The first story is called The Black Smear. It’s a true story and can be summarised very easily:
Emilia is away on a business trip to San Francisco. Liam is lying in her bed, staring at several marks on the ceiling. Most are grey and vague, but a couple are darker, with a blurry, splattered quality. Liam thinks they must be what’s left of mosquitoes or spiders Emilia has slapped dead with a slipper or a book, on nights when she couldn’t sleep, convinced she could hear a droning little buzz, and something scuttling or scratching in the walls, trickly and tappy little sounds that tormented her and brought back a recurring childhood nightmare: while she slept, a spider would descend from the lampshade, crawl into her mouth and make its way slowly down her throat into her stomach, where, right through the night, it would spin a whole system of delicate little webs; Emilia would wake choking and cough up a beautiful stream of silk, which would pour endlessly out of her mouth and wrap itself around her body until she was cocooned and mummified; then the spider would scuttle out, leaving Emilia hanging from the ceiling like a light fitting.
Yes, Liam thinks, that’s what those smears must be. But as he looks closer (in fact he can’t stop looking), he’s pretty sure they’re moving: expanding and contracting in time with his breathing, which is getting quite shallow. He tries reading them like Rorschach blots, but they won’t settle into anything. In a panic, he calls Emilia, who answers right away. He asks, in a falsely composed voice: have these smears all over the ceiling always been there? Should I do something? No, she says, don’t worry. Last week I hired a professional and had everything cleaned up. If you look very closely, you’ll see there isn’t a stray mark in the entire room. In fact, she adds, the whole ceiling is painted black, the walls too. Liam squints. What time is it where you are? he asks. I don’t know, she says, I’m still on the plane.
The second story also starts with a black mark, but this one is more of a smudge. It’s on a page of an A5 notebook, lying open on a desk in an apartment just outside Rotterdam. A guy called Willem is sitting there, working on his illustrations for a magazine. They are due tomorrow. (The editor, incidentally, is Liam’s dad, though Liam doesn’t know this; he thinks his dad is dead.) Willem has just partly rubbed out a sketch of an old man reading a book in an antiques shop, which was quite well drawn, but out of keeping with his usual aesthetic, which both constitutes and is governed by that of the magazine.
The night before, on his way to a slap-up dinner with the editor, he passed a guy sitting outside a corner shop who asked for one of the beers clinking in his bag. Willem froze. His life’s already shit, he thinks, what’s one beer? But I’m encouraging him, I’m becoming complicit. Then Willem heard himself say: sorry, I don’t have any. The guy started laughing, and Willem laughed too. He gave him two beers. Willem mentioned this at dinner, but no one cared, apart from one guy he didn’t like at all. He didn’t like his voice, his accent, or how he kept saying the word quandary. Willem’s current quandary is whether or not to redraw the man. Under the drawing, he writes: the old man is full of black bile and venom. When he looks back down, the smudge has spread across half the page. The story, which breaks off here, has the same title as the magazine: Klad.
The third story isn’t really a story, it’s a sex dream. The dream takes place in a hotel sauna in Hong Kong and consists of several hazy scenes of contorted fucking. There are soaking wet pillowcases everywhere, stained with shit, sweat, drool, champagne, slime. Right now I don’t want to write about it.
The fourth story is about a guy who says he’s being followed by a navy three-piece suit.
No, not followed, he says: I’m being haunted, pursued. I first noticed the suit a few weeks ago, he says. It was sitting across from me on the train to Madrid, giving the strong impression of eyeing me up. I stretched my legs out but otherwise ignored it. I don’t like getting into feuds. But the suit appeared later that evening in my bedroom, he says, hanging on the curtain rail. Again, I kept my cool, I politely asked the suit to leave, but it didn’t move an inch. The next morning it was in the office, carefully laid over my chair, and even though I went home, my boss emailed me at the end of the day, thanking me for going the extra mile. When I dropped into my girlfriend’s, the suit was strewn across the bed, and she was caressing the lapel and smoking a cigarette and laughing. She saw me and screamed: darling, please, it’s not what you think! I completely lost my rag, he says, and the suit threw itself out of the window. And since then, as I say, I have been pursued. But I’m not going to put up with it any longer: now I have a suit bag.
The fifth story doesn’t have a title and I don’t particularly like it. It takes place at a laundrette in Brighton. It’s seven in the evening and I’m waiting for my bedsheets. For the past few nights I’ve woken up with a horrendous itch on my legs and arms, and I’m convinced there are bed bugs in the house, maybe mould. An old man in a tattered brown suit sits next to me and takes out a magazine. The shopping channel is on the TV, and a woman in a green dress is holding up a thick silver necklace, presenting it as if it’s a snake. I doze off. When I wake up the old man is taking my bedsheets out of the washing machine. I have a spare room in my house, he says. It’s cheap, I just need a bit of help with the shopping, cooking and some company. Are you interested? Behind him, the washing machine is still whirling with the door open, and there’s black water all over the floor.
The sixth story is called Panic Voice, or possibly Glassworks. I’m wearing my Sunday best, and just as I’m leaving church, shaking hands with the reverend at the door, my phone rings. It’s an unknown number, but I answer it anyway. It’s Emilia; she doesn’t say it’s her, but I know it’s her. She’s breathing heavily, almost panting. She’s called me twice before like this and I know what to do. I’m here, I say, just breathe. To distract her, I try telling her a story about a guy who’s being followed by a suit. She doesn’t seem to be listening. When she gets her breath back, she starts apologising. I know it’s stupid, she says, but I was just walking to work when I suddenly had the feeling that the sky was made of glass, and at any moment it would start falling to pieces. I started walking very close to the buildings, thinking they’d protect me from the shards. Then I saw two little children, a brother and a sister in their school uniforms, walking hand-in-hand. I could see a huge shard hurtling right towards them, and started running, I was trying to scream but I couldn’t. Then I caught sight of myself in a shop window and started laughing. Does this kind of thing ever happen to you? she asks. No, I say, not really.
There’s a pause, a breath, and I think she might start panicking again. I’m worried about Liam, she says, have you spoken to him recently? No, I say, not for a long time. I take a seat on a wooden bench in the graveyard. Just to check, Emilia asks, who is this again? I tell her. Oh, she says, I wish you’d said something earlier. The line goes dead.
The sixth story ends here.
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