Free My Dirty Little Book of Stolen Time by Liz Jensen Page A

lamp aloft before me & stepped with some trepidation back into the room – where suddenly (and believe me, I drew in a sharp breath, O my dear one!) my eyes, growing accustomed to the gloom, fell
upon the most inexplicable set of objects I had ever seen in all of my twenty-five years on this harsh earth. The first thing
that struck me, for it was nearest to hand, was a most unusual-looking bicycle, whose wheels seemed quite motiveless, for
the contraption was clamped to the floor by a protective casing made of metal. Its handlebars faced the corner of the room,
in which, standing on a corner shelf halfway up the wall – good grief! – sat a huge glass case, that looked to contain an
orange, fur-covered creature with a humanoid face & big moody eyes that seemed filled with pain & reproach. For Fanden, it was some kind of monkey, or my name was not Charlotte Dagmar Marie of Østerbro I could not meet its eyes: indeed, I feared they were alive, & scrutinizing me. For some reason, the sadness in the creature’s
child-like face made me awash with a strange emotion I could not identify, & I felt like screaming at it tearfully: I have done nothing! I am innocent! ‘Looking down, for I could not keep my eyes on the thing a second longer, I spied below it a chair, & next to it a small occasional
table with a dainty white tablecloth, frilled with lacework, upon which stood a half-full bottle of schnapps, another bottle,
medical-looking but unmarked, a mound of cotton wool, and a small open box, velvet-lined. I approached, & drew a breath: inside
lay a silver scalpel. Good Lord, what bloody business went on here? What ritual tortures & sacrifices were carried out beneath
the monkey’s baleful gaze, in the name of the Great Beyond? No wonder Gudrun had heard screams!
    I felt that I had witnessed enough for one evening, but I was not to escape so readily: turning to leave, I drew in another
sharp breath. For there in the corner, gleaming in the gloom, squatting four-square on the floor like a huge, elaborately
carbuncled toad, was the strangest contraption I had ever seen. Claiming a quarter of the room’s space, the demonic machine
in whose construction Gudrun had colluded gave almost a vegetal impression, sporting as it did a leathery skin, pocked like
ostrich-hide. Lord, I half expected it to sigh & breathe! Its shape was rectangular, but with rounded corners, & a humped
roof, like the engine-carriage of a train, & at its centre was a sliding door made of dark leather & wood, with murky glass
panes in which nothing could be seen but the reflection of my own petrified face.
    Would you have done as I did, reader, & hesitated before opening the door & peering inside? I think you would! But excitement
& curiosity would have got the better of you, just as they did me, & after that brief moment of doubt, you would have slipped
in there in a flash. I cast my lamp around & saw that the interior of the machine comprised a single, small room into which
perhaps ten people might be squeezed, & in contrast to the outside, all within it appeared most man-made & functional. As
I stepped in, my eyes first fell upon an array of brass pulleys, wheels & cogs, parts of nickel, & parts of ivory akin to
piano-keys, & adorned – in a seemingly haphazard manner – with myriad clock-faces, all telling different times. At the centre stood a red velvet chaise-longue upon which I supposed the victim must lie, & beside it, a great translucent sphere of what might have been glass, or crystal or – yes! Quartz, it seemed to be, though transparent enough to reveal that inside it lay the dregs of a pinkish liquid. The orb was in turn connected by wires to a series of dials & a metal lever which it appeared that one must push or pull, & a map of the world upon which were marked heavily the Equator & various meridians.

    The strangest contraption I had ever seen
    I was just beginning to run my hands across