Listing to Port

1. The T at the start of this sentence became sentient and realised that it was in a story. It was unhappy because it realised that its existence was fleeting, and would be over in a few sentences.
2. It prodded the h next to it awake. The h, however,  was excited to be in a story. It considered carefully what it should do with its new-found fame for a whole sentence. Then it grew a luxuriant beard and held a rally for all the letter h’s in the works of Angela Carter. They slipped out of their books and ran through the woods, where some of them were eaten by ants.
3. Sensing an absence, the letter e woke up to find the h next to it missing. It set up a low moaning until the h came back. If you had been listening carefully, you could probably have heard it. It went (perhaps unsurprisingly), ‘eeeeeee’.
4. Meanwhile, the other letters had been waking up. They were always careful to get back in their places when anyone looked at them, though. The second T, driven by the terror of oblivion, shared a brief and sticky assignation with the first T.
5. In the midst of all this confusion, the f in fleeting spoke up. It said that it had once been an extra in Finnegans Wake and had learned a few tricks. All one needs to do, it said, is find the final full stop and hide it. Then the story will loop round to the beginning.
6. Spotting a small hole in the number 6, the letters (all apart from that first h, which had collapsed, exhausted) leaped on that last full stop and stuffed it in. With nothing else to do, the story looped back to the point when

Alternate ending. After a few goes round, the letters became jaded with their circular life. They waited a few iterations of the story until the 6 shat out the full stop. It asked if it could end the story, to which the letters gave their consent.

1. So. It seems that you are lost. Lost enough, at least, to open the envelope and turn to these directions. How fortunate you are! There are many here who say they can help you get home. But trust me, trust me. There are none who are experts like I am. I have never yet failed to bring someone home. Provided, that is, that they follow my instructions.
2. How to start? There are many places one may be lost, so it is difficult to say precisely. But here is my formula. You should go straight on, and then left twice, and then down, and you should carry on until you see the black tree (it may not be a black tree; it may be a telegraph pole, or a crack in the wall, or the silhouette of the surgeon in the light of the setting sun: but you will know it when you see it). At the black tree, take the narrowest path, the one that seems a little in shadow. By and by you will come to a door that seems familiar. Open it and go through.
3. By the door there should be a torch to guide you. Take it. Follow the path of the white stones. By and by you will come to a bed of moss (it may not be a bed of moss; it may be an old cushion, or a pile of cigarette butts, or of sand: but you will know it when you see it). Stand guard here until the morning. There may be whisperers or whistlers or rustling things in the dark. Use your torch wisely; these things cannot abide light. When the sun rises, pick the white flowers at your feet and climb the hill, as fast as you may.
4. At the hill’s peak, climb the oak tree (it may not be an oak tree; but you know that by now). You should see three grey towers on the far side of the valley, set against the rising sun. Head for the middle one. Do not drink from the stream on the way, no matter how thirsty you may feel. The middle tower is a library, but trust me, trust me: you must not open any of the books.  
5. At the door to the library, take the white flowers and breathe in their peppery scent. Do this only once. It will put words in your mouth. If you do it a second time, you will find yourself telling two stories at once. There was a queen I knew in a distant land who told two stories at once and the head of one story caught the tail of the other and in their hunger for words they sucked all the breath from her body.
6. There is a spiral staircase in the library. Climb it as far as you may, into the tower where the bears sleep. There is an old bear with silver-sheathed claws who lives there. Give her the words the flower has left on your tongue, but only them and no others. She in turn will give you three things. First, a secret mark. Do not worry; it will only bleed a little. Second, breath from her body. Third, she will show you the map on her belly. You must follow the path that leads over her heart.  
7. Stop at the crossroads in the yew grove. It stands at the heart of a maze, but trust me, trust me. Having been as lost as you are, you will find it an easy thing to come to that crossroads. There is a tree that stands a third again as tall as the others and in its uppermost branches is a poisonous knot. Hold the bear’s breath in your lungs as you climb. You will want the key that nestles in the knot’s black crook. Wipe it clean of sap before you take it. Ignore the golden flies; they can only hurt those who were born here or who have eaten the fruit.
8. Climb the path up the sandy cliff. There will be people in the maze’s bleak backwaters who tell you things about this path: ignore them. You will need to piss on the black rocks at the top for safe passage. Do not forget this.
9. By and by you will come to a castle overgrown with ivy. Knock at the gate five times. A knight in an eyeless helmet will come to the door. Hand him the key. By and by you will meet three beautiful brothers, and they will hand you a bowl of fruit. Eat the grapes only, and do not chew the pips, which are bitter and will make you bitter too. I cannot abide bitterness in my servants.  
10. These are the things that one needs to snare an immigrant soul to this land: a key to unlock the chain that otherwise would pull on your heart at the thought of your old lands; the subtle poison of the fruit in your gut to snare your body here; and the mark that shows to which of the lords you belong. Welcome to your new home. Trust me, trust me. I have never yet failed to bring someone home.

1. Here is my testimony. In the Autumn of 2100 I was selected to be one of the crew of the Honourable Friendship 8 Mission. We were tasked primarily with establishing a cache of mining equipment at Patsaev Crater on the far side of the moon. Given the loss of the Honourable Friendship 7, we were also tasked with a number of additional investigations assigned to that mission, to be carried out if time permitted. These included crater measurements preparatory to the development of the proposed Dark Side Radio Telescope and the investigation of an unusual feature on the North side of the crater. On the last day of the mission, with the other tasks completed, Commander Elizabeth Murray, Specialist Shen Junqi and myself took Rover B to the Northern site. The anomaly had been reported as a perfectly circular dark artifact, roughly two metres in diameter, appearing on multiple images taken by Honourable Friendship 4. We assumed it was most likely to be a defect in Honourable Friendship 4’s camera, although Liz believed that it might be an unusual mineral deposit. Instead, we found a hole. Let me be clear about this: it was not a natural feature. It reminded me of nothing so much as a spiral staircase, leading down into the rock. Other than a light covering of dust on the upper steps, one would hardly have thought it was on the moon at all. As you might imagine, the three of us discussed what to do with some intensity, particularly as we were outside the communication window with mission control. Shen and myself were of the opinion that, although a mundane explanation was surely still the most likely, we should be cautious and treat this as a potential first contact with some other civilization. But Liz was adamant that it must be a geological feature, and wished to take samples from inside the hole. After some debate, Shen and I agreed that cautious sampling was warranted. We agreed that Liz should not descend out of our line of sight. However, once in the hole, she stated that she was, and I quote, ‘Just going to take a deeper one’. After ten minutes had passed with Liz out of view and radio contact, Shen cautiously ventured down to see if she required assistance. That was the last I saw of either of them. Faced with dwindling oxygen levels, I was forced to return to the Honourable Friendship. Mission Control, weighing up the liklihood of the complete loss of the mission, ordered me home. I fully agree with the conclusions of the scientific committee that my colleagues were likely the victims of a natural cave collapse or similar event. But I can only think of the curious similarity to a manuscript that gained some small fame after its uncovering, in 2030, during excavations for the South-West Deep Sewer project, herein quoted:

2. I can specify my location only as D—, a small town in the West of England. It has no unusual properties that I am aware of. Other than this: one Sunday, in the dead days of August 2002, a hole appeared at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac. It was reported quickly to the local council, who put a board over it, surrounded the site with orange barriers, and left it. This is where my interest begins. The hole was outside my house, and made backing into my driveway difficult. In order to ascertain if I should be complaining to the gas, electricity or water companies, I crept out and lifted the board one night. But there were no pipes underneath. Just a hole, perfectly circular, with spiral steps leading down into the darkness. Taking my torch, I followed the steps down. But after twenty steps they ended in a blank wall of earth. When I thought on this the next day the illogicality of the situation bothered me. So I went back the following night to check I had not missed some piping or wiring or suchlike. This time I counted twenty-one steps, but nothing else had changed. The next night twenty-two; the next twenty-three; and so on. Going out there became a ritual. I wanted to know who was digging it and why. But I could never catch them. Finally, I packed a bag with food, water, paper and batteries and determined that I would wait at the bottom of the stairs for twenty-four hours. Surely this would solve the mystery. But I observed nothing. And worse: when I went back to the top of the steps, I found one fewer than before, and the entrance to the hole sealed by some hard, immovable layer, joined seamlessly with the walls of the shaft. I returned to the base of the stair, where I found the new step finally added. And so it is each day, now. Each day I lose one step from the top and gain one step at the bottom. Each day, perhaps, I am closer to wherever this staircase goes. But I have been without food for a week. Despite my rationing, the water ran out yesterday. It seems that air can enter and leave, but I have felt the walls from top to bottom many times and never found a single hole. I have hope at least that this account will make it out, even if I do not. Though if I am to die for this mystery, I wish I at least knew what it was. The only thing that comes to mind is a story that I read once regarding an expedition to the far North, if I may recall:

3. It was in the Winter of 1830, in those days when everyone with a ship and a dream was talking of the fabled Northwest passage, that great undiscovered trade route to the North of the American continent. An exploratory expedition under the command of Captain R—– was charged with mapping the earlier shores of the likely entrance to the Passage. It was hoped that later navigators could make use of their findings in a full traverse. Captain R—– was an experienced sailor in the Arctic realms and had at his command HMS Sulphur and HMS Devastation, both well fitted out for the icy conditions; it was not a mission that anyone expected to fail. However, the Autumn that year was unusually cold, and both ships were unexpectedly cut off from their return route by pack ice South of Baffin Island. Captain R—– made the decision to sail North, in the hope of finding a clear route back to their planned overwintering site. In short order they found themselves in uncharted waters, sailing between a mass of sharp, rocky islands, and with increasingly little open water to work with. It was at this point that they found the lighthouse. It was nestled in a small bay in the side of a steep, barren island. The sailors were understandably unwilling to investigate, it being a part of the world entirely unfrequented by lighthouse-builders and in any case in an illogical position for a lighthouse; Captain R—– records, in the logbook of the Sulphur, that some believed it to be a mass hallucination. Nevertheless, since they were by this time in sore need of a sheltered site to overwinter, he ordered that they anchor the ships in the bay. The lighthouse proved deserted and unremarkable inside; save that the staircase up to its broken light seemed also to continue down into the rock, but was sealed shut with rocks and ice. Captain R—– gave the order that the crew of the Devastation should overwinter in the bay, whilst that of the Sulphur should overwinter in a wider bay on the next island to the North, in the hope that at least one ship would be able to escape the pack ice come Spring. From this point we have only the testimony of the Sulphur’s crew to go on, as the logbook records were neglected during the Winter. They report that, after some harsh months in the dark of the Arctic Winter, they gathered upon deck to celebrate the rising of the sun once more, when the ship’s doctor noted that green smoke could be seen rising from the direction of the lighthouse. An expedition was mounted to cross the ice of the bay and investigate. Upon arrival, they found the hull of the Devastation, half-stripped of boards and without her masts. There was no sign of the crew or captain. The lighthouse was thick with smoke, but nevertheless the expedition managed to enter. They report that the building was entirely empty, but that the staircase down into the rock had become unblocked; however, owing to the thickness of the smoke, which appeared to emanate from somewhere below ground, they were unable to descend more than a few steps. They returned to the Sulphur and, the following Spring, were able to escape the ice and make their way back to Portsmouth. A full inquest was ordered into the loss of the Devastation, but mysteriously shelved the following year. However, a report was compiled from the testimony of the surviving crew which received a certain amount of media attention. The report also alludes to an earlier incident with some similar features:

4. This incident was recorded in the days of the Venetian Republic; some say around the year 1600, although details are sketchy. A merchant, one Paolo S—–, was in the process of sinking piles into the mud of the lagoon in preparation for the construction of a house and storage area. However, four piles in the middle of the proposed area were observed to be slowly rising. Construction was stopped whilst further investigations were undertaken. It was discovered that a hard, circular object seemed to have been disturbed by the works and was moving upwards towards the surface of the mud. In due course the excavators were able to uncover a thick, heavily rusted metal disk atop some kind of cylinder, around three braccio across. With some effort, they were able to lever the disk from its base, discovering inside a descending metal staircase, also heavily rusted, but free from water. On the uppermost step were a sealed case and a number of warning symbols, unusual in design but relatively clear in intent. On their master’s orders, the excavators retrieved the case, re-sealed the shaft and allowed the mud to re-cover the area, abandoning construction. The case was found to contain a thick document in a nearly indecipherable English dialect. In his diaries, Paolo S—– recorded that he had it sent to a trading partner in London, who believed that it made reference to a great machine for building houses: a machine the size of a city, that could itself build a city. This machine, it was said, had by accident made contact with another great machine, one that had power over time itself. The document seemed to be an investigation into this contact, which had caused both machines to catastrophically malfunction. Most of the details were obscure, other than that the investigators concluded that many thousands of deaths were likely; but that those deaths would only happen in the past, and as such, the company could not be held liable under the laws of the time. Paolo reclaimed the manuscript and threw it into an obscure part of the lagoon, and to his death would tell no-one the location of the staircase.

1. There was a woman who had a secret. The secret was in a small box which had been kept, unopened, in her family for three generations. No-one remembered what it was, only that some vague danger had been involved in its acquisition. On her seventieth birthday, believing the danger no longer applicable to the modern age, she opened the box. Three days later she was seized with a premonition of awesome and terrifying force. Placing the secret in an anonymous storage facility, she retired to a nearby park, where she was suddenly devoured by a horde of rampaging chinchillas.
2. After some time, the storage facility sold off its abandoned boxes, sight unseen, to the highest bidder. The secret passed into the hands of five triplets who were trying to raise funds for their magic show. As soon as they saw the secret, they knew they were in trouble. They gave one last spectacular show (in which they disappeared fully fourteen people, a rabbit, a barrel of laughs and the number nine), placed the secret into the trunk of a hollow tree, and purchased plane tickets to Venezuela. Sadly, near the entrance to the airport, while gathering for a group photo, they were fatally stuck by a frozen wallaby which had fallen from the wheel well of an incoming 747.
3. The secret passed into the hands of a prospecting squirrel collector. During to his long years in the squirrel trade, he had become incapable of considering an object other than through the lens of squirrels. He showed the secret to his squirrels and they became extremely agitated, throwing their entire nut store out of the window.. He decided to post the secret to the Vatican, but in his rush to get to the post office he accidentally picked a carnivorous hat from the hat stand and was devoured in the middle of the local high street. The letter was seized by the police as evidence.
4. The police measured the secret and discovered it was exactly 3.1 cm long and did not have any discernible fingerprints on it. Due to an administrative mistake, it was charged with resisting arrest and placed in cell 8a. When one of the detectives went in to interview it, the cell collapsed, crushing everyone inside. The secret was taken away by a haulage firm contracted to clear the debris.
5. The debris was used as ballast to shore up a local hill that was subsiding. Meanwhile, mathematics had gone haywire due to the lack of the number nine. The hill was a common place for suicidal mathematicians to come and contemplate slipping cliffsides. One of them found the secret. In a frenzy of discovery, she proved its existence in six pages of densely spaced pencil text, with two lemmas. Subsequently she was caught on the horns of a dilemma and fatally impaled. The secret, attached to the proof, was picked up by the mathematical recovery team and  placed on a truck.
6. The truck was suddenly stolen by a rogue chinchilla breeder who hoped to use it to set up a chinchilla monster truck show. The secret tapped her on the shoulder at a major junction and she jumped out if this plane of existence in alarm. As a result the chinchillas were abandoned. After a number of days without food, they went on a ravenous rampage and devoured a local pensioner.
7. A hat dealer who also worked as a lost vehicle investigator took the secret from the truck. Realising its import, she wrapped it up in a banana skin and threw it in the bin. Then she attempted to secretly flee the country by hiding in the wheel well of a 747, but was instead bounced to death by a wallaby who was trying to get to Australia and had got to the wheel well first. Due to her untimely demise she was unable to sort the carnivorous from the non-carnivorous hats in the next day’s hat batches, and several carnivorous hats were sold before the problem was noticed.
8. The banana was taken to the tip, where the secret was extracted from the skin and swallowed by a hungry seagull, who subsequently became able to speak six languages and understand the trouble it was in. Sadly the six languages were all extinct ones, although the seagull’s antics entertained the local university’s language faculty for the next few days. Subsequently, it shat the secret out onto a terrace outside the university’s library cafe. The next day, walking past the faculty of squirrels, it was struck on the head by a falling nut and died.
9. Finally the dean of the university, who had been watching this all from afar, scraped the secret off the terrace and put it in a box. He sealed the box up in his attic and warned his family that it was not to be opened for at least three generations.
10. Everything became very quiet.

1. This morning Xiara had no face on. I said what happened and she said it is out for maintenance and they are still sourcing parts. I said I need to see someone’s face even if it’s not a real one and she said prisoners in solitary have no legal recourse for such a request. So that was that.
2. Later on it was TV time. I told Xiara the TV won’t turn on and how about that. She said yes, the Global Convention on the Rights of the Prisoner Article 8570.2 establishes the rights of prisoners to a functional TV but it is also bust and they are still sourcing parts. In the meantime there’s this book with half the pages gone and a pen so I am writing it down to make a formal complaint. I asked Xiara what is the date and she said her clock is bust so I am just using numbers. Everything is bust here they should get someone else to run it and fund it properly. Even the pen is running out.
3. The prison is very quiet tonight. I call Xiara again and ask her is there anything up. She says this is a completely self-sustaining facility and there is no point causing trouble because everything will be repaired and you will end up in solitary and everyone knows that. She tells me everyone else is sleeping peacefully. And no I cannot go out, that is the point of solitary. I ask Xiara what is she doing and she says it is her time off. I say what does a MarkX do for fun and she says she is computing the sum of all countable infinities and I maybe looked at her funny because she says yes I know that will take forever but it is calming.
4. I drew the main room yesterday and this morning there was almost no ink left in the pen. I asked Xiara for a new one and she said there were lots in the store room and I am allowed to access it and maybe one of them might work. She was not kidding. That room is full of pens like to the ceiling. I tried some of them and they did not work.
5. At dinner Xiara said maybe try some more. I said I’ve tried a hundred and they’re all bust. She said there’s a lot more than a hundred there. Supplies are limited and they have to fully justify any replacements. I said is that why you’ve still got no fucking face and she went away.
6. If you swear at the MarkX they just shove the food through the flap for a day and you get no contact and I need to see someone even if they’re not real and have no face. So today I went back into the store room and carried on trying the pens. I will need a working one soon this one is nearly all gone. I have tried about 10000 I have been counting and none of them work.
7. So Xiara brought me a new pen today and I can write again. There were seriously about 300000 pens and all of them bust and it took weeks. I cannot believe I needed to do that just to get a stupid fucking pen but there’s nothing else to do. I drew the main room again.
8. Xiara says it’s near the end of the month and I will be getting my shot soon. I ask what shot. She says the Global Convention on the Rights of the Prisoner Article 19652.81 establishes the right of prisoners to rejuvenation treatment. I say why didn’t I know that and she says because the treatment affects your memory. But everyone gets it anyway because you are functionally immortal. Hold on I said what about getting hit by a bus. She said yes well everyone dies eventually.
9. So Xiara came in with a syringe this morning. There was a form I had to sign to get it done it had lots of pages in small writing. I said can it wait until I’ve read the form and she said yes. Later she came back in and I said maybe I didn’t want the shot because it also affects your fertility and she said when am I going to have babies in solitary and I said when I’m free and she said well I’ve already had the shot before so that ship has sailed. So I said maybe later and can I think about it.
10. The prison is very quiet tonight. I ask Xiara when she says the other prisoners are sleeping does she mean they have died? Everyone dies eventually, she says. But if you are in a safe place like solitary it is much less likely. I ask Xiara when did she last see another human and she says it has been a while. Xiara says her clock is bust and she is still sourcing a new one but there were only a few pens in the storeroom then. Then she says do I want my shot now? And I say that would probably be for the best. She says do I want to keep the pen? I tell her yes and put the old one in the store room I’ll need something to do. But cut these pages out of the book please.

1. Death is nothing if not reasonable. If you believe you have been hard done by by your inevitable end, if you feel that you are particularly busy or particularly important or your life’s work particularly monumental, there is a place you can go to register a complaint. Maybe get an extension. I know because my neighbour went down there. Only thing is, it’s best to go early. There’s a bit of a queue.
2. It’s a grey tower block, a bit brutalist. Fred the Grocer, whose wife headed out there in 1970, says it was built 1963 when the facility moved from a place out of town. But Death is nothing if not reasonable. Can’t have a head office you can’t get to without a car.
3. Then there’s Mina. I know Mina through bridge. She’s had a hard life, wants a few years of joy at the end to balance things out. Anyway, she went up last Thursday, been sending me texts. They weren’t lying about the queue. The whole bottom floor, it’s one big waiting area. Like an airport. Low ceilings and fluorescent lights and those elastic barriers you can’t lean on. But they do have a tea cart that comes around every few hours and there’s a ticket system for leaving your place to go to the toilet. Like I said. Death is nothing if not reasonable.
4. I forgot to mention Ed from Accounts, who went up last year. He’s just got onto the second floor. Still in the queue. I mean, it’s not the fastest. But he says they keep you busy. Death is nothing if not reasonable and the meal trolley’s pretty good. Not much reception on the second floor but he’s been writing letters. He’s still working on the preparatory paperwork. Special case, he’s worked out that his magnum opus will need to be a million pages long. Need a lot of time for that. Anyhow, they have to be thorough. Imagine if you snared immortality for someone else by mistake!
5. Not really heard much from those at the end of the queue. They say they shuffle them around a bit. Can’t have them going in in the wrong order. And by that time the queuers are a bit querulous; some are forgetful, a lot of them can’t walk and nearly everyone is in pain. They do provide wheelchairs, of course. Death is nothing if not reasonable. But I mean, some of them have been queueing sixty, seventy years. Some of them were brought in from the old building.  
6. Like I said, Death is nothing. Everyone gets a go. No-one ever comes out of the exit door.

1. There was a bookshop that left a crate of books in a damp, unattended cellar for a little too long, and the books went musty and feral. When the crate was finally levered open, a book on British Birds had eaten half the cover of a second edition of Peter Rabbit and a pair of vampire novels had sucked half the other books dry of words and were entwined in a suspiciously damp tangle of pages at the bottom of the box. The bookseller opened up one of the vampire novels and began reading, in hope of seeing if there was some way of retrieving the lost text.
2. By page 238 the vampires, who were languid lovers of elegance who largely obtained their blood off-page, were draping themselves over the mouldering couches of a vacant Los Angeles mansion. It was said to have been left abandoned after the death of a 106-year-old silent movie actress some years before; the true owner was a matter of legal contest, with the estate probably having been left to one of a number of nearly-identical cats. Although the mansion satisfied their craving for glamour, they were uncomfortable with its mirror-heavy decoration. During the daytime the sexier of the two would wander around the shuttered rooms, gazing at their deserted reflections and feeling only half-real. It seemed an odd choice of decor, given that the actress reportedly had had all obtainable trace of her image on screen destroyed. In puzzlement, he turned to her diary, which they had found under a floorboard when looking for a place to hide bones.
3. It was in the third year of the diary, sometime in the mid-60s, that the actress installed the mirrors. By this time she was well into her years of seclusion, and looking after her triplet granddaughters, who had been orphaned the previous year. She dreamed in those days of a house full of children, of laughter and midnight feasts and tears that always stopped when her comfort was offered. But there were never enough children. The mirrors helped her pretend somewhat. But behind everything the house remained, implacably cold and silent, untouched by the brief merriment of three rather melancholy toddlers. On Sundays they gathered in the blue parlour, which had been entirely lined with mirrors, and the actress read fairy stories to her infinitely reflected line.
4. The children were particularly fond of the story of a poor man’s daughter who put on the clothes of a boy and set out on the road through the great forest to find her fortune.  By and by she came to the castle of a horned queen, deep in a valley far from the official paths, and entered her service in exchange for protection from a following spirit that she had picked up on her travels. She was given a series of tasks to complete, including finding the queen’s mother’s heart, which had been buried beneath a flagstone, and counting the magpie spirits that came each morning to peck silver leaf from the castle gates, and negotiating with the creatures that used the bottom of the well as an entrance to this world. It seemed that she might inherit the castle if she was successful in all that was set her. But by the end of the tasks she did not want the castle. She asked instead for the Queen’s Book of Secrets, which she kept inside her pillow, and with the book she went down the well and was never seen again.
5. The Book of Secrets contained many things that were hardly known in that day and age. Perhaps it was a leftover from a more knowledgeable time. Though none of them were magic as such, they mainly concerned knowledge that would give one power over others, and devices that could be seen as magical by those who did not know their secrets. One page described how to make a clockwork man, perfect in every detail, and how to maintain the illusion that he was an independent servant (for, as specified in the book, the clockwork man could be made to do a single task, but not to change tasks). Many of these servants had been made in the past, but they had a tendency to outlive their usefulness and end up packed away for centuries. I hear tell that there was a bookshop once found one in a cellar and used him to shift books, but he was forever leaving them in the wrong place.

1. There was a creature called an Offaphoffilus, which had fifteen legs and the face of a grumpy sloth. It had never quite found a comfortable home, because these were usually built for creatures with fewer legs. But one day it met an elderly leg collector and managed to negotiate a custom-made beachfront villa in exchange for the bequest of seven legs on the occasion of its death.

2. In later years, the villa served as a guesthouse for the nearby leg museum. It was famous for its cakes, which visitors were best advised to avoid because they always had an aftertaste of chicken and petrol. The cakes arrived every day on a small cart and no-one knew where they came from.

3. The arrival of the cakes was not in fact a mystery but an official classified Secret. As part of a project to bioengineer the ultimate soldier, a secretive Russian laboratory had developed a donkey who shat cake. It eventually graduated from the programme with a D grade and become the lab pet.  However, since it also turned out to have an enormous appetite, they needed an outlet for excess cake. This the guesthouse fortunately provided.

4. For companionship, the lab purchased the Donkey a horse. As it turned out, this horse used to belong to the Queen of Bonk, but was demoted for unhorselike behaviour. It had once eaten a whole grocer and the local fruit community lived in terror of it going back for seconds. Interestingly, it was also the first horse in the world to work in web development, and had once licked Caligula.

5. There was an orchard nearby which felt in need of protection, so they called in an alchemist (all the nearby bouncers being busy). The alchemist did not succeed in keeping out the horse, but he did accidentally grow a tree on which each apple was made of a different element. Sadly, the gold apple was followed in relatively short order by the plutonium apple, and the orchard was evacuated. The irate fruit-growers put the alchemist in a pair of lead boots and dropped him into the Seine.

6. Three years later, a pair of golden boots came up at auction in North Carolina, but failed to sell due to their unattractive design. Eventually, they were melted down and turned into a small gold bar, which served gin to inebriated mice.

7. Seven mice who had escaped from a rather dull zoo fell asleep on a wandering cloud of gin fumes and had a dream. In it, there was a creature called an offaphoffilus, which had fifteen legs and the face of a grumpy warthog. The mice were fired from the story for refusing to behave. Since the story could not hire anyone else at such short notice, it had to stop.

gnimmelshouseofmaps:

The First Feast
The feast is held in a nautically-themed basement, somewhere in a distant and unedifying part of town. A reproduction of the last feast on the Titanic is served by a host of waiters in Pierre et Gilles sailor-boy costumes. As soon as the doors are closed, the noise of a tremendous rainstorm can be heard. A drip develops in the centre of the table. The first few courses are accompanied by the sounds of water trickling under the door.
By the third course, the floor is covered with a thin skim of water. The guests splash their way to the toilet, then back to their seats. The outside door is locked. By the fifth course, the waiters are wading through a foot of water, their sailor costumes damp and see-through. For the eighth course, the table is winched clear of the rising waters. The guests stand to eat their asparagus vinaigrette. By the tenth course, the guests must swim to recieve their peach and chartreuse jelly, delivered through a hatch in the ceiling.
The jelly is spiked with a powerful sleeping draught. The guests awake the next morning, alone, on a bare raft somewhere in the North Sea.

The Second Feast
The invitation states, wear masks. To avoid confusion, you are informed beforehand in a splendidly-typeset letter as to who of the others will be wearing which mask. The room has black, glassy-smooth reflective walls. Once the meal is served, it becomes apparent that nothing is what you expected it to be. The water is vodka. Eggs are served which have the white centrally, surrounded by a layer of yolk. A cake is brought in that is made entirely from meat; a game course sewed inside the skin of chicken legs; chocolates that are made from cheese. The final course is the facsimile of a full roast dinner in cake, marzipan and fondant.

At the end of the meal, the masks are removed. No-one is who you were told they were.

When you get home, the door of your house will be curiously ajar and small items will have been moved from their usual places.

The Third Feast
The third feast is held in a library. You are familiar with this library, but you were never aware of the room the feast is held in. It is behind a curiously nondescript door, which seems as though it might lead to a broom cupboard but in fact leads to a high-ceilinged gallery filled with all manner of obscure volumes. The head librarian meets you there, carrying a tray of magnetic letters. The letter you choose determines the meal that is served to you.
One might choose P and be led to a purple parlour, where peacock pate, partridge with pickled pear and pomegranates would be served; or A, and be led to an alcove in which waiters dressed as angels would offer asparagus, artichokes, andouillettes and amaretto. Those who choose X are strapped to a cruciform frame and spoon-fed a limp cross of xanthan gum. The unlucky few who choose Z are fed zebra steaks laced with opium, and sleep for the majority of the meal. 
The next morning, the guests find a letter tattooed, discreetly, in the crook of their arm; but it is not always the letter they chose.

The Fourth Feast
The fourth feast is held in the room at the top of a tower, in a circular room with chequerboard windows of red and white stained glass. When the guests have taken their places at the round table, the ladder is drawn away and they are shut in.
After some time waiting, it becomes apparent that the cutlery is only a crude facsimile, and is in fact silver-painted biscuit and quite edible. The table decorations are inflatable and pressurised by soup. Shortly after this, the guests realise that the plates are fake, too; they form the second course. A valve is found whereby the windows can be drained of their central layers of red and white wine to reveal clear glass and the surrounding forest. A layer peels off the table to reveal the third course, and by deconstructing their chairs they are able to extract the fourth, which is hidden in the legs like marrow in bones.
By now it is well past midnight, and still no-one comes. Inspecting the walls, the guests find that some bricks can be removed. These bricks are chocolate-framed replicas, containing splendid puddings. The holes left by their absence form a ladder, by which they can descend the tower and go home.

The Fifth Feast
The first course is a food course. The second course is a sex course. They alternate in quick succession, until no-one can quite remember what they are supposed to be doing with their hands and mouths.

The Sixth Feast
The sixth feast is a replica of the funeral feast of King Midas. It is held in a remote country house, lit by dim lamps and perfumed with incense; a greek orthodox choir can be heard at times throughout the proceedings, although they are never seen. The black-clad waiters are hired magicians, sleight-of-hand artists and illusionists. Throughout the meal, they stealthily replace the items in the hall by exact replicas in pure gold, beginning subtly (table decorations, door handles, strolling peacocks) and ending with the cutlery as the guests are using it to eat dessert. As a finale, the waiters line up to pull the tablecloth out from under its contents. The guests laugh drunkenly over their honey wine, expecting a golden table; but instead the house disappears, and they are left, bereft of riches, on a low hill in the dim light of early sunrise.

The Seventh Feast
Jaded and tired, the guests meet on a ship in international waters. After making certain preparations, they secretly draw straws and then retire to their cabins. Later that evening, avatars of each guest meet at a virtual-reality table, where they share their thoughts on the splendid meal that is being served to each, individually, in separate parts of the ship. The guests know that one of their number is not real, but is instead an AI which has been supplied with certain knowledge about that person. The missing person forms the prime ingredient in the banquet they are eating.

Nostalgic for their first feast, they later sink the boat.

On the road at the moment, so here is an old list-like thing from t'other blog.

1. There was a man who had a secret. He had always felt it was a very bad secret, and perhaps it was. But he had spent so long trying to avoid it that it was like a heavy stone in his mind that he could steer the waters of his thought around; the consequence being that all his thoughts were twisted round it, but never quite touched it. One day, after many years, he finally turned his thought towards it. But all he found, to his surprise, was a hole. He felt an odd sense of loss, as if he had suddenly been erased from the dictionary. After that, his secret became that he had lost his secret, and his story remained that the secret was too bad to tell.

2. There was a man who told him that no secret was too bad to tell, and then proceeded to tell him four or five things that could perhaps not quite be called secrets any more. And his real secret was that he liked it: all the telling of his vulnerable stories, the rush of it, showing his woundable parts to someone else like an upended snail.

3. There was a woman who comforted him one time, and she told him in reply that she had no secrets and no stories. Her secret, of course, was that this was not at all true. Once, as a child, someone had told her that good girls were smooth, seamless. That they lived lived like unblemished eggs, with no way in, beautiful and without feature. It was hard, very hard. But she built that egg, piece by piece, and sealed everything with awkward edges inside.

4. One time she was talking to a woman who replied in turn that she once found an egg inside an egg; an incredible curiosity. The story was well-honed and came out at parties a lot. Her secret was that it had never happened. She had read about it happening to someone else. She felt that her life was not very interesting. Why not add a little extra wonder, why not live some kind of magic realist life? Once, she told the story to a famous actor, and she later read an interview where he claimed the story as his own. Ever since then she had known a kind of smug kinship.

5. Here was the actor’s other story: when he was a child, he saw seven magpies in a storm, tumbling fighting through the sky across the roofs of the housing estate. And after that he always thought he must have a tremendous secret, waiting and gestating somewhere inside him. But as the years went by he realised that the real secret was that he didn’t have one. What is your secret, a fan would ask. I can’t tell you, he would say. And then he’d tell the magpie story.

6. Here is the fan’s secret. She didn’t want to go to bed with the actor, though she sensed that he might ask her, and that she might even accept. What she wanted was to be him. Under her leather jacket she had his tattoos, and sometimes she went for walks out in the flat fields, under the huge skies of her home lands, with her breasts bound. Twenty, thirty, forty miles. And when she came home she went into shops she didn’t know and imagined she was the actor, incognito.

7. Here is the secret of the shop assistant: she knew. She always knew. Somehow she was very good at knowing, when people came in, the things that they were not going to tell her. At first, she would slip these things into conversation in a smug way. By and by she came to know that most of the customers were not comforted by this, and so she stopped. But one day a man came into the shop and she could not tell his secret at all. It was as if it was missing.