What was he going to do about Cupid? The sprite was unstoppable, eternal and clearly supernatural.
He blinked.
Supernatural. He needed a priest to perform some sort of exorcism. A proper, old-fashioned Catholic clergyman, of course, who slayed demons. Who would relish the challenge. Who would above all know what to do.
I can’t be the first man to have this problem, he thought. There is probably a secret Vatican department which deals with exactly this sort of thing -
Just then Cupid erupted from the toilet.
The bathroom door was open and from the bed Michael thought the lavatory had suffered a catastrophic plumbing problem, but the scraggle-topped, rot-fleshed cherub surged out of the bowl like some enormous discoloured turd.
Outwitted at the house, Cupid was too furious for theatrics. He swept across the hotel room to the bed, wings spraying waterdrops. Yelping, Michael swung the whisky bottle, and the vessel cracked against the cherub’s skull. Cupid crashed into the wardrobe and slid to the floor, leaving a slimy trail on the mirror. A heartbeat later the cherub was up again but Michael was already lunging for the door. Cupid intercepted him, clamping himself around Michael’s head, digging his claws into his scalp. Michael blundered sidelong into the bathroom then slipped on the wet tiles.
“You gross little fucker,” he yelled.
Cupid sank his claws deeper, the tips scraping Michael’s skull. Screaming, Michael whirled like a dancing Sufi, trying vainly to shake off the creature. Cupid was adopting a new tactic, he realised. He wanted Michael to pass out with pain so he could eat his heart whilst he lay unconscious. No doubt, it would prefer to consume the organ whilst he was wide-awake. But his previous attempts to do so had failed.
Michael spotted a hairdryer on the wall. Grabbing the pistol-shaped blower, he jabbed the button marked MAXIMUM then jammed the nozzle against Cupid’s eye. Cupid clung on a moment then, screeching, dropped to the floor, eyeball bubbling like a globule of hot soup.
It was now or never, decided Michael.
Dropping to his knees, he clamped his hands around Cupid’s throat. And squeezed. Oh how he squeezed. He squeezed like a vice. Like a car compacter. Like tectonic plates grinding together during an earthquake. The cherub’s eyes bulged like soap bubbles. His taloned hands and feet flailed crazily, lacerating Michael’s forearms. His lips peeled back from frantically gnashing teeth and for the first time Michael noticed the cherub’s tongue, grey, soft and slimy like the meat of an unshelled snail.
Oh yes, thought Michael, tightening his grip. Oh yes . . .
Something throbbed in Cupid’s chest. With muffled surprise, Michael realised the cherub possessed a heart of his own - one symbol of love trapped inside another.
“Let’s see how you like it,” snarled Michael because really, it was too good an opportunity to waste, too poetic an indulgence to ignore.
Michael dipped his head, opened his mouth and bit.
Cupid was dead.
Michael knew what Cupid had known: nothing could live without a heart. The organ lay in the sink, a stinking, unwholesome lump much like a tumour. Ripping it out with his teeth, Michael thought it had tasted like out-of-date confectionary.
Leaving the bathroom with Cupid lumped on the tiles, Michael went to the bedroom. Some whisky lingered in the bottle and he drank, deeply but joylessly.
What was he going to do now?
He needed to dispose of the corpse. Despite the wings, Cupid resembled a dead baby and if the slain cherub was discovered, Michael would be locked up for child-murder.
Michael perched on the bed, thinking.
Should he eat Cupid, as he presumed Cupid ate his own victims? If so, should he consume the cherub raw? Or buy a primus stove and cook the hideous sprite there, in the hotel room?
It was an unbearable idea. There had to be another way.
Should he bundle the corpse in a binbag and lob it into a garbage truck? Or take it home, buy a big dog and serve it as dinner? Or cut it into tiny, innocuous-looking pieces to be dropped in litter bins throughout the city?
Michael came up with a hundred ideas. None felt right.
Needing to urinate, he went into the bathroom.
The Cupid-corpse was decomposing. Its flesh was turning from greenish-yellow to a healthy pink hue. Michael was puzzled but logic asserted itself. When ordinary people decayed, they changed from pink - or white - to the colours of mould. It was reasonable, therefore, that a reverse principle should apply to Cupid, who had been mould-coloured to begin with. Oddly, Cupid looked normal now. Like he had on the picture frame.
In the sink, the heart was like a pink marshmallow.
Michael brooded until dawn broke.
Blackbirds sang on the ledge outside the window. Heavy goods vehicles began their journeys bearing God knows what to God knows where and the grunting rumble of their engines agitated Michael.
Surging to the window, he glowered into the street. “Shut up, will you? Can’t you see I am trying to think?” A juggernaut growled past, trailer juddering. “For fuck’s sake . . .”
Michael grew very still, brain ticking.
Moments later he bundled Cupid into a carrier bag. He went to the window, opened it and waited for the next HGV.
“Come on,” he breathed, trembling.
Up the road, headlamps pierced the sullen grey gloom of the new day. The truck was massive, a quaking behemoth of pistons, gaskets and tyres. As it quaked by under the window, Michael half-threw half-dropped the bag, which landed the trailer roof with a soundless crump.
Stunned by his audacity, overjoyed by his perfect aim, Michael watched the huge machine rolling along the high street to some unknown destination.
Abruptly, Michael realised he had forgotten about Cupid’s heart. He went into the bathroom and there it was, a pert pink lump, nestling in the plughole. He touched it with a fingertip, fearing it might still be beating. That’s how it went in horror films, at least: the malign adversary turned out to be not quite as dead as one expected. He needn’t have worried. The heart was as inert as a ball of clay.
Michael dropped it in the toilet then flushed.
“Now that,” he grinned, “is symbolism.”
He cleansed the bathroom of splashed blood. He returned the hairdryer to the wall unit. He swabbed spilled whisky from the carpet.
It was over, he decided.
He was in a good mood. His appetite had returned and in the restaurant he ordered a full English breakfast. The wedding guests occupied most of the other tables. They were eating without speaking; the restaurant was silent except for clinking cutlery and chomping mouths. The guests’ jollity had evaporated. Michael supposed they were hungover. That was natural. Miserable mornings followed merry nights; it was a law of nature. Yesterday, they had flung confetti; today, they hurled their guts.
As he ate, Michael noticed that the guests’ silence possessed a particular quality. It was stony. He noticed, too, the couples who seemed love-struck the night before were locked in a type of steely animosity - as if they hated one another. An elderly couple at a nearby table refused to look at each other. A middle-aged pair, further away, glowered like pugilists before a fight. A younger couple seemed tense and embittered. Michael spotted the newlyweds and they were no better; hard-faced, dead-eyed, they were clasped in mutual loathing.
Am I imagining things? Michael wondered. Could the milk of love have curdled overnight?
Of course it could. Wedding receptions were tribal affairs and beneath the celebrations, their lurked rivalry, envy, and petty dislike. The animosity roughly possessed the same structure: The bride’s family considered the groom unworthy; the groom’s family thought the bride a little cheap and nasty. If the families knew one another from long ago, there would be some historical opprobrium too. Combine these factors with alcohol, and the effect was barely different to that of a lunatic alchemist mixing dangerous fluids in a hot alembic. There were flare-ups, explosions; literally, there were hard words fol
lowed by raised fists.
Maybe it had not been so extreme last night. None of the guest bore traces of an actual punch-up; there were no split lips or blackened eyes. But clearly something unpleasant had happened.
His meal finished, Michael checked out of the hotel. The desk-girl appeared preoccupied and vaguely confused.
“Was there a bit of trouble last night?” asked Michael, signing the departure form.
“Sir?” The girl blinked, looking up.
“At the reception,” said Michael.
“I wasn’t working last night.”
Michael grinned, slyly. “But you’d have heard something if there was . . . Gossip and whatnot.”
The girl stared at her fingertips, abstractedly. Then, under her breath, she said, “Three years and now I don’t know what I saw in him.”
“Excuse me?” Michael frowned.
The girl twitched, then stirred, as if emerging from an hypnotic trance. “We hope you enjoyed your stay at the Golden Horse and come back soon.”
Baffled, Michael left the hotel and climbed into a black cab.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked.
Michael gave his address. Releasing the handbrake, the cabbie cranked into first gear then hesitated as his mobile phone rang. Michael recognised the ringtone as Huey Lewis’s The Power of Love. Once, Michael had adored that song, considering it sugary yet touching and inkeeping with Noel Coward’s adage about the power of cheap music. Now, it seemed utterly alien, somehow divorced from human experience. Michael supposed his tastes were maturing. He wondered what he would prefer to Mr Lewis’s boppy anthem. Kansas’s More than a Feeling? Or something more sophisticated - I’ve Got You Under My Skin, perhaps? No; they seemed equally irrelevant.
“Sorry mate,” said the cabbie, holding up his phone. “I’d better get this. It’s my brother. He’s had a bad morning.” Then, quietly, “We both have.” Jabbing a button, he clamped the phone to his ear.
Muttering, Michael eavesdropped on the cabbie’s half of the conversation.
“She said what? Nothing at all? Heartless cow. But when - yes, Jack, I know it was last night, when you got back from your shift. What I meant was how did she - you’re fucking joking? You were doing it and she just said . . . No, no. You must’ve misheard. What? She said it twice? She said I’m bored twice and then . . . She just got out of bed, gathered her stuff and went? Bloody bitch! Me? Well, I’m not faring much better. It certainly didn’t happen like that. But aye, it did happen . . . Ah, what? Look. Sorry, I don’t want to cut you off but I’ve got a fare. Yeah, later. The Rose and Crown? Sevenish? Good. Bring your wallet. I reckon we’re in for a long one.”
The cabbie switched off his phone. “What are the odds?” he mumbled.
Restless, Michael glanced out of the rear window. There was drama outside the hotel. The newlyweds were on the steps, arguing.
“Looks like there’s something in the air this morning,” remarked the cabbie, glancing in the rear-view mirror.
“What do you mean?” Michael asked.
“I brought those two here yesterday straight from the church. They were all over each other like a rash. Talk about lovey-dovey! But look at them now.”
“Their honeymoon night must have been a big disappointment,” said Michael, dryly. Then, weirdly, he wondered exactly what might constitute a successful honeymoon. The very idea seemed preposterous.
“I mustn’t gloat,” the cabbie went on. “My brother has had a similar bit of bad luck. He got home from the factory yesterday evening. Him and his missus were going at it – they’re like bloody rabbits, and not the sort you’d find in Watership Down - when suddenly, partway through, she goes cold and says it’s pointless and climbs out of bed and leaves. He hasn’t seen her since.”
“Grief,” said Michael. “Your brother must be cut up.”
“I’m not sure,” replied the cabbie. “He says he is. But then, he says what he thinks he ought to say, even if he doesn’t mean it. I mean, he’s angry because it’s pretty rude, offing at a moment like that. But I don’t know, I really don’t. We’ll be drowning our sorrows together, that‘s for sure.” He scratched his neck. “This morning,” a mystified note crept into his tobacco-roughened voice, “I woke up, looked at my wife lying next to me and thought, Is this it? Me and her? Till death us do part? It’s a crappy sentiment, I admit. But the whole thing seemed meaningless. Then she opened her eyes, looked at me, and . . . Well, we’ve been married fifteen years. I can read her like a roadmap. I looked into her eyes and I knew she was thinking the same thing. This really is a bloody waste of time.”
“This?” asked Michael. A peculiar tremor capered up his spine. As if he understood something without actually knowing what it was.
“You know,” said the cabbie, waving a hand vaguely, “the entire being-together lark. It was very odd. We’ll have to talk about it when my shift finishes. Anyway, let‘s get moving.”
For the second time the cabbie released the handbrake and slipped into first gear. Waiting for the traffic to clear, he went on, “It’s been a proper strange morning. Did you hear about that baby on the news? Some lorry was going along the motorway when a plastic bag blows off the trailer. There was something inside this bag, so it was a bit of a road hazard. When the traffic cops went to remove it they found a baby inside, chopped up something rotten. Poor bastard. They reckon it had been abandoned by its parents, you know. It was deformed, you see. Something weird about its back.”
The traffic opened and the cab pulled out into the road.
Michael looked out of the back window. The newlyweds were shouting now, squaring up like fighting birds at a cockfight. Without knowing why, Michael felt queasy. Maybe it was because he hated violence. Maybe it was something else.
The cab rattled on and, just before it rounded a corner and the hotel vanished from sight, Michael took a final look.
The last thing he saw was the bride springing at her spouse, fingernails stabbing toward his eyes like glossy red knives. With tangible satisfaction, the groom punched her squarely in the face. The bride dropped and the groom scratched his nose, as if nothing truly significant had happened.
YOU ALWAYS REMEMBER YOUR FIRST
by
LEE HARRIS
Some people might consider the fact that I screw dead people to be a touch on the macabre side. I understand that, I really do. It's human nature to fear what we don't understand, and looking at what I do without the benefit of context... Well, it'd be easy to get a bit freaked out by it, I guess.
I have to admit it was a bit odd for me at first, too. I mean, just logistically, there are a bunch of things to consider - lubrication not least among them. But once you've got it into your head that's what you're going to do, and you've done it a few times, it doesn't seem so taboo, any more - not such a big deal. It's not like anyone's getting hurt by it. And I still have standards - it's important that you understand that. I won't fuck just any body.
But here I am, prattling on, and I'd promised you context.
I left school without much in the way of an education. My own fault. I pride myself on being reasonably intelligent, but sometimes I can be a bit stupid. I wasted my last few years in school. I should have come away with a bunch of qualifications, and maybe even gone to university, but I discovered sex. Well, I discovered the opposite sex - which isn't quite the same thing - and desperately wanted them to discover me. It wouldn't have taken much discovering, honest! You only had to go to the Rose on a Saturday night, and there I'd be - drinking cider at the side of the bar, hoping one of the revellers would look over from the dance floor and give me a smile. Or even just catch my eye. As a courting technique, it left a lot to be desired. Sometimes I'd get lucky and manage to grab a snog from someone as she lurched to the bar, pissed as the proverbial, and that was alright, but it never went anywhere, and if I'm perfectly honest, I'm glad it didn't. They were tramps, most of them. I obviously had many, many lucky escapes. I'm one of the nice guys, you see. An
d all I ever wanted was a nice girl. Not like those tarts.
The girls at school were mostly better, but I could never pluck up the courage to ask one of them out. Fear of rejection, I suppose - the curse of the nice guy.
I did once send a Valentines card to one girl when I was in the fifth form. I'd fancied her for ages.
I knew where she lived, as I passed her house every day on the way to school. Not in a creepy way - it just happened to be on my way. So, one February I bought her this enormous card, and wrote some platitude inside - enough to register my interest, but not enough to make me sound pathetic, or anything - and I got up early to deliver it to her house. I had to leave it outside her front door, as it was way too big to fit through the letterbox. I weighted it down with a rock from her garden. A bit messy, but better that than have it blow away.
Halfway through mid-morning break she came over to me.
"Thanks for my card." she said.
I said something along the lines of "You're welcome", and she smiled at me, and waited, as if she expected me to say something else. Well, of course, I was too embarrassed at being found out to say anything coherent, or to come out with a witty aside, so she simply said "See you in class, then", and walked off. Typical of my luck. She started going out with Peter McAdams shortly after that, which was ok, cause he's a nice guy, too.
I never did find out how she knew it was from me, though, and she's married to a lawyer, these days.
And so it went on - I'd find someone I liked, but I never let them know how I felt. Apart from one girl - Simone. I became a little obsessed with her, if I'm really honest. I told myself it was love, but looking back on it I think I was just infatuated. She liked me, but - and here's the kicker - not in that way. Same old story. She hooked up with James, her high school sweetheart, got pregnant, got dumped, and still wouldn't think of me in that way. It's just so bloody frustrating when someone like him can get someone like her, and then walk away from it all, while I'd give anything to have that sort of relationship; that sort of person. She's still got the kid, though, so even she didn't come out of it ahead.
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