But she didn’t have to kiss him. She only had to satisfy him. The quicker she did that, the sooner he would leave. Before he made contact she sank to her knees on the kitchen floor and unbuttoned his trousers. She reached in, found the panel in his underwear and guided his penis through it. Already he was gasping. Before she took it in her mouth she studied it briefly. There wasn’t much to it. In its way, it was very much like a fat, short sausage. The only difference was the musky hair that surrounded it and the hole in its end. Anything was better than kissing him though.
Anything at all.
‘Keep your eyes open and let me know if you see them coming. They mustn’t know. And they must never see me like this.’
Torrance pushed his penis into her face without answering. It fit easily inside her mouth. Even though he thrust with all his strength it never reached the back of her throat. There was very little she had to do, seeing as he wanted to be in command. So she let him pump away at her face and kept her mouth open for him. The worst part was the way her head banged back against the kitchen cupboards.
It was a small price to pay.
When it came right down to it, a bull’s life was a lot easier than a stockman’s.
It was easier than the life of most of the townsfolk of Abyrne. Aside from the quarterly mating flurry, which obviously exhausted the bulls – the stockmen joked about how they’d like a reason to be similarly worn out – there was little else for them to do but feed and rest. Shanti made a point of stopping by BLUE-792’s enclosure regularly, especially in the lunch break when there was likely to be no one else around.
At first he’d hidden from the bull, not letting it know that he was observing it. As the number of visits increased, Shanti let the bull glimpse him through the cracks in his panelled pen. Sometimes he whispered to the bull:
‘I’ve seen your son. He’s beautiful.’
Or:
‘He’s going to be a bull. A special one, just like you.’
Did BLUE-792 understand him? The Chosen listened daily to the chatter and banter and shouts of the stockmen. Maybe they could interpret some of the words even though they couldn’t speak. Shanti didn’t care one way or the other. He wanted to let the bull know that he thought about him. That he watched him. That he cared.
These were ideas and feelings he could never share with anyone if he wanted to stay alive and keep his job. He knew he should have been frightened to have such notions but he wasn’t.
That was what really scared him.
Occasionally, when BLUE-792 was resting, Shanti would tap a soft beat on the panels. He would peer through a crack or even stand in plain view on the outside of the enclosure’s gate. The bull watched him but that was all.
The morning was an agonised parade of last-second glances.
Placing the muzzle swiftly and correctly required unbreakable concentration. The sound of breached crania and pressure-shocked brain tissue was blotted out by the noise of the bolt gun. Its air supply hose looped up behind Shanti like a black viper draped from the ceiling. The pneumatic snake fired its pointed tongue every time Shanti touched its trigger. Its bite was deadly.
‘Ice Pick! Chain speed, please!’
Shanti could hear the delight in Torrance’s voice. It was because Torrance knew that Ice Pick Rick Shanti was annihilating the Chosen like a machine.
‘One thirty-one, sir.’
‘Outstanding, Rick. You know how to make an old stockman very happy. No one’s going hungry in Abyrne when you’re on the stun. And, hey, don’t let this conversation slow you down.’
He didn’t.
At the same time he knew that sooner or later he would slow down and that it had nothing to do with anything Bob Torrance said.
Snatches of their language had come to him. He didn’t understand how exactly, only that it must have been the same way he picked up language from his own family as he grew up – because he needed to know it.
In front of him the access panel slid open and he shared a split second of eye contact with the Chosen before him.
‘God is supreme. The flesh is sacred.’
He placed the bolt gun to the centre of its forehead, pulled the trigger.
Hiss, clunk. The light in the eyes of the Chosen went out. He hit the completion button. The access panel slid shut.
It was intuitive perhaps that the beginning of each message would be some kind of greeting or possibly the name of the Chosen ‘speaking’ and that the end of each communication would be some kind of farewell. That wasn’t enough of an explanation for how he’d picked it up so easily, though. Shanti thought he knew the meaning of taps and breaths because they were so familiar.
On a subliminal level he heard the sounds every day. All the stockmen did. Therefore, in some way, the sounds the Chosen made must have become, at the very least, a ubiquitous part of MMP life. Such sounds would have been prevalent in every part of the factory, penetrating the unconscious mind of every worker. Shanti surmised that it would only take a little extra effort to begin interpreting the sounds and rhythms the Chosen made, translating them into the language of the townsfolk. He had worked there for ten years. It was no wonder that, once he’d decided it was language the Chosen were using and not just random noise, he’d come to understand it so quickly.
The panel opened. New eyes. The same eyes. Eyes he’d seen a hundred thousand times. Their colours differed, their bloodlines varied. He knew them all. He loved the Chosen in a way he could not communicate.
‘God is supreme. The flesh is sacred.’
Hiss, clunk.
Hit the button.
He thought about the language all the time, trying hard in his waking hours to make connections between groups and types of taps and the accompanying hisses and sighs. It was at night, however, that the real leaps came to him. He would dream that BLUE-792 was signalling to him and then speaking the meaning of each phrase. In the morning Shanti would remember every nuance and he would run harder to work, keen to test his new knowledge.
Eyes. Beautiful eyes.
‘…supreme…sacred.’
Hiss, clunk.
Red button.
It took only a few days of this for his excitement to turn to a deeper dread of the plant than before. He could not unlearn what the Chosen were saying to each other. The meanings of many pattered exchanges became clearer and Shanti found himself heartsick over what he heard. Manning the bolt gun, what everyone loved him for, had become a new nightmare. Far worse than before.
‘…supreme.’
Hiss, clunk.
‘…sacred.’
Hiss, clunk.
Sacred.
Hiss, clunk.
One by one he dropped the Chosen, sent them to the bleeding station knowing none would recover consciousness on his shift. His part was done and done well. But he heard them now in every part of the plant. There was very little he no longer understood about the nature of the Chosen. They were noble in a way that few in Abyrne could ever understand. Except John Collins and his followers.
In the crowd pens that led to the restrainer they spoke a prayer to each other. Shanti now heard the prayer hundreds of times a day:
Hhaah, Ssuuh. Your time comes. Surely it comes. May you go forward into your time with great dignity. May you hold your head up before the deft ones and welcome their shining points and blades. May your nightfall be complete before they take what you go to give. We who give, we who are certain to follow, salute you. On a far tomorrow we will see you with new eyes. We will see you in a land where pain is not even a memory, where what we go to give will not be asked for again. Hah, suh. Surely your time comes. Give what you have to give, give it freely. We who give salute you for we are certain to follow. Haah, suuh. For all our times come.
Looking into their eyes, pulling the trigger of the bolt gun became harder and harder to do. The gun itself seemed heavier than before, a gun made of lead. He believed he’d been a man of peace all these years. Doling out the inevitable with tru
e compassion and skill. Never allowing a morsel of meat to pass his lips. But here he was, performing his duty still and fully conscious now of what it meant. Here he was listening to the gentle Chosen prepare for their premature, violent deaths with the grace of saints. No Parson of the Welfare could come close to their purity of heart. The townsfolk did not begin to understand the manner of evil that ruled Abyrne. The town was rotten, and everyone in it, save just a few, were the worms that fed on its foulness.
Shanti knew he was the rottenest worm of them all. He was the stun man, the bolt gunner, the stockman every MMP worker respected for his death-dealing talent. Shanti was the killer that made the way the town worked possible.
Everything began and ended with him.
Ten
‘What else have you filled their heads with?’
‘I haven’t bothered with their heads. It’s their spirits I’ve communicated with. The townsfolk are hungry, Magnus, but not for the tainted meat you provide. They’re hungry for truth and righteousness. They want their spirits to overflow with joy. They want freedom. Not a line of products you’ll ever be able to supply.’
‘The more shit you talk to me, the more pleasure I’m going to take in dismembering you, son. You have to be the cheekiest bastard I’ve ever met, but it’s not your bollocks talking. I could respect a man with some bollocks. No, you’re talking this way to me because you’re not right in the head. No freak is going to ruin my business. No psycho is going to twist the minds of the people in this town. But I’m curious about what I’ve been hearing from my people. They’ve been telling me stranger stuff than you’ve told me. Maybe you’re too scared to tell me your secrets. Maybe you think I’ll steal them.’
Collins laughed. Raucous, delighted guffaws. Laughter too big for a man of his diminutive frame.
‘Shut up, Collins or I’ll cancel this fight you want and we’ll start taking you apart right now.’
Collins blinked the tears of laughter away as best he could and said, ‘You’ve got all the power, Magnus. You start on me whenever you want. I’ll miss knocking your teeth down your throat, though.’
Shit, thought Magnus, I’m going to start thinking that people talking to me like this is normal if I’m not careful. The sooner we get this over with the better. This bloke’s doing my fucking brain in and we can’t have that. No, no, no.
‘Get on with it, son. Tell me about what you’re eating these days.’
‘There’s no point. You wouldn’t understand it. Not even the simplest principles.’
‘I don’t want to fucking understand it, Collins. I just want to hear it from your mouth. I just want to know that I’ve been receiving my information correctly.’
Collins shrugged.
‘I live on God. It’s as simple as that. There’s really no other way to explain it. It looks like breathing and taking in light but really what I’m doing is eating God.’
Collins’s eye contact softened. It disturbed Magnus. No one had ever looked at him that way before. What was it, sympathy? Empathy? Compassion?
‘I wish you could experience it, Mr. Magnus.’
So, now he’s all deference, thought Magnus. What kind of nutter is this bloke?
‘There’s no experience like it in the world. I know it would change the way you felt about everything if you just gave it a try. That’s the beauty of it. Anyone, anyone at all, can do it. It’s so simple. It’s the reason I’m not afraid of you. The reason I’m not afraid to die.’
Magnus took his time composing an answer. There was a lot to say about the man’s views. A lot of roads a thinking man’s mind could go down. Magnus didn’t like to think too much. He preferred action. Action was the measure of a man. So far, Collins was all chat. His bizarre mission in the lock-up was chat and everything that had taken place between them in the office was chat. The difference between them was that Magnus had taken action. He’d sent his boys to find Collins and he’d brought him here. When their tête-à-tête was complete, Magnus would follow through on all his threats, make deeds of his words. Right now, even Collins’s challenge for a fight was no more than words and Magnus was fairly sure the man was merely trying to buy himself some time.
For all the rubbish coming out of Collins’s mouth however, there was something about him that didn’t seem mad, so much as misdirectedly inspired. A man like Collins, if he’d had his way, could have changed people’s minds about almost anything. Magnus was glad he’d stopped him now rather than waiting until he had some kind of revolution on his hands. Collins had something. It wasn’t simple insanity. Some of his words had penetrated Magnus’s defences. Right now he was considering them. Something of the man on his knees in front of him had lodged in his mind.
Magnus’s mind was strong, though. No one, not Collins, not anyone, was going to steamroller their way into his head and change his thinking. And yet … there was something here. There was something inside this man that he wanted to communicate with. Magnus wanted to talk. He was strong enough to talk just a little longer and not be swayed. There was something worth pursuing, just to put his curiosity to bed. Then he could carve Collins up and forget about him forever.
‘It’s a good thing I’m not a religious man,’ Magnus said. ‘Or I might have to point out you’re blaspheming. You contradict everything I know of the Book of Giving. The Father gave us His children to feast upon. He didn’t instruct us to try and eat Him directly.’
‘God is the only food there is. The only flesh. The only nourishment.’
Magnus shook his head, disappointed.
‘Don’t do this, Collins. Not to me. Don’t make yourself sound like the Parsons of the Welfare with their psychodrivel. Don’t preach to me like I’m some kind of idiot.’ Magnus sat down on the step in front of his titanic desk so that he was on a similar level to his prisoner. ‘I personally don’t believe a single word in the Gut Psalter or any other holy book. I’m not a stupid man. I know that keeping Parsons on the prowl is important. I know that keeping order is important. I know that rules are important and I know religion has a part to play. But I don’t give a shit about any of it and you ought to know that. The fact that I encourage readings from the Book of Giving in my stockyard and processing plants is merely a sign that I want things to be maintained, to run smoothly. The religion of the Welfare is an aid to business. Business comes before anything else in the world. Before love, before men and long before God.’ He stretched his neck from side to side easing the tension out of it. He was relaxing. ‘But what you’ve said to me is interesting. Interesting enough for me to want to understand a little more.’
He watched to see if Collins would relax too. He was sure that his generosity regarding Collins’s final moments of life would be well received. But Collins, if he felt any relief at knowing he had a few more minutes of life, showed no outward sign of it.
‘Tell me about eating God, Collins.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘I want to understand what it means, if it means anything at all. I want to know how to do it.’
He saw Collins shake his head to himself, close his eyes momentarily.
‘What is it?’
‘I can’t show you. You of all people, who destroy the Chosen by their hundreds every day in the pursuit of wealth and dominance. Why should I tell you about any of it?’
‘Maybe I’ll change. Maybe you’ll convert me.’
Collins glanced sharply at him. Then his face melted and he laughed. Magnus laughed with him; loud, deep laughter. Bruno shifted, uncomfortable in his skin. Magnus ignored him.
The strange, too-loud laughter died quickly.
‘Do you really want to know?’ asked Collins, ‘Or are you just humouring me?’ His eyes found Magnus’s again, in a way that bypassed all authority. ‘Because I’m ready for the end right now. We don’t have to go through all this talking. I’ve said it a thousand times to as many people and, of all of them, you’re the least likely to take it on board. Any of it. Perhaps it would b
e more meaningful – for both of us – to proceed with my slaughter.’
‘Don’t you want your final scrap any more?’
‘It isn’t that important. I only wanted to prove a point to you. In the end, whether I make that point or not probably won’t make much difference. I’ve already made all the difference I’m going to make.’
‘We’ll do it all before the end, Collins, my old son. We’ll do it all. For now, I want to know all about it. I want to know what you’ve been telling everyone.’
Collins’s eyes closed, breaking the invisible beam that joined him to Magnus with such disrespect for their difference in station. Magnus took the moment to shake off the effect of the stare. He wanted to hear this but he had to stay strong. Not let this fractured messiah too far into his mind. He watched Collins and his over-dramatic pause before beginning his sermon. The man didn’t seem to be breathing. Magnus looked closer, watched his tent pole ribs and his sunken solar plexus for the rise and fall of respiration. There was nothing. So, he can hold his breath for a while, thought Magnus, so fucking what?
Collins opened his eyes.
‘The first thing you need to know is that it’s all lies. The town, the book, the Welfare. It’s nonsense. It’s like the corsets and girdles and make-up and hairspray that make a plain woman seem beautiful. Artful strokes with eyeliner and mascara to enhance a drab gaze, hot air and combs to tease lank hair into fullness, foundation and blusher to bring health and prominence to pale, sunken cheeks. Pencil and lipstick to shape and accentuate thin, passionless lips. Bone-ribbed underwear to make a figure where before there was shapeless dough. Tight bras to push up sagging breasts, pads to make small breasts larger. High heels to lengthen legs. Perfume to mask bodily odours, mouthwash to cover bad breath. Take it all away and what you are left with is this town: stripped of its shroud of lies; naked, ugly and rank.’
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