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1st May 2026

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Chapter 1 

(In which things go downhill very, very rapidly) 

For Denholm Oz, Tuesday 14th March was marked by three important discoveries. In fact, all three of these discoveries were linked to each other by the supreme laws of cause and effect, shunting into each other like a succession of rear-end collisions on the M6. If he had not stumbled on the first discovery, he quite likely would never have bumped into the second, or indeed have face-planted directly into the third. One might say luck was guiding him in the direction of fate — that is, if luck was a twenty-stone ex-bouncer called Painstick — for each discovery would prove to be even more devastatingly earth-shattering than the last.
  Upon hearing the first discovery, a natural reaction might be to cry “How could anything be worse than that?”, in which case the reader is perhaps unfamiliar with Megadrick’s* Fourteenth Law, which is like Sod’s Law (or Murphy’s Law, if you must), but far less rose-tinted. The law states, quite pithily, that, “Things can always get much, much, much worse. So much worse, in fact, that you would rather have your toenails extracted through your eyeballs than succumb to whatever cruel machinations fate has in store.”
  And so it was Denholm was, unbeknownst to him, hurtling at light speed in the general direction of a destiny greater than he could possibly have imagined, and a truth he, in hindsight, would probably have rather not stumbled upon, at least until after he had finished his cup of tea.
  Putting the kettle on was the first thing he did upon returning home. It was more a force of habit than an actual desire to drink tea, though was unusual in the sense that on this day it was during his work lunch break. Going home at this time was in fact something he rarely did. But today, he had a plan. He grinned with self-satisfaction as he watched the steam piping out of the top of the kettle. It was a good plan. He was going to take his wife, Sally, out to lunch.
  “You there, love?” he called out for the second time. He’d expected her to be sitting at the pine breakfast table reading one of her crime novels. He was already picturing the glowing look on her face as he extended his invitation.
  Outside, in their diminutive garden, a sparrow was hopping restlessly between the branches of a rose bush. The sky was pasty, with ragged, tepid clouds stretched thin, hanging low against the tops of the houses that butted against the back of his own.
  He frowned, nodded to the still-dry teabag in his mug as if to say “I’ll be back in a moment,” and marched up the stairs. He opened the door to the bedroom only to be confronted by the sight of Huw climbing out of the window, jeans still unbuckled and checkered shirt grasped in his hand.
  It may be helpful to explain who Huw was: Huw was Denholm’s identical twin brother — the word identical being used here strictly in the medical sense — because he was about as different from Denholm as an identical twin could be. It was, one would be forgiven for assuming, as if Huw had leeched all of the good genes and nutrients away from Denholm in the womb. Not only did he have more hair and a naturally better physique, but he was also more confident, more charismatic, more—
  “What the bloody hell are you doing here?” Sally called out from the bed, red-faced (through anger and the remnants of physical exertion, not embarrassment), clutching the quilt covers.
  “What am I doing here?” Denholm stammered.
  “Don’t you know you should knock before entering a bedroom?” Huw added, still half-hanging out of the window. “It’s my bedroom!” Denholm cried, exasperated, his head swivelling between his twin brother and his wife.
  The conversation didn’t improve from there, and ended up with Denholm lugging two hastily-filled cardboard boxes out to his car. In one box, his prized record collection, and in the other, his near-complete first edition set of the fantasy novels The Wingborn Fallacies. Nothing else in the house, he realised with a furrowed brow, really mattered to him anymore.
  He pondered going back to work, to sit at his desk at the Environment Agency where he was a team leader in the Groundwater Taskforce. The day would’ve dribbled along just like every day did, punctuated perhaps by Mandy from Hazardous Secretions bringing in a box of Mr Kipling’s Bakewell tarts. If it was an especially good day, he might also chance upon an email from Bert over in Agricultural Runoffs, in which he would share a side-splitting environmental protection-related joke. Yesterday’s had been: 

  “What do you get if you cross arsenic and the water table?”
  “Cancer.” 

  No, he didn’t go to the office. If he had, his part in this whole thing would have ended right there. Instead, egged on by destiny, cajoled by the velvety tongue of inevitability, he turned down High Street and parked outside Ghetto Records.
  How Ghetto Records managed to stay in business in the hitherto insignificant, unremarkable town of Wallop was something of a mystery. Most of the troglodytic townsfolk thought that vinyl was just something that they made floors out of. Far from being the usual target market of a record shop, the closest they might come to ‘culture’ was picking at the yeast growing between their toes. Denholm, for one, could barely remember ever seeing another customer in the shop when he visited, which was at least once a week.
  It was by all accounts a terrible record shop, so much so that it was once voted Second Worst Record Shop in Great Britain. It had been pipped to the post by Barry’s Record Shop of Reepham, Norfolk, which had, it turned out, been a front for a devil worshipping death cult. Of its multiple offenses, Ghetto Records was cluttered and unnavigable. To say it was badly organised would imply that someone had at some point attempted to organise it, which would be a sorely misplaced assumption.
  None of this much bothered Smutty, who was perched on a high bar stool behind the counter smoking a hand-rolled cigarette and squinting at a music magazine through his thick- rimmed glasses. He was wearing his usual uniform of leather jacket, torn T-shirt and baggy jeans, attached to which were several chains that jangled whenever he moved. Tattoos poked out at the wrists where his sleeves ended. He nodded silent approval as the sermon-like intro of Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads kicked off on the ancient-but-excellent speaker system.
  Denholm squeezed between the two columns of record- filled boxes that compressed the width of the entrance by at least half. The familiar smell — a heady mix of dust, damp, and tobacco — welcomed him inside like a cocoon. Although he hadn’t quite realised it, the shop was perhaps the closest thing to a home that he had ever known.
  “Alright, Smutty?” he asked, for a moment forgetting the events of less than an hour ago. At this point, his general feeling was still one of numbness. It was possible that some other emotions might have surfaced at a later stage, but as has already been covered, this was to be a day of multiple momentous discoveries. It was possible, it turned out, that even a potent trauma could be rendered quite insignificant by subsequent events, like a single frozen pea floating in a giant vat of soup.
  “Alright, Denny,” Smutty said without looking up. The shrivelled cigarette wavered in his mouth. Only Smutty called Denholm ‘Denny’, and Denholm was happy to keep it that way.
  “Anything new in?” Denholm asked hopefully.
  “Nah,” Smutty said. “I did find a box of prog-rock half-crushed under some funk out back though. Thought you might want a flick-through. I put it around here somewhere.” He looked around the room unhelpfully and shrugged.
    “Um... thanks,” Denholm said.
  “Someone did try to bring some ABBA LPs in, but I told them if they didn’t leave town immediately I’d be getting my crowbar out.”
    “That’ll teach them,” Denholm said, nodding.
    “Too right. How’s the missus? Alright?” Smutty put his magazine down and regarded Denholm nonchalantly from the counter.
    “Well, not really, I think. She kicked me out.”
    “Too bad,” Smutty said with a frown.
    “Turns out she’s been sleeping with my brother,” Denholm added sheepishly.
    “Nasty business,” Smutty said, stubbing the cigarette out on the counter. “Need a place to stay?”
    Denholm’s eyes widened. He looked over at Smutty, feelings of gratitude welling up inside him. Smutty was already lighting up another cigarette, and was completely unaware that by inviting Denholm to crash at his place, he too had become a party to a grand plan spun from infinite probabilities far beyond his limited comprehension.
    His flat was located directly above the shop, and was not any better kept. It would have been well-placed to be voted Second Worst Flat in Great Britain, and might have even been in the running for first place had it not been for its perversely quaint rooftop terrace, accessible by climbing out of the kitchen window. It was there that Denholm and Smutty stood that same evening, each clutching a can of beer, staring up towards the sky as the veil of twilight descended slowly overhead.
  After a while, Smutty yawned and crushed his empty can in his hand. “She doesn’t know what she’s missing, mate,” he said, slapping a hand on Denholm’s back.
  “Something tells me she does,” Denholm replied mourn- fully.
  “Well, I’m sure you’ll feel better in the morning,” Smutty said with a faintly consoling smile, before ducking back into the kitchen. “I’m off to bed. Oh and sorry about the bed sheets. I spilt a tin of tomatoes on them last week while doing yoga.”
  “No worries,” Denholm said weakly. “Thanks, Smutty.”
  With a suppressed shiver, Denholm took a deep breath of cold air and looked up. It was a clear night, as clear as any he had ever witnessed. The night sky was a deep inky black, and the stars burned more intensely than he could recall ever seeing before. Instinctively, his eyes moved to the constellation of Cassiopeia. One of those stars, V762 Cassiopeiae to be precise, he had once bought for the princely sum of ninety pounds as an anniversary present for Sally.
  He felt like he should say something to the star, to curse it, to pile upon it all the unsaid things he had gathered together over the years—
  Except there was a problem. The star was gone. And that, was the second important discovery of the day.
  Most people at this point might shrug, chalk the whole thing up to something in the atmosphere, think nothing more of it. But Denholm had paid ninety pounds for that star, and he wanted an explanation, or perhaps even his money back.
  He picked up his mobile phone and found the contact number for WhenYouDishOutForAStar.com. No one answered. He looked at the clock and realised it was already late, then proceeded to write a long email to their customer services department explaining how they had sold him a dodgy star.
  After clicking send, he still felt unsatisfied. Something about the whole thing was like a termite burrowing into his brain. Then an idea came to him. He scrolled through his phone contact list, frowned as he realised how short it was, and tapped on a name close to the bottom.
  “Hello?” a slightly irritated voice said on the other end.
  “Katrine? It’s me, Denholm. From university.”
  “Denholm?” she said, still rather irritated, “How did you get this number?”
  “Oh, well, uh... you gave it to me, remember?” He noted there was no longer any hint of the Norwegian accent she had had the last time they had spoken.
  “That was about fifteen years ago. You kept it all this time?”
  “Well, yes... yes I did.”
  “Denholm, I’m a little busy,” she said.
  “Wait!” he blurted, more urgently than he had planned. “I remember you told me you were studying astrophysics.”
  There was a pause on the other end. “I did. You have a good memory.”
  “I just wanted to ask if you know what happened to V762 Cassiopeiae,” he explained. “It’s disappeared.”
  Another pause. “Where are you?” she asked, her voice terse.
  “Where am I? Wallop.”
  “Where’s that?”
  “Hampshire.”
  “Send me the address,” she said firmly. “I can be there in a couple of hours.”
  Two and a half hours later, Katrine was seated opposite Denholm, perched on the end of the sofa, sandwiched between a stack of old magazines and a life-sized bust of Johnny Cash.
  “Thank you for coming all this way, Katrine,” Denholm said, handing her a cup of tea. He felt blood rushing to his face as his eyes met with hers. He’d remembered she was attractive, but there was something different about her that evening. In the many years since he had last seen her she had grown into a truly beautiful woman.
  “Everyone calls me Kat except you, Denholm,” she said, holding the cup in both hands. “My mother calls me Katrine.”
  “I just like the sound of the name, I suppose,” Denholm said, his ears burning.
  “I won’t waste your time,” she changed the subject, her face suddenly dark, “because time is something we don’t have. I need to tell you why your star has disappeared.”
  “It’s silly, really. I’m sorry for disturbing you.”
  “No, Denholm.” She leant forward. “This is important.”
  “OK,” Denholm said, straight-faced.
  “I need you to promise me you’ll keep this to yourself. I’m bound by the Official Secrets Act, but I’m going to tell you so you stop digging into this. You need to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
  “I promise,” Denholm said, his pulse racing.
  “Alright then,” Katrine said, checking over her shoulder conspiratorially before continuing. “Think of the worst possible thing that could happen. The absolute, absolute worst.”
  “Woking winning the FA Cup,” he replied automatically.
  She shook her head. “Worse than that.”
  Denholm’s next answer was loaded and ready to go.
  “Finding pineapple in a burger.”
  “Keep going,” she said, slightly exasperated.
  “S Club 7 getting back together.”
  She exhaled slowly and glared at him. “One more try...”
  Denholm bit his lip and thought for a moment. “The end of the world.”
  Katrine nodded slowly. “Now you’re close.”
  “The world is ending?” Denholm felt a hot flush rising up his neck, and his lungs began to petrify.
  “I said you’re close,” she replied calmly. “But it’s worse than that.”
  Somehow her serenity was an antidote to the panic and anxiety that was now wrapping its hands around Denholm’s neck. He swallowed heavily and asked incredulously, “What could possibly be worse than the world ending?”
  “Think bigger,” Katrine said.
  “Weetabix going out of business,” he posited.
  “I feel like we’re going backwards here,” she said. Denholm frowned and tried one last time. “The end of the universe.”
  “Bingo,” she said flatly.
  “You’re kidding.”
  “I’m not,” she said. She wasn’t.
  “That’s bad,” he said, feeling a bit like a dullard, but the sentiment was accurate.
  “It is,” she confirmed.
  And there it was, the third discovery, borne of a succession of seemingly inconsequential decisions and random events. It was as if the universe had wanted him to know — had wanted to make sure that he was there, playing his part, when all of history and creation was brought to a resounding and irredeemable end.

_________________________________________________________

* Megadrick, also known as The Great Naysayer, was a Seventh-Age philosopher on Phobile Prime. Why some dead alien on a faraway planet is being quoted here may become clearer later, but possibly never. 

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JAMES DEAN'S TREE
9th February 2026

Why does it bother you?
they all say.
He wrapped himself around me,
I reply.
He chose me.

It wasn't a choice at all,
I say to myself.
Fate thrust us together.
Live fast!
I would, if only I knew how.

You're a victim here too,
some say.
You still have the scars to show for it,
even after all these years.
Don't worry, I'm thick-skinned by nature.

It's possible to be a forest of one.
Is that the saying?
My fifteen minutes,
bought at one hundred miles per hour.
And we were joined.

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11th October 2025