We View Horizons Kindly

The voice at the end of the phone says 'no'.
'Phone says no.' says Morgan.
'I heard it.' says Esther. 'Wait a sec.' She grabs it off him, roughly, and chucks it into the water below. It makes a sound like a head hitting the water; beneath, the canal silt shifts and disappears. 'We'll never hear from them again.' she says.

'God, I wonder who that was. I mean, when does that kind of thing happen?' asks Morgan.
'I don't know,' pleads Esther. 'I'm really tired. I've got a party to host tomorrow. See you soon. Bye.'
Her door slams in his face.
Oh well, thinks Morgan. He sort-of misses the phone and reaches for his own one. No-one's rung. Hmm.

But the whole thing bugs Morgan for days. Though it's not the only thing distracting him from today's band practice- that would be Emily.
ugh. EMILY.
Morgan distractedly plonks a keyboard.
'I've been musing on... dubstep,' says Emily.
'What actually is a dub step?' asks a distracted Morgan. 'is the step the dance you do?'
'I think dubstep is the TIME. It's the PLACE. It's the MOTION. Dubstep is the
way We View Horizons Kindly is feeling. You know!' she twirls around. Today, Emily's dressed like a one-woman homage to Shakespeares Sister's 'Stay' video, dusty too-tight sequin top, mascara and tiara competing for attention.
'Are feeling. Not is.' a quiet voice from the corner, a self- contained, self-made mysteriousness. His given name is 'Dennis', he's the third member of We View Horizons Kindly and Emily and Morgan found him playing guitar on top of a skip in Mornington Crescent last summer.
Yes, that's the name of Morgan's band. Oversized.Denim.Shirt, TTL FCCKRZ, Yoshi's Island- all these band names had been rejected in narrow favour of one taken from a tattoo Emily's first boyfriend had on his lower arm (the other arm had his name and address tattooed on it).
'I forgot!' squeals Emily. 'Shocking, isn't it, for a classics grad.'
'Though you did only get a 2:1,' mumbles the band's least with-it member. They'd been attempting to play chronological Sugababes covers since twelve; it was now five, and Morgan couldn't take any more.
'I just feel like... We need to fag it up a bit. Get with what the kids are doing. I mean, everyone's talking in patois now, aren't they? Black is back.'
Oh GOD, thinks Morgan.
'Did it ever go away?' intones Dennis, mystically.
'Look- it's time to buck our ideas up. We're supposed to be a multi-media art collective. Not just some musicians in a room.'
They pose on crates in Dennis's warehouse somewhere off Mare Street, feeling the cold and inhaling cups of stale peppermint tea. Dennis isn't much of a shopper. Dennis is in love with Emily. Emily is in love with Robert Pattinson and the Lord of the Rings hobbits.
'I just think our sound needs to be more ambient, you know. It's like every fucking decade's been done. Especially with this 1910's sound that's coming back.'
'We haven't written a song for five weeks,' says Dennis, in his usual, ageless monk voice.
'I thought we were supposed to be divining ambient soundscapes rather than writing songs?' says Morgan.
'Ambient songs, temperate soundscrapes...' whispers Dennis. 'Everything is fragments-'
'-I was thinking about writing this epic song,' quips Morgan. 'It was going to be a requiem for our generation, a modern-day version of We Didn't Start The Fire, starting with MTV and running through Party of Five, the Spice Girls and 9/11, played on a melodica.'
'Are you still seeing that vicar off the TV?'
'NO.' says Morgan, loudly. PHONE SAYS NO. 'And while we're on the subject, what's happened to the shaman?'
'Oh,' Emily twiddles her tiara, wipes a bit of hummus off her sequins. 'He's a dreambout, isn't he?'
'Don't you mean dreamboat?' Morgan has probably never been so keen to not be in a room, on a comfy chair, before. What with the crazy phone and the upcoming gig, it's all a bit much.
'Are you totally soft in the brainbox!? I've never heard anyone say dreamboat before.'
'Maybe they don't,' he says, slamming the top down on his keyboard. 'Sorry. I don't know what came over me. I've never heard anyone say that. Go on.' says Morgan. You absolute fucking idiot.
'We've got a meeting at the shaman's studio next Saturday.'

''We've got a meeting at the shaman's studio next Saturday.''
He even inserts the finger quote marks.
'Have you read Kyki Czukay's column this week? He's literally insane. He's lost the plot.' Devlin, the scone, scours today's copy of the Metro. 'And I quote. BAG ABOUT TOWN, by Kyki Czukay,' he puts on a drawling, awful voice, 'Shitfaced. It was only a Wednesday morning and I'd already found myself semi-naked in Daffodil's bed with a male prostitute called Ludovic. We'd snorted what was supposed to be weed tranquiliser in the back of a German shadow minister's car on the way back from Daisy Lowe's new clubnight, Lowe and Behold. Where the man-whore was concerned, I was definitely doing all the holding.'
Morgan picks up a baseball cap from the side and tries it on, spinning round in the mirror. 'I don't know how these social diarists even get their jobs. I mean, that doesn't even make sense.'
'Kyki Czukay wears a baseball cap,' says Devlin.
'Does he?'
'You just put that one on as I was reading it out.'
'Did I?'
'That's weird...' Devlin shuffles back slightly. 'Put it down, Morgan, put it down.'
Morgan's phone rings again.
'Oh god. It's her.'
'Emily?'
'Queen of the nymphs. The three-headed dog at the gates of hell.'
'Cerberus.'
'That, too.' he picks it up. 'Emily...'
Devlin continues to flick through the paper, his stick-on arms moving the pages somewhat unsteadily.
'Yep, yep...' Morgan picks his nose as he talks. 'Yep. The what? The Shaman's flatmate is holding a spirit quest next Saturday. We can't walk within a five hundred yard radius.'
'Because that's what people get up to on a Saturday...' mumbles Devlin, shaking his crust in dismay.
'You want to hold it here? At ours? Is that alright?'
Devlin's eyes light up.
'Oooh... maybe not such a good one. There's something I forgot to tell you.'
'Forgot. Sorry, Emily. Just a sec.' Morgan silences the phone. 'What?'
'I'm cooking next Saturday. For a few friends.'
'How many.'
'Why? It doesn't matter, it's-'
'It's four strangers, isn't it.'
'It's just a little thing. It must have slipped my mind.'
'Ohhhhh no you don't.'
'What?' cries Devlin, splodges of jam falling from his mouth. 'What!?'
'It's Come Dine With Me, isn't it. Isn't it! You've bloody applied!'
'I might have done.' says Devlin, shuffling out of the room as fast as a baked good can.