Psyche was sat in ‘treatment’ room. It was a rectangle filled with neat cot beds lined up against each wall. The end of his day was looming and he was getting impatient. Still had some more work to do. The room was irritatingly loud. Shit covered lumps of human filth were laid out on some of the beds. They were securely fastened at the wrist and ankles though, in the midst of their delirium, were still vainly thrashing against the bonds. The unpadded manacles gouging out chunks of sickly flesh. Nurse weren’t due today so the naked patients had to lay in their waste, their constant wriggling spreading faecal matter into the grey bedsheets. The nauseating, sweet smell of rotting flesh filled Psyche’s nostrils. Putrid bedsores wept sluggish, green coloured puss which mixed with their shit.

  A young lady screamed in wretched agony. Unseeing eyes flickering around the room. She was gone. Nuts as nuts could be. She’d lost all sense of reality. As had all of Psyche’s patients. That’s how he like them. Vulnerable and unable to understand.

  She screamed and screamed till bloody clots of phlegm spattered over the nearest of cot beds. She bit down severing part of raw tongue, yet still she screamed and writhed. Her slight frame jack knifing to the exact extremity of allowed movement. Girlish, blood covered, tits bouncing. She was almost ready.

  Psyche turned his attention back to the matter in hand. He was sat next to Mr Unknown. A man of average height and average build and average looks yet with strikingly silver hair. The man was laying still in an exhausted stupor. He was deathly pale with a thin dribble of blood spilling from his nose. He had been found on the streets of Lux babbling about inhuman, nonsense things. More animal than anything else, lashing out and barking at any who came near him. Psyche had been called three days earlier to see to the mental lunatic. He and his team swiftly neutralised him and taken him back to Skitzanium.

  The unknown man had spent those days with a fittish spastic demeanour. Gnashing teeth whilst struggling against his bond. Screaming, shouting and blathering incoherent maybe words. The language of the dead and the dying. Evil, occult speech. As those days drew to a close his body had started to give up. Got weaker and weaker ‘till he could do nothing but lay still and simply allow Psyche to have his ways.

  He was ready. Psyche could feel it. See it in his white skinniness. It was time to guide him into the abyss, surrender him into the blissful, unaware, unknown ‘other’. Mr Unknown’s time was up. Gone go get dead Mr.

  Psyche bent over him, studying the oddly familiar face. His eyes snaked down, saw them divot scars. A healed hole over the oesophagus and a large, painful looking schism parting his midriff. Wonder he weren’t dead already.

  Psyche retrieved his briefcase from the floor and opened it on the adjacent bed. He pulled out a tangled mess of wires and metal pads which, when unfolded, resembled a helmet. He placed the contraption on Mr Unknown’s head and plugged the loose hanging wires into two slots in the briefcase. Psyche donned his own helmet and plugged him self in. He flicked a hidden switch and a quiet whirr sounded. Psyche lay down and allowed the all too eager sleep to take him.

  Flicker, ticker. That whirr got louder and louder. A deafening cacophony. There weren’t nothing else. Reality got gooey. Started to sag and melt. Drippy, splashes of the real fell away, puddling on the insubstantial floor like multicoloured oil slicks. Nothing was left. All history and real world had gone. ’twas just Psyche, thereish, naked alone and staring at the weird oily mess on the floor. A cosmic rainbow coagulating on the ‘sort of’ floor. Sluggishly flowing to unknown tide. Psyche fell head first into the messy ‘there’ river, he din’t try swimming just let the blessed tide carry him away.

  Psyche sank down and down and down. The impossible swam with him. A whisper in the goo water. Things that never were, mightavebeens and shouldabeens and whydidn’tchadoisms all sinking with Psyche. He saw many things, things as should turn a sane mind not sane. But that was Psyche’s charm, he weren’t sane. No Sir. Just pretended that shit when under scrutiny. Tentacles grabbed at him, slithering things fondling flaccid cock, spider legs dancing up melting, slimy spine. Tingling. Time swam on, left him be.

  After a long time, years, dunno, months, huh? Something. Not sure just sometime after. There in the after the ‘there’ river spat him out onto the banks of the ‘other’ the not ‘there’. Psyche had arrived and so had Mr Unknown who was seemingly sleeping nicely on the impossible bank of the possible river in an impossible OtherLand.

  Psyche straddled the man and bodily slapped the shit out of him. Slippedy, slap nothing happened. Again. Slap, whoop, ain’t it fun? Still nothing. Again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. Shit, is he dead? Bugger. Slap. This time there was a cough. Weak as shit but still there. Slap. Another cough. A splutter. Psyche stood up and took bare bare foot to Mr Unknown’s stomach. Another splutter. Mr Unknown sparked to life. Sat up suddenly. Pawing at mouth. Urgh.

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  Mr Unknown lent forward and started vomiting out gushes of ‘there’ river the mind bending contents of which made Psyche look away.

  Took a while but Mr Unknown recovered. He was stood on the mystical bank looking at the impossible. Ain’t that just when they heard it. Both of them. Distant Choo Choo. Steamy Woo Woo. Mr Unknown looked behind him and saw the ‘Other’ city rising out of the ground. ’twas Lux but not Lux. Other Lux. Terwall station loomed in the faraway, but it weren’t Terwall station. It was like it but not, a huge tower rising up and up, impossibly high and covered in delicious vegetation. Every inch of rock smothered in greenery so vibrant and lush. It was the same with the city. Instead of them stinky gaslights were oversized yellow flowers. Tall thick stalks oozing sap and nectar. Flying insects as the like Mr Unknown had never seen were busy flying between the flowers. Buzz buzz. Ain’t that funny?

  Where in the shit were that light coming from? thought Mr Unknown. His gaze lifted his head higher. He looked beyond the City into what? He couldn’t tell. Just weird blueness spattered with white cotton and that light. Couldn’t look directly at it, man, ain’t that just something? Did it have a name? Was like what the old folks used to call ‘The Sun’. Huh? Impossible. But... is it? Didn’t feel impossible.

  The Choo Choo got louder. A train appeared. Rattling towards them. Merrily ChooChooing like a fucking children’s story. It stopped and Psyche looked at his still silent companion. ‘This is us.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘On the train Mr Unknown.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘On the fucking train!’

  Psyche had to push the brain addled twit onto the train. They sat down. Mr Unknown stared dreamily at the weirdness. Lights flickered as the train took off, back the way it came, no bulb stink, no bulb fizz, nothing but light. Sweet, strange smells assailed their nostrils as if the greenness had crept into the very atmosphere.

  ‘Where are we?’ asked Mr Unknown as he sat there.

  ‘We’re are in the Other.’

  ‘What’sat?’

  ‘The Other. It’s like life but not. Sort of in-between all things.’

  ‘Huh? How did we get here?’

  ‘We passed through the river.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well... you died Mr Unknown. This is the great Unknown. It’s where souls go at the end of their pilgrimage’

  ‘I died? Fuck off. I feel alive.’

  ‘They all do.’

  Mr Unknown fell back into silence.

  Eventually they reached Terwall Station. Or ‘not’ Terwall station, some shit or something. Mr Unknown looked at the looming building. But... well, blow it, it weren’t no building at all? It were a massive tree. Impossibly big. Carved in the exact likeness of Terwall station. They entered into one of the gigantic archways and into the trunk of the tree. It was just like Terwall station. Same stuff just all made out of wood and covered in plant life. Something else too... Wooooo.... Mr Unknown ain’t you a smart cookie man? Whoop? Figured it out? Ah of course, that’s it, most unsettling. Mr Unknown realised that there weren’t no other souls pottering about. No crowds, no people shouting and children running. No one at all. He began to feel scared.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ he asked turning to a serene Psyche.

  ‘Everyone? My god. There ain’t no one left. This is just a... erm... a waiting room. Just gotta stop off here and then we’ll be on our way.’

  ‘On our way where?’

  ‘Down there, to where the Devil bes.’

  ‘I don’t wanna go meet no Devil.’

  ‘Everyone’s gotta make that trip sooner or later.’

  ‘Well later will do just fine.’

  Fuck! Mr Unknown, whilst living, was keen to face the abyss but now he was here and the yawning cavern of the beyond opened before him he weren’t so sure. Fuckedy fuck Mr Unknown, what you going to do?

  They alighted and stood on the platform of the great Other. Mr Unknown felt like wetting his insubstantial pants. He looked at Psyche who nodded and waved him on down the platform into a waiting chasm of inky blackness.

  But Mr Unkown, well, he had other plans. He did indeed and he was sure as shit that the psychopomp of Skitzanium weren’t going to do nothing about it. He pounced at Psyche, soaring through the air like some preternatural beast. He knocked into Psyche with considerable force and the pair tumbled about on the platform.

  Bloody teeth sank into flesh, wounds opening before Mr Unknown as he scratched and tore and wrangled Psyche like a raggedy rag doll. It were beastly, it were fun. Mr Unkown tasted raw flesh and sweet, nectar like, blood on hungry licking tongue.

  He was finished. Psyche was a pissing mess of bloodiness with Mr Unknown stood over him, smiling devilishly in the phosphorus plant glow. He took flight, left the demented Psyche to lick his shitty wounds, and ran quickly quickly out of NotTerwall station and out into the glittering notness of the Other. Had to get back Mr Unknown, had to find that mystic river and swim the upstream swim back to Lux proper, back to life, back to reality.

  He were on the move. For a long time. He stopped running. After that? Stopped walking too. The light got lesser. Lesser. Blackness enveloped him. Couldn’t understand why. That glowing orb in the upper loft had got dimmer and dimmer till it just winked out all together.

  A different sort of light happened. Pale and blue. Not so strong. Then the ghosts came, screaming and wailing, bemoaning lost lives and things forgotten. Night had fallen on the realm of the dead. Mr Unknown felt himself becoming like them. A ghost.