Darren hadn’t thought of the vagina tree for nearly 20 years, but now, driving back to his hometown with a car full of belongings and a half a fifth of vodka tucked between his legs, the image was burned into his brain like a brand into a horse’s ass.

Tin Te. These are the two syllables that had been haunting Damien ever since he began searching for his missing brother, Luke, a year ago; two syllables that are etched in Chinese characters in the corner of the tattoo covering his brother’s back in a Dali-esque vision: an alpine landscape but where the angles seem somehow wrong and the lines waver, where the mundane rock features appear to be leering faces when you look askance and where the colouring subtly changes with his breathing; two syllables that are perhaps the artist’s name, though no-one in any tattoo studio from the St. Pauli strip in Hamburg to the wharves of Shanghai or the Camden Markets of London claims to have heard of him. Or her. He had also tried mainstream art galleries and a university library to no avail. Nor had that bible of the internet, Wikipedia, helped him in this case.

“What’s wrong, Mrs. Jackson? You seem out of sorts. Holiday stress?”

“How’d you know, Judd? Mind-reading again?”

“This time of year is always stressful, but particularly when you have a boy like . . . ” He clapped a hand over his mouth.

“Go ahead and say it, Judd.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Jackson. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“How’d you mean it, then, Judd?”

It was lights out. The man on bottom bunk was Ben Ramsay, an unlucky thief who'd spent more time locked up than he had a free man. Ben was doing time for armed robbery on a truck carrying DVD players and widescreen TVs. He had five months left and he counted every day. Rudolph Feuds was on top bunk. Rudolph was relatively new inside. Ben had seen him in the yard a few times, and he walked as if not fussed about where he was. Either prison life hadn't hit him yet or he had too many screws loose and incarceration didn't bother him.

I came here on a whim after I found Elly sucking another man’s cock in our bed. The tip of her tongue was tickling his shaft as he gently held her hair back for her. Their bodies glistened with sweat and they seemed so natural. That was all I could stand to watch. My stomach clenched up tight and I had to leave. My head began to pound and I became faint. I remember walking into the kitchen and looking for something; I don’t know what because everything was hazy and I felt dizzy.

The feet were on the chair. There was no body with them; it was just a right foot and a left, resting like a pair of shoes on a department store rack.

Jenni screamed, the kind someone makes when taken by surprise. But she was in an unfamiliar, dark hotel room where things could meld and curl into what they weren’t. Had she thrown her bra on the chair? She had, hadn’t she? Those were the cups of her bra. That was it, yes. They were the cups of her bra.

My dead uncle’s mountain top cabin, day eight of my seventeenth experiment, one hundred and seventy hours that my subject has been shackled to the wall. All of the ancient rites have been performed, the proper incense burned, the instruments calibrated, and now I sit, watching and waiting.

When you’ve got four cups of coffee under your belt and in your bladder, the mile and odd yards from the green sign proclaiming REST STOP 1 MILE to the urinal takes on a life of its own. I shoulda stopped at the truck stop a few miles back, Paul Griffin thought grouchily. But I’m so pressed for time in this damned weather that I let it go, and now I’m trying to keep from letting it go.

361,443. Oh, I’m never going away. Never you think such a thing. Never. Just listen. Do you hear me? Do you hear me turn?

Adrian is perched on the park bench, legs swinging, arms folded. The other boy sits in the woodchips and cries. He has fallen off the swing, which rattles back and forth minus its passenger, who holds his scuffed knee in both hands.

“He shouldn’t do that,” Adrian says, shakes his head, and pouts his lips.

Liza, who is with him now—the shape that tucks him in at night, the one who feeds him, sings to him, and guides him when they cross the street—asks, “What?”

“Cry,” Adrian points out. “He shouldn’t cry.”