Hello?

Kenneth had a cold. Lying in bed delirious, the sweaty pile of bones and blood and hair tossed and turned in the grip of no little discomfort and unsettling images. The yolkyellow sun came and went, clouds passed by overhead, dogs on leashes held tight by unemployed thirtysomethings scampered along on the pavement outside his window.* He opened his curtains after nightfall, tired and unhappy. He slumped back into bed, underneath a pile of blankets and pillows. His body ached all over. The pain held him awake by a slender thread: the pain connected him with reality like a radio shouting down a well. Reality, in the distance, with its supple edges and dissolving surfaces, dropped in and out of view, obscured by waves of dizziness and visions.

In one of his visions, Kenneth was browsing the internet. He was looking, he knew, at his own site, Kenneth Trax, but he could only tell this by the colours on the page - the words were muddy and indistinct. Underneath the orange headings (and at varying lengths), a black smudge traced its mark across the screen. As Kenneth scrolled faster and faster down the page, stopping briefly at each new post, he heard his own voice call "Hello?", like somebody crying into an empty space after a sentience only suspected. For the longer posts, the voice was louder and clearer. For the shorter posts, the call was quicker and fainter until, coming across a very short post indeed (just a link, he supposed), the voice called "Hi?" quickly and repeatedly, echoing across the rest of the "Hello?"s emanating from the other posts. On and on the page rolled downwards while a cacophony of "Hello?"s sank and surfaced in the company of a hundred others.

* Some leaves followed the dogs, occasionally pausing to spiral up into the air, but otherwise achieving nothing.

Zombi - Legacy (from Surface To Air)