Return to Coventry

return to Coventry, please" I asked the ticket seller pleasantly, for it was a gorgeous sunny morning.

"You pervert!" he hissed in reply.

I stared at him flabbergasted, I didn't believe my ears. "What?" I exclaimed with my face going red.

"You heard. You're a degenerate, with your long 'air and high and mighty ideas. It shouldn't be allowed, you should all be shot for the good of the country" he ranted as he sullenly gave me my ticket "What are you talking about?" but he had already turned his back on me. I took up my ticket and it became the albatross around my neck. People stared and pointed, they whispered behind my back.

"Thats 'im ... he's going to that black place ... 'e's the one .. come along Katie don't go near him."

I got onto the train and was immediately isolated by the commuters. The invisible stigma of Coventry hanging over me.

I felt confused, why was this happening to me, what had I done! I tried to get my thoughts in order, with little success. All I remembered of Coventry was a grim Midlands town with a concrete polytechnic. The Green Fascists had won the local elections. But they were environmentalists not perverts or were they. There had been no news of Coventry over the summer vacation so perhaps they were to blame for this strange behaviour. Anyway I would soon discover one way or the other.

I sat isolated all the way to Coventry. There I barely had enough time to scramble onto the platform, my bags slung after me, before the train pulled out, pumping environmentally sound smoke from its boiler. The station had changed, the afforestation was much more apparent in a city than it was in the rural areas. Massive oaks soared above me in a dense wave which spoke of dedicated environmentalism. The undergrowth had got a hold and was forcing its way through the cracks in the paving slabs. Even the concrete had a greenish tinge to it.

I was alone on the platform, nothing stirred, a few birds called in the distance, but the only movement was caused by the soulful wind. There was no ticket collector just the rampant growth of a rose bush. Coventry certainly had changed. The Green Fascists had turned it into an Eden, but something was not quite right!

I walked back to the house I shared with two others, through muddy tracks which had once been major tarmaced roads. There were no cars not even the ones which ran on pig dung and worst of all there were no people. Just gaping doors and windows with weeds encroaching on man's achievements, and tree after tree after tree.

I gingerly crossed a marsh where the underpass for the ring road had once been and then started down Gulson Road, which was now more appropriately called Woody Lane. Then I entered my road, which lived up to its name, being choked with brambles. I had to hack my way through to get to the front door and I staggered in side, barely noticing that the door was unlocked.

I found John on the sofa rocking back and forth murmuring to himself. It took me a few minutes before I could get any sense out of him.

"What happened? Where is everybody?" I queried.

"Gone, the fascists took them. Called then pollutants, a cancer in the heart of the Earth. Oh it started out fine, trees planted everywhere. People becoming healthier. Then people started disappearing, then it came out into the open. They were guilty of trying to undermine the Green Revolution, they were industrialists, wasters of precious resources, vagabonds, those on the dole. And eventually everybody but them. Richard and James were taken last night for littering. Sacrificed by now to nature. How do you think the plants are so luxurious? It's the fertiliser. Get out, get out of here before you end up as Baby Bio." he lapsed into silence from which I could not rouse him, I shivered. Something had to be done. It couldn't be right. Could it?

I walked up Far Gosford Street towards the centre of the city and the heart of Coventry forest. could see green swastikas on a field of blood red flutter from the few remaining tall buildings. Their headquarters was the old nuclear power station, nobody needed electricity now, for there was no one left. I could hear the cries streets away, at first I thought they were solely of pain. But as I got closer I detected the moans of pleasure mingling with them. I stopped at the edge of the Lady Godiva park, her statue now wreathed in ivy, and viewed the fascists at their play.

They had rigged up an altar, upon which they were sacrificing people with a bloody knife. The corpses were then dragged away by fascists in their sweaty leather to the fertiliser factory. The rest danced crazily around the blood letting. Occasionally committing some vile form of perversion on each other or the cowering pollutants of the Earth. There were few left, I expect they had more economical ways of destroying them before but now there was little point for so few. Then I saw the perversions which had made the people at the railway station so disgusted. I myself felt myself retching up the British Rail beefburger, I ran regardless of direction into the Coventry jungle. The fascists had been committing the act of copulation with various bilious green plants which took on the form of human reproductive organs, both male and female. Then I had looked again and seen suspicious looking bulges in some of the plants and most female fascists were pregnant. An eco-paradise for sure.

I stopped running when I collided with a metal wall. I fell over into a soft fertile humus and found myself gazing up into a green face. They were all over me in a moment. Green hands gripping like tendrils, I was overwhelmed by the ecological children of the fascists. Genetically designed, the new master race. Green coloured humans or human shaped plants? Chlorophyll providing them with food, immune to the UVs and able to reduce the greenhouse effect. A brilliant concept I see now, but then it was terrible as they bore me up and forced me into the presence of their god. A monstrous thing growing out of the heart of the decommissioned nuclear reactor, still shedding its deadly rays.

They produced choppers and machetes an sliced me up into rich compost for the hideous plant. Then I was slowly absorbed and I gradually became aware of consciousness and a multitude of others, dedicated to the Green Reich and the environmentally kind master race.

I became part of the plant, a wondrous feeling of satisfaction filled me as I stretched from my roots to my topmost leaves. Growing, insinuating our way into every corner of the country. Sending up suckers to infiltrate our way into other minds. Preparing the ground for our children. Soon Britain will be great again, ready to rule the world. It's our destiny. Then a gradual process of ridding ourselves of the untermench, the blight of humanity on the face of our world. We will make it a world fit for the greens, a world in which we can be justly proud. I am glad I am part of it and that I've lost all my foolish fears.

Now all I can see is GREEN.