the short bald man looks at me weirdly and says "is this how you kill people in your country? in my home we do it much more quickly." the only thing else i know is that the lightning was super-thick and on fire.

it's the end of the world. we're the last humans alive. i'm an advisor to someone. i have two very important duties. i can't remember what they are. we live in the foreground of a nuclear power station. how does it end?

new year's eve. huw asks me out. my mum is left in alone. dad's just absent. we go with some friends to a christian church do thing. it's downstairs. i don't want to be here. i think about my mum. so i go and other people follow me out.

we don't go to george square, we go to a big manor house and break in. i find a way to keep the door from locking us in using elastic bands and a plaster (i think).

eventually the alarm does go off because huw and his friends have made a machine explode by trying to scan someone's head whilst wearing white lab coats. but we get out. but the machine sets fire to things.

i go back to the manor house the next day because they offer me a job.

the boss (who is offering me a job) is the richest man in town - he also wants me to marry his son. the son is cute but i'm not sure. it feels wrong to me. we all go outside to clear our heads. everyone suddenly has a dog. the morning is early, green, misty and brisk. i don't have a dog.

i realise that i'm selling my soul, and then i suddenly notice that i'm dr jekyll and mr hyde.

6:59 am thursday morning

"swimming instructor in a pool in a desert in nowhere. this little girl comes and is scared but i reassure her. i tell her how i wasn't a strong swimmer in school, but now i'm strong enough to save people, and i lead a good life. it's cool actually - i'm not baywatch bikini babe woman - i'm me, and it feels good."

snow fire

there are three of us trying to get to sleep in sleeping bags, in a trench that's been dug for us in the snow. my sleeping bag is going to catch fire if i stay in this position - i'm lower down than the others, so i put the fire out to protect myself. "well done" they sneer, and i have to relight it with my lighter.

but, it was only burning off of the snow, so i'm hunched in my sleeping bag with a 59p refillable lighter trying to spark up the snow. little bits catch. maybe a couple of square inches here and there, and it looks like magic to me, but the little bits all go out. the others are angry. so i go back to the library.

stephen is reading about the life of dreams from a big brown cartoon book. then jess comes in and says that the toilets on that level are shut and please can we all use the ones on the top floor. she and stephen argue over who gets to use the ladies'. i go home and try to stop my flat from getting burgled by the monster who lit our snow fire, and i realise it was a set-up all along.

i'm going out with tom/marc (he's one person). we go to the beach for the day with tom/marc's family. they don't like me as they see i am too neurotic. marc's mother chooses to ignore me entirely and at the end of the day says "we keep passing that girl in blue - could someone please tell me who she is?" marc says "that's my girlfriend and i love her".

so he and i go back to his flat and spend the next day in bed inventing board games. tom/marc's friend is cynical and very attractive. he seems more realistic to me. they have a party tonight in their attic. i get bored and go and hang out of tom's bedroom window.

it's 6am in london and 2 boys have fallen asleep on the pavement across the road, flat on their backs, with their t-shirts pulled up over their heads, revealing their chests, both non-furry. they wake up and go and sit by the wall, pulling their t-shirts back down, looking confused. they don't know where they are. i am definitely bored by now and decide i should have gone out with the cynical boy after all.

so i woke up then went back to sleep for 20 minutes and it all ends badly. some of us end up together and some of us are killed in the stampede.

a saturday in april 2001:

Village of the suicides. they are all smiling. some of them can't be suicides — they're too elaborate, yet I know they all are, even the ones with blood patterns like frost on a window. I think the river is running red, and all the rooms have aquariums below them with hungry sharks snapping at our ankles. Everyone is chain smoking and trying to drink alcohol. But they are all doing it quite cheerfully. On the outside, no one seems perturbed by the suicides. I only came to find somewhere to eat.

it was this huge ridiculous rambling time and i was trying to sleep and a black bony demony thing was choking me. i actually couldn't breathe. kind of like in an approaching death way. then i snapped out of it and sarah michelle gellar was sitting on my bed and she said "maybe i should tell buffy". then i realised that i wasn't really me, only the outer shell of me, and that the strong brave me was inside somewhere else and i had absolutely no idea how to get hold of her. then i thought things were bad. and then life was beautiful for a minute because i knew that at least i had a strong person inside somewhere. then buffy wandered off. that's about it.

great.

i want to go out on the water in a rowboat, but caroline won't let me. she says it's too dangerous and as i look down at the bay i can see all the men coming back. they carry their rowing boats on their backs in sixes, and they rush past wearing flat-caps like a bbc dramatisation. i look at the waves and they're getting bigger and bigger. getting bigger and swamping the beach, and the houses at the bottom of the hill. we all press back into the hillside, trying to get into a house that's been carved into the earth, but we can't get in. now the wave is of relentlessly increasing tidal wave proportions. it is high above us and the sky turns black. it smashes against the edge of the hill before us, which soaks up the impact, but then all the crest bounces over us, only now it's picked up loads of mud and grime from the ground. we are drenched. we are all soaked. the wave recedes. i am covered in thick blck mud. i am not impressed.