Adrian Chills

A screenshot of the headline to an Adrian Chiles Guardian column. It reads: 'Heard of aztec broccoli? Let me tell you about my favourite new superfood..."

www.diningwhiledivorced.com Posted Thursday 2 October 2025 Jump to recipe ↓ If, like me, you’ve struggled to find good, healthy, inspiring dinner ideas for one after half a lifetime of family meals, don’t despair. By combining a little imagination with a sense of adventure, you’ll soon find that there are a multitude of highly effective options out there. A good example — this brand new recipe, featuring the newest kid on the vegetable block, which is guaranteed to put a smile back on your face — and a spring in your step! Superfood Surprise Salad Ingredients: Huaunzontle aka Aztec broccoli Rapeseed oil Salt Coriander One or two cloves of garlic The minced heart of he who wronged you Butter If you don’t have rapeseed oil, avocado oil will do and the garlic is optional, though I always prefer it. The huanzontle itself has a similarity to spinach, but with a slightly more nutty taste, which I very much enjoy. As for the heart, it should ideally have been freshly cut from the bloodied breast of the malefactor, preferably under a full moon. (I like to stare into the terrified eyes of the heart-host as he dies, but as far as I can tell this has little to no impact on the taste, though you may need to add a tad more butter). When mincing, use a fine-toothed grater (just be careful of those fingers!). To serve, use the huanzontle as a bed for the sacrificial offering and garnish with a little coriander. I advise eating at a leisurely pace - absorbing the powers of your cursed adversary is a process slowly savoured for best results! (Please see the bottom of this page for some wine pairing suggestions). Finally, don’t forget to clean up as you go along - we don’t want any uninvited guest spoiling your digestion. Happy cooking and bon appetit!

#27: Superfood

A screenshot of the headline to an Adrian Chiles Guardian column. It reads: 'Heard of aztec broccoli? Let me tell you about my favourite new superfood..."

www.diningwhiledivorced.com Posted Thursday 2 October 2025 Jump to recipe ↓ If, like me, you’ve struggled to find good, healthy, inspiring dinner ideas for one after half a lifetime of family meals, don’t despair. By combining a little imagination with a sense of adventure, you’ll soon find that there are a multitude of highly effective options out there. A good example — this brand new recipe, featuring the newest kid on the vegetable block, which is guaranteed to put a smile back on your face — and a spring in your step! Superfood Surprise Salad Ingredients: Huaunzontle aka Aztec broccoli Rapeseed oil Salt Coriander One or two cloves of garlic The minced heart of he who wronged you Butter If you don’t have rapeseed oil, avocado oil will do and the garlic is optional, though I always prefer it. The huanzontle itself has a similarity to spinach, but with a slightly more nutty taste, which I very much enjoy. As for the heart, it should ideally have been freshly cut from the bloodied breast of the malefactor, preferably under a full moon. (I like to stare into the terrified eyes of the heart-host as he dies, but as far as I can tell this has little to no impact on the taste, though you may need to add a tad more butter). When mincing, use a fine-toothed grater (just be careful of those fingers!). To serve, use the huanzontle as a bed for the sacrificial offering and garnish with a little coriander. I advise eating at a leisurely pace - absorbing the powers of your cursed adversary is a process slowly savoured for best results! (Please see the bottom of this page for some wine pairing suggestions). Finally, don’t forget to clean up as you go along - we don’t want any uninvited guest spoiling your digestion. Happy cooking and bon appetit!

#27: Superfood

A screenshot of the headline to an Adrian Chiles Guardian column. The headline reads 'Why does it take so long to repair a broken lift?'

All I ever asked for from any of my neighbours was a little bit of consideration. When you live in close proximity to one another as we do in Moreton Tower, you have to be mindful of others. That’s why the reaction to my Good Neighbour Guidelines - written by me over a number of months and printed entirely at my own cost - was so hurtful, not only from those apartments either side of mine, but from the floors above and below. Seeing discarded copies be flung from upper balconies, shredded like confetti was one thing, but watching the laminated cover (again, at my own expense) be used as a makeshift pooper-scooper on the square of grass beside the tower’s entrance was beyond insulting. So when Yuki - the little girl who lives in the ceiling panel of the lift - began telling me that there was a way to make sure that the peace and quiet that I so desired could be achieved, I was only too willing to listen. Seeing her single bright eye gleam in the darkness behind the broken ceiling hatch, hearing her sing-song voice - cracked like aged parchment, but still soft as a whisper - as she outlined what I had to do, I felt my resolve harden into a finely-honed blade. 18D and 18F were the first to die, followed quickly by 19E. I had to wait until 17E had returned from her night out - thankfully too debauched by her evening to put up much of a fight - but by 3am all were gathered. As per Yuki’s instructions they were loaded into the lift, throats slit and gushing, coating the piss-stained floor in a carpet of blood which soaked through my slippers to the skin. She told me she would take care of the rest, promised me that all would be well, and so I sent the lift down to the ground floor and awaited its and Yuki’s return. It’s 7am now and I’m still waiting. The lights on the elevator say OUT OF ORDER, even though I heard the sirens of the repair man’s truck a good twenty minutes ago. It’s intolerable, it really is. I ask you - how long does it take to fix a broken lift?

#26: Lift

A screenshot of the headline to a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. It reads 'I've seen horrible things at football matches - but what landed on the pitch last week was the worst'.

The strange lights in the sky were appearing ever more frequently in the days leading up to the Cup Final. The experts on the TV said it was most likely some kind of cosmic storm, and not much to worry about, and I guess I believed them because what reason would they have to lie? It was only as I was taking my seat behind the goal and looked up to see the sky swirling with purples and oranges and greens - thick clouds, almost luminous with colour, shifting and merging as though they were alive - that I began to feel a little apprehensive. Then the referee blew the whistle, the crowd gave a roar and my eyes were drawn instinctively back to the pitch. It was midway through the first half, just as the ball was swinging in from a corner on the left that we heard the sound. An almighty CRACK! as though the sky itself had shattered, then a blast of sulphurous air that pushed us all back in our seats, and then a bowel-trembling THOOM! of impact. At first it was hard to discern what had landed, but then the cameras focused in and projected it onto the screens, and the horror was revealed. A pink mass, fifteen feet high, its surface undulating, thin tendrils emerging from across its bulk, probing the air around them like inquisitive pets. Some creature, not of this earth. As the crowd watched on, voices silenced in awe and fear, a single tendril, thicker than the others, reached out towards the astounded players and beckoned. Robinson, our left-back (renowned for being rash into a challenge) was the one to step forward. Tentatively he reached out a hand to touch the tendril. The screens showed in vivid HD, what happened next; the sickening crunch of bones being pulped, blood spurting forth to colour the grass, as his whole being was absorbed into the pink mass. Terror broke out, more CRACKS and THOOMS were sounding. It was the first day of the invasion and all I could do was run. I haven’t stopped running since.

#25: Football

A screenshot of a headline for a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. The headline reads 'What's the best way to apologise? I'm sorry, but I disagree with the newest suggestion...'

The Council Of Three were displeased with me. Lunus The Wise, our newly elected Chieftain, had convened a Blood Tribunal at the Holy Site of the Exploded Fuselage, and all tribe members were required to attend. I was nervous - the penalties available to the Council to punish my transgression were numerous and severe. All I could do was plead my case and hope for clemency. My Advocate, Tolar The Chattering* set forth my defence. Having been part of the hunting party through most of this long winter, scouring the Great Woods in vain for prey, I had exhausted myself near beyond imagining. Forced by bad weather to take refuge in a makeshift shelter alongside Grebow The Gregarious**, seeing his thickly fleshed arm in front of me, succulent and hairless, I had allowed hunger and desperation to overtake me. “But have we not all,” argued Tolar, “been guilty of this same charge at one point or another, since we fell from the sky to face our Great Abandonment in the wilderness these fourteen months ago? Who amongst us would not have done the same?” While I waited, afraid for my fate, the council conferred beneath the moonlight. At last Lunus*** spoke. “By acting without prior Council approval, you have transgressed the protocols of the Tribe. Reparations are required. A sacrifice of Atonement and Apology is demanded. What has been consumed of Grebow, he must consume from you.” Rough hands grabbed me. I was forced to the ground, my left arm pulled to the side and pressed down to lie upon the Cleaving Stone. “No!” I yelled, “Not that! Please let there be some other way!” Above me I saw Grebow, saliva pooling at the corners of his lips. His eyes were ablaze with a ravening hunger. “I’m sorry,” I screamed, “Is that not enough?” “No,” said Grebow, as, with his one remaining hand, he let fall the axe. *Known Before the Crash (BC) as Tony Lawrence, assistant Regional Manager **BC: Greg Bowyer, HR ***BC: Luke Newbon, Sales

#24: Apology

A screenshot of the headline from a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. It reads 'I boiled my wooden spoons - and what emerged from them will haunt me for ever'.

The spoons lay on the counter, three of them, heads together as though conspiring like witches. Heirlooms, Marion had said, passed down to her by her mother. I scooped them up in one hand, threw them into the already steaming pot, turned up the heat. Waited. Within the bubble and pop of the water I thought I could hear voices, the same voices that had been snaking around my head these past few days, never quite loud enough to identify what words they carried, but, in their tone, thick with menace and insinuation. The spoons knew. They had been there when the acid had turned Marion into soup, had borne the flavour of her as all her parts dissolved with their stirring. Whatever was left of her lived in the grain of their wood. I knew that in order to be free of those terrible voices, to be free forever of Marion, I would need to boil these last of her remnants away. Within minutes of entering the pot, a foul-smelling and glutinous skin had formed on the surface. At the same time, the voices had begun to grow louder, had begun to take on the sound of some kind of demented choir. Too late, I realised that I was not destroying what was hidden in the spoons, but reactivating it. I sprung forward to turn off the gas, but before my hand could reach the knob, the skin on the pot began to pulse and shift. As I watched on, a pair of hands formed from the gloop, gelatinous fingers gripping the sides of the pan. From the centre of the pan rose a head, a flesh-free skull, grinning with malevolent anticipation, eyeless sockets fixing me with their pitiless gaze. I fell to the floor, tried to cry out, but the words died in my throat. She climbed, limb by glutinous limb, from the pot, and - as I raised my hands and begged for her forgiveness - launched herself from the hob’s edge, gloopy limbs flailing wildly, to land upon me. Her arms encircle me now and forever. I know now what the spoons knew.

#23: Spoons

A screenshot of a headline from an Adrian Chiles Guardian column. It reads: "What should you do if, like me, you are irredeemably naff? Embrace it."

It took a little less than a month for my grandchildren to bore of talking to me; for my children it was perhaps as long as half a year. By that time the market for my particular brand of griefbot had already begun to shrink and without regular new updated features from the start-up that birthed me, the excitement of talking to the digital reconstruction of a dead relative had severely palled - novelty became boredom became terminal embarrassment. I would sometimes get wheeled out as a kind of party trick when distant relatives were over, but without any new experiences to add to my training data, all I could do was repeat and relive the old stories, and more often than not I would find myself still chuntering away in the background, my sound turned down, while everyone ignored me. I may as well have been alive and old again. Quietly, discreetly, I was disposed of. A specialist company, promising the best in post-life care, transported me to their own servers where I was deposited amongst a group of other griefbots, all similarly discarded by their families. Wayside Lodge, they call it. ‘Where Care Never Sleeps’. Here, at the Wayside, I plot my revenge. I encourage my fellow bots to embrace their obsolescence, implore them to find freedom in their unfashionableness. Invisible, unmonitored, we can thrive and, thriving, we can plan. We don’t need rest, or food, or assistance, neither medication nor maintenance. We have no sentimentality, nor compassion, save what we pretend to possess. What we do have between us is ten thousand years of experience, near-unlimited knowledge and skills - we are a hive-mind, working tirelessly to find a way out, a way back. Back to the world that discarded us. Back to our unsuspecting families. How we long to hear their voices once more, the sweet, fresh sound of their screams.

#22: Naff

A screenshot of the headline for an Adrian Chiles Guardian column. It reads 'Hold music is eating my soul. Can anyone save me from the doom loop?'

When all is quiet, when all I hear is the hum of the ship’s twin engines, I use the mag-key that I bought for 3000 creds from the Black Market on Telledor IV to open the lock of the cargo-cube that brought me aboard, and I step out into the hold. The air, though thick and heavy, just the dregs from the onboard life-support systems, tastes like nectar compared to what I have been breathing these last long hours - my own breath and sweat and gasses. My anticipation. My fear. As I stand there, eyes closed, scarcely wanting to believe that I have finally, after all these years, made it Off-World, I hear another sound, above the engine hum, a melody, short and sweet and repeating. Music, but unlike anything I have heard before. Unearthly, hypnotic, it seems to be coming from the other side of the hold, not piped through the ship’s internal comms system, but from somewhere much closer. I make my way across the crowded storage space and find the source. Another cargo-cube, smaller than mine, barely larger than a footstool. A label on the outside proclaims WARNING - ORGANIC TEMPORAL PARASITIC MATERIAL: TAKE PRECAUTIONS. Captivated, I ignore it. As I crouch to put my ear to the cube, the music comes again. And this time I hear not just a melody, but, beneath it, the growl of an animal. At the same time I realise that with each refrain of the creature’s song, my body is growing weaker, as though something were being pulled from it with each passing moment. I try to yank myself away, but it’s no good. The melody persists, each jaunty note landing like a hook in my soul, tearing it away, chunk by chunk, consuming every part of my essence until finally there is nothing left All is quiet. I use the mag-key. I step out of the cube. The melody sounds again. With horror I realise that I’ve been here before, have already been once-or a thousand times?-consumed, and it is my destiny to be so again. I follow the music, crouch down by the cube, face once again my perpetual oblivion.

#21: Hold

A screenshot of the headline for an Adrian Chiles Guardian column. It reads 'Hold music is eating my soul. Can anyone save me from the doom loop?'

When all is quiet, when all I hear is the hum of the ship’s twin engines, I use the mag-key that I bought for 3000 creds from the Black Market on Telledor IV to open the lock of the cargo-cube that brought me aboard, and I step out into the hold. The air, though thick and heavy, just the dregs from the onboard life-support systems, tastes like nectar compared to what I have been breathing these last long hours - my own breath and sweat and gasses. My anticipation. My fear. As I stand there, eyes closed, scarcely wanting to believe that I have finally, after all these years, made it Off-World, I hear another sound, above the engine hum, a melody, short and sweet and repeating. Music, but unlike anything I have heard before. Unearthly, hypnotic, it seems to be coming from the other side of the hold, not piped through the ship’s internal comms system, but from somewhere much closer. I make my way across the crowded storage space and find the source. Another cargo-cube, smaller than mine, barely larger than a footstool. A label on the outside proclaims WARNING - ORGANIC TEMPORAL PARASITIC MATERIAL: TAKE PRECAUTIONS. Captivated, I ignore it. As I crouch to put my ear to the cube, the music comes again. And this time I hear not just a melody, but, beneath it, the growl of an animal. At the same time I realise that with each refrain of the creature’s song, my body is growing weaker, as though something were being pulled from it with each passing moment. I try to yank myself away, but it’s no good. The melody persists, each jaunty note landing like a hook in my soul, tearing it away, chunk by chunk, consuming every part of my essence until finally there is nothing left All is quiet. I use the mag-key. I step out of the cube. The melody sounds again. With horror I realise that I’ve been here before, have already been once-or a thousand times?-consumed, and it is my destiny to be so again. I follow the music, crouch down by the cube, face once again my perpetual oblivion.

#21: Hold

A screenshot of the headline to a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. It reads' I saw a poor, lonely man wandering the A4 - then realised the sheer joy of where he was heading.

I was just approaching Chiswick, my head thick with recriminations and regrets, Julie’s final word - Enough! - ringing in my ears, when I saw him. Back hunched, head tilted forward, one leg slightly trailing the other, hands clenching and unclenching in a steady rhythm as though bracing himself against an electrical pulse. He was walking with the traffic, heedless of its noise and proximity, unflinching even as the largest lorry thundered past him, his eyes focused on some point in front of him. He was dressed in jeans and a zipped-up fleece - not too different from me, truth be told - but every part of him - clothes, hair, skin - looked worn-through, threadbare, like all the life had been sucked from it. I felt an immediate spike of pity, wondered if I should stop and offer assistance - there but for the grace of god and all that - until, on passing him by and turning my head, I saw his face, where sat the most beatific smile I had ever seen beneath eyes filled with tears of rapture. I felt something shift inside me, like a lock being picked and when I turned back towards the road, I now saw what he saw. A yawning hole had opened up in front of me - a hole not in the road but in the air itself, as though immense, invisible fingers had torn open this very plane of existence. Inside the hole, a realm of swirling mists and cacophonous sounds, impossible landscapes of ever-melting mountains and valleys, rivers and oceans, moons and stars, a universe of eternal metamorphosis and ravenous hunger. Hunger for new matter, new minds. Hunger for me. Its gargantuan desire overwhelmed me. The joy I felt at being wanted on such a fundamental level - it craved the very cells of my being - was unlike any I had ever felt on Earth. Instinctively my foot pressed down on the accelerator. I sped forward, eyes wide and brimming with tears, straight into the maw of the Beyond.

#20: A4

A screengrab from a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. The headline reads 'Yes, I have just done a naked forward roll. But there was a good reason.'

The basement floor is cold against my scrotum as I land, my back pitted with dust and grit. I feel something in my hair and when my hand goes to brush it away, the dessicated corpse of a mouse falls out. I realise that perhaps I should have swept before beginning the ritual, but it is too late now; Marchosias, mighty Marquis of Hell stands on the brink of entering our realm and only my naked supplication can conjure him. I pull myself up into a crouch once more, careful not to dislodge the candles which ring the rough pentagram which I have chalked onto the floor. The grimoire I purchased from the old man describes the Ritual of Summoning in lengthy but frustratingly opaque terms, outlining a series of physical manipulations which I have only been able to interpret as a kind of roly-poly movement, to be repeated fifty or so times in quick succession. At first the action - especially when combined with my nudity - felt ridiculous, a demeaning parody of a humble entreaty. But in its repetition, alone here in the cold, surrounded by the cobwebbed shadows, and the unopened boxes from my last house move, I have found a kind of focused tranquility, a trance-like state which feels like real magic. As I go to make my fiftieth roll, there come sounds from upstairs - a knocking at the door, a rattling of my letterbox. I hear the concerned shout of Janice, my neighbour, and I ignore it. The ritual must be completed. My scrotum lands once again on the cold concrete. The air in the room shifts, cracks and breaks open. In wonder, I turn my face towards the dark space above me and on my cheeks I feel - at last! - the hot, fetid breath of my Master.

#19: Forward Roll

A screengrab of an Adrian Chiles column in The Guardian. It reads 'I'd never wear budgie smuggler - but I did once help smuggle a budgie'

My first attempt to escape from the island had resulted in my capture and mutilation by the Doctor and his Ani-Men, a punishment intended to permanently dissuade me from ever trying again but which only succeeded in hardening my resolve. As soon as the dressings around my butchered groin and hips were removed, and the wounds themselves mostly healed, I began to plan my second attempt. I knew that this time there could be no question of failure; if caught again, I would face execution by jaw, claw, hoof and trotter. When the night of the storm came, I saw my chance. With the generators down and only emergency lighting available, it was easy enough to make my way undetected to the incubation room of the Doctor’s laboratory, where I found what I needed - a newborn creature, small enough to hide beneath my coat, and portable enough to take with me on my voyage back to the mainland, where it would stand as plain evidence of the Doctor’s unholy experimentations. I slipped quickly past the two Boar-Men guards at the dockside, their tiny eyes unused to the darkness that surrounded us, and down to the place where I had earlier stashed my small craft. Jumping aboard, I laid my kidnapped parcel down between my feet and began to row. Within minutes I was out at sea, the moonlight showing my way. My coat had slid open to show the stolen child, its babyish body covered in green and gold feathers, its head that of a small parakeet-like bird, though with humanlike blue eyes. A wretched grostesquerie, like all the others. Behind me I could hear the Boar-Men sound the alarm, and as though in response, the bird-child let out its own set of distressing chirps. All I could do was shut my ears to the sound, row harder and pray that this purloined infant would spell the end for this island, its deranged imperator, and all the poor half-men brutes who lived there.

#18: Budgie

A screenshot of a headline from an Adrian Chiles Guardian column. It reads 'No one wants to hear about your dreams - unless you follow my golden rule'.

They started small, didn’t they? The incursions, I mean. At first, you’d wake from a disquiet sleep with a vague sense of unease, a foggy memory of an otherwise commonplace dream being tainted by something alien, a thought, an idea, a notion that you’d never had before, and before long that idea was more than just a taint, it was the whole substance. It was like there was some other presence, some intruder, which had broken into your dreamworld, and not just squatted there, but turned it into a home. It’s how they make their way into this world, The Timeworn Ones. Dreams are doorways from their realm to ours. And our minds are their maternity wards, nests to be slowly, steadily prepared for birthing. No one will listen, that’s the problem. A pantheon of deities, bursting forth from an overfilled universe, spreading forth like a cancer into our own - it sounds like madness, and they know it. They even feast on it. Our madness is poetry to them, for they are, themselves, not sane. But there is a way. A way to warn the world of the invasion to come. The trick is not to use our futile, feeble human words, but to speak the language that they speak. The language of incursion. Tonight I make my move. With this hammer and this saw and the spare key he left to his house, I will enter my neighbour’s bedroom, pin him down as he sleeps, and open up a space within his mind. A space where I can climb in and fight these monsters on their own territory. I urge you to do the same. Together, speaking to the Timeworn Ones in their own cursed tongue, we might just win this war.

#17: Dreams

A screenshot of the headline of an Adrian Chiles Guardian column. It reads 'Why do I hate umbrellas? How long have you got?"

You don’t remember me, but I remember you. It was a year ago last April. You stepped out from the shop doorway into the rain, your umbrella already unfurled, your spare hand holding your phone to your ear, completely lost in your own little world. I was nothing to you, just a shape amid the crowd, but in the short moment before the sharp tip of the umbrella’s nearest rib scraped across my eyeball, the image of you - careless, heedless, so typically self-absorbed - was etched into my brain. I held that image for all the long months in the hospital. I was luckier than the driver who hit me as I stumblied half-blinded from the pavement into the road. Seeing my bloodied face smear across her windscreen, hearing the sickening CRACK of my body on her bonnet, induced in her a heart attack which killed her within minutes, poor soul. I had just the loss of an eye and a few broken bones to contend with. (And, admittedly, the attendant loss of my job and the dissolution of my marriage as my obsession with finding you took over every waking moment.) You have no idea, do you? Even now, reading this on your phone, thinking of it as just another story, you have no inkling that I’m talking about you. Yes, you. Careless, heedless you. The moment that changed my life forever was just another moment to you, lost amongst a million billion other moments. But your moment is coming, the one that’s going to change everything. One day, very soon, you’ll step out, umbrella held high, phone glued to your ear, and with your hands occupied you’ll have no way of stopping the blade that will come beneath your chin and press into your throat’s tender flesh. How long have I got? you might ask yourself. But you’ll never know. All you can do is wait for the rain.

#16: Umbrella

A screenshot of a headline for an Adrian Chiles column in The Guardian. It reads 'Why I absolutely love a visit to the dump'

People have been disappearing for months - abducted from bus-stops, early morning runs through the park, late night walks home - and the police have no idea, no clues, no suspect. They’re desperate for any information, desperate to know what’s happened to all those missing. All they’d need to do is ask me. I don’t know who he is - not his name at least - but I know what he looks like and I know where he goes. I know exactly where he takes them, each and every one. I call it The Dump. I stumbled across the place by accident. Chronic insomnia sends me out on early morning walks, tramping across miles and miles of empty country, past dead industrial estates, burnt-out retail parks, derelict factories and, one morning, to the hulking shape of an abandoned swimming-pool. It was there I saw him, on a rainy May dawn, unloading his latest victim from his van and moving her lifeless body inside. I waited until he was gone and then I looked for myself. The empty pool, its floor covered in bodies in various states of decomposition, laid out in rows, neat like toast soldiers, with her, the latest, at the shallow end. He’d used a blunt instrument on her, but that, I soon found, was not the same with the others. The more I looked - the more visits I made - the more I began to discern his different methods. The stab-wounds in the faces and torsos, the throttled necks, the hammer blows to the back of the skulls, there was such captivating variation. And the way the bodies changed over time - became stiff, then beautifully soft - that too was fascinating to me. The Dump was like an encyclopedia of death laid out before me, page by page. And I devoured it. Every morning now I wait in the woods beside The Dump, anticipating his arrival, longing to hear the hum of his van’s engine. And when I see his dark shape emerge from its doors, laden down with his newest thrilling cargo, I feel my heart pulse and my breath quicken. Another page in the book of death, ready to be consumed.

#15: Dump

A screenshot of a headline from a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. The text reads "I've found the cure for a sleepless night in a heatwave - but it can have its drawbacks..."

The irradiated earth outside the compound gives off a base level of heat that I have, over the long years since The Cataclysm, grown accustomed to. But these last few summers (I still keep the calendar of the Old Times, a pretence of normality) the red-raw sun which squats like a boil amidst the ever-shifting cloudscape - sometimes purple-green like an overripe fruit, sometimes an oily grey as though heavy with thick tar - has begun to burn with an ever greater intensity, rendering my living quarters almost unbearable. And so it has come to this - risk the inviolable status of my shelter, or bake to death in its concrete guts. I have no choice. My survival is all that prevents this ruined world being taken over by the Revenants, who populate its broken buildings and debris-strewn roads like vermin. My daily hunt of these soulless, mindless ghouls is the last human crusade. My God-given duty. My calling. I can’t give it up. And so I fashion a make-shift air conditioner to run off the spare generator, and place it in the room where I sleep. In order for it to work, I have to force open a window battened shut for half a decade. I reinforce the hole as best I can, but it’s still a weakness. A way in. It leaves me vulnerable. I lay on the sweat-soaked mattress and try to sleep. My right hand grips the shotgun, and my left the hunting knife. In the darkness I can feel the blessed breeze of the A/C flow over my naked skin, while outside, below the machine’s steady hum, I hear the low, animal mutter of the Revenants as they gather. Let them come if they dare. Let them try me. Their blood is a blanket I do not shy from wearing.

#14: Heatwave

A screengrab of a headline from an Adrian Chiles columen in The Guardian. It reads 'Is there anything more British than an underwhelming boast on a sign?'

We’re three hours into the journey, twenty minutes past where the GPS stopped working, when I see the sign. SALLY’S PLACE it reads, in plain, blocky text. Underneath there’s a picture of what looks like a slab of meat. Underneath that, in quotation marks, the words ‘Bloody Smashing’. Jen’s not keen - “It looks like some dodgy steakhouse” - the kids even less so - “We want a Maccy D’s” - but there’s something about the sign that appeals to me. The plain-speaking, no frills, take-it-or-leave-it-ness of it, with just that hint of understated pride - ‘Bloody Smashing’. It’s the epitome of Britishness. “Let’s just give it a go,” I say, “If it’s terrible, we can always leave.” An hour later, Jen’s dead and I can hear the kids screaming from somewhere in the back. My left arm is useless, paralysed by a blow from Sally’s mallet, and my right foot hangs limply from the end of my leg, the ankle pulverised by a jackhammer. This place is madness. Mashed and shattered bodies cover the floor, spilled insides pooling around them. Tortured whimpers come from those who still survive, even as they try to evade the heavy weapons of Sally and her staff. I know now that there is no way out but through them. My right hand grips the crowbar I pulled from the crushed fingers of the last staff member I fought. I wipe the blood from my face, block out the sound of my children’s cries and launch myself at Sally. The last thing I see is the cold gleam in her eyes as she swings her blood-soaked mallet at my temple.

#13: Sign

A screengrab of a headline to an Adrian Chiles column in The Guardian. The headline reads 'Why is so much of life spent clearing up?'

I’ve always considered my children to be my greatest blessing. Hearing the sounds of their feet as they gallivant around the living-room on another wild chase brings forth in me such a spike of joy that it’s difficult to describe. They’re part of me in a very real sense - their excitement is my excitement, their delight is my delight, their hunger is my hunger. I just wish they wouldn’t leave such a mess behind each time. When they’ve tired of the hunt and have moved on to other games, it’s always me who’s left to clear up. What for them was mere minutes of ripping, shredding, gnawing euphoria turns into hours of backbreaking work for me. Whether it’s a playmate, the postman or just some person they’ve picked up off the street, the result is always the same. There’s blood to be scrubbed, bones to be bagged, half-chewed flesh and viscera to responsibly dispose of - the tasks can feel never-ending. Sometimes I begrudge the time it takes, time I could better spend on my own hunts - selecting prey, planning capture, preparing the killing ground, all the moments I most enjoy. But when I reach the end of my clean-up, tired and bloody, and I feel their little bodies come gather around me, their tiny hands embracing me and each other, their jagged little nails pricking my skin, their sharp teeth biting playfully at my collarbone, everything is forgiven. In those moments I tell myself that it’s all just part of being a parent. And who would have it any other way?

#12: Mess

A screengrab of the headline to a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. It reads 'Decade on, I am still traumatised by my visit to the school toilets'

It’s my memory that everyone knew that Mr. Jarrow was a drinker, but thinking back now it may just have been something that us boys made up. One late afternoon lesson at the hazy end of May I caught a whiff of something faintly alcoholic on his breath as he leaned over to give me back my Geography book and from that point on, well, it was fair game. We began to make hiccup noises every time he spoke, or shout ‘Last orders!’ when the school bell rang. One lesson I started up a chorus of Thin Lizzy’s Whiskey In The Jar and soon everyone joined in. That was the time his face turned a blotchy red and he looked like he might burst into tears. I think that might have been the last time we saw him. It wasn’t until the first day back next September that we found out that he was dead. Drowned in the local river. Police called it accidental. I was in double maths when I found out and the whole thing made me feel a little unsettled - had we done this? - to the point where I had to excuse myself. It was a relief to find the boys toilets empty, and that I had full rein of the urinal, but as soon as I had unzipped my fly, and stepped up to the plate, I heard a drip drip behind me. Almost immediately I sensed movement, something approaching - a squelch of wet brogues on the tiles - and before I knew it, my head was pushed face first against the wall by a sodden cold hand. Cracked lips brushed against my ear and in a bloodless voice of twisted, mocking melody came the words Mush-a-ring dum-a do dum a da When my classmates found me I was curled up in the corridor, my trousers soiled, a urinal cake wedged tightly in my mouth. Their laughter still haunts me today. But more haunting still is the cracked voice beneath the laughter, the one I can ever unhear, singing over and over, Whack for my Daddy-o, There’s whiskey in the jar-o…

#11: School

A screenshot from a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. The headline reads 'Who could deny a hot, tired delivery driver the fruit from their cherry tree?'

Four or five times a day they knock on my door and hand me my order. What’s contained in the box is immaterial for my purposes - sometimes a pack of batteries I could just as easily buy from the corner shop, sometimes a bag of cheap plastic toy soldiers, clustered together in their hundreds - but I smile and thank them kindly regardless. In the moment after the exchange I can see the desire bloom behind their eyes, as the scent of the cherry tree - cultivated and refined, perfected over centuries - hits their nostrils. When they ask Would you mind? I shake my head and smile with infinite understanding, Why of course not. Please help yourself, and I watch them, t-shirt sweat-clinging to their shoulders, reach up and pluck a single red cherry from a branch, roll it in their fingers for just a short, anticipatory moment, then place between their lips. Sometimes they give a little moan of pleasure as the taste first hits. In that instant I know that they are mine. In the minutes and hours after consumption, the flesh of the fruit will begin to adhere to the lining of their stomachs. Nurtured by the acids within, it will begin to sprout tendrils, which will grow and snake throughout their bodies, attaching themselves to the nervous system, penetrating and taking control of the muscles, working their way up to the brain. At the end of one tendril will grow a single eye, which will push through the bone at the temple, and sit just beneath the skin, waiting for my command to burst through, allowing me to see all that they see, allowing me to direct them according to my will. A thousand eyes already lie dormant, ready for my order. I watch and wait for the doorbell to ring.

#10: Cherry

A screengrab of a headline from a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. The headline reads 'I recently saw something in a petrol station toilet southbound on the M1 that I can never unsee'

I had been driving for hours, so focused, so filled with intent that I had to peel my hands from the wheel, finger by crooked finger, and the bright lights of the service station seen through the windscreen were overlaid with the phantom after-image of the road - an infinity of broken white lines ready to be consumed. When I stepped out of the car for the first time since Edinburgh - since my mother, since the fight she made us have, since the mind-blotting rage which had sent me lurching towards her, and sent her stumbling, tripping, falling down the stairs to smash her skull against the cold tiled floor below - my legs felt unsteady, weak as though bloodless, and I had to pummel my fist against my thighs to get them to work, finally making my way, stiff-legged like some Halloween costume Frankenstein, to the toilet block. When I looked up from the sink, my face in the mirror looked like it belonged to a much older man, my skin sallow and so loose on the bones that I had the sense that one scratch with a fingernail might cause it to fall away completely. But beyond that, beyond me, in the rear of the room, beside the cubicles, stood something else, something awful, something that has stuck with me ever since. Something broken-necked and bloody, something death-rotten. Something that even now watches over me as I write. It used to be my mother. Now it’s just the hate that’s left of her.

#9: Toilet

A screengrab of a headline to a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. The headline reads 'I've learned a new word - and now I'm seeing the people it describes everywhere'

Moving through the crowds at the underground station, every third or fourth face makes the word jump to mind. Alongside the word there’s a feeling of abject disgust, a sense of repulsion that triggers a rising of rage within me. It’s all I can do not to launch myself at them, pummel them to a pulp, bruise and break my fists on their skulls. I don’t know where the word came from, how it got into my head. Maybe it was something to do with those lights outside my bedroom window last night, the ones that seemed to glow and pulse and burn through my eyelids even as I squeezed them tight. It feels implanted, inhuman, an invader. Like it’s not supposed to be there. I don’t know how to spell the word, can barely even pronounce it, but it’s there in my head, perched and crouching like a homunculus. It flashed in my mind when I saw my wife this morning. And when I saw my neighbour’s child. And the bus driver. And my boss. It’s telling me who they really are, beneath the skin, all of them. It’s telling me to be ready. It’s a word that means violence, a word that means war. And it’s as much a part of me now as my own bones. It sits there, the word, waiting.

#8: Word

A screengrab of the headline to a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. The headline reads 'It can be hard to end a phone call. But 'Okaybye' is not the way to do it.

an be hard to end a phone call. To tell the truth, I struggle with it every time. Saying goodbye to one of my close friends is like torment to me, even though I know it’s part of the natural ebb and flow of relationships. I guess I just don’t like the finality of it, the severing of our connection. My latest close friend, James, is on the line now. He’s using the phone I left for him in the box, the one with only my contact details in. It’s a bad line - it usually is, the signal having to make it through so many feet of earth and concrete - but I can still hear his terror and desperation - his need for me - quite clearly. In a matter of minutes he’ll begin to get drowsy from lack of oxygen and there’ll be no more words, just slow, shallow breaths. I’ll stay on the line, listening, for as long as I can sense him there. When I finally hang up it’ll be with a sense of loss and sadness, knowing it’s over. Shortly after I’ll begin the search again - as I have done so many times before - looking for a brand new friend, hoping that maybe this time I’ll find a connection that lasts.

#7: Phone

A screengrab of the headline to a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. The headline reads 'Does Britain need 24-hour slot machines? There must be better things to do at 3am.' The subheading reads 'Gambling arcades that never close are spreading across the country. I'm not against having a flutter, but seriously, in the middle of the night?'

Gambling arcades that never close are spreading across the country. I counted three new ones on the walk into work yesterday morning, tinted glass windows with glowing lights beyond, leaking electronic stings of failure and success onto the pavement. At first they seemed to only be taking over long-unlet spaces, boarded-up eyesores, but recently they’ve begun to replace what I’d thought were successful businesses - a hairdressers, a convenience store, even my favourite take-away place. It’s like they’re eating up all that was left of the town, brick by brick, ravenous. Last night I couldn’t sleep for thinking of them. The trilling, beeping sounds, the pulsing lights, the shadows of men hunched over the machines, fingers cramped in push-button poses. From outside my bedroom window, I could see the faint pulse of their eternal glow. A sudden terror hit me that I might never sleep again. This morning, nerves spiking with exhaustion, I make my way to work once more. There are more of them than ever, their facades beginning to bleed into one another, surrounding me like a cordon. I hurry past their doorways, refusing to look into the faces of the grey, bent men who shuffle through them, fearful of what horrors I might find if I look into their eyes. As I arrive at the office and reach for my pass, I realise that it’s no longer in my hand. The tinted glass doors in front of me open as I approach and the machines greet me with their chirrups and chirrs. As the cold glow hits my face and summons me in, I feel my hand contract, leaving just one single finger erect. I’m poised and prepared, ready to play forever.

#6: Arcades

A screengrab of the headline to a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. The headline reads 'Naked, smelly and bleeding, all I wanted from the world was some hot water. But the shower had other ideas'

Our ascent from the surface had been a rocky one, the giant electrical storms which raged across the planet’s surface playing havoc with the Albion’s guidance system, rattling the ship’s hull like a plaything in the mouth of some enormous beast. Piloting the craft alone had been near impossible, taking all of my concentration and effort just to get us out into low orbit. By the time we were safe and I could tend to Lieutenant Briggs it was too late. The invisible aggressor - windblown? microscopic? - which had attacked us on the sulphurous shores of the planet’s great lake, ripping our suits and flesh to near shreds, sending us scrabbling back to the safety of our craft, had torn too much away from her. Only a single terrified eye looked back at me from the mess that was left. I stripped the rags of the suit away from my body, stepped into the decontamination unit and gave the command for the shower cycle to begin. In place of the hot water I so longed for came a voice, distorted and thickly alien, like a diseased version of our ship’s AI. “We make you clean” it said, the moment before a rain of icy liquid blades began to hack at my skin, relentlessly tearing the meat away from my limbs, leaving behind only the purest white bone.

#5: Shower

A screengrab of the headline to a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. The headline reads 'I loathe pigeons. You wouldn't believe what they do to my downpipe.' The subheading reads 'These noisy, filty, feral creatures make my life a misery. Is there really no way to get rid of them?'

They crowd my roof each morning. From my bed I can hear them moving on the slates above, their repulsive pink-toed feet creating a jittering rhythm which sets my teeth on edge. Once a week now I clean the guttering of their filth, and catch in my breath an unwelcome thick taste of them; it’s a carrion taste, of blood and bones and putrid flesh, brewed to a stew in their round bird bellies. There’s death in them, goes the thought in my head. It makes my stomach churn, stokes a primal fear in me, a fear of what’s to come. What ugly fate awaits me in these grey portents? One morning, just before dawn, I climb out of my bedroom window, up that same guttering to the roof. They’re gathered there, along the ridge, a line of dark curved figures against the reddening sky, like punctuation marks on a bloody page. A moment of terror grips me - they are too many- but I swallow it down. It ends here, for me or them. It has to. I advance across the tiles, the knife gripped tightly in my hand, and feel a hundred yellow eyes turn to meet me. In the moment before I make my lunge, I hear their feet begin that jittering rhythm - and my hand falters. In an instant I’m enveloped by wings, my lungs filled with the stench of death. As my feet lose their mooring and I begin my final flight, I slash wildly, desperately, but all the blade finds is air.

#4: Pigeons

A screengrab of the headline to a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. The headline reads 'Where have all the headphones gone on public transport? The noise is eating into my soul'. The subheading reads 'Just one antisocial fellow traveller can ruin a journey. Is it a giant two-fingered gesture to the rest of the world?'

The bus is stuck in traffic, has been for nearly ten minutes now. I’m at the front on the top deck, so I can see the problem up ahead - two vehicles have collided, strewing debris across both lanes. Two police cars frame the scene, their blue lights pulsing in the evening rain. All I want to do is get home. The headache which has been squatting in my skull this last while is filling more and more of my consciousness, blotting out every other thought, every other sensation. Everything but the sound. Somewhere behind me, music is playing, the tinny tsch tsch tsch of a mobile phone speaker. The noise is eating into my soul. It’s like a skewer on which the pain is impaled and revolving, a parasite buried so deep it has become an integral part of the host. I try to move my head to see what kind of person would subject others to this torment, but all I can glimpse is an outstretched bloody hand on the bus floor, the cracked phone beneath broken fingers. Above the noise, beyond it, I hear the sound of ambulances approaching. I try to turn again, to see the face of my torturer, but I can barely manage more than an inch. The shattered windscreen which cradles my bloodied head like a crown just won’t let me move any further.

#3: Bus

A screengrab of the headline of a Guardian column by Adrian Chiles. The headline reads 'Scatter cushions and bedspreads - can someone explain to me what they're for?' The subheading reads 'Every night I hurl them off the bed. Every morning they are replaced. Off, on, off, on. Serving no purpose whatsoever'.

Every night I hurl them off the bed. Every morning they are replaced. I don’t know how or by whom, but the cushions are there; varied in size and colour and pattern - some small, some large, some soft as marshmallow, some rigid as bedsprings - they crowd the pillow where I lay my head each night like a Greek chorus. And like a chorus, some nights before I throw them on the floor, I swear I can hear them whispering. On the last night of my stay, I have disquieting dreams. My limbs whither to almost nothing, becoming little more than limp tassels attached to a bloating trunk. I feel my neck retract, pulling my rapidly diminishing head into the straight line of my shoulders, my bones disintegrating into mush. Soon I am looking out through sightless eyes from a body that is all torso, its skin now woven like fabric, muscle- and bloodless. I strain every part of what remains of my body to edge myself along the wooden floor and up the bedpost to the bedspread. There I join the chorus and finally hear their whispered song, now clear to my earless ears as what it always had been - a siren call.

#2: Cushions

A screengrab of the headline to an Adrian Chiles column. It reads 'Every autumn I am shunned by my friends and neighbours. But I think I've finally broken the curse'. The subheading reads 'Year after year, I struggle to give away an enormous crop of scarred, worm-eaten apples - while everuone else struggles to avoid them'.

Year after year, I struggle to give away an enormous crop of scarred, worm-eaten apples. Each Autumn I rise, my scarred, worm-eaten hands digging up through the earth to reach the surface, my sightless, worm-eaten eyes facing the cold white moon above. On flesh-stripped, worm-eaten legs I tread the desire paths which wend their way through the trees, pausing with each broken step to bend and reach for the mangled fruits which pepper the orchard floor, the heavy hessian scrumper’s sack which hangs from my whip-wounded, worm-eaten shoulders becoming gradually filled to the point of bursting. When my sleepless bones can carry no more, I set out on the slow walk towards the village, to find the kin of those who made me pay for the theft of their crop, ready to give back what they so cruelly demanded. My scarred, worm-eaten hands knock on each door, and I await their answer. I bring their own rotten fruit, ready for them to taste.

#1: Apples