After brushing the flakes of dead leaf from the damp knees of his jeans, he straightened up and grinned awkwardly. The butterfly capsule had elongated itself to encompass Dentressangle, who was now swatting irritably at the insects. Loofah glanced quickly to the side; the nearest slug—thankfully almost invisible through the blizzard—was a few feet beyond the capsule wall, crawling steadily away to its date with destiny—a destiny that he must share.
'Actually, Norbert, I wasn't really praying,' said Loofah, 'I was looking for something. Um, a contact lens—yes, that's it, I've dropped a contact lens.'
The Frenchwoman brushed an unkempt lock from her face and raised a quizzical eyebrow.
'My glasses? Oh, those are cosmetic, just for show.' Loofah grinned again. The ominous hum was pulsing up through the soles of his shoes and, as his shock slowly subsided, the implications of his new predicament were beginning to materialise, towering behemoths of doom that now loomed out of the mental fog.
'Anyway, don't let me keep you. I'll just look around a bit more.'
'If you have lost something, my friend, then naturellement I shall be assisting you in the recherche,' said Dentressangle.
'There's no need, really. I can manage perfectly well and I'm sure you've got better things to do.'
The Frenchwoman smiled quickly. 'Ah, but what is a friend being for if not to be helping out in the times of necessity. I shall search the ground right ici.'
As she lowered herself to the ground, teetering slightly on her scuffed high heels, the hem of her tiny dress rode up her thigh to expose a crescent of ivory skin above a black stocking top.
'But Norbert,' protested Loofah, 'You'll spoil your lovely clothes.'
'Pah!' said Dentressangle, now on her hands and knees, 'What carings have I for the haute couture?'
Not without a tinge of sadness, Loofah saw that she was as good as her word. For the black velvet dress was crumpled and had a large stain down the front, her left stocking was laddered above the knee, and her hair—honey blonde this time, although with dark roots showing—looked like a red kite's nest. Her face, drained and pale under her faded make-up, spoke of an edgy vulnerability, as of an overworked night-club hostess at the end of her tether.
'I've just had a thought,' he said, 'I think perhaps I might have left it at home, after—.'
'Aiee!' cried the Frenchwoman, picking something with precision care from under a piece of moss. Then she jumped to her feet and held up an open hand, grinning with girlish delight.
'See! I have found it! Yet once more, your chère amie has come à vôtre rescue!'
As Loofah bent down to squint at the tiny dish of lensed plastic on her upturned palm, his focus faltered, slipping past her nicotine stained fingers onto the soft hemispheres of her gently heaving chest beyond. A deadly tendril of warmth coiled at the base of his skull and he shook his head quickly.
'Sorry, Norbert,' he said, 'But that one's not mine.'
Dentressangle's happy face crumpled like a burst balloon.
'Pas le vôtre?' she said, in a small voice.
'Different prescription entirely—could cause serious visual impairment if worn by the wrong person.'
Her lower lip trembled briefly, but she forced a brave smile.
'And that would not be good, not good at all,' she said, 'For without les yeux in the perfect order of travail how will you be searching for…?'
Their eyes met significantly. Then she sidled towards him through the fluttering insect mist; Loofah gritted his teeth, steeling himself for the soft caress of hands sliding under his jacket. The challenge, however, never came.
'I think perhaps I was in the wrong position,' she said, 'I will look over here.'
As she again went down onto her knees, another delightful flash of bare thigh shivered through his flesh and Loofah tore himself away. The butterfly blizzard seemed to be thickening and he could only just make out the slug, twenty feet away now, sliding out of sight into a shallow dip in the forest floor. His teeth vibrated with the low hum and a little grub of fear began wriggling maniacally in the growing pool warm honey.
'Actually you can forget about the lens,' he said, struggling to keep the quaver out of his voice, 'I—er—don't need it any more.'
'I do not comprends,' said Dentressangle, looking up, 'Surely, without the vingt-vingt vision you will not be able to be finding—.'
'But my eyes have got better—just now in fact, quite suddenly.' She stared at him blankly. 'It's hard to believe, isn't it? A spontaneous remoulding of the visual cortex, something previously unknown to medical science.' Loofah grinned like a fundamentalist acolyte and swept off his glasses in a dramatic gesture. 'See?—perfect eyesight. It's a miracle, an ophthalmological miracle.'
He blinked, peering out into a now completely impenetrable fog.
'Actually,' he went on, sheepishly replacing his spectacles, 'it might be better to keep these on after all. The newly healed corneal surfaces are a little delicate and we don't want any butterfly damage, do we?'
For a moment the Frenchwoman appeared to be nonplussed. Then, with a shrug, she smiled.
'My friend, I congratulate you on your bon fortune,' she said, struggling to her feet, 'I will be cancelling forthwith my party of the search.'
'That's right,' said Loofah, cheerfully, 'No point in wasting any more of your valuable time—I'm sure you've lots of important things to do.'
'I most certainment have. Choses such as—' with a sultry smile, she sidled closer and a swarm of hot flatworms slithered quickly over Loofah's skin '—such as helping my friend to be finding—la femme double.'
The grub of fear convulsed, expanded suddenly and began to devour his colon.
'To be frank, that's not quite what I had in mind.'
Her smile sank into a puddle of disappointment.
'You see, as a woman you might not understand, but there are some things a man must do alone.'
She started, with a sudden blaze of cold horror in her tired eyes.
'Oh, I don't mean looking for her,' Loofah went on, struggling to reassure, 'It's just that a lot has happened to me recently, what with the eye miracle and everything. I just need some space, a bit of quality solo time, to be with myself, to be with the woods, the trees—.'
'You are sending me away!' cried Dentressangle, bursting into tears.
A stab of guilt and Loofah winced; but the grub was growing quickly, feasting on his innards—and beyond the white capsule the black circle was getting steadily smaller.
'Not sending you away, Norbert, just asking you to go.'
'It is because I have lost the little tin, is it not?'
'Tin? What tin?'
'I will get you an autre one, I promise, and then I will be shining your shoes until they are like mirrors on the ends of your legs.'
Loofah glanced down. For a moment the grub was quiet and he was held by a perfect reflection in the scuffed fawn leather, of round thighs, of pale flesh and of lace knickers nestling in the warm darkness.
'Oh,' he said, looking up, 'You mean you haven't got Dudley.'
Dentressangle sniffed and nodded sadly. On the whirling butterfly screen behind her he saw a lethal surgeon lifting the glittering blade of her scalpel, ready to strike, and a lingerie-clad temptress with molten flatworm flesh.
'I knew you would be angry avec me and I am very, very sorry.'
It could have been her, it could have been the other one. But even as this thought was settling into his grey matter, more images appeared—of a sultry beauty in a fur coat, of a nurse, and of an Olympian huntress—sliding across the shimmering bank of insect fog towards their sisters, then blending into them, fusing into a single deadly blur—which Loofah quickly saw was indistinguishable from the present incarnation. The other one? he thought, only half understanding his own question, What other one?
'It's alright, Norbert,' he said, 'It doesn't matter about Dudley, it doesn't matter in the slightest.'
'You are not angry?'
'There's really nothing to angry about.'
'So I can be staying with you? I can be helping you to find La Demoiselle des Deux Visages?'
She gazed up at him with tear-stained supplication and again he felt himself slipping slowly into the sticky pool. But he also felt the vibration, now reverberating with a fresh urgency. Loofah shook his head.
'It's not fair!' sobbed the distraught Frenchwoman, 'How can you be so pitiless, so cruel to one who is seulement wanting to be your dear friend?'
The blizzard wall thinned briefly; on the forest floor, far away now, a curved line of shiny black dots moved inexorably onwards. The grub went into sudden spasm and Loofah's brain squirmed like a tortured toad.
'Well, I won't go be going away, you cannot be making me!'
In desperation, Loofah saw one last tack to try. 'Alright, Norbert, you win,' he said, 'You can help me find the double woman.'
Dentressangle looked up, a flame of hope flickering through the misery.
'You will let me come with you?' she said, 'We can be finding her—together?'
Loofah nodded in affirmation. 'Yes, Norbert. But to prepare myself for the quest—spiritually, as it were—I do just need a short time alone. After that, we will go and find her—together.' He wriggled uncomfortably before forcing out the final two words. 'I promise.'
The Frenchwoman wiped her tears away and smiled.
'Then I go.'
Loofah sighed quietly as the balm of relief flooded through him, cooling his overheated brain, and soothing the stab wound of his guilt.
'But first a little kiss.' The cooling flow froze solid.
'A kiss?' he whispered.
'To be sealing our promise, nothing more.'
As she came towards him, a predatory succubus looming out the blizzard, Loofah flinched away.
'Do not be the silly-billy-goat,' she said with a smile, 'A little peccadillo on the cheek from une amie Platonique—what is to be afraid of?'
Loofah looked again and saw the smeared mascara, the tear-puffy eyes, and behind the smile vulnerability and fear. The succubus was gone, and so with a shrug he offered his cheek and waited as her face came in through the lepidopteran snowstorm to penetrate the envelope of aroma that still clung to him like the geranium-scented atmosphere of a man shaped planet—.
Everything stopped: 'geranium,' repeated a small voice in the unearthly silence, lobbing the word into his consciousness like a hand-grenade.
A long moan of naked desire echoed his ears and what felt like a thousand frenzied hands pulled at his jacket and his tee-shirt. Her hot breath melted into the skin of his face, blending into the warm syrup that trickled through his flesh. He seized a wrist, wrenched it away and tried unsuccessfully to twist out of her grip.
'Let me go, Norbert, please let me go!' Loofah cried into the whirlwind, knowing that only the butterflies would hear.
He towed her, stumbling blindly into the whirling whiteness. For the blizzard had become a white-out—there was nothing now except the struggling Frenchwoman and a small circle of forest floor. Yet under the roar of flapping wings he could still hear it, the ominous drum-roll hum, and he knew that beyond the tornado a ring of glossy black teardrops was shrinking by the minute. In his struggles with the Frenchwoman he had lost sight of the great molluscs but he could feel the circle closing, like a hangman's noose around his neck.
'Ici!' cried Dentressangle, hardly coherent, 'We must do it ici!'
Something slipped in between the white noise and the hum—it could have been voices. Then arms coiled around his neck and her pleading moan blotted out all other sound. Loofah started to untangle himself but his hand closed over a breast; she gasped and a hot shudder trembled through him. His palm fused into her giving flesh—but as the sticky-sweet paralysis was creeping up his arm he saw the Alsatian glaring sternly out the whiteness and, gritting his teeth, tried to push her away.
'No! No!' she wailed.
Something like a man's shout echoed out the blizzard, then a stockinged thigh squeezed between his legs, pumping hot honey into his groin. Loofah winced, and with a surge of panic-strength at last managed to wrench himself free and lunge away from her—but quickly stumbled to a halt, blinded by the throbbing whiteness. Spinning around like an amphetamine-crazed dervish, he punched frantically at the swirling walls, while scouring what little he could see of the forest floor for mollusc or slime-trail. But he knew it was hopeless—somewhere out there the circle was closing without him; it was all over, finished. His bellow of despair thudded to nothing against the impenetrable insect blanket and when the Frenchwoman again seized him he did not resist but let himself be pulled round into her fierce embrace, staring blankly over her shoulder as her probing hands found their way under his tee-shirt.
Suddenly his despair convulsed like a spider-stabbed flatworm and died. For there, at the edge of the small pool of visible ground behind Dentressangle, was a pair of glossy black shapes, each trailing a ribbon of silver across the dry leaves.
'Yes! Yes! Now I am having you,' moaned an urgent voice.
Loofah was breathing hard and fast, staring at the slowly advancing rim. Three steps, three small steps, and he would be inside it. Hands slithered over his belly like a pair of eager planarians, their velvet touch blending into the growing pool of honey. Though if it was just three steps for him, it was also just three steps for her and then, when the double woman appeared…
'I shall have what I am desiring,' hissed the Frenchwoman, wrapping a leg around his and clutching for his belt, 'You cannot ârretes me!'
But of course it wasn't only the platyhelminth official who had a pathological aversion to the shell-less gastropods, was it? Loofah's body tensed, humming like a violin under her soft caress.
'Now!' she cried, 'You must do it right now!
Somewhere outside the fog, a man spoke then a woman cried out.
'Very well, Norbert,' he said quietly, 'Now it is.'
In the spilt second of her surprise, he dashed her hands away, barged her unceremoniously out of the way and leapt towards the molluscan barrier. The roar of flapping wings rose to a quick crescendo then fell away. At the circle's edge Loofah hesitated briefly in a strange electric silence—the omnipresent hum could have been his own blood pulsing in his skull—and then stepped over the arc of glistening invertebrates into the fateful Ring. As he tried to immerse himself in the full significance of the event, however, the portentous moment was shattered by a woman's scream ripping through the insect fog, followed by another directly behind him—he spun round to see the distraught Frenchwoman lunging down a butterfly-walled corridor towards him.
'Norbert! Look!' shouted Loofah, pointing at the ground, as a man's yell echoed from behind.
Dentressangle screeched to a halt, nearly toppling forward onto advancing rim of slime, with naked fear blasting the lust from her face.
Almost but not quite, for Loofah saw that behind the mask of terror embers of the desperate fire still smouldered. Instead of fleeing into the woods she stood transfixed in front of the molluscan barrier that separated them.
'It's slugs, Norbert,' said Loofah, interrupting another's voice, 'You know you don't like slugs.'
Her whole body shivered at the sound of the word. She went to step back, but then stopped, staring down at the dreaded invertebrates with her face twisting and writhing as desire and terror wrestled to the death across its surface.
Hardly daring to breathe, Loofah started to edge away from her, taking his envelope of aroma with him. A few feet, that's all it needed, then the bonds would be broken and she would be away into the woods, driven only by her loathing of the slugs. But as he crept slowly backwards, he noticed a change in the white walls of his prison—for the butterflies were now streaming steadily out from behind his back and were flowing in white rivers towards the hesitant Frenchwoman, pulling binding tendrils of the deadly scent in their gentle air-stream.
'You treacherous little shits!' he hissed, batting impotently at the fluttering battalions.
But the damage had already been done. After a couple of tentative sniffs, the Frenchwoman inhaled deeply, drinking in the perfumed power. Freshly invigorated, lust fought with new strength across her face. Fear tried to hold its ground—she glanced nervously at the advancing arc of molluscs—but the struggle was unequal and was soon over. For a second, for a long and terrible second, she gazed at Loofah down the lepidopteran tunnel with a surging frenzy in her mad eyes—then she charged forward and with a gazelle's leap cleared the dreaded barrier.
'You see? There is nothing, absolutely rien, that can be keeping me from having what is mine!' cried the triumphant Dentressangle, seizing the front of Loofah's jacket and pressing herself against him.
Loofah groaned with dismay. He knew then that his last defence had been breached, that the enemy was inside the citadel itself.
'Come, my sweet one, let us be doing what must be done.'
As her anaconda arm slid around his neck, bells of doom echoed through the swirling whiteness, and as she clamped the hot wet gash of her mouth over his, a yawning abyss opened to swallow him up. But as the slug of her tongue coiled around his own unresisting organ in a molluscan mating dance, a rumbling porcine voice bubbled up through the cold mud of his despair: 'You're forgetting what you've been told, dear boy—the Four-Legged Filly will only take chaps'.
The abyss snapped shut and the bells were muffled to silence by the insect fog; indeed he had forgotten—so all was not lost after all. And it was then, at this very moment of renewed hope, that Dentressangle tightened her octopus grip and moaned into Loofah's mouth. A sudden pulse resonated through the liquid air, hammering into his bowels. For there had been another moan, a faint echo of hers—and if there had been a moan, then there must be a moaner.
Peering out over the lust-racked landscape of the Frenchwoman's face, Loofah saw that the insect blizzard had thinned directly around them and had now formed a dense white wall that cut directly across the diameter of the inexorably closing circle. As he watched, the swirling surface formed a naked figure which was rotating mechanically like a musical box ballerina, gazing out blankly from each of her two frozen alabaster faces. She was there, he was certain of it, on the other side of the wall. His heart stopped, then began to hammer maniacally against his rib-cage—this was it, this was really it.
Caught for a fraction of a second in the lighthouse beam of the dead-eyed stare, he felt a surge of sudden power and, spitting out the Frenchwoman's probing tongue, he pushed her violently away. She staggered backwards, stumbled on a high-heel and with a cry of outraged frustration fell across the dry leaves in the front of the advancing rank of slugs.
Loofah turned from his sprawling enemy and started towards the wall of insects. Before he gone three paces, however, an echoed scream tore through the air like a pair of artillery shells, one coming from behind his back, the other from behind the white wall, and the double-faced mirage exploded, shattering into a million butterfly wing fragments. He hesitated, staring into the empty whiteness—then Dentressangle screamed again.
She had scrambled to her feet and was backing away from the advancing arc of black Leviathans. Breathing hard, she was choking on sobs of terror that echoed strangely from behind his back. Having lured her into the ring, the butterflies seemed to have lost interest in keeping her enveloped in the intoxicating aroma. Now shorn of the well-spring of its power, the once triumphant lust had weakened and collapsed under a crushing blitzkrieg of slug-inspired fear.
'A trap, it is a trap. Encerclé par les—.' She shuddered into silence, then turned to face him. 'You have tricked me, somehow you have tricked me into this cercle terrible—but how?' Then comprehension flickered across her face. 'Of course—the funny parfum. An ancien trick—I have used it myself. How could I be so stupide?' For a moment her anger seemed to falter and her haunted eyes glinted with tears. 'You are thinking that you have been très clever, yes?' she went on, 'betraying your old amie in this way. Well, peut-être you have not been so clever after all.'
With this she threw her head back, her muscles tensed and her whole body started to tremble. Was she ill, thought Loofah, or just upset? Her jaw clenched and unclenched, and she began to grunt as if straining against intractable constipation. No, he had seen her like this before, and it wasn't anything to do with emotional trauma or recalcitrant bowels. Her eyes rolled back into her head and foamy saliva dribbled over her chin. He knew what came next: her skin would melt, the velvet dress would coagulate into jelly-bodied flatworms, and in a few seconds she would be a…
Yet again the pig's portentous words echoed through his skull, their implications exploding into clarity with the destructive force of a nuclear depth charge—for once she had become a he, the Frenchman would be able to snatch the elusive double-woman from Loofah's grasp.
He was on her before she knew what was happening.
'No! No!' she screamed, trying to push him away and pummelling his chest with her fists, 'Let me go!'
But he held her and wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her in the slug-skin sleeves of his jacket—and in the lethal aroma of his floral after-shave. Holding her breath, she made a final effort—her face contorted and her flesh seemed to squirm under his hands—but he tightened his grip until her cheeks went blue and her eyes began to bulge, and at last she inhaled.
'No! I am Norbert Dentressangle, I will resist!' she gasped, sucking in the tainted air, 'Your mauvais magic will not be working again!'
He could feel her determination crumbling like solid oak timbers eaten out from inside by the hungry termite molecules of the baleful scent. The tension in her body changed and her fists ceased to pummel.
'I will never give in!' she hissed, 'Jamais! Jamais!'
She pressed her face close to his and dug sharp fingernails into his ribs. Her body was against him, writhing like a captured eel, and in her crazed eyes the pale fire burned again, reignited.
'It is no good,' she said, in a stereophonic purr, 'You cannot win, you will never be defeating me.'
Then she pressed her mouth over his, driving her tongue between his lips. He felt her warm wetness slide over his face and body in a rolling wave, and a gout of sweet stickiness spurted down his spinal canal. He tensed, ready to push her away—but knew he could not risk freeing her from the perfumed cage of his embrace. As the full spectrum of his dilemma began to open up before him like the ghastly vista of some blighted land, his hand—propelled by a will that was not his own—slid down over the crumpled velvet of her dress, soaking up the thrilling tensions of her writhing back and buttocks.
'You think that you have me trapped,' she murmured, pulling her mouth free, 'But you do not—for I am trop fort for you, much too strong.'
The voice from behind the wall: when she spoke he had heard it again, shimmering through the incessant roar of insect wings—the woman was there, waiting for him. As he tried desperately to corral the scattered herd of his thoughts, she kissed him for a second time, and the spurt of sweetness became a flood. He fought against it, staring wild-eyed over her face into the swirling whiteness, but then snake hands slithered under his jacket and a spasm of panic convulsed him; he lost balance and teetered forward two steps, two steps closer to the pulsing whiteness.
'It is hopeless, hopeless.' The voice came again, slicing through the ominous hum, so close and yet so far. 'You have lost, admit it. You may as well be giving up.'
Never! screamed a third voice in his head, gurgling incoherently through the sticky wetness. Fumbling blindly through the slime, his trembling fingers closed over a fibril of steel. But even as he pulled tight on this last vestige of his will, he felt his hand—fifth columnist that it was—slide up her thigh. The synthetic mesh of nylon gave way to warm flesh and the high-tensile metal softened then melted in his grip while his palm fused to her flesh and his arm became an umbilicus, pumping hot honey from her body into his.
'There is nothing you can be doing, absolutement nothing.' A hand slid over his belly, fumbling at the front of his jeans. Somewhere in his head an Alsatian barked and a pale deer pushed an urgent memorandum into his cerebral in-tray. 'You are in my power, utterly and complètement.' A klaxon sounded, but far away, muffled by the heavy throb that pulsed through the warm stickiness. 'You are mine now, and tu sais it.' A tremor in his groin as a zip was wrenched open. 'Surrender, it is tout you can be doing.' Something willed his hand to move and it did—sliding further up her thigh, devouring her hot flesh like a hungry flatworm.
'Resistance is useless,' moaned a voice in his ear and from behind the swirling bank of whiteness, as urgent fingers closed around the hard core of his soul. A man's cry echoed in the pulsing air and again he overbalanced, stumbling closer to the baleful wall of butterflies.
'Oui! Oui! Oui! You cannot escape!' Balancing on one leg, she wrapped the other around his back, holding him tight against her. Somewhere in the swirling stickiness a little animal's head appeared and squeaked a desperate warning, but its voice was swamped by roar and rush. Loofah stumbled forward, a three legged beast, nearly overbalancing as she twisted into position.
'Yes!' cried the double voice, 'I have you, you are mine!' Then she swallowed him like a fish into the hot sleeve of her nether oesophagus and the air throbbed like a cardiac ventricle pumping blazing liquid through his flesh. He cried out, raging against the storm, but the rolling tidal wave broke over him and he was lost.
'Ah! Ah! Ah!' echoed the swirling waters as they crashed rhythmically against his pelvis. He must fight, he must fight. Taloned nails clawed into his flesh and a woman screamed in his ear. Her thrusting weight heaved against him; he staggered backwards, then forwards towards the swirling bank of insects.
'I nearly have it, I nearly have it! You cannot be stopping me now!' Loofah fought for control, bracing his legs against the ground, against the writhing mass of the frantic woman. He caught his balance, and peered desperately into the boiling roar of colour and sound. The semi-circle of giant molluscs was closing against the white wall, now just inches away from the pumping back of the frenzied Frenchwoman. And shining off a million glossy wings, he saw their reflection: a woman clasped about a man in insane desperation, her black velvet dress rucked up over her thrusting buttocks.
He stared into his reflected face, contorted as if by torture, and tried to fix himself into the bespectacled eyes as the whirlpool roared around him. The two women screamed and the reflection shuddered as a curtain of butterflies closed behind his back. The white wall between them was now thinning rapidly—and yet strangely, he noticed, the reflection did not dim.
And then the roar was million miles away; the whirlpool whirled, but at the edge of time. Loofah's soul convulsed and liquid nitrogen flooded his veins.
'La victoire est la miene!' cried a pair of distant voices.
For a nanosecond all was still; there was nothing now but his own face, staring at him across three feet of liquid air. The wall was gone, the butterflies now forming a bell-jar of fluttering white that enclosed him both, with its base on the steadily closing ring of molluscs. The liquid nitrogen was blended with molten steel, coursing through Loofah's arteries, screaming joy and terror into every cell of his body.
'Qu'est-ce—aah!—que—aah!—c'est?' The passion-racked Frenchwoman seemed to sense something. She turned—just as the woman opposite turned—to look over her shoulder. For a full second the two identical women stared at each other in blank incomprehension, then the two bodies convulsed and a gasping cry shredded the pulsing air. In Loofah's groin a cobalt bomb exploded into an expanding sphere of white heat.
'Non! Non! It cannot—aah!—it cannot—aah—be!' Her voice crescendoed into a scream and her juddering body twisted suddenly in Loofah's grip. He staggered and with another cry she pushed at his chest. For a moment he teetered—the nuclear sphere was expanding with the speed of light, obliterating all before it—then the swirling mass rocked insanely as balance slipped away and he tumbled forward.
The two women collided back to back and—as if their flesh were molten wax—fused. For the beat of a mosquito's heart she was there: a single being with four legs and four arms, her one body shuddering in uncontrolled spasms, her two faces convulsed by terror and ecstasy, hovering for a scintilla of existence inside the swirling white bell-jar and the tightening noose of black tear-drops. Then, yowling into the swirling roar, she fell backwards, disappearing into herself, and as she fell she pulled him forward and he too fell, tumbling straight into the one who was himself, and into the white heat light of atomic oblivion.