eyes burning etches of fury into the night around it. It was time to cleanse this immoral land once more. And once and for all.

With a slight grunt, the Shadow heaved the axe over its shoulder and made for the quiet, unsuspecting homes ahead. In a brief flash of moonlight, a careful observer could make out a cross-like shape clenched in the Shadow's other hand.

Fear me sinful children, for I am the true servant. Justice is here.

* * *

Naomi found her way back to market easily; she always had a good memory for just such things that had saved her on many a night out. All of course unknown to her Father. Now, where was that…mime, she wondered as she scoured the blurred faces around her with disdain. Naomi put the lantern out with a pop under the bright and multicoloured glow of the market, which was surprisingly busy at what would/should be a late hour if Styx had time. The absence of real time made her head hurt, and Naomi really wanted to avoid thinking about it. She didn't feel tired, and she hadn't felt hungry or thirsty either all day. If it was still day. Or even one? Time's absence bugged her.

Naomi searched through the dead but could hardly make out individuals among the moving throng of people. They brushed past as cheddar against a blunt grater; each dead careful not to make any substantial contact. Hmm. Naomi kicked off her heels and scaled a nearby cart to a curse of a more well-to-do passer-by. Much better. Naomi could now see above the sea of heads and the noise of bustle below.

Aha! There! Barely 100 meters away stood a solitary figure, fixed..well not quite firmly, atop a box. The zebra-skinned mime wobbled as a small child kicked the box below, making the mime to swear and shake its fist as the scamp ran away. No one around the mime seemed impressed, and Naomi was inclined to agree. Nevertheless, if this fruitcake was the route to Camilla, then that was that. With a graceful leap, Naomi slipped back into her heels and pushed her way toward him before he fell off his perch and disappeared entirely.

“Excuse me.” The mime ignored her. Naomi could see he was about middle-aged, quite thin, but not drug-like thin like Lord Shaftsbury.

“Er..Hello?” she tried again. The dull red eyes still stared into the market. How rude. I don't have time for this, thought Naomi. “Look, I'm not here to ruin your set but I need to see Camilla. Urgently,” she added, hoping the mention of Camilla would draw a response. The mime flicked a glance of annoyance at her, which Naomi answered with a childish, innocent smile. So he was the the right mime. “And you are?” he asked in a haughty whisper through his taught frozen lips. “Naomi Flaking. MOD,” she said, hoping it would give her a touch of authority. Instead, the mime looked at Naomi as if she had just offered to give him an enema using a hedgehog. “Oh..you're one of them,” the mime said with firm distaste dressing all over the 'them'. Clearly, it seemed, the MOD wasn't very popular with mimes. Who knew, ponded Naomi. The mime examined Naomi with sunken, old eyes that sneered with a aplomb as he looked down his nose at Naomi.

“Yes I am, and I need to see Camilla now.”

“Queen Camilla or Her Majesty to you.. girl” the mime returned, apparently offended at her lack of due respect. Naomi thought about kicking the box from under him like the boy had tried to; she would not usually let any backchat go but the clock to dawn, at least one of sorts, was ticking (somehow) in her mind. She grudgingly settled for forged smile instead. “Well I need to see her. It's urgent and you are the only one who can help me mister..?” said Naomi, avoiding a broadening smile to see the fake flattery work on the mime who, revelling in his own supposed importance, pumped his chest out like a cockerel. It might have been more impressive if he wasn't in a zebra leotard.

“Sir Boris Black. And why would you think that little girl?” asked Boris Black, nose elevating in pomp and self-serving pride at the notion of 'Sir' being attached to his name. This isn't going to move quickly Naomi thought. She could tell he was one of those who people who liked to put others in boxes, ranks and expected everyone else around them to do the same. She didn't have time for snobs. Ok true, she winced when she had to travel cattle class in the train home due to the MOD expenses policy, but she didn't look down on people…well not the little kind anyway. Her guilt memory briefly threw up her award-winning 'worst dressed chav' outfit at her university freshers' week. Snob? No, that was for people like her Father. And besides, it was a great outfit; right down to the Stella she had put in a baby's milk bottle and the pound-shop carrier-bags she had wrapped it in. It wasn’t like ‘blacked up’ she pleaded to no one but her own consciousness in the morally dank recess of her mind.

“Sir Black, Randolf Cod- yes you know him? He sent me to find you as we do not have much time and we cannot waste time with... lesser, slow people,” she said daintily, taking dirty pride in the effect she was having over him. Perhaps the snob wouldn't get in her way for too long. Boris came down from his box yet he was still a good two feet taller than her and annoyingly thinner too. “Indeed child. Of course he would. As a busy man of high-standing in the Queen's service, who else would your Ministry turn to? What, pray tell, is the apparent emergency this time?” asked Boris, clearly relishing that he held all the cards. He wasn't that bright thought Naomi.. Busy and high standing? Being a zebra in a market next to the reduced fish didn't fit with his self-avowed high station �" even when on top of a box. Still, she had to play his game.

“It's not something I can divulge openly-” she began, but paused from the stern look in Sir Black’s eye. “Her Highness does not take kindly to..breathers.” Breathers. Naomi felt like she should be insulted, but wasn't. “Or of the Ord- I mean your Ministry coming by without consent.” Naomi could tell Boris took her confusion as an insult judging by in the pallor of his face she retreated. “But Randolf said I could tell only you as well. It's, er fluffy apparently?” she said in a lower tone, looking either side of Boris in a conspiratorial manner. The word fluffy forced Boris to re-evaluate her. He searched around her face quickly, seeming to distrust Naomi's true intentions. Naomi swore she could see the faintest flicker of fear in his eyes. A few uncomfortable moments passed in silence as they eyeballed one another. The throng of the market continued around them, occasionally abusing Boris with a jeer; which he returned with a certain angle of fingers favoured by archers.

Naomi held his disdainful stare and answered it again and again with an innocent smile. Ignorance was putty to snobs as her Mother had shown many times during dinner parties. Boris fiddled with his fingers, thinking of his next move.

“Very well” said Boris eventually, oozing reluctance. “ Follow me child” he added with a wave and turned, head high (which looked so ridiculous in a zebra-like patterned suit. Naomi didn't even need to answer back to take Boris down a peg) and led her towards a white archway behind a few of the more quieter stalls.

It was only then that Naomi was suddenly aware that everyone was looking at her. Some in concern or intrigue; some in fear; and some with what could only be described as unabashed hate. She didn't like to admit it, but she took a step closer to Boris as she followed him. As one particularly hateful glare from a wrinkled face gave way to a younger, yet equally scornful one, Naomi was glad she was not alone. A lone trinket man watching them pass creeped her out the most. Through his dreadlocks and smoke Naomi could not make out his eyes. It was the silver-toothed, playful smile he flashed Naomi that she found more unsettling than any of the disapproving glares around her. His message was clear: I am not afraid of you. But you should probably consider being so of me. Where was Frank when you needed him? Slightly perturbed, Naomi concentrated on ghastly suit in front of her; not daring to look back as they left the stares of malice behind them.

* * *

Silence. That was the only sound that greeted Randolf as they stood opposite Olivia's door. Randolf didn't want to look at Frank right now. The door was freely ajar. No light came from within. Only silence He had to hold Frank back (no simple feat), firmly pushing back on his Partner's bugling arms with all his muttered swearing commands to stop Frank rushing in. That's what someone would expect, especially if they knew it was Frank. Randolf had never asked how Frank and Olivia knew each other; some things just weren't for mucking in. But muck they shall. With Frank relenting and simmering beside him, Randolf pulled his gun slowly from its holster. You never knew who or what was going to greet you in this place. Uttering a small silent prayer to himself (and certainly not to his boss), Randolf knew that Frank couldn't hold back any longer. With a slight nod they rushed into the house. Frank kicking the door hard and bounding inside like a frenzied bear.

Silence.

Randolf could see nothing around him, but he was still alive. And, dead or living, they were alone. A small consolation.

“I can't see nothing Frank,” he murmured carefully.

“You may not wish to,” said Frank, his voice trailing off. Damn. Every now and again Randolf wished had those blasted red eyes that could see anywhere. Randolf fumbled his lighter free and sparked a cynical lilac light. As his blindness settled, Randolf could see what Frank's grave tone meant. The place was a mess. The table was upturned, chairs scattered in pieces across the whole floor. Ash from the fireplace was strewn about everywhere. It was the tea stain, still dripping faintly across the dog painting, that made Randolf fear, as he wholly expected, the worse.

“A struggle” said Frank grimly, filling in the void of the blatantly obvious. Hell, an angry pig in a bucket of paint with a hippo would have made less mess, thought Randolf.

“How many?” he asked.

Frank knelt down by the fire place and then followed the terrible sight of ash, and plenty of it, to the front door. “Four… excluding Liv.” They must have moved quickly to overwhelm her and without her sounding the alarm. Inside job? Randolf had long since learnt to see the worst in every situation. It often was when anyone accused him of being pessimistic. Bad things happen. People always seemed surprised, but with the amount of zombies he had dealt with, he knew better. Still, a murder in Styx was uncommon these days. He tried not to look Frank in the eyes as Frank picked up the table they had tea around earlier. It had been a good few months since anyone had gone that far, ever since �" The thought struck him viciously: Camilla.

“Camilla?” said Frank quietly as if he had read Randolf's mind as re-aligned Olivia's country painting. “I doubt it. Of course she could, but she wouldn't be that stupid Frank,” said Randolf, perhaps to reassure himself; but right now he didn't feel convinced at possibility of Camilla's complicity. First 'fluffy' and now this? Things always seem to come at once. What was that saying? Murphy's law? Things will always happen at the worst possible time? Smart soldier, but Randolf preferred Cod's law: his gun and a LOT of ammo, which left no one in any doubt about what was going to happen next unless someone gave him a bloody answer. Sharpish.

“True darling, but since we got here and then to Jimmy's- she never did like Olivia,” said Frank with evident hurt pulsating through in his tone as he scoured the edge of the room for clues. Hmm. Randolf had to be careful here. Someone had rocked the big boat in front of him and he didn't want to see it capsize with… emotion.

“That's nowt but suspect Frank. You know that,” he said, trying to sound somewhat gentle. Not something he ever cared for or ever came easily from his mouth. “And it’s not like we can go barging in arresting a bloody Queen on ice this thin,” added Randolf dryly. He knew Frank would have already long since concluded so himself. But the volcano inside was rumbling. Any reason to lock that hag away would be a bloody blessing added Randolf in his head.

“What about Naomi?”

An expletive the Universe thought people had mercifully long since forgotten and was worse than the C-word was promptly censored by the Universe as the cursing Randolf kicked the newly up-righted chair back on to the floor. We will not be having that in my galaxies mortals said the Universe, folding its arms �" if it had any. In truth, it wasn't sure..

* * *

The darkness clung around the panting figure. It didn't used to be this hard. How long had it been? Oh it expected the struggle. Sinners always do fight hard with the fury of the daemons inside of them. The figure looked around the plush home for a mirror. Vanity was a Sin.. but what do I look like it wondered. It wasn't the screams or eyes of horror that sparked its curiosity. It had long been used to that from the damned when they saw an angel. It was the quivering fear they had in their eyes. This was new. The figure slung the axe over its shoulder. Blood dripped onto the silent saved mounds on carpet below. A sickening squelch accompanied each of its steps. It did not pity them. In fact it envied them. For they were now with the Lord; freed from Sin by my blessed hands.

Ahh. It found a long dress mirror in the hallway. Where were the candles? The man had lit the room by unholy magick when he had disturbed the figure coming through the back door. Evil had truly thrived in this land in my absence. In the dark, it groped around the walls as the man had, praying that the Lord may bless it with similar power to challenge these daemons. After a few brushes, it accidentally hit the light switch. It did not flinch as it looked into the mirror. It could see why the man had screamed so. A broad smile settled on its face, such that it was. My God works in mysterious ways.

* * *

Author's Note

Is it enticing? Is it engaging? Would you like to read more? If it reads like a play devised by an actuary, I want to know.

Reviews

[Bright Ocean Star]

It is very well-written and captivating. I love how the ministry of defense morphs into the ministry of death, and you bring in the British City of the Dead, Styx. It is really, really good. You need to keep writing. Being uncertain of your talent is an all-too familiar curse we writers face, but you don't need to worry. I really, really like the story. You have a great talent. Keep it up. I really like the term phallic-free biology. Awesome!

[Bright Ocean Star]

I re-read the entire piece again, just to see if you added the other part. But it doesn't look like the part you sent me in the mailbox is in this piece yet.
I have to say that I like it better and better each time I read it. I love the fact that you don't curse words with typical profanity. There is way too much pointless profanity in the world, and It shows more imagination to make up your own versions of expletives than the typical, over-used profane verbage, that I frankly find offensive.
You have a wonderful, beautiful imagination, and great character-building skills. The only thing I would say to possibly improve it is to go back to the beginning and check your comma-usage. The first line, "For Naomi Flaking (I think a comma would be good here) her first job out the University isn't quite what she expected it to be. But, still it is a very engaging, imaginative, truly riveting story. I love it. 100/100