Five Stories High

by Jonathan Oliver

  “Is it kicking?” he asks, like every other idiot.

  “Not kicking,” she says. “But sometimes I can feel it bite.”

  ONE MORE YEAR has gone, he has missed the entire birth, and he feels a bit guilty about that. “Oh, don’t worry,” says the storyteller, “it all went swimmingly without you. Would you like to meet your new son?” The boy says he would.

  Into his arms the woman places a head – and it’s the sweetest head, it is the dearest head – all cute cheeks and pert chin and the merest stump of a neck. And the head turns its two big eyes to its father, and seems to blink in comic wonder, then gurgles. The boy feels such love for his son right then, he wants to hold that head so tight and never let it go.

  “He’s perfect,” he says. “He’s absolutely perfect. Thank you. Thank you.”

  “Not quite perfect yet!” says the storyteller. “But so nearly!” And he’s so happy, as if this were his child. He bounds over to the little wooden door underneath the windowsill – because there is a little wooden door underneath the windowsill – and he stoops down to peer through the keyhole. “Not too close,” he laughs, “we don’t want any accidents!” He pulls at the doorknob, and this time the door opens easily.

  It’s the best birthday gift of all, really – because behind the door, just dying to be set free, is the rest of the son. All chest and legs, and a single gangling arm – and it’s true, some of the body parts don’t look too fresh, they must have been waiting behind the door for an awfully long while, and the meat looks a little white and knotted. And maybe everything doesn’t quite match – the stomach alone looks as if it has been stitched together from a dozen different donors, chunks of contrasting colour and thickness and age all slammed together and pretending to be one. The child in the story was born of three sets of parents – what a wonder that would have been! But how can you expect something as complex as a child to be created from only three? This new baby, this brand new boy, has been a big communal effort, that’s obvious – a long work in progress requiring the contributions of God knows how many dreaming children, each playing their own small but integral part in creating a life outside their own.

  The baby totters forward, blindly. “You’re finished!” says the storyteller. “You’re complete!” He scoops up the head and takes it to where the trunk can hardly contain itself with excitement. He balances the head upon the shoulders. It doesn’t snap neatly into position like it did in the stories – the man has to tear away scraps of loose hanging flesh to make a pit deep enough the head can be dropped into.

  And the new father? He is repulsed. But also awed, he has been part of a miracle. The head is at least all new and shiny – and the head is all his, so long as he ignores his child from the neck down he can feel such loving tenderness towards it. The face – it looks like him. It does. Before he turned old and hard, when he was still unspoiled. It has his eyes, his nose, his cheeky smile back from the days when he used to smile. The baby smiles cheekily now – now; it opens its mouth, it prepares to speak. What a genius – it already has something to say! “Daddy,” he croaks, “Daddy,” and that’s beautiful, it’s his first word.

  NOW THEY ALL listen to the stories together. As a family – Daddy and Mummy lying on the bed, and their brave little son lying inbetween. All picking at the birthday cake. And the son loves the stories, the gory ones are his favourites – and the ones without gore in, they’re his favourites too.

  THE FATHER STILL thinks of himself as a boy. Deep down, he’s just a little boy. But he has all these new responsibilities now, and he’s getting old, and he’s heavy and dull, and this life was not what it was supposed to be. His wife is so young and beautiful, and she’s got a son to dote on – what could she possibly want with him?

  HE RATTLES THE loose eye in his head, just to make his son laugh, for as long as his son is young enough to be entertained by such silly things. He wonders which of his two parents his son loves the most. He wonders if he even comes second, out of two.

  SOMETIMES, STILL, HE thinks of his own parents. Wonders whether they felt the same mix of love, need, and resentment – or whether he’s just the worst father in the world and he’s getting everything wrong.

  THE WOMAN DOESN’T spend much time with him these days, it’s all about their baby son. Not so much a baby now, he’ll soon be a teenager, how does the time fly! The woman talks to him, and hugs him, and bathes his body when the sores are bad and the maggots appear. And after she’s sucked the storyteller’s eyeball, it’s to her son she’ll give all the spit and eye juice – the boy opens his mouth, so wide it seems he’ll break his jaw, and the mother pours in all the fluid she has, like a bird feeding its young.

  He is so thirsty. She never kisses him any more. He hasn’t had a drink in years.

  But still, every night, when she gets into bed beside him, she’ll turn to him on the pillow, and she’ll whisper a single letter into his ear. And then smile at him, as if it’s some hidden secret only they can understand. It is almost charming.

  THE STORIES AREN’T for him any longer. He knows that. Sometimes he’ll say, “But I’ve heard this one before!”, and the woman will shush him, and the son will shush him, and the storyteller will ignore him altogether. “Slow down,” he’ll say at other times, or “Speak up,” or, “I can’t hear!” – but it isn’t into his ear the storyteller is breathing now, it’s his son’s, and his son’s eyes are shining bright in wonder, and his skin is turning so dry and leathered.

  THE BED IS so fucking vast, and this is all there is and all there can ever be.

  IT’S HIS FIFTIETH birthday, and no one has remembered. He hasn’t even been given a slice of his own birthday cake.

  The man is preparing to tell a story, and it’s not one he thinks he’s heard before, but he can’t be certain. The eyeball is taken out, ready for safekeeping in the woman’s mouth. “Hey,” he says. “Hey.” And at last they look at him.

  He says, “I’ll have that.”

  The man laughs, not unkindly. “I hardly think you’ve enough spit in you to keep my eye moist. You’re a dried up old bastard.” But he shrugs with his one good shoulder, he gives him the eyeball. “Now you suck this gently,” the man says, and manages some approximation of a wink. “I don’t want you grazing it.”

  He pops the eye straight into his mouth.

  It’s softer than he imagined. He makes himself think of it instead as a boiled egg. He then remembers he can’t stand boiled eggs, and gags.

  And as it sits there on his tongue, he can feel the juices seep out from it.

  He doesn’t have many teeth left, but the survivors are by necessity sharp and battle-hardened. He uses them to clasp the eyeball. He clamps down, just a little.

  The effect upon the storyteller is immediate. He doubles over, cries out in pain.

  Emboldened, he bites down a little harder.

  The man cries out, “Oh, treachery! What a fool I have been, to fall into your cunning trap! You have me at your mercy now!”

  He feels a sudden elation, and it’s something he hasn’t felt in a very long time.

  Then the man straightens up. He sighs. He gives one sharp tap to the back of his head – and into the empty socket another eye rolls into place like a bowling ball.

  “I have eyes to spare,” says the man. “If you want that one so badly, be my guest. You may keep it.”

  And he wants to spit the eye out now, his teeth have broken through the membrane and liquid is eking out, and it tastes faintly acidic. Like vinegar – and he has to spit – but he can’t. He can’t, because he can feel with sudden and terrible certainty that the eye is getting larger.

  “You didn’t have to threaten me,” says the storyteller. “That makes me sad. If you want to leave our happy family, you should just have said.”

  It’s swelling up so fast, the eye is filling up every space in his mouth – and there’s no room for his tongue any more, or his teeth, or his palate – and still the eye is growing. It’s chok
ing him. He tries to plead for help, just a grunt, anything at all.

  “You’re free to leave. I’ve no use for you any more. You’re empty.”

  He can’t breathe. And the pressure inside his head is too much, the eye refusing to stop, and he can feel the eye twitch, the pupil darting back and forth, it’s tickling his cheek. He pants through his nostrils. He feels those nostrils bending out of shape, flattening as the eye contorts his face.

  “You can leave right now.” And there, there’s the door, he can just about see it through his own distended eyes, it’s underneath the window – he reaches out for it instinctively. “Or you can let your son go free instead. Only one of you can escape. It’s up to you.”

  He falls out of bed. His head is splitting with the pain – he thinks that it is literally splitting, and if he doesn’t hurry, if he doesn’t make it through the door soon, his entire skull will smash open, and that’s all there’ll be left of him, one enormous eyeball sitting on top of his shoulders and peering about and winking at everyone. He needs to get to his feet. He cannot get to his feet, they will never support him. He gets to his feet; he shuffles towards the door.

  “And if you leave,” says the man softly, “you’ll never hear how the story ends.”

  He yanks at the doorknob. The door pulls open.

  He takes a look back. The woman’s face is cold, implacable. The son, his son, is reaching out for him. Daddy. Daddy, don’t go.

  He thinks of his son, and the tortures he’ll have to face.

  He thinks of his parents. Because even now, sometimes the boy thinks of his parents.

  This is all there is. And all there can ever be.

  He stumbles through the door, to freedom.

  HE’S BACK IN his bedroom, and he doesn’t stop to register that he’s once more a little boy – that his body is strong, that he has his teeth, that he has his finger back – he rushes straight to the bathroom and opens his mouth and claws out in chunks the eyeball that’s wedged fast inside.

  VI.

  The Respite

  HIS PARENTS DON’T seem especially surprised to see him, and that’s a little disappointing.

  He sits with them at breakfast, and it’s the same non-committal conversation punctuated by bouts of silence – and neither of them has anything particular to say to him, except to hurry up with his cornflakes and get to school. And it dawns on him that this is the first day in forty years that hasn’t been his birthday – he is unimportant, he isn’t special. And he’s so relieved by that he wants to cry.

  At school he sits at the back of the class and doesn’t say a word all day and revels in the sheer anonymity of it all.

  His voice hasn’t broken yet, and his balls haven’t dropped, and that feels peculiar but not necessarily unpleasant.

  It would be easier if he could forget all that happened, or pretend it was a dream. He can’t. The storyteller said there would be consequences. He feels he has to pretend to be a little boy, to be that young, that naive, that undamaged, frankly – he has to force himself to lift his shoulders and wear his body lightly. Some days he thinks he almost gets away with it. Some days he nearly convinces himself.

  On others, he gazes at his restored finger in wonder, and flexes it, and touches things with it – and he wishes he could break it off, it isn’t supposed to be there.

  It’s all such an effort. One day it gets too much and he raises his hand to be excused from class, and the teacher takes ages even to notice him, and that’s because she’s a dozy bitch. And he has to run for the toilets, he knows he’s about to be sick – he makes it there just in time, the rage is spilling out of him – and when he opens his mouth out comes a scream of fury, and he throws up a pool of thick black tar. There’s such anger inside, and his head is pounding and he wants to punch the walls and to punch the windows, he wants to smash the whole world down.

  One day he doesn’t bother to raise his hand in class, and he pisses in his chair.

  His friends don’t want to play with him any more. They can sense something is wrong, even if the grown-ups ignore it. And the boy doesn’t care. Why should he care? Why should he want the good opinion of children?

  On his eleventh birthday he goes to bed early and he stares at the walls and he stares at the ceiling and he looks under the bed and behind the wardrobe. He waits all night. The door never appears. There’s not even a hint of one, not even the smallest doorknob.

  He likes to graffiti over the circus animals on his wallpaper. He gives them monster mouths, and wings, and tails. He gives them cocks.

  One morning his father isn’t there for breakfast. He’s not there the next morning either. Mummy says, “I expect you’ve noticed there’ve been some problems recently,” and he hadn’t, actually, they’re better actors than he is! She tells her son they’ll be getting a divorce, and she asks him if he has any questions – and then bursts into tears.

  What did he sacrifice himself for?

  At the weekend Daddy comes by, takes the boy out for a drive. “I want you to know this is all very hard, but we still love you very much.” The boy says, “You just couldn’t keep your prick in your pants, could you? You arsehole.” The father looks stunned, as if he’s been slapped across the face. “You can’t talk to me like that,” he blusters, “you have no idea what I’m going through!” The boy says, “I know exactly what it’s like to betray your family, and you’re a cunt.”

  And soon Mummy says she wants to move house. They came here for a fresh start, didn’t they, and it wasn’t a fresh start, it was just more of the bleeding same. She says they don’t need anywhere so large now it’s just the two of them, they can be nice and snug together. Somewhere near Granny, it’s been hard for her now she’s on her own. “You and me,” she says, “against the world!” And she hugs him.

  The boy supposes he should feel something now he’s escaping the bedroom for good – relief, or some sense of completion, at least. But there’s nothing, he feels nothing, because he’s still carrying the room inside him, isn’t he? It’s always going to be there, deep down, with all the black tar, with all the rage. Mummy tells him to pack up all his favourite toys, but he doesn’t need them, they were only stage props in the pantomime of his childhood. Maybe he won’t have to act any longer. Maybe he can start over. Now, he will start.

  THEIR NEW HOME is very small, and Mummy says she likes it, but the boy knows Mummy is lying. And it’s close to Granny, and that’s good when Granny is being nice, but Granny isn’t always nice any more.

  Mummy likes red wine from Tesco’s, she’s always got a bottle on the go. She looks up from the kitchen table when her son comes in, and smiles at him, and her teeth are stained pink. “Did you have a good day at school? Well, did you? Did you have a good day at school?”

  It would be such hard work to try to make new friends, so the boy doesn’t bother. He sits in class and waits out his childhood. The teacher, Mrs Woolcroft, is concerned. She asks to see him. “Is everything all right?” she says. “Are you settling in okay?” The boy tells Mrs Woolcroft he doesn’t like kids his own age, he prefers a little more maturity. Would she kiss him? Just the once, on the mouth. He misses it so badly, and he can see she’s up for it. She has him moved to a different class.

  Sometimes, if he shakes his head from side to side he can hear his eye rattle.

  Mummy has new boyfriends, but they never last for long. There’s no wonder why, she’s got it all worked out by herself – she’s nothing to offer, she says, not with her fading looks, with her dump of a house, with her cow of a mother, with her son. One boyfriend hangs around a little too long, he’s on the scene for months. The boyfriend tells Mummy that he’ll make everything better, so long as she sticks with him, so long as she stops acting the pathetic loser. One day the boy goes up to the boyfriend, while he’s sitting on his own in front of the TV, and he whispers in his ear. Not actually touching, but close enough that his breath will be warm.

  “I shall rip open your body,” the
boy says. “I shall pull forth your innards. I shall eat your heart.”

  The boyfriend doesn’t come round again, no matter how much Mummy cries on the phone. “Please, baby!” she says. “You know I can’t live without you!” She gets so angry with her son. “You stay out of my life! You’re a freak. Why do you have to be such a fucking freak?”

  It’s not fair, he’s only a little boy – and yet there are all those years inside him, and they’re not fading away like they should, they’re expanding – and it’s like the eye that was growing in his mouth, but now there’s something filling up his entire body. He can feel it crush flat his bones and his lungs and his heart, and his skin will split open and all the black tar will come splurting out – he thinks, he thinks it’s going to kill him in the end.

  His voice breaks and his balls drop and stubble appears on his chin, and he’s moving deep into his teens, and he tries Mrs Woolcroft again. She takes him to her car, and they drive somewhere quiet, and they snog on the back seat. Mrs Woolcroft cries out, “What are we doing? This is wrong!” And the boy says he has a right to love, as much as anyone else, he’s so desperate and so lonely. And the boy says that if she doesn’t carry on, if she doesn’t meet up with him again, and this time go all the way, he’ll tell – the headmaster, his mother, the police, everyone. “You’re a monster!” she screams, and he supposes that he is. She pushes him out of her car, and drives away.