In chapter 2, Selby found himself in an awful state in the office of enforcement head McDiemen.
After being shown a horrifying infinity device, he escaped McDiemen’s office only to fall into a salty harbour by a set of jagged mountainous molars.
David Loughrey takes his story to its dreadful denouement.
Chapter three
Selby sat gasping on the grass of the Kitchener St Reserve next to the Harbour Mouth Molars, a fearsome, monolithic column that jutted into his consciousness.
How he had got there he did not know; it seemed time and space no longer worked to their normal laws.
He tried to remember how he had got to this awful world, this misshapen version of his home with its horrors and its perverse occupants.
He longed to rest, but as his head slumped to his chest to steal just a moment of unconsciousness, Selby heard a familiar scraping and flapping of wet material on the footpath nearby, and someone cry: "You are one of us now, you have a ticket too!''
A revulsion filled his consciousness, and he staggered to his feet and stumbled away, desperate to put as much distance as possible between himself and McDiemen, and those vile phantoms who, it was now clear, worked for him.
His fate, the investigation into the crime he still could not remember, and the punishment he so feared that would result from the ticket that still sat folded in his trouser pocket, were matters Selby forced to one side for the moment.
Instead he concentrated on the comforting memories that suddenly sprang to mind, memories of his home, of a woman's lilting voice and her scarf and gloves laid across a chair near the front door, a laundry basket of clean clothes soft and warm and the sour-milk smell of a tiny child.
Those memories, despite their apparent agreeability, were tinged with other less pleasing feelings Selby tried, but failed, to banish from his mind.
But the thought of home, of some sort of sanctuary, drove him to turn westwards and begin a painful climb, for his knees and elbows were bloodied, bruised and broken from his fall on to the rocks, to the hill suburb in which he lived.
The roads were strangely empty, and as Selby limped along Jetty St the shadows dark in the doors of solid stone buildings shuddered with unease and the alleyways were black with dread.
His body was riddled with unnameable pains, and whether the cries and groans he heard came from the homes that stood sentinel on each side of the road or from some dark space inside his head he could no longer tell, but still he marched unsteadily on through the queer horror his world had become.
In his own street now, he again could smell and taste the sulphurous emanations from nearby chimneys, and saw again the frighteningly sharp steel spikes that topped the wrought-iron fences it seemed every dwelling he passed now had.
But these things, however unaccountable and disturbing, Selby forced from his consciousness to focus only on the golden light of home, the routine and the familiar that no other place could provide.
And as he pushed open his front door, that is what he initially saw.
There were coats hung on hooks in the hallway, coats with familiar smells of perfume: there was a mirror hanging; a landscape painting on the wall, a mountain scene; through a doorway there were elegant chairs and a wooden table with familiar coffee cup stains; beyond that a lounge room with a fireplace and mantel holding pictures of babies and distant cousins; a heater and a tall, thin lamp.
Selby felt a longing, a desperation for normality, for sanctuary and for peace.
But he also felt an uncanny but powerful aversion to the idea of proceeding further into the house.
Despite its warmth he felt on his brow a frozen sweat, he smelled a sweet yet metallic odour in the air, and it was with considerable resolve he forced himself to limp into the dining area.
He dug into his pocket and pulled out the ticket that seemed to have started the whole mess.
He threw it on to the table and for a moment pondered the unfairness of his situation: why should he, a man who wanted nothing other than to be left alone, now be badgered by whatever strange authority had taken it upon itself to investigate him?
Why since this awful journey started had he seen nobody but the vile phantom who had carried him unwillingly to McDiemen's office, and McDiemen himself, who seemed to have already pronounced him guilty?
And of what? Selby asked himself.
He had done nothing; other people, perhaps, had forced him into situations he could not control.
He was innocent, he led a decent life.
Certainly he became angry now and then, and lashed out, but wasn't that the fault of his upbringing?
God knows it had not been easy, and the ramifications, even if enacted by him, were surely not his responsibility.
Selby noticed for the first time a pistol that lay on the table by an upturned sugar bowl, and a manila folder with his name and the letter 'M' stamped on the top right corner, but his attention was immediately drawn from these matters by a rustle in the room behind him, and the lightest footfall.
He closed his eyes, first trying to ignore, then trying to stem a rapidly rising feeling of panic that had begun to make his heart beat like a painful, addled drum.
There was a dark yet familiar presence in the room, and Selby sat seized with horror; his one hope was if he did not see it, it somehow could not hurt him.
But now he felt a crushing feeling on his skull, as if a clamp or vice had closed on each side, and despite his straining against this supernatural force, it twisted his head painfully to the left, where he beheld a scene that threatened to stop his heart.
There, his back to the wall and his dark eyes staring directly at Selby, was McDiemen.
One of McDiemen's hands was scratching at the top left-hand side of his head, and Selby could just perceive his fingers were rubbing one of two small, sharp, red pointed protuberances just showing through his hair.
But as Selby took in this horror, he became aware of another; McDiemen's right hand, one finger extended, was pointing to a corner of the room where, to his shock and sick, dawning recollection, Selby saw a woman's body, her leg crumpled and arm splayed, face down on the carpet.
There was a tiny bullet hole in the back of her head.
She was clutching a soft toy, and nearby Selby saw a child's still hand.
McDiemen turned one corner of his mouth downwards, and looked at Selby with a sort of wistful sadness.
"I shouldn't have to chase you,'' he said.
"I have a role; a job if you like, and I must complete my responsibilities.
"But you know I'm not such a bad fellow, despite the way some have chosen to paint me.
"Believe it or not, it is very important to me the system is just.
"Perhaps you have an explanation, or even a confes ...?''
But Selby did not let him finish his sentence.
He stood now, his legs threatening to give way, only the hand that gripped the side of the table keeping him upright.
"This is not my doing,'' he blurted out.
`'It ... it was ... but I had so many pressures on me, and she didn't help, always nagging at me to sort things out.
"I was drinking too much, I know that now, I know that.
"I was working too hard I had a new job and that baby it cried and cried it wouldn't stop and she wouldn't pick it up and I was trying to watch the television and God knows I lost control but it's not my fault.
"I was stressed,'' Selby screamed, as he picked up the pistol and held it to the side of his head, not noticing in his alarm and despair it fitted neatly into a small, round hole in the centre of his temple.
"Get away from me, or I'll do this,'' he screamed at McDiemen.
"Who are you to judge me?
"Who are you?''
McDiemen cradled his chin in his right hand, his eyes downcast and a look of wearied vexation on his face.
"Ah, Selby, Selby,'' he said.
"My old friend Selby.
"We have come to know each other well.
"We have been here so many times it is beginning to feel like an eternity, such an eternity, but always it ends the same.
"I try to warn you, Selby, I try to show you the results of your actions, I try to give you a chance to lessen your sentence, but always we come back to this place and always you do what you do.''
But Selby had stopped listening.
The world and its people may have conspired to rob him of what was rightfully his, may have blamed him for a situation into which he had been unwittingly placed, may have pushed him forward for punishment when others should shoulder their part of the blame, but he would leave it and them to deal with the fall-out.
He gripped the side of the table with one hand, steadied the other as he held the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.
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 he could not quite recall.
He rose and staggered through the door on to the street, where he heard a scraping and slapping on the pavement and a cry: "You are one of us now, you have a ticket too.''
University Book Shop short story series
