The Monopolice, ever watchful from their sanctuaries and their elegant chambers, tore ravenously into the flesh of our dreams, bulldozing the spirit of waking truths into the standards of their eloquent supremacy. Championing our own demise, we mustered willingly, eagerly, bearing our conqueror's pattern of servitude by grand design. The ravaged world; a tableau of ugly, economic choices and death, buckled in the ominous fluorescence of a long and dangerous night.

Dreaming fitfully, we imagined ourselves heroes, enduring pain, loneliness, and fear, until dawn's radiance summoned, and again our people bowed down to edicts and implications.

CHAPTER  ONE

Ned was late for lunch when he leaned against the tiles, lost in a haze of frustration and meditative reckonings under the cool, cascading water. Gazing through the bathroom window onto the lush, dripping garden, Ned considered his options in dealing with the lifestyle problems that were suddenly escalating out of control with his flat-mate, Fletcher, and he agonised over the more pragmatic decisions he urgently needed to make.

Once again, his daily ritual of creative disciplines had been disturbed by the irritation of being woken in the early hours by Fletcher and his crew returning from their nightclub crawl. The partying always continued with a desperate frenzy of drinking that culminated in a large group of people dancing mindlessly to hardcore techno, yelling abuse at the neighbours, and arguing throughout the night until Ned finally arose to discover his house in an utter state of shambles.

Sour dregs of beer and wine, cigarette butts shoved into the soil of Ned's lovingly cultivated pot-plants, and burn marks from joints lazily stubbed out on the timber deck completely offended Ned's senses. Once again the fridge was emptied of all edibles, and dirty dishes were scattered all around the floor, underneath the lounge and piled over the table. Flies clustered at the remnants, and his flat-mate, Fletcher, was now snoring loudly through the open door of his bedroom. Items of clothing draped themselves in uneven festoons along the banister and up the stairs, causing Ned to wonder exactly who, and how many fabulous guests were now passed out in Fletcher's room, and on the deck in the hammock, again.

Remembering his lunch date, he stopped the water, and pulled his towel from the rack. The towel was soaking wet  from a stranger's shower, Ned smelled an unfamiliar and overpowering perfume of the woman who'd showered and left her scent. There were ugly black and red smudges from the makeup that had been wiped from her face, and Ned flung his invaded towel into the bath, slammed the door to the bathroom and stomped back into his room, dripping water onto the tiled floor, and muttering as he went.

He'd arranged to meet Matt and Luisa at their favourite vegan café to talk over staging plans for Matt's new play, and discuss some of Ned's ideas for the festival in September.

The phone in his room was ringing as he scrambled through the heap of clean clothes that were piled up on the old rattan chair in his room, and he lstened as he stretched his favourite T-shirt over his head.  

    "Ned, it's 12.45, Lu' and I are waiting at Navan's. Are you on your way or still there? Pick up if you're still there, so we can order, I'm starving, and you can eat later".

Ned jabbed the speakerphone switch on the answer machine, and spoke to Matt as he pulled on his pants.

    "Yeah, sorry Matt, I just had some dramas to sort out here, but I'm leaving now. Order me the ravioli.... yeah, see you soon, man."

Grabbing his satchel and a pair of sunglasses, Ned closed the front door and climbed into his car. Glancing back at the town house to see if he'd remembered to close the window in his room, he was startled to see a woman smiling innocently and waving down to him as she closed his window. Ned was stunned. He scrambled back out of his car and stood staring up at his room.

Ned shivered. A black panther gazed at him from his bedroom, and he was compelled to an immobile state of incomprehension. The woman, still watching him from his bedroom window, was someone he'd never seen in his flat before, or anywhere in his life, in fact. Her jet-black hair moved in a slippery drape of liquid to her waist, or beyond, as the window cut her off at her waist. Her skin was the deeply golden, earthy colour of cocoa, and her dark eyes were so deep, that the glaring light of day seemed to flood into her face and disappear into the depths of her, reflecting back out of her in that childlike, open smile.

She just kept waving at him and smiling through the closed window. Her beautiful smile, and her relaxed, innocent wave were just so natural that it seemed to Ned as if they'd always been close friends, it seemed as if they were just so intimately known to each other, that Ned just stood there, still, confused, hypnotised. Trapped in the timelessness of the moment, Ned became unashamedly drawn in to the strangeness of his perceptions, somehow effected by the sensation that this was not his reality at all, because his reality was entirely elsewhere.

This sensory experience was formed of some other substance, and it sought a higher octave of his comprehension, reached for Ned's deepest sense of self, shaking the foundations of his core beliefs about congruent reality. Looking back at the beautiful woman, he became aware that her upper-arms were tattooed with distinctively tribal, geometric shapes, and that she wore masses of heavy, silver bangles from her wrists, almost to her elbows. The tattooed symbols were so oddly comforting, so indescribably soothing to Ned that he just smiled, and waved back up to her.

Turning back to his car he started the engine and drove away from the window. His breathing began to change and he shook himself back into the awareness of his usual reality. Ned was shocked by his conflicting reactions. He was immediately angered by the woman's intrusion into his room and simultaneously excited by her appearance. She was utterly gorgeous, and when she'd smiled and waved at him, he knew that she'd been watching him all morning as he'd ranted and raged, cleaning up around the flat, stark naked and fuming.