Beneath the streets of London are several stations of the London Underground that are no longer in use. Some were never completed, some were found redundant due to changing patterns of demand, and one, Mornington Crescent, was reopened after many years of closure. But there is one that will never, ever be brought back into service: British Museum. Far below even the lowest and most secret of the basement levels of the institution for which it is named, rumours have surrounded it since its construction in 1900. Its sudden closure in 1933 has never been satisfactorily explained.

In 1976, the Swiss artist H. R. Giger visited London, with a view to seeing some of these “ghost stations”, as they are called. Colleagues in the London art world arranged an introduction to London Transport, who provided a guide, one Henry Cottonwood, a long-serving member of staff who had worked at some of these stations when they were still in use.

Cottonwood found Giger a disturbing individual, but with good grace showed him around Down Street, Trafalgar, and others. But on their final foray, to British Museum, something happened of which he would never speak. Following an episode of “nervous exhaustion” he took early retirement, and refused ever again to travel on the Underground.

Three years later, the first “Alien” film came out, whose eponymous monster and its hideous life cycle were famously designed by Giger. When Cottonwood caught sight of an advertising poster, witnesses said that he screamed, “They’ve escaped!” and fled headlong into the traffic. He was fatally run over.

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A shorter version of this story appears at Lawrence Simon’s 100 Word Challenge for 1 January, 2023.

Image: DALL·E, prompted with
“The British Museum underground station, painted by Giger.”

Watch

Medjool the Watcher stands at the Gate of the World. The centuries crowd there, eager for admittance. But Medjool decides.

In Aegypt, Medjool let a handful of centuries play for three thousand years, then let newer centuries sweep them away. In the Southern Continent, Medjool allowed a single century forty millennia, then banished it to the void.

The centuries come so fast now, that each brings some new wonder into the world. Some say that Medjool no longer stands watch, and the centuries press through the Gate pell-mell. Surely the Fûm is upon us, the chaotic end of all things.

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Social Media

If on a hot summer evening in Japan, you lean out of the window of your stifling apartment, often you will hear a whistle-humming like that of high-voltage electricity pylons. But it is actually millions of insects, all calling to each other.

And if on that hot summer evening in Japan, you lean out and hear only the distant silence of the city, and you jingle a bunch of keys, the insects will call back to the ultrasonic rustle, and then call back to each other, and they will keep going all night, calling to each other because they are calling to each other.

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May 1998. A street in the old merchants' quarter, Nara.

A fragment

On a Sunday, by the sea
My last girlfriend said to me...

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Tura has written a story about an elf.

The Writers’ Dash is held every day at 6am and 6pm Pacific Time in Second Life, which works out to 2am and 2pm in my timezone. Which means I can only participate in real time at 2pm on Sundays. But I can have a go any time for practice. This is my first attempt. The subject is ”Elf”. It took 40 minutes, not the prescribed 15.