Dream of a Russian Princess

Ben Peek

One

In the Frost, you dream your prison. Before the dream begins, before your veins are sluggish and turning solid and your body's sensations are nothing but that crown of cold circling your skull… before that, they sit beside you, neat and white, and ask you what the most important thing in your life is.
     You tell the truth. You lie. Either way, your cage is built.
     I drew six years.
     My dream played out in sepia-toned photographs, pressed between plastic covers and thick pages so that I could never touch them. They ran in an endless loop long after I had learnt the error of my ways.

two

Blair didn't look like himself anymore: he was forty two, ghost pale, sagging around the waist, aching in all his joints, without tattoos— not even his little girl's name, which he'd gotten the day she had been born— and he smelled of disinfectant.
     "You need to sign this."
     He didn't turn, didn't want to face the squat man standing in the warm yellow bloom of the Waking Cell. In the reflection of the cell door, he could see the doctor: his white coat was parted, thrust back at the waist, and his left hand was in his pocket. His right held the electronic pad he wanted signed. Plastered across his face was a look that reminded Blair of a pleased and recent Father.
     There was no Father, only the growing smell of disinfectant.
     "Mister Blair?"
     The smell made him want to gag.
     "Mister Blair?"
     He could taste it in the back of his throat.
     "Mister—"
     "I thought my daughter would be here?"
     In the reflection, the doctor's balding head dropped, and his new Father demeanor evaporated. He began stuttering, claiming that he was waiting before he brought that up, that it didn't do to shock the patient so early into revival. Heavy was the emphasis.
     But Blair knew the man was afraid. In that last moment of rational thought, before the rehab programming began, he knew. The doctor had programmed his dreams: he knew exactly what would happen. Knew that there was nothing to stop it.
     Blair's last rational thoughts were of regret, loss, and bitterness.
     They broke upon the shore of his new thoughts, strong, demanding, and unquenchable:
      How did this happen?
      Find who did this.
      Find them.
      Kill them.

three

I was twenty-five when I stood in St Petersburg's Private Hospital and saw Marilyn for the first time. The doctor held her up, bloody and screaming, and I just stood there and watched, unable to think, even when they cleaned her and brought her out for me to touch.
      It had been Galina's idea to have her in St Petersburg. She'd had a child there before; she liked the staff, and it was close to where she had been raised, so I didn't object. Russia wasn't so bad a place—I could name worse—and I always had a fondness for it after Marilyn was born. The doctor that delivered her took me out to a bar, and he clapped me on the shoulder and said he was always pleased to deliver a child without extra limbs. We got drunk and it was there, at the height of my drunkenness, that I had the idea to have her name inked into my skin.
      The next morning I was back, hung over with my aching shoulder, trying to keep my breath away from her little face, but unable to come and go without holding her, without rocking and showing her to the parade of friends who came through the door.

four

How does a seventeen-year-old girl die? She had been living in St Petersburg, a ward of the State until Blair was released. Being in a ward wasn't like it had been twenty years before: no more neglect, no more leaving them to find their own way, the State rented the kids out to companies after school for their work place education.
     Blair had memories—postcard sepia toned memories—in the back of his mind that she had sent him. Her job at McDonalds, flipping burgers, her blue and green hair hidden beneath a plastic cap. She was smiling as if she were happy that the State was such a lover of having everyone use his or her time constructively.
     Her routine he knew from a Frost diary: she worked in the evenings and went to school six days a week for eight hours, and had one day a week free to herself. In her spare time she studied, watched television, movies, or wrote letters to her Frost bound Father. She was in bed at ten of a week night, and no later than one on Saturday or Sunday.
     How did a girl die when she had that little free time on her hands? Perhaps it had been a simple accident?
     Maybe, Blair thought as he sat in the dark, strapped in tightly for atmospheric entry. Outside the window, he could see a faint burning around the prison shuttle as it shook and rattled its way downwards: a metal stone dropping back to Earth and trying its best to make the ride uncomfortable. Blair didn't mind. The ride helped him keep his mind off things ( find them, kill them, find them, kill them ) and when it didn't, he tried to think about the three hundred credit he had, and how it wasn't enough for more than four days rent.
     The doctor had told him nothing. Looking at that floor, he had said, "I don't know. I really don't. I'm sorry, Mister Blair, but there is nothing I can tell you."
     He was lying. Blair removed accident from his list. The doctor had known enough not to want to help the inevitable.
     It had been his second time in the Frost. He had been twenty-eight the first time, and he had pulled two years. It was before the rehab became part of it, and it was easy time back then, a choice between doing the time in prison awake or asleep. Blair had simply closed his eyes, breathed the gas, and then woke up in the tank, feeling the dead weight of a new body hanging off him. Everything had trickled back into his head as he floated: to walk, eat, shit, and a week later, he wiped the wet sludge from his body after being pulled out of the tank and did those things. The only real bitch was that everyone had gone two years without him. Some were dead, others moved on, some married, or something else entirely. But that, Blair knew, wasn't any different from a stretch in prison—it was just that in the Frost you didn't get letters or visits, while in the cell, you did the time on your own two feet.
     The second time had been different: there was rehab and no choice, and the Frost came with time so that the six years crawled across him with the lack of choice that they originated from.
     Blair had been caught jacking a bank, in what he could only put down as his own stupidity. He had been sure that the pathways were clean, and that there was nothing, nothing, in there that would be able to trace him. The strict timetable that he had been working to had been compromised from the start. Rather than disconnect and walk away, he had continued, falling further and further behind as he went. He had thought he could make up the time, as he had done in other systems. But this system had flagged him at the start. It was a simple mistake. All four of them had gotten caught, but since he had been the one wired up the bank terminal, he had received the full six years.
     The shuttle dropped over the dark ocean in a spray, jolting the passengers around as it came up to the spaceport just outside St Petersburg.
     He would need names.
     He didn't even know her friends.
     The only thing he had was the address of her plaque in the public burial wall across from the Leningrad State University.

five

The lights along the Bol'Shaya Neva were a harsh electric yellow, and the light reflected off the black, chemical riddled water that ran along it. The buildings around the river were stained with salt and chemicals that ate into the bricks and window seals.
     It was three in the morning and Blair huddled within himself as he walked along the streets.
     Ahead of him there was a spray of light and noise, unintelligent at first and remaining so as Blair walked past the plastic red car that the light and noise spilled from. Around the open doors and leaning against the buildings on either side of the car, a group of young men sat with plastic tubes leading from their nostrils and down to cans of boiling nicotine that they held. They fell silent and watched him as he passed.
     Had they had known Marilyn? ( Find them, kill them. ) Would she have been friends with people like that? The cold bit into him and his body had a sudden, middle aged ache to it. Away from the youths, he paused to catch his breath and strength, before walking again.
     How had she died? Again, he returned to the question. That same question as he had stood in the Waking Cell with a collection of useless feelings, each one dying off. How? He didn't know, and in the back of his mind, he knew that it would not be easy for him to find out. ( Find them, kill them. )
     He was tired again by the time he came to the burial wall. Made from solid, black granite, it stretched along the street, and was lined with bronze plaques that shone with the morning damp from the light that was emitted from the burning steel chambers cemented on the top of the wall. It was a tall and solid wall, though there was an air to it that suggested that the wall was more solid than it looked: that it had, and would, weather the years better than any of the people it kept remembered.
     It was organised in years, and plaques descended down from the date. As the years continued, the wall extended up the street, with a new section of black granite being added. Eventually the wall would wind its way through all of St Petersburg, joining with the other burial walls through Russia and then, eventually, forming one long chain across the world.
     Blair counted the years, followed them up.
     The street was empty at first, but as Blair looked up from one section of the plaques to another, he saw a figure in white approach the wall further up. Counting, he walked towards what turned out to be a woman.
     She was tall, and her clothes were wrapped tightly around her, as if they were afraid of falling, and he couldn't see her face due to the hood that was closed around her.
     The wall stretched its black granite face out and ended where she stood. Blair stepped up next to the woman, and stared down at Marilyn's name in the middle of the wall. It was a tiny, insignificant bronze plaque.
     "It's such a tragic thing, isn't it?"
     Blair knew that voice.

six

Galina. Galina. When I met her, she was twenty-three with chemical coloured vanilla skin and short shaggy blond hair that was streaked pink. We didn't talk much about ourselves at first, because it'd never meant to be more than anything but two weeks on Mars.
      We were staying in the Hilton, and we spent the two weeks in that neon blue room with the shutters closed. I can still remember the way the light shone along her smooth, sweaty skin as she crawled across me to pour another drink. We had just finished and Marilyn had just started, though neither of us knew that.
      Galina told me that she was a Birth Mother. Pay her enough and she will carry your child for the term; genetic tampering and a few illegal modifications made her ovaries near perfect. One month before, she delivered a beautiful little boy, and was up on Mars, drinking, dancing, having a holiday.
      I told her that I was a banker. Depending on which angle you looked at it from, it was either half a lie or a full lie. But I repeat: it was never meant to be long term, never meant to go past the two weeks.
      But it did.
      Inside Galina's womb, imperfect sperm and perfect ovaries were meeting, joining, morphing, and the little white speck that would be Marilyn was building, evolving, designing.

seven

Galina led Blair silently through two electric yellow streets, leaving the burial wall behind and embracing the crumbling tombstones of the buildings and the apartment block that she was renting in. He walked up two flights of stairs, waiting for her to speak, but she did not. She remained silent as she opened the door, as she turned on the lights, and then locked the door behind him. She ushered Blair onto the faded red couch in the middle of her living room, turned on a second light which burned brightly above him, and spoke for the second time.
     "Would you like a drink?"
     "Yes."
     She disappeared into the kitchenette, returning with two tumblers of whiskey. The glasses smoldered in the light.
     She sipped her drink, and spoke to Blair quietly. She did not ask Blair anything, and Blair did not ask of her: it had been years since they had spoken, and the only thing that tied them together now was Marilyn. ( Find them, kill them. ) Galina's words were careful, and soon Blair realised that while her hair was longer and without its pink, and though her skin was stamped with crows feet, she had not changed. Every moment and every person that she met was still an audience, and everything that she said, every movement that she made, was rehearsed.
     "He took her away from me, Blair. Away ."
     There was silence. She closed her eyes and ran her long fingers around the tumbler, spreading the whiskey slowly along the glass.
     "I know what you want." She didn't say how, but Blair knew it was the Doctor, selling the information.
     A name fell from her orange lips: "Fredrick Lynch. Fredrick Lynch at McDonalds." ( Find him, kill him. ) She repeated the name: Fredrick Lynch. Again: Fredrick Lynch. Fredrick Lynch. ( Find him, kill him. )
     He shot my girl.
     He shot our girl.
     The emphasis was heavy, like the doctor in the Waking Cell, but the our was false, the only slip in her act, the only thing that betrayed her. Yet it didn't matter: the Frost programming had started its second cycle, and the deadness in his stomach cracked, broke, and the gears pushed him towards the goal. ( Find him, kill him. Do it. Do it now. )
     He took a deep, calming breath and looked down at the whiskey, then back at her. Galina's pale eyes stared at him: calm, focused, an angry ocean waiting to engulf someone. Fredrick Lynch. ( Find him, kill him. )
     "How do you know?" he asked.
     She smiled, hinted teeth, then disappeared and returned with a folder. Police documents. Reports. Photos. Marilyn. ( Find him. kill him. ) Blair looked down at his girl, then turned her over, trying to hide them. He asked Galina where she got the copies from and she evaded.
     "I have my ways," she said, faintly.
     It didn't matter. Blair couldn't stop himself. If she was using him, then so what?
     He would use her too.
     "I need a gun," he said.

eight

When Galina left, Marilyn cried like I had never seen. I'd just returned from my first time in the Frost, and she was five. Galina waited a whole two weeks before she upped with her bags and left. It broke Marilyn's heart. She cried for days, and there was nothing that I could do. I tried everything I could think of: toys, hugging her, leaving her, asking her, having others ask her. Everything. She cried and cried and I slept a whole eight hours in that first week.
      I felt guilty. If I hadn't returned, then Galina wouldn't have been able to leave, and Marilyn wouldn't have been hurt. Yet I realised that if I hadn't returned, Galina would only have found some other way to leave. The guilt remained, and didn't leave, not even when I was in the Frost.

nine

The room was dark when Blair arrived, but as he perched on the edge of the bed, the orange burn of the sun soon filtered through the windows and over him.
     He had tried to sleep, but had been unable to. ( Find him, kill him. ) Memories from the Frost crawled around in the back of his subconscious, settling with his desire to find Fredrick Lynch. Sperm and ovary, the two gelled, ballooned and sat in his stomach, heavy and unpleasant, but alive.
     Galina had said that a gun would arrive for him in the morning, and then she had propelled him out of her apartment with directions to the cheapest motel she could find. The motel he sat in, with a name he couldn't recall. All he knew about it was that the sheets on the bed were made from plastic and patterned in a strange swirl of faded orange and red.
     He had not wanted to leave Galina, but had wanted to stay and talk about Marilyn. He had questions, memories that he wanted and which weren't from the Frost. Had Galina known her at all? Had Marilyn spoken of him? Why had Fredrick Lynch killed her? (The answer to that was in the folder: drugs.) But Galina had propelled him out, and he had walked down the hall, stagnant with his thoughts and desires.
     ( Find him, kill him. )
     How was Galina going to get him a gun?
     Was it the same person who had helped her find Marilyn's killer? The person who had given her the files?
     "She was shot."
     Blair closed his eyes—
     "She was shot."
     There was a knock at the door and Galina's calm, seeping voice evaporated.
     Blair pushed himself from the bed, walked past the plastic dressing table that was the rooms only furniture, and opened the door: a dark bearded man with tiny, deep set black eyes and wearing a thick, grey police uniform, smiled at him, but the smile held no kindness. He said Blair's name in a deep voice, then stepped into the room, closing the door behind him.
     He introduced himself as Officer Naum.
     "What can I help you with, Officer?"
     Officer Naum continued to smile his cold smile, and opened the grey coat he wore. Blair tensed, but the thick set officer made no move towards him; instead he dropped a brown wrapped package on the bed, and said that he was here to give Blair something that would make his time in St Petersburg much easier.
     The package bounced and settled like the dead.
     It called to him like the dead.
     Blair made no move for it.
     "It's what you wanted," Officer Naum said.
     Blair didn't move, didn't trust the man. Yet it did make sense that Galina would have help from someone in the Police.
     Officer Naum's smile grew, and his face wrinkled as it did, yet it remained devoid of warmth. Empty.
     "I was the one who found Marilyn," he said. "From what I can tell, she was walking home from working at the McDonalds and was shot in the back of the head: no struggle, no marks of any other kind, just that shot. The bullet matched a record we've been keeping on a man known as Fredrick Lynch."
     ( Find him, kill him. )
     Blair's hands began to sweat. The package sat on the bed, just on the edge of his eyesight, and it called to him while Officer Naum continued to speak.
     "Lynch runs a small drug business, which in itself isn't that much of a crime. For fifteen years I've been working cases like this, and a small drug run is nothing. He pays his bribes and conducts whatever other business he has without it ever reaching my ears, or anyone else's for that matter. But the one thing that brings him to my attention is that everyone he has killed has been a teenager. Each one of them has worked with him."
     "Why?"
     "As far as we can piece together, she said no."
     Blair's fingers curled in on his palms, digging.
     "The others said no as far as we can tell. Getting kids to run your drugs is a fairly standard technique, and most of them will for the extra money. The Behavioral Department thinks that the reason Marilyn said no was you."
     His nails were hurting him now.
     "It's not uncommon for children like Marilyn to have an aversion to crime, or to anything that brings them into opposition with the law."
     "Why are you telling me this?"
     "I believe you know my wife?"
     The last of Blair's restraint broke away, and he picked up the package, holding the heavy weight in his hands.
     Officer Naum did not stop speaking: he told Blair about how Galina had tried to take Marilyn away from the State, but she wouldn't leave. For four years she said no and denied the Mother who had left her, always with the iron belief that when Dad returned, he would take care of her, that he would be all that she needed. It hurt Galina to hear her only real child deny her for a frozen criminal who had not been there for half her life.
     "To be quite honest, I blame you for all of this," Officer Naum said with quiet venom. "If not for you, she'd never have worked there, and if not for you, she would have never been shot."
     Blair was silent, holding the package.
     ( Find him, kill him. )
     "Where can I find Lynch?"
     "He's works the nightshift. The address is in that folder." Officer Naum walked to the door, opened it, paused. "I know what you're going to do. We all do. When the death was reported, I made sure your rehabilitation continued. Your doctor was easily bought. Most of them are. I'm telling you this because I want you to know that I could stop you right here, but I won't. You're going to do this for me, for her , and the moment you've done it, I'm going to send you right back to the Frost."

ten

Beneath the brown paper it waited: metallic, with a black handle, and two plastic clips. Eighteen bullets accompanied it.
     ( Kill him, kill him. )
      Walk away , he told himself, holding the empty pistol in his hands, the morning sun running along it. He couldn't walk away. ( Kill him! Kill him! ) Marilyn lay on the ground, shot in the back of the head, obscuring the Frost images of her life, of her attempt to make sure that he knew everything that was important to her.
     And if it was a rose coloured snapshot of her life, then he did not blame her, not with the half glimpsed memory of her on the ground waiting behind his eyes, coupled with Officer Naum's words—"I blame you"—and then Galina's: Fredrick Lynch Fredrick Lynch Fredrick Lynch.
     ( Kill him! Kill him! )
     For every moment that passed, Blair found it harder to think.

eleven

Have you ever had to explain to an eleven year old girl why you break the law?
      It's not just hard. It's impossible. She goes to school six days a week and hears teachers and robots tell her how she shouldn't break the law, how it is wrong. But she knows that Dad jacks into bank terminals and steals money, that Dad's friends rob houses, jack cars, run drugs, beat people, carry weapons and have spent time in the Frost. Naturally, she comes home and asks Dad why?
      Most of the time, you can't explain it. I couldn't. The best I ever did was to tell her that people have different views on what is right, what is wrong, and that the most anyone can hope to do is to follow their own rules, and to be true to themselves. But then I got caught, and there in my cell, Marilyn visited.
      It was dark, the only light back at the door; she had been crying, and they gave her a metal stool. We looked at each other through the cool blue shielding, unable to touch, shadows to each other.
      "What's going to happen?" she asked.
      "It should be okay. Are you staying somewhere nice?"
      "I'm in a dorm with some others. None of them really talk to me, but the lady who ran it said that they are trying to find Mum. I told her I didn't want to, but she didn't listen and—"
      "Maybe staying with Mum again wouldn't be such a bad idea, huh?"
      "Will—will you be going away?"
      "Yes. Yes I might."
      "But. But." She sniffled, wiped her nose.
      "Hey. Hey now, don't cry. It's okay."
      "Why?"
      I tried to smile, tried to keep the bitterness out of this conversation for her sake. If it was the only thing I learnt from my parents, it was that bitterness ought to be kept from kids. I said, "It's okay."
     "I want you to stay."
      "I want to stay."
      "Really?"
      "Yes. I promise. But I might not be able to, okay? But I promise I'll think about you all the time, and that if I do go away, I'll think about you then, and when I get back, it'll just be me and you, and no more of this, okay? I promise."
      We pressed out hands up against the blue divide, but it was cool, without warmth or comfort, and she cried. I did too. The Officer came back, waited while she cleaned up, and then he lead her away. She kept turning around until the door closed.
      That was the last I saw of my Marilyn.

twelve

The giant yellow and red sign of the McDonalds was a beacon to Blair: it pulled him through the electric yellow streets, past the buildings, the plastic cars and people, beneath the stone, chemical eaten bridges, and into the empty car park that surrounded the restaurant. His body ached, he had run most of the way, but he could not stop now.
     Fredrick Lynch was in there . ( Kill him! Kill him! Kill him! ) Less than one minute away, across the car park that Blair stalked across.
     He pushed open the door.
     He walked past the tables.
     He passed beneath the holographic mobiles.
     He was sweating when he came to counter ( KILL HIM! KILL HIM! ).
     At the counter, a young, dark haired girl smiled at him. "How—"
     "I want to speak to Fredrick Lynch."
     "May I ask why, sir?"
     "I just want to speak to Fredrick Lynch."
     The girl nodded, looked over at one of the other girls at the counter—Blair hadn't realised there was another cashier—who shrugged slightly. Blair didn't care. It took all his control to stop him from leaping over the counter, to burst into the back of the room and find the man ( KILL HIM! ) that had killed his daughter. His hands dug into his jacket pockets, the right hand curling around his loaded pistol and left curling around the second clip.
     The girl returned. "He'll be out in a moment, sir."
     Blair nodded, his hands tightening on the pistol and clip until he thought that he would break them. He tried to focus on the metal rack behind them that held burgers, or on the gold and brown sign above that showed the prices.
     There was a flicker in the air above the prices, and the hologram mobile began again: a pair of mice appeared, and began to hurl balls of flame at each other as a pair of eyes materialised above them—
     "Sir?"
     Blair's pistol came out.
     The first shot hit the drink machine; the second the burger rack; the third scored the edge of the deep fryer as the dark haired Fredrick Lynch ran. ( KILL HIM! CHASE HIM! KILL HIM! ) The two girls screamed as Blair vaulted the counter, ignoring the complaints of his body—and theirs—as he chased Lynch.
     Workers were huddled down on the floor as he passed. The skillets smoked and burned in directional signals; ahead of him, a crate of buns had toppled over, and spilt across the floor. When he stepped past them, he heard the sound of a door rattling furiously.
     Fredrick Lynch stood at the fire escape door, throwing his weight behind it, but unable—for some reason—to open it. The light from the exit light shone its lonely burning red over him, and as Blair stepped behind him, Lynch's shoulders sagged and he turned around.
     He was crying. "You're him. Jesus, you're her Father. Jesus. Naum wasn't lying. That bastard said he would."
     Blair paused, used every ounce of restraint he had ( KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOW! ) and said, "Tell me."
     "Naum." Lynch wiped at his face. "Jesus don't kill me, man, I didn't. I don't." Sobbing, he fell to his knees and sobbed out Naum's name, sobbed out the story and completed what Blair had been hearing since he had awoken: "Naum said you'd be here. God. He said I'd killed her and he was going to send you to kill me. I thought he was just full of shit. Him and his fucking wife. Full of shit. Oh God man I swear I never wanted to kill her, it was just an accident! I swear!"
     Blair's finger etched closer to the trigger; the metal was warm, waiting. "You killed her?"
     "I…" Lynch looked up through his spread fingers. He barely nodded. "But it was—a mistake—I didn't know the gun was loaded—I swear I'm not lying oh God please—"
     Blair pulled the trigger.
     The second bullet was from him, the Father. Marilyn .
     Blinking back tears, Blair left the bloody door and the red escape light that lied its message above Lynch. He felt helpless, but he knew, knew that when he walked out the door he would be free. He walked past the buns, past the still huddling teenagers, and up to the now empty front counter, where he pulled himself over.
     Outside, the angry flare of police lights flashed through the glass windows and exploding holograms. Officer Naum and two others were coming up the glass doors with their own pistols drawn.
      You bastard.
     He had been played, drawn, pushed around like a toy. He had been used just as Marilyn had been used by the Government to fill their quotas, in the end, by her Mother to fill her quota.
      Bastards.
     The doors opened.
     Blair lifted his pistol and fired.
     Naum fell, lurching as Blair continued to unload bullets into his body, stealing him from Galina as she—
     The ground rushed up to Blair, smacking into his tear stained face. For a moment he lay there, waiting for the bullets to hit him again, for blackness to roll in and everything to end.
     The siren lights continued to spin silently, the red lancing into his eyes, and under their beat, it dawned on Blair that nothing was ending. Everything would continue.

thirteen

It's not easy to die when someone else has already decided that you will live.
      Under the white glare of prison medical lights, the Police bullets were removed and their holes sown with care. It was there, as they stitched me up, that I learnt that Officer Naum had not died.
      After that, everything blurred past me. With the ghost of Marilyn by my side, I sat through the trial, and then the shuttle that took me to the prison. Galina and Naum were both waiting for me, the latter leaning on his walking stick and with a cybernetic left eye staring out from faded scar tissue.
      They were there when the doctor and his assistant strapped me down to a table, and with cold smiles, they watched as the needle pricked my skin, and my body turned heavy and alien.
      The doctor said, "What is the most important thing in your life?"
      I was silent, staring up at her, etching her face inside my head with my entire will. For her part, she met my gaze, and did not flinch.
      "What is the most important thing in your life?"
      "Galina."

Ben Peek is a Sydney based author. He is (was) the creator of the Urban Sprawl Project, a pamphlet that mixed photography and prose and suburban mapping, of a sort. In addition, he has published short stories, poems, a chapbook, and essays. Currently, he is engaged in a Phd, where he is writing a novel about Sydney, the next step in the Urban Sprawl Project. Ben has also edited an online comic section of popimage.com, and the comic 'Rust', which recieved an Eagle Nomination that had very little to do with him. He also had a bimonthly column called Sydney Before 2AM on the website www.popmatters.com. You can still read them both, if you are so inclined. His web presence is at: http://www.livejournal.com/users/benpeek/

back to top