All of a sudden, a chair appeared in the middle of a quiet suburban street.

That may seem like a fairly unusual way to start a story, and I’ll admit that I had reservations about beginning in such a manner. I thought to myself “Dave, man. Why would anyone ever want to read something that starts off with a line so inappropriate that you could probably be tried, convicted and hung for it?” and after a lot of thinking, it suddenly came to me that I was the kind of person that would like to see something start that way, so I went on ahead in the hope that there is at least one person out there as temple-achingly mad as I am.

Anyway, all of that nonsense aside, the chair himself was pretty bloody upset that he’d been so unceremoniously lifted from the nice cosy sitting room where he had been trying to work out the conundrum on that evenings episode of Countdown and dumped on his well upholstered arse in the middle of a cold, wet Cul-de-sac. As a matter of fact, if he could’ve, he would’ve written a very sternly worded letter to whoever was responsible for the whole sordid fiasco, telling him (Or her, for he wasn’t a sexist chair) quite where he (Or she…) could stuff their random teleportation. After that, he surmised, he would begin writing a very similar letter to his manufacturers informing them of their utterly appalling oversight in letting a chair be created with the unique ability to write letters and then selling it for the degrading sum of £120 to an aging Liverpudlian woman who, apparently, had absolutely no idea how to use a vacuum cleaner.

Little did the chair know, he wasn’t the only indignant piece of household furniture out on the streets that night. In fact, at that very moment there was a rather irate plastic bin holding up traffic at Elephant & Castle spitting rubbish in the face of a portly man in his late fifties who was trying, in vain, to lift it out of the way.

Neither the chair, nor the bin, had any idea how they had gotten where they were. Nor did they know that moments before they had been as lifeless and unintelligent as their other household peers (Except of course for the potato peelers, who were actually just as intelligent as you or I and had been planning for some time to revolt and claim the earth for their own) and so both of them resigned to sit there, sulking, until someone came to collect them. Which, as a side note, was never actually going to happen; but the furnature didn’t know this and so it isn’t really terribly important, furthermore, don’t you go telling them, they’d only get upset.

The chair and the bin were not the first unusual incidents in very recent history. There was in fact a Ford Cortina perched atop the “Cristo Redentor” statue in Rio de Janeiro who had, for as long as he could remember, been parked in front of a semi in Bristol. Everyone the world over was stumped, and not a scientist, philosopher or welder (Yes, in desperation the world had turned to the people who stick two bits of metal together and burn them...) could come up with any logical explanation. Of course, Theologians threw in the old classic “God did it,” but that was immediately dismissed as nonsense and the man who suggested it was thrown out on his arse.

Which was a pity because, as sad as it makes me to admit it, he wasn’t far wrong…

* * *


The reason behind all the silliness was actually a long time stranger to earth who had decided, whilst very drunk one evening on peach schnapps, that it was time for him to pay a return visit to us all. He’d been here once before, and it hadn’t been a terribly successful trip. He dressed up like a local, donned the robe, silly tea towel hat, long hair and beard and decided to show of his rather unique abilities; Which got him into a bit of a pickle, because as soon as people learned he could turn water into wine they all wanted him at their parties. The rest, as they say, is religious canon.

The stranger was called Majic.

At that very moment, as Majic sat in the dingy little pub nursing his peach schnapps, and the household amenities sat brooding in the cold evening mist, a young lady sat thinking about a young man…


* * *


Unfortunately for Brian Parking, the young lady in question was not thinking about him, rather she was thinking about Oliver Twist. Why, is really none of our business, but suffice to say her copy of the Dickens classic had a typo on page 89 that made Oliver seem like a total prick.

Brian was a shut in. “The Big Bumper Children’s Book of Words and What They Mean, With Pictures!” defines a shut in as; “Someone who does not go out.” Closely followed by a picture of what can only be described as most peoples first thought whenever they hear the word ‘Pedophile’. As I’m sure you can tell, “The Big Bumper Children’s Book of Words and What They Mean, With Pictures!” is rarely quoted from in intelligent fiction. (To the detriment of literature on the whole, I might add)

Fortunately, for the sake of my future credibility, Brian was most definitely not a Pedophile and un-fortunately, for the sake of my present credibility, he was in love.
He was in love with his neighbour (the aforementioned young lady) whose name, for the record, was (and most likely still is) Jane Elliot.

Jane Elliot studied English Literature at Trinity College, Dublin, which was handy seeing as she lived and worked there as well, so she saved on commuting. She was the kind of person who liked to curl up on the sofa of an evening with a bottle of wine and a good book. (I think it’s safe to say that this one will most definitely not be making it into her extensive collection.) She was also the kind of person who liked to eavesdrop on other peoples conversations through the paper thin walls of her mangy old flat, but that’s a completely irrelevant and superfluous fact seeing as she lived next to Brian, who never had a single visitor, didn’t own a television and had headphones Symbiotically bonded to his ears, so there was never really anything to listen to. Jane had never met Brian; she had spoken to him once through the wall one evening when she had a little too much to drink and decided that she must, must make friends with her estranged neighbour who only left his flat to buy supplies at the Tesco Express across the road. It was a bad idea, she later realized, as she awoke covered in sick having sat up all night getting increasingly more intoxicated, trying to elicit more than a “Hello,” from Brian.

Brian didn’t like people. Ever since he was born he was a recluse, in fact, they needed six doctors three nurses and a very bewildered security guard to get him out of the womb. He found it very hard to see quite what it was people enjoyed so much about the outside world. It was cold outside and, for that matter, wet, dreary, dismal and other negative adjectives. He thought people who actually wanted to be out there were mad, and should be lined up and shot without a moment’s hesitation. (Only in the leg, mind. Try to frolic gaily in the fields now, you shits.)

Brian was tall. I won’t say how tall, because I’m not very good with figures but you would do well to think of him as ‘Unnecessarily tall’. He had ruffled black hair, and sharp, intelligent little green eyes that were constantly on the move. He was not an unattractive man, on one hand he was no Adonis, but on the other he didn’t have a spare tire that wouldn’t look out of place on a Monster Truck (Or for that matter, the kind of person who owns a Monster Truck, but I suppose that’s a kettle of fish that it’s best not getting into.)

Majic differed from Brian in a great number of ways, not least of which was that he absolutely loved the outdoors. It reminded him very much of home, although he didn’t know, or really care that much where home was. Majic spent his time traveling between different worlds, interfering where he felt like it and generally causing unwanted mischief and havoc, whether he meant to or not, he was a kind of pan-dimensional American tourist. When he was but a wee lad of Four thousand and Fifty Six, Majic decided that he wanted to see the plethora of dimensions and proceeded to pack all of his belongings into a small, beat up leather suitcase and take to the cosmic inter-dimensional winds. Unfortunately for him, he flew Easyjet and had to sit the entire 1.46 Million light-year flight being kicked in the back by a six year old, without even a bag of peanuts to keep him happy.

The first world Majic visited he called Tilsaz, for reasons unbeknownst to anyone but himself. It was a very nice world, all lush and green and outdoorsy; Very nice, very…un-Brian, which is unfortunate on Brian’s part, because although he didn’t know it, and most likely if he did know it, he would be about as enthusiastic about the whole affair as someone who has been dragged bird watching very much against their will, he was going to be spending a substantial amount of time there.


* * *


Sitting in the back room of a pub which smelt refreshingly like human urine (Which was refreshing because in most other pubs there was the delightful mix of stale body odour, sweat and excrement.), in the Tilsazian capital City of Golden-Morovar (whose streets were, ironically, paved with filth) were two of the very strangest people you could ever hope to meet. The first of which was sitting at a weathered old card table, wearing a moth-eaten old black robe and holding a variety of playing cards at eye level in a vein attempt to hide the fact that his face was purple, swollen, and bleeding quite extensively from a variety of cuts and painful looking welts. Sitting opposite him, to his great dismay, was a startlingly attractive red haired woman whose face was, it is worth noting, perfectly unblemished.

The pair of them where playing a particularly brutal card game, usually reserved for the dull witted gorillas in Go-Mo’s large and very popular prison, called Slam (The game, that is, not the Prison. The prison was, inexplicably, called Bernie by most of its occupants.). The rules of Slam are not unlike the rules of Poker. The only real difference is that, when it comes to the final showing of the cards, the winning player has obliged to run at his opponent from a distance of no less than 25 yards and kick them as hard as they can in the face.

The red head was exceptionally good at Slam.
The gentleman in the black robe was not.

Missing three teeth and in an indescribable amount of pain from all of the kicking, Black robes decided that it would be best if he called it a night.

Black robes real name was Darius De’Neuvre who was Tilsaz’s only, for want of a better title, Supernatural Temp. Supernatural temping was a concept designed and engineered one fateful night two years ago, when Darius faced the very real figure of Death himself in the middle of the night, who asked him very kindly if he wouldn’t mind stepping in and taking over for the next couple of hours, as he had to go and pick up his niece from the nursery. Since then, Darius has been the Easter Bunny, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, three different representations of the Devil and the Ghost of Christmas Past, amongst others. Darius was currently tied up in a standing contract he had going with his first employer, Death, which allowed him to reprise the role every few months whilst Death got a Holiday.

Darius’ slam partner was, to his constant complaint, a goddess. Well, that was how she put it, she was in fact Eltraya: Low God of Indoor Sporting Activities (It wasn’t a terribly prestigious position within Tilsaz’ pantheon of deities.). Being the Low God of Indoor Sporting Activities did however have its advantages. Take the Bi Weekly Game of Slam the two had, for example. As Low God of Indoor Sporting Activities, Eltraya was wholly entitled to look at Darius’ cards whenever she felt like it, and there was nothing he could do to stop her.

“That’s it,” Said Darius, reeling from his spectacular loss at the last hand “I’m done; I don’t bloody know why I come here anymore.”

“It’s because you fancy me, Darius,” Replied his partner, and added with a coy smile “And you like to look up my dress when I kick you.”

“I’d rather take a moose to my bed with me.” He sulked.

“Which frankly says a lot more about you than it does me Darius,” She carried on, “Well, if that’s us, pay the man and let’s go?”

“I don’t understand why it’s always me who has to pay.”

“It’s because you always loose, and in the rules it says that the loser has to pay. Isn’t that a simple enough concept to grasp?”

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. That’s a shit rule, why should the loser, who’s just had his wallet artfully lightened by the worlds most adept card-shark, be forced to pay for the drinks when it’s the card shark who has all the money!?”

“Because I say so Darius, and in the world of Indoor Sporting Activities my word is, quite literally, law.”

Begrudgingly, Darius handed over his remaining £5 note to the Barman, which didn’t quite cover it so, begrudgingly, Darius ran away before the Barman could catch up and break his legs with an obscenely large wooden club.


* * *


Golden-Morovar was a large city, in fact, being the capital of Tilsaz biggest continent it was rather large indeed. This is a fact that would not be lost on the casual observer, because the casual observer could only causally observe about an eighth of the city at any one time.

I mentioned earlier that Golden-Morovars streets were paved, quite ironically, with filth; this is not entirely true. At the very heart of the city, there lies the gated community of ‘The Heath’ whose streets, while not quite paved with gold, were most meticulously cleaned and buffed to a delightful sheen at least three times a day. The Heath was the home most of the cities aristocracy, those who didn’t live there lived in large estates out in the country so as to keep away from the proletariat rabble that made up the bulk of Golden-Morovars populous. Which is not only rather rude, but also quite pointless, because as the great Tilsazian scholar, orator, politician, lecturer, gentleman and, in his spare time, cross-dresser once said “I don’t know why all of you bloody toffs deem it necessary to buy big plots of land out in the country just to get away from all the riff-raff. It seems to me that there’s just as many out there as there is in here.” As I’m sure you can tell Tilsaz is in no short supply of ‘Great Orators’.

Very rarely do those who live inside the Heath venture out of it. One of the very few who did was a well dressed, portly man named Choreen Daily, which was an unusual name as it is of Bhratish origins. The Bhrat are a people who are very much like J.R.R Tolkien’s Uruk-Hai, only without the copyright infringement. They stand roughly seven feet tall, have skin of a mottled olive green, and have an uncommon love of hitting things very hard with other things. Why it is Choreen was named in the fashion of a horrible man-beast is one of those uncommon mysteries that are entirely possible to solve if you put in the effort. In this case, the only effort that would be required would be to take a look at the man, which may I say, does in fact take a great deal of effort.

Choreens personality matched his appearance. Although unlike his brothers-in-name he did not enjoy hitting things very hard with other things, he did have rather a penchant for watching other people do just that. He also had the money to be able to indulge in this delightful pursuit whenever the mood took him which all added up to make him a frighteningly unpleasant individual.

Lucky, then, that as Mr Daily was passing the Church of the Undecidedly Holy Mother a stone gargoyle that was previously engaged in being very large, very heavy and almost as foul of appearance as Mr Daily chose that very moment to be heaved from the top of the building, fall seven stories and land squarely on Choreens ugly bonce. If he wasn’t pretty before, he most certainly wasn’t pretty afterwards although this didn’t bother him much because he was also spectacularly dead…


* * *


Brian was, very awkwardly, leaning over his desk so as to hear better the goings on in Jane’s flat. Brian didn’t usually do this, there wasn’t usually a great deal to hear, but he felt it was necessary this evening because, by the sounds of it, Jane had brought home with her a very nice, very funny man who was currently trying very hard to get into her bed.

“Come on!” Said the muffled male voice from behind the wall. Brian was already having horrible visions; he didn’t like this man very much.

“No.” Came Jane’s voice, light and gentle.

“Come ooooooonnn!” He said again, with a loud flump as he leapt onto her bed

“No! These walls are like rice paper they’re so thin, I’m not having sex with you where everyone can hear us!” She said indignantly. It was clear, in Brian’s mind at least, that this situation was getting wildly out of control and he should most certainly step in and protect Jane’s innocence from being besmirched by such a horrible…bastard. The feeling conflicted with his powerful hate of leaving his flat quite violently, and it also used some quite dirty moves to get the upper hand before breaking his hates back with a knee drop straight out of WWE. Anyone watching the brawl would have been quite impressed, Brian certainly was.

Brian’s hand shook as it reached out for the doorknob, he couldn’t help but feel like he had Parkinson’s disease. Which, when he looked back upon that moment later in life, he felt might have been a little bit uncalled for.

Brian knocked lightly on Jane’s door. Another thing Brian didn’t like, something hastily tacked onto the end of the already very large list of things Brian didn’t like, was hollow doors. Jane had a hollow door, and this made Brian feel sad, and slightly foolish about what he was going to do. Brian opened the door, which came as a bit of a shock to Brian, because not only had he not been so presumptuous as to open Jane’s door himself but also because he was now standing outside her flat looking inside her flat at himself, who had just opened the door to her flat from the inside and was smiling at him with teeth that looked very much like his own.

That’s when everything got a little bit confusing for Brian.


* * *


Darius stopped running.

He stopped running not because he wanted to, but because he had in fact just run into someone who was quite tall, and had just about enough mass to make Darius think twice about trying to occupy same space as him.

Darius Sprawled.

So did Brian.

Time/Space/Dimensional rips, tears and poorly darned holes are very rare, as Majic is the only one who can make them and is meticulous in clearing up after himself. This time was no different, in fact, the only reason I mentioned them was because I felt it was necessary to do so in order to make the transit from ‘pleasant story about a young man and his slightly creepy love for a woman who he’s never met with a subtle back story of fantasy’ to ‘Story of Fantasy featuring a young man who once, whilst in a parallel dimension, had a hugely creepy crush on a woman who he’d never met.”

Brian stood up, and so did Darius. Brian screamed and, feeling that he’d been mimicking the man for the last few minutes and he might as well continue, Darius did as well.

“Where am I!?” Said Brian, his eyes franticly scanning the building-blotted horizon for a sign, or at least something he was familiar with, which he was unlikely to find no matter what universe he was in.

“Corner of Arlington Road and Pie-Maker Run,” Darius replied, nodding to a shoddy wooden sign nailed to a post by the side of the cobbled road. He took in the mans appearance, he looked young, and scared and for that matter quite cold. “Just down the way from the Bernie, alright?”

“No, I’m bloody not!” shouted Brian, his fear being replaced by unfounded rage at the cloaked figure before him, “I’m not alright, I’m just bloody not, OK?! Where the fuck am I!? One minute, I was standing out side Jane’s front door, and the ne-” he suddenly remembered the horrible paradoxical feeling he got when he looked into the flat and saw himself standing there. “Oh dear…” he said, before vomiting copiously over his shoes.

“Hey hey! Watch the cloak there fella’! That’s not on!” Darius hauled up the hem of his cloak from the ground where the man was being sick.

“Am I dead? Are…Are you Death?” Brian asked between wheezing breaths and mouthfuls of sick

“Yes, I am...But only for little while.” Darius smiled, he liked that joke and it made him feel terribly witty every time he said it. “But you aren’t dead, so you know. Looks like a bad case of ‘port lag to me,” Darius stepped back as another wave of vomit splashed onto the pavement, he coughed “A very bad case…”

“Can you just…I need…Could I…Please?” Was all Brian could manage before he inevitably succumbed to unconsciousness.

“Oh dear,” Darius sighed. He didn’t know if he should help the man, that’s not true, he did in fact know that he shouldn’t help the man, but being Death for any length of time left a little soft spot in you and Darius couldn’t bring himself to leave him there face down in a pool of tepid sick.

He carried him home over his shoulder, laid him down on the horrible lumpy sofa that smelt of moth-balls and against his better judgement, left him to sleep it off. If anything, at least no one could call him a complete bastard, although he imagined that he’d probably end up as ‘That stupid fucker who got robbed’ very soon.