“Fuck it,” said Graham. “Go pick something. Be fast and make it cheap.”

  Isabel did her best; she wanted to make her father proud always. It was hard to be rational, though, when she was surrounded by a collection of the most awesome and modern unicorns in the world; that and any number over one hundred was just as big as a hundred, just spelled differently.

  On the way out to the car, both kids were beaming.

  “Best day ever,” they both said in agreement.

  All Graham wanted was to get home. His head ached, his back ached, and his haemorrhoids ached. All he wanted was a cup of tea. So frazzled was he, he forgot all about the socks.

  “Don’t tell your mum about the toys.”

  “Oh I promise, dad, we won’t,” said Nathan.

  It’d be the first thing he’d do when he got in the door.

  On the way out, though, a group of young louts appeared out of nowhere blocking the exit at the stairs. They were all dressed from head to toe in delinquency and every one of them wore the same no-good expression.

  “So I fucked him up, I did,” said The Leader. “I grabbed him by the throat and I just started punching him until half his teeth fell out. Then I threw him on the floor and I stomped the rest out with my fuckin boot.”

  He must have stomped the ground at least fifty times, making all the faces he would have made if even half of this story were true. And he didn’t hold back on the cussing either.

  “Fascist cunt,” he said.

  Then he spat on the ground and looked straight at Graham, his eyes sharp and narrow, as if the world were a crack in a fence that he was peering through.

  There wasn’t space for Graham and the kids to pass by; but even if there was, the way in which these young men loitered, there was no way they would make it through unscathed. The children gripped their father’s hand and he, theirs.

  The young louts could smell the fear. They didn’t just thrive on it; it gave them a sense of purpose. Even the frailest of the lot – with their gaunt faces and arched backs – looked savage. They puffed on their cigarettes and puffed out their chests, and then chewed on their gum as if they were chewing on the ends of dynamite.

  Graham could feel his heart in the back of his throat. It was as if fear was a weather condition. Just as a warm front could sear one’s skin and an unseasonal frost could do away with one’s toes; fear, like an inexorable amalgamation of the two, could melt a man from the inside out yet leave him shivering as if he were being frozen to death by some arctic wind.

  Still, the louts puffed and chewed and spat. It should have mattered that he was older than them. It should have mattered that he was bigger too. It should have mattered that he was a father and an academic and that he was only trying to get to his car. It should have mattered that he was a person at all. It didn’t, though.

  The Young Louts laughed and taunted the father and his children; not with words, but with their demeanour. It was heinous. They didn’t laugh in any traditional sense; it was more so in the smug looks on their faces – a beastly swirl of mocking and menace.

  Graham wished he had the courage to just walk right through the middle. He wished he had the courage to do what any other man might do – one with a great deal more courage than him. He wished he could just walk right up to the biggest thug and punch him right in the face; knocking his head clean off and send a clear message to all the others.

  “Come on kids,” he said, trying to sound calm as if it were his plan all along. “We’ll walk around.”

  The other exit was a fair way away.

  As they walked back through the shops and took the long way round, Graham’s fear turned to burning hot shame. It curdled in his stomach and the more he thought about it, the more it steamed in his mind, scorching his face and casting a stony lump in the back of his throat where his beating heart had once been.

  No-one said a word; not Graham, not even the kids.

  By the time they got to the car, Graham’s thoughts had turned wicked and vengeful. As he gently buckled the kids into their booster seats, he imagined himself, over and over, confronting The Leader and saying something tough and smart like, “I’m not gonna ask you twice.”

  And he would have said it in such a way that The Leader would have folded like paper and scrunched up with the rest of his idiot friends on the ground and all the other shoppers would be clapping as he made his way to the car – even the mall security guard. Given a second chance, that’s exactly what he would do.

  “That was close, wasn’t it?” said Isabel, now that they were safe in the car. “Those bad guys probably would have done something if we didn’t get away.”

  “Should have just punched him, dad,” said Nathan. “That’s what I’d do.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. You’d be even more scared than dad.”

  “Would not.”

  “Would too.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You shut up.”

  “I said you shut up first. So shut up.”

  “Make me.”

  “Both of you, shut the fuck up!” said Graham.

  All that fear had worked its way out.

  “Sorry, dad.”

  “Yeah, sorry, dad,” said Nathan.

  Graham stared in his mirror for a good minute before starting the car. What kind of world was it where evil was allowed to run amok like that?

  “Who said anything about me being scared?” he said.

  No-one responded. It wasn’t the type of question that warranted one; especially with how he said it. Isabel was just happy to be out of harm’s way; for everyone’s sake. But there was no way she would mention it again. It was one thing her daddy being scared and it was another to make him angry. Besides, she had the best ever half unicorn, half Pegasus giant teddy bear that she had wanted her whole life; ever since she found out it existed twenty minutes ago.

  “For fuck’s sake,” said Graham as they left the carpark. “I forgot the fucking socks.”

  For the rest of the day, and especially as he lay his head on his pillow that night, Graham obsessed over what had transpired. And though to any sane person, it might have been nothing at all, to Graham, it was no such thing. It enraged him to be scared like that in front of his kids. More than that, it tortured him.

  “I should have done something,” he said, as his wife drew faces in her crossword.

  “What’s that?” she said, hearing only the sound of him talking.

  “Those assholes at the mall. I shouldn’t have bloody done something. I shouldn’t have just let them get away with acting like that.”

  “Are you still going on about that?” she said, clearly oblivious as to the magnitude of worry in her husband’s mind, and more so, to the heavy burden that came along with it.

  “They think I’m weak.”

  “Who? Those guys?”

  “Nathan and Isabel.”

  “They think no such thing. Don’t be daft. You’re their father, they worship you.”

  “I could have done something.”

  “I’m sure you could have.”

  “I should have done something.”

  “And we’re all glad that you didn’t.”

  “What, you don’t think I could?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “Well, that’s what it sounded like.”

  “Can we talk about something else?”

  Graham was on the very edge of the bed staring out the open door into the long dark corridor. In his head, The Young Louts were fifty feet tall. They had arms like railway carriages and they were no easier to stop. With his eyes shut on his pillow, he set upon them time and time again with savage blows and heroism. And he must have felled a dozen louts more than a dozen times each before it became clear that there was no way he would ever win this fight, not as long as it played out in his mind.

  Unless he did something about it, he would never sleep again.

  Track 3 (Yellow)

  Very few people slept well in their beds that night, but none as much as Graham. It’s not to say he was ever a sound sleeper just that tonight was unquestionably the worst night he had had in quite some time.

  Getting older had never really been an issue, or at least he hadn’t thought it had, until now that is. It was around one or two in the morning the first time he woke up, sweating profusely and gasping for air. Then again at three, three-fifteen, three thirty-two, four; and then every seven minutes or so until finally he pulled himself out of bed and stumbled towards the bathroom.

  He stood in front of the mirror, heaved over the bathroom sink, catching his breath. His heart beat as if he’d just run a marathon while beads of sweat dripped from his brow and collected with tears that ran down his cheek.

  “Who are you, old man?” he said quietly to his reflection. “I’ve seen you in times before. Is this – the face that greets me – the mask I always wore?”

  He wasn’t an old man – not by any measure - but he wasn’t a young man either; that ship had long since sailed. He was, by all accounts, halfway through the race and by the looks of him, his laces were still untied.

  The boy he thought he had been this whole time was somewhere under this man-sized fat suit, suffocating. He looked as if time had made him its bitch; as if life had been slapping him in the face each night as he slept.

  Graham stood there for maybe an hour never quite catching his breath, moving between sheer panic and quiet desperation. And the whole while, a single thought echoed in his head.

  “One day I’m not going to exist.”

  Track 4 (Red)

  “You look like shit,” said Isaac.

  “Yeah, well, one day you will too; just keep that in mind.”

  “Seriously, though, you look pasty. Are you alright?”

  “I’m fine,” said Graham.

  As he said that, he could feel his left knee, a haemorrhoid, and his right wisdom tooth flaring up. All three of them caused him a good amount of bother and a fair amount of pain. The older he got, though, the more liberal the definition of fine had become. These days, whatever the problem was, as long as nobody else made a fuss, he was fine.

  “So how did the school thing go?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Your son must’ve been proud.”

  Isaac, the younger of the two scientists, had the most stupendous smile on his face. He had the naïve wonder of a child, curious about everything that was far from his reach and out of his sight. He asked a million questions, and when he did, he had the face of a young boy desperate to grow up; in stark contrast then to Graham, who, after years of failed experiments and rejected papers, had started to look like an over-ripened fruit.

  “Ah, you know?” he said. “Kids.”

  He shrugged it off as if it were nothing.

  “Must be so good to have that.”

  “A son?”

  “The whole works; the wife, the kids, the dogs, and guinea pigs; someone to love you; someone to come home to – you know, a family.”

  His face was unspoiled as if he’d never had a moment of disappointment in his life. He looked like a young boy, dreaming of owning his first guitar.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” said Graham. “I love my family, but it’s hard work. You’re young, single, and still bloody fit – you should be mowing your own lawn, not losing sleep over mine. Trust me, before you know it yours will be overrun with weeds and you’ll be as old as balls too.”

  Isaac stood there smiling. It wasn’t a smug smile, but it was irritating.

  “What, you don’t think you’ll ever get old? You don’t think I wasn’t once like you? Young, dumb, and full of…”

  “We got the grant,” said Isaac.

  “What?”

  He still had that stupid smile, except now it could talk.

  “We got it,” he said. “We got the grant.”

  It took a second or two for the words to make sense.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” said Graham.

  His face was shaped like a mix of surprise and relief. He looked like a villain who had just sneezed his way out of handcuffs.

  “I’m serious,” said Isaac. “The approval came through. So, unofficially we got the green light. I’m pretty sure that’s what today’s meeting is all about. Dotting the I’s and crossing the t’s.”

  “I swear if you’re winding me up I’ll throw you off the mezzanine.”

  “Relax, old man. You can smile. Look at it this way, everything else may be going to shit, but at least we get to do science – right?”

  “Finally,” he said. “Something’s going right.”

  The two scientists stared in a quiet bliss at their surroundings. To call their office disorganised would be generous; the room was beyond a mother’s care. There were papers scattered on the floor, chalkboards stacked in the corners, and piles of folders sticking out of the floor like stalagmites. There was a smell too – like month-old meat, stuck beneath a fridge.

  “There’s a lot to do,” said Graham.

  “Yep.”

  “Have to contact all the test subjects.”

  “Yep”

  “And book in the fMRI.”

  “Yep.”

  “And the anaesthetist.”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re not gonna stop smiling, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  Finally, Graham let himself go. For the first time in a long time, he too smiled.

  The two walked the hallways with a renewed swagger. For Graham, he no longer felt the weight of his potential being dragged along like an anchor behind him. Unlike Isaac, whose curiosity was founded on a childlike want to discover, Graham was driven by a primitive need to prove himself – to his peers, his superiors, and his students; just as much as he did to his family, his father, and worst of all, to himself. The proof was as much about the science as it was his own ego.

  And so he walked with a swagger, the kind of heroes, marching to war. Though the hallways were empty, he imagined thousands of people jostling with each other just one look at as these extraordinary men as they set off on a quest for greatness. He imagined kisses being blown from windows, confetti raining down from the stairs, and roaring applause; the kind fit for Nordic gods and Korean pop sensations.

  “Take a seat, gentleman,” said The Rector. “Firstly, Graham, happy belated birthday. I meant to give this sooner but…”

  He handed him a small card and a present wrapped in a tea cloth.

  “I made it myself,” said The Rector. “I’ve been taking a seamstress course.”

  They all stared at the tea cloth, completely ignoring the gift inside. It looked as if it had been sewn in the dark. There was no specific pattern or order to any of the patches and there was no consistency to the sewing whatsoever. Some parts even looked glued. If schizophrenia were an object, it would be this tea cloth.

  “It’s an online course,” said The Rector. “It’s the future really. You can learn anything now. Last month I learned how to draw Disney princesses. Amazing! I just want to do all of them. So,” he said, “what do you think?”

  Graham smiled. He was a father after-all.

  “That’s a great effort,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “I wish I could do something like that.”

  The Rector smiled.

  “Go ahead and read the card,” he said.

  It was a poem.

  “It’s a poem,” said The Rector, proud as punch. “I wrote it myself.”

  Graham read the poem in his head. It was terrible. It reminded him of that time his son tried to draw an octagon. He said the same thing now as he said back then.

  “You’ve got a real knack there.”

  The Rector smiled.

  “I suppose you’ve heard the grant came through?” he said.

  The two scientists feigned surprise.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised; news travels fast around here; even when it’s not supposed to. Gossips galore; the lot of them.”

  “We have the funding?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yes you have the funding, but no, not for the whole experiment; at least not outright anyway. There are a few concerns from The Ethics Committee but on the whole…”

  “Oh fuck the committee; bunch of sensitive conservative stalwarts.”

  “And I couldn’t agree with you more but…”

  “Look, you’re scared of any blowback, I get it. But when we prove this theory…”

  “I’m not worried about your theory.”

  “Publishing then? It’s almost guaranteed. This is breakthrough science.”

  “Not the publishing. Well, yes the publishing, of course, it’s the whole point but...”

  He’d practiced this speech all day and it had gone swimmingly every time. Now, though, when it actually mattered, the way he felt was getting in the way of what he had to say. He wished life were as simple as a tea towel.

  “Do you intend to kill people?” he said.

  Now that he said it, he felt like he could say anything.

  “You make it sound like we’re recklessly endangering lives. We’re professionals. We’re scientists. Nobody is being killed. We’re not hitmen.”

  His itch, though, had not been scratched.

  “Let me be clearer,” he said.

  “Fine,” said Graham.

  “I’m asking so that I can defend you and your experiment to The Ethics Committee.”

  “I know,” said Graham. “And we’re grateful for that.”

  “Do people have to die for your experiment to work?”

  All he wanted was for the answer to be no.

  “I like to think of it as a controlled unresponsive state.”

  The Rector sat himself down before his legs could give way. He wasn’t an old man, even though he may have acted like it. What he wasn’t, though, was a traditionalist. He was fond of Graham in the same way that he was fond of stories about elves and pixies and other kinds of sprites that did magic in forests and lived on the inside of leaves and vivid imaginations.

  “You’re scared,” said Graham. “As you rightfully should be.”

  “You’re not making this any easier.”