After a similar encounter on Wednesday evening, he left work early on Thursday evening, so as to avoid the woman, and made his way back onto the bridge. He reached a quarter of the way across, proceeding as a zombie—numb, deaf, unfeeling in every sense. He was aware of his legs working beneath him but apart from this, there was no other thought in his mind. He now had no need for thoughts, for he knew what he was about to do. And as he walked, his right hand squeezed those wire cutters in his coat pocket and his eyes fixed on the guard wires ahead of him, at the exact place where he would cut. He was not even looking down at the distant floor of the gorge; he had already memorized every detail of it and now had no need to look; and he had also lived his leap so many times that there was now nothing left to think about; there was now only a great void within his numb mind and at the centre of that void was the picture of him enacting his leap. He reached the spot on the bridge and took the wire cutters from his pocket.
The problems first started a few years ago when he noticed that an increasing number of his patients were saying they stopped using drugs, which they found ineffective, and cured their problem with alternative treatments, acupuncture being the most popular. Common ailments were hay fever, depression, panic attacks, high blood pressure. Initially he shrugged off this trend, certain that the misguided fools were somehow deluding themselves. And then another brand of nutter (which was how he regarded the more vocal members of his “flock”) started saying the drug he prescribed had not only not tackled the original problem but damaged their health, and on stopping the drug and receiving acupuncture, their health recovered and the original illness cleared. They were most concerned to helpfully disillusion him, so as to prevent other patients suffering as they had. These nutters he managed to ignore, while silently waving them out of his consulting room. And then there were the silent nutters, the “secret” nutters, if you like. One of these, a man, whom he contacted, had stopped taking his fluoxetine, which John prescribed for depression. He contacted the patient to check on his welfare and the patient told him that acupuncture had cleared his depression and he was told his depression was caused by the drug omeprazole which John prescribed to him two years previously for heart burn.
John quickly put the phone down—lest he poured into it the colourful language that was surging from his mind towards his mouth, in much the same way that particularly wilful vomit behaves when your stomach finds food violently disagreeable—he put the phone down and, instead, addressed his devastating tirade to the empty chair staring at him across his desk, which chair, he was sure, was left in no doubt about what he thought of it. And two days later, when he finally regained his composure, he was sat behind his desk, dumbstruck, as a mother sat in that very chair and told him that three months ago her son was dying of an asthma attack, when, out of desperation, she called in an acupuncturist (who was been highly recommended by a friend of hers) who treated him and within minutes he recovered. Another two months of treatments followed and her son was now (allegedly) cured completely. And the acupuncturist suggested her son’s medication had worsened his condition.

In the living room of 52 Niggling Grievance Street, Lily Smithe was sitting in her easy chair, Helen Smithe was sitting at one end of the sofa and Peter Softly was sitting at the other end with his shopping basket placed on the floor beside his feet. Helen had been eyeing Peter from head to foot, and she now started making insinuating comments about transvestites.
Peter lifted the front of his overcoat, pulled out Lily’s letter and told Lily, ‘I’ve come about your letter, Mrs Smithe.’
Helen abruptly stood, said she would make some tea and headed for the kitchen.
Lily started talking, but Peter could not quite get to her meaning. He gave up trying, leant forward, rummaged through the basket and gripped the hatchet’s handle. But then his hand start trembling so much that he wondered whether it was right that he should be contemplating using this weapon.
Lily said, ‘But are you eating enough, Peter?’ She saw that he was bent over that basket, playing with something within it, and she called, ‘Peter!’ He looked up, but distantly—as if he were playing in some playground in his mind, some fantasy playground that was miles from anywhere. She repeated, ‘Are you eating enough?’ He did not respond. She said, ‘I mean, who’s looking after you, Peter?’
He looked back down to the basket and saw the hatchet in his hand. He could now barely hold it; all the strength seemed to have gone from his arm, and the muscles in his arm had begun aching with the effort of holding this great weight in his hand. He dropt the hatchet, took his notepad and pen from the basket and mentioned Lily’s letter to her again. She started saying, ‘There’s crowds of people coming to read the gas meter...’ He wrote this in his pad, so that he could study the words, to try to more clearly understand their meaning. While doing this, he heard her saying something about somebody drinking her tea, and her milk—these people always drank her milk. But he was already frowning at the words on the pad, trying to make sense of them. Then he thought about Sally, about the monster that had so successfully possessed her head, causing them to come to hate each other. He thought about the way it was now impossible for him to battle through her hatred in order to communicate with her—her just shouting incomprehensible things at him whenever he got near her. He thought about her affair with Roland, which he was sure she was only doing to show him how much she hated him. Then he recalled the man he had met earlier, the way the monster in his head had made him try to manipulate Peter into jumping to his tune by trying to make him feel guilty. The man had then said, ‘You’re just the sort of person who causes all the problems. Are you stupid——?’ and he had nodded to indicate that Peter should answer ‘Yes’.
Trying to understand Lily’s words on his pad, and listening to what she was saying now, he knew that she too was possessed by one of those invisible monsters. He looked up at her, and he could almost see the monster inside her head, possessing her personality and working her mouth.
He stood up, placed his shopping basket over his arm and made his way round to the back of Lily’s easy chair. He could still hear her words, which now sounded like mockery, as though the monster in her head were making her mock him—as that other woman who had made comments about transvestites had done. He told her not to worry—he was helping her; he would soon stop them; he knew what to do now——
Lily was sitting with her hands in her lap, smiling proudly and saying, ‘Oh, I am impressed, Peter; you’re so clever now.’
He stood behind her chair, looking down at the back of her head. He could feel the presence of that monster inside that had possessed her, and also all those wrong ideas that were the seeds of yet more and more of these monsters; he could clearly feel all this down there in her head. He reached into the basket and gripped the handle of the hatchet, telling that mocking voice that he knew what to do now—It’s okay; don’t worry. He raised the hatchet above his head, and his hand was now trembling so much that he could hardly hold the hatchet any longer, and he was sure he was about to drop it, but he knew he was about to experience a tremendous release, if only he could keep defying those monsters for a moment longer, only seconds now. He felt his whole body climbing into place up there above him, and just when that weapon had become so heavy that he was sure he could not go on holding it any more, his hand then became steady, rock steady, and the hatchet wedged down into the head, again and again and again.
While this release was taking place, a single thought entered his mind; he saw himself transforming into a malicious dark mist and then engulfing Sally; he could see himself—in the form of this mist—pouring all over her, and he could see the horror in her face as he attacked her again and again and again from inside this mist. But he could not let this happen (—They’re trying to make me behave like them; but I won’t let them; I have to find the seeds before these monsters can make me——), and then he thought he could see the seeds and he started spooning them out with the hatchet’s blade (—Get them out! all of them—stop this horror; you won’t do it again; I have to stop you—it shouldn’t be like this—get them out! out——).
He wiped the hatchet clean on the back of the easy chair and made his way to the kitchen. In there, he saw the back of the second head as the other person stood against the sink. He could hear a woman humming, and also the sound of metal clanking against china. He raised his trembling hand above his head again, and he found that this was so much easier now—now that he knew what that release felt like, and also that he was doing the right thing. Then the hatchet wedged down into this other head, and he tumbled with the head to his knees as the body fell to the floor. He bent over it and continued wedging down into the head, digging for those seeds (—Get them out—stop this horror; it’s wrong! You won’t do it again; I’ll stop you—there they are!—out! get them out! out! out!).