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Next time you hear strange sounds emanating from your pipework you’ll know what it is.

But how did it come to this?

There were many sources: Spiders and shield beetles; potato blight; the mould on an old cheese; nits off the kids hair; a not quite dead goldfish; some seeds; mud off a highland walking boot; a furball coughed out by a cat; an apple core; something that lives in the phlegm you’ve just coughed up. They all went down and they’ll come back up again.

Then there’s the stuff that’s down there already; rats; blind insects who live in Human faeces; trapped sparrows; crocodiles and panthers who were flushed away in the 70s; the eyeless descendants of lost Victorian sewerage workers:

it was only a matter of time before they’d become immune to domestos, only a matter of time before they’d breed, only a matter of time before they’d evolve into what we now call a super species. It’s ironic that it’s our use of Ecover washing up liquid (with it’s dangerous cocktail of c223454324 chromosomes) has speeded that process.

When they burst out it isn’t always how people imagine. It’s not always a sudden explosion in your sink and immediate carnage and Just placing grids over your pipework only moves the problem elsewhere. Last week some of them broke through the drainage under Roath Rec and chased Llanrumney under 9s into the community centre. Their goalie hasn’t been seen since, not that the press are allowed to report that!

Call them monsters if you will but they are our own doing, our own shadows.

And it needn’t be such a problem! There is actually nothing dangerous about consuming them, humans can’t be harmed (as long as you cook them properly), I’ve tried them and they’re a tasty and adequate replacement for most meat products. A sort of cross between bacon and turkey. Ideal at Christmas.

We could farm them, instead of secretly spending millions on drainage systems that keep them trapped but increase risks down the line, we should be sending husbandry experts in to establish a breeding programme. On this overcrowded Earth shouldn’t we utilise all our resources?

On GMB, Piers Morgan kept interrupting me, he said I was woke, Guardian reading hypocrite for ignoring that vegans, Megan Markle and transsexuals, flush their waste too and said you couldn’t call meat farmed from these creatures “steaks”. I was trying to say we could all flush more under the farming scheme but he kept butting in and I couldn’t get my point across.

No one in the science community argues against my proposals anymore but the waste lobby is massive and frankly they don’t want lose revenue by turning the sewers over to farming so nothing will happen.

The government’s proposed target of “some vague unspecified action by 2050” will be much too late.

We’re not helped by hippies dressing as lizards dancing round Trafalgar square singing “Drainage Creatures don’t want fuss, they have feelings just like us!”

So all in all we are failing to get any traction in prioritising issue of Drainage life forms.

But I warn you, unless we start to tackle this issue soon we’ll be facing an environmental disaster that will make Global Warming look tame in comparison.

The air moves, just a fraction, colder.

“What do you want, i’m trying to sleep.”

“I’m sorry luv. You were snoring i was just moving over...”

“Snoring, hardly, it was just a little rustle. What, I can’t even breathe now is it?”

The pause is unfinished. A darkness stirs.

“No, it’s fine. You know what I mean.”

“That’s fine, don’t worry, I won’t breathe…i’m sure you’d love that.”

A smell drifts softly through the dim night air. Cloying and close.

“Don’t be daft now, i’m sorry i woke you up. I am. You’re so grouchy.”

“Well I would be less grouchy if you didn’t keep me up.”

“You were the one snoring though.”

The smell, the air, the cold, creeps together, a shape forms.

“I told you I wasn’t snoring.”

It hulks, softly, waiting.

“If you were asleep, how would you know?”

“Oh just cut it out, the nagging. I know what this is about.”

“I wasn’t nagging. I didnt even mean to wake you up.”

“No of course not you just accidently kicked me. Well fine I won’t breathe.

The shape

“I won’t roll over.”

That was a shadow

“I won’t make a noise.”

Steps forward

“I won’t see friends.”

Watching

“I won’t go for a drink. Anything else you want me to not do? For fucks sake.”

And smiles.

“Don’t swear?”

“Are you fucking kidding me...”

“I’m sorry i was just joki..”

“Joking? Well it’s not funny. I’m SICK of it. You’re on me ALL THE TIME”

It’s smile melts like a fog, twisting and growing thicker.

“Tidy up, pick up the kids, help with the washing. I’m working all fucking day....”

From it’s mouth a cruel hand emerges, fingers of tendrils that reach for you searching.

“...and i’d just like a little sliver of light at the end of the tunnel where I might relax and see some friends.”

And smothers your mouth. You do not know, but you are suffocating.

“That’s not what I meant darling.”

“It never is, is it? What you mean, huh. Tough is it? Sitting around all day, stuffing your face, cloggin the plughole, letting the boy run wild and do whatever the fuck he wants. But I can't have a few beers. In my own house. That i pay the rent for.”

“That’s not fair is it.“

In the unfinished silence the searching tendrils find your throat. They wrap around it, moving down to your arm.

“I’m sorry. Please”

Your throat is closed. You do not breathe in.

“Sorry. Don’t TALK TO ME ABOUT SORRY. You fucking bitch.”.

The tendrils reach down covering your arm. They grip your wrist, and draw it up slowly. The touch is wet and strong. The shape surrounds you now. It’s smile is your smile, crooked and cruel. Its fingers are your fingers curled and cold.

You watch the tendrils rise your arm up. The curled fist opens and closes. Then swings swiftly and surely down.

Oh Brent, what happened? Where was the jet-black goatee painted to the sculpted chin? Where were the biceps and pecs that mocked the merest hint of a belly crowning beneath?

Bloody cheek on the man, using a ten-year-old photo for his dating profile.

Brent’s face wore a circle of grey fluff set roughly to the bottom of a circle of flesh, all sitting atop a tube of pink squeezed out from the too tight collar of his denim shirt. If he still had the muscles, they were living in fear of the monster belly beneath.

Alison had cringed at using a one-year old photo, but she had to – it was taken before she lost all the weight and she still had her boobs.

It would have been okay if even a tenth of the wit and repartee she had seen in is profile had come with him to the restaurant.

Alison said, ‘Your work. You’re in computers?

‘That’s right.’

A couple sat down at the table to their right. The clink of tableware, swirl of water. Quiet rustle as napkins were unfolded.

Alison said, ‘Music. That’s something you like too.’

Brent nodded.

Alison said, ‘Any favourite bands?’

Brent nodded. Flatly, as though he was describing the prevailing weather, he said, ‘Sliver of Light, Clogged Plughole?’

Alison smiled and sipped some water. There was a snort of laughter from the neighbouring table and Alison’s smile deepened. Perhaps that guy was a telepath and he’d read her mind: Clogged Plughole? Named after your personality was it, mate?

Alison wracked her brains for another conversation starter. Stamp collecting, Star Trek – his blow-up doll collection?

Brent said, ‘Do you hear that sound? Like…a train?’

Alison shook her head. ‘I don’t think it’s a train. It sounds more like a-‘

The entire front window of the restaurant exploded inwards, the cheap imported Saftee glass breaking into lethal shards that soared across the restaurant a split second in front of the happy headlights and cab of the driverless tram that had launched its way into the story. The shards of spinning glass chopped into heads and bodies, seemingly at random, and yet, there was almost a precise order to the butchery.

The sharp elbows and outsized breasts that had been declaring loudly that willpower was all one needed to stay looking so beautiful and thin would never guzzle down a Big Mac and burn it off thanks to her metabolism again. The man who looked a bit like Donald Trump was actually a lovely chap, but sometimes trams sent from the future to save us from perfunctory stories just have to go with their gut. The snooty wine waiter would find it hard to snoot much of anything without his legs, knees, toes or eyelids.

And Brent. Poor Brent. His body had become a pin cushion for shards of glass. He was still alive, but the gurgling sounds he made as blood dribbled from his mouth had improved his personality beyond measure.

Ding! said the tram. It’s me! Who wants to be friends.

Sadly, no one there spoke Tramese, so the poor, friendless tram backed sadly way and out of the story forever.

An oblivious teenage waiter chose this moment to arrive with Alison’s burger and chips. Possibly not the done thing, but she’d been starving herself all bloody week. She ate with gusto. And ketchup. And Brent’s fries, and his burger. Well, come on, after the lucky escape she just had, wouldn’t you?

The crowd surges ahead of me, rippling out as far as the eye can see, like the hide of some great beast, stretching out, flexing, testing its strength as if preparing for battle. The air ripples, charged with nervous excitement as we gather here in our thousands on this dull, grey, unspecial October morning.

All around me people are tense, waiting. Some stretch their limbs, some talk in quick, machine-gun bursts, eyes casting out over the crowd ahead. I stand silent and still trying to quell the snakes churning in my belly, trying to tell myself that I can do this. I will do it.

Somewhere in the noise, within the blaring music, the babbling commentator, the cheering crowd, I can hear the quiet rustling of the race numbers pinned to our chests like shields.

Then, quite suddenly, we are moving. A slow, shambling, shuffling towards the start. It is a sliver of orange electric light in the distance that grows and grows until suddenly it is looming overhead, roaring its terrible, thundering music over the bellowing onlookers and we are running.

The start is strong. People laugh and talk and shout words of encouragement. The pace is steady, the mood is bright. There is a man dressed as a bee and another as a hotdog. A group of women in matching charity t-shirts power together through the crowds. The world is awash with greens and reds and oranges. Fluorescent stripes and flicking ponytails, peaked caps and foreheads just beginning to prickle with sweat.

It is only later that things begin to sour. At the 9th mile no-one is laughing. I am surrounded by a sea of clenched jaws and sour sweat, determined grimaces, eyes down, one foot heavy, leaden in front of the other, again and again and again.

My mind wanders, spinning away from the cheering people and their children handing out sugary sweets, leaving behind the pain of my thighs and the burning in my chest. My thoughts flit among the mundane: last night’s meal of pasta and sauce, how soft my duvet had felt before I left it, the shower plughole clogged with strings of my housemate’s long brown hair. Anything that isn’t this road, this pain, this terrible, relentless beast that will not be beaten.

But then comes mile twelve. We pass the brass band and the end is in sight. Someone pats me encouragingly on the back and we share a quick smile that carries worlds within it. The last push over the last hill, through the straggling remains of the crowd who still clap and cheer. As one we round the corner and pour, like water, across the finish.

Fire rages through every muscle, my throat burns and my fist clenches over the medal they press into my clammy palm. Nausea rises in my belly, pain swims in my eyes. Even stopping running doesn’t stop the painMy back is drenched in sweat and my feet are sore to bleeding. I lean heavily against the wall, waiting for it all to be over.

Until next year.

I washed ashore East Shinjuku, Tokyo shortly after Reba’s death. After selling all my possessions, including my car, I had enough cash to rent a space above Decoy, a small jazz bar with a back-alley entrance. The owner, Kaito, was kind enough to give me part-time work during the week, and with my savings I was able to enjoy a moderate existence in this city of 14 million people.

I chose Tokyo because Reba and I dreamed of retiring to Japan. That was supposed to be our future. But with the world ending, and Reba gone, I decided to abandon my research post and go into hiding. I needed to escape the corruption and betrayal of my government and live the remaining months or years I had left in this doomed world as a ghost, alone to grieve.

To take my mind off my heartbreak, I began walking nightly through the shopping district so that I could people watch and window shop, enjoying the comfort brought upon by my self-imposed isolation. Tonight, six months after my disappearance from the Omega 8 Project that Reba and I were working on in secret, I stroll toward the entertainment district. I can smell the mixture of noodles and beer. It’s a soupy flavor, distinct to East Shinjuku.

I hear the rustling of voices, like thousands of leaves on a windy day, waving in unison. I catch a sliver of light from the inside of an arcade, slithering its way into the alley, attempting to pull me inside. I resist, though, because to walk the streets of Tokyo is to free my soul. The business signs are a mixture of vibrant color and stylized kana; a strange brew that, as a foreigner still learning the language, brings me wonder and confusion.

A young man and woman ahead of me turn into one of the pubs, she with a bright blue flowing shirt on and he in comfortable khakis. They look to be in love, and it hits me how much emptiness fills my heart since Reba died, all those months ago on the island we called Omega 8. Sometimes, on these walks, I daydream about bumping into her again, as if she’s still alive, walking these streets alone like I am, looking for her soul.

Omega 8 was supposed to change our lives. I guess, in a way, it did. But not for the better. Reba gone, the antidote missing, the monsters escaped. The sabotage we suffered at the hands of our marine escort was an act of betrayal that doomed us. In fact, it doomed the world.

Yet here, on these peaceful streets, you wouldn’t know that terror was swimming through the ocean. Right now, it’s just me and the fair people of Tokyo. These quiet and courteous people unknowingly await a fate too terrible to comprehend.

I return to my flat to take a hot bath, but the tub is clogged, and instead I decide to slit my wrists.