Leigh Barton had reached the washbasins when that brash voice caught her attention. 'Complete rubbish!'

She knew with uncanny prescience that the woman was talking about her, and queasily, that she was going to deliberately eavesdrop. Tip-toeing back into a loo cubical, she closed the door as the voices came closer.

'Oh, c'mon, they're not that good, I mean, holiday reading, maybe, but hardly the sort of stuff you'll remember five minutes after you've put the book down!' That voice. That was the woman who interviewed her first day of the Convention, looking like butter wouldn't melt in that wide mouth. What was the harpy's name? Leigh drew a blank, but she remembered the shiny auburn bob. And the dandruff. The sound of something being unzipped, a wash of scent and a clatter. She could imagine those lips pursing to receive an extra layer of Spoiled Liver, under the illusion the colour resembled Black Cherry.

'But...' A soft querulous voice. Not the stuff of which champions are made. Go on, Leigh urged her, tell her that the narrative drive is underpinned by an unflinching study of human nature. Tell her that the prose is transparent and a deep love of words shines through. Tell her ...

'Of course, well....I know it's not Proust...' Wimp.

'I mean this woman churns them out and we are talking sausage factory here.' The sound of vigorous hair-brushing. Leigh could almost hear the soft sihing of dead cells.

'Ooh, I love the Touch Of Midnight series, love it, I've read everything written by Todd Leigh. Don't you just love that spooky sensual imagery? And the Hilary Hilary novels are so inventive.'

'Yes, yes,' dismissively, 'and the first vampire cop novel made a stir but it was a slack year. And you know she writes under other names?' Criminal.

Dandruff was barrelling on, 'Yes, thrillers, fantasy, romance. Never revises, she says. Well, you're not telling me that her prose doesn't suffer.' The sound of running water then a brief blast of the drier. 'Because it's plain as the nose on your face.'

'Yes, but...'

'Sixty-eight in twenty two years...' Dandruff was smacking her lips with relish. Clip cropping steps and her voice began to recede, 'and that's if you don't count the stuff for kids. Just think of the sheer number of words ... a Niagara of narrative diarrhoea, a positive torrent of...'

Leigh ground her teeth, imagining a cigarette sizzling out on that envious tongue. How dare she! If that woman wrote at all, it was probably a constipated 500 golden words a week. If only she had more time to spend on her literary novel. That would show them. That would really make everyone marvel. This year. Next year. Soon.

An idea began to form. She needed a side-kick for the apostate mage in 'The Wanderings of Gentian Sky-reader' Mmmmm.

Leigh eased her back, and taking a sip of disgustingly cold liquid called out, 'Darren, make me a coffee, there's a good lad.' There was no immediate response, and she turned back to the keys, gleefully mischievous.

Gentian raised her hands and wondrous lightf lashed to hertngertipstrom the blue-grey roilings of a mockerel sky. Druff flinched and cowered ond drooled from slack lips.

'Pardon, O Mistress,'she mumbled, 'I was blind. I was wrong. I didn't mean to do it.'

Gentian smiled, stern and sad.

'Too late,'she said, softly 'Now comes the accounting for the years when you crushed the folk under your heel, with nought but malice in your heart.'

The impact when it came was soundless but as dramatic as if the frmament had split into a myriad fragments of silence and compressed her enemy into a tumulus of quivering flesh.

'Did you shout, Aunt Leigh?' Darren clattered into her study, all adolescent angles, with gawky knees and dusty elbows. He put down the filthy cardboard box he was carrying and rummaged in it.

'Make me a coffee, mmm?' She swivelled her chair. 'What have you got there?'

He grinned,'Ha! When did you write these?'

The exercise books were a faded terracotta. Darren opened one at random and struck a pose,'The tenebrous whelkin rang with Tartarean tortured cries as the Slime God, oozing ichor, purple as the darkling dusk, dealt death in a form too hideous for mortal contemplation.' He sneezed. 'You wrote this when you were my age, fourteen, right? What on earth is ichor? What's Tartarean? What's a whelkin?

Sounds like you swallowed a dictionary.'

'Ichor?' Leigh frowned as the meaning eluded her. She felt disoriented as though she had reached for something and her hand had passed through it. 'I'm sure I didn't write that. I must have stored someone else's stuff in the attic. Tenebrous is sort of...' She lost her train of thought, reached for the book and bent over it. 'Hey, it's my name, my writing but I don't remember this at all. How weird...'

She passed it back to Darren.'Best consigned to obscurity,' she said. 'I'm thankful I got past that stage if all I could write about was ike-whatsit.'

He left, carrying her scummy cup, and she rubbed her eyes, trying to get over an obscure feeling of loss.

As her fingers tapped the keys she was once again absorbed.

The mound that had been Druff shrivelled from the inside out, mewling piteously, and sublimed into aubergine mist, redolent of-

The clock on the wall emitted a penetrating click and stopped. Leigh's hands froze on the keyboard. A blinding pillar of cold flame impaled her. The light, the bright bright light.

The ceiling was silvery metal, a highly polished oval immediately above her. She could see herself reflected in it, a pale body topped with crow-black hair, limp as a fish out of water. She was on a trolley, a shiny machine all ducting, probes, and blank screens, on the floor at her side. Fully awake, and unnaturally alert, she found to her horror that when she tried to move her body would not obey her, she could manage the merest roll of her head.

Fractured reflections in the mirror surfaces of the device by the gurney allowed her to see some of what was happening behind her head. She found herself squinting, trying to make the images resolve into something more sensible. Two voices were speaking, one more authoritative that the other.

'Zazel, you're late.' Curt tones. A small three fingered hand made an imperious gesture.

'I crave your pardon most humbly, O Tiriel.' There was a shushing sound, which made her think of goosedown. She blinked. She had caught a glimpse of the most beautiful face. The fine planes of the cheeks assembled around a classical Greek nose. Eyes gleamed cerulean blue, and blonde curls in all the shades from apricot to palest wheat clustered over a muscular neck.

'And what do you mean turning up looking like this? When was the last time you did a D and C?'Tiriel said, sourly.

D and C? Something and cuvettage, Leigh seemed to recall. A scrape and suck. But she wasn't pregnant, what were they going to get rid of?

'I prostrate myself before you. Humbled.' Zazel actually bowed and Leigh caught her breath at a glimpse of swan-like plumage.

'And get rid of those.' that deformed child like hand stabbed accusingly. 'What century do you think this is? Thing have got slack around here and I won't stand for it.'

'But... we're recording... It's our badge of office and where... how...?' Zazel stuttered to a stop and sighed wistfully. Leigh closed her eyes in bliss at the sound of such melodic beauty.

Tiriel snorted impatiently. Something was put down on her gurney, just behind her head. She looked at the ceiling. A bronzed hand and forearm was retreating from a snow white feather, longer than from any swan. The quill was followed by a scroll of parchment.

'If you are quite ready.'

There was a fluttering noise which soon ceased. She could see glowing wings unfurling and beating as though in farewell, and then they were shrinking, transforming. The room seemed suddenly darker.

'Right. You want to call up her file on this.' there was now a single item on the gurney which looked very like a personal organiser.

'Yes, I have it.' that heavenly resonance had vanished from Zazel's voice. A low whistle. 'She's been busy. Mewling, piteous, redolent, sublimed....'

'Just read out the list slowly, numbers and all, doesn't do to be careless and be ready to assist if I need you. This is delicate work.' Tiriel started the machine and the room filled with a pervasive humming. 'You do remember the process?'

There was a touch on her brow as Zazel said, 'I say the word, while you use the nano tubules to suck at the activated region. Then we stimulate CREB2 to make it permanent.' The voice seemed to recede to an unimaginable distance. She was so, so tired. She strained to stay awake.

'Right,' said Zazal. 'Right. I've got the file. Word allocations, Dorothy Leigh Barton, last updated 1.4.92. Let's see, we have to get rid of wondrous. She's been allocated 8622 wondrous and they're all used up.'

The figures moved to the gurney. They looked so similar now, she couldn't tell them apart. She wanted to weep for the loss of the angel, but she didn't have the energy. The faces looked down on her, impassive. Big black eyes with no whites, obsidian almonds embedded in bleached ovals of almost featureless skin. Little slits of mouths, no nostrils worth mentioning.

'Followed by firmament,' said Zazel.'She was issued with 8225 but her entire quota is used up. Then there's myriad, she's used one too many already.'

Something was being attached to her head, not painful, but with a sensation of a million prickling needles sinking frostily into her brain. A screen at her side lit up in computer enhanced colours.

'Records are getting slow off the mark. So, that's wondrous, and firmament and debit a myrmidon.'

'Fine, that leaves her with a hundred and sixteen mymidons . Redolent, she's only got three redolent remaining.'

'Okay, we'll excise redolent while we're at it. Save us time in the long run. Credit her three extra redingote.'

'Hold on. She's used roilings twice and she hasn't been issued with any roilings.'

'Debit her two rozzers.'

'And there's a few more about to run out. Adept, ague, alabaster, apostate, balm, bard, basilisk, bedaub, beldam, benison, cacodemon, cadence...'

On the screen small areas of image sparkled and ceased. So pretty. An icy tickling persisted inside her skull. Her vision narrowed to a purple dot, while the voice chanted on.' chrysoberyl, cobweb, consigned.....

Then even that faded completely.

'aubergine mist redolent of...'

Leigh erased redolent and replaced it as Darren carefully placed the cup of coffee the right distance from her elbow. 'sweet with the tang of copper pennies and the must of overripe plums.'

"Thanks, Darren.' She made a decision,'You know, I've had enough of fantasy. This is the last. I'm going to stick with thrillers from now on. Bin that old junk, would you?'

Leigh put the final touches to the cake, as the doorbell rang. It lanced into her head like a lightning flash and in its echoes she seemed to hear babbling voices, 'ache action admit advise-affray agile...'

She opened the front door with a flourish, 'Shirley! Where's the 'A' Level boy?' Darren avoided a hug, but she managed a pat on stutdy shoulders.

Her youngest sister breezed in, 'Were you in the shower or something?' end looked around critically. 'Your clock's ten minutes slow. Something's different.'

'Yeah, I got fed up with wall to wall books. I hardly do any reading these days, anyway. Too much like hard work.'

Shirley looked at her, 'You're not ill are you? I know you're not working much these days. You always said they'd have to carry you away from the keyboard feet first.'

Leigh shrugged, 'People change. I'm not desperate for cash.' She sheered away from the fact that her writing had slowed to a trickle, and seemed about to dry up completely. She didn't have the energy for the dense prose she used to write, and the stuff she was currently producing 'pared-down prose with the clarity of an urban poet' said the blurb was boring her silly.

'Anyway come on through, I've done us high tea.'

What had she forgotten now?

The phone was in Leigh's hand. She had a brief memory of brightness and a voice chanting meaningless syllables 'add-also ample-end...' Not. It was gone. The phone was in her hand. Had she rung Darren or had he rung her?

'Aunt Leigh, are you still there? Mum is keen, I'm keen to see you. The degree ceremony is in a fortnight. 60 on, I haven't seen you for three years. Aunt Leigh, are you still there?' that couldn't really be the time. Damn clock never seemed to work these days. The phone was on its cradle. Had she replied? Surely she had.

Leigh peered at her pin-board where she taken to writing down her daily tasks.

Milk, biscuits, olives.

Olives?

Phone Darren, congrats.

The phone was in her hand. Had she made that call, or was she about to?

............White walls, sheets smelling of clean. Lying still.

Sitting. A fine young man smiles at her so nicely it hurts. He is.... She needs to tell .... No words. Not fair. Bad. She kicks him as hard as she can. Again. Quick, again. The smile goes. He moves out of reach. She cries. He talks to the woman in white with the thing around her neck.

'I think she recognises me. Or at least she always tries to kick me.'

The words beat at her ears but stay out. The woman makes a face which is very... and gabbles yapyapyap siss bambam....

'Look, Mr Lampton, Darren, we have a firm diagnosis. These are the results of the MRI scan.'

Sad faces. Silly pictures.

'We can clearly distinguish many kinds of tissue damage. See, in CID we would find lesions here in the cerebellum. But your Aunt is clean there. Her deterioration has obviously started in the hippocampus, the area concerned with memory. See, tangles here, and loss here and here and here. This pattern means that brain tissue has almost certainly been lost slowly over a considerable period of time. It's unlikely that we would have been able to halt the process even if you had brought her to us a number of years ago.'

A sigh.

'Your Aunt is unfortunate in the age at which she developed full blown symptoms, but otherwise this is a classic case of Alzheimer's. Absolutely classic. I'm sorry. The end won't be long now.'

A bright light, a voice.

'at-bad-beat-bright-but-cry-face-fair-gabbles'

End.

Soon.

End soon.

End.