Beta and I left Anna and Xenana with the relative security of Zitha and her friends by the range rover, and pursued our quest along the dark forbidding Suburban streets. The sun had fully set, but none of the lamp-posts had come on. Neither were there any lights coming from the houses on either side of the road, although a menacing orange aura emanated from far off. The devastation and chaos meted out in this district surpassed all that we had seen before. Hedges were pulled down, windows and doors were ripped out of the semi-detached houses, cars had been upturned and a trail of water-logged garbage was blown along the streets by the persistently strong gusts of wind.

I shivered in the evening chill, and grasped Beta’s hand as much for my own comfort as for hers. There were no people wandering about the streets now: it was eerily and uneasily quiet and empty. Occasionally, we passed dark mounds slumped out on the ground which could have been garbage, but could just have easily been people’s bodies. We were disinclined to find out for sure, principally from overwhelming helplessness. What could we do if they were corpses?

When we heard the sound of clicking mandibles and raised voices, we dashed behind the shadow of a garden wall, in amidst a pile of torn and sodden magazines, with such titles as My Knitting Weekly, New Car Review and The Suburbs Advertiser and Courier. We saw a group of ants and termites, each about two foot long, like those I had seen in Endon. In amongst them was a couple of giant earwigs and buzzing menacingly overhead were a few flies, each as large as myself. They were shouting and bawling at each other, more in a state of drunkenness than organised malice, and those words we caught were more to do with just how drunk they were and how annoyed they were that no pubs were open. The procession took a tortuously long time to pass by, and we were terrified that one of the flies that buzzed backwards and forwards would examine the shadows behind the garden walls and distressed hedges with more attention. A bottle shattered against the windscreen of a car, one ant paused opposite to vomit loudly into the gutter and an empty beer can was thrown over our heads to bounce off the double-glazing of an upstairs window.

Eventually, the sounds receded enough for Beta and I to re-emerge, which we did with caution, and walked on, keeping to the shadows in case there should be more stragglers. Our caution was justified as we came to the smashed windows and discarded wares of a small row of shops. There was a chaotic mess of broken television sets; scattered, damp and now inedible chocolate bars; neon tubes torn loose from the windows; cans of beans and plastic bottles of washing-up liquid; and torn open cardboard boxes. In amongst all this were two or three ants sitting on the ruins of a freezer drinking from the bottles of cider and wine they had taken from the smashed wreck of an off-license. From their boisterous, incoherent ramblings it was obvious that they were far too drunk to concern themselves with us, but, nonetheless, we crept by stealthily.

We hadn’t walked very far from these shops until we came to the grounds of a small chapel, where extraordinary damage had been wrought on the small tombstones in the cemetery and the weather-cock, shaped like a pig with large wings, was dangling down the cracked steeple. Whoever had expended their wrath on the building had clearly relished doing so. I spotted a strange cylindrical object lying on one side in one of the deeper puddles left by the downpour. It was a green top hat now much darker where the water had soaked itself into the fabric.

“I think I know who that belongs to,” I remarked to Beta.

“You do?” asked Beta. “Who could that be?”

“Someone I met a few days ago. Someone that Zitha said was lost in the Suburbs somewhere. Perhaps he’s around here.”

“Who’s around here?”

“Sir George. A giant grasshopper.”

“Oh! Another monster!” exclaimed Beta. “Everything you could ever imagine is loose in the Suburbs. Giant flies! Hideous termites! Did you see those horrid mouths of theirs? Just like shears. And now a giant grasshopper!”

“He’s a very wealthy businessman. Perhaps we’ll see him here. I hope he’s alright!”

I wandered off the road, through a great gash torn into the hedge enclosing the church, and searched about the toppled and defaced tombstones. Many had graffiti sprayed over them: some of a political nature, but just as many of a vulgar or obscene character. There had certainly been an exhaustive outbreak of desecration.

My hope, or more accurately fear, of finding Sir George proved to be true. He was lying in the shadow of a tomb, above which was the statue of an angel’s torso, her wings and head lying in fragments all about the ground, and graffiti reading, amongst other things, BEES SUCK! and RED PARTY BOOT BOYZ RULE, OK! His head was resting on the angel’s marble arm, his antennae twitching near the remnants of the marble cloth clutched in chipped white fingers. His body sprawled out in a chaos of spindly limbs, clothes torn and soaked in blood, his thorax split open, blood spreading out from under his long waistcoat and a rear limb bent in a very curious and disturbing angle. His face was battered and bloody, blood intermixing with the lenses of his eyes and several antennae broken or even severed. He was, however, still alive and moaning piteously and defiantly.

I bent over him, leaning my knee against the base of the tomb and gazed into his ruined face. “Sir George! Are you alright?”

The grasshopper groaned and turned his multifaceted eyes towards me. “Uurrghh! Wass ... look like? ... The Damned ants! Ants! They ... did it! ... Aaagh! ... They attacked me! ...”

Beta knelt down beside me. She examined the blood seeping through the fabric of his coat, and drew in a deep appalled breath. “You’re losing a lot of blood! We’ve got to get you to a hospital!”

“There aren’t many ambulances about,” I pointed out. “And the phones don’t work. And I don’t know any hospitals around here.”

“There must be ... ughh! ... There must be ... some help. I can’t be left like ... argh! ... like this. Not Sir George Greenback! Not me! There ... argh! ... must be an ambulance. What’d I pay my ... ugh! ... premiums for? People like me don’t ... uh! ... they don’t ... Those Damned ... Damned ants! And termites!”

“Why did they do it?” Beta asked. “Why did they attack you?”

“For nothing!” groaned the grasshopper angrily, releasing a stream of invective despite his obvious agony. “The damned lower orders! ... Aagh! ... It’s the Damned Red ... The General Election has ... They’ve been emboldened ... Aagh! ... They attacked me. For nothing! For nothing!”

“For nothing at all?” I wondered.

“I told them to ... urgh! ... I told them ... ‘Get out of my way!’ I said ... urgh! ... Blocking my way, they were! Lower orders have got to know ... aargh! ... got to know ... their place. Insects like me are not supposed to ... shouldn’t need to ... aargh! ... ugh! ... The Damned insolence! And they attacked me ... ugghh! ... There were too many of them! I killed one of them! ... argh! ... Maybe more than one! ... They didn’t stop! ... Too many of them! Too ... argh! ... Too many!”

“Perhaps they were the insects we saw earlier,” Beta commented. “They were awfully drunk and disorderly!”

“It’s the ... ergh! ... It’s the fault of the Damned Reds! They should never have been allowed ... ughh! ... Never allowed to win the Election! See what’s happened! ... Aagh! ... It’s the rule of the mob! ... Anarchy! I hate them! ... Argh! ... I ... I ...”

The grasshopper agitatedly twitched his antennae, and tried to stir one of his legs. The effort cost him a great deal of extra pain. He shouted out loudly, the sound deadened against the damp night air but still prominent in the uneasy silence. He looked at us mournfully.

“I’m not ... aagh! ... I’m not dying, am I? ... ughh! ... Those Damned ... ergh! ... Damned ants haven’t ...? ... Not Sir George Green ... Not me! It can’t be happening! ... It doesn’t happen to ... I’ve paid my ... agh! ... There must be some help ... aagh! Oh! Aaaghh! God In Heaven! ... ‘Swounds! ... aarghh! ... The pain ... The pain ... Aghh! ... Some relief ... I can’t! ... The Reds! ... Aaagghh! ... Those ants ... and termites ... and ...”

“We must get some help!” said Beta urgently. “We can’t just let him ... die. We’ve got to do something!”

It was then that we heard the sounds of some people wandering through the cemetery. They were not making any threatening noises and from what we could see of them they appeared to be no cause for apprehension. They were dressed in heavy black hooded gowns, looking far more like monks than monsters. They were examining the damage caused to the church with apparent disgust, and two of them were kneeling in front of a marble cross above a tomb that had escaped the worst of the vandalism. One was crossing himself with veneration at the spectacle of torn up gravestones and shattered marble. We couldn’t see their faces or hands in the dark of the cloudy night, but after the traumatic sights we had seen so far that evening, they were a welcome if sobering sight.

“Perhaps they can help,” I whispered to Beta.

She nodded. “I’m sure they can extend the hand of Christian mercy and charity to Sir George. I’ll look after him while you talk to them.”

“Yes, you do that. I’m sure I won’t be long. I’m sure they will want to help in some way. They look so pious.”

I walked towards the hooded figure who had been crossing himself and stood in front of him, palms facing out to indicate that I offered no threat. He turned to face me, and, even as close as I was now, I could not see his face. I noticed for the first time that he and his companions all had submachine guns slung over their shoulders, but decided that they were probably not meant aggressively. After all there were some dangerous monsters and fanatics in the Suburbs, and it was just as well to be prepared.

I told him that a friend of mine had been badly wounded and was in urgent need of medical attention. I said that if he didn’t receive any attention soon he would probably die. The gowned figure said nothing at first, while his companions gathered around him, their faces hidden by their hoods, and stared at me with what I imagined must have been suspicion. His first comment rather surprised me. He told me that he was frankly rather appalled to see me dressed so immodestly in consecrated ground, showing such little respect for Christian souls.

I repeated my own news, adding that I hoped he and his friends could extend their Christian charity and help my friend in his time of need. The figures said nothing, and I was feeling rather embarrassed and uncomfortable. At last, the first figure expressed his wish to see my friend so that he and his companions could assess whether he was worthy of salvation, and that, if he were, there would then be no trouble, no inconvenience, too great in the saving of a Christian soul.

Reflecting on Sir George’s assertions of his Christian beliefs, I felt sure that they would have nothing to worry on that account, and led them through the dark shadows of the tombstones to where Sir George was lying with Beta by his side.

Sir George faced me. “Are they ... ugghh! ... Will they? ... Aaghh! ... It hurts so ... so ... I don’t know if ...”

“Are they going to help?” asked Beta, looking at me with anxiety. I nodded. She looked at the gowned figures and told them that she was glad to see them and she was sure that Sir George would show his gratitude too when he was able to do so.

The first gowned figure did not respond with quite the same civility. He told her that she was a slut, a whore and a jezebel, who was thricely damned for her immodesty in a place of the Lord, but as a human, and therefore of the chosen species, was not to be harmed as long as she left consecrated ground, dressed herself modestly and asked forgiveness, although her palpable sin had already damned her to an eternity of torture.

Beta was rather surprised by this response. What about Sir George? she asked. Were they not going to assist him? The gowned figure simply repeated that she should leave soon, for it was all that they could do to resist temptation and lust while she affronted their vision. Beta frowned, but politely did as she was told. She ran over to me and held my hand, positioning herself such that she was out of their sight.

“... Are you going to ... aaghh! ... Are you ...?” asked Sir George pitifully.

The figure told Sir George that he was damned and damned a million times. Not only was he a soulless animal - themselves tolerated by God only insofar as they could be seen to serve man, the only creature God had blessed with a soul and the hope of redemption - but he was also an insect, a vain foppish insect of proportions contradictory to those decreed by the Creator and manners which aped those of the worst excesses of humankind. He was therefore damned and deserving only of death.

Beta squeezed my hand when she heard this judgment, and Sir George looked askance at the gowned figures surrounding him, their submachine guns in their hands and no faces visible under the darkness of the hoods.

“Are you? ... Ugghh! ... Can you? ... Please ...”

There was suddenly a furious burst of submachine gun fire that tore into Sir George’s prone form, blasting his ruined thorax and abdomen apart, ripped his clothes to shreds and transported fragments of his internal organs to the sides of the tomb. This was followed by silence during which the hooded figures crossed themselves.

“You killed him! You killed him!” shouted Beta. “Why did you do that? Why did you kill him?”

The hooded figures all knelt down to pray with the exception of the first figure who turned to address us. He explained that he and his companions had merely exercised their Christian duty, a calling which the damnable blasphemy of the quest for the Truth had brought them to the Suburbs to execute. We had only been spared because we were human. Had we been another species, especially a pig or centaur, we would have joined our late friend in his preordained transportation to Hell. However, he added, were we to continue to sully the consecrated grounds of God’s house with our naked flesh then they might feel obliged to execute the exact word of their creed.

“We had better get going!” I said to Beta, who was staring at the bloody mess which had once been Sir George. She stared at me with wide disbelieving eyes, but nodded.

“I think we should!” she agreed, turning round, still holding my hand and leading me out of the cemetery, over the shattered remnants of the low wall enclosing it and back into the dark forbidding, but still less frightening, streets of the Suburbs. The dark hooded figures were all bent down in prayer as we left, soon becoming invisible in the shadows cast by the ruined church.

Beta was very still very distressed by Sir George’s murder, but she held on to my hand tightly and said nothing. The Suburbs were dark and deserted, the orange glow in the distance being the only sign of life. Many of the houses were in a very poor state, their roofs caved in and the brickwork surrounding their windows blackened by the results of fierce fires. The only sounds we could hear were the blustering wind, and fluttering paper pressing against ruined hedges and walls. This silence was momentarily shattered by several large military helicopters thundering overhead, beams of light scanning the Suburban streets below.

“Let’s hope they bring some order to the Suburbs,” I commented to Beta. “Perhaps they can flush out all the monsters and rioters who’ve caused all this!”

Beta glanced up at me, but made no comment. The helicopters disappeared out of sight, and the Suburbs returned to its earlier quiet. We walked along what had once been the main road, but the larger detached homes aligning it had not escaped from vandalism any more than the occasional shops, telephone boxes and bus shelters. In one place, a telegraph had been uprooted and bestraddled the deeply dented bonnet of a large car and reached half way across the road. We trod over this, and saw another figure in the darkness ahead of us, and one which somehow emitted a golden aura from his very presence.

It was the Unicorn, who was walking steadily and unhurriedly along the centre of the road with no apparent fear at all. He saw us approach, and greeted us with a whinny and a gesture of his long tasselled tail. “Why, hello young man,” he said when he was level with us, “and you, too, young lady. I see your pursuit of the Truth has brought you here. I take it that you haven’t found it yet?”

“We haven’t really been looking for it,” Beta confessed. “There’ve been so many other things to worry ourselves with.”

The Unicorn nodded his head. “Indeed there have been. What bedlam! But don’t give up your quest. You must not be dissuaded this from the object of your wanderings. You are surely more likely to find the Truth than these others who have congregated here motivated by nothing more than curiosity or malice.”

“I didn’t believe that so much injury could be done in the pursuit of something as good and honourable as the Truth!” Beta exclaimed.

“Isn’t that always the way! Throughout history, the worst violence is always wrought in the name of what is best and most universally desirable. I have seen it happen so many times before and in so many places. If it is any consolation to you, this night will soon be forgotten as have so many similar nights.”

“Are you saying that you’ve seen destruction and chaos like this before?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, yes. It happens periodically. The stresses and strains of all societies soon give way to disorder. I’ve seen worse. Much worse. Hundreds of thousands slaughtered by machete. People hunted down by helicopter gunships. Missiles and rockets pounding from distances, sometimes as far as a continent away. Mothers killing their own daughters. Sons killing their fathers. Decapitated heads on skewers, rivers of blood, corpses flowing down rivers, all that and more. I’m not saying that some, if not all, of these things are not happening tonight somewhere in this land, but, generally, these moments of destruction are mercifully brief.”

“Are you saying we should accept this as just something which happens?” Beta asked, clearly upset by such detachment.

“My view of events is necessarily on a much longer scale than yours, and I have learnt to see them as part of the cycles of change and evolution. Every wave comes to a crest and collapses in on itself. Only great care and attention can prevent such a crisis from taking on the murderous proportions we have here. But my hope is that as the strands of society become so much enmeshed with each other they will prevent the worst from happening...”

“And what is the worst?” I wondered.

“Oh! The total destruction of everything. But enough of these musings. I’m pleased to see that you are both still alive and in such apparently good mettle. So much has changed has it not, young man, since I met you nearly a week ago in Gotesdene?”

“Yes, it has! And how is Gotesdene? Has it escaped from this tumult?”

“Alas, no! There are few places untouched, but fortunately none in this country as severely affected as the Suburbs. It was a touch of genius of that absurd marsupial to direct the worst of the crisis into an area utterly incapable of coping with it. There has been a revolt by the peasants of Gotesdene against the Lord Mayor which has left many dead and not a few corpses dangling from nooses in trees. The White Elephant has fled, his business concerns ravaged as a result of his unwise investments, many of which have been in the failed affairs of the late Lord Arthur. His castle has been sacked and his retainers raped, tortured and slaughtered. I imagine, however, that the Lord Mayor will recover from all this rather better than many of those who have perpetrated this violence. I doubt that he wasn’t well-insured. But the number of dead is significantly less than that here in the Suburbs.”

“Have you seen much of what has been happening?” I wondered.

“Enough. Quite enough to know! Whole avenues and cul-de-sacs are in flames. You can see the aura of the fires which have been started all over the Suburbs.” He nodded at the orange glow that had so recently appeared relatively comforting. “People have been hacked to death, gunned down, raped, disembowelled, impaled. Many, themselves, perpetrators of the violence. Blacks slaughtered by Illicitists. Religious sects destroyed by opposing sects. One species or race set against another. Others have been methodically slaughtered merely for what they are. I saw some goats from near Gotesdene being rounded up by some pigs with guns, to be mowed down by firing squads against the walls of a supermarket warehouse. I saw centaurs lying dead on the ground: their upper torsos methodically sliced off from the lower equine parts: presumably by those who disapprove of such miscellaneous beings. Duckbill platypuses, chimæras and, of course, beings such as myself are considered worthy of slaughter simply because we don’t conform to some fairly rigid convictions as to what an animal should be!”

“What do you think the result of all this will be?” Beta asked.

“Who knows? Who can say? Crises like this usually benefit those who have been most aggressive, which I suppose, in this case, would suggest the Illicit Party. All that can be said is that the recovery will not be easy. There will be more death and destruction long after the last fires of the Suburbs are extinguished as the many disparate elements of your country do battle against each other for their own perceived interests. City against Country. Pig against goat. Black against Red. Dog against Cat. Peasant against landlord. There is a great deal of pent-up frustration and hatred still to be released, and much of which will be fatally exacerbated tonight.”

“And all this for the Truth!” I exclaimed sorrowfully.

The Unicorn shook his head. “Not for the Truth at all! The Truth has nothing to do with all this! The quest for the Truth may, for all I know, originally have been pursued for good and laudable reason, but it has become nothing more than an excuse. Don’t confuse the apparent and real cause of an event! The Truth is no less the Truth now than it was yesterday. I doubt very much that the Truth is in any way a green light for this kind of destruction, but I suspect that very many more atrocities will continue to be met in its name. The bastardisation of the Truth is no different to that which has happened to other causes throughout history when fanaticism meets prejudice and political ambition meets warfare. Socialism, Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Democracy, Justice and Fairness have all been used as rallying cries for the most gross abuses and the most atrocious violence that I have witnessed. It is rare indeed that a creed of destruction is phrased without hypocrisy.”

The Unicorn looked up at the dark brooding sky, as a particularly dark cloud passed overhead. A brief flash of lightening appeared in the distance followed by a low rumble of thunder. He pawed the pavement with a cloven hoof and whinnied. “More rain, I suspect. That should hopefully dampen the fervour of some of those here tonight, though I doubt that it will alleviate the misery of the tens of thousands of refugees from the Suburbs, or those who have been made homeless.”

He looked at us again, and tapped Beta gently on the arm with his horn. “I must leave you now. I have duties to perform elsewhere, as a Unicorn must. I wish you both the very best. I’m sure you will be at least partially successful in your quest.”

With that, he shook his mane and strode off with the same nonchalant tread with which he’d approached, leaving the street somehow much emptier and quieter than it was before. Beta grasped my arm, as another flash of lightening from many leagues away illuminated the sky and the resulting rumble of thunder became more distinct. A gust of wind blew by, lifting Beta’s hair high above her head and across her face. She brushed it to one side, and determinedly strode ahead, pulling me along with her.

The calm was again shattered by low and ominous thunder, but this time more prolonged and progressively louder. Beta and I dashed off the centre of the road, behind the shattered ruins of the parked cars on the pavement in the dark shadows of hedges and a badly chipped red post box. The sound became a roar, as a cavalcade of armoured cars thundered along the street as fast as any private car. The whole procession took only a few minutes to pass by, but it seemed endless, machine guns on the outside pointed ahead and the occasional dark figure of a soldier sitting on top. Behind came a lower roar of jeeps in which sat groups of soldiers clasping their weapons and staring at the road receding behind them.

They were soon gone. Calm once again descended on the Suburban ruins. Another crash of thunder echoed in the sky, and a pornographic magazine was picked up by the wind and blew against Beta’s bare leg. She disdainfully kicked it to one side, and guided me back into the street.

“We mustn’t give up!” Beta hissed. “The Unicorn must be right. Our quest must be worth pursuing!”

My heart wasn’t really in it anymore, but I nodded. Where else was I to go? I was in my home town and there was no obvious way out of it. We might as well go forward. I squeezed Beta’s arm. She looked at me with large limpid eyes.

“Are you alright?” she asked, observing my expression.

I nodded. “I was just thinking...”

“Thinking?”

I nodded again. “Thinking about how lucky I’ve been to meet you. Thinking how very much I’ve enjoyed being with you these last few days. Thinking that however much we’ve been through together, and whether we find the Truth or not, and whatever we might go through soon, and whether we even survive, what has been most worthwhile is that ...”

I paused. The habits of Suburban reserve were overcoming me, even amongst the Suburbs’ death throes. Beta grasped both my hands in her own, and faced me eye to eye. I pressed on.

“I think that meeting you. And being with you. Has been the most important. The most worthwhile. The most significant thing of my quest!”

There. I’d said it! A great weight took flight and despite the horrors of the world around me a strange levity and elation took hold of me. Beta responded as somehow I knew she would. She pressed her face against mine, her arms gripped the back of my neck, while my arms grasped her around her naked waist, and her tongue and mine battled together in the middle of the dark empty street. Beta’s hair brushed against my face and hands, her skin was cool in the evening chill and there was a sudden flash of lightening much closer by. As the air vibrated with the ominous echoes of thunder, my thoughts concentrated on the liquid warmth of Beta’s mouth and the contours of her beautiful naked body.

We continued along the dark and ominously quiet Suburban streets. The rumbles of thunder continued spasmodically above our heads, and the streets occasionally lit up in a flash of lightening. Sometimes the lightening forked across the sky like a crack in the dark firmament. The streets were ruinous and disconcerting. We passed one street in which dark bundles lay about on the pavement, over car bonnets and across the road. We were about to wander down this road, but without a word, Beta gripped my arm and pulled me backwards.

“Wh...?” I asked.

Beta closed her eyes and pulled me more urgently. I glanced back to see the cause of her concern, thinking perhaps to see more monsters in the street, but there was nothing. It then became belatedly clear that these bundles were in fact the corpses of men, women and children who had been massacred. Another flash of lightening revealed a distinct red tinge in the puddles and water gathered in the gutters, unable to escape down blocked drains.

My horror was deepened when I recognised where we were. Even though the houses were mostly just burnt-out wrecks of recent fires, and most landmarks had been wantonly destroyed, it was still recognisable as the part of the Suburbs where I came from. The names of the streets were the same: Apidistra Avenue, Rose Garden Road and Camomile Crescent. This was home, and my house wasn’t too far from here. There were the smashed windows of my local newsagent and post office. There was the dangling telephone receiver and leads lying about on the ground near the smashed glass of the local red telephone box. There was the smashed glass of belisha beacons by the local zebra crossing where a small car was embedded in the side of a larger car, and its boot sliced off by the passage of, perhaps, military vehicles.

“I live round here!” I exclaimed to Beta. “This is where I’ve lived all my life! My house isn’t at all far. Look at all the destruction!”

Beta squeezed my hand with sympathy. “Shall we see how your house is?”

“I’m not sure I can bear to see it! It’ll probably be a ruin like all these others.”

I indicated the houses with collapsed roofs, broken windows, charred brickwork and dismantled hedges.

A crack of lightening launched itself onto the ground at the end of a nearby cul-de-sac releasing the smell of burning wood and followed almost immediately by a crash of thunder that echoed loudly across the roofs of semi-detached houses. It lit up a street scene of discarded rubbish, broken television aerials, shattered cars and what appeared to be another body lying on the drive of the house we were standing outside. At about the same time, a huge droplet of water splattered my face and stung as it trailed down my cheek.

“I don’t think we’ll have much choice. It looks like it’ll start raining again. We’ll need to find some shelter!”

I nodded. “It’s only a couple of streets away. Perhaps it’ll be alright!” I breathed in deeply. I feared the worst, but could see no choice as more raindrops fell on us, accompanied by flashes of lightening and rumbles of thunder.

“Let’s run!” urged Beta. “Come on!”

“Yes, we must!” I agreed, still grasping Beta’s hand and dashing along the streets neighbouring mine. Along Orchard Drive, past Cherry Tree Close and Poplar Avenue, around the corner of Meadow Crescent, and straight into my own street - roads I remembered more for their relative location than for anything in them that I could actually recognise. As we ran, past and through puddles, dodging cars parked extremely badly in the middle of the road, the refrain of thunder and lightening urged us on our way together with the constant beating of rain not yet in full torrent.

As we ran along we heard a roar approaching us from the sky, louder than any crash of thunder, and then, speeding just yards above our heads, just skimming over the ruined roofs of the houses, was a jet plane, its lighted fuselage easily visible. It was gone as soon as it came, the roar of its engines still getting progressively louder after the jet had shot off into the distance. A more persistent roar of helicopter gunships followed behind it, visible like a swarm of dark bees against the white electric glow of the lightening-illuminated sky. Our immediate concern however was the rain which had broken into a heavier more persistent patter.

And then we were in my own road and ahead of us I could see my home. It stood out distinct from the other houses, including that which was the other half of the semi-detached block, not only from its long history of familiarity, but also by its unusual intactness. All the other houses were charred and ruined, but mine was as I had left it. The hedge remained intact, the dustbins standing, the windows unbroken and, most surprisingly of all, amongst all the darkness of the Suburbs, was the distinct luminescent aura of light generating from an upstairs window.

“I don’t remember leaving a light on!” I gasped, as we hesitated at the gate.

“How can it be a light? There’s no electricity! You don’t have your own power generator?”

“No,” I said puzzled. “I don’t know what it can be!”

We dashed to the front door which was closed and secure, and stood under the porch as the rain finally ceased its teasing, and culminated in a heavy outburst. A wall of rain surrounded the house, obscuring visibility, and making escape impossible. I took my keys out of my pocket, and applied them to the locks securing the door. After a few moments, the door was open and we were in the darkness of the hallway. Instinctively, I clicked on the hallway light, but there was no response.

“The electricity has been cut off!” I exclaimed.

“So what’s the light from upstairs?” Beta asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“We’ll have to find out.”

I agreed. There appeared to be no choice. The tympani of rain beat against the windows and the front door porch. Despite the dark, we navigated to the foot of the staircase, which wound up to the upstairs landing, and gingerly walked up. When we were half way up the carpeted stairs, and just by a vase of flowers on a table, we could see the ruin of the Suburbs through the landing window. Helicopters and jets were gathered over the Suburban roofs, and even through the cracks of thunder we could hear the din of their engines and more ominously the crackle of rocket fire. A sequence of bright lights shot out of the jet’s nose, followed by explosions and a column of flame rising from whatever it had shot. The jet arched up in a loop and disappeared off in the distance, while another jet roared in from another direction.

The landing was partially lit by two sources of light. One was the occasional flash of white light from the electric storm, and the other came through the rectangular door jamb of my bedroom which was where the mysterious source of light came from.

“What is it?” I wondered.

“It’s the Truth!” Beta asserted. “I just know it. I’m certain of it!”

“The Truth! Here in my home? All along? It can’t be!” However even as I stated my doubts, I felt a strange feeling of certainty. Yes. It was the Truth. What I had been searching for the last week. The Truth. It was here. In my bedroom. I don’t know from where this feeling of certainty came. It was nothing in the aura of light, which resembled nothing more than the normal light of a bedroom in a dark hallway, but something that seemed to emerge from deep inside me. It was a certainty born of the Truth itself which dispelled any uncertainty or doubt.

Beta and I approached the bedroom door. I pushed it open, and we looked inside at a room transformed not in any particular detail, no part of it at all different from when I had left, but now possessed of a new quality and essence that I was sure had never been there before. And the source and immanent possessor of this quality was the Truth itself.

“It’s here! We’ve found it! At last! Now everything will be alright again. Things will never again be bad! All the world’s problems since the beginning of time and for eternity have found their solution!” I eulogised to Beta, who like me focused her eyes intently and unblinkingly on the Truth.

There suddenly came another roar of jet plane engines, getting louder and louder by the microsecond, and then without warning a sudden jarring crash. The fabric of the house shuddered and then collapsed in on itself. The ceiling crashed down onto the floor, the television aerial and chimney plunging through the roof, through the plaster of the ceiling and, then, along with the rest of the room including ourselves into a pile of rubble on the foundations of the building.

Like a light being turned off, or a fire being extinguished, the aura of the Truth vanished in the destruction as our bodies were covered with our blood and brought down with the weight of my home’s walls and plaster. As Beta and I collapsed under a pile of masonry we knew, with the same certainty we had when we’d seen the Truth, that it was now destroyed. Its fragments scattered forever, to the four winds, from the beginning to the end of time, from the greatest galaxy to the smallest boson, from alpha to omega.