A special collaboration between the Otago Daily Times, the Dunedin Unesco City of Literature and the University Book Shop begins with David Loughrey’s short story Hereafter.
First we join Selby in a dread Dunedin.
Chapter one
Selby staggered and fell to his knees. Something solid fell from his hand and on to the floor.
There was a screaming sound in his ears, and a sickening burning sensation on the side of his head, but his main focus was on escape. From what was unclear.
There was a taste in his mouth he recognised as fear. In front of him was an upturned chair, nearby a woman's shoe and in a corner a child's soft toy.
Selby saw these things as he stumbled to his feet, barged through the front door and fled down the steps and on to the empty street.
His mind was awash with vague fears and the memory of something awful, but that memory proved elusive - what was it? - perhaps a fantasy, perhaps a discarded memory from a recurring dream that existed briefly on the edge of his consciousness but could not be placed in space or time.
Perhaps a memory of a memory.
What could it mean?
He slowed to a walk so as not to raise suspicion, and took in his surroundings.
The sky was a deep, dark grey, though where the setting sun lit the horizon's edge that grey took on an angry velvet-red hue.
The city he knew well was strangely silent and somehow askew.
The steel tips atop the wrought iron gates he passed gleamed cold and terribly sharp, the smoke from chimneys hung in the air unpleasantly sulphurous and the streetlights put out a cold glow that seemed to make the encroaching darkness even darker.
Across the street, to his left and a little behind him, Selby became aware of a figure in a long dark coat and what looked to be a wide-brimmed hat who moved soundlessly along the footpath. As he looked furtively over his shoulder, trying hard to meld with the street and the fence line and the dark of night, he noticed with a sickening sinking sensation the figure appeared to glide rather than walk past the parked cars and gateways and grass berms, its sodden clothing now scraping and slapping on the pavement.
Selby quickened his gait, but his fear of capture (by whom, and for what? - he had no answer to these questions) actually stopped him from what he most violently wanted, to break into a run, a sprint, anything to distance himself from this most repugnant of circumstances and the most unnatural sensations he was experiencing.
The burning sensation on the side of his head was ever present, and it goaded him further into flight. But it now appeared to him the pace, just short of a run, at which he loped was taking him nowhere; rather he was on the same street he had been on for what seemed an eternity.
Selby could not resist looking again over his shoulder, and to his awful shock he found the figure was now breathing on his neck, its stubborn face in his, its snub pockmarked nose, with a single hideous nasal hair that grew long and quivered against its upper lip, within centimetres of his own.
He stopped, overcome by revulsion and horror, no longer capable of taking flight; instead he was welded to his spot, to the time and place, and no motion was possible.
He breathed almost against his will the fetid air, the rancid breath and stared into the empty eyes of his assailant.
"You are one of us now, you have a ticket too!'' the figure demanded, suddenly coming alive.
Selby was unable to respond, so overcome was he with the violence of the statement.
"Aye'', cried the figure, "there! Look in your pocket, you have a ticket too.''
Charily, Selby dug into his pocket and sure enough, there was a ticket with his name on, neatly printed with a date and time and a reference number that started with the letter M.
The ticket shone slightly in the darkness, projecting holographic images of something he vaguely remembered but could not place: perhaps an upturned chair, a woman's shoe.
He looked to his new companion for something - anything - as a man who is drowning will grasp at straws.
"There are so many reference numbers nowadays,'' the man said.
"But surely you are not new to this trickery the authorities undertake.
"Reference numbers here, offence codes there, the whole system is set up for the most awful obfuscation.
"There is nothing but ambiguity, and that is one thing that may or may not be a certainty under the new regime of things!''
Selby nodded in dumb agreement.
"However'', the man continued, "you are clearly one of us.
"You have a ticket, and if there is a ticket there is only one course of action, and that is to seek relief from its punishment at the highest levels.''
At this point his voice became quiet and confidential, and his face came so close as to touch Selby's as he spoke.
"I can help. I know a man, a man who could help you.
"It is your only chance, but together we are stronger, and together we will plot our course.
"In the Octagon we will find him, at the Department of Enforcement.''
Selby felt sick to the stomach at the thought he had come to the attention of the authorities, and despite the unwholesome appearance of his new companion, and his confusion regarding a terrible feeling of guilt he realised he was carrying with him, he could see no better course of action than to follow the man's lead.
Together the pair walked; now quickly, now hesitating and uncertain.
The situation was acutely uncomfortable, and Selby was on the verge of bolting when he began to notice a sharp pain in his heel; a pain remarkable for its intensity, as if he walked upon a cluster of rusty needles that forced their way under his skin to scrape on his bones.
At the same time his hips began to make a grinding noise as he walked, and they stiffened and ground to a painful halt.
"You need help!'' Selby's new companion cried.
At the man's instigation, and despite a fierce sense of discomfort at the situation, Selby agreed to climb on to his back for transport to the Octagon, where he was told his case could be put to the head of department - a man of fearsome reputation, Selby was told - who could once and for all deal with it.
The journey began as the pair swayed down High St to their destination, allowing time for Selby to get some insight into the man he was about to meet.
Enforcement head McDiemen, Selby was told, was neither Scottish nor Dutch, but had been fired from a higher governmental post after an unfortunate incident which the man described to Selby as a "bout of iniquity''.
McDiemen had come to Dunedin a sort of stateless soul with few interests other than an obsession that bylaws were put in place for a reason, and offenders must be collected and punished for their violations.
Taken to a point of eventualities, Selby's companion told him as he looked back over his shoulder, McDiemen came to believe the correct punishment of offenders was the most important aspect of the system.
"Yet there are some who say one can make a deal with McDiemen, one only needs to play one's cards right, approach the situation with the right attitude and one can find relief from one's predicament, and a release from the punishment in store for those who have a ticket.
"Well now!'', he proclaimed after some thought, "without such a deal the outcome could be indescribably awful''.
Selby flinched at these words, his mind a turmoil of fears and nameless horrors as the strange pair made their irregular journey down High St.
One moment he made up his mind to tear himself from the back of this vile man who bore him on a journey to who knew where, no matter what pain such flight would involve, the next he clung to the back of what proffered the only distant hope of extricating himself from an awful predicament he could only partly perceive, but which he knew in his heart was disturbingly real.
As the pair made their way down a murky Princes St towards their goal, all power of action failed him, and struck rigid with a mixture of dread and procrastination, he held on as he was drawn ever closer to the office of McDiemen.
University Book Shop short story series
