Drink me

There are doorways all over London.

Sometimes they have “No Entry” written on them in peeling red letters.

Sometimes “24 hour Access required!”, litter from a hundred bad-choice food products papering the foot of the alcove.

Sometimes just a hard-core, zero-tolerance padlock and a scarred veneer.

You just never know which one of them leads to the other London.

The hidden London.

The London below and behind.

The ghost stations, some still with ghost trains, preserved for the silent commuting dead.

The citadels, remnants of a country at war, kept clean and dimly lit, tidy and neat, as if The Bomb dropped, and nobody made it.

The secret telephone exchange, it’s ceramic switching units seemingly poised for the new cold war.

The row of houses, where all the doors are fake, and behind the front facade is the entrance to a different world.

I could show you these places, and more. I could take you by the hand and lead you down the spiral stepped rabbit hole to a subterranean cityscape of tunnels and wires; sewers and electrical conduits big enough to drive through.

It’s easy, once you know how.

Well maybe not easy. Maybe quite hard, if you don’t want to get caught, or lost, or injured.

Maybe we could call it research?

Maybe if we took a camera, or an ipad, or a hand-held, we could pretend we’re doing reportage.

But we’re not, are we?

we’re going into Narnia.

Victorian-industry, cyber-wrenched inter-bled electro-spark Narnia, sure. But Narnia never the less.

And it’s not safe.

We’re not alone down here.

I’m not talking about the animals; the bats and the rats and the wild packs of blind dogs. The foxes and the crabs and the unique, never found elsewhere, variety of mosquito.

Although they’re bad enough. Meet some of those when they’re hungry enough and you’ve just fallen 15 metres down a shaft and you’ll know about it.

I’m not even talking about the homeless and dispossessed, the people who have place-hacked themselves under London’s skin, trying to make a life out of the neverworld below.

I’m talking about the ghost-girl. The girl who walked straight out of my head, dressed in tatty black streetwear with a soul full of anger and as face full of pain, and disappeared into the systems beneath the street.

The vengeance girl

The girl with the moral code of a cracked record; scratched and jumping to a messed up beat.

I’m talking about Tuesday.

No. Best not to go down there for real.

Better to do it through a cypher.

Better to download her. Try and control her and contain her on our devices.

Although I doubt it will work.

I’d imagine that when you’re reading about her on the tube.

Thinking about her as you stare out of the window.

You might ghost-see her beside you.

With her army shirt and it’s ripped collar.

With her fuck you hair and her scuffed DM’s

grinning.

and tapping her bag.