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declared.
    ‘What a champion,’ Beami yawned. Her habitual sarcasm was once something he admired, but these days he hated her dismissive attitude towards him. Funny how the little things you like at the beginning often become the things you ultimately abhor. ‘You coming to bed?’
    As if to highlight the ensuing silence, the heating system wheezed like an old man dying of pneumonia, indicating firegrain caught up in the piping somewhere. Cheap shitting hack workmen . The whole house suddenly shuddered like a living thing.
    ‘I’m just unwinding. I’ll be there in a moment.’
    Beami gave him a forced smile, then uncoupled her gaze from his face. It took her a while to say it: ‘You want to try again tonight?’
    ‘Maybe.’
    She left him then, with only his rum and costly possessions for comfort. The last time he’d tried . . . hadn’t ended well. Their attempts never did.
    And afterwards I get overcome by rage, and try so hard to transform in front of her . . .
    It took him a while to get out of the chair, through laziness, tiredness, whatever. Then painfully slow strides to the bedroom. And there she was, lying in that huge bed, looking so small amidst all those coverlets and blankets, her hair spread out across the pillows. Boots off first, then clothes off, he climbed in next to her, the sounds of the city muffled in the background.
    Warmth and soft skin.
    He pressed against her, wondering if she was still awake or not, and when Beami turned towards him, the dread hit him, like it always did. Kisses didn’t do much for him, though she tried – along his neck, his jawline, and she made those noises, the ones she thought he liked to hear, little groans to indicate he might be satisfying her, as if to rebuild his confidence. Her hands skimmed across his bare skin.
    Nothing, no sensation.
    He made efforts too; he did not simply lie there. He felt for the heat of her stomach, tentatively explored her wetness. As he moved his mouth across her neck he resisted the urge to bite. He concentrated on the kinds of things he imagined he should be feeling. This went on for a while, duplicating gesture after gesture, and when she finally touched his cock he held his breath in anticipation . . .
    Nothing. No reaction.
    Time became less abstract and more relevant, and this added pressure to react pushed him over the edge. Rage had been flaring beneath the surface, and he didn’t want to express it, but he did . . . ‘Just leave me the fuck alone.’
    And he shoved her aside, and turned over; he felt if he didn’t see her, it wouldn’t happen. He was now seething with anger, wanted to strike out at anything . . . But he held back, somehow. It wasn’t that easy, but he managed not to turn in front of her.
    And he lay there, in the darkest of nights, unable to get an erection, wondering about something he dared not mention in public, not even to her. A question that couldn’t be said out loud to any of his gang, because it came loaded with shame and embarrassment.
    Am I even a man any more?

 
F OUR

    Private Lupus Bel of the Night Guard informed Brynd that Villiren today was a world away from the one he remembered, and given the current rate of development and saturation with building projects, Brynd could well understand the lad’s childhood memories being different.
    Under those interminable flat roofs, throughout the dreary crowded streets, men and women sought escape from reality in increasingly diverse ways. It never used to be like this, Lupus assured him. People kept hearing terrifying stories that flooded in from neighbouring islands, embellished as they passed from mouth to mouth. So what else was there to do but drink and party themselves into oblivion?
    Secret drinking joints and burlesque clubs were springing up and closing down daily, moving around the city as if planned by stealth. If you had a fetish, you had a place to go. New music too, styles based around the Villjamur standards, but taken down smoother