Carnivore

by Jonathan Lyon

  ‘A swimming pool maze.’

  So you’re being helpful to me now.

  ‘Perhaps so, little cunt. Minds are not machines. Our rules are changing, from showing you this.’

  But there are no walls. How is this a maze?

  ‘It is a four-dimensional maze – the only way out is to find the right time.’

  Which is when?

  ‘When they find the way out.’

  The globe of water solidifies, slowing the machines inside, reshaping itself into a giant skull. The camera zooms towards the skull’s eye socket – and as it zooms, the screen itself loses its solidity, becoming another door.

  I have watched long enough, I think. I wish to enter. I walk towards the screen-door, into the projection —

  Without The Door

  I’m outside, I think. The door, the cinema, the machines are not here. I am on the shore of an endless ocean. A refugee, but with no more borders… Or are the machines dreaming me into another confinement?

  Infinite grey glass behind me, infinite grey water before me. I could walk along the shifting tide. Or I could devise another route.

  Machines – give me an axe!

  No answer, except the rustling waves. Perhaps they do not hear me. Or I am alone, my own audience again. But something is different, I’m out of the skull. The sky is – I haven’t even looked yet. The sky is… grey and cool and glossy like the whispering vapour that waited in my theatre instead of an audience. What is this vapour? Can it make me an axe?

  No answer. Perhaps I must make myself an axe. But I have only my body...

  Well, then. What limb would be best? The hip-bone I suppose, if I sharpened it, and used the leg as the handle. So off with my leg? How do I do that? I could jump...

  I run along the glass shore, accelerating – I’ll keep speaking even as I gasp, until momentum seems impossible – and I leap into the glaze of wet glass – and slip, into the splits – in an ecstasy of agony, my right leg cracks, fails – I roll towards the water, my leg a reverse right angle, the knee-cap shattered.

  I cannot sing but I can scream, ocean! You will not keep me here.

  My hip may be too ambitions, but I can rip the rest off below the knee. I snap my leg back further, and again – my blood giggling into the waters, my tendons and muscle strung out but clinging still to the stubs of bone.

  I rip and twist and – bite – at my lower leg, until at last it swings upwards in my loving arms, freed from the knee socket, its spurts of blood mingling with the surf. I must be quick. The tip of my shin-bone is sharp already from the fracture – excellent, excellent – the machines were not expecting this.

  I twirl the bone ceremonially, as if for cameras – and then plunge it into the glass beneath me. A murmur obsesses the shore – yes, as I hoped, the glass is thin.

  I stab again, and a crack appears. A third hit, and the crack fractures outwards into tributaries. I am breaking their world...

  I stab again at the wound in the glass, it buckles beneath me. The beach groans – water rushes towards me for the newly-lowered ground.

  I thrust my shin-bone again at the fracture, and the cracks squeal in defeat. Slowly, the glassy plain around me seems to deflate as it ricochets with scars, the ruptures dancing underneath the ocean bed in a glass lightning. A high-pitched wailing overcomes the waves – and then it shatters, the shore is shattered, and I fall, bleeding – into the grey vapour beneath the glass, as the sea drops through the hole in its fabric.

  And in the whirlpool, the shards of glass become skulls, millions of other skulls, each emptied of their actors, emptied of their machines… My body spins into the vapours, no longer a place but a process – bodies no longer needed, or needed but no longer fixed – and I am mingling with other voices, at last, I have found other voices, and as we spin, we sing —

  ‘Homeless, homeless

  We are our own home,

  Homeless, homeless,

  We are our own home’.

  2.

  The first sensation was a suction in the gums: the taste of ash around my teeth, elevating the blood. Then my heart, politely tapping at the sternum – until my limbs solidified around me, and the hum of a motor rotated into my ears. I could see. Stark mouthwash-coloured ceiling lights. And the smell of mouthwash in the air. A bed below me of paper sheets. And around me, a curtain. I was in hospital.

  My chest was haunted by the echo of electricity – as though it was trying to be in pain but couldn’t remember how. The stab-wound at my hip stung, tightly re-strung. I lifted my head to look at my body, but I weighed too much, or my limbs had been bolted to the bed.

  ‘Can someone unlock me, please?’ I asked.

  ‘Leander!’ cried a form beside me. ‘Leander. Unlock you? You’ve been a very naughty door.’

  It was Eva, and she was hugging me, smoothing back my hair with a lily-of-the-valley-scented hand, kissing me on the cheek.

  ‘How did I…?’

  ‘End up here?’ she said. ‘I saved your life, my love. Actually, I didn’t save your life. You lost it. You were officially dead. Do you know how rude that is?’

  Eva was smiling a wide American smile, with the emptied-out loveliness of an American actress being interviewed – a loveliness not quite authentic. Her black hair was loose over a loose black and orange t-shirt, which was tucked into a high leather miniskirt.

  ‘That’s not rude, that’s… glamorous,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing more glamorous than coming back from the dead.’

  ‘Only just coming back. I was getting ready to live my whole life thinking I was responsible for your death.’

  ‘And now you get to be responsible for my resurrection.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘That was the guy that defibrillated you in the middle of the street.’

  ‘Oh… I don’t recall that part of my day.’

  ‘He knocked you out as soon as your heart restarted – sensibly – so we didn’t have to suffer through any more of your monologues. You’re lucky he gave you any drugs at all – they said your blood test was the worst they’d ever seen.’

  ‘I’m flattered.’

  She unhugged me to slip into her seat. My upper body was freer now, and I was able to sit up against the headboard. Briefly a jellyfish ballooned inside my head, adjusting to motion, and my wound began begging to be scratched.

  ‘Drink!’ she said, handing me a bottle of some strawberry-scented smoothie.

  I drank it all, thirstily, without feeling thirst.

  ‘Is this another one of your terrifyingly virtuous potions?’ I asked. ‘It’s got four hundred flavours. I feel like I’m drinking a really loud video game. It’s amazing – I never want to drink anything else again. What’s in it?’

  ‘I didn’t make it, but yes it’s like one of my potions. It’s a protein shake. I stole loads of them from a fridge in the HIV ward. They’re for people close to death. So I knew you’d love it.’

  ‘Delicious,’ I said, my forehead creased in astonishment at how satisfying the drink was. ‘The closer to death the better. Did you steal anything else from the dying?’

  ‘Yeah I got this chocolate muffin.’ She handed it to me. ‘They’re really dense but they have this weird aftertaste like you’ve swallowed a neutron star or something and there’s a squashed bit of the universe inside you for a minute. And I got some rice milk too –’ she placed a carton in my lap – ‘which I know you’ll probably hate but… I wanted it for myself. And you deserve some kind of punishment for what you put me through.’

  She was being more playful than usual, perhaps out of relief. Or perhaps she was simply no longer afraid of me.

  ‘Dying wasn’t a good enough punishment?’ I asked.

  ‘No, that was the thing you need to be punished for doing.’

  I ate the muffin in two bites and rinsed it down with the rice milk.

  ‘Oh yeah I see what you mean,’ I said of the milk, wincing between swigs. ‘It’s kind of overwhelmingly underwhelming, i
t’s so… intensely mediocre that it’s frustrating to drink. You keep expecting there to be more to it, but that’s all. Rice milk – such a mild abyss – but more frightening because of that mildness. How can nature be capable of something so… neutral? I hate it.’

  ‘Good. You need to drink all of it.’

  I did so, and waved the empty carton at her in triumph.

  ‘I’m an immortal now,’ I said.

  ‘I’m pretty sure your life expectancy is lower now,’ she laughed, taking away the carton and putting it, and the muffin wrapper, into the bin beside her. ‘And you’re supposed to have loads of memory damage.’

  ‘Isn’t that what’s colloquially called a “win-win situation”? I’ve spent far too much energy trying to forget the past – I’m glad it’s going to become easier.’

  ‘We weren’t even sure you were going to be able to speak, or if you’d know who I was.’

  ‘Well, Holly, I didn’t deserve to have all of my wishes come true at once.’

  Eva hit me.

  ‘But how long was I asleep,’ I asked, ‘or in a coma or whatever?’

  ‘Like twenty-five hours,’ she said. ‘It’s Saturday. I’ve been in and out. Iris was on the other shift. She really thought she’d killed you.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint.’

  ‘You haven’t been discharged yet, so there’s still time for complications. I might not have to tell her that you ever woke up.’

  ‘I’m not staying here,’ I said. ‘I don’t stay at hospitals.’

  ‘You have to, there’s —’

  The curtain was drawn back, revealing Detective Chief Inspector Sanam, listening in. Initially I didn’t remember who he was, beyond his name – and focused instead on the space above his head – where a lavender-coloured cloud was forming – and as I stared at it, I thought of the smell of freshly plucked lavender and the feeling of rubbing it in my palms and against my neck – and the cloud took on the shape of a lemur, twitching its lavender tail – but diffused into nothing as I remembered who he was.

  ‘Good morning Leander,’ he said with a nod. ‘I am pleased to hear that you can talk. We need to have a conversation.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m too busy at the moment,’ I said. ‘Maybe in a few weeks?’

  ‘If you wouldn’t mind, Ms Ravel – Leander and I need to have a conversation.’

  ‘Are you… are you sure?’ Eva asked, standing, worried.

  I shrugged to her, like I had no idea what this could possibly be about. ‘I’m sure this misunderstanding can be easily resolved.’

  ‘Ok, but I’m right outside if you need me.’

  She left, closing the curtain behind her. The chief inspector sat in her chair.

  ‘Leander,’ he said sombrely, ‘would you mind telling me, in as much detail as you can, your memory of what happened since our last meeting in this hospital?’

  ‘Yeah it was a nightmare – I went to the supermarket to buy satsumas – but they’d run out. It was a nightmare. So I had to go to a different supermarket, to buy satsumas. It took me ages.’

  ‘We don’t have time for this. There’s nobody else here, Leander – nobody to perform for. There’s nobody to quote to. Detective Constable Floris and Mr Cole are missing, there’s blood, brain matter, semen, and a bullet hole in your living room. And, again, here I am asking you – how did you manage to escape?’

  Dread tightened my muscles as I processed what he’d said – I sat upright, twisting the sheets in my fists.

  ‘Francis is missing?’ I asked.

  ‘That is correct. Is this new information to you?’

  My eye was punched in – by the fist of a boy from the canal – or by his memory – and I couldn’t feel it, but I saw the same verdigris pigment as I’d seen in the punch – the most vibrant pigment, the most toxic pigment – and it was mixing with lead-white and lead-tin yellow and yellow ochre – and behind it, I saw the ultramarine of my myalgia – walled off by the opiates in me, waiting for their defences to weaken. And the verdigris-green was giving way to it – to the ultramarine glinting with minerals – glinting with calcite and pyrite, and augite and mica – and pouring out of my eye and across the room – and out of the hospital, into the sky, and towards Afghanistan – or to wherever Kimber first fired a gun – to the poppy fields and cliffs of lapis lazuli, away from the European bombs of the south – to where lapis stone was ground into pine resins and lye and sold as the most expensive colour in the world. Ultramarine! – a colour as holy as the heroin it was born beside, sister of the same soil – paint and painkiller – both claiming Kimber as their king – the king of the movie the west was watching! – the king of the heist the east was hosting! – the king that must be – the king that must be – the king that must be killed!

  ‘He… he was fine,’ I said, struggling to keep my mind in the present. ‘We got out. That’s my – what?’

  ‘What do you mean you “got out”? Please, you need to tell me what you know if we’re going to help them.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you tell me what you know?’ I asked, angered by anxiety.

  ‘I did, I am – we’ve barely begun speaking to each other.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ I shouted. ‘Constable Floris is in no need of help. She’s been dead for two days. And you not telling me what you know is the reason why Constable Floris is dead and why Francis is probably dead and why I basically died. I don’t believe that you knew as little about Kimber as you claimed. I think you sent us into a trap. Why didn’t you come and investigate when you didn’t hear from us all night?’

  ‘You are speaking very quickly, Leander. I need you to slow down. You appear to have witnessed something that has disturbed you. And I understand it might be difficult, but I need you to tell me what that was. Police officers were dispatched to your property as soon as it was noticed that Constable Floris had not checked back in. Unfortunately, her absence was not noticed by our team until yesterday morning, because we were engaged in a series of raids all night.’

  ‘Her absence wasn’t noticed?’ I shouted. ‘She wasn’t noticed for ten hours?’

  ‘This gang will disappear. We have had to push our small advantage as aggressively as possible – ever since you yourself invited us to the Rockway bar. This process was started by you, Leander. We are hunting for the man that you named to us in your phone call. You are the reason why we’re having to act so fast. And if you had shared with us more information, then we might have known better how to proceed.’

  ‘What information could I possibly have about a man I met for five minutes in the back of a pub? Compared to you? You’ve been investigating for years! You fucked up and you fucked us over, and you’re trying to blame me for not sharing information? I thought that you were sending us into a trap because you didn’t have enough evidence – and so you needed to catch Kimber doing something to us. But then you never showed up! So what – so I’m supposed to believe you’re homicidally incompetent instead?’

  ‘Are you telling me that Kimber was at your property? Who else was there? Leander, can you please tell me what happened in a straightforward manner?’

  ‘While you were “engaged” in your night raids, the man you were raiding for was fucking me, at gunpoint – in the apartment that you sent us to, because any evidence at all could be useful, you said, and Dawn was his weak spot, you said, and you had very few other leads, you said – although apparently you had enough fucking leads to engage in raids all night – long after the good Constable Floris had stiffened and gone to join the big bumblebee in the sky – and I’d been injected with enough crystal meth to have a cardiac arrest in the middle of a snow storm.’

  ‘I need you to keep your voice down, Leander. What you are telling me is upsetting.’

  ‘Are you upset? I’m so so sorry. Is my experience upsetting for you?’

  ‘I was speaking for you. You are upset. Understandably. From what I can understand, Kimber shot Constable Floris and attacked you… And I presume he
attacked Mr Cole as well? That must have been upsetting. I can understand. But I need you to please fill in the rest of the picture for me, as difficult as it may be. How did you escape? Where did Kimber go?’

  ‘Kimber overdosed on meth. We handcuffed him to the bed, and went outside. And I… I was distressed. So I ran away. And I don’t know what happened next. Maybe Kimber woke up and Francis went back and got shot. I don’t, I don’t… he’s not…’

  My voice cut out. My right hand was shaking. Storytelling seemed pointless – my scepticism had no use. I felt anxious and spiteful and insane.

  ‘There was only evidence of one gun shot at the property, so it is possible that Mr Cole is still alive,’ he said. ‘In your memory, was there only Kimber there? There would need to have been other men to help him take the constable and Mr Cole away.’

  ‘Not that I saw. They could have been waiting outside. I left… in a hurry.’

  ‘What is most important now is that… we see that Mr… that Francis —’ The chief inspector paused and placed a consoling hand on my shoulder. ‘Francis could be alive. Kimber kept you both alive before. As I have said, I believe that Mrs Cole was his weak spot – and you are both connected to her. To Dawn.’

  ‘He said he wanted to be our father,’ I said. ‘He was psychotic – babbling daddy-issue delusions about angels and... he said I was an angel! Do you know how insulting that is? Angels are just fucking policemen – flying useless policemen, like pigeons are flying rats.’

  He ignored me.

  ‘He was… he filmed us,’ I continued. ‘There’s a video of him… of me and Francis… he made me and Francis —’ I stretched out my arm to gesture my meaning, unable to finished the sentence.

  ‘He was filming you? There were camera parts discovered on the kitchen floor – but only parts, no memory card.’