Excerpt: Simple Monsters

It was a service station. There was pretty much nothing to say; tiles the colour of barely-cleaned-off grime, battered corners, a washing tide of bored children and frazzled salesmen. For an absurd moment I was struck by the insanity of my own faith; by the vast and bitter irony of the beauty tugging me forward, the irresistible current that flowed under this flotsam of alteration. What were these journeys, these pathetic tiny things, a visit to the family, a client three hours away? What meaning was there in this, in the comics and tinned fruit bonbons, the bad Cornish pasties and the bottled Evian? What could they have, against the fist of divinity that closed around my soul?
I climbed the stairs like a ziggurat, coming into its temple of plastic trays and discarded cartons; and the joy drew me forward, the fear pushed me on. I must have looked like a sleepwalker, or like anyone else there; in this place because I had to be, because it was where the journey was.
I came to a window; beneath me cars flashed, flowing north, flowing south. I had a sense of hanging in mid-air, that the steel and concrete that held me up was ephemeral, that I was here only because of magick and that it was all that held me up. The joy sat at a table, coiling in and around itself like light, and with a stiff unreal hand I drew out a nonexistent chair, and took my nonexistent seat.
“I came,” I said.
“I can see that.” The light began to fade; the voice within it was gentle, and yet somehow strong.
“You're – that?”
“Can't you tell?” A face began to take shape before me; the silence that reverberated through me began to trickle away, like water, like sand. I could see high cheekbones... the faint sounds of coffee cups and cutlery clattered, tugging at my thoughts.
“I can't tell what you are. I don't even know if you're a woman or a man.”
“I'm Ash,” said the voice, timbred with laughter. “Stop trying to define me.”