by Haydn Wilks
You enter the house and there’s a bit of scuffle inside, it all unfolding in one quick blur of screaming, bludgeoning, bashing skulls with household objects until no-one’s moving, bleeding, then to an anteroom, a crib, a mercy smothering, a snatched handbag, then staggering down the street, pissed, unsure of what’s happened, if it happened, but it’s all lost in the blur whatever, and life continues, and you’ve got needs that need satiating.
You stagger into Spar, blinking at low lights, nodding to the young guy in green jacket behind the counter. You gaze rows of produce, labels blending in together. You can’t tell a tin of soup from a thing of Toilet Duck. You pick up a few cylindrical containers and one square packet and take them to the counter, burble out some brand of cigarettes, step outside and realise you’ve not got a lighter.
Did I leave it inside the house?
You look at your dual bags; the Spar one, and the handbag you swiped from inside.
Why the fuck are you carrying this around? Looks well conspicuous.
You’re a bloke with a girl’s handbag. You’ll be assumed to be thieving, at best.
A group come down the pavement toward you, laughing and joking as they walk.
“Excuse me, butt, have you got a lighter?”
“Yeah, butt, hang on now, a minute.”
You instinctively hold the handbag behind you; they’re all thankfully too pissed to notice it.
You carry on down the street, cigarette lit.
A few minutes later, you’re home.
The light’s on in the living room, but the place is silent.
You move through to the kitchen and place your bags down upon the counter, handbag first, then the Spar one. Then you stare at that black handbag, wondering if what’s in it is what you remember putting in it.
False memory, surely?
You convince yourself and unzip it. The cold wide eyes of a dead post-fetus stare up at you. You’d guess an age of somewhere between a year and 18 months.
You consider throwing it away, getting rid of the evidence. Then you think of the tragedy of it, a young life discarded. The tragedy and the scandal.
You tip the bag upside down. The baby tumbles out of it, its little light blue babygro-clad body slumped face down on the counter.
You open a drawer and take a knife out, then look at the baby, then look again at the meek blade you’re holding. You replace it, shuffle through, pull out a Gordon Ramsay-branded carving knife. You wield it, looking down at the baby, and it makes you feel like some ridiculous slasher movie villain.
You’re not a monster.
Dispose of the evidence, and this never happened.
You shuffle through the drawer some more and settle on a potato peeler.
You sigh, shove the drawer closed, then pull the babygro off and start curling the flesh off, blood oozing out beneath it.
You stick the tap on and place the baby in the sink beneath it, then grab a tea towel and wipe up the excess of red liquid it’s left all over the kitchen unit.
You stuff the soiled tea towel into the handbag and put the oven on, 240 degrees, fan assisted, the tap still flushing water over the thing in the sink behind you.
You stare at the reddened water circling the drain as you let the oven warm up.
You look at the bag, and glance at the ceiling, wondering if Dave or Emma are there, if they’re sleeping, perhaps likely to wake up in the middle of night wanting a glass of water, or worse, out on the piss, likely to stumble back in through the front door at any moment.
You open the back door, check there’s a few logs in the wood burner, shove a couple more in, then take a stick through to the kitchen, turn the stove on, ignite it, then hold the stick over the flame until it catches fire.
You rush back outside and shove it into the burner, jiggering and poking a bit until fire starts to catch.
You walk back inside, water still flowing over the thing in the sink. You grab the bag, head out back, and shove it on top of the logs in the wood burner.
Back inside, you pull the baby from the sink, holding it by its arm for a moment, foolishly letting blood drip all over the floor until you make sense of the situation, pull a baking tray out of a cupboard under the kitchen unit, slap the baby inside, slam the tray into the oven, and shut the door.
You spot the blood on the floor and glance about the kitchen for another tea towel to clean it up with, see one of Emma’s bras draped over a chair, snatch it up, wipe the blood, then head out the back and chuck the bra into the wood burner.
You stare into the flames and start asking yourself serious questions.
How long’ll it take to cook a baby?
Turkeys are whole-night jobs, far as you know. You distinctly remember your mother sticking one in about 10 o’clock on Christmas Eve when you were younger.
You pull your cigarettes out, spark one up off the wood burner, then stare into the flames, watching the evidence burn, thinking not much of anything, the combustion of dead plant parts and all the heat and warmth and energy and chaos that gives out putting into perspective the all-encompassing futility and endless renewal and continual revolution running through all that is, like the name of some shit seaside town full of skagheads repeating through a stick of rock.
Then you hear a key turn in the front door and remember something: the baby peel.
You dash into the house, scoop the damp coils of flesh out of the sink, hug them to your chest to stop them slipping out, then bundle them into the wood burner as best you can.
You head back into the kitchen, pulling the door closed quietly behind you, then listen as Emma half-wretches in the hallway, groans for a bit, then clambers heavily upstairs.
You close your eyes and breathe a sigh of relief. You look at the oven and make a mental note to set your alarm early so you can take it out before your housemates wake and have breakfast.
You’re woken up by banging on the door. The knocks keep coming as you blink into wakefulness.
“Hey, soft lad, open up!” Dave shouts.
You groan, get out of bed, open the door to him.
“What the fuck were you up to last night?” he says.
“Huh?” you mumble.
“The kitchen’s in a right fucking state. What were you up to?”
You close your eyes and cringe; the baby.
You follow Dave downstairs, him berating you all the way, until you enter the kitchen and see what he’s referring to: a Walls Vienetta on the kitchen unit, melted, oozing out from its box and dripping down to the floor. Beside it stands a thing of Toilet Duck and a jar of decaffinated Nescafe. A Spar bag on the floor reminds you where you got them from. You glance at the oven; off.
“And you left a fucking chicken in cooking,” Dave says, opening the oven and pointing at the baking tray inside.
You smile. “Sorry mate, I was steaming.”
“You could’ve burned the house down,” Dave says, shaking his head at you. “Where’d you find a chicken at that time of night anyway? Spar don’t do poultry, do they?”
“I had it in the freezer from ages ago,” you explain. “Must’ve thought it’d help with the hangover.”
“Yeah, well, next time just go to Benny’s and get six wings for two quid like a normal person. Anyway, it’s done now. Give us a leg and we’ll call it even.”
“Alright.”
Dave heads into the living room. You pull the baking tray out of the oven and look at the baby slumped face down in it, its skin golden brown. It does kind of look like a chicken. You laugh to yourself as Dave turns the TV on. The sound of canned laughter on an old episode of Two and a Half Men filters through.
“Hey, be careful banging about, soft lad,” Dave shouts. “I heard one out of Two and a Half Men have HIV these days.”
You make sure to laugh loudly at his quip as you stare at the roasted baby, wondering how best to serve it, and what to do with the head and all the entrails. You look at the Walls Vienetta oozing all over the kitchen unit at t
he side of it and decide you should probably clear that mess up first. You look around the kitchen for a tea towel, then remember you burned the sole clean one the night before. You walk through the living room, glance at Alan and Charlie arguing on the television screen, Dave chortling at them on the sofa, run upstairs, grab some bog roll, head back down, mop the mess up, then dump the wasted Walls Vienetta in the bin. Then you sigh and stare at the golden brown baby in the baking tray; the fruit of your endeavours. You wonder if its real as you fish through a drawer for the Gordon Ramsey carving knife. You take out two plates, set them next to the baking tray, then hover over the baby’s legs with the knife. The blade shakes in your hand as you stare at it. You’ve really done it. You’ve crossed a line that few ever cross. You’ve murdered a family and cooked their first born. You spend a few seconds trying to calculate how many people in human history have ever done such an abominable thing, and realise most of the few that did probably had better reasons than getting terse answers to cold calling for carrying out the massacre. Bollocks, you correct yourself. The majority of family murders probably resulted from war, or domestic troubles; psychotic husbands and despotic leaders. You’re no worse than them. Not really. The husbands probably subjected their families to years of physical and mental abuse before the act of killing. The leaders probably didn’t bat an eyelid at all the blood they’d shed. At least you’ve got conscience enough to hesitate before cutting into it. But cut into it you do, pushing the knife hard through tender cooked flesh, breaking the legs off and sticking one on each plate. You stare at them for a moment, thinking they quite closely resemble some kind of overly-plump deformed factory chicken monstrosity, no worse than what you’d get from Lidl. But something’s not right. It takes a few more seconds of staring before you realise what; the feet. The feet, with the five little toes on each, are a dead giveaway it’s not a bird leg you’re serving up. You hack the feet off and, in absence of any better ideas, a fear of police combing through local bins to find evidence forming inside you, you stuff the baby feet into your pockets. Then you look at the cheeks of the roasted baby arse and contemplate the horrendous job of degutting it that’ll have to be done at some point if you’re going to pass the thing off as chicken. Degutting and decapitating. And what will you do with the head? You stare at the Toilet Duck; perhaps it’s a fortuitous impulse buy. Perhaps you can fill a toilet bowl with it and dissolve the baby’s head inside. Fuck off, you admonish yourself. Common Spar-sold toilet bleach isn’t going to be the same kind of bleach that burns through human bones. What’ll happen if you try that is the roasted baby’s head will be floating in a toilet bowl full of blue water. You’ll flush and the skull will be small enough to slip down the cistern, but big enough to get stuck in the U-bend. You’ll spend hours with a plunger before giving up. A plumber will be called out. He’ll find the head, and that’ll be the end of you. Off to HM Wakefield with the nonces and the mass murderers. You shudder. The guts can probably be disposed of normally enough without raising eyebrows, but a full baby’s head will be noted as suspicious by someone sooner or later if it’s allowed to pass into the refuse collection system, what with the council cracking down on recycling and separating rubbish these days. You take a knife to the hands first and force it through them, snapping the wrists and sticking them in your pocket with the feet, then you press the blade of the knife against the small of the neck, push down and, with great effort, force it through with a sickening crunch. The knife moves through it completely, then you snatch the head up, straggling spinal cord following out behind it. You stare into its eyes, blackened from the hours spent in the oven, and shake so much you drop the head to the floor. It hits the tiled kitchen floor with a crack like a breaking egg. You look at it in stunned panic for a while, before noticing the Spar bag at the side of it. You stick the head in the bag, wrap it round itself tightly several times, then stuff it in the freezer beside some Chicago Town pizzas and a bag of McCain’s oven chips. You stick the baking tray back in the oven, then go through to the living room with the plates.
“This chicken’s well good,” Dave remarks once Two and a Half Men reaches a commercial break. “Did you cook it from frozen?”
“Yeah.”
He tears more flesh from the leg he holds in hands and then addresses you, his opened mouth revealing chunks of white meat: “You not eating that?”
You look at the leg on your plate: “I’m feeling a bit queasy.”
“I’ll have it if you don’t want it,” Dave says, tearing another chunk of meat off his own leg, tearing it to the bone.
You stare at the leg on your plate. You’ve come this far. Who knows when you’ll ever again be presented with an opportunity to eat real human flesh? It’s something few people ever experience. If you let Dave tackle both legs, you might spend the rest of your life wondering about it. You lift the leg from your plate and bite into. The meat’s surprisingly good: tender, moist, not quite chicken, closer to pork, with some quirk that marks it out as different to anything you’ve ever eaten before. You take another bite and start really enjoying it. You eat without thinking, strip the leg to the bone, then stare at the television set and wonder how healthy it is, eating your own kind. You’ve heard of cannibalism causing insanity, but then second-guess yourself, half-remembering madness is only a side-effect of cannibalising human brains.
“Mind if I have a bit more?” Dave asks a while later. “A breast or a wing or summat?”
You stare at him. A wing. No way he buys a baby’s arm as having come from a chicken. A breast. A nippled baby’s breast. No way. “I’m saving it.”
“Saving it?” Dave scoffs.
“Yeah. For sandwiches. To take to work with me.”
Dave sighs and stares at the television. He seems to believe you.
Two and a Half Men plods on, and whatever crazy shenanigans Charlie and Alan are embroiled in come to a close.
“Fancy a pint?” Dave says.
A little while later you’re at The Pen & Wig, out the beer garden, supping Cradle Snatcher Ale, unable to resist the droll irony.
“Oh fucking hell boys, I di’n’t see you pair out here.”
You turn slowly and confirm your fears; it’s Branston, dickhead Dave’s dickhead ex-flatmate.
“I’ll just get a pint and I’ll back out here now,” Branston says, once Dave’s finished going on about how shocked he is to see him.
Fucking Branston’s always popping up. You sip your Cradle Snatcher and listen to Dave go on about how shocked he is to see Branston until Branston returns with his pint.
“What you boys up to later?”
“I don’t know,” Dave says, shooting you a glance for a half-second before returning eyes to Branston.
Branston suggests some place. Dave sounds keen on it. You sup Cradle Snatcher and remember that you just fed Dave baby. You smirk.
“What you laughing at?” Dave says. “Fucking weirdo.”
“I don’t know, it is kind of funny man,” Branston says, eyes glimmering as they make brief contact with yours, thinking some banters afoot, “a sixty-thousand seater stadium and you’ve not seen the top-flight in years.”
“Fuck off.”
They throw football insults back and forth; Leeds vs. Liverpool, even though Branston’s from somewhere in the God-forsaken Midlands – a wasteland of boring accents and bland architecture. You sup Cradle Snatcher and listen to this shit until it’s time to buy another pint, then another, then you move on, the day unfolds, becomes evening, you’re at that place they were on about, Buffalo, out the back watching Dave and Branston goon it up for a couple of uni girls. They both seem to be vying for the same one – a girl formed from the mixing of two indeterminate races, big frizzy hair, big eyes, a face formed to the conventions that us dick-wielders all find fairly attractive. Her friend’s smaller, shyer, a thin little nose and twitchy rodent eyes, hair dyed an improbable hue of red. The boys boisterousness propels them back to the bar with “nice to meet you”s, the frizzy
haired one they were after starts talking to some other friend of hers, and you drunkenly stumble into say something to her meek companion: “What was your name again?”
“Emilia.”
You slip your phone from your pocket and hand it to her: “Maybe we can grab a drink or something.”
“Sure,” she says, tapping her number in.
The night barrels on through booze and booming music, then you stagger back in the early hours, Dave and Branston’s banter at fever pitch as they stagger, pissed, down the road.
You get in, turn the computer on, and pass out without jabbing the scissors into the fan casing to get it turned on properly, so that when you wake up, the screen’s still black, with white text telling you the fan’s fucked, and you stare into it as a half-remembered dream involving Emilia eating newborns at a maternity ward reminds you of the fucked up chain of events that’ve made this weekend more memorable than any you’ve had in years.
You spend the day wondering when and what to text her, these thoughts peppered with panic about the baby’s head you’ve left wrapped up in the freezer, while you cycle through your twenty-odd Reddit accounts, down-voting and flaming at random.
Dave knocks on the door around 1pm and says he and Branston are going to get some grub at Wetherspoons; he wants to know if you’ll join them. You say you’ve promised you’d Skype your Mum.
“Suit yourself, soft lad.”
When the front door slams shut, you realise Emma’s in work, and that you’re alone in the house, and that you’d best start doing something about the remnants of your moment of madness the other night.
You switch the telly on – BBC News – and hear the headlines as you lay the tray with the half-devoured baby carcass and the ice-crusted plastic bag with the head in it on the kitchen unit.
Wherever you stick a whole baby head’s just gonna be asking for trouble, you reason. First thing’s first, break it up a bit. You pause and try to remember where you picked up that nugget of wisdom from: something along the lines of ‘when a task needs doing, break it up into smaller chunks.’ Breaking it up into smaller chunks seems the best idea. You root through drawers, find nothing big and heavy enough, then search the living room, pausing to smile wryly at the Prime Minister giving a speech about how sick and twisted ISIS are. I bet none of them fuckers have fed their flatmate a baby leg.
