It wasn't raining.

Now it may seem a little silly or pointless, even, to direct anyone's attention to the fact that water droplets were not falling from the sky, especially as there are always far more interesting things to talk about than the weather such as verrucous, genital warts and mutual masturbation, however if one were to suffix the above statement with, 'anywhere in the British Isles,' then the fact that it was not raining becomes an entirely different kettle of fish all together.

Fish, generally, aren't kept in kettles. At least they're not kept in kettles that boil water with which to make a nice cup of tea, coffee or hot chocolate or, indeed, any number of branded beverages requiring the addition of boiling water.

No, the kettle in 'kettle of fish,' actually refers to an elongated saucepan.

Odd D'Abbot-Doyle wished she had known that.

She knew it now, of course, it was common knowledge. Everyone over the age of ten knew that fish did not live in kettles, that despite the vast amount of occasions upon which adults said 'kettle of fish,' they were not actually referring to the kettle that was merrily bubbling away upon the hob or steaming up the kitchen nicely as it boiled beside the toaster.

Odd D'Abbot Doyle definitely knew that now because she was almost thirty and there have always been certain things that people who are almost thirty simply knew.

Fish don't live in a kettle. That was one of those things.

The look upon her mother's face, however, upon pulling a very dead Goldie from the very recently boiled kettle that still sat upon the stove as Odd D'Abbot Doyle, six and three fifths years of age at the time, looked on with tears in her eyes because even at such a young, innocent and tender age, Odd D'Abbot Doyle knew that if her mother was holding a fish by one of its fins and it was motionless unless she shook it, that it was dead, was something that she would never forget.

Odd D'Abbot Doyle thought about it every day. It was probably not fair to say the experience haunted her though she did have something that resembled a nervous tick; a slight, barely noticeable wrinkling of her nose, every time somebody mentioned going out for sushi.

"I'll pass," said Odd with a practised smile and slight inclination of her head and her nose gave its customary, involuntary, far from prominent wrinkle. "Besides, I have tickets to the Monster DeathRay concert tonight."

That was a lie. Odd D'Abbot Doyle did not have tickets to the Monster DeathRay concert that evening. In fact, if a band did, indeed, exist, and went by such a name, then Odd D'Abbot Doyle had never heard of them and even if she had, she suspected that the chances of her actually enjoying anything Monster DeathRay played enough to actually go to a live show, were slimmer than her mother's anorexic Care in the Community nurse.

"All right, well..." Gavin flashed her a smile. He had the eyes of a puppy that made her feel guilty for - not the actual eyes of a puppy. That'd be weird and gross and Gavin was neither of those things. He was, Odd D'Abbot Doyle thought, quite lovely - lying to him but as he'd offered to take her out for sushi, she felt perfectly justified in that lie. "...maybe next time."

"Yeah, maybe, " Odd replied, and headed out of the door.

It still wasn't raining. Now Odd was no meteorologist, nor had she ever studied meteors, but it was always raining somewhere in the British Isles. Always somewhere. The place was famous for it.

That's what any Briton will claim, at any rate.

And apparently meteorologist's memories were not what they might have been for after three weeks of no rain anywhere in the British Isles, one might well have been forgiven for assuming those reporting on the weather were doomsayers, heralding the end of All Things when in fact, Odd D'Abbot Doyle quite clearly remembered the summers of two-thousand three to two-thousand six, when it was not unusual for a month or more to pass by without there being so much as a cloud in the sky.

She waited patiently at the crossing as rush-hour traffic streamed by, cars and motorcycles, lorries, vans, buses and bicycles in their droves, and upon the appearance of the little green man, Odd D'Abbot Doyle put her best foot forward and set about making her way across the road.

***

"Cor! Did you see that bird, Ricky?!" Ignatius, the drummer of death-prog-punkcore band, Monster Deathray, yelled out with his face pressed up against the tour bus window as a dribble of drool made its way slowly down the glass as if it hoped that it would one day become a mighty river and carve its way through the bedrock of the planet. "Ricky! Ricky! Did you see?!"

"Nope," Ricky replied. He was the vocalist, a man of very few words until there was a microphone in his hand.

"Well trust me, she was a right looker," said Ignatius, not at all worried by his band-mate's monosyllabic response. "I hope she's coming to the show tonight 'cause if she does, I'm gonna' f..."

"You're gonna' what, Iggy?"

Ignatius yanked his head away from the window and turned as Timmy and Tommy, the band's bassist and guitarist respectively, emerged from the only bedroom with which the tour bus was equipped. In the room behind them, Iggy could quite clearly see the group of women whom Tommy and Timmy had spent the last five hours sharing, sprawled in various stages of undress upon the bed.

"Yeah, Iggy," Tommy smirked. "Pretty sure you couldn't find your penis for a piss, the amount of hash you've been smoking!"

"Could, too!" Iggy replied, the drummer jumping straight on the offensive. "I've been for a piss at least three times whilst you two have been in the back f..."

"Children..." Ricky's tone was low and menacing though in truth the word was meant as nothing more than a friendly request that his band-mates keep the noise and bickering to a minimum, and they knew it, too.

"Sorry, Ricky," Timmy mumbled.

"Yeah, sorry boss," said Tommy.

"Didn't mean anything by it, Ricky..."

Ricky sighed, and rather heavily at that. Something strange was going on, and though he was unable to put his finger on exactly what it might be it was there nonetheless, taunting and teasing him whilst it remained just beyond his reach.

The thing is, Monster DeathRay did not exist, which is probably a rather bewildering notion when one takes into consideration that the band's tour bus was, at that very moment, en route to Hyde Park, London, where they were due to headline, so perhaps it might be more accurate to say that the death-prog-punkcore band known as Monster DeathRay did not exist until a woman, entering the twilight of her twenty-ninth year, told what would undoubtedly prove to be the most important lie of her life.

And so, regardless of how many hours they had been in existence, Monster DeathRay were soon making their way towards the stage. The hour was late, almost eleven in the evening, and the crowd was rowdy.

Most of the band ignored the gaggle of fans, all of whom were in possession of the much sought after backstage passes, gathered behind a cordon as they tried in vain to be noticed by their idols.

Most, yes, but not Iggy.

"Ricky!" he yelled, though he might as well have been yelling towards something that did not have the capacity to listen because even if Ricky had heard Ignatius' shout over the rather loud crowd, he would have ignored the man. "Ricky! Ricky! That bird's here! The one from the street!"

***

Odd D'Abbot Doyle stood with her feet roughly seven inches apart. It does not really matter how far apart her feet were, other than the fact that it was simply something she had noticed and she had only noticed that, the fact that her feet were roughly seven inches apart because the gap between her Doc Marten clad feet appeared to be roughly the same size as her ex-boyfriend's feet...

Odd D'Abbot Doyle was not only wearing Doc Marten boots, of course, ones that laced all the way up to the lower portion of her thighs. The remainder of her attire consisted of fishnet stockings, a skirt that was probably too short to be classed as anything approaching a modica worth of decency, and an 'Anal Vomit,' band tee.

The whole ensemble was strange, really, and not only the for the fact that Odd D'Abbot Doyle did not remember putting any of it on, nor did she remember the actual act of purchasing any single item that adorned her quite flat, plain figure, and she most certainly did not recall procuring the ticket that she held in her hand, the one that would permit her entry into the Monster DeathRay concert.

She did not, in fact, even remember leaving her flat. The last thing she was able to recall with any level of clarity was setting the timer on the microwave, having placed a chicken korma ready meal for one in a bowl within...

Then without rhyme or reason she was in a queue longer than that at Alton Towers for the opening weekend of Oblivion.

And then the Monster DeathRay played and they were good, really good.

They were almost done, midway through the middle eight of their second encore, in fact, when they ceased to exist, just as everything and everyone else did.

Yes, for the most fleeting fraction of a second, there was nothing. No birds or trees, no stars or buskers, no weapons of mass destruction or camomile tea.

Everything was and then it... wasn't.

And then everything was back to normal.

Well, almost everything.

Odd D'Abbot Doyle most certainly was not or at least, she was, but she was not in the crowd at the Monster DeathRay concert though it was not like anyone really noticed. The only person, as far as she knew, who was aware that she had intended to attend the gig was Gavin and, as nice and lovely as Gavin was, he was, unbeknownst to Odd D'Abbot Doyle, at that very moment, hanging out the back of a blonde named Ursula who had augmented breasts and possessed the rather unique talent insofar as she was able to whistle the theme music from 'The Great Escape,' through her left ear.

Ursula would, on the eve of her fortieth birthday, whilst surrounded by her five children - three boys and a girl, and 'Max,' who championed gender neutrality, despite the fact that 'Max' would quite often be found balls deep in a redhead named Imola who, much to the chagrin of her peers and coworkers at her local B&Q, would actually manage to create a temporal vortex whilst masturbating with a nine inch rubber penis attached to a hammer drill and would, having inadvertently found herself in nineteen seventy-nine, fall pregnant following an encounter in the back of a New York taxi with a young Donald Trump and nine months later, give birth to a baby boy she named Gavin but due to the fact she felt uncomfortable raising a child in a time that was not her own, would give the child up for adoption though some eighteen years later, he would travel to London in search of his mother, meeting a girl named Ursula in the process... - and her husband, Gavin, discover that the theme music from The Great Escape was not the only piece of music she could whistle through her left ear.

She could do the theme music from Black Beauty too.

And so Odd D'Abbot Doyle looked around which turned out to be a complete and total waste of time though of course, she did not realise that until she had looked absolutely everywhere and found that there was nothing. Nothing, in this case, meaning the absence of All Things, until there was Something.

That something, was a voice.

Odd D'Abbot Doyle. The voice boomed at yet at the same time, it was really rather gentle. It was also a tree, a volcano and a pencil topped with an eraser. The voice was all there was, apart from Odd D'Abbot Doyle, and so it was everything. And it was just a voice.

Odd D'Abbot Doyle. The voice boomed once more.

Odd D'Abbot Doyle could not tell whereabouts the voice was coming from but as there was nothing else, other than the voice which was also a camel, a Ferrari California and a packet of menthol cigarettes, that should come as no real surprise.

Odd D'Abbot Doyle. The voice boomed for a third time, though this time it continued, and Odd D'Abbot Doyle was glad about that, because hearing nothing more than her name repeated over and over again in such a booming voice that was also a packet of strawberry jelly, a paperclip and a kestrel floating gently upon a summer breeze, was a little unnerving. You are guilty of breaking the Universe, and the punishment for that crime is life imprisonment.

"What about my trial?" Odd D'Abbot Doyle heard herself ask, though those were not the words she had intended to say at all. No, what Odd D'Abbot Doyle had intended to say was something along the lines of, "What the bloody hell do you mean, I'm guilty of breaking the Universe? I didn't even know it was possible to break the Universe!"

Odd D'Abbot Doyle. The voice boomed yet again, the voice that was also a single granule of instant coffee, a fax machine from 1991 and a pair of sheer nylon tights with a torn crotch. You do not get a trial. You are guilty of the most heinous crime. There is no doubt. Your sentence starts now.

***

Iggy stared at the three-eyed, seven-legged, one-eared, thirty-fingered creature and the three-eyed, seven-legged, one-eared, thirty-fingered creature stared back at the two-eyed, two-legged, two-eared, eight-fingered creature whilst thinking to itself, 'what an incredibly odd looking creature this 'drummer,' is...'

Instead of voicing that thought though, what the three-eyed, seven-legged, one-eared, thirty-fingered creature said, was, "Hello, friend. My name is Harold. What're you in for?"

"Not existing, apparently," the drummer replied, warily. Harold made him nervous, probably because he really did not look anything like any Harold that Iggy had ever met - not that he could recall ever meeting a similarly monikered individual. "Apparently, I didn't actually exist until some girl told a lie to her co-worker and then boom, I'm here or y'know, there, and now all of a sudden I'm here because my existence broke the Universe."

"Well that's a bummer," said the three-eyed, seven-legged, one-eared, thirty-fingered Harold to the two-eyed, two-legged, two-eared, eight-fingered drummer. "And speaking of things being a bummer, I'd like to introduce you to a few friends of mine..."

"All right," said Iggy, all feelings of wariness having fallen by the wayside, thanks entirely to the opiate Harold secreted from the nostrils of his highest nose, and he set off after the creature, eager to meet his new friend's friends, though he did barge shoulders, accidentally mind, with a human girl whilst doing so.

"No it's OK, I'm sorry," said Odd D'Abbot Doyle, in response to the apology from the vaguely familiar man who had bumped into her, as she sought a woman who, apparently, according to the three men without a complete set of teeth between them, could, "get yer the frell outta' this joint, lassie."

That was a good thing, as far as Odd D'Abbot Doyle was concerned. She certainly had no intention of sticking around.

The prison, she had learned, was actually contained within the hollowed out remains of a cold star somewhere in the Phiphiphiphiphiphiphiphi region of space, wherever that was, and was enormous. So vast was it, the prison, that it was capable of housing an inmate population close to a googolplex of people, though Odd D'Abbot Doyle had a sneaking suspicion that number may well have simply been plucked out of the sky in order to gain extra funding.

And she was right, though of course she had no way of knowing that was the case.

Yasanti Dillybop knew all too well though, for it had been his idea to tell what in truth was nothing more than a teeny tiny white lie. And what did it matter, anyway. They were inmates, cons, scum... The worst of the worst.

Think of the most heinous acts committed throughout the Universe - smoking a cigarette in a nursery, buggering a bunny rabbit, and even purchasing a One Direction record - and then wonder, why should we even care if people who commit such acts are all crowded into the hollowed out remains of a cold star, somewhere deep in the Phiphiphiphiphiphiphiphi region of space, with a maximum capacity of seven hundred trillion individuals?

We shouldn't and Yasanti Dillybop most certainly did not and nor did his superiors. And nor did the billions and billions of corporations who laundered their money via the Cold Star Prison.

Things would not always run as smoothly for Yasanti Dillbop though. In fact, on the third Wednesday after his eightieth birthday he would suffer a massive heart attack, during which he would fall and knock over a stack of canned beans in a supermarket, a crime punishable by life imprisonment in the Cold Star Prison.

"Ms Doyle," said the woman.

"Erm, hi," Odd D'Abbot Doyle replied, because it was the decent thing to do and in truth, what else was she supposed to do? "Apparently, you can get me out of this place."

Odd D'Abbot Doyle was curious to find out whether the woman, who was as human as she with thick, unruly dreadlocks and a sword holstered at her hip, really could get her out of the Cold Star Prison. And if she could, then why in all of creation had she not managed to get herself out?

"That I can, Ms Doyle... That I can."

Odd D'Abbot Doyle smiled and was, quite literally, about to ask the dreadlocked, sword-wielding femme how, exactly, she intended to do that, when at a velocity the likes of which Odd D'Abbot Doyle had never witnessed, the woman drew said sword and in one swift, smooth motion, drove the blade straight through the heart of one Odd D'Abbot Doyle.

***

They say that one's life flashes before one's eyes in those fleeting moments prior to one's death, and they're right, but as Odd D'Abbot Doyle's life did just that she realised how thoroughly boring her life, up until the point of her death, had been.

And it wasn't really as if it was her fault. Not really, not when you get right down to it. However it was not only her life that she saw; it was also the lives of those closest to her, although strangely not her mother, and of events that occurred in close proximity to her.

There was more than one occasion though, as Odd D'Abbot Doyle dropped to her knees whilst simultaneously watching the events of her life on fast-forward as they played in her mind's eye, that she realised just how lucky she was to have lived for as long as she did for there were three separate occasions where, had she turned left instead of right - and one where had she turned right instead of left, but anomalies do happen - then she would have been killed by tripping over a small child onto a pair of uneven paving slabs which, in turn, would have collapsed and buried her beneath several hundred metric tonnes of rubble, had her neck severed by 'the world's largest throwing star' or been crushed and subsequently blown to smithereens by a piano with the acronym, 'ACME' painted onto its underbelly, respectively.

Had she been in possession of all her faculties rather than dying of death as she was, then Odd D'Abbot Doyle would most definitely have raised her eyebrow at the third occasion on which, she suspected, she should have met her end.

What Odd D'Abbot Doyle was not aware of, of course, is that such things happened an awful lot. In fact, during the latter quarter of the twentieth century, there were eight hundred and seven 'ACME' piano related deaths, that were incorrectly filed.

None of that mattered though, not any of it, because she was...

***

Odd D'Abbot Doyle breathed because generally, one did, though one is not usually as aware that one is doing so, as Odd D'Abbot Doyle was as she stood upon the very tips of her toes, teetering on the edge of the kerb as an Alfa Romeo that had, in fact, just been involved in a hit-and-run incident - or at least it had just been involved in the 'hit' part of said incident, and the driver was clearly doing his level best to succeed at the 'run' part, too - having knocked over a young mother and her small child.

She knew she ought to be rushing to the aid of those poor, unfortunate parties involved, yet Odd D'Abbot Doyle simply could not move. It was if her feet were rooted to the spot.

Eventually, however, Odd D'Abbot Doyle managed to regain her composure and did, indeed, move, but by that time several people had already rushed to the aid, futily, it turned out, of the young mother and her small child and so rather than getting involved, which in truth is what she would have preferred, Odd D'Abbot Doyle stepped back from the kerb and turned on her heel just in time to witness two rather strange things taking place.

The first of those rather strange happenings was probably the strangest, if only for the fact Odd D'Abbot Doyle had no idea prior to that moment in time, that Bedlington Terriers were capable of breakdancing.

It was the second of those strange occurrences though, to which Odd D'Abbot Doyle paid most attention. She could always watch the video of the break-dancing Bedlington Terrier that was no doubt already recorded and uploaded to the interwebs - which also happened to be the video that finally broke the internet, something the Bedlington Terrier never did manage to live down. For the rest of his life, cut short thanks to an addiction to soluble painkillers and cigarette butts though not before with the aid of a ghost writer he released three autobiographies and the much sought after and incredibly rare graphic novel, 'I Am A Bedlington Terrier and These Are My Genitals,' he was forever known as 'That Bloody Dog Who Broke The Internet and Stopped Us Watching Porn.' - later and besides the heavily-armed, dreadlocked individual wearing far too much battle armour for one who was not, indeed, currently engaged in battle, intrigued her.

The man moved quickly through the crowds of people, all of whom were going about their business, whatever business that might be, and as such Odd D'Abbot Doyle found it incredibly difficult to keep up with him. In fact by the time she did finally catch him, the man was seated at a table outside a coffee shop, opposite a woman Odd D'Abbot Doyle had to admit for whom, despite the fact she had only had that one lesbian experience at university although that, of course, had turned out to be a dream from which she had awoken somewhat damp 'twix her nethers and she had never been able to look Michelle in the face again, she would quite happily and readily have sworn off men for life.

The two of them appeared to be deep in, if their furrowed brows and expressive faces were anything to go by, a rather serious conversation, and one that ended mere moments later when the conversation appeared to be for all intents and purposes, over, the man decapitated the woman for whom Odd D'Abbot Doyle would - not now, obviously, as necrophilia is only cool in certain circles of which Odd D'Abbot Doyle did not hold membership - have turned full-on anti-shaft.

Unable to prevent herself from doing so, Odd D'Abbot Doyle yelped as the woman's severed head thudded wetly to the pavement.

She watched as the man turned incredibly slowly and deliberately to face her. Much to her surprise he was grinning rather broadly, as if he had not just decapitated a defenceless woman in broad daylight though had she thought about that even for a second, Odd D'Abbot Doyle would likely have been even more surprised that no one else appeared to have noticed the head and headless body that lay upon the pavement.

And then, as if he was in some way capable of manipulating time, he was standing directly before her, so close that she was able to smell his quite pungent body odour.

"Pretty sure you shouldn't be able to see me," he said, his eyebrow raised. "And I'm damn sure you shouldn't be able to see that."

"If you're referring to the head and the body upon which it formerly resided," Odd D'Abbot Doyle replied, doing her very best not to show that the man's scent was somewhat repugnant. "Then believe me, I wish I couldn't see it."

It scared Odd D'Abbot Doyle how little the events she had just witnessed freaked her out but she put it down to her time spent in the Cold Star Prison. She had heard stories of ex-prisoners leaving their former dwelling completely and totally hardened to even the most vile and repulsive acts, and assumed that must have been why she was not, at that very moment, being violently sick into a bin and, to be fair, down herself.

"Do you know what it means?" he asked. "That you can see me, I mean."

"No," Odd D'Abbot Doyle replied, because when that single syllable word is the truth, she believed it was generally the best answer to give.

"It means you're special, Odd D'Abbot Doyle," the man replied with the slightest shrug of his shoulders serving as an accompaniment to his words. "Though to be fair, probably special in a way you'd rather not be."

"In what way am I special?" Odd D'Abbot Doyle asked. "I'm just Odd D'Abbot Doyle and by the way, how do you know my name?"

"I don't have all the answers but if I had to guess," he said, pausing to light a cigarette. "If I had to guess, I'd say that you recently died and came back... And now I'm just stabbing in the dark here, but I'd say your being here is the reason I just had to do what I did and remove that lassie of her head."

"I..." Odd D'Abbot Doyle stammered, unsure as to what she was supposed to say. "I... I don't know what I'm supposed to say."

"You're not supposed to say anything," he replied. "But what you are supposed to do, is... Ah, crap!"

The man's exclamation had not been without good reason for before he had even managed to finish his spiel, Odd D'Abbot Doyle had mysteriously disappeared, leaving him standing upon the pavement, essentially talking to himself before he, much more slowly than Odd D'Abbot Doyle, it has to be said, disappeared from existence.

***

"I'll pass," said Odd with a practised smile and slight inclination of her head and her nose gave its customary, involuntary, far from prominent wrinkle. "Besides, I have tickets to the Monster DeathRay concert tonight."

That was a lie. Odd D'Abbot Doyle did not have tickets to the Monster DeathRay concert that evening. In fact, if a band did, indeed, exist, and went by such a name, then Odd D'Abbot Doyle had never heard of them and even if she had, she suspected that the chances of her actually enjoying anything Monster DeathRay played enough to actually go to a live show, were slimmer than her mother's anorexic Care in the Community nurse.

"All right, well..." Gavin flashed her a smile. He had the eyes of a puppy that made her feel guilty for - not the actual eyes of a puppy. That'd be weird and gross and Gavin was neither of those things. He was, Odd D'Abbot Doyle thought, quite lovely - lying to him but as he'd offered to take her out for sushi, she felt perfectly justified in that lie. "...maybe next time."

"Yeah, all right," Odd D'Abbot Doyle replied with a half-smile. She made to turn away but something, call it instinct or deja-vu or simply that Gavin was so damn pretty, prevented her from doing so.

"Actually, Gavin..." she said, running her fingers through her hair as she did so. "You know what, sushi sounds lovely. Pick me up at eight?"

And then, just because things sometimes work out like that, Odd D'Abbot Doyle stepped outside at the very moment the heavens opened and it began to rain.