Almost Perfect

by James Goss

  ‘Yep,’ agreed Gwen.

  ‘We could find Jack. See if he can help.’

  ‘Also good,’ said Gwen.

  ‘We could also find out why the walls are breathing.’

  ‘Um. Yeah.’

  Actually, they made their way awkwardly to the bar. No one seemed to notice them. Everyone was dancing, dancing, dancing, their eyes rolled up, enraptured.

  Gwen giggled. ‘It’s like the nineties, but no one’s tried to hug me or backwashed in my water bottle.’

  Ianto nodded. ‘I’ve been to parties like this too. But normally in abandoned warehouses. Not, you know, on Charles Street.’

  The pounding was starting to really beat down on Gwen. She looked at the DJ, who was mixing away at his desk, but without even looking at it. It was really, really creepy. As she leaned on the bar she sensed the beat travelling through her. She tried to move and found it harder than she thought, as though the surface of the bar was really, really sticky. She finally got the attention of a barman, who beamed at her glassily. ‘What’ll it be?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you the manager?’ she asked.

  He shook his head. ‘He’s on holiday, really. Upstairs.’

  ‘Who’s in charge?’

  He shook his head again. ‘The music’s in charge.’

  Gwen rolled her eyes. She could see Ianto leaning forward, trying to flirt with the other barman who, frankly, had too many muscles and too small a T-shirt to be really interested. Bless, she thought. She turned back to the barman. ‘Look – who is in charge? Who pays you?’

  The man looked puzzled. ‘We haven’t been paid. We’re here for the love. The power.’ He grinned suddenly, raffishly, and then started to bang his head to the music, drifting gently away.

  Ianto joined her. ‘Nothing. It’s like I’m invisible.’ Finally!

  Gwen nudged towards the fire escape. ‘Let’s go out to the smoking garden,’ she said, and strode off, edging around the side of the club, past untouched drinks and a group of men who were leaning back against the wall, dancing as though stuck to it. All of them wore the same lopsided grin.

  The smoking garden was creepy. It was packed, but no one was smoking.

  At each table in the freezing night sat boys in T-shirts, their hands clasped around long-dead cigarettes. All of them were just staring ahead, nodding in time to the beat.

  ‘Seriously, seriously wrong,’ said Gwen, watching as the rain plopped into unguarded drinks.

  ‘Wrong and creepy,’ agreed Ianto. He reached into his enormous handbag and pulled out a tiny pop-up Snoopy umbrella. They huddled under it and watched the sodden crowd.

  Gwen peeped out from under the umbrella. A fire escape led up to a second floor. She pointed it out. ‘I was told the manager had gone on holiday upstairs,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Ianto. ‘They said something about a Brendan and a flat.’ He checked his PDA. ‘There’s nothing about a Brendan here on the records. We should be looking for a manager called Rudyard.’

  ‘Rudyard?’ laughed Gwen. ‘No one is called Rudyard.’

  Ianto held up the PDA. ‘Here he is. He’s got a beard and everything.’

  ‘Right,’ admitted Gwen. ‘Well done, Miss Jones. Ten Points to Hufflepuff. Now come on – let’s climb up the fire escape. If Jack’s here, I bet that’s where he’ll be.’

  Ianto pointed in alarm at his shoes and Gwen smiled.

  ‘Honestly, Ianto, nearly a week and you still haven’t learned – it’s practical pumps for missions.’

  Ianto winced. ‘I know, Gwen, but these look so good.’

  Gwen patted him on the shoulder. ‘It’s a sacrifice worth making. I’ll give you a bunk up.’ And so, in the rain and the music, Gwen found herself hoisting Ianto’s ankles onto a rusty ladder.

  CAPTAIN JACK IS

  BARGAINING

  ‘What is this?’ Jack asked Brendan.

  Brendan, pottering past with a piece of toast, paused and ruffled his hair. ‘It’s got many names. Call it our Belief System. It’s a way of bonding all our true believers together, giving us the power we need to do all our good deeds.’

  ‘It’s obscene,’ growled Jack.

  Brendan offered him a bite of toast. Jack shook his head. ‘You’re only saying that cos you’re on the inside looking out. I think it’s all rather beautiful. It’s kind of like the tar baby. And it’s only a temporary solution until we can find that machine.’

  ‘It’s not working. Let me out of this – I can help you,’ said Jack.

  ‘Pleading?’ Brendan squatted down, meeting Jack’s eyes. ‘It’s rather beneath you, Captain.’

  ‘Not if it saves lives,’ said Jack.

  Brendan rolled his eyes. ‘You are so noble, I could eat you up. Sure you don’t want some toast?’

  ‘What would be the point?’ sighed Jack. ‘How long are you going to keep me here?’

  Brendan shrugged. ‘Dunno. In a few hours we might let you all out for a bit and play with you. Depends how up for it Jon is. Then we’ll pop you all back in. Cos I’ve got yoga, and I can’t leave you all alone with Jon. He might go mad.’

  ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’

  ‘Truthfully, until we get the device back. The problem is, our need for power’s growing at a rate… oh, I dunno. It’s a bit worrying. Frankly, I think we’ll be running out of boys soon. Which isn’t a great state of affairs really, is it? We might have to reach out wider and wider. You know, Aberdare.’

  ‘Can’t you see how stupid this is?’ gasped Jack.

  ‘Totally,’ admitted Brendan. ‘But it’s what we’ve got to do to stay alive, to carry on searching, to find that bloody thing. Trust me, Jack, I’m a god. It’s what we’ve got to do to stay alive. When we get our power back, we’ll make everything right again.’

  Jon walked into the room, towelling himself after a shower. ‘You all right babe?’ he asked Brendan.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Brendan.

  Jon flicked Jack playfully with the towel. ‘Are you talking to the furniture again?’

  ‘Stop this!’ said Jack.

  Jon arched an eyebrow. ‘You don’t look happy Jacky,’ he said, squeezing Jack’s cheek. Jack growled at him. Jon laughed and dropped the towel over Jack’s head, leaving him fuming.

  ‘Come on Bren, let’s get some clothes on and go and see how things are downstairs.’ They walked away, laughing, and all Jack could see was cotton.

  RUDYARD IS SADLY ALL

  MOUTH

  Gwen slid the window up, and the two of them slipped into a dark, quiet corridor.

  ‘It’s bloody great to be out of that rain,’ shivered Ianto. ‘I really miss jeans.’

  ‘Well,’ hissed Gwen, ‘why don’t you wear some?’

  ‘Oh, it just hasn’t felt right, really,’ said Ianto. ‘You know, I just don’t think I’ve got the figure for them. I worry they’ll make my bum look fat and squidgy.’

  ‘Oh, bollocks,’ hissed Gwen. ‘You’ve got a lovely pair of child-bearing hips on you.’

  ‘Have I?’ Ianto looked genuinely pleased. ‘Oh, that’s nice.’

  ‘Now, shut up, princess, and let’s get on with it.’

  The two of them started down the corridor, the flashlight gently glinting around them.

  It all looked very dark, and the thump-thump of the club became overwhelming.

  ‘Considering everything I’ve heard about gay grooming, it really reeks of BO in here,’ said Ianto.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Gwen. ‘Smells like a teenager’s bedroom.’

  Ianto pulled the pheromone sniffer out of his pocket and waved it around. ‘Well, bloody hell,’ he breathed. ‘Jack’s off the scale.’

  Gwen cast her torch around the corridor. ‘I’m not sure I like this,’ she said.

  They both heard the voice calling for help. It was a quiet voice, almost a whisper. Both jumped.

  ‘Jeez!’ wailed Gwen. ‘I’m switching on the bloody light.’ She fumbled her hand along the wall. ‘Blimey, they
’ve papered it with that velvet stuff they use at Indian restaurants,’ she said, her hands brushing along the warm, slightly damp surface. ‘It’s like moss.’ Her fingertips brushed up against what felt like a socket, and she reached out for the switch, but instead she felt something move and her hand went into the wall, into something warm and wet and— it licked her.

  She screamed and screamed and screamed, feeling it bite down.

  Ianto ran up to her, his flashlight showing her hand embedded in a mouth in the wall.

  Both shrieked.

  ‘Do something!’ wailed Gwen, helplessly.

  ‘I don’t want to touch it!’ yelled Ianto.

  ‘You’re bloody squeamish when it suits you! It’s biting me!’ shouted Gwen.

  ‘But it’s a … mouth… in a wall! It’s wrong!’

  ‘I don’t care, it bloody hurts!’ Gwen was starting to cry. Ianto tried pulling her by the arm, but Gwen just shrieked more. Ianto let go and stood back, hands on hips, trying to work out what to do, trying to block Gwen’s shouts.

  He noticed something – something oddly wrong. And then he saw the light switch, and flicked it.

  Pause.

  Gwen and Ianto were in a corridor of flesh – the walls were a kind of thick, coarse meat, breathing and rippling. Lumps and occasional limbs protruded at various points, fleshy trails hanging down from the ceiling, twitching slightly. Apart from the mouth that was eating Gwen’s hand, there was the back of a head further down the corridor, and an ear.

  ‘Can you switch the light back off?’ hissed Gwen.

  ‘No,’ replied Ianto. ‘This is just so horrible.’

  ‘It’s still eating my sodding hand!’ wailed Gwen.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Ianto. He grabbed a biro from his handbag and jabbed it into the mouth. ‘Gag reflex,’ he explained as Gwen pulled her hand out, gasping with the pain. ‘I don’t suppose you brought some Dettol?’ she asked.

  Ianto was just staring at the mouth, which was mouthing ‘Help me’ over and over again.

  Gwen shook him. ‘Come on.’

  She dragged him down the corridor, both of them recoiling from the carpet, which appeared to be made up of matted human hair, streaking in colours and patterns and whorls and lumps through to a door.

  The door, embedded as it was in meat, appeared to be a normal little Victorian-effect door, with a shiny gold handle. She pushed it open and, without thinking, flicked a switch on the right.

  This room was worse. She stepped into it.

  Ianto followed her, and breathed out raggedly. ‘A Living Room. Oh my god.’

  It had once been a quite nicely decorated, minimalist room – all white paint and polished floorboards. But it was now covered with lumpen flesh, twisting and veined across the walls, occasionally bursting out in cancerous bulges, or half-recognisable shapes. The whole room flowed across and hung away from a big bed, the covers turned down, the pillows scattered randomly about.

  Tufts of hair poked up through gaps in the floorboards.

  ‘I am going to be sick,’ announced Gwen, starting to look round for somewhere to hurl.

  ‘Gwen?’

  She recognised Jack’s voice and spun. She and Ianto ran towards a shape, roughly the size of a grand piano and covered with a dust sheet.

  Ianto pulled away the sheet, and they both gasped.

  ‘Ladies!’ beamed Jack. He was, to their horror, entwined, impossibly entwined, in a heap of about sixteen naked men, enmeshed in the floorboards and protruding into the wall. When Hieronymus Bosch sat down to paint Hell, he’d left out the bit where they played Twister.

  ‘Jack…!’ began Ianto. He tasted vomit, swallowed, and went silent.

  Gwen’s reaction was different.

  ‘Captain Jack Harkness!’ she barked. ‘When will you learn that you can’t solve a problem by shagging it?’

  ‘Hey!’ said Jack, managing a shrug. ‘It’s a one-size-fits-all solution.’ His expression shifted under Ianto’s basilisk glare. ‘Ianto! This isn’t what it looks like. Have you met my friends Eric, Adam and Tristan, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Hi,’ said some voices.

  ‘Nice to meet you, I’m sure,’ said Ianto crisply. ‘Do I actually ask for an explanation or just take pictures for the album?’

  Jack clucked, disapprovingly. ‘This genuinely isn’t an orgy. We’re simply fuelling a vastly complicated energy exchange through the violent excitation of our biomass.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ said Gwen. ‘That would be the obvious explanation.’

  ‘Seriously,’ said Jack. ‘It’s an attempt to power that alien device. But it’s not working well.’

  ‘Evidently,’ Ianto looked like he was chewing bees.

  Jack sighed. ‘This is serious. You need to do something. We’re approaching critical mass.’

  ‘Riiiight.’ Gwen giggled. ‘Oh, Jack, what a mess.’

  ‘I tried to stop it. I failed,’ Jack told them. ‘It’s got out of hand. I don’t think they know what to do. Have you got—’ And then: ‘They’re coming!’

  The room’s fleshy walls bulged, parted and extruded, swelling and tearing as the Perfection strode through.

  They were both looking their best, gloriously naked. The entire meat of the room just shuddered.

  Brendan nodded at them, crossed to the kitchenette and lit a cigarette from a packet on the table.

  Jon walked over to Gwen and Ianto. ‘How did you get in?’ he demanded.

  ‘Fire escape,’ said Gwen.

  ‘Ah,’ said Jon. ‘It’s just that we’ve got psychic shielding up.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Gwen. ‘Only we’re Torchwood.’

  ‘Jack’s friends.’ Jon smiled at Jack. ‘Well, it’s sweet that you tried a rescue, but it’s not going too well. And I don’t believe that you got through our shields without help.’ He turned to look at Ianto. ‘And you – you’ve been touched by the machine. You’re wearing Christine.’ He ran a finger across Ianto’s hair, and Ianto tried not to flinch. ‘She suits you. Lovely work. It’s not lost its touch. Where is it?’

  Ianto had recognised their voices. These were the balls of fire. Those cruel, sing-song voices. They’d torn apart that boat in their fury, they’d wrecked lives looking for that machine, and they’d thrown up this unholy horror around them, all to show off their dreadful power. And now one of them was staring him in the eye and smiling slowly.

  Bren looked up, tapping ash out. ‘Have you brought us back the machine?’

  ‘Would it actually help?’ asked Ianto.

  ‘It’d stop all this,’ Brendan waved his cigarette around the room.

  ‘Really? Could it make all these people better?’

  ‘Oh probably. It can do all that, and make us gods again, and give you back Captain Jack. Lovely.’ Brendan considered. ‘And maybe that’s the right thing. Or maybe this is our wake-up call.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Jon.

  ‘Why should the party stop? With the machine, we could expand again.’ Brendan had stood up, spreading out his hands. ‘Gods need room to breathe.’ He started to glow.

  ‘I think you should stop,’ said Ianto, very quietly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just once, wouldn’t it be nice to just go back to how things were? Everything’s changed. But what about a bit more of the same?’

  ‘I agree with the skirt,’ shouted out Jack. ‘I think you’re both in danger of doing something very, very stupid.’

  Jon shot him a glance. ‘Looking like that, you manage that sentence?’

  ‘I am not without a sense of irony,’ muttered Jack.

  Brendan advanced towards Ianto. ‘Give us back the machine.’

  ‘No,’ said Ianto. ‘I don’t think it’s safe in your hands any more.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No.’

  Jon reached out a hand and, barely moving, he gently picked up Gwen and threw her screaming into the wall. She stuck fast, half in, half out, her hair sucked and pulled back. She screamed
and struggled and only succeeded in vanishing further in.

  Jack screamed back at Gwen. Ianto ran from the room.

  Behind him he could hear the Perfection laughing.

  IANTO JONES COULD TEACH

  YOU, BUT HE’D HAVE TO

  CHARGE

  Ianto sat on the fire escape, sobbing to get his breath back. He opened up his handbag, and took out the bag with the alien device inside.

  ‘Oh, you,’ he thought. ‘You’ve caused so much trouble. What the hell do I do now?’

  He opened the bag, and tipped the device into his hand.

  Captain Jack Harkness, at your service! Boomed a very familiar voice in his head.

  ‘Why are you doing that?’

  I’m the voice of who you most admire, Ianto Jones. Great shoes, by the way.

  ‘Thanks. But I wish you wouldn’t do him.’

  Oh, come on, Ianto. It’s just a bit of fun. Puts you at ease, doesn’t it? Admit it. Just a little?

  ‘It’s comforting, yes. But it’s not right. You shouldn’t sound like him. Not when I’m trying to work out what to… do…’

  It’s really easy.

  ‘Is it? Can you make everything right? Can you? Jack and that room and me?’

  Yes. Trust me, Ianto.

  ‘I’m not sure I can. I’ve seen what those creatures did looking for you.’

  But Ianto – all the people I’ve helped. I helped so many on that boat.

  ‘But so many people died. And look at me.’

  I can fix you. And Jack. I can fix him too.

  ‘NO!’

  You love him. He doesn’t love you. You saw him in there. But I can change all that, Ianto Jones.

  ‘How can I trust you? Those creatures in there. They relied on you, and you—’

  That’s different. They were boring.

  ‘What?’

  I got bored. I always did. A few thousand years of perfection, and I’d make them move on. You know how it is. You cure war, famine, plague and pestilence and then… you know… it’s the small stuff. I’m better off moving on. Like that Littlest Hobo doggy. Who doesn’t love a dog?

  ‘Again, what?’