this is the hand

Chapter 1: lead you to the nearest exit

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

You’ve been here before, you’ve been here before, you’ve been here before—

Colin’s bleached hair is stiff under his palm, like the bristles of a brush — there’s a faint sheen of sweat on the skin of his face, and Stefan can see a look of amusement pass through his eyes. Just his eyes, and not his mouth. Stefan clasps the back of his neck, like a man trying to steady himself against a wall, but Colin’s hands have found the rings of bare skin under the hiked-up sleeves of his undershirt. Colin rubs his upper arms soothingly, warm skin against warm skin. It shouldn’t be an intimate gesture, not in the ordinary way — having another man thumb at your upper arms, perilously close to the little pocket of armpit-heat there. It’s arresting.

Why did he come here in the first place? How did he get here? He couldn’t have walked. He couldn’t have driven. And Ritman isn’t going to tell him, at any rate. Stefan shifts on the leather couch, making it creak — from across the room the computer screen gazes on them dispassionately, like a dull gray eye. Colin isn’t across the table from him this time, but next to him, with his knee pressing into Stefan’s thigh and his hands bracing his arms.

He could say something innocuous, like that’s a nice setup or I’ve got to be back home by ten or what do you think about Jerome F. Davies’ early work, but he doesn’t. His mouth opens, but no words come out. No prompting from on high.

Colin’s hand goes to trace Stefan’s bottom lip. His fingers are warm and dry and blunt, and they make something in Stefan tremble.

“What about Kitty?”

“What about her? Do you think she’ll be important later?”

His fingers are in Stefan’s mouth — with the ghost-memory of a taste, a chemical fingerprint. His fingers taste like the sticky keyboard of a Spectrum feels — artificial, lab-created. Stefan shivers and opens his mouth, leans his chin into Colin’s palm.

Colin presses a kiss to his mouth, wet fingertips pressing into the side of Stefan’s throat, and Stefan accepts it.

In his bedroom back home he has every one of Colin Ritman’s games, even the ones for Commodore — he knows their paths like the rooms and hallways of his own home, their irregularities and oddities and innovations. Colin is every bit as deliberate in person, every bit as alive with perverse joy.

Colin’s mouth opens against his. His tongue traces Stefan’s teeth, like fingertips running down a keyboard.

Ritman knows this is what he wants because this isn’t the first time they’ve been here, in this room with the tangling potted plant and the magazines and the prints on the walls. Ritman knows this is what he wants because somehow someone else has always known — some people have always been able to tell what he is. There’s a reason for it, and other people can trace back the trails of it to whatever choice determined it. Dead mum, prick dad, spending one’s formative years locked away in a room reading about amnesiac gods and robots and shit on a steady diet of psychiatric medications, maybe something that happened before he was even born. Something your father said when you were little that hurt you someplace, or some pill your mother swallowed when she was pregnant with you. A defect. A bug. An error. No, a secret code, a magic word, an easter egg.

He lets himself get tangled up in Colin — misaimed kisses and helpless grinding and heavy breathing, the sound of his own heavy breathing seems impossibly loud in his ears. Colin’s hand slides in past his waistband, cool and callused — Stefan presses the corner of his hip against him and latches his arms around Colin’s neck like a dying man.

He wants this, he wants this so badly that he might go blind from it — he hasn’t had a real erection like this in a year, all that weird furtive energy previously reserved for having an agonizing wank in the shower had poured itself into the games, into the programming. Girls have never gone out for him much, between his spots and his obsession with Zork — they’ll never go out for him now that he’s a registered psychotic. None of that matters. Colin Ritman is interested in him, Colin Ritman — in his games, in Bandersnatch, in making choices.

It’s happening again. Stefan can feel it, hanging heavy over him — heavy and urgent as his own desire. Something else is pressing down on him, telling him to stop — like reading through a sentence and reaching a comma or a period. Something else wants him to pause, to halt, someone else wants to stop this and he doesn’t want it to stop. It could go further than this, easily, and he would accept it with open arms — Christ, he can never tell Dr. Haynes about this, she’ll have him sectioned again.

Colin gropes him through his pants, touching his body like he already knows it well — touching him the way Stefan touches himself, but less timid and less embarrassed, downright defiant. Stefan arches into it, twists his body into it, biting his lip.

Colin cups his balls in his hand, pressing in close — his other hand finds Stefan’s standing nipple through his shirt with a thumb. “I knew you’d like this,” he says. “Knew it from the start.”

Stefan breathes a shaky exhale, and pulls the wire-framed glasses from Colin’s face. When he goes to set them aside, Colin eases him against the cushions, down onto his back.

How did you get here? Have you been here before?

It’s happening again. Someone else is forcing his hand. His vocal cords are trembling with unexpressed sound, and the effort of keeping silent nearly hurts, nearly aches. He stifles himself by burying his face against Colin’s shoulder, just to make sure. He won’t say something he doesn’t want to say, he won’t do anything he doesn’t want to do, right now he wants this — to touch and be touched, kiss and be kiss, fuck and be fucked. Colin would fuck him now if he asked, he’d do it like a dream, but if Stefan lets himself make the slightest sound he won’t be begging yes, yes, show me, it’ll be someone else’s words coming out of him. Someone else will slam on the brakes. He’ll wake up. If he says a word, it’ll be ruined.

Something is going to make him ruin it. It can’t go on like this uninterrupted. He’s going to wake up with a jolt and find it’s all just been one of those sick dreams. This can’t be real. They have to stop.

> > TELL COLIN TO STOP

> > SAY NOTHING.

Chapter 2: we think of frightening things

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

“Stop. I can’t do this,” Stefan says. It comes out in a rush of flapping hands — he shoves Colin away, not to get Colin’s body-weight off of him but to satisfy the awful seizing pressure to act. He can’t do this. Given the chance he’d do this happily, and with relish, and a half-dozen times before breakfast, but he cannot. “Just stay back. Stay back. Don’t touch me.”

Stefan scrambles back, shaking — he wants to lash out, to strike, to feel. It would only take one good hard hit. It would only take one time. God, what is he thinking?

“Easy, tiger!”

“It’s not like that. I’m not scared of you.” His heart is hammering in his chest, his blood is pounding — Stefan holds up his hands. “I’m being—”

—controlled, I’m being controlled, I’m being—

“It’s all right, mate. I understand.” Colin wipes off his palms on his jeans and tugs his shirt down. Stefan can’t look away. “This stuff’s not for everyone.”

“I’ve never been with a man, but it’s more — it’s more than that. I shouldn’t have started. I should be working.”

“Some other time, then."

Colin withdraws from him, studying Stefan with bored eyes. There’s a pink mark on the very bridge of his nose, from the way his glasses were mashed up against his face when they were kissing, and his mouth is faintly reddened.

Some other time — they could have met some other way. They could have met a thousand different ways. Over the counter at the record store, across the aisle on the bus — Stefan hugs his discarded jumper to his chest, and tries to count down from twenty-five. Twenty-five different ways to meet your hero. In the same jail cell, in the same back garden…

Ritman is growing cooler by degrees, while he watches; he reaches out and snags his glasses from the table, slipping them lightly onto his face. “So what’s the matter with Bandersnatch? What brings you to my humble abode, seeking succor?”

“Nothing’s the matter with it — the story’s all there, and we’ve got the rights and everything. There’s just a lot of book, that’s all.”

“You’re telling me. Makes Victor Hugo look like Agatha Christie.”

“I’ve already cut out a lot, but I don’t want to diminish it. If someone’d made a game of my favorite book, I’d be holding it to a high standard. If you cut bits out, you damage the whole, and it affects the whole chain.”

“Every artist has to make cuts, you know. That’s what we do, isn’t it? We’re artists. Kitty sings songs. I make games.”

“The more I read, it’s like — the less of it I understand. I used to think I knew how it all fit together, and now it’s like it doesn’t.”

Colin laughs, lightly. “You stared into the abyss too long, and now it’s trying to screw you.”

“My mother’s copy used to always open to the same pages. The spine broke, right down the middle. Hers had notes in it, to help me find my way, but I must have lost it — I had to get this one at Dillons before I started.”

“Your mother was a Davies fan?”

“She must have been.”

Maybe for her it had only been a way to kill time — flipping back and forth at the train station or on the toilet, unraveling paranoid fantasias like other people read Life, the Universe and Everything or Rendezvous with Rama. Colin stretches out his legs into Stefan’s lap and leans back against the leather arm of the couch. He’s not wearing socks, and he has long, slim legs— it’s all he can do not to look at him, but Stefan is still hunched over trying to guiltily conceal the last gasp of his erection. His body still wants this, even if his brain won’t let him. This thing that’s in his head must take orders from Mary Whitehouse. Stefan watches his fingers instead, as Colin lights a spliff.

“Must be nice to feel close to her for once. The two of you are connected by an idea, now. Her thoughts are your thoughts, her choices are your choices. Your flies are undone, by the way.”

“Sorry.” Stefan fumbles, mortified — if he turns away, maybe it won’t matter. His face is burning.

“Doesn’t bother me. Can I get you a tea or anything? You’re looking peaky.”

“Yes, I think so.”

Colin comes back trailing sweet smoke with a coffee mug that says NOLITE TE BASTARDES CARBORUNDORUM on it and settles in next to him. His hand falls against Stefan’s leg when he sets down the cup, just the backs of his knuckles. The brief interlude has given him a chance to cool down a little, but that touch is like an electric zap arcing between them. This is going to be difficult.

“Feeling any better?”

“Yeah.”

“Mm.” Colin blows a thread of smoke. “Get started on that, and then tell me where you’re getting hung up.”

“It isn’t the game any more. Not really.” Stefan looks in his face, and searches for recognition. (Smooth cheeks, wry quirking eyebrows, that odd and memorable mouth. Sardonic amusement, maybe even cruelty. Knowledge.) “It’s like someone else is controlling me. Like I’m not making all my own decisions. I don’t know if I’m making any of them—”

“Who is it this time, sweetheart? Who’s controlling you from behind the wheel? It better not be Thatcher. I’ll have to throw you out.”

He’s mocking him. Might as well tell Mohan — at least mockery is easier to swallow than pity. Stefan couldn’t take pity from someone like Ritman.

Who has it always been? Bundling him into the car, watching him twitch and jerk as he dreams in the passenger’s seat, pushing him into that horrible too-cold office like a fucking icebox and letting Dr. Haynes pick him apart. He can’t do it because he knows exactly what dad would say if he knew. He’d run cold and worried and disappointed and that would be worse than anything, worse than anger.

Stefan presses his face in his hands and hunches forward, elbows on his knees. He has to say something, or this is going to become very uncomfortable for both of them.

> > “I THINK IT’S MY FATHER.”

> > HYPERVENTILATE.

Chapter 3: there’s something odd about his gloved left hand

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

This is no longer his body — these hands that touch the skin of Colin’s back are not his hands, the hands that feel the muscles of Colin’s shoulders shift and strain as he turns his head to press his teeth to Stefan’s throat. Stefan’s body is someplace else — it’s like seeing what’s happening to himself through a little window, as his arms and legs and fingers and mouth go on moving without him. Is someone making him do this? Or is something not stopping him? What’s the difference?

Like a flashback. You ride it out. There are tricks to do, counting and breathing and numbering off each sense — he can taste Colin Ritman’s cigarettes, and he can smell his cologne, reedy and womanish. He smells like marmalade, almost; it’s absurd and sublime at the same time. Radioactive marmalade. He can feel the human softness of his belly under his tee shirt, the sharpness of his hip bones. He can see:

—in the offices at Tuckersoft, totally deserted in the dead of night — he drags Colin's jumper off over his head and slips his hand over the smooth sweet canvas of his bare chest. Colin's hands are on his body, shucking up the layers of his clothes to hold onto naked skin, and he presses him with a jolt back into the corner of a desk, jostling the machines. Lifting his hips up to the hard plasticked edge and making Stefan emit a startled laugh against his open mouth — that hand down between his legs. Between a rock and a hard place. Colin shushes him, and kisses him so hard he has to grip the desk's edge to keep from toppling back...

It takes him a moment to catch his breath once he’s back in the present reality, and Colin is kissing him, making fists in the hair at the back of his head. He wants this terribly, and he’s terrified.

“You’re safe here,” Colin says against his mouth.

“I don’t know,” Stefan says, “I don’t—”

Colin leans down, and undoes the buttons on his jeans.

“Relax.”

He takes him in his hand, stroking him off until he’s hard and ready — just the way he likes, but Colin’s hands are bigger and rougher and much quicker to make him work. Stefan twists into it, parting his legs — his own hands want to return the gesture, to feel at the swell of desire in Colin’s lap, but Colin makes a sharp tutting sound with his mouth and he lets his hands fall uselessly to his sides.

Colin lowers his head. The inside of his mouth is wet and blood-hot.

Stefan lets his head fall back — desperate broken little sounds are escaping him, his restless hands want to reach out and grab. In this light Colin’s bleached hair is nearly white, and the tips of his ears are blushing.

This is what men do together. He’s never done this before, never done more than a nervous spasmodic stroke back when he had friends but before those same friends discovered girls. Didn’t have the time, head in the clouds. It’s more than he’d ever imagined, worse and better and more.

Colin raises his head, drowsy-eyed — dragging his mouth slowly over the tip of his cock, breathing on the hot skin there like fogged glass.

“How’s that for you?”

Stefan makes a desperate sound, and Colin swallows him down again in one long and practiced stroke — his grip on Stefan’s thigh burns like a brand. Just when it seems like it’s impossible to stand it any longer, Colin’s lips and tongue and fingers make it worth his while to hold out — the little diamond edges of Colin’s stub fingernails, his hands stroking slowly. When he draws back, lips circling the head of Stefan’s cock — the pad of his tongue teases at the slit, almost enough to hurt, and Stefan grips at Colin’s shoulder with a hiss. He can feel the tremor of answering laughter coming from his throat, through the hot sheath of his wet mouth.

You could lose yourself in this, empty out your mind.

And it all goes slow — his climax comes in hard inescapable presses, a surge of agonized relief that simply doesn’t stop. The come spills between Colin’s thumb and fingers, and sends him gasping. People talk about seeing stars, don’t they? Stefan sees a pressure of white light on the insides of his eyelids.

*

“Your heart’s beating so fast. Like a little rabbit.”

Colin rests his head against Stefan’s chest — his arm is crooked behind him, loosely wreathing. Stefan is breathless and damp, smiling a vague nervous smile at nothing. This is what happiness must feel like, or comfort. He could sleep like this. But if he falls asleep, he’s bound to dream.

“I didn’t think you’d be so young,” Stefan says. He hadn’t even seen a photo of Ritman that wasn’t about the size of a postage stamp in the middle pages of a computer magazine, the less interesting pages.

“Really? I always thought I was supposed to be a whiz kid. There’s nobody over thirty at Tuckersoft, you’re in good company. How old did you think I’d be?”

“More like, you’re not like I thought you’d be. More like a rock star.” The heat is in his face when he says it, and a tinge of shame makes it into his voice.

“I’m an explorer,” he says, with evident pride. “You should come with me some time.”

“I already have. In my dreams, anyway.” Little slivers of dreams, a sick sampler plate. If Colin thinks this is an odd thing to say, he doesn’t show it.

“There’s loads of ways to send yourself someplace else. Sleep deprivation, fasting — you haven’t been sleeping, have you? I can never sleep when I’m working on something big. Scares Kitty to death. You can do it with loads of stuff. Entheogens. God inside you. Is God inside you now, Stefan?”

“Something’s inside me. I want to get rid of it.”

“Ego death.” Colin’s mouth against his cheek, Colin’s breath against his face, the faint vibration in his chest when he speaks. “You know what I’d do for you, if I could? I’d make a place — I’d code it all in, with a parser, like a little vacation village. A whole alternate mode of being, but just a small one, little pocket dimension. Fully digital.”

“More than a game.”

“Some other way of being, without consequences. I don’t mean some far future, I mean an alternate reality where we can meet, and dance, and get off, and everything, without some inbred cro-magnon kicking our teeth in. Not forever, of course. Just for a while. Another little life, with all the trimmings. Adventure, strategy, dirty bits.”

“I think I’d like that.”

“It wouldn’t really be for us, of course. Not for you and me.”

That just rests between the two of them, there on the leather couch with legs sprawling and hands cast recklessly wherever they might happen to fall.

“Want to know something?”

“Yeah?”

“I lied. You’re not safe here.” Colin’s speech grows pressured, the opposite of that eerily metered delivery of crypto-truths that Stefan can only half-remember. “The government have stolen things from my flat. They’ve made people sick. You think all these people are getting sick for no reason? They’re doing experiments with architecture. They fund and build these high-rises to keep birth rates down, they build estates like prisons, they brutalize you. Right here, every apartment is slightly different, so you never know where you’re waking up. Where do you live, again?”

That train of thought doesn’t bode well. “With my dad. Why?”

“Does he know where you are right now?”

Stefan smiles guiltily, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Not really, no. It’s probably got him frantic.”

“He should be. You’re full of chemicals right now. Haloperidol, oxytocin, dopamine, all the stuff your brain squirts out when you come.”

Stefan shakes his head. “No Haldol.”

“Clozaril?”

“I’ve stopped. I’ve stopped taking my pills.”

“That’s good. You should be in the driver’s seat. I’m not going to choose for you this time. That pleasure is all yours.”

Stefan blinks away sharp points of light. “I need your help.”

“Help with what?”

> > “I NEED ANOTHER HIT.”

> > “I NEED HELP WRITING BANDERSNATCH.”

> > “I NEED TO SEE DR. HAYNES.”

Chapter 4: all the errors and mistakes

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

“I think it’s my father. My dad, I mean.”

“It always comes back to dear old dad, doesn’t it.” Colin takes Stefan’s face in his hands, straightening him up — his hands are warm, so incomprehensibly warm, and so careful. “You can tell me about it. I’m listening.”

His isn’t a trustworthy face, not exactly, but it’s young and beautiful and alive. You could fall in love with a face like that, in all its wonky peroxided acid-head glory. Stefan tries to meet his eyes.

“I can’t work with him there. He interrupts me, makes me eat, drink, wash.” All those cups of tea — and Colin would know something about what you can put in a cup of tea, wouldn’t he? “I don’t like leaving it alone. But he insists. I think he’s making me do things. I think he’s doing something to Bandersnatch.”

The reason he’s not making any progress, the reason why the loose ends keep trailing off into nothing, is because dad’s going in and deleting content. It wouldn’t have to be much — a line here, a few numbers there. Sabotage. But that’s ridiculous, only a lunatic would think that. Peter Butler doesn’t know the first thing about computers, he can’t stand them — but that’s just what you’d say, if you didn’t want anyone else knowing you were having a look around. Stefan, you haven’t gotten out of that chair since Sunday. Stefan, you can’t go without sleep. It won’t be the end of the world, Stefan, if you took a break once in a while—

It all pours over him like a shiver, in a sequence of flashes — taking the key and opening the lock, punching in the code and letting the metal cabinet doors shudder open to reveal an Apple II, beige and monolithic. No dossiers, no rabbit. The machine powers on without any prompting, there in dad's room, and the display lights up CRT-green. It spills with text: nothing new, a few lines from here and there. Stefan knows those numbers. People always say you can't read when you're dreaming, but they're never right...

When Stefan comes back — he must have been staring, because Colin is waving a leisurely hand in front of his eyes. He blinks spasmodically, wetting his eyeballs, and straightens up his spine.

“What’s the view like in there? Any great insights?”

“He’s stealing it.” His whole body has gone stiff and cold with an awful certainty. Everything is clear now, clear like it’s never been. Copies of copies of copies, deletions and insertions, corruption, unaccountable number errors. Paths he could swear he’s written and taken are just gone, gone without explanation. And dad all the while lurking like a ghoul, making himself useless and indispensable. Cup of tea, bowl of cereal, trip to the pub. “He’s stealing it.”

Colin’s face blossoms with warmth and with pleasure, the satisfaction of a turn rightly taken. “Well, then. We’ll just have to do something about that. Can’t get some silly bastards get in the way of art.”

> > “WILL YOU HELP ME?”

> > “I CAN’T HURT HIM.”

Chapter 5: a voice that told her when and where to act

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

“I don’t — I don’t know, I don’t want to think—”

These thoughts that are in his head — are they Davies’ thoughts? Did he put them there? Davies reaching out a long cold hand to touch him, even now, the echo of a dead man. Breathing seems impossible, the room is tightening around him like a fist — the whole surface of him has gone cool and dry. Stefan shakes his head, hard enough to make his neck twinge, and tries to summon the words in between sharp shuddering breaths. Too fast, too hard, too much, and his thoughts are being stolen away as fast as he can think them, like water through a hose. He can’t remember what’s come before. Someone is stealing his thoughts. Something is stealing his thoughts, removing them, erasing them. Rewriting them. He is being rewritten.

Colin is looking at him expectantly. Stefan tries again, in between breaths.

“I don’t understand what’s happening to me, and I—”

>>I think I'm losing my mind.

>>I think I'm dying.

>>I think I'm going to hurt someone.

>>I think I already hurt someone.

He is becoming something altogether different from whatever it is he once was.

He can’t speak. Stefan breaks down into tears.

Rather than pulling back with uneasiness and disgust — the reactions normal people have to a nineteen-year-old mental patient bawling in public, you’re embarrassing yourself, you’re making me uncomfortable, pull up your socks and get on with it — rather than that, Colin creeps closer and places his arm over Stefan’s shoulder in a mute gesture of solidarity. Stefan turns into the gesture with desperation, which sends the tears falling on Colin’s souvenir concert tee-shirt — Colin swipes at his face with the worn-soft cloth of his his button-down, murmuring reassuring things that are impossible to hear. His body shakes, his lungs are heaving, it’s as if something inside him has been punctured and come pouring loose. Another flashback comes, fleeting and intense like a sudden stab of pain—

—there in the bedroom among the fallen pages of graph paper and the scattered 8'' floppies, there in his childhood bedroom with the pictures tacked up on the walls, Colin's arms around him to brace him as he sobs. This time he's done something unforgivable, and he doesn't even understand why. Colin understands. Animal sobs escaping him, the breathless wheezes of childhood, and his heart beating like a drum — the kitchen knife lying forgotten between them, and Colin's stroking his hair, the tears are running down his face and dripping from his chin. Colin presses his face to Stefan's temple, and holds him tight...

Colin gives his shoulder a squeeze. “Let it all out, eh?”

Letting it all go, no counting down and no just breathe, deep breaths, utterly crumbling the way he’s never permitted himself to do before. Colin kisses his face, strokes the back of his neck, and Stefan weeps like a child.

> > “WHAT CAN YOU GIVE ME?”

> > “I WANT TO START OVER.”

Chapter 6: tight as a tourniquet

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

“I need, I don’t know, I need something. I’m sorry to bother you like this, I just don’t know anybody else I can talk to — I need something just to get this finished. I’ll pay you back after, even.”

“You’ll pay me back, will you? That’s nice. I don’t exist just to pump you full of drugs and send you on vision-quests, you know. At least I like to think so. Keep your filthy lucre, you’ll need it after Thakar’s crew are done with you.”

“I didn’t mean it like that—”

“We just had sex, and now you want to hit me up for drugs. You’re getting more worldly by the second, Stefan Butler.” Colin pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, nastily and decisively. “You know what we just did was a crime, yeah? Kitty can shag you as much as she likes, it’ll only make her a slag. but I lay one hand on you and I’m a criminal. In for a penny, in for a pound.”

“I know that, I know, I didn’t come here just to take something from you—” He could cry, he could bolt for the door, he could take a leap from the balcony if it’d raise him any higher in Colin’s esteem than such a callow plea for help. He’s here because he needs something, besides sex. He came here for something, if he can only remember. Not that the sex wasn’t nicer than the usual sort of thing that happens to him, but

“I’m just winding you up, really. Of course I’ll help you. What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t?”

“Are we friends?”

They aren’t, by any stretch of the imagination, friends. They can’t be — he’s captivated by him, obsessed even, but he wouldn’t call the mix of emotions he feels for Colin friendly. Of course, he’s never really had friends before, so his opinion might not count for much. They’ve been through a lot together already. The dim sense of that is creeping around at the back of his mind even now,

“Sure we are. So what’s your poison? Ketamine, mushrooms, I think I’ve got something more, er, designer floating around in a drawer someplace…” Colin springs up and goes to rummage, flicking through his record collection like he’s looking for something. Some of the discs in it look unsettlingly fragile for how he’s treating them.

“I don’t know anything about any of that stuff. I just thought you’d know what I need to finish it.”

Like some kind of latter-day alchemist, like a raggedy wizard sequestered in a tower. Davies loved that kind of thing, the juxtaposition of the brutal modern and the witchily ancient. Ritman’s like Merlin, born old and getting younger.

“Ah, yes. Not acid this time. Something to clear your head, not expand your mind.” Colin withdraws his arm and rubs at his mouth, considering. Maybe he can taste him still. “You’ve had enough of that for one lifetime.”

“Something like that, anyway. I feel like I’m wide-open now, and everything else just rushes in to fill the hole. I need a barrier.”

“You want to work faster? Or do you want to get rid of distractions? Either way, I’ve got just the ticket.”

> > WORK FASTER

> > NO DISTRACTIONS

Chapter 7: would you like to learn to fly?

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

Stefan rubs at his face with both hands. His mouth is still aching from more kisses than he can count.

“I need help finishing up Bandersnatch. I know I should be working alone, but I’ve never done this before, and I’m sort of scared I’m missing something obvious.”

It seems a little stupid to run himself ragged trying to do this thing solo on his first trip out. More about ego than anything. Ritman said he’d need a little madness to get it done — and what could be more mad than what he’s done today, what he’s done just now? He braces for scorn, and receives none.

“Oh, that? That’s easy. I’ll take a look at what you’ve got, try and patch some holes. Thakur won’t even notice, the poor clueless bastard.” Stefan swings his legs over and fumbles in his pocket. “Want a smoke?”

Stefan exhales, sagging a little with relief and looking up over the mountain-ridge of his fingers. “Right, thanks. The file’s pushing it, though. I don’t know if it’s going to fit on one disc, at this rate.”

Colin produces a crumpled Rizla and gets to work assembling a spliff. “There’s loads of ways around that, if you’re really worried. Mohan won’t be, it’ll mean he can double the prices. Cut out the whole earpiece subplot. It’s a mess, it goes nowhere.”

“I thought you hadn’t read it.”

“Things change. I’ll go get your things, sort things out with dear old dad. No time like the present, yeah?”

Colin grins at him wryly, maybe a little encouragingly. Maybe this isn’t his first time springing a delinquent loose.

Everything seems like it has some heavy secret import, some dire second meaning that only Stefan can glimpse. Sort things out. Maybe Colin will make a better killer than he did. Stefan sees it, all at once, like a myoclonic twitch — dad in parts, stacked up in the bathtub like a butcher-shop display, and Colin cooking up a rich chemical bath. Stefan hugs himself, and tries to banish the image.

“Sure. What day is it?”

How long have they been here, locked in this little room with one another? How long has he been away from home? Colin rubs the place in between his shoulder blades with one big hand, gingerly but tender, like you’d massage a fat and listless housecat. It’s not unpleasant. This can’t be his first time babysitting a neurotic, but it’s more than Stefan has ever hoped for.

“Don’t bother figuring it out. You can use my setup, if it helps get the juices flowing.”

“You don’t think Kitty will mind?” Stefan asks quietly. The mention of her makes Colin bite his lip and fumble his rolling-paper.

“She’s a smart girl, the two of you’ll get along just fine. Of course, you know, we can always form a splinter cell. Tell Tuckersoft to screw off and buy out, go rogue. If you lug over your files you can set up shop here with me. No distractions.”

> > “MAYBE LATER.”

> > “SURE, WHY NOT.”

> > “SOD THAT. I WANT TO START OVER.”

Chapter 8: louder than rattling swords

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

Interview with Metropolitan Police Service, August 1984

- This is an interview with — state your full name, please?

- Colin Michael Ritman.

- And state your date of birth, please.

- December 16, 1959.

- I'm interviewing officer [REDACTED]. There are no other persons present. The date is August the 17th, 1984. The time is 10:35 AM. We are in an interview room at [REDACTED].

- Lovely, lovely. Get on with it, then.

- You've been cautioned as to the state of your rights, correct?

- Cautioned, yeah. Anything I say ends up in court. They fingerprinted me before they even told me the charges, you know that? Stuck my fingers in ink and fingerprinted me. Fascist swine.

- Your fingerprints have been taken, yes. You're here because you have been arrested for—

- [interrupting] This is about what's left of Stefan's old man, you can cut right to the chase. I've been down this street before, don't bother. You think I'm going to snap and do something entertaining, right out of the gate, tell you where to find the bits, but where's the fun in that?

- Mr. Ritman, can you elaborate on that?

- Too simplistic. Not persuasive. One out of five stars. You'll have to go out here yourselves and pick up all the pieces.

> > the end

< do you want to go back?

Chapter 9: all the world is biscuit-shaped

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

*
*
*

“It was only a dog,” Stefan says, brow creasing. “Did we have to?”

“Dogs run away all the time,” Colin observes. “Nice big doggy park in the sky. You’ll be thanking me later.”

Just a lovely patch of dirt in a lovely back garden — man and man’s best friend, snugged up nicely in a narrow but deep hole. Stefan feels sick; Colin feels triumphant, and shows it, muddy hands thrust deep in pockets and an insolent grin.

“Thank you for helping me,” Stefan says — his voice is shattered and soft, almost a breath. “I couldn’t have done it by myself.”

The man probably wasn’t even his real father. Might not even have been human. Colin had done the job, of course, but he hadn’t even seen him bleed—

This is a two-player game. Collaborative. Colin claps him on the back with a dirty hand. “Right, that should do us for now. Lead the way, hot shot.”

“Lead the way—”

“Where do you keep your rig? Upstairs, right? Let’s get to work.”

> > the end

< do you want to go back?

Chapter 10: games without frontiers

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

*

“This’ll cheer you up.”

Colin comes back to him with another little box — maybe it’s the only little box, maybe it and the one with the little blotters of LSD were one and the same. This time, he withdraws a little beige tablet. It sticks to his fingertip, just the same.

“I got this from a friend,” he says. “An American. It’s called Adam. Brings you back to a state of primordial innocence. Before the first choice anyone ever made.”

Forgiveness in a tablet. Stefan lets it sink into his tongue with gratitude, and when Colin has sex with him every touch is like a climax, the rasp of dirty bedsheets against his back an exquisite pain, the sticky crook of Colin’s hand against his throat a blossoming ecstasy. Pure pleasure, pure fearlessness, pure absolution.

> > the end

< do you want to go back?

Chapter 11: war without tears

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

“I need to go see Dr. Haynes.”

Colin sucks a breath between his teeth. Wrong move. “Suit yourself.”

*

*

*

“Stefan, you’ve had an understandably disquieting experience. You might be rethinking a lot of things.”

“You have no idea what I’m thinking.”

“You were in a state of disturbance, and you acted impetuously.”

What does she mean, a state of disturbance? Was this a flashback, another play-through of the same scene — the acid that Colin would have given to him either way, whether Stefan wanted it or not? Would he have done that, whether Stefan wanted it or not?

“You tell me how I got there, then. If you’re such good pals with my dad, then tell me.”

There is a vein in Dr. Haynes’ forehead. “Your father—

> > is in the south of France, with his sister

> > is draining cold blood into an enamel bathtub, drip by drip

> > s feeding the primroses right now, try again later

> > is not your father at all

> > is feeding you psychoactive drugs on a daily basis

—your father wants what’s best for you, but you’re not addressing my concern. You had unprotected sex with a person you barely know, a man, moreover a drug user, during a delusional episode. Does that sound like a wise course of action?”

“I didn’t tell you about the drugs, did I?”

Dr. Haynes’ lips part. She is trying desperately to convey compassion with her eyes. “Well—”

Stefan’s face settles into a stiff mask, a nasty smile. “I’ll be asking the questions from now on, Dr. Haynes.”

> > the end

< do you want to go back?

Chapter 12: this house is full of mistakes

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

Colin’s pills go down too easy. You don’t get hungry, you don’t get thirsty. Everything becomes wonderfully clear.

He sends in the code for Bandersnatch by post, because he’s too weak to make it to the office. He stumbles on the steps, and can’t get up.

He’s in a hospital bed with a needle in his arm by the time the yellow paper envelope with the code for Bandersnatch crosses Mohan’s desk — near-dead, and dreaming.

*
*
*

“You can code, right? Course you can, what else am I paying you for?”

Satpal isn’t being paid at all, but arguing with the unsinkable Mohan Thakur is an exercise in futility. He leans back in his petrochemical-scented office chair, and shuts his eyes.

“Anything you want, of course.”

Thakur raps a floppy disc against the desktop like he’s fiddling with a pack of cigarettes. “Think you can kludge together something for me? There’ll be a bullseye in it for you if you get it in by six tomorrow.”

“Make it a hundred.”

“Jesus Christ, who do you think you are?

The disc clatters down hard enough to make him jump. No way is this job worth getting paid in industry experience.

> > the end

< do you want to go back?

Chapter 13: no stranger’s feet will enter me

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

*

*

*

Colin’s pills go down easy. They’re dusty in their plastic sachet, tucked away not behind a stack of records but buried deep in the bowels of a record player, and they’re smaller than the wasp-vicious medicines he’s used to swallowing, and they hardly have a taste. With them comes clarity.

He finishes the new, streamlined Bandersnatch with time to spare. Cut away the excess, leave the skeleton behind — the sensation of choice, but not the burden of it. His hands ache, and his eyes smart, but the code is all there.

Now there’s only dad to deal with. He’s left him sitting for days, and that was a mistake. He’ll have to mop the floor.

Stefan cuts him up where he lies, and carries each piece upstairs to the bathtub, where the boiler always runs too hot. The flesh comes off the bones in fat shreds, smelling like wet mince — the fat rises to the top, like a bowl of soup. What’s left flushes down the toilet in a wet bundle — sometimes it takes a couple gos, but what can’t be scooped up washes away down the drain.

The pipes will choke, eventually. What’s drowned will come back. He’ll make another choice, then, but he’ll take that when it comes.

> > the end

< do you want to go back?

Chapter 14: when it’s only a game

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

July 17, 1988

*
*
*

“Kitty’s coming over,” he says, slipping back under the covers. Their bed is wide and unwashed and very, very soft. “She says your new game’s in the newspaper. She wants you to see the file photo they’re using.”

“Well, that’s predictable.” Stefan rolls over, and reaches out a drowsy hand to stroke Colin’s parched blond hair. “They can’t very well put a picture of Malaphar, Duke of Hell on the cover of Compute!, can they.”

It’s not for everyone, this thing they have. Dad would have a stroke if he knew, but they don’t really talk anymore, Stefan and him. Stefan and Kitty each get Colin on alternate weeks. Same life, same flat, same bed.

“Can’t risk it, probably. They say it’s cursed, that it’s doing the rounds and offing people. Chaos magic, like.”

“They said that about television. Anyway, it’s making people off themselves, really.”

“Ghost in the machine, eh?”

Kitty and Colin and Stefan and Pearl, one offbeat family unit. Pearl’s learning to write code, two weeks out of the month — nothing fancy, just hello world, but she’s her father’s daughter, after all.

> > the end

< do you want to go back?

Chapter 15: looking from a window above

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

**Interview with Pearl Ritman for *Stratosfear* magazine, Fall 2017 issue**

Q: I can only imagine that must have been hard for you. You were a very young girl.

A: I didn't know much about it until I got older. Kitty — my mother — was inconsolable. She had to take a hiatus from her work, took off to a commune in Spain. That was where she wrote most of the songs off *Mercy Bed*. That was in '88.

Q: As his wife, did she retain any of the legal rights to Colin's work? Did she benefit from the re-releases of his games written in the Tuckersoft era?

A: They weren't married, but as a matter of fact I believe she did. She kept back a number of his files from the police — didn't want Stefan to get his hands on them. It's those discs I'm working from right now.

Q: Stefan Butler was a Tuckersoft shareholder. He would have been effectively profiting from committing his lover's murder.

A: That's a facile word for it, "lover". They were partners, they'd been immensely productive together in the course of only a few years. Murder, suicide — [sighs] What's the difference, really. The illusion of choice.

Q: Butler still claims it was suicide?

A: Last I heard, yeah.

> > the end

< do you want to go back?

Chapter 16: love and swimming pools

Chapter Summary

Chapter Notes

*
*
*

“See you in the next life, yeah? Figure you should get a do-over. This hasn’t been much fun.”

“See you in the next life.” Stefan hugs himself guiltily. Out on the balcony, laundry is flapping like flags, a little too homely to ignore. Baby clothes. Lacy knickers.

He can’t do this like Colin can, he can’t jump brazenly from reality to reality with the blithe confidence of an animal. Colin takes his hand like a lover, unfolding his arm from his chest, and steadies them both against the concrete overhang — the wind is whistling past them, and the impression of a great height makes Stefan’s knees stiffen and his throat go tight. It would be easier than he’s imagining, probably, just to let himself drop — to hold on to Colin’s hand until the moment of impact and have it all blink away in a moment. It would be easier than anything else he’s ever tried.

“Come find me when you’re ready.”

Colin leans over in an abrupt jerky motion to give him a kiss on the cheek, and Stefan’s foot slips, and then they are falling.

> > the end

< do you want to go back?