by Harry Gallon
‘Dad?’ I said.
‘Uh huh?’
‘When’ll I be old enough to drive?’
‘Not for a few years yet. Why?’
‘No reason.’
‘Come on. Let’s go find your brother,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Kelly’s Heroes is on this afternoon, and your mother’s made bin cake again.’
WHEN I MET MY DEAD BABY SISTER
In the middle of the night I heard her crying. It was the first time. I was very young. She woke me up. I hadn’t been in a particularly deep sleep to begin with. I’d shot a rabbit and when I walked over to it I saw that it was covered with fleas. Most of the fleas were on its long rabbit ears. Some were on its neck. I couldn’t sleep that well because my scalp kept itching. Also, I had a fear of house fires. A fear of house fires. A fear of our house burning down every night. But not staying burnt. Reforming each day. Burning down, building up, over and over again. I wouldn’t let myself sleep too deeply in case the house caught on fire. In case the soot in the chimney combusted. Created a vertical wind tunnel. In case a spark from a piece of pine was thrown up on the carpet by the dog’s bed. In the night. Parents asleep. Brother asleep. In case Gentleman Jim, parents not yet sleeping, all digesting the aftermath of red wine and curry, didn’t put out one of his cigarettes properly before he went home.
I slept in acts, punctured with intervals.
I heard her crying. Or I heard someone crying. And the sound of the crying pre-empted the second interval that night.
At the first interval, I woke up as usual. Act One had gone exactly as planned. My brother was asleep in his bed on the other side of our shared room. Our door was open. Only open a little. Light from the hallway shone under it and around it and the house was silent and warm and the air smelled like air, not fire or blood which is metallic. Back then I dreamed of internal combustion. Of tiny infinite spontaneous explosions occurring all around me.
*
I saw the rabbit in my sights. My father and I had been walking back down the track from the field with the old concrete reservoir in it, towards the farmer’s yard where we’d left the car. I asked my father if Gentleman Jim was coming for lunch. My father said, ‘Your uncle’s out of town at the moment,’ then looked away. The track was muddy and ran in funny zigzags from the top of the down where the wild flowers were, by the bush in which I’d propped my gun and had a wank, earlier.
My father stopped and put his arm out in front of me. I wobbled because I was standing on a flint. My father, arm out straight, said nothing. He pointed, and his finger, rather than his mouth, spoke, ‘Rabbit.’
*
The house was silent. First interval. I sat up, went out onto the landing, down the stairs which were steep. I checked all the rooms in the dark. I checked the bin in the kitchen, and the boiler by the downstairs toilet in the downstairs bathroom. I filled the black Mars Bar cup with water and drank it by the back porch. I always drank my interval water from the black Mars Bar cup because when the water was gone I could see the reflection of my eyes at the bottom, and they didn’t know who they were looking back at. I held them open, wide, and drank another.
I drank water before I slept in order to wake back up. A healthy human bladder can hold around sixteen ounces of urine comfortably for two to five hours. Less for a child, which I was. I drank three cups at eight o’clock. The first interval was at half-eleven. At half-eleven, after checking all rooms in the dark, I drank two more cups. Second interval at half-two. I refilled the cup a third time and poured it into the rusty old Parkray stove, just in case.
Then I turned the lights on, looked around to make sure everything was as still as it sounded. When I turned the lights off I ran quietly up the stairs, panicky in anticipation of being grabbed by the leg, if the eyes at the bottom of the black Mars Bar cup had grown a body and legs and were following me back up to bed.
*
When I lifted the shotgun and tucked it into my shoulder and steadied my breathing and remembered to keep both eyes open and pulled the trigger as I exhaled, not only because I’d been told to (this wasn’t a rifle) but because it made me feel lethal, nothing happened. After finding me with my hands stuck to dock leaves–
‘You alright, son? Stung yourself or something?’
–my father had broken the gun, removed the spent cartridge and carried it down the track himself. He’d seen the rabbit and handed the gun back and instructed, ‘Now, tuck it–’
Like this?
‘–into your shoulder.’
First kill.
‘You see it?’
Not first.
‘You see ‘im?’
Not sister.
‘Breathe steadily–’
I’d hoped it was a him.
‘–and gently pull the trigger.’
Click.
We’d both forgotten to reload the .410. I had a cartridge belt, leather, round my waist. All live. All shiny percussion caps and bright red plastic staring up at me like the eyes of a spider.
*
In the middle of the night I heard a baby crying. At first I didn’t think it was a baby crying. At first I thought it was my mother. But in the darkness and the warm silence and after finding the body which I knew I’d find anyway, though I don’t know how, then yes, there had always been a baby crying.
I woke up.
I’d been lying on my back.
My face was cold.
I sniffed the air. It smelled like gun oil.
Click
It was 1:35am. The ache in my bladder was still only gentle. I didn’t have to stagger when I got out of bed, legs crossing, I just got up and went out onto the landing where the light shone. I stood by my parent’s door, heard nothing more, at first thinking, yes, Mother. Muffled crying. Must’ve been. It wasn’t high. But my mother doesn’t cry. She bakes cakes instead, and says everything’s okay despite the burnt edges. She spends Sundays in the kitchen, slow cooking lunch and projecting. ‘It’s good beef. Isn’t it a good piece of beef? It’s a very, very good piece of beef. And the leeks–’
‘The leeks?’
‘The creamed leeks. They’re really, very good.’
‘Very creamy. Very–’
‘Cheesy?’
‘Yes dear. Creamy and cheesy. Now pass the salt.’
I followed the crying past my parents’ room. It wasn’t my mother, silent, mother, tolerant. Father, fingers owning her. Didn’t cry, except occasionally when she’d read magazines and think of all the French beaches she was sure she’d never see. I followed the crying downstairs to the bathroom. Turned on the light. Feet shuffling. Floor tiled. My father had always aspired to have under-floor heating. He likes to have warm feet and heat rising from somewhere other than his chest. The crying was loud in my head but quiet everywhere else. The house was dark and silent. I trod in something wet on the tiled floor as I entered the bathroom.
It was blood.
Blood under the sink by the toilet by the boiler above a tiny body lying in a pool of blood. Thin blood. Menstrual blood. Blood which formed canals in the channels between the floor tiles, unheated.
When I turned on the light and looked down I saw a little grey rubbery thing trembling in the puddle. I touched it, turned it over and saw that it was a girl, sister, daughter, rubber limbs giggling like broken, couldn’t control them and eyes screaming nightmares behind lids that would never open.
Is it true that babies can survive underwater? In a birthing pool? Because their lungs have not yet been exposed to the air?
I was looking down and couldn’t decide who was the nightmare: her or me. The sound of her crying, which was distant (though she was lying at my feet), felt less immediate than the feeling that her sound was flaying my skin. That the blood on the floor had come from me. And I knew it. Red as tomato purée. Crawling up my shins like mud on Boxing Day.
I began scratching myself.
Clawing its way up.
And up.
And open.
The bubble broken. The breach closed but the head split jaggedly open. After the first click, when I’d pulled the trigger and realised that the gun was empty, my father took it from me, carefully, extending the trigger guard to cock the gun and break the barrel. I, equally cautious, took a cartridge from my belt and passed it to him. He pushed the cartridge into the breach. It was green all around us. Morning frost slowly melting in the light that came through the trees. Flies in the sun through the branches. Daddy-long-legs irritating spiders’ webs. My father and I watching the rabbit on the other side of a rusting barbed wire fence where the track, at the end, thirty yards, zigzagged right down the hill. The wind was coming towards us. My father clicked the gun shut and handed it back.
It was an easy shot. The rabbit, when I lifted the gun to my shoulder, had already seen us. It stood up on its hind legs. And that’s when I fired.
The kick from a .410 shotgun is affectionate. Like having your neck bitten during sex.
The other end is, predictably, less flirtatious.
The rabbit was thrown into the air by its nervous system, which had become disconnected from its brain after the shot pulverised its head.
The skull was cracked through and leaking.
Still looked like a rabbit, though, so I didn’t feel too sick.
It was the bubble of blood that did that. Father, kneeling, broke a necessary neck, which forced a final rabbit struggle, and a thick red blood bubble out of what remained of the animal’s nose.
Pop.
*
Standing in the bathroom puddle, I knew it was my sister. I knew it was my sister because I knew it was my sister. She was something I’d always missed and had pulled that trigger for, hoping, too, to be reabsorbed.
*
It was sunny on the track. The broken mounds of tarmac dumped by the farmer whose barn my not-yet-dead big brother and I burned down. I was sweating and sweating her out.
Two deaths in one day.
I said, ‘Sister.’
To the rabbit.
I said this quietly.
A whisper.
My father didn’t hear.
Pop.
Then, ‘Sister,’ to the little grey thing under the sink by the downstairs toilet next to the boiler.
Dead.
‘Sister?’
She, on her tiny back, stopped crying with that and–
‘Are you there?’
–opened her eyes.
I turned quickly and vomited.
When I woke in the morning I’d pissed myself. And my mother was mopping bin cake up off the floor.
THE GREEN PLATE
‘We stood in silence outside the restaurant while I rolled another cigarette.’
‘You gave your first one to a homeless guy.’
‘That’s right. And you kept wiping your nose.’
‘I’m pretty sure I wanted to go.’
‘Wait. Wiping your nose, and I was moving deliberately slowly, making you wait.’
‘Don’t remind me. That’s one of the reasons why I wanted to leave. And you weren’t nearly as cool as you thought.’
‘I said wait, Willow. Cold. Wait in the cold as I lit my cigarette then put the lighter back in my jacket pocket. Or–’
‘What?’
‘–was it my trouser pocket?’
‘Can we just go inside, please?’
‘Wait. WAIT. Hit that button.’
‘What button?’
‘That button.’
‘Why?’
‘For the heat lamps.’
‘What heat lamps?’
‘The heat lamps above your head.’
‘What was it you did, or said, then? Get–’
‘It was my jacket.’
‘–on with it.’
‘Definitely my jacket. That’s right. Anyway–’
‘You kissed me.’
‘And then we dated for two years.’
‘Three.’
‘Can’t have been that bad a first date.’ Willow stands up. ‘Hey, what’s your rush?’
‘I want another drink.’
‘You can’t drink when you’re pregnant.’
‘I’m not pregnant.’
‘Remember how you always used to think you were pregnant?’
‘Remember how you always used to drink too much and annoy me?’
‘Like right now?’
‘Exactly. You’re fucked.’
‘I’m boring. Home’s drunk. And mad. My sister is bad at organising the deconstructed Tetra Paks. The recycling bin’s been a complete mess all day.’
‘You know, this whole sister thing was funnier when we were students. But now, if people hear you talk about ghosts like they’re real, they’ll think you’ve lost it.’ She goes inside. Suddenly I feel very heavy. And empty, as though there’s no breath inside me. When she comes back with another drink she sits and says, ‘I didn’t mean to sound like a dick just now. People have weird ways of coping with things, don’t they.’
‘I don’t want to go home,’ I tell her, looking down at my foot, which is shaking.
‘Then,’ says Willow, coughing as she rolls a cigarette, ‘come to mine instead.’
‘The problem is, I don’t really want to be anywhere.’
‘My housemate’s away. We can drink his wine.’
‘Have you cleaned the green plate yet?’ I ask.
‘We’re not getting any coke in,’ Willow says before hitting the button. ‘And besides, I’m meant to be pregnant, aren’t I?’ She smiles.
‘You’re absolutely fucking right. I’m sorry. Have you taken the test?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Well,’ I say, ‘you’re glowing.’
She laughs. ‘Definitely just the heat lamp,’ she says, wrapping her scarf around her neck. ‘Hold on.’
I’m sitting on the bench. Threat of carrion airstrike imminent. Can’t get anything up, least of all myself. Too much blood squirting round in my head, my belly, my chest. Bouncing the springs. Lying alone. Spending three hours contemplating veins then trying to bring myself off under the covers in the hope that overt repetitive movement will tire me out. A relief like her eyes, Willow’s, that say, ‘Fine, phew,’ and, ‘Okay.’
And maybe, then, after splatting endorphins all over my stomach, or the pair of dirty boxers I usually take off and use as a mop, and after lying for fifteen more minutes with my limbs growing colder in the air growing bluer and the sheets even greyer and a finger fiddling in the splash of puddle, acting much like a curious child who hasn’t seen something that strange before, or even tasted mud (just to see what it’s like), feeling the void-like space in my arse left by the deflation of enlarged prostate stress, dry but a little crispy (will have to bathe for another three hours) after relentlessly tugging my doughy cock, underfilled, underpressurised, underused by someone other than you (me), until the final build to the depressing, pathetic and ultimately uninteresting crescendo, I’ll fall asleep, and NOT dream of the kukri knife. The notch, the blade being pulled across the stranger’s throat, catching blood in a Tupperware bowl. Surgical gloves. No, black cotton gloves, though they–
‘Are you coming?’ It’s Willow, back from the toilet.
–could leave fibrous traces on the corpse.
‘Coming?’ I cough. It never happens. I barely sleep. I just lie there spilling out, spilling me, stroking and hoping the notch will catch my dribble, which comes thick and slow and dehydrated. Willow sits back down. Thin and underwired and possibly carrying someone’s child, though by now it seems very unlikely. ‘It’s not knowing that scares me,’ she says.
I say, ‘Jesus, just take the fucking test.’
‘But that’s the thing,’ says Willow. ‘There’s a part of me that enjoys being scared.’
‘There’s no way something’s growing inside you,’ I say. ‘Now,’ standing, ‘if we keep sitting here we’ll get shat on.’
Willow looks up at worriedly. ‘I’ve been re
ady for ten minutes,’ she says.
‘Sorry, I was thinking.’
‘What about?’
I put my hand in my jacket pocket and say, ‘Nothing, cigarettes.’
two
CHAINSAW BALLET
‘I want you to choke me with that belt.’
‘What?’
‘Choke me with the belt.’
‘Still like it like that?’
‘Don’t laugh.’
‘Sorry.’
‘The belt.’
‘What about it?’
‘I want you to choke me with it.’
‘Now?’
‘Right FUCKING now. I want you to choke me with the belt. I want you to reach forward, while I’m pulling your hair, and take that black leather belt off the bed frame.’
‘Wait,’ she says. Bites my finger. Goes so tense I can feel the skin breaking between her teeth and then–
I let go of her ponytail and take my finger out of her mouth. Stop clenching my jaw. Pull out. Lie down. She turns around. There’s a vodka cranberry on the bedside table. She climbs on top. She takes a sip, puts my dick back inside her and loops the belt round my neck.
*
The first thing she said to me when we met the night before was, ‘Poison.’ I’d arrived at the pub at 7:45. After coffee in the park she’d texted me and we’d agreed to meet at eight but I wanted to get there early. Neck a drink. Buy another and one for her then sit quietly at a table by a wall, with a view of the door. Except there was ‘Poison,’ behind me, while I stood at the bar.
‘Willow?’
That’s how she’d kill me.
‘You’re early,’ I said.
She took a sip from a vodka cranberry and said, ‘I wanted to get a quick drink at the bar, buy another (and one for you) then sit quietly at a table in a corner with a view of the door.’ I sat down. Sniffed. There was a small thistle in a smaller, empty milk bottle between us. She moved it. ‘Poison,’ I said. ‘I remember. I suppose a florist would know all kinds of things about naturally occurring toxins.’ I eyed the pint she’d placed on the coaster in front of my chair, her hair a whole shade darker red lit up by the pound shop tea light. ‘You’ve got half an hour,’ she said, dipping her finger in the wax, ‘to impress me. And if you make me laugh in that half hour,’ picking wax off her finger, ‘we’ll ask for another candle.’