Midnight Mass

I roam, not half-awake and now away,
Brought back to stand to sing;
The fourth port in the corner eye,
Where Christ will see his mother -
See opposite of meet -
Cross on bare back, strained, weighed down.

Behind them waits a soldier,
A cobweb strung between his wooden hand and wooden eye.
It sways and quivers.
I watch it through the bleak midwinter,
Don't brush it, wrong to touch,
But let it stand between hymns,
Stirring to the rhythm of our breath.

It's not important. No-one will see it
When the church is less full.

Negotiations

My fingers rattle a rhythm on the desk. They are talking to me, requesting my attention, looking for something to do. Always keen to keep them sweet, I ship my digits across to the keyboard so they can tap out a more specific message.

"Hello, Fred."

"Hello, fingers," I say back.

"Sorry to bother you."

"That's ok."

"We're a little bord."

"Spelling..."

"Sorry - bored. :)"

"What do you want to do then? Some drawing?"

"No, thank you." My right-hand fingers stop typing. "It's a bit shit for us."

"What about a little pottery?"

"NO NO NO. TOO DIRTY. THE CLAY DRIES UNDER OUR NAILS."

"Alright. You can turn caps lock off. I get the point. Do you have any ideas?"

"We want to play the piano."

"But you've played the piano six times already today," I groan.

"Just once more. We'll put your earplugs in for you."

"What's in it for me?"

"You can use us to pick your nose as much as you like." This is the clincher.

And so, five minutes later, the eleven of us are all over by the piano, fingers bashing out a Mozart sonata whilst I try to do the Times crossword in my head.

Geneva: The Third Gate

At the third gate of seven, Jessie and Jim come to their first real problem. Two pictures from L'Etranger's past which seem unconnected but which they must somehow link if they are to get any closer to the ideas at the centre. An otter thrashing about and a rank full of taxis. This is bloody hard and they're only at gate three.

They have identified obscure family members (Catherine de Clemency, Gerard Rougerie) and recalled unwitnessed conversations from decades before (with Marion Delaunay), pieced together through the untrusted testimony of one-time acquaintances (Jonathan Allen, Martha Linehan), but there is a limit to the number of locks they can pick through homework alone.

Now they will have to intuit, to prove they knew L'Etranger by making a connection which is beyond logic. They have to "be" him, if they can, imagine the puzzles which he might himself have set, untangle his intentions, identify his bluffs.

He must be the only man who could have answered these questions. Not only are they about him; they demand him. That's the whole point of the idea-safe. That's why it's the most secure joint in Geneva.

Towards the Sky

They first appeared on Tuesday, three o'clock, when I was elbow-to-elbow in Room 28, creeping through a page of trigonometry. They'd itched beneath the surface since lunch, pushing up against the inside of the skin, bristling briefly and urging me to scratch. But no actual buds appeared 'til three.

They started on the left forearm, leant on the table to keep the book in place, pushing through white and thin and painless, three in five minutes, one on the inside of the elbow and two more up towards the wrist.

I tried to cover them, stop Norris from noticing, but when I glanced down at my writing hand and saw a creamy stem peeking eagerly up between my thumb and index finger, I couldn't help but shriek and toss my triangles to the floor.

Norris looked up from the shoulder of a struggler on the front row and, as he did so, the class all swivelled to stare. I was up out of my chair, through the door and away down the corridor, my face watered with tears, Norris' fat roar bouncing around the walls behind me.

I ran into the loos, rushed into a cubicle, swung the door shut and locked behind me. Lifting my shirt, I counted - seven, eight, nine plants sprouted from my chest and belly, white and delicate and now beautiful. I could see them emerging, slick and bloodless, with fresh buds following behind - twelve, thirteen, fourteen - creeping up and shooting through the skin. I fell back onto the seat, pushed off shoes, unpeeled socks and looked down at my foliaged feet, plants peering up between my toes and what felt like roots suddenly pulling from inside down towards the floor, yearning for turf. I was to be planted, I realised now, and suddenly it didn't feel like such a horrible thing.

But the boys' toilet would never do. I unlocked the door and walked out, caught sight in the mirror of my still unblemished face, then strolled down the corridor and stairs, barged open the big double doors and stepped into the sunlight of the yard. I knew where I should go now and headed straight there, marching through the gates, across the road and into the park.

There I stood, my feet together, in a nice south-facing flowerbed and let the roots push down at last, relieved, through my soles and into the soil. I sighed, leant back towards the sun and felt my face give in to the flowers, arrowing through my cheeks and lips and eyes, stretching up and out towards the sky.

The Star

Maxwell Dandy has a fine physique - tight, lithe, CASTABLE. Taut mocha body topped off with thick chocolate moustache. And, lurking beneath, the thin satisfied lips of a hatefully spectacular lover.

He is invariably the first to take off his shirt when the weather allows, to parade around La Cienega Park in his unfeasibly tight shorts (on anyone else ridiculous, but around his upper thighs quite the sexiest thing that any passer-by can ever have seen). He will stop and talk to THE FANS (if they're able to speak), sign photos, kiss babies, "do his thing"... and they will swoon and faint, probably, and he'll call an ambulance and sit in the back with the emasculated husband, reassuring him that his wife will be ok, that it was just the heat, when we all know that she's only cracked her head open because HE'S SO BLOODY GORGEOUS.

I'm working with Maxwell Dandy next month. We're filming the sequel to Prometheus Lives. I'm playing Fourteenth Mortal. I wish I was playing the eagle.