I squirmed faster, but still he pinioned my thighs – until I dragged my left arm loose and reached to rip at his ear. My grip slipped in his sweat, but I dug my nail back into its helix and tore down again – his head jerked to follow it; and I twisted it backwards, desperate to part the skin from his skull – but skin is hard to rip.
I shoved him further sideways to roll out from underneath him – but as I tried to leap away, one of the other boys snatched at my coat. I stretched back my shoulders to lose it over my arms – and he fell as I shed it, and shrunk – now only in my polo-neck. But before I was fully upright, the shorter boy with the splintered chin slapped my foot – and my face smacked into the concrete. I bit my tongue, tasting its own blood – the third now on my palate – and this mixture had the tartness of pomegranate seeds.
The third attacker dived onto me, gripping me in a headlock – his armpit’s deodorant leaking into his sweat, the smell of a ripening peach, its case breaking to the yellow fruit beneath, but soured by detergent – I sniffed longer, until at the back of the aroma I found hyacinth. He heaved his body onto mine, his knee in the small of my back, shouting ‘Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!’
Then, my head was concussed into the stone – and I saw the cobalt shoe of the shorter boy at my face. As he stamped me with one foot, and the asphalt assumed the flavour of salt in my throat – I watched his own blood webbing across the tongue of his other trainer. I wanted to skewer this foot to the ground with a knife to stare at it for longer in various lights – but the knife was gone, and I couldn’t worm my head away.
As his partner beat me, my vision seemed to swell – the geometry of the canal and the towpath was altered, distending, the rules of perspective suddenly re-complicated, as my gravity increased, competing with the city’s. Sounds fawned to my ear – the boys’ screams and pants, but also from further, I fancied, I could hear exhausts and bar chatter – and these sounds were gathering around me almost in devotion.
In his fury, he stripped the shirt off my back, and re-opened the whip cuts made that morning – but under his blows, I grew more exuberant, like a whole world I had never participated in before was being revealed to me. My old ultramarine pain was gone – overruled for now by joyful shallower agony. I had known that my world was not the right one – I had known that I was not living as everyone else was living – but here, finally, I was being allowed to exist where they existed – here, finally, I was experiencing a correctness in being alive, a comfort in simply being, that felt not like a state or stasis but a curve. I finally understood it, and stood in it, and accepted it and was accepted by it – the land was no longer alien to me; my body was no longer merely half here – I was here, wholly; I was present, I was finally present! Perhaps this was what is called Stendhal syndrome – overwhelmed to nausea by aesthetic pleasure...
‘Stay on his legs! Who fucking kicks like that?’
‘There’s only two hundred pound here,’ the taller boy shouted, turning out my coat pockets. ‘Get his shoes.’
Hands tore at my boots, and then slowed to unlace them – as hands tore at my waist, reaching beneath me to unbutton the fly. I flailed under the weight of two bodies. My socks were pulled off – and the money within them found. Then the mass on my thighs lifted – I kicked faster, but hands were already at my waist, dragging down my jeans and boxer-briefs until I was naked – and the money within them found also.
‘Let me kill him.’
‘Pick that up – count it!’
‘Let me fucking kill him!’
‘You’re not allowed to.’
What? I thought. Who didn’t allow him? Was I the performer now – in someone else’s play?
The second weight stood, and the foot left my head. They twisted me onto my back, serrating my flesh against the cement. My gaze was pure exhilaration; they were shaking in terror.
‘Shit!’
‘He’s got a boner!’
They recoiled – I clutched for the oldest boy’s testicles and squeezed one with my thumb into my palm until it flattened – and as he screamed in an agony that must have felt like levitation, I rolled sideways into the canal.
The water vibrated with joy – and I felt keener, faster, staring at them, safely, from a few meters away.
‘Have you got it?’
‘I’ve got it.’
‘Let’s go.’
The taller boy threw my clothes and shoes into the water. The shorter one vomited, leaning on the third as he tried to stand. I treaded water, watching as they hobbled towards the bridge, groping at each other like drunken lovers.
A bicycle light skimmed through the darkness towards them – too late to witness our communion. Its strobes illuminated the boys’ retreat. They gave way.
But I could not long remain in this cold – my clarity was yielding to heaviness. The water coiled around my legs like a moray eel, deepening towards a mile-high dam it wished to suck me into. In the dark I could see only my coat, a few strokes away – so I swam over, and found by it my jeans, but could not see anything else.
Kicking with one leg, paddling with one arm, I strove for the opposite bank, my lungs clenched as though stuffed with sackcloth. The bank was further than it ought to have been; possibly a current I couldn’t feel was resisting me – but my will was stronger than my muscles, and I achieved the shore. I climbed onto the bank in a crawl, wheezing, and sat to drag on my jeans and coat. But I couldn’t let myself pause here – so I crawled to the steps towards street level, spitting blood over my hands, my vision a whirlpool.
At the pavement, I tried to stand under a streetlight, but instead fell into a flowerbed. Its briars revived me – enough to claw forwards, with fists of soil, across and out onto the road. Cars cruised by with interior musics. I collapsed under the folds of my coat, looking up at clouds purpled by London’s light pollution.
As my body began to understand itself again, its adrenaline dwindled, but was replaced by a more exquisite thrill – of realisation.
The robbers could have guessed to search my socks and boxers – but Dawn’s antic mode this evening suggested she had betrayed me. Perhaps they had followed me from her doorstep. And so my suspicions about my whipping weren’t just paranoia – Dawn was arranging my injuries. Our game was real – I loved her more, for this.
And now it was my turn to play.
A car was approaching along the lane I lay in. And as I blacked out, I ejaculated.
ACT 2
The call to adventure
1.
I woke in a man’s arms.
‘No,’ I tried to say, but my teeth turned to brass and unscrewed me back into ultramarine.
I woke as a car door closed on my face. I couldn’t differentiate between words and textures. But I knew that a man was in the driver’s seat beside me.
‘Not to hospital,’ I said.
‘You have to.’
‘No… to 24 Orgrave Road, SE5… something. SE5.’
‘Is someone there?’
‘My… girlfriend,’ I managed, and blacked out again.
I woke in a man’s arms. He was holding me against a column of names.
‘Ravel,’ I told him.
The door buzzed open, he dragged me into the lift. As it rose, charcoal covered my eyes.
I woke in a woman’s arms.
‘What happened to him?’ she asked.
They carried me onto a sofa.
‘How much was the journey? Take it!’ she said.
His protestations dissolved into glue.
I woke as a woman pulled off my jeans. My wet coat was already gone.
‘Eva!’ I said.
‘What happened to you?’
‘I’m… cold.’
‘Not for much longer. Shit!’
She drew the jeans off over my feet and tucked me into a blanket.
‘You need to go to hospital.’
‘I need whisky.’
‘You need that treated.’
‘Then treat it.’
‘Please?’
‘Ok, I probably have antiseptic, but you need more than that. Shit, you’re bleeding.’
‘Surface wounds. Decorative.’
‘Shit,’ she said, and left.
Eva returned with a tray of three tall glasses – one gold, one white, one green.
‘Drink all of these. You can’t talk to me till you’ve drunk all of them.’
I obeyed, shifting onto my un-stabbed side to drink first the milk, and then the whisky, and then the juice.
‘What was in that?’ I asked, tipping the last glass’s leftover algae along its side.
‘Protein shake with spinach.’
‘I’ve never felt so virtuous.’ I sat up a little.
‘Get back down.’ She took away the tray and lifted up the blanket to apply antiseptic to my cuts. ‘Turn over.’
I did so and she yelped. ‘Shit, were you whipped? You’ve been stabbed. What the fuck?’
‘I went swimming,’ I said, warming to the attention of her hands.
‘The taxi guy said you’d been in a canal?’
‘I went swimming,’ I said again.
‘Who did this?’
‘A blue-ringed octopus.’
She sighed in irritation. ‘So you were attacked and thrown into a canal. Why? And why did you come to me?’
‘You were the first person who came to mind. I remembered your address from last night. Were you not expecting me?’
‘I’m supposed to hate you. Did you forget that when you drowned?’
‘Do you hate me?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe not. This afternoon I was… angry.’
‘I remember.’
‘Your eye is so fucked up.’ She squeezed more ointment onto her fingers.
‘Is that Savlon?’ I smiled.
‘What? Yeah. Why’s that funny?’
‘Nothing. It’s a good parallel.’
‘With what?’
‘Nothing.’
She sighed. ‘I was crying all afternoon.’
‘Same.’
‘I don’t think you’ve cried for centuries.’
‘My body cries in other ways.’
‘I can see that. But why would you come to me?’
‘I like you.’
Her hand twitched to her face, unsure of its response. In the shadows behind her I saw the outline of the taxi that had taken me here – and this shadow changed into a coach from a fairy tale – and then into a pumpkin – and then into a hearse – and I imagined myself inside the hearse, driving across a moor in the middle of England at night – and the moon was looming over me like a mother offering her breast to a child – and we sank.
‘I threw out Francis’ clothes,’ she said eventually. ‘I hate him. He lied to me. But I don’t know what to think about you. You didn’t actually lie to me. Or even if you did… yesterday, you were…’
‘I like you,’ I said again. ‘I came back with you yesterday because I wanted to come back with you. Why does everything have to have an agenda?’
I thought of how slowly yesterday she’d pulled off my trousers and kissed the inside of my thighs – and of how, later, a helicopter had passed overhead and she’d woken and told me she was burying herself with her own hands and I’d said I was cutting open her stomach and pulling out a snail-coloured snake and taking it into my mouth – and then we’d fallen back asleep.
‘You like being confusing, don’t you?’
‘Am I confusing you?’ I asked, lifting my head till my lips were at hers. ‘I wanted to see you.’
She did not move. I relaxed back, smiling, as her instincts wrestled with each other. With her long neck and loose black hair and long loose white dress, she looked like a goddess painted on the walls of a pyramid.
‘Your pockets are empty,’ she said.
‘No phone, no money, no shoes, no keys,’ I gestured at my naked body. ‘Just this.’
‘Do you want to wear a dress?’ she asked.
‘Do you want to kiss me?’
Her gaze paused, I met it. She hesitated as I rose, but again did not pull away. Her lips parted, I kissed her. Briefly, the taste passed into the sound of a plucked string. I fell back.
‘You should have drunk the whisky last,’ she winced.
‘I’ll have some more.’
She retrieved the bottle, filled a third of my glass with whisky, and handed it to me. The contact of her finger on mine repeated the sound of a plucked string in my mind – but more clearly now – a viola treated with reverb. She filled the emptied milk glass with the same amount for herself and drank it in two gulps.
‘Do you have any water?’ I asked.
She stood to fetch some, coughing from the whisky.
My body was a muted growl. Her absence felt like an impression on a pillow – and I longed instantly for her return. She had less certainty than she’d had earlier today; out of costume, she could no longer simplify herself into a stock character, so she could not speak or think in the clichés that had given her courage. My costume, meanwhile, had become more elaborate – these injuries had advanced my performance.
She returned with a pitcher of water and a scarlet dress. As she set them down, I gripped her wrist with an urgency I had no words for and pulled her to me until she knelt either side of my hips, close enough to kiss. I pressed my fingers into her shoulders so that their blood turned white. She kissed me back almost in panic. I lifted her dress to lift myself into her – and we fucked, her nails cutting across my bruises, her knee against my stab wound. Each shock rose into pleasure as the endorphins and alcohol overruled the pains of my body’s surface and its deeper myalgia – until briefly she seemed like their antidote.
Her eyes were closed, my eyes were covered by her hair. I slid my hands down her arms to her elbows, and came as she did.
I untensed and let my head fall backwards. She lay across me, reaching over the side of the sofa to sip from the water jug.
‘Is there cum on my dress?’ she asked, smiling.
‘You can’t see anything, it’s white.’
‘What about blood?’
‘It’s quite stylish blood.’
‘Shit.’
She stood up quickly, dabbing at the stains – confused by herself but not annoyed. ‘What was that?’
‘It was quick,’ I said. ‘Do you have any painkillers?’
‘I’ve got you paracetamol and ibuprofen. They’re just there.’ She reached to the table behind my head, and as her perfumed wrist passed my nose, it trailed lily of the valley.
I listened to four foil pockets perforate. She fed me the tablets one by one, between sips of water.
‘Anything stronger?’ I asked.
‘Are you being ungrateful?’
‘This is like… trying to mop up the ocean with a tea towel,’ I said.
‘Don’t flatter yourself, you’re not the ocean. You’re a paddling pool at best.’
‘Alright, I’m a paddling pool, but I still need better means to mop it up.’
‘Well sorry – I’ve run out of whale tranquiliser, or whatever class of chemical you’re accustomed to. Iris will have something stronger at the gallery.’
I sat up to repress a smile. ‘Are we going to the gallery?’
‘If you won’t go to hospital.’
‘Even though you hate Francis?’
‘It’s not just photos of him. There’s photos of me as well.’
‘Who’s Iris?’
‘An ally.’
‘Are you going to get revenge on Francis?’ I asked.
‘Maybe.’
‘You should. The best revenge is always erotic.’
‘I was thinking that.’ She drank again from the whisky.
‘What do you want to do?’
‘I have an idea – but I’m not telling you. Aren’t you on his team? You can’t be trusted.’
‘Obviously not,’ I said. ‘I don’t work well in teams. Do you hav
e any shoes that could fit me?’
She laughed. ‘You’re most likely to fit into sling-backs. I’ve already chosen them.’ She pointed to a pair of black suede high heels whose straps curved behind the ankle. ‘But if we’re going down that route then we need to sort out your face.’
‘How dare you? I’m beautiful.’
‘But you can look more beautiful.’ She kissed me, tasting of whisky – her proximity again twisting in my mind into the sound of a reverberating string. ‘I haven’t done a boy’s make-up since I was a teenager.’
‘Can you bring out the best in me?’
‘I can’t perform miracles.’
She left for another room. I began to climb into the dress. My sense of space seemed to be stabilising as the fluids retrieved me to competence. But when I tried to stand, I wobbled, and dropped back onto the cushions. Eva saw me fall as she reentered, and cried ‘Ah!’ in pity.
‘Ah!’ I echoed, mockingly.
From a quilted bag she took out a bottle, and from its dispenser she pumped a puddle of foundation onto the back of her hand.
‘This can hide tattoos,’ she said. ‘So it should hide your bruises.’
She dabbed some on her index finger – but then hesitated.
‘No – I’m doing this wrong. We should colour-correct first.’
‘Yeah, I want a full actor’s mask,’ I said. ‘Don’t skip any steps.’
She took another pot from her bag – a wheel of five creams. And with her ring finger, she rubbed at the salmon cream – and then applied it over my bruises, cancelling out their bluish colour. Again I breathed in the scent of lily of the valley at her wrist.
Carnivore Page 6
