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'So I caught you,' said Big Bob. 'I caught the virus, this thing that is affecting my mind. That is letting you manipulate my thoughts. Play your games with me. But, and verily, askest I, how did I catch you? I have no computer. Oh yes. I know.'

'he definitely knows,' said large voice number two.

'The boy on the bus,' said Big Bob. 'Malkuth, son of the lady in the straw hat, whose name no man can pronounce. His mother said that he played computer games all the time. And she kept hitting him. And Periwig and I shook his clammy hand. His clammy and infected hand. I caught you from him.'

'give the geezer a big cigar,' said large voice number two.

'we must give him death,' said large voice number one. 'the knowledge of this secret must die with him.'

'You can't hurt me,' said Big Bob. 'I know what you are. You're an infection. I am big and strong. I can fight you off.'

'oh no you can't,' said the first large and still a little bit terrible voice.

'Oh yes I can,' said Big Bob.

'oh no you can't.'

'And I shan't even bother with that. I shall go at once to the pub, get a few large ones down my neck, have a bit of an early night and you'll be gone by the morning. Thou wormy germs, thou malodorous microbes, thou…' Big Bob flexed his big shoulders and puffed out his big chest. 'Thou losers,' he declared.

All was very silent in his head.

'Fine,' said Big Bob, looking once more all around and about. 'And, thinkest I, we can forget all this folderol.' He blinked his eyes and thought away the Butt's Estate.

And found himself now burning within the fires of Hell.

'No,' said Big Bob, breaking not even a sweat. 'Forget all that too. I must still be in the hospital bed. And somehow you made me invisible to the doctor, didn't you? Oh no, of course you didn't. He was infected too, he touched me. Is that how it was done? Well, I carest not for the whys and wherefore arts. I know what you are and that's all that I need to know.'

And Big Bob thought away the fires of Hell, and lo he was back in the hospital bed.

'Most satisfactory,' said Big Bob Charker.

'I don't feel too satisfactory,' said Periwig Tombs from the bed next to his.

'Periwig my friend,' said Big Bob. 'You are still in the land of the living.'

'I feel like death itself.'

'I will help you out,' said Big Bob. 'But I fear that it would take just a little bit too much explaining. I'll come back for you tomorrow, when I'm all better myself. Let me just say this, you'll be hallucinating a lot, you'll be hearing voices in your head. Ignore anything they say to you. They can't hurt you. Ignorest thou them, wilt thou promise me that?'

Periwig Tombs nodded his big Mekon head and then slowly metamorphosed into a pig.

'Very good,' said Big Bob to the nasty viral thingies that lurked unseen and angry in his head. 'I see that I will have to be on guard. You still have a little fight left in you. But thou wilt lose, I promise that unto thee.'

'oh no we won't,' said voice number one.

'I'm not talking to you any more.' Big Bob climbed gingerly out of the bed and tested his feet on the floor. That left one hurt like a bad'n, but strangely Bob found comfort in this.

'Nothing like a bit of real pain to keep things in perspective,' he said. And he opened the bedside locker to find his clothes, ignoring the rotting corpse of Periwig that stretched out taloned claws from within, thought away his Superman suit and donned his tattered shirt and suit and tie.

'I'm off for a beer,' he told the unwelcome guests in his head. 'I've no doubt you'll be coming too, but this is Brentford, my Brentford, and I know what is real around here and what indeed is not. Thinkest thou upon this, demons, and count away the hours until I cast thee out.'

And with that said, and well said too, Big Bob girded up his loins and left the cottage hospital.

It was Wednesday evening now. The fifth day of Rune in the year 2022. The evening srnelled of lilies and of antique roses too and Big Bob marched across the bridge that had once crossed the railway tracks and wondered to himself whether it would perhaps be better just to go home and have his wife Minky lock him away in their pink coal cellar for the night. With orders to ignore all possible screamings until the dawn of the following day.

An inner voice said, 'Yes do that.'

Big Bob said, 'I thinkest not. Drink has the habit of blurring the mind and then I'll sleep thou off.'

With a look of determination upon his big face and a sprightly whistle of a Mr Melchizedec tune issuing from his lips, Big Bob continued his marching, with quite a spring in his step.

He really was doing remarkably well, all things considered. He was putting on a pretty fair old display of inner strength. And if he was trembling way down deep in the very depths of his mortal soul, that he would not be able to dislodge the viruses from his head, cure himself of them, then this trembling was kept way way way down deep, where he alone knew of it.

The sun dipping low now behind the noble oaks lengthened their shadows across the sacred soul of Brentford's St Mary's allotments. The shanty huts and beanpoles and water butts and plot dividers held a beauty that might have been lost upon some, but filled Big Bob with joy. He had suffered greatly over the last forty-eight hours, but he knew that he was on the mend now. That he would triumph. That he would cross over the abyss and step to the other side a better man than ever he was before.

Not that he had ever been a bad man. He hadn't. He was honest, he was noble. Big Bob's size twelve feet crunched along the gravel path between the sheds and beanpoles and the water butts and dragons and the seven-headed Hydra and a fierce-looking yeti or two.

'I love this town,' said Big Bob. And he thought away the illusory monsters and thought once more about that plan he'd had about bringing tourists into the borough by promoting it as an untouched suburban haven. That really hadn't been such a good idea, he was glad that Periwig Tombs had talked him out of it.

'Good old Periwig,' said Big Bob. 'Good friend, Periwig Tombs.'

Had Big Bob known that Periwig Tombs had in fact had many thoughts regarding what he, Periwig Tombs, had named Suburbia World Plc, and that these very thoughts, indeed these memories, had been downloaded into the Mute Corp mainframe for data reaction when the virally infected Periwig underwent a brain scan on a machine that contained a Mute-chip, installed when the machine was supposedly being deloused of the Millennium Bug back in 1999 [9], he would not perhaps have said 'Good friend, Periwig Tombs,' but something quite to the contrary.

But as Big Bob didn't know this (as indeed no-one as yet did), he did, rather than he didn't.

So to speak.

The sound of applause came to the ears of Big Bob. Brought lightly on the breeze from the Waterman's Arts Centre.

'Wednesday night is the Brentford Poets night,' said Big Bob to himself, although he knew he was being overheard. 'And what better than poetry to fill the mind with golden thoughts and cast out those of darkest black?'

And with that said, and also well said too, Big Bob marched on towards the riverside to take a dose of the muse.

The bar of the Waterman's Arts Centre was pretty crowded now. Fat moustachioed poetesses, who looked as if they were up for it, hugged their mugs of hand-drawn ale to their ample bosoms and sized up the knots of pimply youths, who'd heard tell stuff from a mate of theirs who had other plans for the evening. A