The Midst is a place of stairs. Stairs and walkways and bridges and towers and attic rooms with skylights... It is always night time there. The only time Stephen has ever seen the light of its sun is when it is just setting, through his window. Then he looks out and down over a city that inhabits sixteen different levels and which he knows has a language all its own. Stephen knows its language - when he sleeps... But when he wakes he wonders, sometimes. What was that word that a person wearing grey spoke to him, from a under an archway in a courtyard? It meant gender, didn't it? Gender or perhaps sex or sexuality... Odd, but the nearest he can remember the question now is "Which way do you turn?" And he cannot remember what he answered.

When he is there it seems as if he has known the Midst for as long as he can remember. There is no questioning in his mind when he wakes in his attic room with the big colourful cushions that this is his home. The room is filled with paintings - paintings which he knows to be his own work. They are stacked against one wall so as to almost obscure the door. He knows that the door leads to the stairs, and that the stairs lead down past other rooms and the pink lit bordello and eventually past the cafe to the back door where the whores forever stand and argue into the night. Maybe this last is the reason he doesn't use that door. Instead he steps cat-like out of his window onto the roof and from there he goes down (an iron fire escape, a swing, a drop) to the courtyard below. This is the courtyard where the grey figure spoke to him, that time. He was carrying some pictures, ready for an exhibition at the Dome, he remembers. He wonders what he said in response.

When he first came to this place, though, he did not live here. He came over the desert, in the company of a short, fat, balding man whose name he could not recall. On the outskirts of the city was an oasis, and here they sat and ate fruit and drank water from tall, cool, clay jars. His journey up until that point was vague to him, but he remembers clearly that the man turned and asked him.

"Would you visit the mist before you continue your journey?"

He hadn't known what he meant, since from the rocks where they sat the city could not be seen. But the man had waved a hand towards the air behind them, where there had seemed a glassy, shimmering, silken grey dome in the air. Through this, like a mirage of itself, he imagined he could see a glitter of spires and minarets. Out of the fog of his mind at this time somehow this decision had been a thing he was certain of. He had said

"Yes."

They'd put down their jars, then, and leaving their beasts with the oasis keeper had taken a tiny aircar from a rack under a palm tree.

"The city is no place for beasts." His companion had commented as they rose into the air. Then he had been too busy driving for further speech.

The desert had been hot and brassy, but it was at their back, now. Ahead of them the veil shimmered and grew large until it took up all the sky. Stephen flinched as they passed through it, but there was no shock or damage, only a light film of moisture that covered his face as if with dew.

There were many such cars now, and they buzzed silently through the air as if constantly about to collide. Stephen would have been afraid, but the man seemed confident as he steered them through the swarm.

"We will visit the imaginary college," he said. "There is somebody I would like you to meet..."

Ahead of them now were buildings, and as Stephen watched one of them grew in size until it was a cliff of windows, all regularly spaced. They caught the sun as they flew in towards them, and his heart filled with the pleasure of flight and the vanishing light. The man stopped the car with great precision outside a window in the middle of the cliff and stood up to get out.

"He will be asleep," he said confidently, "but I'll wake him."

Stephen was puzzled, but it seemed as if he was meant to know what was going on and, not wanting to seem foolish, he followed the man's lead as he stood and stepped off of the stubby wing onto the windowsill of the room. The car remained steady as the man rapped loudly on the window and shouted "David!" repeatedly until it was opened by a dishevelled boy with sticking up ginger hair who wore nothing but a pair of red tights and a quilt thrown round his naked shoulders. As they climbed through the window and across the desk beneath it the boy flung himself back on the bed opposite them and yawned hugely.

"What kind of time do you call this, Tony?" he asked, ignoring Stephen as completely as if he hadn't been in the room. "You know I'm on tonight."

"In two hours," said the man, "and I'd like to see you conscious if that's at all possible." He picked through a pile of clothes on the floor with his foot and fished out a green shirt which he threw at the boy. "Put this on, if you've nothing cleaner. This is Stephen, since you're rude enough not to ask. He's a great fan of your work. I want you to show him the Midst."

"Oh all right," said the boy grumpily, his voice muffled as he pulled the shirt over his head. "I don't suppose you've got a fag, Stephen?"

Stephen wondered what work it was that he was supposed to be a fan of and mumbled embarrassedly that he didn't smoke. The boy didn't seem too put out.

"Never mind," he said, "I'll steal one off Tone." He extracted a packet from the man's breast pocket with one hand, removed a cigarette with his teeth and shoved the pack back. "There you go, Tone." He turned the man around and shoved him gently toward the door. "Now piss off, there's a good manager - me an' Stephen 'ave got work to do."

Stephen was filled with an obscure sense of pride as the boy put his hand on his shoulder and steered him toward the bed. There he sat as David smoked his cigarette, put on a long black coat and grabbed a guitar, all the while chattering of his forthcoming gig and the songs he was working on and the jealousies of his profession as if they had known each other for years. As Stephen watched his face he felt that he must know him from somewhere, not personally, perhaps, but by his fame. Here though it was as if fame were a thing that could be set aside (Stephen almost had it there) as if it were a garment he could cast off at the border of the city.

When David was ready he pulled Stephen up by both hands and looked at him for a long moment. (Perhaps it was not fame at all. Perhaps it was just that it would be almost criminal for him to forget such a person.) And then they left - through the window (which now overlooked a dark alleyway), onto a balcony, down a flight of steps and into the night.

After this Stephen's memory is clouded, but it seems to him as if weeks passed on this visit to the city. He went with David to his gig in a low level bar that night, and watched the boy fascinate an audience of usually hardened drinkers until well into the night. He was taken to bars and exhibitions and gigs and parties and learnt (to his great delight) that the imaginary college was so called because it had no classes - only the great bank of halls of residence that he had first visited. The people made him welcome - that much he can recall, vividly. They made him welcome in a way he had not known before - in spite of the fact that he continued to decline their drugs and their occasional offers of sex. He didn't want to leave the Midst, that time - but he did. He had to.

The next time he was there he woke in his own room. He doesn't remember how he came to live in the place - but if he had planned it he couldn't have asked for somewhere better. He had always wanted a place with a skylight, and here he had not only that but little alcoves where his art materials were stored and a step down to the sleeping area full of bright cushions and a window that opened straight out onto the roof. The sun was setting again as he woke, and he lay there for a minute with the diffuse orange light behind his eyes wondering where he was. Then the phone rang.

"Answer," he said.

"Stephen," said the fluffy blonde girl who appeared on the screen, "for heaven's sake put some clothes on."

"It's my bed," he said, stretching out on it luxuriantly, "why should I?"

"So that you can come to my party, dumb ass. We're all heading down to the Underzone - do you want to come?" Her voice was a conspiratorial whisper, and Stephen sighed heavily. The Underzone was not the lowest level of the city, as the name might imply. It was simply the lowest that people like Twink were willing to go. He really didn't fancy slumming it with the air head crew tonight, and was about to say so when she pre-empted him.

"David is back. He's got a gig there - in Heathens - it's a bit of a step up from the old days, eh?"

"I guess. Yeah, OK, I'll be there."

"Pop over to mine first. We've got sweetstuff."

"You know that doesn't agree with me. I've only just woken up - you don't want to send me away again, do you?"

"Of course not, darling, just come."

He grumbled to himself as she cut off the call, but crawled out of his bed and up to wash. The water was on for once, fortunately, and no-one had been dicking about with the system recently, so he got bathed in a pleasant shower of water at his own temperature settings as soon as he stepped into the stall. Then he shook himself, got dried with hot air, and went to find some clothes.

Twink's was a short hop over the roofs, and by the time he got there it was already full of people, with Twink herself being surrounded by hangers-on who wanted to sample her bag of sweetstuff. He steered clear of that crowd, and instead took a drink from the bar. As he turned someone jogged his elbow. It was a dark, slender, woman, her long straight hair held back with a plaited band, and with an intelligent look in her green eyes that set her instantly apart for him. He realised that he needed something to say.

"I wonder why it's so colourful here..." he said to her, looking around the orange walls and then letting his eyes rest on the psychedelic patterns on her purple smock.

"Probably because you can see it," she said simply. "Most of them are colour-blind, you know."

"I didn't know. I've always been able to see colours, since I was a kid. Everyone here seems so much more competent than me that I never thought." Somehow it was alright to confess these doubts to her. She smiled.

"On the wagon tonight?" she asked, looking at his fruit juice.

"I can't get drunk here," he said with an embarrassed shrug. "I can only just taste this."

"So some of us can drink, and some can drug, and some lucky bastards can have sex... You may be more fortunate than you realise, being able to see."

"I can't have sex," he said sadly, "but I can kiss..." What a cheek, he thought. He'd never have said that, back there. Here, though, it seemed easy just to bend his mouth to hers. He tasted the rum on her lips and breathed the smell of her hair until he felt himself fading and pulled back.

"Never mind," she grinned, "don't push it, or you will end up back there. You coming to the show?"

"Of course."

"You're not another of David's fans, are you?"

Stephen looked down. "He is good," he said, defensively.

"Oh yes, but he's such an egotistical twit he really doesn't need anyone else telling him."

They followed Twink and the crowd across the rope bridge to the next building, and then took their turns to slide down the huge chute that someone had set up to take them down to the Underzone. The people on sweetstuff were giggling insanely by then, but even he, in his unenhanced state, could appreciate the long drop, almost like flight, and the landing in a huge pile of mattresses. He certainly had no difficulty keeping up with them. They ran through the street, swooping like birds, and he held hands with the dark girl and followed them.

Heathens was the most fashionable bar in the Underzone, and Stephen could see why David would be pleased to get a gig there. It was already full when they arrived, so that they could barely see its famous imps and demons that crowded every wall, but Twink was a well-known face, and her exuberance, or perhaps her wealth, bought them swift service and a place by the stage. Soon the air heads were crowded round four tables near the front and the lights were going down for David's set.

"I hope he's good tonight," said the dark-haired girl. "Twink says there might be agents from the Dome down here this time."

"I thought you said you weren't a fan."

"I didn't say I wasn't, I just asked if you were. I'm just as annoyed with myself about it as I am with you."

"Oh thanks"

They quietened down for the support act, a trio of lithe dancers from somewhere beyond the desert. Stephen wasn't watching them, though, he was thinking about all he'd heard about the Dome, the top level of the city, and the strange ones that were said to live there. He didn't like to believe the rumour, himself, there was something about the idea of superbeings that put him off, whether they were alien, as most people thought, or simply more 'advanced' people. Either way all that normal Midst dwellers ever saw of the Dome was its regular exhibitions, which included paintings, films, music - in fact all the arts. To get your art accepted in one was the highest accolade, and if David could achieve that, Stephen supposed that he shouldn't resent it. The only thing worrying him was the assumption that artists, once accepted, would eventually want to live in the Dome for good. He didn't want to lose his friend to that. Not yet.

There was a round of applause for the dancers and David came on stage himself then. He was a little older than when Stephen had first met him, and his hair was black now, in a kind of mohican. But he was still good. He only had his red guitar, at first, and he sat on a tall stool and sang the song about the end of the world, and the one about the statues that fell in love. Then Mike came up, the curtain at the back opened to reveal Bobby at the drums, and the show really started.

"Posey git!" said the dark-haired girl angrily. "He's just full of little stunts like that these days. He wants us all to remember where he started out, I suppose."

"What's the matter?" asked Stephen. She was clearly upset about something more than David's choice of set.

"Nothing. I just hate it when he plays this song."

'This song' was Lilith, a ballad about a demon queen with green eyes. Stephen looked at her and realised.

"Well there's no need to stare. I'm not a tourist attraction, you know."

"I'm sorry."

They held hands under the table as David continued his tale of the demon who he'd had to send away "because she wanted to know my soul". Then he came to the front of the stage and looked out at his audience for the first time.

"This is a new song," he said, "and a new member of the band. Come on Twink."

Twink jumped up on the stage, her eyes wild with sweetstuff now, and the band launched into a crazed number that was, he realised, about the people that lived in the Midst.

"No mere visitors we. We are the ones that stay. We will not cease our journey. We the ones that cannot stop," she sang, in complex duet with David. Her voice was deeper and darker when she sang, and Stephen was entranced. His eyes followed their every move and they whipped around the stage, around each other. "We are the holy fools, the travellers, the ones that know just what we are. Stand up all you dwellers in the Mist, stand up."

And they stood up. All the audience. Proudly, as if they had been given their birthright. Stephen felt the movement by his side, and he too rose to his feet, so that by the end of the song there was no one left seated. And then Stephen turned, and saw that the dark haired girl, the Lilith, was no longer there. He lifted his glass in his hand and crushed it until it cracked. The pain made him start to fade out and he saw the blood from a very great distance. He left the Midst.

It was another visit (months, years later?) when he realised that the picture was finished. He didn't remember waking, but now he was standing looking at it on the easel in the dying light from the skylight. It showed a young man opening a door. The young man was clothed entirely in black, and stood to the left of the picture in a brightly lit room. Outside the door was darkness and a forest, and stepping in from that darkness, his foot merging with that of the young man stepping out, was another figure robed in white. They looked the same - the light man and the dark, and they both looked afraid. They both looked like David.

Stephen wrapped the picture carefully and put it under his arm. He had done this before, he realised, several times, ever since David had told him to try for the Dome, but each time something had stopped him getting there. There had been a gig, an aircar breaking down. Once there had been the grey one - his last, disastrous attempt to have sex in this place. Whatever it had been, he knew now that it had all expressed the same thing, the feeling that his art wasn't good enough, could never be good enough, for the strange ones in the Dome. This time, though, he was sure. So it was no surprise to him that he ran into David on the third level walkway.

"You going up, then?" David asked, neatly side-stepping onto the belt Stephen was on.

"I think so. I've got this far." They stood next to each other for a time, while squares and open air cafes scrolled past them in the still twilight. There were no natural plants in the Midst, even here, for there was no earth, but every so often they passed clumps of greenery in pots and small, noisy fountains.

"Is that what you're taking? May I see?"

"OK." He drew off the cloth and passed the frame to David, who looked at it for a long time.

"Is that how you see me?" he said finally.

"Sometimes. It's not just about you, though, it's about all of us. It's my answer to your song, if you like - dwellers in the mist."

"And what will happen to them, these two, will they pass through one another or will they merge?"

"I don't know. Maybe I will when I go up there."

"You're not just looking to get this exhibited, then?"

"Maybe, maybe not...there's more to it than that, isn't there?"

"I don't know if you'll like it, up there," David said dubiously. "It's not what you think."

"I don't know what I think - but I want to see."

"Stephen, listen to me - don't stay there. Exhibit your stuff if you want - you've been good enough for that for a while now, but don't stay there..."

"No? It was you that was trying to get me to go..."

"Was I?" David seemed to deflate. "Yes, I suppose I was, but that was before."

"Before what?" he asked, but he got no reply. They travelled together for a while in silence and then Stephen had to get off.

"See you," he said, but David didn't turn around.

The Dome was the top level, level one, and it could only be reached by aircar. Stephen had got the hang of these little bugs by now, and he enjoyed the flight between the second level and the first, even though he was shaking with apprehension. He reached the gate of the Dome much sooner than he wanted.

"What art have you to share?" asked the Gatekeeper. It was a tall brown robed construct with a cowl over its face.

"Just one picture. Would you see it?"

"Come into the waiting room. I will pass it to the others."

The Gatekeeper took the frame and pushed aside the metallic curtain that fell in waves behind it. Stephen entered.

Inside, the waiting room was something of a let down. Everything was glass and chrome and black plastic. The floor was made of black glass and there was a sort of clouded viewing window over the other side. He walked over and tried to look through, but he could see only the vaguest shapes, like birds flying behind wisps of cloud.

A bell rang behind him with an intensely sweet and musical chime. Stephen turned, and saw a pair of winged constructs, one standing either side of a door he hadn't noticed before.

"What do you want?" he asked them. But their featureless faces did not answer, and there was no movement except the gentle swaying of the very tips of their silver wings.

"Don't ask them - they only ferried me here. Talk to me."

Stephen looked down at the source of the voice and saw a skinny punk slouched in one of the low plastic chairs. He wore a torn black T-shirt and skin tight black jeans. His hair was black and spiky and he had great black smudges of make-up around his eyes and mouth. His skin was deathly pale. He looked as if he had been awake for a week.

"Are you one of the dwellers here?" asked Stephen, unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice.

"I am," said the punk, smiling a gap toothed smile. "That's what you want to be too, isn't it? I can tell from your picture - it describes exactly what we're all about, here."

"And what's that?"

"Merging, crossing over, you know. You do know, really..."

Stephen didn't know that he did, but he was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He liked the punk, in a strange sort of way, but there was something about him that made Stephen not want to go any closer. He looked at his feet, noticing how scuffed his boots looked against the shiny floor.

"So what do I do now?"

"Whatever you want. You can stay with us, or go back down. If you leave the picture you can always come back. Up to a point."

"Up to what point?"

"The point when you can no longer enter the Midst. If you want to put it off you can, but in order to enter here your art mustn't fade, and if you leave it long enough it will - it always does."

"And what is here?"

"That you can't really know without entering, but I can show you a little."

He touched a button in the arm of his chair and the clouded window cleared. The figures that had looked like birds Stephen could now see were more of the angelic constructs, rising and falling between platforms and gantries. Some were alone, but others flew in pairs and carried a person between them, lifting them from one level to another. The people were much harder to make out than the constructs, and Stephen peered at the glass closer. One woman was being raised to a platform at his left, and as she was set down she turned her face towards him.

"Twink?" The window clouded over again as he spoke.

"I'm sorry," said the punk, "I can't let you see any more. Will you join us?"

"I...I don't know...can I leave again?"

"You would have everything you could want here, and your art would live forever. Why would you want to leave?"

The punk stood up and looked Stephen in the eye. He was a couple of inches taller than him. Stephen looked back, unabashed.

"You friend left us, of course," said the punk, looking away after a while. "the one in the picture. But he's one of the few. It is possible, but not for very long." He scrubbed nervously at his arms, and Stephen could see the track marks on them. He looked, Stephen didn't know, almost ashamed of something. Maybe he was telling the truth, but there was something he wasn't saying.

"You can take the picture," he decided, "but I think I should go now."

"Will you return?"

"I...don't know...maybe."

"Don't leave it too long Stephen."

Later he found David again. He was drinking heavily in one of the lowest level bars, and he didn't notice at first when Stephen sat down at his table. It was only when he reached out for a drink that wasn't there that he looked up.

"Stephen! You came back."

"Yes," said Stephen, handing him back the bottle, "did you think I wouldn't?"

"I didn't know, it's very tempting, that place..."

"It didn't tempt you."

"Oh it did - for a while. I left it almost too late, in fact. It nearly killed me, you know..."

"Killed?" The word seemed to echo on the air. It was the first time Stephen had heard death spoken of, in the Midst.

"Yeah," David mumbled, embarrassed, and the reverberations died away, "in the other place, you know..."

"I think I do know," said Stephen, carefully. "What about Twink?"

"She came with me, but she never left. She took an overdose, in the other place. She came to the Midst and never..." he skidded around a word, "never left."

"But her art will live for ever," Stephen said, remembering the punk.

"Oh yes," said David bitterly, "if you want that kind of immortality. Personally I'd rather be immortal by not, you know, not dying."

"It will be her song, now, I suppose."

"She's welcome to it."

They sat for a while in silence, David handing Stephen the bottle from time to time. Eventually he spoke again.

"You do know, Stephen, what kind of place this is, don't you?"

"I do now. I think I may have guessed before, but I always had to leave, whenever I realised." It was important, even now, not to speak the words out loud. Instead they spoke of 'the other place', of 'leaving', or 'fading'.

"It's a hard trick to pull off. It took me years to learn."

"How long? How long have you been coming here?"

"I don't know. Twenty years, thirty?" He looked like a boy of twenty five, at most, but Stephen didn't doubt him.

"And will I be able to come back now? Knowing what I know?"

"Of course. Don't judge this place by the Dome, Stephen. It's only one level, after all."

"I know. It may even be a good thing - for other people, but I prefer down here, for now...David?"

"Yes?"

"Can I kiss you?"

"Of course. You've always refused me, before."

"I know, but I've learnt to stay a little longer now. I can even drink, see..."

"I see. Come here, then. I'll be fading soon myself, I expect."

"Then let's see how long we can stay..."

When he was leaving the Midst that morning the words of David's song remained in his head. He remembered another time he had been there, before what he had come to think of as a first time. It was when he was a child, and walking the streets of the city he had met another child, a young girl aged about ten or twelve.

"What is this place?" he'd asked her.

"My dad says it's the Midst," she replied, "and anyone who's on a journey can come here. We're moving house," she proclaimed this fact with the self-importance of the very young. "What journey are you on?"

He hadn't known then, and he didn't know now, but he suspected his journey of being a long one. What was it Twink's song had said? The ones who won't stop? Stephen realised that he was, indeed, such a one.

"Neither snow, nor rain, nor something or other else, will keep me from this place." He said out loud.

"And what if you reach your destination?" said another voice in his ears - Lilith? "What then?"

"I won't," he said adamantly. "I can't, because..."

But he does not remember what the reason was, because once again the mist faded around him and he left the Midst.

Last updated 2nd March 2000