Mike sat up in bed, embarrassed. “I fixed stuff. Like you.” His face was clean, unlined. His laughter lines – that she’d loved to stroke – were gone. His frown, the same. Mike’s face was plastic, shiny. “I thought you’d like it.”
“You thought wrong!” She got out of bed and backed toward the door, horrified. “What did you do?”
“It’s just a little Botox, some filler, nothing you haven’t been doing for ages. What’s the big deal?”
Grace stared at the bland face watching her, realising how little she could actually see of his intention. Was he angry? Sad? It seemed these days as if the only signifiers of emotion – in virtually everyone she knew – were the eyes and the voice. Other than those, she might be talking to a mannequin, for all the reaction she could see. She took a deep, surprisingly shuddery, breath and tried to smile. “You’re right, I’m sorry.” Her voice steadied, and she relaxed slightly. “It was just a surprise, that’s all.”
She stared back blandly as Mike appraised her response – and prayed he couldn’t tell she was still horrified. Aware of the hypocrisy in her reaction she smiled at him again, and resolved to accept this change in Mike: her rock. How could she criticise him for, as he’d pointed out, something she did regularly herself? Aided by the substance in question, she was able to keep her features relaxed; and although she was grateful for that fact, the irony of their situation was inescapable.
“I guess it was.” He smiled warmly at her and patted the bed. “Come back to bed, babe… please.”
She smiled shakily and climbed back under the covers, lying rigid beside him. Neither dared move, and the similarity to a pair of dolls didn’t go unnoticed. Minutes passed, and the silence grew unbearable. Finally, Grace turned over, her back to Mike – and relaxed as she felt his body mould itself to her contours, familiar as ever. She smiled as he kissed her neck, and whispered, “Night, babe.”
“Night,” she answered, but her voice was crystal clear – she was far from sleep. She felt her husband’s body relax against her, his arm grew heavy over hers; and finally she allowed herself to react. A perfect tear formed in the corner of each eye, and rolled down onto the pillow. She made no sound. Mike was the one solid thing in her life, faithful and unchanging.
What was real now?
Over the next few days, Grace tried hard to reconnect. She gave up attempting to have proper conversations with anyone at work; it was all the usual gossip from expressionless clones, as far as she could see. No, she tried to talk to people. The man at the station’s ticket office, tired and grumpy yet desperately trying to stay polite to the mass of people herded past his barrier each day; the woman at the newsagents’, whose smile Grace had been pathetically grateful for when she’d paid for her weekly dose of tabloid gossip; the man she’d bumped into when entering the lift to her floor at work, who’d glared at first then smiled when he realised the person who’d annoyed him was an attractive woman. At least, she thought he’d found her attractive. He’d smiled, eased his shoulders back, made some inconsequential flirty comment when she’d apologised – but all she could think of with these people was: How does it feel, when your face creases up like that? When you laugh, shout, smile, cry? How does it really feel?
She was devastated when she realised she couldn’t actually remember those feelings first-hand. How anything that felt real on the inside translated into external sensation. Sitting at her desk, staring blindly at her monitor, she ran her fingers over her face; nothing. Trying to keep tears at bay, she bit the inside of her cheek… and winced at the sweet, sharp pain as blood flooded the inside of her mouth. At last – this was what reality felt like, this was the real thing! She dabbed at the wound with her tongue, and was rewarded with a fresh lance of pain. Over the course of the day she occasionally probed at her cheek, savouring the sensations she felt at each fresh disturbance of the wound. Several of her workmates looked up as she gasped in delight, but quickly bent their heads to their work again when Grace smiled at them; her eyes glassy and way too bright, her laugh brittle.
While cooking dinner that night Grace ‘accidentally’ dipped her hand under the hot tap. She hissed at the way her nerve endings leapt in response to the heat, pain racing up her arm, leaving her breathless.
“What’s the matter?”
Mike’s voice in the doorway made her jump, and she hid her hand quickly in the folds of a tea towel, the seared skin rasping against the cloth. She swayed a little, and leant against the worktop to disguise it. “Nothing… I just… the water was hotter than I expected, that’s all.”
Mike came forward and examined her hand, cooed over the marks and took her fingers into his mouth. She gasped as his tongue lapped against the skin in an effort to soothe.
He looked up, concerned. “Did I hurt you?”
Her breathing quickened, just a little. “No, no, I…”
His lips found hers, and she groaned as he kissed her, his tongue finding the sore spot there, too. She shivered as his hands roamed over her body, and she responded eagerly as he pulled her down to the floor.
Despite Mike’s ardour, Grace quickly grew frustrated as she realised that all the enhancements had an undesired side effect. Although she was bigger (or smaller) in the appropriate places – firmer, more supple – she had lost a significant degree of sensitivity, and found herself exaggerating her responses to Mike’s touch so that he didn’t suspect. She was forced to spur him on to being more forceful, almost rough, in an effort to really feel something. As he lay atop her prone body, she found herself disconnecting. Life wasn’t real anymore; nothing was.
Everything was so remote…
Two days later. A Bank Holiday loomed. Three days away from work, alone together. Mike relished the prospect. Grace had seemed almost like her old self the last couple of days, less introspective, almost eager to try new things, seek out new experiences. He hadn’t wasted the opportunity – each night had brought them to new peaks of pleasure, or so he thought; she certainly seemed to be enjoying herself as much as he did. Only one comment had been unusual, and it returned now to haunt him as he waited for her to wake up from their evening’s lovemaking. “Did you really feel that, babe?” He’d looked at her, bemused, wondering what she’d meant. She’d smiled a little at his expression, and tried again. “Was it good? Was it really good?”
“Of course. Wasn’t it good for you?”
She’d smiled and reassured him, her lips curving gently. Although they’d barely twitched, Mike knew how much effort had been involved even to make such a small movement, and had appreciated the apparent warmth of her response. But there’d been something about her expression, hadn’t there…
He put it out of his mind as she sighed and rolled over, her eyes blinking open and her gaze not quite focussed as she tried to orient herself. She saw him sitting there, beside the bed, and her eyes opened a little wider. He tried to tell himself he was imagining the vacancy of her expression.
“Mike,” she purred.
“Hey, honey; enjoy your sleep?”
She nodded. “I did. I feel so tired, though, still.” Her gaze went to the window, and the rain streaking the glass. “Oh, not a nice night.”
“No,” he agreed, “it really isn’t. Good job we don’t have to go out, I suppose.”
“I don’t want to go out tonight. I don’t want to go out at all.”
He paused, watched her more closely for a moment – that emphasis had been strange, hadn’t it? Mike wasn’t just imagining things, he was sure. Grace was staring at the rain, mesmerised, her face perfectly still. And blank.
He shivered, and Grace turned her gaze briefly on him. “Cold, honey?”
“No, not cold.” He cleared his throat. “A goose ran over my grave, I think.”
She giggled. “Such a silly phrase…” Her face fell again, and all of a sudden Mike was very sure that Grace was no longer with him. He was all alone with a mannequin that, God help him, he adored.
Later that night, Mik
e stirred to find the bed empty. The curtains were open, and rain still bled down the windows, gleaming in the light that seeped into the room from the hall. He heard the sound of a drawer slam in the kitchen.
“Grace? Honey, is that you?” A choked laugh was his only reply, accompanied by more banging of drawers and clinking of implements as his wife rummaged through them, looking for… what, exactly?
Silence fell. Listening to his own rapid, shallow breathing, Mike slowly came to realise the depth of his terror. He felt the skin on his face stretching in response to that fear, try as it might to remain calm. He wondered what he actually looked like; remembering the sight of an elderly actress he’d seen once, Botoxed to the hilt. Asked to emote fear she’d merely registered slight surprise – unless you looked into her eyes. In them, you could see terror; as if she were screaming on the inside all the time, only no one could hear. He heard the sound of his wife padding down the hall towards the bathroom, accompanied by a scraping sound as she hummed tunelessly. The bathroom door slammed, and he heard the light clicking on.
“Grace?” His voice was quivering now, his fear rising by the second. He heard his wife moving around in the bathroom, her voice high and shrill as she crooned something to herself. What was she saying? He got out of bed and inched towards the door, hardly noticing that he was holding his breath, goosebumps rising in the chill air. Light gushed under the door, rendering his feet white and bloodless as he stood there, trembling.
Standing outside the bathroom door, he could make her words out clearly. “Not real, not real,” she muttered, as something metallic clinked against the counter top and liquid splattered into the sink. He shifted from foot to foot in the cold, his bladder shrinking by the second, both from the cold and the horror that his wife seemed to have become. Taking a deep breath that was almost a sob, he took a shaky grasp of the door handle, and tried the door.
Grace was staring blindly into the bathroom mirror, oblivious to the door opening just a crack behind her. Her nightdress lay in a bloody heap on the floor, her perfection laid bare in the glare of the bathroom light. In one delicate hand she held a paring knife, small and extremely sharp; and she was singing softly as she slowly flayed herself, strip by strip. “Not… real, not… unhh…” A bloody strip of skin slapped wetly into the basin in front of her, gore spattered onto the floor unnoticed. “…Real!” Her arms were so much raw meat, and she was gradually paring away the skin from her face.
Mike saw a strip of flesh hanging from the counter and recognised the freckle cluster there – he’d nuzzled it while kissing her shoulder just the night before. His stomach clenched, and he vomited onto the floor. Grace turned, gazing dispassionately at her husband as he knelt on the tiles and retched. “I told you.”
Mike fought to keep his nausea under control, and avoided looking at the thing that was his wife as he answered, “Told me what?”
“That I didn’t know if I was real, after all…” She gestured at the flesh adorning the counter. “…All that. I couldn’t feel anything, not properly.” She shuddered, and a cry of pain escaped her as her raw hip nudged the counter behind her. She smiled, and did it again.
“And can you feel now, babe?” he asked, wondering how bad this really was; and whether a good surgeon could repair the damage enough for her to continue to function; at least enough to be able to see someone. A psychiatrist.
Grace smiled down at him, her expression beatific. “Oh, yes,” she breathed. “I can, my love; I can feel everything.” She ran one ruined hand over her breast, and cried out – although whether in pain or rapture was unclear. Her breathing quickened, and she moved towards her husband, knife in hand. “Do you want to?”
Mike shuffled back as well as he was able, until he hit the wall in the hallway. Grace stood framed in the bathroom door, light spilling out and glistening on the juices that were escaping her quivering frame. “Do I want to what?”
Grace grinned, her perfectly capped teeth blazing in the dark ruin of her face. She raised the blade, watching it shine wetly before her, then traced it down her chest, watching raptly as a line of crimson followed the blade’s progress. She dipped a finger in the wetness and touched it to her mouth. “Mmm.” She moved closer still, her voice now heavy with desire.
Mike started to cry as she pointed the blade at him and whispered once more, “Do you want to feel?”
In The Howling of the Wind
The old man watched as the child pressed close to the window, staring wide-eyed at the falling snow – flakes large and small dancing in the moonlight. He shivered as a sudden draught swept into the room; the door swinging inward as if presaging the arrival of something wondrous.
It was nothing. “Just the wind,” he muttered to himself.
The child turned towards him, his eyes full of questions; and the old man felt his spine turn to ice.
“What is it, Grandpa?”
“Nothing…it’s nothing, child. Just the wind.”
The boy stared at the door, and sighed as it swung shut once more. “Do you think they’ll come?”
The old man nodded, clearing his throat as he gestured at the room – the gifts under the tinsel-laden tree, the mantel groaning with cards and pine garlands, complete with golden bells and red velvet bows. “Of course. It’s Christmas Eve. Why wouldn’t they come?”
The boy said nothing, just stared at his grandfather with an intensity he found unnerving.
The old man leaned forward, tried again. “They’re your parents, Matthew, of course they’ll come.”
This time the boy responded. “How can you be sure?”
“They love you. You are…” he hesitated, suddenly unsure, then continued, “…their flesh. Their blood.” He reached out to the boy, who skirted his grasp and hovered just out of reach. “Trust me. They’ll be here.”
The wind howled as if the skies themselves were in pain, and the boy’s gaze shifted to the fireplace, where the wind whispered in sympathy.
“I don’t like the sound the wind makes in the chimney.”
“What do you mean?”
The boy smiled briefly at him, nervous; aware of how fanciful his words sounded. “It cries.”
The old man laughed heartily at that. A little too heartily. “It’s just air, Matthew. Just air.” He sat back in his armchair with a sigh and gripped the armrests tightly, taking comfort in feeling the worn fabric under his fingers. On nights like this he drew strength from the feel of the fire warming his skin, the grooves his weight had worn in the chair over the years, the touch of cloth against his body. This was what counted, what was real…he cared nothing for what lay beyond the confines of his refuge.
Lights swept across the window suddenly, then were gone. Matthew ran back to the window and pressed his face to the glass. “Grandpa! It’s them!” The bell stayed silent, and there were no voices at the door. The boy’s smile faded as he surveyed the empty street.
The old man watched as the child raised his hand and laid it flat against the frozen pane as if he wanted to melt the ice with its warmth. He called the boy’s name, softly, but he didn’t answer. He almost didn’t hear the boy’s sob, muffled as it was by the sudden shriek of wind that battered the house, rattling the windows in their ageing frames.
“Matthew.”
The boy said nothing.
“Matthew, come here… Please.”
This time the boy came, reluctant, and the old man could see the pain etched on his face. He ached to stroke the child’s cheek, hold him close – but that was impossible for a child like Matthew. All he could do was talk to him, and this he did willingly.
“You’re a good boy, Matthew. And they love you, even now. If there’s a way for them to get here – to get to you – they will.”
The boy nodded, but his disbelief shone through. It was in the slump of his shoulders, the way his eyes slid away from his grandfather’s, the sorrow on his face. He turned away, and went back to his puzzle, sitting hunched over it on the living room floo
r.
The old man loved his grandson, always had. Gazing at the forlorn figure bent over his jigsaw he offered up a silent prayer, Please God, let them get through.
The chiming of the clock on the mantel woke the old man up, and he heaved himself out of his chair, huffing. Moving around wasn’t as easy as it used to be, he found. The clock said it was nine p.m., and the shadows flickering on the walls confirmed the day’s passing. The fire crackled in the hearth, and Matthew was still working on his puzzle, his little face solemn but determined. It wasn’t natural for a child to be so quiet, he mused. It didn’t seem right, although he knew Matthew was perfectly happy – lost in his own little world, where he had always been happiest; never more so than now.
Wandering over to the window, he stared out at the poorly-lit street. Snow had drifted against the walls and hedges, he saw, the parked cars buried almost to the tops of their wheels. The snow on the road itself was pristine, no traffic had disturbed it – and it would be morning, probably, before the gritters reached this far out from town. He sensed the boy’s eyes on him and turned, forcing a smile. “The snow’s deep, lad, do you think they’ll make it?”
Matthew regarded him in silence for a moment. His answer, when it came, was terse. “You’re the one who said they would.”
“Well, yes, but the snow…”
“You promised.” The boy’s tone brooked no argument, and the old man sighed, then nodded.
“I did, didn’t I. And I meant it, Matthew. If they can make it, they will.”
Matthew’s smile was singularly humourless, and the old man flinched. “Remember what you said, Grandpa.”
“About your parents?”
“About them…and about breaking promises.”
The strength drained out of the old man’s legs, and he fumbled himself back into his armchair. “What did I say, boy?”
In Times Of Want Page 2
