Pongo #35

Casenotes
(from subject's personal journals)

Somewhere out there, I hope
that the rest of me, scattered
across premieres, ground
into red carpets, is shining
like diamond from coalface.
Soon
I will gather my skirts, reel in
whatever
is on the end of this line,
smash the hall of mirrors,
one grinning inverse twin
at a time.

Zoom
Facewatch

Spotted: Genna Estargo spotted leaving celebrity 'peaches & cream' sanctuary "Coven in Holisten Gardens on Tuesday.

Overheard: Pop singer Tenna Nix booking a clandestine appointment on her mobile phone in the Central Station toilets.

And it's not just the girls. Rumour has it that a certain "fine wine actor has been keeping the bulges at bay with a dabble in Marley's superstar suite. No names, but you know who we mean.

In other news, it's been a tough week for Maren Gilligan. The "Fine Vexation actress confessed to Zoom that she is afraid for her life, after bodyguards observed a stalker on several occasions photographing and following her. Gilligan claims that she is having to arrange for any letters arriving at her house to be destroyed without being opened, in case of nasty surprises from the stalker. Rumour has it that a certain co-star has been lending her a rather muscular shoulder to lean on in these troubled times. Trust us, first sniff of an engagement ring and we'll be in there with a candid interview and hen night pictures faster than you can say "boy or girl?

Insa

The first thing I did after leaving the café that night was just wander. It's a pretty human trait to hope that sheer luck will navigate problems for you, part the seas etc. I went up and down streets I'd never normally venture near, and on every one someone was doing the same. It was odd: just like the night I met Andaw, the roads and alleyways were full of horrors. Lopsided, wonky legged, they stumbled around, pitifully alive, like trainee zombies who hadn't managed to die properly. They looked at me, as close to symmetrical as you can get without being equally freakish, and each one looked both familiar and dead, like cut and shuts or collages. They were soup cans, oil brushstrokes, glued-on clumps of horsehair and they were roaming the streets not in search of blood, nor, it seemed, in search of the revenge such creatures crave in ghost stories, but just wandering. Taking the air. Most had grey hairs streaking through younger-looking manes, many had crooked backs, missing eyes, conspicuous scars, pimples. Most had on designer coats, bulked out at angles by various deformities. Gold shone from every finger, as if they were trying to snow-blind the world, to dress maggoty skulls as haute couture models. Just like Andaw, I thought. These are the walking landfill sites. This is what's left after the magazines have rolled off the press ' pulp dressed as tinsel.

A shoplifter of about eighteen belted past, high as a kite and swerving, slamming into the zombies. She dropped her swag, a bottle of premium spirits, and it smashed at the feet of a manchild with red and grey hair, surrounding his feet and soaking his trousers with a halo of mucky liquid. The manchild stopped his shuffling, stared at the pool, then at the lifter, and resumed his snail trail down the road. The thief stood, giddy and bemused for a moment, before moaning "my rum, absently, and zigzagging off. It was like she had smashed it against a dustbin.

These were the most extreme cases, vessels for every kind of abuse. Yes, argue the supporters, but it's their choice. Sure, as if you don't throw money at them, embroider the truth and then lock them into contracts until their bodies deteriorate so much it's nigh-on irreversible anyway. What good would a court case do? They're rich ' look at the fucking ice hanging off the neck of that cadaver in blue ' but they can barely walk and we can barely look at them.

As I wandered, I thought of Cadderine, of the cells growing inside her. Then I thought of her as one of these crossing sweepers, the only other extreme enough outlet for her idiotic worship. Then I tried to weigh up the two, and though the thought of her being eaten away by the disease scared the daylights out of me, I thought "better that than this. Then something vaguely human blundered into me and I fell, and then I thought maybe I deserved that.

She could be under a car, a spell or arrest. I've been hoping since that night that sheer luck will trip over me. It would be nice.