DAY 28 (ENCLOSING)

(Day 26 continued) Awadil wakes up two hours later, 27 days before the UK government approve a vaccine which offers 95% protection from COVID-19. He will never learn of this. He vehemently apologises to Bilhah. She insists on exchanging phone numbers, explaining that she’d like to keep in touch. His company, she says, even just the odd text message, will help her remain accountable in her efforts to make a better career, a better life for herself. He considers the request and feels his soul stir, a single ripple on the surface before it goes still again. With his hands in his pockets, he nods and is too ashamed to meet Bilhah’s eyes.

She says she’ll call Bonbon’s owners and ensure the safe return of the cat.

Here begins Awadil’s rebirth. Think of him as a mayfly.

The two gingerly embrace and he gazes across at the birds. A tear makes a small stream through the dirt on his cheek.

At the door, he forces a smile and nods. Not another word is said.

Bilhah steps forward to open the awkward old catch on the door and the daylight floods in, bright, stinging both their eyes. Bilhah thinks the loud bang is another collision of cars, but the red and blue flashing lights are already here and she cannot grasp the gravitas of this yet. Not on a conscious level. At least the chicken blood on her protective uniform makes Awadil’s fresh spilled blood seem less grotesque to gawping bystanders.

News of the vaccine dominates the newspapers. Only one publication carries the ‘terrorist’ situation story. Even then, it is a small headline shoved down in the bottom right corner, directing the reader to page 4, where a mugshot of Awadil, with his rumoured ISIS ties and the brave officer who saved Bilhah.

***

Whether the firebreak lockdown has helped to control the virus is debated far and wide, with great fatigue and lethargy weighing down our words as people wait for the cafes and pubs to open, ready to accept whatever it takes to return to what they were on with before all this.

***

At breakfast, Trudy asks her mother what kind of cat the one in the news story is. Her mother closes the paper, scowls at her husband, who shrugs his shoulders, before telling the small girl she thinks it might be a tabby.

***

Across town, Dan watches the interview with the manager of the poultry shop, at the crime scene. The man says he received word from Bilhah that some headcase had broken in and taken her hostage and alerted the police.

“Fucking paki. Course it it.” Dan sneers when they show Awadil’s photograph as Amy takes his crumb filled plate and cup away, rolling her eyes. She opens her mouth to tell him that he might not be from Pakistan, but lets out a long sigh instead.

***

Simone, on the bus, reading the online article through steamed glasses, feels sympathy and wonders what brought the man they shot to this point, to his own, private brink. Maybe we’re all closer than we think, she considers before she remembers the message she had to reply to on Instagram.

DAY 27

(Day 24 continued) Errol sleeps like the dead for 16 hours straight. When he wakes, he is incredibly confused. Rhoda, as she turns out to be called, arrives with tea on a tray. A small dog growls, dubiously at him.

The two enjoy each other’s company, playing games, watching TV and Rhoda helps Errol tighten his bow and arrow. They both understand that when the authorities inevitably find her new unexpected love interest, they will have a battle to convince Errol’s sons he is well enough to stay here. But for now, there is a new crackle of independence, of defiance, of thinking for themselves. Life is short, so they drink it all in, quietly grateful for the pandemic’s role in this late-life twist.

Craig shifts in the sofa and the paper crown slips from his head. He smacks his lips, grumbles, farts and starts to snore loudly again. Mrs. Brown’s Boys plays on the TV and his Christmas lights dance their five-track loop, highlighting the side of his face not pressed into his shoulder. Next to him are several mince pie wrappers and in the kitchen, on the hob sits the dried dregs of mulled wine. Washing up is piled high on the draining board.

The money he came into when he lost his mother two years ago means he does not have to work. He cannot travel without being muzzled during the flight, questioned by foreign border authorities and bolted into his hotel, so he started Christmas in mid-September. He’s put on 1/3 of his previous body weight, but says he’ll sort it in January. What else is there?

DAY 26

Viv’s paternity-leave never really ended. The company fell into receivership and despite the reasonable pay-out, it only really set the family up for two months. In an effort to cheer him up, during a 4am baby meltdown, his wife, Flora takes a photograph of the baby monitor, on which sways Viv’s arse in night-vision. With little Layla settled, before they go back to sleep, Flora jokes how sexy it looked, dominating ¾ of the screen. As sleep takes him, Viv wonders what his life has become.

***

Rocky signs into his Onlyfans account. There’s a lot of content on here, but it’s unspoken that a large number of users come here to buy premium porn from their objects of affection; celebrities and such. Rocky is one of these punters. He doesn’t want to see sex anymore. Not in numbers, not straight, not gay, not solo. He wants something different. He wants niche. That’s when he finds V.I.V.X.X.X. It’s the almost Roman numerals style name that lures him in. It’s the brutal simplicity that traps him. The bollock naked lower half of a man going about his daily chores. Here, he’s unloading a washing machine into a basket. The detail is beautiful; sighs, yawns, humming of a tune. Rocky pays up for the full experience. It’s easy to see why this guy is trending, racking up the fans, that arse is a featured deal. It rocks back and forth, showing only a glimpse of cot to sell the illusion that he is settling a baby. Now he’s bent over, mopping up spilled dog water. At one point, nothing happens for almost an hour. Then, he turns in bed and the sheet inches up. Oh God. There’s barely any sexual aspect to this; Rocky does not masturbate. He just watches, feeling a strange affinity with the man who never reveals anything from the navel up. His fans know so little about him; only the things on his domestic to-do list. And yet…  has he put the wash on the correct cycle? How is his wife? Does she really love him? Will his raw plugs arrive in time to hang the framed artwork we know he’s bought her? Did the coat fit? There are long threads and arguments about this in the comments, arguments fought by people paying premium prices for practical pornography of a different kind.

(Day 20 continued) Bits of dry cocoa swirl around on top of the tepid hot chocolate. Bilhah could have walked out into the street and left Awadil behind, guaranteeing her safety, but this person is not well and the last thing he needs is the sight of another turned back. He picks at the chipped edge of the cup and for a while, the only sounds aside from car horns outside are Bonbon licking his paws and the birds jostling for the tiny pockets of space.

“So what do you want from me… what is your name?” Almost a minute goes by, Awadil staring at his shoes, before he finally mumbles his name like a mischievous child caught out, now in the furnace of the headteacher’s office.

“I don’t know…what I want. Not anymore. I’m empty. I shouldn’t be here.”

“I’m trying to retrain, Awadil. By this time next year, I hope not to be here, not to have to do this. But this is not about me, is it? It’s something bigger, I feel.”

“Some days I don’t care. I can go to work, talk with friends, get excited about sport, about the movie I’d like to see. But it does not last. It’s always there, bubbling like lava inside a volcano. I see a sponsored appeal advertisement on social media; a sad orangutan, its family gone, no trees left to climb, no habitat to forage thanks to some shampoo or chocolate manufacturer and the hole which opens up in my soul is absolute. The darkness which swallows my thoughts is infinite and unfathomable. I want to kill the next thing I see, even myself, some days.”

Awadil falls silent. “The only reason I’m still here is because… if those of us who feel this way are gone, then only those who do not think, do not care, remain and the end comes even quicker.”

The two talk at length about this, about the burden of knowing, about empathy and what the capitalist system does to the minds of those who care about more than the status quo. At times, Awadil grows angry, agitated again. Sometimes he cries. He says he’s worried about how he allowed himself to be so weak, to snatch up Bonbon like that and come in here this way.

“What if Bonbon was a gun, Bilhah?”

Bilhah thinks about this, but it’s no use worrying about what might have been. Even now, there’s a warmth pumping out of Awadil, despite the heavy clouds rolling across his skies. He says the virus hasn’t helped. Too much time to think. To Bilhah’s surprise, he falls asleep, so she puts a sheet over him and turns up the heating before going about her work. She steps into the corridor and calls her boss, explaining everything is fine, that the intruder will be gone soon, to trust her.

DAY 25

Nine days into isolation, Arshad feels a great kinship with his fish. He’s been staring at Ike, a black one with bulbous eyes, who nibbles algae off an ornamental skull.

***

Fiona changes the channel without knowing why. What she was watching was fine.

***

In the absence of sugar, Ginny scrapes at the dried-out dregs of honey and manages to get enough to put in her coffee.

***

Marcel doesn’t make it back from his 5.40pm nap.

***

A host of angry suburbanites peep from behind their curtains at the travellers who pitched up on the already carved up playing field. They splash outrage around the neighbourhood WhatsApp group to offset their fear of this new perceived threat. It is, in some ways, a justified fear; one of the younger travellers threatened to cut the fingers off a school kid on Friday afternoon.

Frustration is the prevailing characteristic of a lockdown named firebreak, which is lukewarm at best. It seeps through even the most secure of front doors as morality hangs above head height like an evening fog. There, but distant. Barely noticed, something to be pointed at and referenced only when all other conversation fails.

DAY 24

Aileen doesn’t have an outlet. She would love to read more, write a short story or embrace the great outdoors; but what little enthusiasm she works up tends to mauled by her barely manageable anxiety. During the last year, it has mutated into something monstrous and hostile. The Andy Burnham ‘king of the north’ memes grant her heavy face a lethargic smile, but even he looks pale and when the government announce that her home town, like Manchester, will remain under tier 3 restrictions, London staying in tier 2, despite R rates flying in the face of the decision, the monster sprouts another head with tiny, orange, malevolent eyes and a fetid mouth full of spiny teeth. She has friends who have utilised their rage over the alleged political strokes to help them battle on, but it merely incapacitates her and millions of others with a similar mental makeup. For some, this is a dick-swinging death sentence handed down by egomaniac schoolboys who nobody ever checked.

***

Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. I never knew this park was here... Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. This TV series is meant to be decent. Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks. Drink heavily and eat too many takeaways.

Ty looks back on some parts of his life with rose-tinted glasses on. He yearns to relive them, see, smell, hear, taste and touch the truffle texture of nostalgic bliss. When he looks back at 2020, in years to come, he knows it’ll be through a pair of balls in a faded, prickly, smelly, guilty ball-sack.

(Day 18 continued) Errol does tai-chi in the woods he saw and liked the look of from the train, between two small towns. He’s done tai-chi since his early 50s. It keeps him younger than his years. After tea, which consists a Marks and Spencer’s pasta dish from his carrier bag of supplies, he sees out the rest of the daylight skinning a stick with his Swiss army knife, making a bow and arrow. He brought string from the care home kitchen without an explicit purpose. Just like in childhood, the arrows don’t fly very far, but he enjoys it nonetheless. Nobody comes here and he falls asleep easily enough, soothed by the sound of the stream. He wakes up cold once more at midnight and sets off for the next town.

He is tired. Without Ayanna and Bruce, this is more difficult and boring than he anticipated. No drama, exciting sub-characters or twists play out in this story. While he takes a modicum of satisfaction from putting his two sons through the emotional mixer in return for their pathetic twice-annual visit to the care home, for even unloading him in the damn place to begin with, he now feels a little guilty for the distress this must be causing them. Trouble is, he does not know where he is and has no form of communication. After two hours trudging through wet grass and along snatches of motorway, he finds himself back on a quiet street in the nearest town, murky water seeping through his socks and grows angry with himself for not just staying put and doing a Captain Tom. That old bastard has a bottle of gin out now. Errol feels he deserves no more than a range of colostomy bags with his face on them. Standing there, feeling empty, worthless, expired, a small, yappy dog runs over and shouts at him. Something about his owner’s smile snaps him out of his malaise.

DAY 23

Justin tells his mother, uncle, sister and cousins he will not be seeing them any time soon. He could have, of course; walks to the park, garden meet ups, sneaky pop-ins at the house were all very possible. But he became so fed up of his four walls, living alone, his groundhog-day, that he prescribed himself a strict diet of dick heads. His bubble was carefully composed exclusively of them. He accepts a long-ignored Facebook friend request from Dave Ackroyd, who he has not spoken to since year 9 science class, who he hated back then. ‘Wot u bin on wi m8?’ pops up in the chat box and Justin engages in dialogue darker than a Ouija board natter. He sifts through village idiot grandmothers who write ‘all lives matter’ on the comment pages of articles in the local newspaper and reaches out to Vera, a stand out example wHo USeS A FRitinEng (sic) aRRaY of CaPS and LOweRcASe. Also in his bubble is Chris, a 34-year old mechanic he befriended in the supermarket after Justin saw him point and snigger at a trans person.

Justin made this decision knowing fine well he would come out in hives and hyperventilate from unmanageable rage in their insufferable company. But it means that returning home, closing the door, stepping into the silence and darkness of his hall and dragging the chain across the catch is a euphoric ride better than any orgasm he could ever hope to have. Home sweet home never felt so apt. Tomorrow, he is meeting in the local park with Wiggzi, who spends a lot of his time watching paedophile vigilante group videos on the internet and is keen to tell Justin he suspects his neighbour is a ‘nonce.’

***

Sam has been suffering irrational bouts of self-loathing. With 12 years of experience of presenting the local news weather forecasts in his trademark fruity shirts, carefully curating his facial hair to tease his locked down fans, who occasionally ask him for a photograph, he cannot imagine doing anything else for a living. Yet he leaves work this morning, without a coat and gets drenched by a near-monsoon he did not warn of. Turning on his heel, back he thunders back into studio reception, snatches the visitor sign in form from the hand of a new intern and writes out his soggy resignation with such force, the pen breaks and draws blood. He collapses and has to be sat with upon regaining consciousness until the ambulance arrives.

Hulkamania is in mortal danger. The Undertaker scoops up the only man to wear a skullet and Fu-Manchu moustache and still be cool, drills him into the canvas, head first. Hogan springs straight to his feet, shakes his head, points at the dead man and mouths ‘YOU!’ Various mullets and vivacious perms bob up and down behind the guardrail and Paul Bearer, The Undertaker’s scheming manager is hysterical, screeching at the camera. Now Hogan unloads with a series of rights and all hell breaks loose as Ric Flair marches down to ringside in his turquoise, glittery robe, the words ‘Nature Boy’ across the back. The colour-commentators have come completely unglued. Chrissy takes another greedy swig of chardonnay straight from the bottle and palms in another handful of Thorntons chocolates without even looking, or caring which is which. Who gives a fuck about mass death and economic collapse anyway?

DAY 22

Cleggy will throttle the first person he sees if he is ambushed by a tabloid newspaper front cover depicting UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson photoshopped as Santa. That’s a promise.

***

Anne has been helping her father, James to trace his family history, using the genealogy website membership gift she bought him out of desperation, after his new ant farm tank broke, resulting in a nasty home infestation. He had neglected to tell anyone about this ‘new hobby’ until too many concerned relatives began calling him about the blotches from the bites all over his face during Zoom calls.

The two of them are stunned to find that not just his father and grandfather and Anne’s four-year old son, James share the same name, but also the previous seven generations of men before them. Unfortunately, that’s where the excitement ends. Aside from his great, great, great, great grandfather James’ arrest and release in a case of mistaken identity over the theft of two apples, it turns out he comes from a family of workshy, imagination parched layabouts who mainly stayed in. How they managed to procreate is riddle worth the subscription alone, Anne thinks. James grumbles threats about revoking his BBC license fee for false advertising in their popular show Who Do You Think You Are.

(Day 18 continued) Ayanna and Bruce are met with a mixture of outrage and relief by their families and care home staff when they return. Errol’s absence comes not as a shock, but as a cause for grave concern, especially when his two accomplices put on their bewildered act and claim they can’t remember where they saw him last. Despite his prized swiss army knife, he is frail and long past his physical prime.

That said, he finds enough stores in the nearby town which accept cash and buys himself enough food for the next two to three days. By nightfall, he has appeared on the local evening news twice. Once as a mugshot; the missing, vulnerable, ‘likely scared’ missing elderly person and also with a host of local students, helping them tear down a fence their university tried to erect around the campus to keep them in their halls of residence. Afterwards, they invite him back and he not only earns himself 6 cans of Guinness and his first sample of cheap weed, but also a roof over his head for the night with a first-year criminal law student who happens to have a single camp bed going free. In the morning he takes several phone numbers in case he needs any help, then catches the first train to the next county.  

DAY 21

Tom, only two days into isolation after the whole of his eldest daughter’s year group were sent home following a positive COVID test in the ranks, sits with his dehydrated face pressed into his folded arms at the dinner table. Debris surrounds him; toast crusts, apple cores, puddles of milk and lonely beans, a scene not dissimilar to the aftermath of a coastal village battered by a hurricane. His eldest daughter hauls her younger sister along the carpet, wrapped in a sofa throw, shrieking, cackling, working on his defences. The cat hangs from the curtains. Tom has nothing left so he reaches for the dregs of his whisky bottle. He’ll tell them it’s a special apple juice, for grown-ups. Upstairs, his wife shouts at their youngest daughter, who has managed to bring down not just the shower curtain, but the entire rail during bath time.

***

Minnie hears a news piece on the radio, discussing George Clooney’s decision to thank fourteen friends who helped him along the way by giving them $1million each. He says he wanted them to enjoy it while they can, rather than sticking with his initial plan to write it into his will. Minnie is a long way from any tangible, lucrative success, so she wonders who might reward her this way and why. She comes up with little as she watches Shane Ritchie get bollocked for sleeping in, to get out of chores on I’m a Celebrity. When it is finished, she gets in the car, drives to the local shop and buys fourteen £1 scratch cards, to send to her kindest friends. The top prize is £100,000. She thinks each of these friends would acknowledge her with at least £10,000, which would sort her right out.

Sylvester doesn’t entertain social media. At 72, why should he? His books are plenty to keep him entertained without distraction. The dog cocks his head when Sylvester mumbles something about divisive decisions from his wing-backed chair, in front of the fire. That he is not part of the digital cock-fighting, does not mean he is unaware of it going on. Every government decision sends millions of people into a frenzy of bickering, bickering you rarely see in the real world, squabbling over whether travelling to see family over Christmas is morally right for the war effort. In reality, people prefer to spend their rage from wound down car windows, or at the person with different skin colour who jumped the queue in the Post Office. It's a shame, he thinks, what the younger generations have become, before finding his place on the page. The dog huffs and settles back down. Some wood in the fire pops and spits.

DAY 20

Kim Kardashboard was booked for a month of Sundays at various clubs and functions. With 17 cancelled dates and January on thin ice, given the inevitable spike in post-Christmas cases, Tony Hardman has to hang up the wig for the foreseeable. The garage light blinks on and he pulls back the dust sheet covering his bricklaying tools. He can already hear the hiss of murmurs awaiting his sheepish return to Screwfix.

***

Yeadley D. Burke boasts a net worth of £12m. He is a retired, single football agent without too many stories of his own. During the 1st part of lockdown, he ordered things from the internet to keep each day alive. Some new piece of machinery, technology or fine clothing would arrive and he would watch excitedly, in his silk gown. In June, he spent £142,000 on cake forks made from precious metals hewn from some never before accessed cave in Argentina.

Now, sat in the booming silence of the guest quarters following a documentary about the perils of crossing the Mexican border, the lack of danger in his life coils around his throat like a python and leaves him struggling for breath; the idea that getting a £125,000 per week striker £140,000 at a slightly better club should be his biggest thrill before the pandemic. Terrified of waiting for a normality that might never return, he leaves the giant property barefoot, sets fire to a neighbour's paper and cardboard bin and sniffs up an indulgent lung-full of the deadly fumes. Every few days since, he does this and his life has become an unfolding toxic mystery. If he wrote down the unanswered questions each morning after, it would be thicker than a novel from Stephen King’s coke days. Yesterday, he found his own £2,000 shoe in a shopping trolley and has no recollection of even getting them out of his wardrobe. It had an empty can of Redbull in it. While off his nut, he's been mugged 3 times. For the first time in his comfortable life, he feels alive.

(Day 15 continued) As he says this, Awadil falls to his knees, tears breaking fast, like a river bursting its banks and all rage leaves his body, drowned by despair. Bonbon finally gives up on the caged chickens and brushes up against the legs of the poultry shop lady. She does not know whether to approach this broken man or not.

“Kill it…” he whimpers, “KILL IT!!!”

“What? Can we at least talk about it?” Bonbon struts back towards the birds, ears moving curiously back and forth. Awadil continues to sob, slides down the wall, pulling his knees up to his dripping chin.

She messages her manager, explaining there is a situation involving a troubled stranger, but it’s under control so to be closeby, but don’t come in. She manages to calm Awadil down with a glass of water and he seems thrown, a little more lucid when she explains that she is a 36-year old mother of two. Her name is Bilhah, which she explains is Jewish.

Between despondent, slurred sentences, mumbling about the hypocrisy of humans, Awadil’s neck will intermittently jerk stiff with rage and he barks barely decipherable profanity. How can people eat meat kept and killed in barbaric surrounds, the production of which is destroying the world’s forests and our futures, but pamper another species into luxurious docility? He presses Bilhah for an explanation about why she looked horrified at the idea of killing the cat when all those birds live in hell. She considers the idea and explains that she does this job to support her young family and keep a roof over their heads, but underneath the learned emotional separation is a young girl who dies a little more with each snapped bird neck.

Bilhah draws a slight smirk from Awadil when she explains that if he found her name on one of those cheap key-rings, it would say ‘rash action and confusion’ and gets him to agree to a cup of hot chocolate. In the corridor, she looks at the door back to the street. 5 paces to freedom…

DAY 19

Yolo_230X reworks the comment 6 times, taking long, pensive breaks to make hot chocolate before s/he is happy with it. It is 1.58am, Monday morning and s/he sends the final draft to >Beggzy< who messages back on a MSN Messenger. The two share a virtual laugh, using obsolete (for those who do as they are told) emojis before Yolo_230X posts the finished sting. His/her dry lips peel back, revealing a deck of caffeine-stained teeth, asymmetrically stacked in a screen-lit, snarky grin. Tonight, they hover through the dusty corridors of Myspace. Tomorrow - a glance at the calendar confirms – there’s a dance taking place in the crumbling Bebo ballroom. Yolo_230X and >Beggzy< belong to a cell of impish spectres who haunt the graveyards and edge lands of social media.

In their ranks are tech wizards, who if they wished, could ply their trade for six-figure salaries in Silicon Valley. But they prefer to remain anonymous, supported by unremarkable jobs, hidden away in their bedsit base camps from which they troll dead celebrities, leave flirtatious comments on the profiles of oblivious wives and mothers, frozen in time, here, in their Avril Lavigne eye shadow and low-hanging purple fringes.

The members of this bedroom network of digital-archaeologists are delighted about a 2nd lockdown and hope that things get worse, so they can continue to point-score, competing around the clock in the utopian freedom of internet mausoleums. Soon, XTXT0 will screw the last bolts into the neck of his Geocities Frankenstein and await lightning to shock life back into the corpses of some of the greatest websites nobody visited.

(Day 13 continued) Todd fixes bits around Ena’s house, orders her a new compost bin and does two different shops. He even brings a musty shoebox of old family photographs, dating back to his childhood. Ena thinks some of her aches and pains have eased since she had this to look forward to each week. The photographs trigger all kinds of memories and stories and they each learn from one another’s lived experiences in the same town. Both make mental plans to locate further such artefacts before the next visit and Todd knows some good websites where he can find information which will help Ena answer some of the questions she had about days before his time. As Todd reaches the garden gate, four police officers await him following an anonymous phone call saying he was putting the life of a vulnerable person at risk. He sighs and shrugs his shoulders, gut-wrenching sadness crushing his soul. Honest is the only way he can be so he explains that he’s been helping Ena during a tough time. Foolishly, he names the voluntary services organisation and they are made aware of this breach of COVID rules by the police. Todd is informed his help is no longer required and Ena receives a phone call the same afternoon to inform her that her shopper will be a different person from next week. ‘Todd had to divert his time towards something unforeseen’ is the official line.

***

April is mortified when she hears that the government are set to announce a relaxing of COVID-19 restrictions for Christmas. Immediately, she hears the rustle of uncle Tony’s carrier bag, containing a homophobic joke. His jelly-baby posture, lolloping up the side of the house to seep in through Mum’s back door. The reek of him, those stained, unwashed jogging bottoms. She thought this was the year the nation would be gifted a legal doorman to turn away the family dick-slinger. She was wrong.

DAY 18

(Day 11 continued) Ayanna screams and kills any chance of remaining undiscovered. Bruce snarls and Errol sighs. The game is up. They shout their proclamation of peaceful surrenders before the police anticipate something worse and shoot. But the outside presence is no police officer. Instead, a small, hooded silhouette is backlit by a mobile phone light and cries out in shock, just as alarmed as the three escapees.

George and Jay are two drunk teenagers spending their Friday nights in the woods with booze stolen from George’s dad’s drinks cabinet; each set of parents told their son is staying at their friend’s house. Even through their haze, they struggle to believe their night has taken this twist; drinking the derelict lodge with three old people who’ve broken out of their care home. In the dark, it is hard to tell that without his medication, Bruce is dangerously pale. He admits he is freezing and suggests it would be dangerous to stay here, at their age. Jay, George’s friend says not to worry and from under a pile of wooden planks, drags a pack of firelighters, several musty sleeping bags and some wool hats.

The flames dance satisfyingly high.

“We’ve been doing this since the first lockdown. What else are we gonna do? We can’t go out. Sometimes we bring girls here.”

“Once… and that ended well.” Interjects George.

“Yeah well… That’s why we have all the sleeping bags and that.”

“What about you?” Asks Ayanna.

“We’re fine, got thermals under here and we can use the tarp.”

Bruce wakes first, at 5am, feeling horrific, short of breath. By sunrise, the boys return their sleeping gear to the dirt under the planks for next week and ask the escapees if they would like dropping anywhere. By the time they make the car on the edge of the forest, Bruce barely manages to keep himself up, stopping to cling to a tree. Ayanna bursts into tears and Errol sighs. For the other two, this is the end of the line. Ayanna asks the boys to drop them back at the care home. Errol does not yet know where he would like to be taken, but says he has adventure left in his old bones yet.

DAY 17

Bev finds a reduced-price chess set in the supermarket and doesn’t hesitate to part with the cash. On recommendation, she watched The Queen’s Gambit with her husband, Wayne. Once Wayne had stopped grumbling about a female lead in a show based on chess, he admitted it was fantastic and spoke of a yearning for the days when up to three games would be played at a time in the local pub.

Wayne returns from the dog walk to a candle-lit room, glasses of his favourite whisky poured, two arm chairs and a wooden table set up in the centre of the room. On top of the table is a wrapped gift. If it is what he thinks it is, business has just picked up.

“Go on, love, open it!” The glow on her face is pure and he cannot hold back his own smile.

“Hold on, hold on! Just let me wipe his paws and get my wellies off!”

“Hurry up, you’re going to love this!”

He has not the heart to say anything and manages five excruciating games of draughts before Bev checks the box for horses .

A tiny owl is on the mend after being rescued from inside the Rockefeller Centre Christmas Tree.

Jacqueline forces her eyes to remain on this tiny crack of light, in the news headlines between the raging Gods above, in their story holes, newly and unnecessarily introduced to Twitter. If she looks at them, final judgement of inane bullshit awaits. Below is worse; she has no desire to walk off the cliff into the burning fires of anti-nuance and ill-considered shouts. Edging the cursor to the log out button for the last time, she hits it on the fourth click. The nightmare is over.

***

Ian is desperate was desperate for a proper night out. What that entails is down to individual preference, but for the divorced 39-year old postman, it must be authentic, not some fondly remembered highlight reel.

At 5pm, he takes a nap, throws an oven pizza down his neck, showers and sprays ¼ of a bottle of Joop! on his neck.

By 5.30pm he wears a two-tone shirt, smart jeans and white Kickers shoes.

At 6.30pm, after downing a can of Fosters, listening to 50-Cent, he takes a walk in the cold, without a jacket and arrives at his mate’s house. They drink pints of Carling and do shots of red Aftershock. He eyes his mate’s wife over the kitchen island, but she is on Facebook, clearly unwilling to indulge him.

Undeterred and drunk, at 10pm he arrives to find a long queue outside his house. Bass rattles the front windows and when he finally reaches the door, he is challenged by a prick of a bouncer, he says he’s had too many. After returning to his mate’s house, he changes clothes and returns in a different shirt. He gets in.

His feet stick to his laminate flooring. Ian spent early afternoon spilling a range of drinks on it. It’s all in the detail.

He dances like an animatronic giraffe, gets so plastered he is sick in his wardrobe and is abruptly turned down as he tries to kiss a disgusted selection of local women as per their freelance role here tonight. The last thing he remembers is bad mouthing a neighbour who asks him what the fuck he’s thinking during a pandemic, before he is dropped with one punch. He wakes the next day with a tray of chips strewn across his bedroom carpet, a black eye, shoes and coat still on, trapped in a sinewy, diabolical hangover. The final and most important detail is revealed when he fishes in his stained trouser pocket for his wallet. A notice spells out a hefty fine for breaking lockdown restrictions. Ian smiles and sets off for the local shop to get a cheap sandwich and some Lucozade, falling off the kerb several times. It was just something he had to get out of his system.

DAY 16

If you’re annoyed about black people in the Sainsbury’s advert, you may be upset to learn that Christmas is a celebration of the birth of a Middle Eastern man.

That might be the best response Dahlia has seen so far. The one about Aldi’s family of carrots being relatable was funny, until she stopped to think about the fact that when it comes to the mindset of those outraged, it carries a little too much truth.

Stevie gently dances around directly asking Lora what’s wrong. He can sense it. She’s been flitting from task to task in various rooms in the house. She wants to give it a couple more days to see if her new problem goes away. It started mid-morning when Sean Bean spoke to her from the TV. For a confusing few moments after the scream, her brain could not process the fact that it was merely his voice, over an O2 mobile phone network advertisement, not the Sheffield bastard himself, inexplicably standing in her living room.

Just after lunch, halfway through an online guided meditation, Lora jumped and scrambled on all fours across the bedroom floor when she thought a woman she did not know was in the house talking about staying in control and releasing grey matter.

As afternoon wore on, she muted all devices and unplugged the TV and radio, terrified by the sheer range of threats to a person who loses the ability to differentiate between which voices are emanating from them, or from the inside of her lockdown sanctuary.

In the evening, with Stevie reading some work papers, she finally slumps into the chair and disregards the whole thing as a side-effect of fatigue. All is well until a flowing and optimistic phone call to her mother takes a terrifying plunge when Lora becomes convinced that a menacing southern man has entered the front room behind her beloved, surviving parent. She starts to shout and pull at her hair, dropping the phone and jumping up and down in a hysterical panic. Steve’s sheets flutter every which way as he leaps to his feet and grabs his fiancé around the shoulders. She stops dead and the blank look on her face convinces Stevie she has entered some sort of fugue state. Slowly, she reaches down and picks up the phone.

“Mum, are you still there? Are you OK?” her voice is trembling. Steve hears the tinny voice of his mother-in-law to be coming from the receiver. On their TV screen, a muted Danny Dyer dramatizes the events of TV game show, The Wall with serious expressions and hard-man body language. Her mother has the show on in the living room and is safe, behind her locked doors. Lora now realises this is not normal and must call the doctor 1st thing in the morning or face a silent existence with no radio, TV or internet sound. On a different day, it could have been Rolf Harris.

DAY 15

This message was deleted

None of the work’s WhatsApp group can ask what it was. They all want to know. Several glimpsed something pink and terrible. It was moving. It won’t be brought up at work tomorrow, but the entire office will know that Steve sent more than a typo somewhere it wasn’t meant to be and recalled it, minus a part of his soul. Whatever he has in his diary will require intense focus so he can press his face up against his monitor and disappear at lunch. Everyone will leave him alone. As if this time isn’t strange enough.

It’s cheap to buy houses in a less than gentrified part of town. A walk down the high street is enough to understand why.

WER SICK BUT STILL HUMAN

Is the message sprayed across a permanently closed pub’s metal window coverings, full of tiny holes. The local corner shop could double up as a boxing ring. That’s how often Rian has seen noses popped, faces raked with fake nails in here. People are skint and afraid, jumping into deep, murky puddles of addiction and escapism. He just about makes enough to tread water, but now there are rumours of a Tesco opening across the bridge and it’s costing him sleep. He is increasingly convinced that this government’s agenda is better served by working people on their knees. A small girl in a white t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms comes in with a scribbled shopping list.

“You got a mask, young lady?” Asks Rian. She shakes her head. Her wide, innocent eyes stir a yearning to know she’s alright in him. He can’t know, but the chances are, she won’t be. It just depends how bad things end up for her. He might be wrong. He hopes he’s wrong. He’s been wrong before, but he knows who her parents are. Seven lads pour into the store, making a lot of noise. Rian sighs and his anxiety spikes. The little girl stays quiet somewhere behind the crisps.

(Day 9 continued) Bonbon the cat is friendly and brushes against Awadil’s knee. He scoops him up and at first has no idea what to do with him. Before he even realises, he is marching back the way he came, firmly stroking the cat to calm his nerves. At the poultry company, he tries the door and it opens with a squeal. It is very heavy and requires his shoulder to get it open enough to enter. It closes behind him with a soft hiss.

The bloodied lady jumps when she sees him, then a look of total confusion crumples her face, now uncovered from the mask she wore in the street, when she sees the cat. Awadil throws Bonbon down on the floor, but the cat heads straight for the many chickens, each as desperate as the next, crammed into their cages under flickering tube lights. He swings a paw at the heads which poke out, here and there, like a game of whack-a-mole.

“What are you doing?” She asks him in a soft voice, nervously gauging the distance between Awadil and the door. Something in his body language, his bulging, wild eyes suggest she would be wise to make a break for it… and yet… the cat has begun to clean his paws. The fear the lady feels is not so much for her own wellbeing, but strangely, this strange intruder. He does not appear to be carrying a weapon. Finally, he speaks, constrained words are strained out of his throat like garlic through a press.

“The cat… kill it.”

DAY 14

Guest lecturer, Simone, stands there, bellowing about screen printing, looking like an extra from a low-budget sci-fi movie in her extreme PPE and feels like a twat. A right twat. Especially given the massive words FACE SHIELD emblazoned across the forehead part of it.  Communicating with the students is a thankless task, spittle spraying against the sheer, plastic visor as she shouts to be heard. One of the cocky teenage students says he’ll order her some tiny, novelty windscreen wipers off Amazon for next time she’s in, which draws sniggers and hisses from his viper’s nest of prats. At lunch time she downs a can of mid-strength Polish lager and half a packet of arctic ice chewing gum, brought in her handbag to combat this very instance. The smell of sanitiser helps mask the booze on her breath.

The interview goes well for Barrett. As well as they can go over Zoom. Only once did he unintentionally cut the interviewer off because of the lag. The MD laughed at two of his jokes and appeared pleasantly caught off guard when he listed the raft of new skills he’s acquired via online courses and tutorials, since he became unemployed in July. There was one slight snag. Just before they left the meeting room, his webcam fell down, revealing that beneath the pinstripe shirt and cornflour blue tie, he wore only white underpants, which he clearly saw on screen; their saggy waistband, the Batman logo, stretched over his manhood. There is no way of knowing if they had already left the meeting and Barrett begins to sweat profusely.

Marvin lost his cousin during the 1st lockdown. He threw himself feverishly, obsessively into a cornucopia of DIY and gardening work to stave off the gnashing jaws of depression. The garden is now a mud-bath and his wife, Joy has warned him away from holes, drills and any emulsion or eggshell paint. Under a low lamp in their converted loft, he sits at a 1960s typewriter and clacks out poetry. He has never written any poetry before. His poems are like those of a 12-year old delinquent. But he means well. The problem is, those receiving his poems do not appreciate the beautiful intentions of the kindred spirit despatching them. Marvin waits for the free local newspaper and excitedly turns to the obituary section, cuts out the photographs of lost loved ones and writes his poems around their image, before sending them to the bereaved families of those who’s addresses he can obtain, either thanks to his own knowledge of the local area and a personal friend who works at the paper as assistant editor. Joy dares not ask where he is going with his weekly stack of envelopes. It is for the better.

DAY 13

(Day 7 continued) Todd arrives early and leaves later than last week. Ena has made lunch. Today, they talk values, old and new. Todd opens up about deep rooted childhood issues which he has seldom aired. Ena listens, is sympathetic and shares her own challenging upbringing, the middle child of 6; 4 brothers, 2 sisters, one of which tragically passed away in a freak accident early in her childhood. Ena surprises Todd with a love of boxing. He feels a little guilty for this gender stereotyping and she mocks him about it. Upon leaving, Todd offers to pick up any bits she might need in the week, if she runs short. They both know this is simply opening the floor for an off-the-record extra chat. She has his mobile number and says she will.

Rowan is beyond angry when he hears this arrogant government has been at it again. Their little boys wanting to play with big boys’ toys nonsense; assigning heavy-artillery codenames for things in their diaries. Firebreak lockdown. What was it before? Cobra committee. Circuitbreaker. Operation Weeting, which sounds like something unfortunate for a specialist to carry out in Michael Gove’s kecks.

Luckily for Rowan, he still has a large box of model making kit parts in the loft and a lot of time on his hands. He sets about making miniature 3D representations of what these ‘secret’ meetings might look like. At a passing glance, it looks like any other clever model, depicting an official looking board room. He is a minimalist. There is no reason to overplay this. The only detail out of ordinary is under the table. Rishi Sunak’s trousers are missing and he wears red heels to go with his ridiculous red briefcase. He entitles this one Fart Box Committee.

Scholesy, the 8-year old brindle Staffordshire bull terrier loves lockdown. His owner, grouchy Manchester United fanatic, Len, walks him 4 times a day, as opposed to his usual twice, sometimes once and there are significantly more dogs on the field than normal. It takes Len 10 minutes to get another dog’s ball off him. Scholesly is put straight on the leash, then marched home to a soundtrack of comforting curses.

DAY 12

In keep with everything; the lack of any real form of weekend, the absence of colourful rainbows in the house windows, no clapping for carers, Monday morning is still shit. Raul can’t remember why he wanted to move to the UK, how he ever managed to convince anyone he was worthy of a university place, or why his girlfriend has not yet abandoned him for greener pastures. By 1pm, he sighs and laughs at himself.

The things we allow ourselves to think when trapped in these windowless negative thought cells!

By 2pm, Biyu leaves the house and dumps him via text message, halfway through the maiden episode of Winning Combination, stating she can’t spend any longer playing 2nd fiddle to TV gameshows. He merely gurgles with humourless laughter, tosses his phone across the floor and begins handwriting a postcard to the host, Omid Djalili, saying why he didn’t love Biyu anyway, why he’s better off without her. Omid will understand.

Viridiana is a party girl. Before the pandemic, she worked a high-intensity job at an investment and stock broker company. Weekends were sleepless blasts of bug-eyed hedonism; buckets of obscenely-expensive champagne, blizzards of the purest cocaine money could buy, waking up in the beds of high-flying men and women. Then a global pandemic gave her what she would never have sought: the chance to get off the one-way train to somewhere dark and deadly. But compulsive people need to focus on something. With no intention of ever reproducing, she grew bitter throughout the 1st lockdown, angry at all those so-called friends who holed up with their insufferable brats and forgot about her. That’s why she bought a heavy-duty NERF gun for Cindy’s restless 8-year old, Luke, a set of life-size cardboard cut-out set of Hogwarts night-creepers Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger for Bryan’s daughter, Billie, in his Croydon one-bed shoebox flat and currently browses for the messiest indoor recreational kit she can get her hands on for her clean-freak cousin’s twin girls, Sarah and Jayne. The key to all of this of course, is ensuring the children see the gifts before the parents can do anything to stop it and Viridiana ensures her hit by taking the offerings round in person, smiling gleefully as heads pop like bubble wrap. This is her high now.

 While trawling the recruitment websites each day, Robbie likes to take short breaks to stoke fires in the minds of ignorant people in the social media comments sections of the local newspaper Facebook page. Today, he sips his Peruvian blend coffee through a satisfied smirk as Ned, Pearl and Eddie chase their tails, spitting blood for being called out as racists for their disdain of Black Lives Matter campaigners in their town. Their grammar is awful, replies increasingly incoherent the more Robbie gets up in their confused, hostile faces. He leaves them hanging for hours at a time, suspended in unfinished confrontations before replying to their string of unanswered, increasingly abusive barks with a wink, or a thumbs up emoji.

DAY 11

Francis notices Bernie has been quiet during story time before bed each of the past few nights. They finish The Twits and she manages only a heavy smile and turns to face the other way in bed. Francis asks her if she’s OK. She says yeah, just feeling a little gloomy, a word she learned only last week from another book. This breaks some small part of Francis, a shedding of some part of his beloved daughter’s innocence at the age of 6. In the midst of holding everything together during COVID-19, he didn’t stop to think that the children are subject to mental health challenges too.

Ulrich watches another passer by arc so far around him that one of their feet slips off the kerb and they almost fall into the bike lane. It is as if the homeless people, like him, were the virus itself. What people don’t understand is that Ulrich was a self-employed builder until mid-way through the 1st UK lockdown. He worked hard to get his job and excelled, had bigger ambitions to start his own construction company. Then several unforeseen things happened, left him short and now… he is degraded in many ways, each day, mentally and physically. The thing with Ulrich is, despite the raft of adversity in his life, his inability to shower at the refuge because of the government’s advice during another lockdown, he remembers to laugh. Always laugh, even though some days, it takes an iron will to raise the corners of his cracked lips. A professional looking woman in a sharp pencil skirt, hugging a folder, tuts and speeds up as she passes him. In response to her arrogance, Ulrich stands, holds out his arms so his hands dangle, turns his collapsing shoes inwards and moans like a zombie, rolling his eyes. She breaks into a full run and he turns away, laughing, shaking his head before fear reclaims him.

 (Day 6 continued) The trio are startled when a police siren sounds down below. They enter the 2nd, dense forest on the brow of the hill overlooking the care home as quickly as they can. Errol reminds the now twitchy Ayanna that they can just blame him, or act senile. He doesn’t care. Dusk begins to pull in. It seems none of them have thought this far ahead, but Bruce seems to think he is 17 and ready for the challenge of preserving three escaped pensioners. He does not offer up details of his proposed methods and Ayanna starts to shout at him as they navigate thorns, bogs, foxes and bold squirrels.

By 7pm it is pitch black darkness and Ayanna is crying, approaching total hysteria when the group stumble upon a small, derelict lodge type building, It is overgrown with ivy and surrounded by many trees. Bruce acts like he knew they were heading here, but to his credit, reveals a cooker clicker lighter he pocketed from the care home kitchen.

With a small fire blazing in the lodge, several rats scatter, but it appears nobody else has been here for some time. Errol pulls some cheap sausage rolls and 500ml of water from one of his 7-layers and says this is their entire ration, but they can sort that in the morning. They won’t go hungry tonight. To her surprise, Ayanna enjoys herself more than she has at any time during her captivity. At 1am, less than 2 hours after attempting sleep, huddled under a grubby tarpaulin, the three are suddenly woken and see there is a light dancing outside. Ayanna screams.

DAY 10

 Lester hacks at his beard with a trimmer which trembles slowly on batteries taking their final breath. There are no more in the house. He can take a joke; he always could. But another month without work has frayed his nerves and he is a fragile thing. He grew a beard during the 1st lockdown and while he could not be arsed, this time around, he buckled under pressure in a WhatsApp stag do group which should have been terminated long ago. They called him a hipster and he wasn’t having it. So he’s growing another. Then Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire ripper died and his wife giggled as they announced it on the news, covered her mouth with her hand, looked at the TV mugshot with her mischievous eyes, then at Lester’s fuzzy head. The trimmer stops altogether. It’s her fault, so the family will go to the park and they will have to deal with the bald patches all over his head.

For the 3rd time today, Li passes the 7 builders on the ground floor, the 7 maskless apes, swinging their chins, scratching their balls. She accidently nudges one because her glasses have steamed up above her own expensive mask. What’s the fucking point? A tangled hair loop of abuse falls out of her mouth, abuse nobody but her can comprehend, sprayed at their ignorance and idiocy, their toxic masculinity. The builders smirk and wince, Carry On style.

Teenagers took a lot of blame during the 1st lockdown for walking around in their small to medium sized groups, wandering aimlessly, laughing and joking, as evil as that is. In reality, they are one of COVID-19’s biggest tragedies. Youth shoved back into the carton and forgotten about at the back of the fridge. Like the adults never enjoyed going out drinking, looking for love on the weekends.

Josh couldn’t get it up. It was the nerves.

Now, sat at home on Saturday night with his virginity cutting off his air supply, he cries quietly into his pillow, waiting for the blue tick to appear, signifying his girlfriend, Carly has read his plea to meet so he can explain. It’s all he has. It’s not like they can get pissed in different pubs, then kiss and make up with slurred apologies in some back corner of a shit nightclub. Her parents are onto their secret meet ups and now he knows that he will have to wait for the rest of this wretched time, knowing that she thinks it was something to do with her. Something she did. Or didn’t do.

DAY 9

The weekend is coming like an unannounced relative and Friyay is dead. Gordo now lives for the week. In fact, living is strong. His digital marketing workshops are far from living. He exists for the week. Friday night used to feel like an exhilarating, life-affirming plummet into Saturday; a nest of pillows stuffed with unbridled joy. Now, he sits in traffic and listens to upset and angry callers on radio phone-ins. The traffic all around his vehicle shouldn’t be here. Nobody is taking this lockdown seriously. The corpse of Friyay hawks him up like a twisted knot of phlegm and gobs him high into the air. Below, racing right at him, is Saturday, a dog-dirt smeared pavement strewn with burned out, cheap fireworks and chewing gum. Someone blares their horn and almost rams into him. The laugh rollicking out of his face as he flies out of the driver-side door belongs in a Japanese horror movie, not on the bypass.

Bethany observes the tabloid media outrage over Extinction Rebellion’s remembrance-day stunt; placing a wreath emblazoned with the words ‘Climate change, ACT NOW’ on the cenotaph. The Daily Mail go out of their way to allege that the ex-soldier involved is a convicted drug dealer. Admittedly, this one has not helped the cause… Yet not too many people express anywhere near the same venom over the government who runs their country, with a duty to serve its people, handing another £122m PPE contract, without tender, to a peer associate with absolutely no track record. Before her own sense of societal injustice can stick another boot into her happiness, she fires up another episode of Selling Sunset and laughs at the beautiful people.

 (Day 5 continued) Awadil finds himself staring straight through a lost cat poster taped to a street light. When focus returns to his eyes, he reads it. Bonbon’s safe return will fetch a reward of $200. His despair flips and mutates into hatred. Not hatred of the cat, but hatred for the flabby hypocrisy clogging up the arteries of the human race. How, he wonders, on the same street, can people be so tortured by the absence of a domestic pet, yet pick up a packet of meat without a second thought. Meat which threatens to cause mass famine, war and vast swathes of inhospitable land. Not to mention the panic and survival instinct bulging out of the eyes of animals waiting to slide down the throat of the ignorant, arrogant masses. Awadil finds his legs and marches ahead, gritting his teeth. No destination, no care for where he ends up. He makes it only 100-yards before sudden movement from the corner of his eye causes him to stop dead and snap his head to a fire-escape staircase out back of some apartments. Bonbon the cat is scratting at a burst bin bag. Awadil drops to one knee and beckons over the missing feline. He has no interest in the $200.