Threading through a tangle of inner-city streets, Fee watched as stray dogs nosed bin bags stacked like boulders after an eruption. Amy glanced over at her daughter, staring out of the window, those dead grey eyes glassy and blank. Silky whispers painted the vehicle with gentle breathing and a murmured nonsense—her lullaby to the world outside—peaceful, at least for now.
For five years, Amy remembered how it felt to be free from pain, until it was twisted into a cruel joke. The shock of losing half her family still burned, where it would catch her in the quiet moments and pierce through any calm.
Reaching a mile high, ‘Apep’ was a crashed alien Mothership that remained upright. It looked for all the world like the tip of an arrow lodged in the haunch of the planet, leaving the surrounding area to go septic with radiation. How it came to arrive was something to behold. Far from the slow spectral awe that sci-fi movies had sold, this gigantic, city-wide Spacecraft had appeared out of nowhere, as if the fabric of reality decided to part like a beaded curtain. The shape resembled a spinning top, albeit one that was separated into tiers, which slowly rotated in a direction opposite to the one above. Its gun-metal carapace moved silently, glinting dully in the midday sun and hung like a gothic borbel against the empty azure sky. The city's reaction was pure, concentrated fear and pandemonium. A brief sting of amazement morphed into unease, until a full-blown stampede had everyone scattering to their cars. Mass religious hysteria broke out across the planet, awaiting the coming of the end times. Media helicopters swarmed the airspace like carrion birds, until they were cleared by a more weaponised squadron of helicopters belonging to the nearest airbase. Except this was not an invasion, it was more akin to that of a runaway train; if the train was the size of a postcode and on a collision course toward the city centre. Upon impact, the felled Mothership vaporised Coventry instantly, sending the population to an immediate afterlife. An emerald-coloured dome spread, as the ship tore a rent in the Earth, throwing up deadly shrapnel, while cooking the land and turning organic matter into ash.The cacophony of brutalised metal reverberated like a blind, drunken orchestra and buried itself into a splinter on the horizon, leaving a scrap-yard of smoking ruin in its wake. After a few days, Apep finally settled with no sound but for the aching groan of twisted metal, like a death rattle of some eldritch God. There it remained as a canker on the skyline, a constant reminder both hideous and celestial.
Passing the endless fields, Amy leaned forward toward the windscreen. Part of her was hoping to catch a glimpse, while the other hoped it was buried in darkness and fog. She turned onto the new bypass that diverted around the giant wall. Beyond the eighteen-foot concrete barrier lay miles of abandoned motorways left to crumble into ruin.
The one solace she took was the fact that her husband and son would not have suffered. There would have been no time to process the horror, just a quick death without warning, along with the rest of the city and its population. Still, the Tower remained, as a cursed name to tie a bow around and put in the family album. Fee had suggested moving to Cornwall and Alberta’s old Manor, but her mother stubbornly refused. It was the principle of the thing. Why should she relocate? ‘They’ attacked first. Endless fields slid past, blanketed in a stygian void of night. Amy leaned forward and tried to get a good look at the tower known as ‘Apep’. Part of her hoped to catch a glimpse, while the other wanted it buried in darkness and fog. She turned onto the new bypass, around the giant wall encircling Coventry and outlying villages. The concrete megastructure was hard to miss, scaling eighteen feet in height and closing off miles of abandoned highways left to memory and ruin.
***
Upon arriving home, Fee bolted upstairs to her bedroom. An over-cluttered vanity table and a chest of drawers were among the usual furniture. A framed poster of the first Doctor Who, played by William Hartnell, hung above a calendar for the current year. A spherical red lamp in the corner made the white bed frame look dirty. The dirty white frame made the picture frames look rusty. The concentric rug was dangerously psychedelic, which made the room spin if given enough time. To the side was a large bookshelf containing several fantasy sagas and figurines of female Thor and X-23. Tucked away at the bottom was a hutch containing a mottled rabbit named Robinson Burrows. A top window was open to let the scent of disinfectant seep out.
After cleaning herself up, Fee sat on the bed in a T-shirt of a Pachinko machine under a striped bathrobe. She was halfway through sketching a creepy red tree when her mother knocked on the door.
"Come in!" Fee hollered.
Amy said nothing, instead casting her gaze upon a purple belt (for Black Eagle Eskrima) next to a line of trophies for Judo and Taido tournaments, none of which were first place.
She picked one up and said, " You would have come out on top if you'd gone nuclear."
"Martial Arts is not about destroying the opponent, but balance."
"Maybe you just lack the killer instinct."
"Killer instincts are for killers, Mother."
Amy smiled and nodded, placing the trophy back.
"Weird day, huh?" She said.
"Well y’know, not many people have this much fun on their birthday.”
"I wouldn't be a good mum if I didn't arrange to have my daughter beaten half to death, lured to a creepy part of town and teleported hundreds of miles away."
"As you do."
"Next year, I'll just get you a clown."
"Now that's just mean." Fee said. They shared a quiet laugh.
Amy focused on the artwork that festooned the bedroom wall. Some sketches were done in pastels, with maniacal strokes almost tearing through the paper. Other sketches were drawn with a calm, measured hand, as if two alter-egos were competing for attention. Half of the artwork was placed on top of the other, until it layered like the feathers of a demented paper bird. For some reason, every scrap was of the same subject: a blood-red tree with black spots dotted about its trunk. Needless to say, there was an overwhelming sense of wrongness to it all.
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"It's called 'Gonipatoma, '" Fee said, not looking up.
"Go-nip-what?"
“Go-nipper-toe-mah. The blinking tree."
Amy shot her a puzzled look. "A tree that blinks?"
Fee blew on her mug.
"The great tree of creation,” She said. "Every leaf represents a single universe. When a leaf is shed, that universe is extinguished, only to be replaced by a brand new one."
"Frightening."
"How we could be blinked out of existence in the next five seconds? I'd say."
"Why? I mean, why have a tree at all?"
"It's the will of the cosmos. Who's to say we aren't just a mistake? Created out of a series of random events? Weeds exist for the same reason."
"That sounds bloody depressing, Fee."
"According to my teachers, I'm something of a pessimist."
“Not you of all people,”
Fee snorted in response.
Amy squinted at one of the recent artworks. "None of these trees has any leaves on them."
"I know. It doesn't make sense."
"What are you talking about? You're the artist."
"I draw what I see, but don't have all the answers."
"There's a first time for everything," Amy said. It was she meant to sound sarcastic, but there was a weight in her tone. "It's a bit full-on."
"What do you mean?"
"It's not exactly subtle, love. Why not put up some posters of celebrities, y'know? Normal girl stuff."
Fee slurped her coffee.
"Celebrity worship is overrated." She said. "It’s an immutable reality, where the fan is locked into a hallucination, unable to escape the daydream which has become their whole life."
"You kids and your...immutable realities," Amy said.
She stopped at a photo of the smiling family, and felt her cheeks prickle with regret and longing. Fee felt sad for her Mother. It was not in her nature to express grief openly, since there was always a need to go on living. 'Do not fill your head with useless things. ' She would say. Fee couldn't tell if it was a Swedish thing, a Viking thing or just how Amy coped with loss. Sometimes, Fee would catch Amy playing the final messages from Pickford:
“People are running in the street, screaming in panic. Some are looking up. We’re…we’re in a café. Dougie is looking at the big shadow. He wants to see what it is. I don’t know, I don’t want him to get scared. He’s starting to cry. Gotta go. I’ll tell you when I get home. Love you.”
No last-minute goodbyes. No closure.
Upon hearing the tragic news, her first reaction was to tidy up—to clean clothes that would never be worn, to remake a child's bed that would never be slept in—almost as if the shock had triggered some innate need to spare the mind from the reality of loss. Over time, the photos of the dead had been limited to one room or stowed away altogether. Amy was not the kind to turn the house into a shrine to the departed. She saw no relief in nostalgia, and hoarding a collection of artefacts to remain in the past was a distraction and took up space.
"I still miss them." Fee said. "Every day."
"I know, just don't miss them too much," Amy said. "Corny as it sounds, but life is for living, remember that. Even if that means drawing cosmic chickens in the sky, so be it. "
"Where are you getting chickens from? Do you see any chickens?"
“Whatever, you know what I mean," Amy said, yawning. "Just don't lock the door when you have a bath."
"Mum."
"Only until you get to college."
"I'm not a cutter," Fee said, showing off her bare arms. "See?”
"Some good news at last,” Amy said, brushing her hands on her thighs.
"So, I'm going to college?"
"Your grades seem to think so."
"Cool." Fee said.
"You did well Bab, I'm proud of you."
"I can go to Art College."
"Or a real one, if you're lucky. We’ll sort out your courses over the next month.”
“Can’t I enjoy the summer?.”
"Hey,” Amy said, “If my Mum can give me the big speech, you're getting one as well." She paused in the doorway. "You want this open or closed?"
"Open, I don't want to be alone."
"Night, Bab."
"Night, mum.”
***
That night, Fee dreamt of Godwin's Knock.
For as long as she could remember, Godwin's Knock was a place so vivid, it became a second reality. She could see the wind-blasted town nestled in the cliff-face from her bedroom window. The lower half of the area had been hit by a terrible flood that blackened the beach, soaking the ruined houses, causing them to collapse. The hard smell of old water permeated the buildings, as the sea slicked in through the gaps of doorways. Only the hotel remained, listing to one side. In this dream, Fee always woke up in the same room of the vacant hotel. The room was small enough to accommodate a single bed, a small chest of drawers and a corner table with a chamber pot underneath. It was located at the front of the building, where the view overlooked the gun-metal sea.
Her dream avatar was always clad in a full-length robe of moss and bones. The features were buried under a brass cage, covered by the thick folds of the hood. What passed for hands were gnarled wooden fingers formed from the branches of a tree. She had no idea as to why she came to be this way, or why she wore a cage. It was one of the few things she had no control over in the dreams. The other was that she could only communicate in feral grunts, not that there was anyone to talk to, because the world was always deserted.
Fee stooped into the old hallway. The walls were wet with crawling damp; the portraits streaked with water damage, rendering the subject's faceless. Everything was perfumed with a salty desolation. She made her way to the empty reception room, fashioned in the distinctly Victorian interior of the double-front detached hotel. As always, she was forced to slosh through two feet of murky sea water surrounded by bobbing furniture. The Hotel was always quiet, except for the mournful sound of a piano playing behind the overgrown conservatory. It was never in tune. Inside the kitchen, red roots snarled around worktops, creeping through the back door underneath, framed by a sliver of honeyed light. It seemed to branch out like the bronchioles of an exposed lung.
Fee pulled the door open, and a blinding light filled the backyard, ending on the edge of a cliff, crumbling away into the abyss of space. In the distance, a distant universe formed a majestic backdrop with molten swirls of cyan, yellow and purple. Drawing back her hood to reveal a pale, shaven-headed features., she stood over a blood-red altar; both a wonder and a horror to behold. The tabletop was a blighted composition of waxy, red wood which seemed almost alive. Foul, shiny black eyes bubbled like pustulating sores, disappearing and reforming on every inch of the unsanctified bark. A large leather book was placed in the centre, but locked down by an immense pressure, seemingly reluctant to expose its secrets. Fee wanted to know, however, and managed to wrangle the eldritch forces, which buckled to her will. Compelled to oblige, the demonic tome unleashed its arcane knowledge, turning Fee’s eyes into burning pits of purple vapour. The book turned its pages, stopping on a diagram containing impossible geometric shapes, and a series of numbers filling the pages in block passages. Something inside her felt a giddiness, unmatched by anything found on Earth.
Fee knew Gonipatoma was watching her every move despite the fact that she was less than a nucleon in its presence. Now wounded by her presence, it regarded her as entropy itself, sent to upset the grander mechanics of the universe. Above all, even the cosmos wanted her gone.