Test Signal

by Nathan Connolly (Dead Ink)

  It was during one of these meetings that Bella felt the first stab of pain somewhere around her pelvis. She pressed her hand to her lower stomach, excused herself and made her way to the bathroom. The pain increased steadily in volume until Bella lay curled around the foot of the toilet, riding out tides of agony, her hands clutching her crotch which was soaked and doughy. It lasted no more than ten minutes, subsiding as quickly as it had come on. She rolled down her workout tights and heaved herself onto the toilet, wrapping lengths of toilet paper around her hand before going in to assess the damage. It was the same golden substance; more jelly-like in texture this time, or in fact more like little lumps of jelly marooned in a thin, glistening liquid. She wiped herself down and waited: girls knew what to do when other girls had been too long in the toilet.

  *

  Rachel arrived a few minutes later and Bella told her she’d had some menstrual problems, asking whether she wouldn’t mind fetching her clothes and also a tampon or sanitary towel from the locker room. In the cubicle she changed and plugged herself up, though the leaking had mostly stopped. Outside the gym she rang her mum.

  ‘Bella,’ her mother said. ‘Bella, is everything okay?’ ‘I’m fine,’ Bella replied. ‘It’s just … I have a discharge.’

  ‘Go straight back to the hospital,’ her mother said. ‘And you let me know what they say.’

  Bella went back to the pharmacist. His eyes were still blood-shot; his razor burn replaced with a patchy grey beard.

  ‘I need something for … a discharge,’ she said.

  ‘From where?’ he enquired.

  ‘From my …’ Bella whispered, ‘… vagina.’

  ‘Vagina?’ he said. ‘Makes sense.’

  She was given a suppository. At home, she pushed the cream capsule into herself, curled over like a cat licking itself clean. Then she switched on the TV, spread out across the grey velvet sofa and waited for the suppository to do its job. She stared at her stomach: nut-brown and flat as a pancake, impossible to reconcile with the large wooden bowl of pain she had felt earlier. Rolling over, she closed her eyes. When she woke Michael had slipped in behind her, his arm resting heavily across hers. They brushed their teeth side by side in the bathroom, before taking it in turns to urinate, both solemnly pushing the door shut and allowing the other their privacy. When it was her turn, she had a quick check, moving some things around, and flakes like dried egg white fell into the bowl, but the leak had dried up. She flushed and went out to where Michael waited in the bed.

  ‘Do you want to?’ he said.

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied, climbing on top of him.

  She woke a few hours later, feeling a wetness between her legs and more pain in her lower back. The leak again already or, she wondered hopefully, possibly just stray semen? She had a little probe but couldn’t feel anything other than the everyday wetness. On moving her hand further back, she identified the real source: her anus. Now this was a worry. Strange things were always coming out of vaginas – more than a couple of times she had found purple clots in the bath – but anal seepage was something very different. Cancer, probably. She crept to the bathroom to call her mother.

  ‘Mum?’ she whispered, hearing the click of the receiver. ‘No,’ a voice came back. ‘What do you want?’

  It was her twin sister, and she sounded annoyed. She always sounded annoyed.

  ‘Is Mum not there?’ Bella asked. ‘This is a situation for Mum.’

  ‘Is this your sinus infection?’ her sister replied. ‘Why don’t you just ask your stupid boyfriend about it?’

  Her sister and her boyfriend did not get along.

  ‘Can you tell her to call me back?’ Bella said.

  ‘No,’ her sister said, and then she hung up.

  *

  Things between her and her sister had always been strained. Bella charted this back to what she now recognised as a peculiar choice on the part of her mother, who had told Bella, when she was seven years old, that she had a Guardian Angel. Bella had been involved in a car accident which she had survived and her father had not. Lying in her hospital bed, her body a waterpark of colourful wires and drips, Bella’s mother clung to her hand and told her all about her Guardian Angel: the leviathan span of his white-feathered wings, rolling waves of straw-coloured hair. She brought him up with semi-regularity throughout the years that followed, especially during moments when, say, Bella tore open the last layer of wrapping paper during a round of pass the parcel, or when everyone in her year, including her sister, had their scalps colonised by lice, except for her. ‘That’s your Guardian Angel,’ her mother would say, and Bella would be ravenous for details. What was his name? What did he smell like? When did he watch over her? ‘Always,’ her mother told her. ‘He is always watching over you.’

  A few years after the passing of their father and the manifesting of the Guardian Angel, Bella’s sister had an accident at school. She was racing her friend in the school playground, tripped over and ripped open the skin above her eye: an injury requiring three butterfly stitches. That night Bella lay in the top bunk, listening to her mother soothe her sister. ‘Mummy,’ her sister said, in the smallest, most miniscule voice she had ever heard. ‘Do I have a Guardian Angel?’ Her mother paused for a while. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘Just your sister.’

  Bella thought about her sister as she eased herself into bed beside Michael. They were non-identical but they looked the same, like the Olsens. Bella often thought about the Olsens: how thin and sad-looking they were, how they both preferred clothes that drowned them. Bella wished she and her sister had something to orient their relationship around, like oversized outerwear or holidays. She looked at Michael, lying face-down, the sculpted dunes of his body. Often, he felt more like her twin, or even the exact same person: like how she’d learned to paint butterflies at school, folding the paper down the middle and daubing one half with a body and a single wing, then squishing both sides together. Though he also felt a little like her Guardian Angel: the person who’d whisked her away. She snuggled up close to him, glad to have found someone the same. Falling asleep, she was struck by a violent fantasy in which Michael sucked the leaks right out of her, continuing until only her skin remained, a popped balloon on the floor of a birthday party.

  The next morning she wondered again whether to tell Michael about the leaking. Sometimes they would collaborate, drawing attention to issues they both felt strongly about, like global warming or mental health. Those posts performed very well. But bodily rupture did not feel like the right kind of project to collaborate on. She went back to the chemist instead. He looked even more dishevelled, his eyes more alarmingly bloodshot, than the last time she had seen him. Was the whole world falling apart, she wondered? Is that what was happening now?

  ‘How can I help you today?’ he said.

  ‘It’s that leaking,’ she replied. ‘Except this time, it’s from … my, uh, bottom.’

  ‘Have you been under any mental strain?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been a little tired,’ she replied. ‘With work.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Connected. The bottom and the brain.’

  ‘What?’ she replied.

  ‘The bottom and brain,’ he repeated. ‘You don’t think the bottom and brain are connected?’

  He gave her an herbal supplement and told her she needed to get more sleep.

  A few days later she got an email from Rachel: a last minute invitation to Paris to learn about a new Dior lip palette. She moved her hand to her crotch before replying – moving her hand to her crotch had become an instinctive gesture, like how she used to fuss with her hair when someone mentioned a boy she liked. Rachel didn’t like it when she said no to things.

  There was a cocktail reception at the hotel on arrival. She knew all the other bloggers and influencers in attendance. They sipped cucumber-garnished drinks and talked about brands. ‘Oh they’re a great brand,’ an influencer said, about a line of lambskin apothecary bags. ‘So cute,’ another coquettishly agreed. Bella s
hifted her weight, feeling the beginning of a trickle. There were moments when she could conceive of the leaking as less painful, not necessarily unpleasurable. She smiled and nodded along, an ultra-absorbent sanitary towel doing its worst.

  *

  Her room was beautiful. A garland of white lilies greeted her, along with a handwritten note: We’re so grateful to take you on our journey! She took a photograph of it, uploading it with the hashtag #spoiled. There followed a whirlwind of singularly exceptional experiences: a lip-art tutorial on the riverbanks of the Seine; a personal consultation with a runway make-up artist; a lavish four-course dinner. Every now and then she was interrupted by intrusive memories, one in which she recalled overhearing Michael tell two friends about some pornography he had recently viewed, which allowed you to see ‘inside the nipple hole’. And periodically she needed to excuse herself, to swap out the soaked maxi pad from her underwear, or to plug her ears with cotton wool. But other than that, she smiled through it all: she was a professional.

  On the flight home she scrolled through Instagram. She browsed some of her friends’ grids: their overstuffed living rooms, hippy hats and avocado-based brunch. She checked briefly on Michael: an old photo of him in Brooklyn captioned #TakeMeBack. Finally, she looked up her sister’s account, something she did rarely. Her sister had three photographs in total: two of their mother and one of the front garden. She also had a video of five baby otters, definitely stolen from someone else’s feed. The otters stood on what appeared to be a wood-effect plastic floor, a single chair leg breaking the edge of the frame: an ordinary person’s home. The otters made hysterical chirruping sounds, like chickens made mad by a fox in the coop. They pawed at each other and at the floor with extreme desperation, throwing their fur-covered bodies around. They squeaked, it seemed, because they wanted to understand, but also because they wanted to be understood. Whenever the video ended, Bella replayed it, every time feeling more like she was trapped inside the video alongside the otters, and no one was getting to leave, ever.

  After watching the video for perhaps the thirtieth time, Bella found herself crying, desperate and hysterical, just like the otters. But her tears were interrupted by a bump – first a small one, then another, much bigger, this one lifting her momentarily out of her seat, enough to provoke a small yelp from the woman next to her. She looked around the fuselage: the hangovers and lethargy had been replaced by a grey, shivering panic. The seat-belt sign pinged back on and the air hostesses or cabin crew or whatever they were called, marched back to their seats, impossible to scrutinise.

  The bumping continued and all around her people were murmuring, though at the same time sitting extremely still, aware of how the smallest movements might throw the plane off-balance once and for all. Bella had a strong urge to disrobe: to be unburdened and able to think straight. She started breathing very quickly, the liquid pouring from her nose and ears. She squeezed her eyes shut and covered her face, thinking about her Guardian Angel. When did he watch over her? Always. He was always watching over her.

  The plane lurched once more then settled. A loosening bled through the cabin. Ashen and exhausted, the passengers paused, waiting for permission to carry on as before. They had experienced something significant together but also something undeniably routine: briefly united in their endeavour and already faintly embarrassed by that union. Bella looked at the woman next to her, who looked back, their faces both streaked with leakage. When the plane eventually landed, there was a round of applause, which Bella joined in with, though more than anything she just wanted to go to sleep.

  Bella got an Uber home. The pain had returned, behind her eyes and in her stomach. She’d thought about touching the option that meant the driver wasn’t allowed to talk to you, but then she thought talking might be quite a good distraction.

  ‘How’s your shift going?’ she said.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he replied.

  He had a vaguely Eastern European accent.

  ‘How about you?’ he asked.

  She was struck by a vision of the car crashing, its metal shell crumpling like pleated lamé, not unbeautiful. Though watching the traffic move sluggishly along, she knew it wouldn’t happen.

  ‘I’m not very well,’ she said. ‘I don’t think.’

  ‘Oh really,’ the driver said, turning around. ‘You should get yourself to a hospital.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘I probably will.’

  Michael was by the front door when she got back, holding a love-heart-shaped balloon. He started making a video on his phone as soon as she walked through the door, lifting her in the air and spinning her around, finally pressing his thumb to the screen, stating dryly: ‘We got that.’ He’d cooked dinner: grilled chicken, steamed vegetables and boiled rice. Before they sat down for dinner, he took her hand and led her through to the middle room, where he had stacked the various boxes and packages she had received in her absence. ‘It’s a good haul,’ he said, still holding the balloon.

  Bella began unpacking: a silk bralette and thong; organic linen wrap dress; semi-translucent setting powder; English rose and black pepper perfume; oversized cotton blouse; woodsmoke scented candle; silver seashell necklace; Italian small dishes recipe book. She stopped about midway through, and Michael took over, diligently unboxing and setting aside. Bella looked around the room: the boxes half-opened and tissue paper thrown everywhere; the rose gold homeware and identical slim-cut jeans. Her hand went back to her crotch: not exactly dry but not exactly damp either. Next door the grilled chicken was getting cold, a nauseating thought.

  After dinner they watched a film starring Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd. Bella wondered which parts she was supposed to laugh at and which parts were supposed to make her feel sad, or whatever the next thing along from sad was. She intermittently looked at her phone. Her Paris posts were doing well; Elizabeth Olsen was still the only Olsen on Instagram. After the film, they fucked on the grey sofa. There was something excitingly desperate about it: two people conversant they will never make themselves a single whole though nonetheless persevering.

  *

  She went to the bathroom after they’d finished. The sex had shifted something and the leaking was worse than usual. She sat on the toilet, letting it drip into the bowl. She looked around the tiled space, lined with all the toners and exfoliators and moisturisers she had been gifted. Between her legs the leaking continued. After a while it started up in her nose again, then in her eyes and ears, too. Finally, droplets sprouted from her breasts. She thought about overhearing Michael talking to his friend. The grave seriousness with which he’d said ‘nipple hole’. Outside the bathroom door he called to ask her if she was okay.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she replied, sniffling. ‘I’ll be out in a bit.’

  NOT MY USUAL PRACTICE

  TRICIA CRESSWELL

  It is slack water time and the log barely moves, debris pooling round it, mermaid’s hair. The sun is up, midsummer early, but the world is still sleeping. I know this time well now, in my new life here, high above the Tyne.

  The log rolls and something white moves outwards; the mermaid has an arm. I look away from foolishness. It is not a body and I will not look at it again, but when I do the whiteness is clear in the strengthening daylight. The previous owner left binoculars: a present, he said, when I moved here last year. Just a cheap pair, for looking at the cormorants and kittiwakes, he said, certainly not strong enough to see into the windows of the flats on the far bank. Strong enough, though, for me to see the naked torso, the face half covered in tangled hair, the arm outstretched on the oily water.

  My eyes water as I squeeze them tight shut, then open them again, and look through the binoculars, again. I do not think I am mad, not now. I can see a body, and the tide is turning. My pulse starts to race and I feel the heat rise up my neck and the cold sweat begin to run. The mantra: do not think ahead; do not rehearse what happens; do not think about the questions, the police, the media. Do not hyperventilate. Do not.


  Keys and phone and yesterday’s jeans over my pyjamas and then I run out of the flat and down the stairs and down again to the quayside path.

  The body is still there but moving a little now, bobbing in the water as, to the east, the sea ebbs. Not a woman but a man, his long beard and hair twisting slowly across his face and naked chest. His legs are covered, trousers or no, are they wrapped together? How strange to feel curious. Then the head rolls towards me and the wide-open, glaucous eyes look at me. Soon he will be gone, hard to find as the river takes him away to the sea. I press 999.

  There is an initial slight pause from the call handler as I describe the body but I use my no-longer title to make her take me seriously. I am joined by a jogger as I wait for the police. He is young and looks sick when he realises why I am there, what he is looking at, and I find myself using the voice, reaching out and patting his arm. He smiles weakly at me, as a son to his mother, a patient to his doctor.

  *

  The police station is new and shiny, a metal and glass kit-building with the required grey-blue carpet tiles and display screen: the strapline scrolls across, ‘Proud to Serve Our Community’. An obese blonde woman, not in uniform, makes chatty conversation as she escorts me to the interview room, seemingly unbothered by my too-brief replies. She has marked xanthelasma around both eyes and I wonder what her cholesterol and lipid levels are, which takes me upstairs to a heavy blue door which she leans hard on to open, the blue cardigan straining over her shoulders.

  I am expecting a uniformed PC in a tiny office with chairs placed cross-corner so our knees are too close as she, or he, slowly turns my words into hackneyed statement-speak. But this is a formal interview room with a man and woman sitting at the far side of the wide table with an empty chair facing them. I stop in the doorway, pulse beating in my ears, but my voice is measured and calm.