“I’d like to introduce you to the esteemed Professor Emmanuelle Van Guarde.”

  The strange-looking man tipped his hat and then bowed in such a way that it seemed as if he ought to be showered with roses and deafening applause.

  “Charmed,” he said.

  Though he sounded as if he were thoroughly disgusted.

  “Professor Van Guarde will be responsible for bringing you all back from the dead, so to speak,” said Isaac.

  The participants all clapped. Some of them oohed and aahed. The Professor, though, ignored the adulation and instead turned to Isaac and spoke surreptitiously, “I trust all waivers have been signed?”

  Isaac had his copy of the document sitting in his lap. Truth was, he hadn’t the courage to bring it up. He was hoping that, like a rotting tooth, the problem would somehow sort itself out. How on Earth was he supposed to convince a group of people to sign a document that relinquished their rights to any civil or criminal prosecution should any harm or foul come to them? Should he be serious and consoling like an oncologist or a first responder, or should he tell a few jokes to lighten the mood? What if they said no? What if there was a revolt and a protest? What if the entire fate of the trial came down to this? What if the trial was shut down? What if Graham and The Professor were stood down?

  “Great things have been said of your potential,” said The Professor, leaning into Isaac’s ear.

  He got close enough so that Isaac could properly see his pendant. It was shaped like the tip of a small child’s finger if all that was left were the bone.

  “Lest not we err,” he said, “and come to mar such sweet remarks.”

  Isaac nodded.

  “I was just getting to that,” he said.

  Then he packed up his anxiety in a little box and stuck it deep in his belly

  “You can be sure that every precaution has been taken,” he said. “Every ‘I’ dotted. One does not achieve excellence being any less than excellent.”

  Then he held up his copy of the waiver and addressed the room.

  “Has everyone had a chance to read through the terms and conditions?”

  Everybody nodded their heads even though they hadn’t. Their heads wobbled back and forth in such spasmodic fashion, it was as if their spines were moulded from plasticine.

  “Are there any doubts?” said Isaac, feeling a breeze of relief blow against his skin.

  He was expecting to be bombarded with dozens of questions and at the very least, a handful of accusations. The risks involved were astounding. Each had, in a way, donated their living tissue to science. The participants, though, all smiled aimlessly as they shook their heads.

  “Ok,” said Isaac, surprised.

  Before he could say another word, The Professor swooped in with his binocular in one hand and small wooden stick in the other.

  “Open,” he said, forcing the stick into The Evangelist’s mouth.

  He wedged the man’s mouth open, forcing the stick down the back of his throat, humming the tune that was playing in the background – the oboe, clearly his favourite.

  “Please, to hold,” he said.

  His English was painted with a thick yet delicate stroke of French. His words sounded like colours, with every request like a work of art. The way he spoke, even the most appalling news would be heard as a blessing.

  The Evangelist remained entirely still as The Professor took a small camera from his waistcoat pocket and took dozens of photos of the old man’s uvula. And when he was done, he did the same to each of the participants, wedging their mouths open and prodding about inside. Then, without much ado, he stowed his tiny camera, took his cane and monocle, and quietly left the room, acknowledging nobody.

  “Ok then,” said Isaac. “I guess that’s it. Any last questions?”

  “Who gets to go first?” said one of the participants, an impoverished looking writer.

  Those eighteen dollars would definitely come in handy.

  “One of you will be chosen at random, and then once a week for the next six weeks if all goes well. And by that I mean if there are no administrative delays. As it is random, we do ask that you not travel, or if you do, to let either Graham or myself know in advance. Also, for the remainder of the trial if you can adhere to the diet outlined in the term and conditions.”

  The participants all looked blank.

  “So for the duration of your time, please refrain from any or all kinds of peppers and spices, and if possible, avoid sex and masturbation.”

  The old lady gasped.

  “How else am I supposed to get to sleep?” she said.

  Track 9 (Yellow)

  “Stop pacing around, Graham, you’ll wear a hole in the carpet.”

  He’d been restless since he got home; unable to sit still on his feet and in his thoughts. And though it should have been work causing him all this bother, there was something else crawling beneath his skin; something far more severe that as much as he tried, he couldn’t resist.

  “I was thinking,” he said, unsure how to start the conversation.

  “Yes,” said Mary. “And?”

  She had an armful of laundry in one hand and a handful of toys in the other. Graham, on the other hand, looked like a lost child with one hand on the edge of his enormous belly and the other pressed against his face as if he were hiding behind the very next thing he was about to say.

  Graham didn’t so much have butterflies in his stomach as much as he did a colony of feuding wasps. He wanted to tell her but he was afraid she wouldn’t understand. He wanted to tell her but he was afraid she would laugh. He wanted to tell her but he was afraid that she would say no.

  “If you were thinking about giving me hand; the thought counts, sure, but the effort goes a longer way.”

  She was only half-joking; the other half would bide its time.

  “I want to do Wu-Shun,” he said, bold and defiant.

  He hoped that was enough. He hoped she would drop everything and look at him as if in the morn he would set sail for war. It had already taken him so much just to muster those words; he wasn’t capable of giving her a reason why.

  “I’ve already made chicken,” she said, dumping the laundry onto the dining table and the handful of toys halfway up the stairs. “Nathan, come and pick up your crap,” she said. “Remember the rule, if it’s on the floor it goes in the….”

  The boy came running down the stairs.

  “No!” he shouted, jumping onto the pile of toys and scoping them under his body; shielding them as if they were helpless ducklings that he was protecting from a callous and savage wolf. “Don’t you dare throw them away.”

  “Well then don’t leave them dumped all over the bloody floor.”

  “I was using them.”

  “They’ve been lying around for a week.”

  “It’s not fair to just throw things away. They’re not even yours. They’re mine.”

  “They’re yours as long as they’re in your hands or in your toy chest. Anything left on the floor is mine to keep, sell, or throw away.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I can and I will.”

  “I won’t let you.”

  “Try me,” said Mary, making a pile out of Graham’s worn and oversized underwear.

  “It’s a martial art,” said Graham.

  He was still standing in the same spot, in the same way, with the same pale expression on his face; and those damn wasps had burrowed through his stomach and were setting fire to the back of his throat.

  “Mum and dad are coming over for dinner by the way. I’m pretty sure I told you. It might have slipped my mind. Can you give me a hand cleaning this place up?”

  “It’s just your mum and dad.”

  “Exactly, it’s my mum and dad. The best way to educate kids is by leading by example. The least we can do is make a little extra effort here or there. And yes, for my mum and dad.”

  “I can’t,” said Graham.

  “What do you mean you can’t? You can’t what?”

  “Nah, I mean I can’t be here.”

  “Whattaya mean you can’t be here? I had this planned for a week.”

  “Yeah but you only told me now.”

  “Well, that’s hardly my fault.”

  “Well, it’s hardly mine.”

  “You’re never bloody home, Graham. And even when you are, its work. So what is it this time?”

  “A class,” he said.

  “No, you don’t. You don’t teach on Tuesdays.”

  “No, not the university.”

  “You need to learn to put your foot down, you do. Stop letting them bully you around. If you should be doing favours for anybody at all it should be your bloody family, not that stupid Rectum.”

  “Rector,” said Graham.

  “I know what I said.”

  “It’s nothing to do with work.”

  “Well, then what? You don’t do anything else.”

  “It’s a martial arts school,” he said.

  “Marital what?”

  “Arts. Martial arts. It’s fighting.”

  “What do you want to go and do a thing like that for? People get hurt at places like those.”

  “Exactly,” said Graham. “That’s the whole point.”

  In his mind, he was imagining flying through the air like some seventies TV ninja, jumping down from a cloud and single-handedly disarming scores of trained assassins and making a small mountain out of their bruised and broken bodies, before calling for his cloud once more and vanishing in a gust of wind.

  “No,” said Mary. “You’re not doing any martial art. I mean, first of all, look at the state of you.”

  She was right. At best, he looked as if the exercise alone might kill him.

  “I have to go,” said Graham.

  “What do you mean you have to go? You don’t have to do anything. You have to be here is what you have to do.”

  “I already paid for the first class.”

  “With what money? You know we’re tight.”

  “Really? What about the money you borrowed off your folks.”

  “Bloody Nathan.”

  “What did we talk about borrowing money? You know I don’t like them involved in our affairs. Especially your father; he holds it over us like a fucking Mistletoe.”

  “Don’t swear.”

  “What did you borrow the money for anyway?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing,” said Graham. “Nothing is ever nothing. It has to be something.”

  “It’s not anything I want to talk about now.”

  “Well, that just makes it worse. We don’t need your dad’s help. I’ve got the bills covered.”

  “It’s not the bills.”

  ‘Well, then what it is? We’re supposed to be open, right? That’s what happily married people do. They talk. So, what is it?”

  “Nobody married is happy. That’s what being married is, having to deal with everybody else’s shit.”

  “Mum?”

  “Not now, Isabel.”

  “Mum.”

  “What’s up darlin,” said Graham, his tone blunt but considerate.

  “She’s fine,” said Mary. “She had a stomach bug this morning. Had the runs. You’ll be fine, Isa. Just keep drinking water and go lay down. You’ll sleep it off.”

  The girl had tears streaming down her face.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  She looked stiff and desiccated, incapable of walking or even swinging in a breeze. She stood, at the top of the stairs like a mangled tree; her body twisted into a wretched angle.

  “I pooed my pants,” she said.

  “Oh, Christ.”

  “I thought it was a fart.”

  The way she spoke, she might as well have stepped on a landmine and be uttering her last remarks; such was the severity in her tone – one of sheer helplessness. Her face carried all the hallmarks of having just given up.

  “I’m so sorry,” pleaded Mary, and at the same time holding back what she would describe as, a panic induced, wave of laughter. “I should have warned you, Isa. Oh, my poor girl. For the next twenty-four hours at least if you feel anything down there, you rush to the toilet, ok?”

  Graham was already halfway up the stairs.

  “I’ll take this,” he said. “Then I have to head off. I’m already late.”

  “What time are you home?”

  “Not sure. I’ll try not to be late. It’s the first class so I don’t know what to expect.”

  “I’ll save you some chicken then.”

  “Thanks, darlin. Love ya.”

  “Yeah? You better.”

  Then he turned to the scared little girl on the stairs.

  “You have to lift me,” she said.

  Track 10 (Blue)

  Isaac sat alone in his apartment, trying in vain to calm his mind. It was no use, though. It was like trying to quieten a hurricane by shouting over the top of it. He thought about everything that could go wrong, and from there, all the hell that would come of it. And it didn’t matter, either, how innocuous or trivial the problem might have been, he thought about each as if it were a plane crashing into the side of a mountain.

  Worst of all was the thought of not being published.

  “Now it’s your turn,” said The Man on the TV. “Won’t you paint with me?”

  Taking a deep breath, Isaac prepared little dollops of paint on his palette and sat quiet and attentive as the man on the television explained why he had pre-painted his canvas in a liquid white.

  Inside his apartment, there were barely any furnishings at all. The brutalist design left no space for art or décor. There were no paintings on the walls even though, at first glance, he seemed to be a man who appreciated - more than he admired - fine art and reverent culture. Yet the walls were bare and all the rest of his apartment was barren as if he hadn’t decided upon this kind of life yet.

  There was no furniture outside of the stool that he sat on and a futon in his bedroom. Even the television he had was meek. It was no bigger than a cereal box and no matter what he was watching; it looked as though it were being filmed in the middle of a blizzard.

  “So let’s start with some Alizarin Crimson,” said The Man on the TV.

  He made it sound so easy.

  “Careful, now, to spread the paint evenly through the bristles.”

  Isaac had no idea what he was going to paint. It both excited and worried him. He wondered if the man on the television felt the same way too. Seeing how nicely he swept his brush across the canvass, he didn’t at all seem bereft with worry, not like he ought to be – not like most folks were.

  “And don’t be put off if you leave a bit too much paint here or there,” said The Man on the TV, sounding as if nothing in life was worth getting upset about. “Well, they’re just happy little accidents.”

  Isaac cursed when he said that. His canvas was full of little accidents and none of them were happy or merry or brought any kind of joy. Try as he might, he just couldn’t see the world the same way.

  So, while The Man on the TV slowly unravelled a sprawling paradise, hidden in a Prussian Blue mist, Isaac swished his brush across his canvass in almost a trance-like state, at first adding a touch of shadow to a sprawling mountainside and then, overcome away by thoughts of loneliness, isolation, and failure, he vigorously painted the whole thing black.

  “Isn’t that just the prettiest thing you’ve ever seen,” said The Man on the TV. “I’ll confess I say that about everything I paint, but it’s true, though. None of it’s a lie. I just love to paint as much as I love a good cuddle with my wife and a kiss on the nose by itsy bitsy puppy dogs.”

  Isaac could feel his anxiety swarming – painting would not do the trick. He stared at his phone. There was a message from a girl he had only just met. Her profile didn’t give much away, only that she was grateful to God for her health and all her success.

  Isaac had never been on a date. He would, though, like the man on the television, like to be married so he too could cuddle his wife and gets tonnes of slobbery kisses from the puppies they raised while they waited to have children.

  “You busy?” the message read.

  He had no idea what to respond. He’d never felt this scared in his life. He tried to imagine himself as the cool protagonist in all of the romantic comedies he had seen – the same debonair and nonchalance he felt when he watched them. Real-life, though, was so much more different.

  “Hey,” he responded, wishing there was a handbook for this kind of thing. “My name is Isaac. It’s nice to meet you. I’m a research scientist. What do you do?”

  “That’s it, don’t be scared,” said The Man on the TV. “Just get in there and see what happens. You know, painting is a lot like life in that way.”

  “Motel on Arlington,” she responded. “Meet me at the church across the street. Thirty minutes.”

  “Now, just a dash of Sap Green,” said The Man on the TV, amazed at how easy it was all coming together, seemingly with no effort at all.

  Isaac assumed she wanted to have sex, but then again, what if he was wrong?

  “???????” her next message read.

  “You see what it does to the leaves?” said The Man on the TV, amazed by the texture of such a simple stroke. “It just gives the tree this wonderful colour and a whole new life. I bet all sorts of critters are getting about on the branches and the leaves.”

  “Fuck it,” said Isaac, thrusting himself into that swirling vortex. “Ok,” he wrote.

  And that was it; he had a date.

  “I like to look inside,” said The Man on the TV as Isaac rushed about his apartment frantically. “And I like to pretend that all my little friends live there; tucked away, nice and safe.”

  Graham, too, was rattling his own tin of nerves and excitement. And as he stared at himself in the mirror, dressed in a white kimono, he felt, for the first time in his life, like an actual hero.

  A gong was struck and an almighty crash echoed through the dojo.

  “Come, my students,” said The Master in a wise and noble tone. “Sit before me and let us utter the creed and give, not just our oath, but our entire selves to the spirits of Wu-Shun. Seat yourselves, as a leaf upon a pond, or a flea upon the wisping seed of a dandelion. Gather your attention as dust, adrift in the sea of conscious being. Gather your spirit and repeat after me.”