The wrenchling babies poke their  faces out of the cracks that lie between the tiles of the kitchen floor. Their eyes wet, their mouths leering gargling smiles that smash against the solaplexes  of reason. Then the she-dancer comes. Her ballerina clothes pink. She dances a sickly pirouette, stamps a small foot and pokes a thumb into her mouth and grins. In her eyes unholy fires burn, wicked deceptions come to life in a spiralling prodding rainbow of black that she swallows with a thing giggle. She bends, tucks a  babies’ face beneath the chin, making it   cry and chirp like a  wasted  eagle.  The she-dancer, angelic face framed by blonde hair, dances again, her tip-tapping ecstacy just missing the faces in the floor. Rapture takes her, she reaches beneath her skirt and she is not a girl but a wizened dwarf, a thing of wrinkles and death, the stench of decay and dieing things. The faces wale and the lights go on. The white chases away illusion, and the tiles are just tiles, and the she-dancer is a cat again, a meowing creature that licks milk from its untidy whiskers.

            “But do not be afraid,” said the sky to the stars, “There is menace in the  witchching hour, magic in the covering ways, the gambling clouds and the coldness of men’s frigid dreams.”

            “But hear me,” the moon said, an apple and a charm around  her crooked neck. “Illusion burrows beneath their skin like fleas. I wil chase away their fear.” And she did, and the cat was just a cat, and the tiles were just tiles.

            “No!” a bleeding star said, a razor in his hand, his chin a red mess. “They must experience the illusion and the other worlds. We cannot carry them, sail them through their lives without experiencing such favours.”

            The fridge sprouted hair and walked across the kitchen, yellow eyes marking the darkness, pink mouth singing silently the song of the kettle. Then it trunddled, it rolled with gay abandon until it saw the spoon, a thing with eyeless lids, and mouthless lips.

            “Come to me,” it cooed, “Let us dance once more.” And the music played, an egg cracking its own skull with a fork, a fork tapdancing on top of the cooker, the kettle whistling a melody and the food mixer a counterpoint.

            They danced, and then the man in the suit came, a man with long bright hair and a yellowing pettle at his throat. He smiled, teeth of cushions, gums of carpet. He sipped a glass of rat juice and walktzed with a long legged television that sprayed sparks of electricity into the waiting air.

            Then the she-dancer returned, a black wetsuit covering her thin body, a bonnet on her head. She spoke the language of the night, the language of have been and could be. A wording mix of pleasant sounds that looked like projectile vomit. Then with a crack and bang the cow came, two squirrels hanging from her udders, two tiny fried people leaping upon her back. She mooed, a lowing pleasing sound and all was still.

            “Clouding thoughts are not enough, let them feel and see what lies beneath the edging place of the imagined and the damned.” A spec of cosmic dust said, twitching slightly in the light of a solar flare.

            The babies pushed themselves from between the cracks in the tiles. Some were dressed as Elvis, others as John Travalta. Some were dressed as Hitler, others as the pope, and still some as Tommy Cooper and John Wayne. They danced, they chattered, fat faces filling with strawberries and steak, apples and cat food. They rode motorcycles, jeaps and  hung from model aeroplanes, cooing happily. Then the sunglasses came out of top pockets, cool saxophones played jazz and the wall paper sang to the flowers in its pattern. The action man broke out of the box, the Barbie wore a thong and the star wars figures had an orgy as the lightning struck the local church and gave the dead new hair styles.

            The pendulum broke, the galaxy shifted, the frosty eggy covering of reason broke and the weird things woke from their slumbering beds of leaves and ash.

            “Come one, come all!” the ring master invited, “See the clowns, the dolls, the magic lantern show. Watch the woman as she drowns in reason, watch the man as he burns in faith! Wach the children suffocate in a pillow of logic and watch the animals pluck out their own hair!” the crowd roared, the circus rose into the air and the sun licked the moon and the rain fell down.

            The stinking houses fell, the flattering rocks broke cover and the  banjo played a merry tune. The conductor of the band ran a hand across tired eyes and the hat jumped from the policemans’s head and carried away a sleeping Pigeon in a nurse’s uniform.

            Jesus visited and stayed for a while. Street lamps sidled up to piller boxes and tried to invent new ways to read the old testament. The nervous gathered in new houses. They stood in groups trying to understand the purpose of the world. They talked, hope injected into every word, confusion and fear their blankets.

            “What’s happening?” one man asked.  “The world’s gone mad! Are we on drugs?” the intelligent vowed never to sleep, and the stupid vowed never to wake up.

            And the fairground came to town, blazing colours, shuffling music and interesting smells. Dogs rode the roller-coaster and penguins  ran the ghost train. Badgers  worked in I.T. and ferrets ran small businesses. Disharmony came, candles flung apart fragments of oddness, horses ate marmalade sandwiches and went on weekend fishing trips, whilst Herrings entertained clergyman with Baroque dinner parties.

            A lamp turned out, a leaf slept in the ground, a fox jumped as he was disturbed by his wife coming home from a club. Chocolates  sprang to life, hoping for potatoes to join them in games of poker.

 Samhain was celelbrated and witches wore rubber nighties as they ran the four-hundred metres.

            God, whoever he  had been, turned in his metaphysical grave and gave the world a new saviour. A man called Colin who worked in Ipswich as a traffic warden. He tried hard, bringing around him a number of followers, but they soon hated him, not for his blood, but for his job. And the Muslims and Christians danced together on Brighton beach, giving thanks to the chancellor, a frog called Rachel. They danced and they burned the books, a bombfire as big as the sun.

            Colin tried, he even  offered to  nail his balls to a fence but people just laughed. His dad was angry and sent down lightning. The lightning came and grinned at the thunder who wore a wastecoat and looked quite camp.

            Yellowstone park exploded and the French laughed because the Vikings ate rabbits instead of pigs. Noth America vanished, in its place a tea pot with a  pink orchid growing out of its spout.

            People went on holiday to the teapot and  sent postcards from its spout. The orchid was declared holy and it became pope.

            And the world went mad, and the clouds, the sky, the moon and stars laughed, pencive faces and paper party hats, sponge cake, jelly, icecream and crisps their companions.

            And the lights came on and the dream was extinguished, and nothing had changed. The tiles were just tiles,  America was just America anColin was just a bloke.