Human Remains

by Elizabeth Haynes

  A phone was ringing. I went into the other room, following the sound. On the sofa was a bag, my bag, and the ringing came from inside it. I looked at the phone. It said SAFE.

  I pressed the green button. “Hello?”

  He said some things to me. His voice was quiet and even and soothing, even though I didn’t feel worried or upset. I felt so calm. It was like floating on the surface of warm water, letting the waves take me away to somewhere I’d be safe and cozy.

  “I need to do something,” I said.

  “Remember to plug the phone charger in,” he said. “I told you about the charger. It is inside your bag. When our phone conversation is finished, you need to plug in the phone right away. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You told me about the phone.”

  “Yes,” he said. “You can do it when we finish talking.”

  “There’s something else,” I said. “I was supposed to do something else . . .”

  “No,” he said. “Everything is done, Annabel. Everything you do is because you choose to do it. Everything is fine. You are fine. You are safe at home.”

  “Yes,” I said. I felt safe.

  “I will visit later, but you don’t need to worry about that. You can sleep now and I will call tomorrow,” he said. “At six o’clock. Do you understand?”

  “At six o’clock,” I said. “Yes.”

  Then he said good-bye and the phone was silent in my hand. I looked at it for a moment. It wasn’t my phone. It was a small black one with a small screen. I looked in my bag for my phone—a big one, bulky, old—but it wasn’t there. Instead I found a charger. I took it into the kitchen and plugged it in to the spare socket next to the kettle. I put the other end of the cable into the bottom of the phone. The screen lit up and there was a flashing battery and a word that said CHARGING. I put the phone down.

  I stood still in the kitchen. There was a noise at the back door but it was a normal noise and I tuned it out. Then I went upstairs and lay down on my bed. My coat was still on. I was warm, and safe, and at home. Everything was fine. I didn’t need to do anything. I lay still and waited for six o’clock.

  Colin

  It strikes me as odd that her house is next door to the one I visited all those months ago. It must be a street full of suicidal people. Misery breeds misery, after all—contagious, the soupy atmosphere of despair. I should really have been holding my breath. And of course she was the one who found Shelley, the one who gave me the fright of my life that evening when I was paying her a visit. I heard the sound of the glass breaking at the back door and ducked into the hallway, planning to let myself out of the front door, but something made me stay. I feel very protective over my friends, especially when they have not yet completed their transformation, and the thought of Shelley’s metamorphosis being interrupted by some thuggish teenage burglar was more than I could bear. And then I heard her call out, something—“Hello? Anyone there?”—something of that nature, at any rate, and I stopped in the hallway. I knew she would not search the house, whoever she was. She would get as far as the living room and Shelley and no farther.

  I was intrigued by the thought of observing someone else’s reaction to the tableau of Shelley’s putrefaction. After all, I know I’m unusual but there is always the possibility of others seeing the same beauty in it that I see, and who knows? I might have found someone to share all this with. Either that, or it would add a new, voyeuristically erotic dimension to the whole process.

  She was so beautifully calm. She didn’t scream, or vomit, or even turn away. I saw from a crack in the doorway to the hall that she stood there looking at Shelley for a long moment, her face serene, only her rapid breathing giving away the sense of shock.

  I hadn’t recognized her in the supermarket, of course—out of that context—but it’s wonderful to have her as my next subject. I love symmetry in all things. Watching this one go, when she has borne witness to the decay of another, is almost poetic.

  Annabel

  I opened my eyes and I didn’t feel alone.

  It was dark in the room but my eyes adjusted and after a while I could hear breathing that wasn’t my own.

  I lifted my head. It took a lot of effort, as if it were made of iron and my neck were a rubber band.

  There was a man sitting on a chair by the door. He was watching me. The light from the window was like an orange glow in the room and it lit up his face. He smiled at me, and I felt safe and comforted because I knew he was my angel and he was here, watching over me.

  “Sleep,” he said, his voice just a whisper.

  The angels would speak to me in a voice that was just a whisper, a breath. They would hold me in their arms and support me in times of trouble. When I was lonely, or afraid, the angels would be there.

  I rested my head back down on the pillow and closed my eyes.

  Colin

  I went to the house on Newmarket Street first, as soon as it got dark. There was nowhere to park the car, which was annoying. I ended up parking in a residents’ only bay in the next street and walking back to the house. I didn’t see a single person on the way, and, although I checked behind me before going down the path to the front door, the whole road was silent and empty. I used the spare key she had given me and as I opened the door a shape darted past into the house—her infernal cat, no doubt. I closed the door and listened for a moment. The only sound was the cat, meowing from a room at the back. I went in and found some cat food in a cabinet, and shook the nuggets into the bowl that was on the floor. I would have to let it out again, and maybe put some food outside to keep it quiet.

  Upstairs, she was fast asleep on the bed. I found a chair outside on the landing and moved it into the bedroom so I could sit and watch her for a while. She was so silent and still that I could almost imagine, almost pretend that she had already passed into death, that I’d caught her right at the perfect moment, the start of the process—the last breaths, exhaled into the stale atmosphere of the room, the stilling of the heartbeat, the blood cells no longer racing around the body, tension gone from every muscle. Everything peaceful and quiet.

  I’m not usually aroused by them until the process of decay has started, but to imagine myself here at the very moment, the precise second she passed from life to death, was thrilling. I shifted in my seat to ease the discomfort, and I was just undoing my pants when I heard her sigh. The movement must have disturbed her because she lifted her head and opened her eyes and looked at me.

  I tried a benevolent, reassuring smile. “Sleep,” I whispered.

  She went back to sleep. That perfect undisturbed moment was gone, and with it my arousal.

  Something brushed against my leg and startled me—that bloody cat again. I stood, hooked my hand under its belly, and took it down the stairs to the kitchen. By that time it was squirming and fighting in my arms. I unlocked the back door and half threw, half dropped it out into the night.

  When I got home it took me half an hour to get the cat hair off my pants using sticky tape. I won’t feed it again.

  It’s late at night, and I’m at the computer with a tumbler of single malt, exploring the world from the darkness of the study. Shostakovich playing. I’m too peevish for porn tonight: I shall have to turn to my books for inspiration.

  Biology first, and this evening’s topic of interest—detritivores, a subject approached because of the images I looked at after work. Edward, I think his name was, or rather Eloise, the one who dressed like a woman and indeed fooled me completely until he let me in on the subject of his miserable family. She or he had left the window open upstairs, and of course, because I never interfere in the natural processes, the window had remained open and as a result the detritivores had arrived early, and feasted well.

  Often my digital photographs are quite static, but Edward’s is a veritable teatime drama.

  Detritivores—the vertebrate and invertebrate organisms that feed on decomposing organic matter—are attracted to their sustenance by smel
l. Different smells are given off as a by-product of the object in question at varying stages of the decomposition process, meaning that the consumption, recycling, destruction (whatever you prefer) of the dead is carried out by a variety of detritivores. In other words, it’s not a feeding frenzy. Blowflies like their dinner fresh. Tineid and pyralid moth larvae will only consume putrid dry remains, and won’t appear until after the blowfly larvae have finished. It’s a banquet carefully stage-managed by Nature, a series of courses laid out one after the other, the perfect scent—to tempt only those guests who will enjoy each flavor—given off at precisely the right moment.

  When I finish indulging in my love of biology, I return the images and the notebooks to their hiding place and move on to the less controversial topic of NLP.

  The tutor for the NLP course is called Nigel. He worked in the City, once upon a time, initially without much dramatic success until he discovered NLP and thereafter, if you were to believe everything he says, he became so successful that he managed to retire at the age of thirty-two. He’d decided it was too stressful being a trader and had chosen to turn his hand to a bit of part-time teaching instead. And thus he imparts his knowledge to us.

  He is always quite entertaining, to be fair to him. The tutor group sessions start out with an apparent firm structure, descend into amusing anecdotes about Nigel’s time in the City—or else one of the other participants’ attempts to put into practice the techniques we’d learned—and by the end of the class Nigel will reveal with a dramatic flourish that he has been training us all along, and that what we learned today was actually something quite unexpected.

  On one particular occasion, when Nigel had claimed to be teaching us how to lead a conversation away from confrontation and toward resolution, he ended up telling us a story about how he’d used NLP to get a girl he liked to sleep with him.

  There were six of us in the group that night. Lisa wasn’t there, for some reason, leaving just Alison and five men. Alison worked in a bank. She’d wanted to attend the class to learn how to increase her confidence when dealing with customers, particularly difficult ones. She wanted to know how to turn a complaint into a sale.

  You could tell that Nigel had been saving up this particular topic by the way he relished the telling of it. Alison was shifting in her seat, as was the elderly gent who trotted along to evening classes regularly—he’d already been in three of the courses I’d attended—as a way of escaping from the horrors of having to make conversation with his wife. But the rest of them—the two youngish guys, Roger and Darren, who were hoping for a career in sales, and the music producer who wanted to influence the critics—were hanging on Nigel’s every word.

  He’d succeeded in his quest with the woman, of course, because Nigel didn’t fail at anything, and, if he had, he wouldn’t have shared that particular story. The girl he liked had been helpless, powerless to resist his charms. He had slept with her and ended up in a relationship with her that lasted three years. And then she’d moved to the States to pursue a career as an actress and a model. It had ended amicably. And then he’d met his wife, and not used any NLP techniques to woo her, and that, too, had been a success.

  And the moral of the story was only partly that all this was immoral. NLP was a powerful tool that should be used with integrity, he said. It worked best when people used it to provide a positive, empowering result for both parties. It was all about honing techniques that every human possessed if only they realized it. It was all about being the best that you could be. If the woman hadn’t been attracted to him anyway, Nigel argued, she would never have succumbed to his carefully planned suggestions and influences. It was about maximizing opportunities that already existed. Not about faking them, or making people do things against their will. You needed to lead them down a path that they might already have been intending to take. It was about encouraging them to do what they wanted to do, but lacked the courage or the focus or the determination to do on their own.

  It was, as Nigel frequently said, win-win.

  I tried my hardest, but I couldn’t see how anything he said meant that I shouldn’t also consider using these techniques to seduce a woman. Surely that would be win-win?

  I gave all of it a lot of thought. The idea grew and spread through me like treacle until it was all I could think about. I could find a woman who was reasonably attracted to me, and instead of saying the wrong thing and ruining my chances I could make her warm to me, make her like me. And maybe, yes, make her want to sleep with me. And after that, presumably, if we were compatible and I liked her enough to continue with it, maybe I could actually end up having that most dramatic and unexpected of things: a relationship. I read voraciously around the topic, every book I could find and every Internet page that discussed the Meta Model versus the Milton Model, mirroring, strategies, calibration, everyday trances. I practiced at work, even though it felt uncomfortable; I struck up conversations with Martha and some of the others and watched their awkwardness change from wariness to a kind of reserved acceptance. It was undeniably fascinating. It worked, and the more I put into it, the more my confidence grew.

  Annabel

  When I opened my eyes again he wasn’t there. I expected to feel something but there was nothing. I wasn’t afraid.

  Time was passing because when I opened my eyes the next time it was daylight, and then it was dark again; six PM had happened twice. I had answered the black phone and listened and spoken, although I couldn’t remember what about.

  My mouth was dry, sticky, uncomfortable. That was the only thing that bothered me. And then even that passed.

  The phone was by the bed. I plugged it in to charge, as he told me to.

  I felt as if I was waiting for something.

  When it comes I will know it, I thought. I will greet it, like an old friend.

  Colin

  I take my responsibilities very seriously, although I must admit to being distracted since the newspaper article I read on Friday.

  I stayed in most of Saturday, only venturing out after dark, and then only making one visit. After Friday’s trip to the house on Newmarket Street I resolved to leave her in peace until she transforms properly. It’s no fun being interrupted by the living. Instead I made my way to see Maggie. I often think she will be the very last to be found, which is ironic in a way because she was clearly the most wealthy person I’ve spent time with. You would think her friends and family would show her more respect, when she clearly has a lot to offer them. But as yet, months down the line, she is continuing her transformation uninterrupted. Her house is beautiful, and the rural setting means the scent is unlikely to disturb the neighbors as it often does in the urban areas.

  I usually pay her a visit on weekends, and sometimes during the day, because I’ve never seen a soul down this road and I don’t worry quite so much about being seen. You’d think I wouldn’t worry about being seen, wouldn’t you? But really I’m quite a private person. If you met me in the street I dare say you would not be unduly worried by my presence, and that’s as it should be. Nevertheless, I do prefer not to be noticed.

  You want to know what I do, on these visits? I thought you might.

  I spend time observing the changes that have taken place since my last visit. I make notes, but more frequently this happens at home afterward. I take pictures with my digital camera, which I then examine further, catalog, and store when I get home. After a while, when I have noted everything I wish to note, I spend some time just sitting with them, watching them. I am always careful never to disturb anything in the environment, never to leave anything of myself behind.

  I have to say with many of them the thrill is not as it once was. The excitement that was once highly erotic has gradually been replaced by a kind of fondness. I would say, even though I’ve never fully understood the meaning of the word, possibly even by love. After all, sometimes I spend months with them. I get to know them with the affection of a lover. I have seen their most private moments and I know their
bodies more intimately than their husbands, partners, mothers. I see things they have never even seen themselves: the moment when the body reveals itself, piece by piece, when it opens like a flower to display the beauty within.

  Sometimes I talk to them, although of course they can’t hear me. It’s a way of reminding myself that they are—or were—human beings, although of course from a purely scientific point of view they are rapidly becoming objects of decay. I think I am more aroused by them when they get to that point—wherever you choose to define it—when they cease to be a person. I wonder what it is in me that finds the idea of sexual intercourse with another human being to be so challenging, and yet can imagine it readily when that point is reached.

  What about the smell? I hear you ask. Don’t they smell bad? I know you want to know, don’t you? That’s the first question I’d ask, if I were in your position.

  They all smell different, of course, which is part of the charm. Although the smell is pervasive and lingers in the nostrils for a long time after I’ve left them, I’ve never found it intolerable. When you’ve been around them for a long time, you notice how the smell changes and develops as the decomposition progresses. At times it can be like rancid cheese, vomit, spoiled meat, even sweetish, like an exotic dessert you are almost brave enough to try. I object to the smell of decomposing food, of course. It’s similar, but has less appeal.

  I wear the same clothes when I pay my visits, and wash them often. The scent clings to the material, as I imagine the scent of a lover would, and as much as I would enjoy smelling my own clothes I cannot risk others noticing it.

  Actually, I haven’t told the complete truth there. I said I never found it intolerable, but there was one. Robin, I think he was called. An alcoholic, although I remember him being an intelligent man who would have been a witty and engaging conversationalist were it not for the tragedy of his life. I hadn’t realized the depth of his alcoholism until he began to decompose, and the odor that came from his fermented liver was quite unlike anything I’ve ever smelled. Even I found it difficult to bear. I went back to him less frequently, but each time it was worse, and after a couple of visits I stopped going.