Steve Smith has a minor problem with the world, he cannot abide the human race. Apart from his darling wife, that is, and Mrs Oliphant, the neighbour, who was almost as quiet as the disused electricity station on the other side of the house. He preferred the disused station, because Mrs Oliphant had imperious manner that needled him when she tottered out of her front door and they met by accident. But at least that was not often. Otherwise, life could not be better. Belinda was the the love of his life and together they had made the house into a real home. The one place where he felt truly happy. Furthermore, he had a good job and his boss was not wholly psychopathic. The economy had not crashed yet and the infantile and instinctively hostile Government was reassuringly self defeating. And anyway, he and Belinda lived at a healthy distance from the scabrous, dangerous and unhygienic tracts of a disintegrating society, the result of lost decades of progressive politics and lunatic woke ideology.
Yes, life was very good indeed and Steve never gave any thought for the morrow, not till Mrs Oliphant died, that is. He felt the force of this tragedy. After all,she was only eighty-five. And now the uneasy, or possibly existential question arose of who would move in next door. Recall that according to Steve, the world was heaving with zip heads, deadbeats, flops, duds and self obsessed mid-wits droning bores. And this was not even to mention the active villains and anti-social thugs. But out of all these dysfunctional archetypes never in his wildest nightmares did Steve anticipate the arrival of psychic vampires. Members no less of an infernal clandestine cult. Soon he will be locked in a titanic and surreal battle of wills and to escape with his life might mean the sacrifice of everything else he holds dear.
