It only seemed fitting, after seeing something so beautiful as life, that I should pollute the experience. Isn't that the human condition?

  The Children of Polyethylene worship in the bright, clean corners of the world. They wash their hands too much and bounce around with the attitude of a bubblegum Nietzsche. They are practitioners of Palo Mayombe and they may well have doomed us all. None of them shake my hand or touch me as I wander their factory. I put on blue plastic shoe covers that are then dipped in disinfectant. I wear a white polypropylene bodysuit that sticks to my skin. My face is covered in a nylon mask. All I can smell is sweat and latex. My hair barely pokes out from the hood. They politely requested that I shave my head. I politely reminded them that I had a bomb strapped to my chest. Funny thing about death cults, start threatening to kill them before the end of the world.

  Paolo Mayombe is as mongrel as the British Isles I have travelled from. A core ripped by the root from the Congo, dragged to the ends of the Earth, tearing at the religions and traditions it passed to incorporate into itself. A beautiful blend of animism and Catholicism, of the inherent spirituality of all material things, and the veneration of ever approaching death.

  It is a black art they say, to chain a spirit and use it to act workings upon the world. It is called nganga, and it begins with a jar. Clay and iron work best. Then you fill it, with all the things you wish to be protected from. Blades and bullets, for stabbings and shootings. Diseased bodily fluid to ward off STD's. A tumour from a calf to prevent them from festering within you. Human, if you wish for utmost assurance in the ritual. Then you call a spirit of death, with an offering for it to feed upon. The hotter the blood the better. Feed the vitae into the open maw of the jar. The loathsome spirit, who rages at life itself, will follow. You must shut the lid quickly, and seal it with lead. There are no circles of binding, no chanted latin, nor Ennochian. Just the bait and the beast.

  There are other methods to leash dark spectres. You may bind them to an altar of corpses in such a way that they may roam free when allowed. To hunt who you say. You must keep them like a dog, unfed and chained to the garden. Kept lean, driven by hunger. Lest their wits remind them that you too, are food.

  The spirits are natural and ancestral. At least they used to be. Shamans nowadays invoke spirits of concrete and wire, of radio waves and ultraviolet radiation. They think they know magic. They hear of my work and share a smug look. We program silicon to make it think for us, we mix formulas that break down toxins in the blood. That's fucking magic. I hate wizards. I hate their robes, and their candles. I hate the smugness of their smiles and the empty promises of something greater. Life is great without the need for fetishes and rites.

  They are blinded by their journey towards a greater lie. Even with the truth screaming in their ears.

  It seems there could be a great filter on life in the cosmos. Whether it's nuclear war or overpopulation or a hostile intelligence watching over and preventing anything from getting too uppity. I wager what will bring about the end of the world. True ecological collapse that is. It’s simple. You probably have some on you now. You definitely have some in you. It breaks apart into microfibres, and we've found those fibres on Everest, at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. They get into our food, into the air we breathe, and into the blood of the unborn. Our cells take it in, incorporating it into themselves and dying. In a million years things will dig up our bodies and recreate the structure of our doom in our image.

  The whole place was immaculate. I must hand it to them, they’d pass just about any health and safety inspection I can think of. I could've eaten my dinner out of the toilet, on the floor, even the tarmac outside, as I saw it being hosed and rinsed every fifteen minutes like clockwork. The only living things in the building were the people.

  Only exception is the room housing the nganga. I mentioned before that they are kept inside an iron or clay pot. The Children of Polyethylene had chosen iron. An old ironworks to be specific, prolific as they are in the north of the country. And it was here they sought to bring about the extinction of the human race. Split bin bags full of rotten scraps, old tyres, plastic bags, cheap clothes, glasses frames, packaging. Oh, so much packaging. And that was the base they needed. Decomposed and used and discarded, like the god they wished to create. With that foundation they added more. There are so many ways you can make plastic. Coal and crude oil, natural gas they took it all and pressed it into shining coloured perfection. Cellulose too. So when I walked in, it was to the sight of gutted cows, mulch torn from their stomachs. It didn’t even produce much. The cruelty was the point. The blood, the death, the reek of oxidising fat. All working in concert to attract, and keep the spirit that they needed. They'd trapped Caspar in a bottle of Coca Cola. Then, like termites, they had pulped and sculpted everything they could find, moulded into a beacon. A lumpen effigy that pressed against the ceiling.

  It stood two stories tall, a heap of rubbish and corpses, gooing. Rancid, dripping with clotted blood and offal. They intended to feed it until it could poison the world. Every well and every height. So that every mouthful of water taints you and incubates the synthetic flesh. Every inhalation in the face of their God was a punch to the throat, trailing gristle down my tongue.

  Standing in front of the monument was their leader. He was dressed in all white. A gleaming acrylic suit, with a polyamide tie, polyester socks visible beneath polyurethane shoes. He used to be called Costanzo. I don’t think he has a name anymore. For he is but a conduit, he claims. An extension of their polymer God. His eyes had burst open. A pair of webbed antlers, jutting protrusions that throbbed with the remnants of the ocular veins that latticed across the surface. The jagged antenna twitched as the muscles within the sockets pulled in vain at the barbarous horns hooked into his meat. A smile broke upon his face at our approach, and he welcomed me to paradise. I could only wonder how he kept so clean. The refuse around his feet seemed to part, to allow him an island of grey to stand upon. I wanted that patch of concrete. My shoe protectors had begun to slosh. He welcomed me, but would not shake my hand despite the silky rayon gloves he wore. I was informed by one of my escorts that he was a germaphobe.

  I looked upon his face, and I'm not ashamed to say I trembled. The skin upon his cheeks strained against something underneath. Like he had too many bones in his face. Muscle rippled around tendrils squeezed between tissue and tooth. How deeply had he buried the profane polymer into himself? He was pronounced dead years ago, after a spree of killings culminating in an American college student. What decrepit longevity had his perversions in this place wrought upon his body? The man should not have been alive. I wondered if the roots pushed through into his brain, tunneling through the hole that the optic nerve runs through. A translucent gelatinous liquid ran along the underside of his antlers. Dripping, never quite hitting the floor. Yet I could still hear the drops, even through the noise of the interior. It was streaked with the most transcendental colours.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  He asked me if I was enjoying Mexico. I had not. The heat was worrying. He had a fantastic brought to me, foam blades funneling foul air into my face. It did not help. He gestured, arms wide in parody of the cruciform. Did I like what they'd done to the place? There was always room in the family. They would not normally take visitors, so I'd have to excuse the state of the place, but my benefactor is not one to deny. At least, not yet. His voice was a tantalising chimera of Cuban and American. It belonged to a man on a beach wearing a floral print shirt, sipping a mojito.

  All I could do was wonder where the flies were? The stink of the charnel house should have been a home to vermin. Flies and rats and larva writhing amongst the filth. There were none. I almost threw up. The smell was quite rank.

  The antenna twitched, to my left. My escort. Back to me. Wordlessly, the escort produced a small, zip lock bag. Plastic. Always fucking plastic. It held a small piece of ginger. I took it. Chewed. It helped with the nausea immensely. I apologised for my weak stomach. He laughed, and it was so warm and vibrant I felt as if I was basking in the gentle first light of dawn. He said there was nothing weak about feeling ill at ease here. I was standing before the beast of the earth. The sweat was tracing tributaries down my back.

  He let his laughter lull. He leaned in, never crossing the threshold of his putrid circle. He could help with the nerves. From his jacket pocket he took out an inhaler. Blue capped, metal canistered. He brought it to his lips and hissed a hushed hymn. He held his hand high. As if feeding a skittish horse. I took it, careful not to touch him. My arm a claw machine with no good prizes.

  Shake, puff, he said. Like a gay in a go-go cage. I inquired as to what it was. What is anything in here, he replied. A cloud of micro plastics. Guided by his will into such a configuration they would travel through my airways, across the membrane of the cilia, journeying all the way into my neurology. There they would bond to key neuroreceptors in my amygdala. The thing about plastic, he said. Is biologically it is inert. They would attach to the receptor and do nothing. The neurons would not fire, and they would be unable to, as the sophisticated mechanisms that would tell the plastics to detach would never trigger. In less than a minute, I would be free of fear forever. He rubbed his hands together. It is a marvelous material, no?

  Completely complimentary. Tell your friends, tell your family. Bring the good news to your boss. Suffering is out of style. A piece of paradise for your return to bedlam. His antlers were almost squirming. Like botfly larvae burrowing into his face, as he spoke. They shouldn't move like that. He composed himself. After all, he gestured to myself, you are our honoured guest. Please. He wrung his hands together beseechingly. Please.

  Nobody was moving. Everybody was watching. I looked at the small device in my hand. And I was tempted. For a moment. He was, eyes excluded, just a really nice fella. He spoke like an old friend, returned from travels across the world. Changed, but at his core the guy you've known for years.

  It was fucking terrifying. And the sucking feeling in the hollow of my guts was the only thing that was holding back the screams. It was an anchor through which I was draining out the madness.

  I did not speak. I unzipped my suit, hands struggling to find purchase through the nylon gloves. I pulled up my shirt to reveal the flat, blinking bomb buried into the bodice binding my body.

  I knew in that moment that I held the power. They would do anything I told them to, lest I blow their shitty fucking God to shitty fucking pieces. I felt two pieces of metal dig into the pressure points under both ears. Blunt, cold steel that whispered dual discharges of death, more easily than I could draw breath.

  Costanzo looked at the device strapped to my stomach, like a dog sizing up another that had flopped down upon the ground in front of it. He crouched, curious. Considering the contraption. All he did was smile. The guns left my skull.

  This would not even destroy the room we are in. The walls are iron. Our God, intangible. All it would take, is a wayward soul to wander in. And the apotheosis would proceed anew. Nevermind the incineration. That is what we desire anyway. The stalks twitched as he cast a gaze over the pink strips of flesh, spilling ungraciously around the strip of fabric that encircled my torso. He frowned, his brow crinkled. It was only for a moment. He seemed to make a decision. He stood, and turned his back to me.

  He walked towards the nganga. His feet always found flooring free of filth. He nodded his head, beckoning me. I followed. Each step gushing puddles, an archeologist unearthing new and exciting smells with each motion. We stood, side by side, before the tower.

  This room used to be the incinerator for the slaughterhouse. We did as we must, and the first stage of our devotion began with a gutting. Above us, there is a chimney, through which the nganga is pushed higher and higher with each passing day. When our work is near its completion, we are going to light a fire that will change the course of human history. This is a vessel. Every molecule contains a fragment of what we are creating. By fire, it will spread into the heavens. The ash will fall upon the land. The smoke will gather water and fall down into the ocean. Upon contact with each piece of plastic scattered throughout the world, in our cities and towns, in the hills and jungles, they too, will become tainted. This will happen regardless. As manufacturing increases, as the world is further polluted. With this, we may have a chance for survival.

  He delicately removed a glove. And he trailed a finger upon the surface of the nganga. He spoke, voice distant. He asked me to commune with him. Even as a non-believer, when do opportunities like this arrive? As far away as he was, his voice still held a playful ring.

  I looked upon the wall in front of me. Paper thin wrappers and shopping bags, layered upon bright chunks of playground equipment and PVC tubing. Milk bottles and buckets and bins, garden furniture and a children's bike. Toothbrushes, laptops, shoes, watches. Tupperware and toilet seats. At some points a collage, and at others like smooth panelled scales. I thought I saw a face, dark eyes framed by tyre rubber cheeks and cling film lips. The surface of everything glittered. Pinprick droplets glistening like shattered glass in a gutter. Thick yellow rivulets, and brown mosaics of sludge whose edges caught the light just so. There was one spot which was dry. A smooth, lumpen oval. Almost the perfect fit for my hand. Kismet. It was a picture frame, warped by the weight of the walls around it.

  This is what I came here to do. I reached out, and touched the structure. It was warm. Like a landfill baked under the summer sun. It was soft. Like a mother's love. It was wrong. Much like walking into an abattoir.

  There was a movement, too. Steady. I felt it must be my own pulse thrumming against my fingertips. I was almost there. About to pull my hand away.

  It acknowledged me.

  For a moment, for a brief moment, I was no longer.

  The nganga fell upon me. Tons of rubbish and meat gave way and crushed me beneath them. I was compressed upon all sides by the strength of stars. Points punctured into me, my guts splattered, spilled from both ends. My arms, my legs were liquified entirely. Greedy fingers scooped my intestines out of the way, and stuck themselves into my mouth, flattening against the walls of my throat, funnelling slurry that spurted from the red labelled bottle at the core of all there ever was, defiling the remains of my limbless torso. I did not think it was anything at all. What a grand and intoxicating innocence.

  It spat me out once it was done. I was in the room. My hand was bleeding. Crimson red running down the face of the thing. Peeking from the smooth surface within the frame were teeth. Canines, small and sharp. Too small for a man. Or an adult. Molars around the rim, exploded and fused together like popcorn kernels. I could feel grime in my mouth.

  Costanzo tutted. He was gone. Still somewhere else. He chided his God like a pernicious toddler. He cocked his head up close to the nganga. Pulled his hand away laughing. He looked to me. His face was bulging, skin pulled so taut I could see bright colours breaking through.

  Your blood is very clean. Very hot.

  I threw up into my mask. Chunks of burning ginger and stomach acid dripping down my chin scalding my sinuses.

  My blood dropped upon the floor. That was where the sound was coming from. I could not bear it anymore. I ran. I ran from the room. They hosed me down in the passageway between doors. They cut my boots off, stained and dripping black. I cried. They wiped the sick from my face with a wet wipe. Plastic fibres broke against the surface of my skin and I could feel them catching upon the pores.

  It was nothing more than a pile of rubbish. They were a group of the sick and the mad and that is of no question to me now in the wake of the visit. But when I was there. In that claustrophobic room with the stench of meat and oil in my nostrils. I could have almost swore I felt it looking at me.

  As I walked back through the compound the factory was nestled within. I paused. The smell of ozone in the air. A storm is coming.