The Taxidermist's Lover

by Polly Hall

  I looked at my face—more mature, but fake. It was as if I had reinvented myself. Finally, I retrieved my lipstick, the dark red I had worn when I met you on the beach. A mating call? You had remarked on its color then and said I looked very smart to be walking alone on a deserted beach. Only it wasn’t deserted. You were there. And I. Predator and prey.

  I carefully widened my lips to apply the color then instinctively pressed them together. Here was a different me to the girl I used to be, scavenging on compost heaps and running wild with Rhett across fields. I understood why Penny always wore make-up; it was empowering, like spreading tribal paint across your most visible features, stating who you were, declaring battle.

  I sat for a while just looking at the transformation to my features and felt my back straighten up and my shoulders push back to accentuate my cleavage. My breasts became fuller and rounder. I was reclaiming the Scarlett I was supposed to be. Fearless warrior who always got what she wanted. And right then, I wanted you to want me more than those dead things.

  It was nearly 6 pm. I knew you’d be cleaning up and would come up the path through the back door, so I positioned myself in a place where you’d see me the minute you opened the door, wearing just the mink stole to cover my nipples.

  “Holy crap, Scarlett?”

  I was stock still and maintained my expression (I’m not sure how, as I was growing cold). But I felt like an actress with layers of make-up, and my nude body getting goose pimply from the evening chill. You stood looking at me, leaving the door ajar and smoothed your hand back over your receding hair.

  “What’s all this in aid of?”

  I said nothing and continued to stare back at you. I blinked slowly like some sort of automated doll. You moved toward me and lifted the mink’s head, which lay on my right breast looking down at my nipple which had hardened in the coolness of the kitchen.

  “Are you trying to compete with my specimens?” you chuckled a little and ran your hand down one side of my body to my thigh, where you lingered before walking behind to my other side and surveying me as if I were a sculpture in a gallery. I had perched upon the sill and half regretted this pose, as my bottom was becoming numb and my ankles crossed over were making my feet tingle with pins and needles. My hands propped me up, pushing my breasts forward. I know it was suggestive and I wanted it to be. I wanted you to notice me like you used to.

  How you used to study every inch of me and touch me with your hands, your lips! I felt moist from the stillness and the anticipation, the surge of power from your presence. Only an hour ago I had felt mad and angry that those creatures were taking over our lives, but now I knew how addictive they were. The precision and texture, the deep inner-being extracted and examined.

  I could smell you and wanted you to move closer, but you stood to the side of me just out of my line of vision, waiting to see if I would keep up the pretense. Between my legs I felt the pulse of hot waves. It would’ve been easy to grab you and let you fuck me hard and fast on the kitchen floor, but I wanted this pleasure to last, to savor it and control it. It was a matter of battling with instinct, but I could not deny my physical body was reacting already without your touch. You smoothed the fur on the mink so I could feel it press against me. The edge of your little finger sent tingling down to my groin and up to my neck as if activating a chemical reaction.

  “So Miss Scarlett becomes one of my exhibits,” you whispered in my ear just close enough so I could feel your breath. “And what a fine specimen she is.”

  I shivered and blinked, wanting you more than ever to touch me. Still by my side, you let the back of your hand brush over my belly and down to my inner thighs. Then your fingers swept back up between my breasts. I tried to hold my breath as you continued your exploration up and down my body, feeling the wetness grow and the heat rise.

  “This young skin is soft,” you breathed in a heavy sigh and reached down between my thighs.

  “I’ll make you come alive,” you said, lingering on each word, unbuttoning your pants. And I wanted to resist you, in my own battle. I wanted to gain control and excite you from just being near me like you had while you watched me sleep when we first met. But even though your breath was quicker, and I could sense a slight shake in your hands, I knew you had me on the tips of your fingers. In that moment I would do anything for you, I would give my life for you if you could hold me in that delicious, sweeping, pulse of glorious ecstasy.

  “Would you like that, Scarlett? Would you like to come alive?”

  I couldn’t hold myself still any longer and turned to face you. You took your cue to plunge deep within me while I leaned against the sill. Once, twice, three times was all it took before we both collapsed into each other in a shuddering mess.

  You looked at my face and said, “Why are you wearing all that make up?” I burst into hysterical laughter. You had seen past my disguised outer layers. You always did.

  Later that night, I removed all traces of the make-up that had not been kissed or licked from my skin and tipped the contents of my cosmetics bag into the bin. Why did we need all these fake coverings? I made a decision to clear all those unnecessary things from my life that I’d carried with me for too long.

  Christmas Day—Today

  4 p.m.

  I have always loved the comforting feel of fur on my bare skin. It feels like a creature in its own right, a rippling, glimmering ocean of follicles pushed up to trap warmth.

  The creatures mime their moods. The swoodle twitches its two beaks, rippling its feathers as if the wind has rained words on his back and he is reforming them into runic symbols that tell me the secret of this place. I grasp at their lines and curves as if to decipher them through possession. I want to know what they say. Those words from the ballooning sky are like the decorations that drip from our Christmas tree. Beneath its luscious branches, on its trunk, are the carved letters, “S” and “P.”

  A bauble dropped from one of the branches lands near my feet. It mutates into a quivering mass of meat, womb-shaped, translucent pink and glowing like a jellyfish. Then it leaps across the floor as if an electric current has pulsed through it, charged with life.

  I hear glass breaking.

  My eyes are full of grit.

  A hare is motionless on a wooden stand, gazing toward the cloudless, moonless ceiling.

  October

  “Penny’s having an emergency flood meeting. I think we should go.” You were covered in mud. It clung to your trousers in dark smears. You took off your boots and washed your hands in the kitchen sink, splashing brown soap suds onto the draining board.

  “Do we have to?” As I said it, I remembered the candle experiment from Wensley’s book. “Where is the meeting going to be held?”

  “At Penny’s house. Why?”

  “Will the puppies be there?” I thought this a clever ruse. I could pretend to see the puppies but actually take my candle and see if Parker’s soul responded to the light. It was worth a try.

  “Oh, I get it,” you said, “not interested in our home getting flooded but if there’s a puppy, you’re there in a shot!”

  “You know me.” I squeezed you and felt the cool wet of your clothes seep onto me. I let it dry, like a second skin, and later picked at the crusts of mud, dreaming up new ways to free myself of the darkness that seemed to descend without any notice.

  I knew that to live in the middle of the countryside meant a compromise of modern comforts and, even more so, I realized that we were the unnatural invaders of the wilderness. It was we who encroached on what already had a natural order, not the other way round.

  I flicked on the radio and pulled my cardigan tighter around me. It was getting chilly at night-time and we’d soon light the fire again. The lawn was sodden from the rain, the pond spilling over the sides and running down to the rhyne. The trees’ remaining leaves clung on like chrysalises waiting for transformation. The fallen ones clogged together in clumps or adhered themselves to the window panes like opaque flat h
ands trying to feel their blind way through the glass. The birds looked disgruntled; the cows looked clogged and heavy, mud clinging to their flanks; the sheep had been taken in early to prevent their hooves becoming rotten; the villagers moaned about the river levels getting dangerously high and the authorities taking no action. The aquifers, last year, had been dried up, at their lowest level for years. Now it seemed they had miraculously filled over the past few months of rain. The rivers would soon reach their limit, teetering on the brink to push their swollen mass up and over the banks like fattened eels spreading onto the moor.

  A committee, headed by Penny, petitioned the Environment Agency to do something: dredge the rivers, position more pumps to take the water away from the properties, anything, but the waterways were already dangerously high by now. The lessons from the past had not been learned. We were riparian landowners too with our boundaries flanked by ditches that sported ancient willows in rustic rows and hawthorn hedges. Frustrated vengeful rumblings came up out the peat bog like Grendel’s mother resurfacing. But I had decided nothing would spoil our Christmas, especially not the British weather.

  Half the village turned up at Penny’s house. It sat higher than the curve of the river, where the brackish water bulged and rushed in strong eddies. Here, the kingfisher and heron observed and pierced the water with ease. St. John was lounging around in his role as “beautiful person” while Penny added to the urgency of the situation by skittering about like a startled goose. There were probably over fifty people packed into her amply sized dining room. She started the proceedings like a wedding speech, clinking a silver spoon on her wine glass before introducing one of the local councilors.

  “People—people,” she said as if she were about to deliver great insight. “Let’s convene this meeting. We have many matters to consider. Over to you, Mr. Preece.”

  Mr. Preece had one of those forlorn faces that seemed to sag. Everything about him sagged. Even his beige jumper sat limply on his shoulders. He began droning on about river maintenance, the state of the environment, the weather, lack of response from the government, dredging, strategies and contingency plans. He held up a map of the flood risk area, blue patches covering most of the village.

  “The water is coming—make no mistake,” he said, “We need to be prepared for it. All of us need to be prepared.” He looked about as prepared as a fish caught in a net. The grumblings from angry residents surfaced but died down as he continued to make promises of more sophisticated pumps that would not erode the river banks and reiterated that dredging had taken place since the last flood.

  I looked at you and thought of your mud-soaked clothes. Were we prepared? With you I felt safe; you would not let any harm come to me. Your hand found mine and I felt your warmth seep into my own cold skin. After the lengthy discussions, some handouts were passed around in a paper-rustling frenzy, marking the predicted areas of a worst-case scenario and where to position sandbags. Were we naïve back then in October? Rivers did not wait for directives from the government; clouds did not wait for us humans to give them permission to burst; the sun would warm the ground again and far away on another continent they would be praying for rain to quench the wildfires. The meeting was nearly over and, with residents’ hands raised for questions, I slipped from the room. I knew where to go.

  Down the corridor I crept like a Christmas mouse. I heard the rumble of debating voices but didn’t look back. I stealthily slipped into Penny’s lounge and retrieved the matches from my handbag. Parker was still in the same position by the window. I swear he whimpered as I entered the room. I struck the match. It snapped in half. I fumbled in the box for a second, struck it less violently and watched the flame splutter to life. It lit up the dark room and glinted off the glass eyes set into Parker’s head. I slowly moved the flame, the short match petering toward my fingers. The whimpering got louder and turned to a low growl. His spirit could sense the flame and seemed to pull my hand toward it like a vacuum. But I steadied my hand so the flame wouldn’t die. A touch may be all that was needed; I remembered the words of Wensley’s book:

  . . .it is essential for the flame to touch the specimen in order to have an effect . . .

  The flame was eating up the match, so I tilted it, but that seemed to make it burn more quickly. His fur would not catch. The match petered out before it burnt my fingertips. I lit another. This time I held it close to his leg and watched as the white fur curled inwards to create a blackened patch. A whoosh, as if a pack of hounds were passing by, blew the flame out and the whimpering ceased. It felt too quick, too easy. Then there was just an empty silence and the drone of voices in the room next door. I exhaled slowly.

  “What are you doing in here?” the plummy voice startled me. I was still kneeling in front of Parker, the scent of singed fur in the air. Quickly, I slipped the hot match back in my handbag and turned to face the voice. “Is that you, Scarlett?”

  “I was looking for the puppies,” I said, wincing at the transparency of my lie.

  St. John moved toward me, his long limbs and wide gait reminded me of an orangutan. His arms were folded indignantly over his chest in a gesture that reminded me of Rhett. It made him look like a petulant child who had discovered some incriminating gossip but hadn’t yet decided its worth. St. John seemed the sort of man to collect ammunition for later battles.

  “What is that smell?” he said.

  I stood up and moved toward the door, trying to distract him from what I had just done, but as I tried to get past him, he gripped my wrist, letting his nails dig in just enough to leave a mark.

  “I know your type, Scarlett Pepper.” His breath smelt of garlic and red wine.

  “And I know yours,” I hissed back at him and ripped my arm from his grasp. He didn’t follow me. He stayed in the room, and I imagined him scouring it to find evidence, checking if I had stolen any of Penny’s tat.

  The meeting was over and a gaggle of people were vacating the dining room, chatting animatedly or silently shuffling past the bodies loitering in the hallway. Their homes were their lives; I understood that. And Penny had taken it upon her shoulders to spread the news. You saw me in the hallway and smiled. St. John appeared behind me with a thunderous look, but I felt satisfied I had done enough. It seemed that Parker was free at last, to roam in the afterlife, without being tethered to his taxidermied body. I couldn’t wait to get home and try with the other hybrids that were slowly taking over our house.

  You went to bed, tired from all your physical exertions. So I set up some candles and started work. Only it didn’t go to plan. There was too much confusion. It was as if the light from the candle flames excited them into a frenzy and they were too muddled to leave their tethered frames. I consulted Wensley’s book for more advice:

  If resistance is felt, often in the case of incomplete taxidermy, the physical parts of the specimen may need to be fully consumed by fire, as in cremation, to enact the release of the trapped souls.

  I looked around the room and, I admit, felt daunted. You had created so many different creatures of varying modifications. The cowstrich loomed in the corner upon large, muscular ostrich legs. The wallopea, too, had ostrich legs but the body of a wallaby and upper half of a peacock, tail feathers spread in full display. The head of a sheep attached to a badger’s body; the three-headed turkey with a carp’s modelled tail swam and gobbled air in a case on the wall. My head was beginning to spin. I needed space to think before my mind exploded.

  I don’t know why I did it, but I drove back to the blue house where I’d lived with my parents and knocked on the door. Some children’s plastic toys in the garden had been shrouded by the tall grass and a swing set had moss covering its dirty seat. I peered through one of the windows and saw the kitchen had been refitted with a new range of cupboards, still the same shape as I remembered from my childhood. An island had been built in the middle of the kitchen. White marble worktops and shiny floor tiles made it look clinical. My mother would’ve hated it. There was a chro
me oven and even the refrigerator was silver. It was sort of futuristic, nothing at all like the rustic, ramshackle kitchen I remembered. A row of shiny saucepans hung from the ceiling above the central island. There were a few dirty plates left in a pile with cutlery scattered on top and crumbs next to half a loaf of bread. I wanted Rhett. He would know what to say to make me feel better.

  A gust of wind whipped up behind me. It had stopped raining but was still wet underfoot, so I stepped round a large puddle to look through the next window, steadying myself on the wall. There was a log burner where the open fire used to be, a faux leather sofa and a shelf full of books. Where I remembered the staircase, a door now sealed off the first step so it looked cozy and inviting. Rhett and I used to race up and down those stairs that led to the front door, chasing breathlessly until one of us was tagged then the chase would start again. I stood back and looked up to the second-floor windows. Our parents’ bedroom used to be above the lounge. This was where they’d been found. Dead. The fire had gutted the lower half of the house, and they hadn’t even woken up. The policeman told us they wouldn’t have suffered. Just gone to sleep, overcome by fumes. An accident. The fireguard had not been put back in front of the fireplace, a burning ember, a candle, the rug, the flames, the smoke, the melting plastic toys. We never saw the cat again. I like to think she ran away and started a new life hunting mice and sleeping in barns, drinking the creamy milk from churns. I like to think the policeman was right. Although I would choose drowning over burning.