Free The Immaculate by Mark Morris

earth he explained it was because he had a phobia about centipedes and was a strong believer in confronting one’s fears.
    She spent a long time perusing the bookshelves, pulling books out and looking at them, which he greatly approved of. He was enchanted when, at first, she hunkered down in front of the bookcase in the hall and, with an expression like a child in a sweetshop, asked, “May I?”
    â€œOf course you may!” he replied effusively, and for the next hour he and Gail became embroiled in a passionate discussion about books. At one point they both crouched beside a bookcase, so close that their shoulders were touching. Jack could smell her perfume and the fresh scent of her hair, and he felt almost dizzy with happiness.
    They watched the films and ate the food that Jack prepared, and Gail drank gin and tonic whilst he had beer. After the films had ended they talked about them over coffee, and then they talked about other films, and then books again, and then writing, and then London, and then just general stuff. Finally Jack drove Gail home in his Mini Cooper. He dropped her outside her building, which looked white and modern and featureless in the darkness. She thanked him for a fabulous evening, and when she leaned across and kissed him on the cheek, Jack felt the breath hitch in his throat, a grin stretch his mouth for the hundredth time that evening. “Can I see you again?” he asked, aware of how corny it sounded.
    She smiled as if she were the lucky one. “Yes, please,” she murmured. “I’d like that very much.”
    When Jack arrived home it was 3:40 A.M. , but he felt far too buoyant to be tired. He lay back on his sofa, lights turned low, the CD of didgeridoo music he had bought the week before playing on his stereo, and he thought of Gail until the memory of her face and her voice and her smell entwined with the ancient magic of the music and tugged him deliciously down into sleep.

3
T HE O GRE
    When Jack was in the tunnel he became almost overwhelmed by the knowledge that this was the only certainty in his life. It was awful, this knowledge, sickening. It was like a poison seeping through his system, consisting of dread and loneliness and a surging, terrible panic. He could barely breathe; his clenched fists shook as though the fingers were striving to burst open; his heartbeat felt like the cruel rhythmic squeezing of some tender internal bruise. In his soul of souls Jack knew that this place, this dark and dreadful place, was the single inevitable truth. The rest of it was a sham, a delusion of tinsel and glitter, which would fade little by little until he was left dreamless.
    He brought his shaking fists slowly up to his face and pressed them against his forehead. No, he mustn’t think about that. Such a thought was enough to drive anyone mad. While he could still dream he would try to return there, he would cling with single-minded desperation to the privilege. And he’d try to believe that there was meaning to life, or at least obliteration at the end of it. For even obliteration had a kind of meaning. Far more, at least, than this sense of endlessness, this terror that was growing and growing, and which would continue to do so boundlessly, with no focus to contain it.
    Concentrating as hard as he could on holding his thoughts together, Jack slowly spread his arms out to either side of him and touched the black walls with his fists. They were cold and dead, and they seemed to transmit their deadness to him. He felt a sense of despair, of defeat, that paradoxically was all the more acute because it was as murky and indistinct as undersea vision. He wanted to scream, to yell out his fury and defiance. He opened his mouth, but before the sound could emerge, a figure—grey and grainy, more like dust than shadow—emerged from the blackness and began to glide towards him.
    He felt sharp, new fear, though now that there was a reason for it the