POST-NUT PROPHECY
The framed photograph on the bedside table caught my eye while Kyle was kissing my neck. She was staring past my left shoulder with that tight, victorious expression she wore on election nights in the eighties.
“Slower,” I mumbled, my hands slipping against the sweat on his shoulders.
He adjusted immediately, shifting his weight onto his elbows so he wouldn’t crush me into the springs. He smelled like sandalwood, warm skin, and the artificial coconut scent of cheap lube. Outside, rain beat against the glass in heavy, erratic sheets, rattling the loose sash frame.
He pulled back, his breath coming hot and uneven against my chin. “You alright?”
“Yeah.” I looked past his ear at the bedside table. “Just noticing your interior design choices.”
Kyle turned his head, his chest rising and falling against mine. “Oh. Maggie. It was my granddad’s.”
“Right.”
He let out a short breath that was almost a laugh, then leaned down and pressed his mouth to mine again. The room was stifling. A single bare bulb hung from the ceiling, casting hard shadows across his unmade bed, the tubs of whey protein stacked in the corner, and the fitting sheet that had pulled free from the mattress corner, bunching around our ankles.
My phone vibrated twice on the floor, the motor buzzing loudly against the bare floorboards. I ignored it. Kyle’s hand moved down my side, his fingers pressing into the dip of my hip, firm and warm. When I turned onto my stomach, he braced himself over me, his hand slipping over my lower back. The mattress groaned under us. He was careful, checking my weight, asking if the angle was right in a low voice that lacked any of the swagger he put into his profile photos.
When it ended, he collapsed beside me, his shoulder heavy against mine. Air whistled softly through his nose as he caught his breath. The ceiling had a thin, jagged crack running from the light fitting to the door, brown at the edges from an old leak.
He reached over to the table and handed me a tissue from a box decorated with cartoon dolphins. “Good?”
“Yeah,” I said, wiping my stomach. “Very good.”
He rolled onto his elbow, looking down at me. Without his chest pumped out for a camera, he looked younger than thirty. The skin under his eyes was dark, and he had a small patch of dried shaving foam behind his left ear that he’d missed in the mirror.
“My name’s actually Kyle,” he said quietly.
I looked up at him. “I didn’t say it wasn’t.”
“You looked like you thought I was lying.”
“I didn’t think anything.” I reached down for my trousers, sitting up on the edge of the bed. The cold air hit my bare back, making my skin prickle. “I just need to find my socks.”
“You can stay if you want,” he said. He wasn’t pushy about it. He just pulled the duvet up over his waist and watched me pull my jeans on. “I’ve got tea. Or we could just sleep.”
“I’ve got work early,” I said, pulling my jumper over my head. The collar bit into my neck—I’d put it on backwards, but I didn’t feel like taking it off to fix it in front of him. “Freelance stuff. Deadline in the morning.”
He nodded, though his face dropped a fraction. “Right. Sure.”
My phone vibrated again. I picked it up off the floor. Two texts from Mia.
Mia: ARE YOU ALIVE
Mia: OR DID COMMON SENSE HARVEST YOUR ORGANS
I unlocked the screen to reply, but the screen flickered. The familiar yellow interface of Birder—the grid of faces, the distance meters, the messaging tabs—vanished entirely. The screen went pitch black.
A second later, faint white dots began to pulse in the center of the glass, like static on an old television. Text rolled out slowly across the dark background, appearing letter by letter.
THE MAN WHO FEARS THE FIRE WILL STILL PROVIDE THE MATCH.
“What’s that?” Kyle asked, leaning over my shoulder.
“Just a glitch,” I said, tapping the home button. The app refused to close. The text lingered for another three seconds before dissolving back into black glass. Then the standard profile grid snapped back into place.
“People online are saying the app’s been doing that all week,” Kyle said, sitting up further. He picked up his own phone from the table. “My mate got one yesterday telling him he was going to miss his train to Manchester. He actually missed it because he spent twenty minutes staring at his phone trying to figure out how it knew.”
“It’s just algorithmic recommendations using location data,” I said, zip fastening my jeans. “It knows where you live and where you go.”
“It felt weird though,” he said, turning his phone over in his hands. “He said it felt like someone was sitting in the room with him.”
I tucked my phone into my pocket, grabbed my trainers, and walked out to the landing without lacing them up. The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage and damp carpet. A woman in a pink dressing gown was opening her front door on the floor below, carrying a plastic bag of recycling. She stared at me as I hurried down the stairs with my laces dragging behind me.
Outside, the rain hit my face hard enough to sting.
Stockwell Road was grey and slick under the streetlights. Water collected in huge, shallow pools along the kerb, spraying up onto the pavement whenever a double-decker bus rumbled past. I walked fast towards the station, my left ankle cold where my sock had come off somewhere in Kyle’s bed.
A digital billboard above the chemist flickered between an advert for a local gym and a council flood warning. The station entrance was blocked off with low red barriers; a puddle had expanded across the concourse floor, dark water rising around the ticket gates.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, expecting Mia, but Birder had opened itself again.
The profile on screen wasn’t a torso or a gym mirror. It was a man standing in a green raincoat next to a wooden fence, laughing at something off-camera. Dark curls, heavy brows, a faint scar through his left eyebrow.
RAVI, 29.APP DEVELOPER. CLIMATE ORGANISER.
Distance: 12 metres.
A message popped up at the bottom of the screen.
Ravi: Your jumper is backwards.
I stopped near the bus shelter, my boots splashing into three inches of water. I looked up. Standing ten feet away under the glass roof of the shelter, holding a large black umbrella, was a man in a dark green raincoat. He lowered his phone and looked directly at me.
Before I could say anything, a loud, metallic bang echoed from the middle of the road. A manhole cover shuddered, water lifting the iron disc three inches off the asphalt before it slammed back down, sending a wave of murky river water surging straight over the kerb.
