Grip

'This is Guy. Strictly speaking cognomens aren't en vouge yet. But we're the elite here.'

It was Nathan

'M. Guida Pal. Cicero actually. Nova Roman you know.' The heavy gold bracelets spilling out from under his his thick hooded cloak said it all.

'I'm a guide too. That's what I've been doing for the last few years. Paving the way. There's a lot to talk about Jake.' Lauren looked guilty.

She handed me some wine. I gulped it. The mosaics were beautiful - Ancient Rome in Africa. Nathan, Guy, whatever his fucking name was, was watching me carefully. He couldn't stop himself from smiling.

'I've been waiting for this day for a long time' he grinned.

The full impact was starting to hit me. I was in another country, another time, in another body and the two people I thought I knew were giving me the distinct impression that what I knew was horseshit. This was nothing to do with drugs. This was serious. I finished the wine and demanded another.

Le grand désordre

As the train lazily pulled out of the station, the protagonist (young Jacob for sake of clarity) stole his last glance at the myriad of blackened, crumbling town houses and graffiti-soaked railway properties. The view became an infinite loop of human salad – a huge demented battery farm. He tapped away at his laptop for a moment but his thoughts were interrupted by a rasping noise that escaped from the man sat opposite. The clitter clatter of the train’s progress caused the sleeping man’s limp head to jerk sporadically, painting a greasy '8' on the window with his dirty hair. Jacob’s initial feeling of amusement was replaced by one of revulsion as the man’s flabby jowls vibrated again and again, producing saliva that was starting to collect as a white froth in the corner of his mouth. Averting his gaze, Jacob’s attentions landed on a small slip of paper on the table in front of the fat man. It was upside down and the writing was very small.

He was too distracted with wandering puerile thoughts to digest its contents. Besides, his nicotine receptors had other plans for their host. He made his way to the smoking car to smoke – and render himself inebriate on warm cans of Stella. It was apparent, at this point, that the generic fat man was becoming increasingly slipshod in his work and had missed a perfectly good opportunity. His superiors would be pissed also.