by Sam Millar
“What? What are you doing?”
His mind wasn’t working right, as if it were wrapped in putty. Everything was soft and filtered, even the noise around him. He felt like he wanted to throw up but didn’t have the energy. He became light-headed. The sensation was one of floating away. Somehow, it was important that he stay on the ground. He blinked his eyes to try and clear his thinking. There were white spots behind his lids. They turned black when he opened his eye. He watched them, dancing across the ceiling. What was it about spots? There was something important but he couldn’t remember. Maybe it would come back to him, he thought and closed his eye, once more. He screamed to be released, but the mob only screamed louder, laughing, encouraged by his fear and helplessness. Now he felt as humiliated and as naked as the beasts whose deaths he had witnessed a few minutes ago.
“Baptise. Bap-bap-tise. Baptise. Bap-bap-tise,” they chanted, almost in song. “Baptise. Bap-bap-tise …”
The more Paul struggled, the tighter their grip on him became. He fought off the twin impulses to scream and kick. Within seconds, he was drained and felt his body go limp, like paper damp with water.
“Now you’re learning,” whispered Geordie into his ear. “You can struggle, Idiot, but you can never win. Not here, not in this place. Never ever in this place …”
Unexpectedly, the crowd stopped and eased him to the floor, gently, as if he were something fragile, a tiny baby newly born.
“John and Alfred? Take his ankles. Raymond? His left hand; I’ve got his right. The rest of you stand back,” commanded Geordie.
“What are you going to –” But before Paul could complete his question, he found himself being hoisted into the air.
“Ready lads?” said Geordie. “One …”
“Hey!” shouted Paul, fear in his voice, as he felt his body swaying to and fro. “What are you –?”
“Two …”
“Look, okay. You win. Please …”
“Hope you can swim, Idiot. Threeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”
He remembered sailing through the air, naked, and the truly exhilarating experience of what birds must feel at the start of take-off. A swirl of colours passed over his perspective. He remembered his penis wobbling from side to side, making horrible slapping sounds, as it winked at him like a one-eyed pirate.
Only when he realised that they had tossed him from the third floor and that he was falling quite rapidly towards his death, did he scream.
Some ray of hope, perhaps augmented by his closeness to death, seemed to fill him with adrenaline, dulling the fear inside. His life didn’t fly before him in a blink of an eye – as was rumoured in near-death experiences – but when his face and body crashed intp the red carpet beneath him, killing him instantly, he did piss himself.
Red. What would the world be without it? It is the most attractive of colours, primary in its superiority. Roses, apples, wines and Valentines. Red sunsets and hot love. Red is the component and attribute of power, vitality, passion, anger and excitement. All are governed by red. But without doubt, the most important of all reds is blood. Without it, we are nothing. It is a life-giver.
When you come upon an action at the precise moment of occurrence, movement is frozen, sound waves do not propagate, and what you see is not real. And so it happened, spreading through Paul’s whole being as he found himself swimming in blood – lakes and seas of the stuff – knowing if he didn’t do something very quickly, it would not be a life-giver but a life-taker.
His head came to the surface, only to find the rest of his body being pulled back down by the blood’s magnetic power. He was a good swimmer, loved to swim, but this thick liquid was unlike water. It had more in common with a swamp, and the more he struggled the stronger it became.
The workers had surrounded the massive blood tank, cheering him each time his head rose to the challenge. He didn’t know how deep the tank was, nor how wide, but it seemed endless. Yet, he believed he could accurately form a picture of how the tank had been apportioned for all the running blood oozing and streaming from the unwilling throats of cows and sheep. Only now did his brain kick in, telling him how he had hit the red carpet of a swimming pool full of animal blood, doing a massive belly-flap before quickly sinking like a stone, his body rapidly losing buoyancy.
The blood disorientated him, his direction, as did his sense of survival, which he would have had if he were drowning at sea, in beautiful salty water.
Each gasp of air released a mouthful of blood. He remembered the beautiful voice of Shank telling them to bring him up, he’s had enough. Then the hateful words of Geordie saying no, others have lasted longer, test him, test the bastard Idiot.
“Out, I said. Take him out – now,” commanded Shank, no longer tolerating Geordie’s defiance.
Hands quickly reached into the pool and retrieved the bloody body of Paul. He resembled something which has just crawled from the womb, all bloody and slimy, slithering and squirming on the floor, a dead thing somehow reactivated. When he coughed, great bubbles of orange and pink emerged from his throat gushing out his mouth and down his nostrils and slowly but surely he realised he was still alive – barely.
“You showed favouritism, Shank,” accused Geordie. “He still had ten seconds left.”
“Perhaps,” replied Shank, removing a pocket watch from his waistcoat before smiling. “Perhaps your watch is simply wrong? Eh, Geordie?”
Geordie glared at the motionless body at her feet on the unforgiving hardwood floor. She knew there were certain lines even she could not cross. But she also knew there were lines needing to be crossed. “He still hasn’t toasted our health, yet,” she said, smiling deviously. “Even you can’t deny us tradition, Shank.”
Shank though for a moment. “He’ll do it. I’ve no doubt whatsoever. Isn’t that right, Mister Goodman?”
Paul could hear the words falling in his direction, but he could not understand their meaning. Hands pulled him up and steadied him against the massive metal pool.
“Almost home, Mister Goodman,” said Shank staring directly into Paul’s eyes, like a trainer who had just witnessed his boxer take an unmerciful battering.
You’ve almost got the job, Paul, said the voice of his mother in his head. Show them what a man you are, show them good and proper, she encouraged. And don’t forget all that meat for free each Friday. We’ll show the whole street it. Steak and sausages and chops and …
“Here you go, Idiot,” said Geordie’s voice, breaking his thoughts. She held a pint glass full of warm blood to Paul’s mouth. “Drink it down, deep to your stomach. Drink and the job is yours. Isn’t that right, Shank.”
Shank said nothing. There was nothing he could say. All were watching. All remembered their own bloody initiation in the pool of horror and pint of terror. There would be no exception.
You can do it, Son, enthused his mother’s crackly voice. One great gulp and it’s all over. Think of it as a pint of coloured Guinness. You can do it …
“Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it,” chanted the crowd who had now gathered, surrounding Paul in a circle. “Do it. Do it. Do it …” On and on they went, hypnotised by their own sound.
The smell in Paul’s nostrils made him think of OXO cubes. He loved OXO cubes, especially on winter nights. He knew he would never touch another one again as he brought the pint to his lips, dreading the stench, not wanting to look behind Geordie’s shoulders, knowing a tiny calf lay staggered and drained, strung up by its skull, its long legs dangling as a small pool of blood grew from it, the same blood resting on his lips, its taste of salty iron familiar from his past as a brawler.
“You can do it,” said a voice in his head. It sounded like Shank’s voice but it was probably his mother’s. “One great gulp for mankind …”
An urgency for completion filtered through Paul, as if tiny threads of his brain were becoming unstitched. In his mind, he was in an arid region, scorching heat piling down on him, sandstorms flaying his skin. He felt his tongue swell through pa
rched and peeling lips. In was only a matter of time before he was dead, the sand covering his body.
When the oasis came into view, it was the most beautiful sight he had ever witnessed. He drank from its water, greedily, and believed it to be the greatest taste he had ever tasted, gulping it down, disregarding the strange lumps floating on top.
Thirst. Thirst. Thirst …
“Good man, Goodman. Well done!” exclaimed Shank, shaking his head in admiration. “Well bloody done, indeed, Mister Goodman!”
The crowd joined in, whistling and cheering, even those who had wanted him to fail, to die before their eyes, begrudgingly joined in the congratulations.
Paul said nothing. He didn’t trust himself. The pint of blood sat in his stomach like an angry fist.
Well done, Son, said the voice of his mother. You’ve done us proud. I’ll have a big mug of tea waiting for you when you get home. Wait ’til Maggie Mullan hears this. Her and her skinny pork chops on a Sunday. I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting a bit of bacon with your spuds …?
“Raymond? Take Mister Goodman to the shower and see that he gets some overalls to go home in. He starts Monday morning, six o’clock sharp. Is that sound, Mister Goodman?”
For the first time since entering this marvellous and terrifying place, Paul smiled.
“That … that is sound, Mister Shank. Very sound, indeed. Thank … thank you.”
Once outside the abattoir, Paul felt free. He inhaled the cold air with the same vigour he had used when he thought he was drowning in a sea of stinking blood mixed with sounds and vibrant sinister smells.
It was dark now with evening dominating the hazy distance, seemingly in all directions at once, squeezing out the last measure. Only the rough rising shapes of trees and rusted vehicles with their small properties of light and sound were sharp enough to make a clear image in his head, to help guide him home, not towards the moonlit fields that spread as far as the eye could see, but towards the dark and ominous woods that towered behind the abattoir. The smell of dinners being prepared in far-off homes floated on the soft breeze, signalling the close of day.
The image of the mysterious Geordie, her legs shackled and imprisoned forever, surfaced again in his head. He knew she was watching him from a window but he didn’t look back, even though he wanted to. He wanted to see her face. Was it filled with defeat? Hatred? Indifference? He wanted to look back, but didn’t. He was just glad to be going home.
CHAPTER TWO
DREAMS OF DARKNESS AND DELICIOUS DEATH
“In dreams begins responsibility.”
Yeats
“There was a door and I couldn’t open it. I could not touch the handle. Why could I not walk out of my prison? What is hell? Hell is oneself, hell is alone, the other figures in it merely projections. There is nothing to escape from and nothing to escape to. One is always alone …”
T.S. Elliot
DREAMS, TO PHILIP Kennedy, serve a very specific purpose. They say dreams have no colour, but Philip Kennedy knows that to be untrue. His dreams are in red.
Sometimes the red is as placid as oil on a candle’s drip and is almost calming. Sometimes it beads his brow with sweat. But always, that horrible whispering, accusing voice: Why? Why me? Why why why …?
Through sheer force of will, he smashed the present nightmare’s iron grip, waking breathless in the raw-boned darkness, almost as if he were a dream, a ghost, a figment conjured out of need.
He’d had a headache for four days. It wasn’t his first – he had a history of migraines, but usually, by morning, the pain was gone. This was different. The headaches had left a residue of pain unlike anything he had tasted. He believed that the young man, who had visited the shop two days ago, inquiring about snooker cues, had sparked all this. Not forgetting, of course, Catherine’s treacherous, but clumsy sleight-of-hand …
Everything began spinning around him as the remnants of last night’s alcohol coursed through his veins. In his head, he heard the unmistakable sound of someone trying to ease a cork from a neck of a bottle. It was an enticing hum and the unnatural progression of his thoughts lead repeatedly back to this imagined sound until he could no longer tolerate its torturous call.
Rising, he poked the patches of darkness until he found the open cabinet and skilfully fiddled a slab of wood from its place, pulling it out before capturing the bottle of whiskey with its torn label and lying words. Frantically – but expertly – he mixed the stale water from the rusted jug with just the right amount of alcohol – not so much that you could smell it but more than enough to give it that little kick. A little kick in the arse …
Impatiently, he swished the diluted alcohol through his teeth, swallowing the amber liquid, repeating the exercise until the taste returned to his tongue, burning it with intensity, wishing he could explore the bottle again and again, forever and a day, never ending its flow, admiring the simplicity of its power.
The throbbing slowly began to subside and he felt only numbness and depletion while walking to the window. Air. Need some air …
He wrestled the reluctant window open and poked his head outside its frame, as if preparing for the guillotine. Above him the sky was disturbing and grey. He could see bellies of clouds moving overhead and thought about rain. He thought about a beach …
In due course, he made his way downstairs to the shop, focusing his thoughts upon routine tasks, passing Cathleen’s bedroom, stopping at the toilet to relieve himself in the sick light of the dingy space.
The shop itself was carefully arranged in a dimly lit, fragile ecology of handmade cupboards and drawers. The displays before him presented shelves of silverware lounging on black velvet with plenty of separation between each item. Cathleen didn’t believe in crowding the more expensive goods in the shop.
Tools, manually and electrically driven, lined the far walls like trophies and weapons; do-it-yourself books poked from wooden crates. Once, they had belonged to the men from town; now they belonged to Cathleen, held by the power of ransom. She would never use any of the tools, of course, but that wasn’t the point. What she had, they didn’t. She always laughed at their feeble excuses, how they always said for a couple of days – a week at most. But the week would turn into a month, and before long, the docket would have accumulated enough late-payment penalties to make payment unattainable.
Getting the goods from the bad … Never borrow, was her motto. Be the one everyone owes. Foster suspicion. That’s the power. The true power. Taking the goods from the bad. She loved that last saying. Thought it up one Sunday at church. Take the goods from the bad, the scum, because that is all they are – will always be. Scum.
Without exception, his preferred items were the collections of old books – some of them first printing editions: Nietzsche, Tolstoy and Kant shoulder to shoulder with Shakespeare, Socrates, Shaw and Joyce.
One of Kennedy’s favourite books, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, was beginning to look a bit ragged – a bit like its hero – its spine withered and tarnished. It was a first edition, and more care should have been granted it, but he couldn’t resist rereading it every chance he had, regardless of how many times he had read it.
Catherine had threatened to burn the book, along with all the others, but quickly recanted seeing the storm in his face. Weather is always unpredictable, but especially the storm …
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist sat next to, Don Quixote, his favourite.
He loved the smell from the books, the musky smell of opium which never failed to bring back the lanced days of childhood memories; of a childhood he hated and feared, but would give everything he owned to be transported back to that time.
Kennedy walked out on to the street and pulled the rusted shudders up from the shop’s front, casting a feeble light into the entrance of the shop, revealing more items ‘rescued’ from the hands of their owners: Sunday suits lined up like naked carcasses in the local abattoir for all to see – a million threads, a thousand buttons, a universe of
heart-breaking stories captured and exposed, humiliating the one-time owners; an army of candlesticks and lamps granted no light, only a silvery coating of cobwebs falsely glimmering with life, each tagged with the sale price; women’s shoes surpassed men’s boots as did the wedding rings of dainty fingers; blocks upon blocks of bed linen accumulated from floor to ceiling, standing like giant pillars of cloth, all mixed in the melting pot of personal heirlooms, too numerous to calculate.
Unenthusiastically, he made his way back to the shop, towards the kitchen.
Dirty plates loitered in the sink, grease congealing. He decided to make some coffee before preparing breakfast for Cathleen, his sick wife.
The thought of entering her room, seeing her sitting atop the bed, her nylons knotted about her massive ankles, made him shudder. Occasionally, she would wink, just as he prepared to leave, a wink that said: don’t forget my bedpan, darling. I had a terrible night last night. Must stop eating those prunes, even though I am quite partial to them. All this, while spreading her enormous, unnaturally white legs wide across the bed in an unspoken declaration of territorial rights.
Cathleen had already survived two husbands, both of whom rested side by side at the local cemetery like bookends of death. Unfortunately for Kennedy, there would be little chance of husband four – or wife two.
It had been over two years since he had been in that bed, but Kennedy thanked God for small mercies. Over the years, Cathleen had piled on the weight at an incredible rate, as if preparing for the Guinness Book of Records. Her one-time lovely face had been consumed then camouflaged with layer upon layer of candle-grease fat, until he barely recognised her as the woman he had first met.
