It was in the thick of this final rush that a femme fatale with dark lipstick and a tall pointed hat presented herself at the counter, with two or three of those rubbish bestsellers that are always clogging the charts in Irish bookshops. We exchanged the usual small-talk as I silently judged her awful taste in literature; then I, looking distractedly into the till as I counted out her change, asked:
'Would you like a bag for all that?'
To which she replied:
'I'm going to replace you with a changeling.'
Simon Macabre narrates the events of an autumn long ago, when his life was temporarily destroyed by a mysterious woman.