By Richard Al Ledger

1.

Early December and a seasonal deep frost snaps hard. One which has lasted now weeks rather than days, threatens to last for weeks more on television forecasts, even those the most optimistic. Atop the windscreens sits a crisp – the air has a glean – the mist owns a weight – it has been here a while now – the bitter, bitter cold is old.

When are they going to let us in? What is holding the queue? I can see right down the line. Stood next to a wall adorned with costly mistakes and shattered dreams, each smear telling a different story.

I can hear the thud of music muffled in the freezing air. I am not a kid like those huddled around me, those in social clusters – loyalists birthed in university halls. Wearing barely nothing or even less than – there is a uniformity in the young men in particular, yet to find their own individuality.

I might catch an airborne illness here – the heavy vape smoke that surrounds me from the battery powered dicks, everyone sucking in intermittent turns – a factory of a later death. The low chatter of clattering teeth and small talk, the scheduling of the pills.

The last I saw of our band of misfits was half an hour earlier, swallowed by the dark, frozen night. Steve had staggered around the corner to vomit – a thick, substantial broth of regret splashing onto the high street. Better there than in the nightclub queue we figured. Did Denise find a place to get the pizza she so desperately required?

I turn to look around me – maybe too quickly; my eyes momentarily blinded by streaky streetlights – a colour remains a moment, which is pleasant and somewhat magical. Why isn't anyone stood with me? Where are my people? We've broken flank worse than the battle of Tamai.

2.

Collectively we'd been drinking since four, that’s when Dave got the bottle of vodka out from the secret drawer in his office. By five when we'd left work I had a pleasant buzz, and by nine I was drunk. Right now I'd say it’s somewhere between one and one-thirty, and I’m drifting in that peculiar state of lucid intoxication – where the voice in your head speaks mostly straight, but your inhibitions have been sifted through a fine mesh strainer.

You're also horny. God – you're a horny bitch and you hate it. Strange eyes catch your own, reading way more into it than most likely exists in stark reality, but disillusioned through the freeze you just let your eye linger that moment longer just in case. Your lip curled at one end to show an enthusiasm though in probability makes you look more like a pedophile to teenagers whom surround you. You're the prey. You're the prey not them.

Then like a droplet of rain into the river you remember her at home. My darling Josephine. She'll be asleep right now, which brings a sense of calm – at least when I know she's not awake and worried about me – please don't be worried. I selfishly hope she's asleep and doesn't try to call me because once I get inside, into the heat – the shelter – a sanctity I don't plan leaving. Maybe for a cigarette from a strange generous giver, the ones who linger in night shadows, outside all evening and don't blink. Otherwise speaking to a responsible adult right now feels like my idea of contracting aggressive syphilis again. Even (especially) if it's my long term live in girlfriend whom I do love, I do love. Love – love is a funny word that – at this time of night.

3.

Finally I get in. I look around the room, nothing but a large black box, high black ceilings, the only disruption to the black are plastic snap frames filled with cheap fluorescent student night propaganda - The Berghain fortress this is not.

I'm old enough to remember this building used to be a Methodist Church in the not so distant past, now with flashing discotheque lights hanging in each corner and a scaffold stage set back at the opposite side of the bar, where the people naturally gravitate towards – followers to the flame – it's what Jesus would have wanted. An ageing DJ cups a headphone to an ear, his head lowered towards the mixing desk and I visibly see the bald spot atop his dome change colours red – purple – green – blue – red. For a moment I am transfixed by his glowing cueball.

A thinner crowd than usual tonight, likely due to the unrelenting freezing weather, only the dedicated night people are out tonight. The usual crowd with pockets of office Christmas parties – standing out like sore thumb – let out once a year – stand out even to me – don't know the etiquette. I have no idea where anyone is so I head straight opposite the DJ booth towards the bar.

A girl who looks like she hasn't slept in four days but young enough pull it off shouts in my ear over the bar, asking me something like what I want to drink. Hardly able to spell my own name never mind make a reasonable decision such as an overpriced beverage choice, I'll give it a shot.

I see a neon cardboard star behind the counter promoting a 'Quad Vod' so I ask for one of those and she looks at me with a sort of obnoxious grin, judging me completely. I offer to pay for her to have a drink with me, which she accepts onto which creates a never ending bond between us till the next customer approaches – then it will all be over – but there is a beauty in the moment.

Together we shot something alarmingly green – share a high five – her hands sticky, warm and clammy. I'm thankful of the warmth, still chilled into the bone, and I decide at that moment that I love her. Then she hands me what I could only describe as a half pint of vodka in a plastic cup. I shoulder my way past three or four sturdy frames, those that glare towards the poor girl to get served next — those with unrelenting tractor beam like stares — those also looking for her love. Many of them buoyed by cocaine and the thirst, many still wearing coats and layers and scarfs – still radiating the chill from outside.

Everything is fuzzy as I deliberate on a corner away from the sub woofer and tap my foot along to the queer pounding. Queer pounding is what me and my old housemate Gary called this kind of music, you know the stuff – thud thud thud. The monotonous beat of the drum, its incessant thump with no intention to ease, a war drum for the gaywads.

4.

I finally discover my co-workers huddled together on a sticky corner table, people nearby sank into bean bag chairs kissing necks with slippery fingers. I ignore them and get the low down on the casualties thus far. Steve threw up again, this time on the bouncers shoes right out front so didn't get let in.

Denise completely disappeared with her pizza under her arm like a cat burglar into the clear cold night. We're all suspicious and spiteful, rumours that she jumped in a taxi with our backs turned, her and the horizontal cheese and meats – this will not be forgotten on return to the office.

Last of rabble was Jason, and Dave swears he saw him or someone who looked a lot like him enter the nightclub a couple of rows in front, accosted quickly by another man and led away briskly, he's been assumed MIA ever since.

So now I'm left with the scraps, bossman Dave, former coke addict who got off the stuff and became addicted to corporate business and jogging long distances. He's handsome but still retains that sallowed face as a mark of his past. He has devious piercing blue eyes, the ones enhanced by narcotics, and thin lips and neck giving him an untrustworthy face. Dave is now leery drunk, perving and uncomfortably handsy with all the girls under twenty-five – has been since we left the last venue, and I'm close to calling him out, pervert – pervert – cunt. He looks over at me and I smile, though I'm sure he's somehow looking through me.

Sue, our office busy bee and receptionist turned head of administration couldn't possibly be exuding more a look disinterest to be at a nightclub at this time of night and I suspect that she is not long for this world, the matriarch of the office in many respects.

The voice in my head tells me it should be time to hedge my bets and go home too as the only way this nights going to go now is awkward or weird or both – but it feels like so much effort and I've hardly touched the grim, paint stripping vodka in my hand.

Sue and I share a grin and eye each other up, deciding if the effort is worth the intent to try and spark up a conversation when in reality we do little attempt of that at work. She has permed tinted thinning hair in a faux fro dome, a sour profile, low lips and antagonising eyes around a wrinkled profile, an expression of gloom. Still in her overcoat and gloves, a visual aid concerning her mindset. I decide to collar the gaffer first.

“Dave hows your wife?” I ask intentionally direct as his glazed over eyes x-ray young bodies walking past us. He's so drunk that his posture has curled his spine like some predatory hunchback. He doesn't even hear me, so I give Sue an eye roll and make my opinions clear via body language. Sue reciprocates with a shake of the head and an eye roll which earns brownie points.

I shout this time, loudly. “Dave!”, his head spinning as if manoeuvred by strings handled by a puppeteer's apprentice, his blue eyes peer at mine accusingly.

“What?” He responds as if I've interrupted something incredibly important. “Oh, you know.” His delayed response eventually cottoning on to what I had said.

I haven't the faintest fucking idea, Dave.

“She works as a deputy head doesn't she Dave?” I attempt to egg him on further, somewhat to annoy him as he mentally undresses two girls who walk past our table – he ogles and I hate it.

“Yeah, yeah.” His reply. I fear at this point we've officially lost Dave to the Official Perverted Men's Club, and I decide it's probably best for him to get home otherwise I fear we'll never see him again as a free man. He's a lovely bloke, and I enjoy his tact and temperament as a boss, but I've seen this kind of behavioural tone in many a heterosexual men and it never ends well for anyone involved.

“Dave, think it's time to go home mate?” I decide to use an endearing tone to soften the blow.

“No I'm going to get another drink. Shots?” Dave gets up, unsteady, both in clarity and decision making.

I hear “I'm going to leave.” – I turn around but by the time I can reply, Sue has already gone.

“Bye, Sue.” I say to the chair where she once sat.

See you Monday.

5.

I follow Dave to the bar and we get served by the same girl I shared shots with just half an hour earlier. She looks at me with those same tired eyes like she's never seen me before in my life and even though I know it's ridiculous in my vulnerable alcoholic state I can't help but feel a little bit sad about it.

I order another Quad Vod (bad fuckin' idea) for me and a single Vodka Lemonade for Dave. I peer behind me to check on his wellbeing and I'm convinced he's trying to rub himself against a blonde teenage girl in a sparkling silver one piece.

“Dave!” I hand him the drink over the racket. He doesn't even give me the recognition, eye contact or any sort of respectfulness that I'm looking for from my superior. I'm trying with him but as the midnight oil flickers my enthusiasm and loyalty to hierarchical work colleagues is waining.

I decide there and then it's time to ditch bossman Dave and to enjoy my last drink without having to babysit the gaffer. What he does in his own time is up to him – already coming to terms that I'd lost him to the Official Perverted Men's Club some while back. I unceremoniously peel away and blend into the cold masses. Looking back, he doesn't even notice I'm gone. His corrupted half open blood shot eyes and five o'clock shadow stick out like a terrible incumbent, a bad smell of age and regret amongst the innocent youthful assholiness.

6.

I wasn't alone for long when I had a chance encounter with my occasional former sexual partner, (also named) Josephine, whom was on a similar if more successful Christmas staff outing with her IT buddies.

She’s angular and slim, with striking features and a lacklustre head of hair. Her presence is a study in contrast — broad shoulders, large hands and feet, and nearly five feet eleven in height. She always carried herself with a kind of effortless authority, and I couldn’t help but feel that old flicker of shame at standing an inch or so shorter – more so when she wore heels. Her size eight shoes sparked a flood of memories, and my mind swelled with all manner of emotions, immediate and uninvited.

But other than her height she was rather a shrinking violet you see, something that couldn't be said for (my) Josephine at least, whom could be difficult at best. For a split second my mind flitters moth to flame — wishing I could waft a magic wand to somehow merge the two Josephines' – get what I wanted from both – morph them into one bountiful perfect girlfriend. However life's not like that, not that good.

But I do have fond memories of (this) Josephine – especially nice to see her at this moment and it hits me that I am overtly enjoying her company as I throw my arms around her neck, my mannerisms enhanced some by the full proof liquor intake. It also dawns on me that I’ve felt vaguely alienated all evening – adrift in a sea of mismatched energy – and it’s oddly comforting to encounter someone who, if not on the same page, at least seems to be reading from the same book.

We stop and exchange pleasantries and then more. She asks about (my) Josephine, and I give her some vague responses to fulfil obligation - “She's fine, enjoying work, her parents are well” – aware that I'm allowing myself to put up an emotional wall whilst also giving myself permission for what could follow seeing (this) Josephine on this particular evening, at this particular time of day. I realise I'm clenching my vodka filled plastic cup tightly, the inebriating liquid inside raising to the brim, on the cusp of overspill.

Something low and electric hums between us, a kind of magnetic mischief that dares stupidity. Even the DJ, with his ancient headphones and sunken eyes, seems complicit — slipping on noticeably sultrier music selections.

I look out over towards Dave to somehow base myself, a prang of guilt especially after how much I judged him earlier, then to only find myself doing exactly the same. I see him still talking to the blonde teenager in the metallic Dalek dress and realise at that moment that there's a high chance tonight we're both going to do something we'll later regret, but later is not now, is it? What am I doing – I glance back around to (this) Josephine and notice she's still looking at and around my face, which makes me even more aroused. It's a statement of intent on her part, I decide.

7.

The evening passes quicker and three more drinks in cheap plastic cups of varying colour pass my lips. We've not separated since our chance meet and at this point I think (this) Josephine and I both know where this is leading. I give (my) Josephine the occasional thought – noting the coinciding stomach drop – but my active libido has ideas all of its own and these ideas I consider good and just.

I cast a glance over at Dave and notice he's left with the space suit and I'm sure he'll soon be on his way to Planet Sirius in a metaphorical sense. I decide that's my prompt to advance this night on to the next stage, furthering my chance tryst with (this) Josephine. I suggest we grab a cab outside, a good time to leave and get ahead of the queue before the club closes, not one to stand out in freezing temperatures cooling down my sexual desires. But not before I take a piss in the water closet first, being as quick as I could. She agrees eagerly, says she'll grab both our coats and meet me out front, we exchange ticket stubs like tender.

I brush past blurry faces, strange creatures, dark souls, funny people. The time of night when only the filthiest of society are still in public holes finding sharp corners, am I judging or projecting? I see lurid yellow stares, blank faces and sinful sniggers. Do I belong with these people?

These are my people.

8.

I fall through a door, my feet splashing into urine puddles and I know I'm where I need to be – a blast of piss stench and warmth hit my face. I unzip my pants before I even see the nearest troff and walk past two men against a wall next to where a hand dryer used to be, smelling wet leather and sodomy. As I piss somewhere around the designated area of porcelain and my shoes, I suddenly realise one of those men I walked past is Jason from the office. I outwardly giggle and, my head down, I give my penis a sickly grin. One of them. One of them. One of th–

Suddenly I feel quintessentially male fingers around my neck and not an ungentle pressure to move along in a direction which feels premeditated. With my already unsteady frame I go along with the momentum and all is a hazy fog of activity, graffiti blur, the condom machine comes and goes, I see a flash of a face until I find myself in a cubicle not alone. My back turned and head forced forwards towards the Armitage Shanks logo on the throne, I feel another hand reach around and unbutton my trousers and before I have chance to compute the scenario I have cold knees.

Two hands clamp on my shoulders like jump leads on an muted engine, and I immediately know from those thick digits that it is a wholehearted man. I hope my jacket is safe, I really like that jacket, there's a penis in my asshole. Those were my exact next thoughts.

I push my hands up against the wall above the cistern to offer leverage to my alien sexual partner, somewhat sad that the person in question behind me couldn't even wait for a conversation nor a comfy bed, somewhat strangely happy that there's a penis in my asshole. This is new.

I turn my head to offer some encouragement to the strangling more eloquently and appreciatively than grunting like a pig – do I recognise that face? A hand reaches around and covers my mouth, cranking my head and eyeline back forwards towards the wall, there the hand remains. My heart begins beating frantically, questions flood my head, a sailboat over the shoreline and through city streets with abandon, reason is being washed into the frothy never like cars caught in the predatory currents of a unexpected tsunami. I try again to turn my head, try and make sense of the situation but face resistance, my mind all washed up I'm drowning. I realise my thoughts have wondered to the sea because the digits roped around my mouth taste salty.

Restrained from speaking and immersed with both a kind of euphoria and deep panic I begin to think, is this some kind of sodomised act of revenge from my dear Josephine? Is it a sexual encounter motivated by jealousy? Another explanation enters my mind like a flutter, one we've spoken about occasionally in bed when we've been intimate together – the inclusion of a third person. A nameless man.

Could it be Dave? No, it is much more of a thick and robust hand, as if working with metal or machinery from a young age. A hand which must have been outside recently as the layer of bitter cold wrap over hardened skin and callous palms. I am losing confidence in my ability to rely on my instincts, as a suck air between middle and ring finger not easily. Shit, am I dreaming?

Could it be Jason? With his newly outed preference for penis, one which he must know now will surely permeate the office come Monday, has he taken this godless leap to sodomise me? Reason enough to back me into a corner — Become his bitch?

What would I do if I were dreaming? I'd shut my eyes and just take it. Yes, I'll just take it I decide, deal with the consequences later. That seems reasonable for a moment – but then my brain resets, right back into both survival and investigatory mode as his thighs slap against the back of my legs. Unsatisfied and somewhat shamed with my immediate conceding impulse, I choose to use one of my unaffected senses, my sense of smell. Leaning back to try and smell into the neck another thrust, close but nothing. I try and take another look at the rapist behind me, a hand forces my face again forwards with an uneasy vigour I'm not particularly thrilled about, to put it mildly. I did get to catch a glimpse of a mouth, pursed similarly like the lips at the end of a penis. I twist my wrist, reach around and grab a thigh, not sure if jean or chino, then swatted forcefully away.

A pink flushing light descends down the celestial plughole and directly into this very cubicle.

Distortions like broken glass, a weirdness comes, a collapsing of all perspective falls suddenly around me. Then the total of absolutely everything becomes clearly defined – electrons and neutrons, all fluid and malleable and distinguished. I can see every individual layer, every tiny unique spec, a run of data and they're all very beautiful and also terrifyingly complicated, every single one.

I gasp, realising so clearly that these walls that surround us are simply just walls made of timber frames and plaster board and paint – intermittently but also at the same time – hard to explain, but there it was in front of my eyes as the man stood behind me and comforted me. I looked down at the toilet, it was just a toilet and had been just a toilet for many years, before that it was something else entirely but nobody knew what and people will die and be born again but it will remain a toilet with its past concealed. The flush handle the same but also certainly not the same, it was great as a toilet handle but before that had been something so much more terrific, and good for it, and the likelihood being it would be something terrific once again but we won't know when. Isn't that beautiful? Beautiful toilet seat handle.

Look - he says to me – Can you see it? He asks, and for the first time ever I think I can. There is a Kingdom looking over the tallest crests of the tallest hills, kissed with the ice caps and atop sits the king of the polar universe. It wanted to have control until it didn't and then it wanted anything but, but by then it was too late. He was right – it was too late. The cold snap had already arrived with nobody else foreknowing of it, and they wouldn't until they knew it was too late too.

It was here, and we should be afraid of it, for it itself is the only one who can control it, but it hasn't yet and it won't because it cannot destroy itself, because it doesn't truly believe that it can. Sadly, I think it is correct. The cold is just the beginning now, there is much worse to come through time and it will arrive simultaneously with the ice.

Do you understand? I say that I think I do, speaking to him non verbally, through a recently found use of telepathy.

Good.

A state of relative consciousness returns, the hand has been removed from my face, a smell of human waste and sweat fills my nostrils and I take a full breath, the first one in a while. I hear the creak of a door, splash of piss, some commotion from beyond the ply screen and I'm left all alone. My investigation incomplete, a pink light no longer there or anywhere – I am frustrated, beyond angry, no more salty palm or cold fingers only questions aplenty and sadness.

I begin to shake from the knees upward, my brain hazy like the beginnings of a common cold. I turn around and see the door slightly ajar, the place where whence a man had sex with me or too me at last now empty and hollow like myself. I look down at visible boot prints left amongst the urine and the muck and the filth, planted apart. Noticing a streak through the sludge, then a longer smudge through that, not unlike a skidmark. Maybe left so when he'd turn to leave, giving impressions of a religious cross marked on the floor. Something to do with Christ, the son of God I believe?

He had given me a message – but why? – and what did it mean? The king of the universe, this universe and why did I only need to know? The death of reality and meaning had occurred, all I know now is the relation to the cold outside and more to come.

Through the crack to reality I see Jason necking with a man in leather chaps showing bare arse, his back to the wall, staring directly in my direction, a transfixed stare which unsettles me further, yellowed eyes and a sickly smirk. I can see shared breath.

I retreat, lock the door and stay inside my cell. For now I crave normalcy, trousers still around my ankles, a trickle of cum rolling down my inner thigh, mixed with what I can only presume from the smell and sharp stabbing pain is some of my own faeces mixed with my own blood.

The End.