Teresa’s room is the attic. Mum and I had it converted with the money she inherited from gran. A professional job with a whole new staircase and a large window that extends out of the roof. It’s modern design and style sit awkwardly on top of the rest of the shambling house. It has a thick, shaggy carpet, spotlights and bookshelves under the eaves. There are table and chairs by the window, but Teresa chooses to lay down on the bed. I join her, lying on my back, propping myself up on my elbows and take another turn on the spliff when she offers it.

  ‘But why haven’t you told anyone what you can do?’

  ‘Why would I?’ I ask, exhaling a thick plume of smoke.

  ‘Because this is… significant! It changes how we understand everything. The entire universe!’

  The spliff must be kicking in, because this just makes me giggle. ‘Who’s “we”?’

  She sits up and throws her hands in the air. ‘Science! Everyone! The whole human race!’

  ‘What? So they can put electrodes in my brain and dissect my mum? No thanks.’

  ‘But this proves scientific theories. You’ve got NASA arguing about whether there’s such things as parallel universes, when you’ve got one you use to go to fucking Sainsbury’s!’

  ‘They’d probably put an end to all that too.’

  ‘There are more important things than shoplifting.’

  ‘Spoken like someone who’s never had to worry about money.’

  She leans in to take back the spliff. ‘Oh, you working class hero.’ She doesn’t withdraw but stays a foot away from my face. She takes a long drag and exhales out of the side of her mouth.

  I lift myself up on one elbow so we’re facing each other. It’s obvious where this is leading, but I’m not going to make the move. I don’t have to. She turns the stub of the joint around, so the lit end is in her mouth and gestures for me to put my lips around the butt. I do and feel her exhale through the joint. My mouth fills up pleasurably with smoke, while my lips rest against hers. I pull away, taking the butt with my lips. I exhale and grind it out in a saucer we’ve been using as an ashtray.

  A few moments later, we’re naked. Her body is slim and pale. Her breasts are small and firm, her nipples respond when I kiss them. We play that game all new lovers play; exploring each other’s bodies, giving little groans of encouragement. She climbs on top of me and takes my dick in her hand. I tell her I don’t have a condom, but she shrugs and says she’s on the pill. The sensation is overwhelming as she slides down on top of me. It’s been so long. I realise with a flush of shame that this could all be over very quickly. I slow my breathing and exhale until each breath has completely left my lungs, and then I’m back in control. I switch positions, pushing over onto her back. I look down on her and in that moment, I feel like I’m falling in love. Naked beneath me, she’s undeniably beautiful, but I know it’s only arousal. No, that’s not true, there’s also the relief that I’ve told someone about The Other Place after all this time. Teresa has seen it too. The secret is held between us. It connects us, just as our bodies are connected right now.

  Afterwards, we lie together in silence, her head on my chest. Eventually, she props herself up and looks at me. ‘Are there people there as well?’

  Of course she’s been thinking about The Other Place? How could she not?

  ‘I don’t know you’d call them people, but there are creatures that kinda behave like people.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘There was a thing. Short, with grey skin and scales. It had a face like a lizard, but with these little tusks.’

  ‘Lizards don’t have tusks.’

  ‘I know. It was more like a little rhino but on its hind legs.’

  ‘Rhinos don’t have tusks, either. Their horns are made of keratin.’

  I throw her a look. ‘What I’m saying is it wore armour and threw a spear at me.’

  ‘So there is civilization there.’

  ‘I don’t know you’d call it that. But it had language. It shouted at me. Obviously, I didn’t understand it. But it moved fast. I was like six. There was no way I was going to get away from it.’

  ‘So how did you?’

  An image comes to mind. Something I hadn’t thought about for years. Something I hadn’t wanted to think about.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  ‘There was a girl. She saved me.’

  ‘So there are people there!’

  ‘I don’t know that you’d call her people.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘If that thing was a goblin, then I guess, then I guess she was like an elf.’

  Teresa laughs, ‘Like the little cobblers in the story?’

  ‘No,’ I smile back, ‘Not like that. She was beautiful. Definitely a girl. But green.’

  ‘And the ears?’

  ‘Were pointed, yeah.’

  I’m back there now, in a memory. I’m standing on my six-year-old legs, shaking, sick with fear. The goblin is on the ground behind me, arrow in its back, still reaching for me with a dead claw. I look up and there she is. Crouched on the low branch of a large oak tree, perfectly balanced, bow still aimed at the creature, but its string relaxed, having done its work. She’s wearing furs, her hair woven tightly to her head. A creature of the forest. She drops lightly to ground and kneels in front of me. In my memory, she looks like a teenager, but age is the most unreliable characteristic of a memory. She tells me to return home and never open another doorway again. She makes me promise. And then she tells me that one day she will come for me, but of course, she never does.

  ‘You want to sleep here?’

  I look over at Teresa, who’s looking hopeful. It’s terrible idea. The sensible thing is to write this off as a bit of fun and resume tenant/landlord relations. I don’t know if it’s the spliff or loneliness, but I find myself agreeing. I pad naked downstairs to the bathroom. The light is still off in Sandra’s room. She’s a nurse who works nights. I’m finishing a piss when I hear a muffled thump from the kitchen below me. I tense. Someone’s downstairs. Could that creature have come back and found its way in? But I closed the doorway to The Other Place, I know I did. Nothing has ever reopened it before. At least, not yet. A chair scrapes on the cheap linoleum.

  I’m not imagining it, someone is there.

  I look about for something to use as a weapon, but there’s nothing. Mum’s room is on this floor; I mentally scan it for something to use without success. I move silently out of the bathroom and slip down the carpeted stairs that open out into the kitchen. I know there’s a rack of chopping knives next the sink. If I can get to them, I’ll be in a stronger position. I edge around the bottom of the stairs. The first thing I see is red splashes on the black and white linoleum. My first thought is that it’s paint. Why has someone split paint over the floor? But when I hear the groan of pain, my mind reevaluates what I’m seeing. It’s blood. Someone is bleeding out in my kitchen!

  Feeling more confident that I am not directly under threat, I step into the room. Someone is lying on the floor, their head propped up against the kitchen cabinets. The first thing I notice is that they are too big for the room. Like a doll from the wrong dollhouse, that dwarfs the other inhabitants. The second thing I notice is that they are green. Very green. The third thing I notice is that they are female, there are breasts under the military combat vest. And the fourth thing I notice is that I am standing completely naked in front of her.

  She looks me up and down with her large almond-shaped eyes.

  ‘Look at you,’ she mutters, through gritted teeth, ‘All grown up.’ And then she’s hit by wracking coughs, blood runs from her mouth. She wipes it away with the back of one of her long, green hands, before returning her hand to the assault rifle resting across her thighs. She’s dressed in British Army fatigues, that are a little short on her legs. Her long green ears taper to a point and confirm what is obvious.

  ‘It’s you,’ I stammer, ‘The elf.’

  Her face curls up into a snarl. ‘You call me that again, and I will kill you.’

  She doesn’t look like she’s in any state to do anything. There’s a gash in her side, but it’s the puncture wound in her abdomen that has caused her blood to spill out over the floor. She has her other hand pressed against it, the blood that oozes between her fingers looks brown against her green skin.

  ‘You said you’d come back,’ I manage.

  ‘And here I am. Now help me child or this will be a very short visit.’

  ‘What do you want?’ I ask.

  ‘Not to die.’

  I cross the room and kneel next to her. Despite everything, I’m acutely aware that I’m completely naked.

  ‘What do you need?’

  She looks at me. ‘We don’t have much time. The forces of darkness are at my heels. I need something dead.’

  ‘What do you mean? Dead? Like a body?’

  She laughs and then winces at the pain. ‘Do you keep a corpse on ice? That would be a little macabre. No, a plant or flower.’

  ‘You want a dead flower?’

  ‘Very quickly or there will be no need for it at all.’

  I look around the kitchen, there’s nothing. We don’t keep plants as mum can’t look after them, and I have enough on my plate keeping her fed and watered. I go through to the living room, but no joy either. There must be something somewhere? Then it comes to me, there’s a hanging basket outside on a bracket. It’s been there for years, the flowers long gone and the soil at its base, dry and cracked. I don’t fancy opening the front door with no clothes on, so I run upstairs to get dressed. Teresa’s sitting cross legged on the bed, finishing rolling another joint.

  ‘You took your time.’

  ‘Just need to take care of something,’ I say and quickly pull on my jeans and a t-shirt and head back downstairs. The elf has closed her eyes and is clutching her side. She looks pale and sweaty. I run through the living room, open the front door and I’m hit by a freezing blast of night air. I reach up and grab hold of the metal hook of the hanging basket. It’s covered in an icing of snow. The metal is freezing against my fingers. I shake off the snow and bring it inside, kneeling next to the elf and offering it to her.

  ‘Dead flowers,’ I say, she doesn’t respond. ‘Hey, wake up. I got it for you.’

  Still nothing.

  ‘What do you want me to do with it?’

  For moment, she remains motionless. The only indication that she is alive is the pressure with which she’s holding her hand against the wound in her guts. Slowly, she lifts her other hand from her assault rifle and holds it out to me. What the hell am I meant to do? I lift the hanging basket, so her large, green hand meets the frozen soil. She nods, perhaps to me, perhaps to herself, and lets out a sigh of relief.

  She starts to mutter something that sounds like a mantra or a prayer. At first her voice is so quiet that I can hardly hear her, but slowly it builds in confidence.

  ‘We are the land, and the land is us.’