by Create50
“…Oh… God… Mrs Gladstone. I’m so sorry.”
“…I think… we may have a problem here.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt your finger; I just woke up and you were there on the floor. . .”
“You were telling me about your boss.”
“I just saw red.”
“I can see that. Do you think seeing red in the workplace and on the road could be the reason why you are seeing red in your dreams?”
“No.”
“I’m going to have to refer you to an anger management therapist. I’m not equipped for violent behaviour.”
“Please, Mrs Gladstone, I’ve been sent around the houses before. This dream is making me so tired and anxious. If I don’t sleep properly soon I don’t know what will happen.”
“You really hurt me, Mr Baxter.”
“I’ll pay double, triple even. Please, just one more attempt.”
“I…”
“Please.”
“The slightest outburst…”
“Anything you say.”
“Okay then.”
“I’m ready.”
“Let’s start again… Now, concentrate on your breathing… in… and out… in… and out… Slow it down now. Long, deep breaths. You are drifting further and further away… away from this room and on to a calm place in your mind. By the time I count down to one, you will fall into a deep, peaceful sleep, where all you can hear is my voice, carefully guiding you. Three… Two… One…. Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you.”
“Think back… further now… Try to remember the very first time your anger became uncontrollable.”
“My wife had cheated on me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I remember the moment I confronted her; that brief look of contempt just before she carried on ironing. I remember her curls of red hair escaping from her hair clip like wild fire as she furiously worked, as though doing something mundane would somehow block me out.”
“That must have hurt.”
“I just wanted her to look at me and see my pain, to see what she’d done to me. She at least owed me that much after all those years? We had two children together, surely that counted for something? But she just carried on, slamming the iron down on my pants, banging on about how moody and controlling I was and that she had just about had enough of my temper tantrums. That’s when she glanced up at my bloodshot face and snorted a laugh.”
“You’re shaking, Mr Baxter. . .”
“She knew I loved her and yet she threw it back in my face. Why would she do that? Would you do that?”
“Please keep your hands on the arm rests.”
“It all changed when I grabbed that damned iron out of her hands. How dare she mock me? I loved that cold, heartless…”
“Mr Baxter! Lean back and take a deep breath.”
“Those ignorant, scheming, callous bitches. They make me sick. They all make me physically sick!”
“You’re becoming extremely agitated again, Mr Baxter. You obviously have severe anger issues with powerful women, but we’re not going to be able to. . .”
“When they treat me like scum, when they walk all over me, when they don’t even register my existence, what do you damn well expect?”
“That’s it Mr Baxter, time to wake up. On the count of…”
“Don’t bother. . . I’ve been awake from the start.”
“Oh… Oh God… Something’s gone seriously wrong with the session. I need to call…”
“You’re shaking, Mrs Gladstone. Are you angry with me? Or just scared?”
“No, of course not.”
“Did you just laugh at me?”
“No… I. . .”
“You bitch.”
“What did you say?”
“Look at you sitting there in judgment, patronising me, believing yourself to be so innocent and beyond reproach. It seems to me that you walk through life and simply don’t see the damage you do to good, honest people like myself.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s just the problem Mrs Gladstone, people like you never do, but it’s about time you did. Tell me, has your husband had enough of your stupidity too?”
“My husband?”
“Is that why he hasn’t been home for the last few weeks? Quite a heated argument from what I saw, throwing his cases into the back of his 4x4 and racing off down the road. Another man’s life you’ve ruined?”
“You’ve been watching me?”
“Mrs Gladstone. You’re going red. . .”
“You’ve been watching me!”
“Of course. What did you expect me to do?”
“What are you talking about?”
“After what happened I had no choice but to follow you to work and when I saw your name above the door… well… everything became clear to me. I waited outside all day. It was such a hot day, but my screaming kids soon learnt to shut their whining little mouths.”
“I’m calling the…”
“Sit down!”
“You’re hurting me!”
“As I was saying. The journey home was terrifying. Blindly, you veered out of your lane into oncoming traffic as you applied your lipstick in the mirror. I remember the face on the other driver, his life flashing before him, his car nearly hitting a truck to avoid you. All the while you were oblivious, in your pathetic little red car.”
“Oh my God…”
“I watched you pull into your large gravel driveway and I waited until you drew your bedroom curtains. You must be educated! You have to pay!”
“Please! You’re going to break my fingers!”
“It’s time for us to go and for you to learn the full consequences of your actions.”
“No… I didn’t mean to upset you… please. I can still help you end your dream. You’ll stop seeing red, just listen to me!”
“I’ll only stop seeing red when I can see it in the flesh. It’s a vision you see, a beautiful vision. You can’t imagine the beauty, but you won’t have to, we’ll be seeing red together in all its many shades and in all its glory very, very soon.”
“No… please… put the paper weight down.”
“Such a beautiful colour, isn’t it?”
“Don’t do this.”
“On the count of one, this will hurt… a lot. Goodnight Mrs. Gladstone and thank you for listening.”
“Please, I’ll do anything.”
“Three…”
“I’m begging you!”
“Two…”
“Please?”
“One.”
The Auto-Cannibal
By Kathleen Bryson
Sky bright as a watermelon slice outside my closed lids but, if I raise them, pink disappears into hot, pale light. March, but this means little. Means only brighter skies; doesn’t mean I see their summer conclusion. Understand now what ‘looking at life through rose-tinted lenses’ means. Means you see things through skeins of blood-tinted, shuttered flesh.
Means your eyes are closed.
I wait before I open them. Want to remain behind my rosy veils, head slumped against the cool window. Number 38 alternately bounces and cruises towards Victoria; other passengers so accustomed to uneven rhythms that bodies anticipate jerks of traffic: sliding forward seconds before they must; bracing flesh against yet another pothole. My flesh, on the other hand, vulnerable. Lost city instincts along with three appendages and, simply, the ride hurts. Healed skin raw against seats.
Open my eyes and dispel the pink.
See two things immediately. One, retrieval truck, blank as a baby, lumbering past in the opposite lane. Two, several seats ahead, off-duty Retriever. Content under his/her dark shawl, spidery material preventing recognition. People actively dislike Retrievers, resentment that even overrides disgust at Stumpers. Concealment necessary from former family, friends, colleagues. They've made their beds. Consider this fact, and the dark-clad figure. Choices, no choices. M
ain thing this: they're gloriously, healthily fat. Among the few who regularly get meat. Get a percentage off people like me.
Truck first came for me nine months ago. After the first amputation, my flesh was good, mouth-watering; roasted with chicory, small white pellets of valuable garlic, rehydrated mushrooms – perks allowed for your first time. Heard of – even seen pictures of – lurid foods like watermelon and goulash, but truth is I don’t know that taste and, obviously, my culinary skills are limited. Yet I cooked it myself, propped up on both hands and single leg. So good. Ate up my whole limb within two weeks. Left arm also filling but, as they predict, grew tired of the oily taste, no matter how well seasoned. Left leg stuck in my throat. Only hunger finally drove it down the hatch; didn’t care for it, near raw, veins too close to the surface, like on my eyelids. Retriever took their cut; remaining under-cooked blob mine, duly gagged on, duly swallowed. Still, it was food.
Press my spine hard against the seat. Retriever hasn’t seen me, but I’d only be meat. Maybe a guilty reminder of choices made. Eat rather than be eaten. No. Scavenge, rather than become one’s own parasite. Bus draws close to Islington. Treble-phantom-itch driving me nuts. Can't concentrate on real pain, scraping hunger in my stomach, now-invisible limbs demanding attention. Window dirty. Fingerprints streaked across glass surface. For a moment, organic grease makes my stomach revolt in hunger; perhaps have acquired taste for human produce. But then my (non)legs itch again, and I'm just hungry; hunger does strange things to a person.
Make myself see past double-glazing to Essex Road, where skeletons walk slowly. Some refused to choose; these dot the street, briefly. My whole family went this way. My lover went this way too, wasting until I counted ribs that pushed her skin, fossilised parentheses. That’s how they looked beneath. Beneath the dwindling meat of her torso. For those brackets held nothing, really; an empty exception: (((((()))))) Eventually, retrieval trucks will come for these shrinking cadavers who walk old Essex Road, too. See, they get you anyway in the end. Least you can do is enjoy your hangman’s meal.
Lied about Retrievers being fat. Not really, the way people used to be fifteen years ago, the millennium. Retrievers dangerously thin even then, but these days I want them obese; want their relative thickness bulging like old-fashioned babies, well-fed, skin tight over all that meat. All that flesh. Cherubs clad in black, Gothic shawls. They're beautiful. My mouth suddenly, embarrassingly, wet; I look down at my hand, curled in my lap.
Bus crunches to halt before Farringdon. Brusquely lifted from seat. Maybe this person still sitting there is my Retriever. My own pulp pads out this Retriever’s body. I am part of this Retriever.
And I let my anger go.
Carried like a child down from the top level. Can smell dread, people willing themselves not to look at my stumps. Juxtaposition of thought: That could be me, with three limbs gone and one to go. And: Look at that bundled meat; how hungry I am. They turn away, ashamed. Have realised they’re animals, and ravenous ones at that.
Dumped unceremoniously by bus stop. Skin on arm and face hot, stretch out phantom legs, basking in spring sunlight. Exmouth Market. Sky too bright across the street. Conjure an alley packed with healthy people, lively and animated, vibrant. Can almost smell long-gone scents: leather, cinnamon, honest perspiration, acrid tobacco. Reckon I was ten years old last time I smelled tobacco, and a decade older now.
Cinnamon is a good memory. When I was a girl, people had dried spices, the cinnamon tree soon perished. My nose tingles. To casual viewers I'm a Stumper by a bus stop. But I'm powerful; I hear old market-clamour: whistles, petrol cars, voices raised in fury or excitement to sell and haggle. Consumerism I’m reviewing with nostalgia. We devour ourselves on short-term contracts. Tell myself this, but feel no bitterness. Only sadness as I close my eyes and dream of bounties I never knew. Smell and hear and see the market, and then, finally, allow myself to taste. Imagine wandering – on legs – past stalls with bright crisp peppers, yellow, green and ruby; clean vegetable taste in my mouth, spiky, fresh. So I’ve heard. Stalls of pastries, breads – thick, chunky with yeast; flour dry on my palate, filling. Read about these things. Think of sausages, hung in encasements, meat mixed with herbs mixed with bread mixed with meat mixed with meat –
Retriever and Cook arrive. Reasonably sure it’s the same Retriever as on the bus, but can’t prove it. All Retrievers look alike: satiated, covered with diaphanous shrouds of black lace. Still, Retriever shifts suddenly as Cook lifts me up-up-up into the wild blue yonder and I catch a glimpse of matched eyes beneath veil. Furtive. Half-ashamed. That’s as it should be. Violent jealousy, wishing nothing more than that, like this Retriever, I'd chosen to scavenge. But full of morality last year; making the virtuous choice. Not so sure now. Funny how hunger changes a person. Resent Retrievers, but I respect them, too.
Great, awkward Cook carries me easily through empty market. In more plentiful times, he’d’ve been a big man. Now folds of skin on a huge bone-framework lifting me past the ghost-town of stalls. Gets his scraps too, we all do; just enough to stay alive. State doles out perishable stipends, rationing till the day you must choose. Stumper or Retriever or Cook. Or nothing at all. No surplus of Retrievers: everyone so hungry for pounds of flesh they’ll happily chew off their own feet. Or the hands that feed them. And so on. State dispenses crackers and mush whilst waving the promise of bulk past our noses. Most women amenorrheic. Fertility a curse. Another mouth to feed. Though there’s some that would eat their own. I’m sorry. It’s grim and it’s true. Historical precedents. My lover and I, blood dried up from hunger, both grew as barren as mules. Mule another noun I’ve only heard about, like goulash or watermelon. Nostalgic for nouns I’ve never seen.
Mule. Wonder if it’s edible.
Sure it is.
So. History. Starving cultures should rise up, break down. Any movement at all. Should hunt each other down for food. But we don't. Flensed us of rebellion, along with sinews and marrow. (Crack shin-bones, simmer with garlic pellets for tasty soup with quite a kick!) We're history.
Retriever’s slow, laden down with surgery kit. Skilled workers, practised in amputational arts, healing gels, amazing anaesthetic. Clean methods: round stumps, smooth perfect billiard-balls. No trauma here, folks. The only pain is spectral, an apparition in your head.
Last limb, desperately afraid as with my first. RightlegLeftarmLeftlegRightarm. SummerAutumnWinterSpring. Ancient flow of seasons, equinoxes, solstices. Authority and credence. State is Mama: crackers and benediction; everything you crave. Soul-food. Right arm last, kindly bowing to particulars of right-handed majority.
Fooling myself: have no idea how they reason. Cook waits for Retriever on doorstep. I'm a moveable feast. Look straight ahead. Click, key enters the lock, three of us inside.
White electric trucks come gleaming like larvae; my first three were done there, inside vehicles. Pale lorries coast the streets on powered tracks to collect almost-corpses of the un-cooperative.
Moist odour fills my nostrils. Hallway dark red. Colour the insides of mouths, outsides of genitals. Cook clutches me too tightly as he ascends, trailing the retriever, and my heart pounds in my ribcage.
Don’t worry, I hear Cook speak softly, it will be okay. Easy for him to say. But he’s doomed, too, and so’s the Retriever, and so are we all. So I take comfort, and think of bright green peppers as the Cook bumps me over several flights of stairs.
Retriever digs deep inside its shawls for keys, crimson door swings open, I recognise that fragrance for what it is. Heady, sexual excitement, not from me. The Cook, or the Retriever. Doesn't matter. Door clicks shut. Operating table, clinical, no stove, this puzzles me. Cook's here to concoct the meal on the spot. Prêt-à-manger, as it were. Walls rust-stained wood. No windows in this room, but perhaps in the next. Again that pervading scent of arousal, or merely hunger? Maybe I’m smelly, after all.
Shut my eyes and ears to twitches and clicks as Retriever fingers the steel and miracle anaesthetics. C
ook stands silently behind me; prop myself up on one hand. This won’t be a violent act, but I don’t want to see its rituals.
As quick and painless as the other three. On the table. Completely numbed yet incomplete. Emaciated grub, torso with head. Stomach rumbles: chorus of raspy-voiced angels. Feed me. Rust-coloured ceiling, but how will my right arm taste? Feed me.
Not sure if Cook and Retriever hear me pleading, or even if words exit from my lips, but their attention shifts. Then that smell in the air again.
But they're not coming closer; not bringing me my last delicious limb. The smell. Can hear them arguing, salivating, blood-scent fresher than dots on my cauterized stump. Cannot force my eyes down from the ceiling, yet hear their animalistic fury as teeth tear my severed arm, for they're hungry too, and they’re sharing this meal. Can even sense the satiation once they’ve had their fill.
Cannot hate them. Still hungry, but floating on above my body. Could have eaten too, filled myself in this great conspiracy of limbs, torsos, broken promises.
Arms lift and tenderly place me on the floor of the little room beyond. Bloodlust tremors, but they’ve made the transition: human. Treat my torso with respect now; dim the lights in the antechamber before they quietly leave. On my back, once more the ceiling. They’ll come back. I won't suffer. This room has a window, as I suspected, so sunlight whittles through. No light bulbs. Why should there be? No need. I have no needs now; I should not hunger. Am only a portion, a grave pupa with thoughts above my station. A dazzling, noisy market but it’s no good; the image grows dim. Try to think of my long-dead lover, a slip of a girl, but she too fades away.
Now it’s dusk. To eat. To be eaten. Have still not decided. As I lie here, two images bob slowly, one dulling orb to the other. All the time in the world. In my left eye, momentarily the blunt white heaviness of the universal lorry; it's Famine herself. In my right, the scaly, butterfly-thin scrapings of dark veils, sexless human shapes solidifying slowly, becoming thick crust before my sight. Then the pale truck again. Right, left. Back and forth.
The Swing
