by Johnny Mains
I began to look for some means of escape.
‘It doesn’t matter where you go,’ said van der Merwe, ‘and it doesn’t matter what you say. All anyone will hear is the Call. You are the Messiah. Or, if you prefer a more medical analogy,’ and here his voice became a sneer, ‘you are the secondary host – unaffected by the disease that you spread but helpless to do anything but allow it to achieve its goal. I tried with Mohammed because he was here with you that day. I tried with others, but they were abject failures. The Call needed you and now that you are finally here, the whole world will listen to its cry.’
‘Who are you?’ I gasped, trying my best to ignore the horrifying self-mutilation that was taking place all around me with every word I spoke.
Van der Merwe glanced back at the pit. ‘I am the Call made flesh,’ he said. ‘I am part of that which you awoke all those years ago. But the Call cannot work directly. It needs a conduit, a catalyst, a means of making humankind understand and see its shining light of purity.’ He was smiling now. ‘It needs you.’
I ran. At the time I thought I was swift enough to outwit them, that it was sheer good fortune that allowed me to make my way unimpeded to the car to find the keys in the ignition. I drove back to my hotel, ignoring the concierge’s quizzical look as I dashed in and took the stairs two at a time. I had no idea what I was going to do but I needed time to think.
When I got to my room Aeliya was waiting for me.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked.
‘No,’ I replied, closing the door behind me. ‘I’m not. I don’t know what I’ve just seen but I do know that I need to get away from here as quickly as possible. Can you help me?’
But Aeliya was no longer listening. As soon as I had started to speak her expression had changed to one of total serenity. She picked up my bedside alarm clock and smashed it against the wall. Then she brought one of the fragments of fractured plastic up to her chin.
‘So I may see you better, my Lord,’ she said, before digging the point of it into her face.
I tried to stop her cutting away those beautiful lips that had only all too recently been pressed to mine, but she was surprisingly strong, and very determined. By the time she had finished there were blood blotches on the bed and scraps of her beautiful skin smeared across the wall.
She gave me one last, lidless look with those lovely bloodstained eyes of hers, and then left, no doubt to join those gathered around the pit.
Which brings me almost up to date in my writing of this account. Except of course for the part where I took a scalpel from my medical bag and, in front of the mirror and with great care, removed my lips. Mohammed must have done something similar to himself and I now realise that the clicking and tapping of the man’s teeth was his way of trying to communicate with me by Morse code.
But I couldn’t allow myself to communicate, even like that. Anything that came out of my mouth would cause whoever heard it to act the way Aeliya had, and those wretched souls in the forest. That is why once I had cut the flesh away I took a length of strong non-absorbable suture material on a hand-held needle and, bracing myself as I held the curved pointed steel in my right hand, proceeded to sew shut what remained of my mouth.
I pray that it will be enough.
I am the secondary host, van der Merwe said, the way by which this disease, religion, or whatever it is, can spread to the rest of humankind, just like the tiny schistosomes need a freshwater snail to complete part of their life cycle before they can infect humans.
Let this, then, be my final testament. I cannot allow myself to live, for if some reason the sutures should break or God forbid someone should come here and cut them free then humanity is lost. At least it seems to be only through speech that I communicate this pestilence and I thank God that it is not through the Call is love the Call is truth show your true face to the Call the Call is love show your true face show your face for love show your face show your face show your face sh—
The Garscube Creative Writing Group
MURIEL GRAY
The ending was good. The wrestler finds his slut mother in bed with the two men from the bar, and smashes one against the wall before throttling the other. Yes, it worked just fine. Graham admitted to himself that perhaps the prose required a little more elegance, maybe some subtle recalibration of pace, but on the whole it was satisfactory.
He picked up the three laden bin bags and swung them into the back of the Polaris Ranger, its idling engine chugging in the dark like a fishing boat, and pulled his work gauntlets back up over his wrists. The smell from the bags was gruesome. What new, inventive suffering had today’s veterinary students inflicted on their helpless, animal captives? The bags were heavy. Whole bodies perhaps, as well as organs. Graham climbed onto the bench seat, coughed once against the stench, pushed the truck into gear and trundled slowly towards the incinerator building. Maybe the wrestler should kill the mother too. Smother her. Crush her. Silence her. Punish her. But then again, maybe not. The strength of the story demanded that she’s kept alive to suffer. Enough. The ending was good. Best left.
Graham always wore a tie for the group. As the furnace fired up behind the metal boxing he mused on which one from the dozen he owned he would favour tonight. The tartan one was useful. Looked casual. Not too dressy. But this evening his mind was steering more towards the lilac daisies. He celebrated the fact that men could now wear pinks and pastels and flowered shirts, without being considered homosexual. It was fashionable. It felt good. It felt free. Being the only man in the group already rendered him self-conscious each time he took his seat. Dressing smartly steeled his nerves against those often deathly stares of indifference that met him on entering and scraping his chair into the tight half circle. Tonight, however, he felt strong. He’d noted Sonia’s contempt last week that he hadn’t finished his chapter, and now he had it. An ending. A good one. She could scowl all she liked but he was going to read it out with confidence and be justifiably proud. He threw the last bag into the hatch and pressed the button.
Professor Hanson raised an apologetic hand through the window as Graham stood at the open lab block door and rattled the keys in his boiler suit pocket. The lecturer’s face suggested guilt that the janitor was once again being kept waiting to lock up, and Graham watched pitilessly as the man fumbled with papers, scattering them as he hurried to make his tardy exit. Graham used the time to hone his Booker prize acceptance speech. He would be gracious. He would thank all those who deserved it, and then surprise the audience with introducing a political edge. It would depend on the events of the day of course, but he’d have an opinion that would make the front pages of all the broadsheets. ‘Kearney uses prize to plea for striking firemen.’ Or maybe ‘Bestselling author of Slammed scorns government u turn on debt.’ Something like that. Something that would touch people. Make them realise that not only was he the finest writer of his generation, but also the boldest, the most controversial.
Hanson exploded from the swing doors, nearly dropping his folder. Graham held the door for him.
‘Thanks Graham. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Lost track of time.’
‘Not a problem Professor.’
He scurried away then stopped, remembering.
‘The lights have gone in the male student changing rooms.’
Graham remained impassive. He enjoyed keeping Hanson guessing as to whether he was annoyed or not. He was good at it.
‘Not a problem.’
‘Good night then.’
‘Night.’
The gangly, awkward man waved a hand and crashed on through the fading light to his car. Graham watched him go, then peered into the building. He weighed up the time it would take to replace the lights and decided the chore could wait until tomorrow. It was group night. He flicked the mains switch off at the door and locked up.
It didn’t matter how many times he’d been through this, it never se
emed to change. They were silent when he entered. All four of them. He knew they’d been discussing him, could see it in their eyes.
A brief muttered hello as he adjusted his tie and seated himself in the usual place at the end. There was seldom any preamble. The Garscube Creative Writing Group took itself very seriously indeed. Graham waited patiently as the others ran through their work. He listened politely, nodding, cupping his chin in his hands as they droned out their dreary, stale ideas, his mind drifting as their voices merged into one low background hum of mediocrity. He clapped at the end of Fiona’s piece, if only for something to do until it was his turn. It didn’t deserve applause. Both her story, and the self-consciously arch reading of it were lame. He, on the other hand, would dazzle. He would make them see this week that he was better than all of them. Cleverer. Funnier. More astute in his observations and original in his style. Shereen finished off with some tiresome cliché about pre-partition India that made him press his fingernails into his palm in irritation, and suddenly there was an expectant silence. It was his turn at last. All eyes on him.
Graham cleared his throat, took the pages from his satchel, and calmly, slowly, began to read.
As he knew she would, the girl was in her usual seat on the bus. Graham watched her in the reflection of the glass, a ploy to make her think he was looking away from her, out of the window, instead of studying her closely as he was now. He watched as she pushed the spectacles up her squat, shiny nose each time she turned a page. He followed her hand as she lowered it to scratch at one of her generous thighs, pushing against the tight fabric of leggings that looked a size too small. He delighted in the tiny, almost imperceptible motions her small, cupid bow mouth made in its plump face as something in the book moved her. She always got on at Maryhill Road, and off again at Anniesland, so there was little time. He knew she sometimes stole a look at him. She had a furtive glance from beneath her glasses, tiny and fast, but not too fast for him. He’d worked hard to make sure his book, the one that was always ostentatiously laid on his lap, was interesting, something she wouldn’t have heard of but might look up later. Last week it had been Thomas Pynchon. The week before, R. Chetwynd-Hayes. But tonight the graft he’d put in watching her in the library had been fruitful, and as anticipated she was reading the Henry James she’d borrowed. His own copy of Portrait of a Lady was placed casually on his lap. He watched her carefully, trying not to smile with satisfaction as her small eyes flicked to him, to the book on his knee, then back up to his face with interest.
Her stop was three away. He waited as the bus pulled up, poured some passengers onto the pavement, then moved off. It had to be now. He stood, rising to get off. It was one stop before hers. No looking back. He tucked his book under his arm and walked casually to the front of the bus. Graham felt her behind him before he saw her. Her hand was on the metal pole beneath his. He could feel its warmth.
He walked no more than fifty yards before she caught up. Impressive. How was she going to do this he wondered? Her pace quickened and she overtook him, nonchalant, though the fast pace had taken its toll on her heavy frame and she was already a little out of breath. She dropped her book. Graham almost laughed out loud. Was she living in some Victorian fantasy? What next? A dropped hanky?
He picked up the Henry James and wiped the mud gently from the cover.
She ordered cappuccino. He ordered tea and a pastry. As the waitress set it down with clumsy clattering Graham regarded his reflection in the darkened cafe window. He was handsome. A catch. Look how beautiful his jaw line was, with its dusting of carefully trimmed stubble. Look at his deep set brown eyes and heavily lashed lids, his gently curling dark brown hair that he’d fashioned down the nape of his neck to accentuate its sinewy strength. Actually, maybe he was more than handsome. Maybe he was beautiful. Think how that face would look on the cover of The Observer magazine, looking back over one shoulder, wearing his loose denim shirt, and a fine silver chain round his neck. So what if she was plain and heavy? Maybe this time she’d be the one. The girl who would understand him. See past his physical beauty to the genius in him. Really know him.
Her name was Moira, and she loved historical fiction as well as modern. She wanted to be a writer. Of course she did. Why did she think she was here? She lit up when he told her he was one too. He talked of the ecstasy of plotting, the temporary schizophrenia of living in another character, of the task of keeping the reader looking in one direction while you, the author, snuck up on them from another direction and sprung the ending.
She laughed, she listened, she argued. She liked to know where a story was going. Enjoyed the familiarity of a well told tale where everything came out as you’d hoped. He listened politely, admiring the whiteness of her small even teeth that transformed her face when she laughed or smiled.
They discussed Dickens and Eyre, Shelley and Le Fanu, then he asked her what exactly it was that she wanted to write.
Moira’s eyes shone with pleasure as she took off her pink rimmed spectacles, wiped them on the corner of her shirt and placed them carefully back on her nose. Graham guessed few people, if any at all, had asked her this. Bullseye. He settled in his chair and waited.
It was a huge tale. Epic, yet focussing in on the detail of love, endeavour, suffering and longing, it was both exciting and heartbreaking. Graham felt his mouth dry as she described the setting, the vast Canadian tundra, where two 19th century settler families vied for trapping rights in the beautiful and most ferocious of landscapes. He could understand the resolve of the stiff, formal father, feel the frustration of the young, wilderness-savvy tomboy daughter and the wickedness of the boy from the rival family, using his charm and sex to woo, deceive and ruin. It was familiar territory, yet not clichéd. It was wonderful.
His turn. She leant forward, eager to hear. He mustered his courage, scared yet excited, and began to tell her of his masterpiece. The Mexican wrestler was famous, strong and universally celebrated. There were plastic action figures made in his image. Posters printed of his photograph. But his mother was the dark secret he dared not reveal to his adoring public. A feckless drug addict and whore. He had worked hard to escape her home made hell, a secret childhood of obscenity, physical brutality and deprivation. His fame, on having broken free of these satanic chains, was all his own doing and he was proud. But pushed too far, he kills two men and collapses in remorse, begging his mother’s forgiveness. It ends as they drag him from her hovel and she screams in agony that he, her child is the real obscenity, the stain on humanity and the darkness that engulfed her when he was born. The unwanted product of some violent coupling with a client, her son makes her sick every time she looks at him. His murderous instinct, which she has driven him to, is simply the squaring of the circle. Her final admission of her visceral hatred is his spiritual salvation.
Moira blinked at him and swallowed. Graham waited. She looked at him through the thick lenses of her spectacles and cleared her throat.
‘I think that’s one of the most remarkable stories I’ve ever heard.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Really. It’s dark, and terrible, of course, but, well the sheer boldness of it. The pain. The forging of a soul through such torment. It’s . . . absolutely amazing.’
He looked closely at her earnest, slightly sweaty face.
She was lying.
Moira felt lighter than air. She’d been aware of him for weeks of course. The beautiful boy on the bus. Once, her fevered passion had made her imagine she’d glimpsed him in her local library, and the possibility had made her heart beat faster. And now she had a date. A real date with this wonderful stranger. A brainy, bookish, gorgeous man. A mature vet student, it turned out, and even better, if such a thing was possible, a budding writer. So here she was, trying to select exactly the right outfit, the perfect look to go on not some routine trip to the cinema, or an awkward meal at a restaurant, but an evening at a creative writing group. An intell
ectual tussle. Something they shared and could talk about. That too was perfect. Moira was so happy she wanted to sing. Even the writer in her wouldn’t have dared to conjure an evening as faultless as this, this dazzling break from her small life, a receptionist in a commercial law firm, her confinement to a one roomed flat, nearly five hundred miles from her quiet, doting parents, the only two people in the world who loved her. It was a life with few friends and even fewer adventures. Now, the prospect that she might have both a boyfriend and a group of new and interesting acquaintances made her dizzy with joy. People who shared her love of storytelling and the frank exchange of ideas. It was impossibly thrilling.
Graham had apologised that the group was all female except for him, which only made her adore him more. How manly he was, to make women his friends, to be so confident and assured of himself that such a group wouldn’t intimidate him. She guessed that all the women were secretly in love with him. Why wouldn’t they be? It was a rare and exotic thing, a man enjoying the easy company of women, but then he was obviously a very special man.
She held up her tight and shiny green blouse to her chin and admired herself in the mirror. Yes. It was just right. A daring top but twinned with carefully demure trousers and low heels. She wanted Graham to notice the girl, discover she was more than just a friend who had reading in common. A passionate, tender, loyal, warm-blooded woman. Almost as important, she didn’t want the girls in the group to hate her. If they were Graham’s friends it was important they liked like her too. Moira put down the blouse and flicked nervously through the ten printed pages of ‘Frost That Binds the Boughs’, checking again that there was no dialogue. Attempting a Canadian accent would be humiliating, but these pages were free of speech and rich in description. She could read them aloud with pride, making him recognise that she had talent, that she was a person of worth. She moved aside, with some tenderness, a tribe of watchful soft toys on her bed laid her clothes carefully on the centre of the duvet, and went to run a bath.
