The Slaughter Man

by Cassandra Parkin

  “You’re a bloody fast walker, you are,” he says after a while.

  I have to get from one end of college to the other in five minutes and our site’s massive. She and Laurel used to tease their parents: You’re so slow, keep up, we can’t walk as slowly as you do!

  “For a girl,” Luca adds, watching to see if she’s going to rise to it.

  Willow climbs carefully over a tree root.

  “I can’t tell if you’re not answering me cos you can’t talk, or if you’re not answering me cos I’m boring you,” he says. “Hey, watch out.” He takes her elbow to help her over a gully. She shakes it off. “God, you’re touchy. I’m only trying to help.”

  Even though she’s wearing long sleeves, her elbow feels warm where his hand briefly rested. Has she hurt his feelings? And why would she care if she has? Luca is in her head a lot, she’ll admit that, but then what else is there around here to think about? She doesn’t fancy him. She doesn’t. He’s the only game in town, that’s all. At the edge of the wood, the goats are clustered eagerly around the fence.

  “Fuck’s sake,” Luca mutters. “What do they want?” He reaches out a hand towards the bearded muzzle of the nearest goat, flinches a little when it tosses its head. “What do you actually want?”

  Willow wonders if goats have an idea of the future, if they make plans and have dreams and imagine growing old in a field in the sunshine somewhere. Do goats tell stories? Do they have nightmares? Best friends? Do they love each other?

  “Fuck off, the lot of you.” Luca flaps his arms. The goats hesitate, then move away a little. Willow feels the itch of their gaze between her shoulder blades as they cross the field.

  “Nosey twats,” Luca observes, and flicks at a heap of goat pellets with a stick he picked up in the woods. “Too many of them at the minute. That’s why they’re all a bit weird and pushy. They’re not following us, are they?”

  Willow looks over her shoulder. The goats are standing in a clump, staring. Their gaze is mild and innocent, but multiplied across a couple of dozen faces, it becomes sinister. She feels as if they’re playing Grandmother’s Footsteps.

  “Sometimes they come right up behind you and shove you in the back,” Luca explains. “And the beardy ones get all slime and dribble in their beards and they wipe it on you and it’s so unbelievably gross.” He puts a protective hand around her shoulders and steers her out of the way of another pile of pellets. “Watch it. And again. And again. Fucking hell, are you doing this on purpose?”

  His arm stays across her shoulders for the rest of walk across the field, pressing her into the earth so she has to walk more slowly. When they reach the gate, he climbs over, then holds out a hand to help her do the same.

  “Quicker than opening it,” he explains; and even though it’s clearly not quicker, and him holding her hand makes it harder to climb over rather than easier, she lets it happen. As she swings over, her hair falls forward into his face, and he tuts and catches it in his free hand and then holds it still, as if she’s so fragile that even her hair needs protection.

  “It’s all right,” he says, and his fingers caress her wrist, a small slight delicate movement that she could almost tell herself she’s imagining. “I’ve got you.”

  She doesn’t need his help. She’s safely on the ground, so close to him she can smell the warm spicy scent of his deodorant. His grip tightens.

  “You need to be careful, going off with strange men like this,” he says, and although it has to be a joke, it sounds like a genuine warning. “I mean, I could do anything to you right now.”

  Is he going to kiss her? Does she want him to? She doesn’t like Luca, not really, but she likes the shake and tumble of her heartbeat, reminding her that she’s alive and young and there’s a boy who likes her.

  I don’t feel very well, Laurel whispers.

  She shakes her hand free, snatches her hair back as if he was trying to tear it out of her head. An instant later and she’s ashamed of herself – he was helping her over a gate, not tearing her clothes off – but when she looks at him apprehensively, he looks… relieved.

  “Come on, then.” There’s no mistaking it, he looks happy, as if her hand was a burden he didn’t want to carry. If she had her voice she could destroy him, but instead she has to follow him through the vegetable beds. He’s not even watching as she wipes her palm ostentatiously on her hip. In the yard, the chickens have found a dandelion, and are now pecking viciously at each other’s heads as they fight for the last few shreds.

  “We’ll have to climb,” Luca explains at the foot of the stack in the hay barn. No reach this time for her hand; no exaggerated care for her welfare. He scrambles onto the first tall dusty greeny-yellow step without looking back at her.

  She’s never climbed a haystack before. She’s surprised by how unwelcoming it is, filled with dust that gathers at the back of her throat, crammed with prickly twigs that catch at her palms. The stack shifts and rocks as they climb, and there are deceptively deep gaps in between the bales that could easily swallow an arm or a leg or maybe even a whole person. Suddenly they’re seven bales high and underneath the roof, and the distance to the ground is dizzying. Are they allowed to do this? Is it safe?

  “They’re round here somewhere,” Luca says, and makes a shushing gesture. “Listen a minute and we’ll hear.”

  In the silence of their held breath, Willow hears an urgent squeaking sound, too high and unformed to be called a mew.

  “That’s them.” Luca clambers across the bales. Willow follows him gingerly. “Thought it was rats at first. I was all ready to smash them, but when I looked—”

  There’s a tunnel in the hay, a little burrow where two bales aren’t quite butted up together, and at the end of the tunnel a soft round place holds a heap of furry things, squirming and squealing and clambering over each other until it looks as if they’re all one creature.

  “Come on then.” Luca scratches at the tunnel entrance. “Come on out. That’s it. Come on.”

  A single stripy scrap detaches itself from the heap and walks out towards Luca’s hand, skinny tail pencil-straight and vertical. Its stride is proud and purposeful, its feet slightly splayed, as if it’s marching in a parade and keeping time with the music.

  “There’s five,” Luca says, his gaze fixed on the approaching kitten. “They’ll all come in the end, but this one’s the bravest.”

  More kittens detach from the knot, joining the procession and marching out to meet them. Two more stripy, and two coal-black. Their faces are tiny beneath outsized ears, their eyes round and innocent. Willow clenches her fingers in longing as the first kitten reaches Luca’s knee, stretches out a tiny paw, and swarms up the small hill of his leg to reach his lap.

  “Ow ow ow ow ow.” Luca winces. “You spiney little fucker. Do that again and I’ll throw you off the haystack.” But he’s already petting the eager little head, his fingers rubbing at the spot behind the soaring sails of the ears. He strokes it for a minute, then scoops one hand beneath its belly and holds it out towards Willow. “Here. You have this one.”

  Willow takes the offered kitten, afraid she might break it, not sure if she’s holding it properly. The kitten squeaks its displeasure. When she drops it hastily on her lap, it puts out four pawfuls of tiny spikes and hooks itself into her flesh.

  Spiney fucker, she thinks to herself. That’s exactly what you are. Spiney, spiney, spiney little fucker. She strokes the little back with her fingertips. She thinks of baby creatures as fat and luscious, but there’s barely anything to this one; she can feel the tender bones beneath the skin.

  “If he sticks his claws in, pick up his feet and he’ll let go.” Ignoring the three other kittens who swarm eagerly around him to sniff at his fingers, Luca is trying to attract the last one, who sits at the entrance to the tunnel, watching him with wide eyes. “He’s an idiot but he’ll get the idea if you keep telling him. And if he doesn’t you can lob him over here and get another one.”

  T
he kitten is purring now, kneading enthusiastically at her leg. Afraid she might break him, she reaches two fingers around each miniature paw and unhooks his claws. He wobbles, then finds his balance. She strokes him over and over, from the place between his ears where his stripes form a tiny ‘m’ to the tip of his ridiculous stringy tail. His proportions are all wrong, his ears and feet too big, his tail too thin. In the place where she unhooked his front right foot, a thin dot of blood spreads out across the leg of her jeans.

  “Want another?” Luca passes over a black kitten with dusty-looking fur and the roundest eyes Willow has ever seen. “Sometimes they fight. That’s quite funny. Ouch, you little bastard.” He snatches his hand away. “Yes. You. Learn your manners or I’ll fucking drown you.” The kitten bats at his outstretched finger, trying to catch it and bring it to its mouth. “You’re hopeless, mate. No point trying to train you at all.”

  The black kitten has rolled itself into a tiny circlet and apparently gone to sleep on her knee. The tabby kitten has swarmed up her t-shirt and made a den between her shoulder and her hair. Nobody is biting her, not even a little bit. She allows herself a moment of smugness at her superior kitten wrangling skills. There’s a small red-and-white tear in Luca’s brown hand.

  “You’ve got to handle them a lot when they’re little or they grow up feral,” Luca explains. He licks blood from his skin, then scoops his hand around the belly of the littlest kitten, who is taking long stripy steps towards the precarious edge of the bale and considering the leap downwards. He’s studying Willow in quick little sweeping passes, as if his gaze might burn her if it rests on her skin for too long. “That’s what Katherine says, anyway. I mean, maybe she thinks it’s good therapy for me to go up in the hayloft and play with kittens.”

  Willow thinks this is what he says, but she can’t hear him properly over the excited snuffly purr in her left ear. Maybe Luca’s strange, spikey behaviour is because he wasn’t handled enough when he was little. The kitten is making a nest out of her hair. How will she ever get the knots out? Perhaps she’ll have to cut it off. Another step away from Laurel.

  The kitten on her shoulder squeaks as her hands grab too tightly. The kitten on her lap tumbles off onto the bale. She makes her hands relax, makes herself soothe their ruffled fur and ruffled feelings.

  “D’you miss her?” Luca asks. His voice is too loud and his words are too quick, as if he needs the momentum to get them past his teeth.

  She could pretend she hasn’t heard him. She could climb back down the haystack and leave.

  Keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the kittens, she nods.

  “It wasn’t long ago, was it?” He picks up the tabby kitten and returns it to her lap. “I mean, in that photo you look the age you are now.”

  Of course he’s still talking; he’s got no way of knowing she wants him to stop. But she could make her feelings clear in other ways. She could push the kittens off and climb back down the haystack, leave him here alone, to play with them until his hands are torn to shreds. She risks one quick look at him, their eyes meeting and then darting away again. She hopes he can’t sense how she feels.

  “I mean,” Luca says. “I’m not trying to upset you. And I wouldn’t ask out of, fucking, like, nosiness or whatever. It’s horrible when people look at you like you’re some sort of freak just cos some shit happened to you once. It’s… I mean… I mean—”

  If only there was a way for her to shut him up. They could sit together in the hayloft with two lapfuls of kittens and all the things they can’t say to each other, and enjoy the peace. Perhaps she should kiss him to make him stop talking.

  “I mean,” he continues, “I know what it’s like.”

  She looks at him in disbelief.

  “No, I don’t mean like that. I mean, you know, sort of. Well, not really. I haven’t got a… I don’t have any brothers or sisters, but—” His hands stroke frantically at the kittens clustered on his lap, tugging at the scruffs of their necks, pulling their eyes long and almond shaped.

  Stop talking, she thinks. She pushes her fingers into the centre of the rolled-up kitten on her knee, feeling the vibration of its answering purr. When she tickles its belly, the kitten’s purr deepens.

  “What it is,” Luca says, “I’m in this court case. I mean, not the family courts and that. Not about where I live or who I live with or anything. Proper court. Crown court. I mean, I’ll be on trial and that. For what I did.”

  What? What did you do? Are you a robber? A rapist? A murderer?

  “I mean, he deserved it,” Luca says hastily. “It wasn’t some random defenceless bloke. He had it coming. I was defending someone else.”

  Violence, then. Some sort of fight, someone who got hurt. But it was all right, because he was defending someone else.

  Well, she thinks, you would say that, wouldn’t you?

  “So, yeah.” Luca shrugs. “That’s why I’m here. Because I had to be away from where it happened. What it is, right, they’re worried about what might happen. They think I might… you know. Do something bad. Something else bad. To him, I mean. He’s afraid I might do it again before the trial. I mean, I wouldn’t, at least I don’t think I would, I suppose you never know, right? But they know I could. Just thought you ought to know.”

  Luca is looking at her, waiting for her reaction. She isn’t sure how to arrange her face. Before she can make a decision, he leans forward and takes the kitten from its nest on her shoulder, untangling her hair from around its paws and putting it carefully into her lap.

  “He’s made a right mess of your hair, do you know that?”

  His words are rough, but his caress is very gentle. Is he the boy he’s describing, the one so violent he had to be sent away from home? Or is he the boy who’s combing his fingers through the tangles in her hair, made by the kittens he summoned out of their nest to enchant her?

  “But it’s all right.” She can feel his breath against her neck and cheek. She sits frozen and still, mesmerised. “You’re safe with me. I wouldn’t hurt you. I mean, I was violent and that. But I wasn’t, like, violent violent. I mean, I was keeping someone else safe and it got a bit out of hand.”

  There’s something odd about this story, as if he’s reading from a script. She wonders what he means by a bit out of hand, and who he was defending. There’s a lie in here. She can see it in the way he glances at her, checking to make sure he’s being believed. But which part is he lying about? What did he do? Who did he hurt, and why? If only she could ask him some questions, shake him up a little bit and see what falls out. She turns her face towards him so their mouths are only a few inches apart.

  “Fuck,” he whispers. “Willow… I don’t… I mean… I don’t know…”

  They’re saved by a series of rustling thumps. Something is jumping and scrambling up the haystack towards them. As one, the kittens sit up and prick their ears forward.

  “Hey, look,” Luca says, leaning precariously over the bales. “Their mum’s coming back. And she’s got this massive rat and all.”

  Willow feels a slight tremble in the bale she’s sitting on and a large tabby cat leaps from below. She’s sleek and prosperous, muscled and strong, and an equally sleek brown rat dangles from her jaws. At first Willow thinks it must be dead, but then she sees the two front paws move weakly in supplication. When the cat lets the rat drop, it staggers to its feet and tries to drag itself away. The kittens watch intently, and creep closer.

  “Teaching them to hunt,” Luca explains unnecessarily. All five kittens are clustered around the rat now, dabbing at it with tiny paws, jumping back when it twitches. It would be charming if it wasn’t for the poor rat, confused and desperate, its end inevitable.

  “This is fucking awesome,” Luca says. He’s watching avidly, his face tight and intent. “Look at the size of it. Reckon it’s pregnant?”

  She doesn’t want to look, but she can’t make herself stop looking. The rat is a living thing, it’s frightened and in pain and it wants to live.
Luca is right, it looks pregnant, its belly distended, dragging against the hay. One of the kittens leaps forward, needle teeth closing on the fur at the back of the rat’s neck. The rat screams.

  “Yes then,” Luca whispers. “Go on. Kill that fucking thing. Rip its throat out.”

  How can you watch this? Willow presses her hand against her mouth. Did the rat know when it woke up this morning that today would be its last day on earth? The other kittens are growing bolder, lunging for the fat curve of the rat’s belly. Is Willow imagining it, or can she see the taut outlines of the babies, squirming inside the skin? Luca is transfixed, his eyes bright, his mouth wet. Moving carefully, he reaches forward and prods at the rat. Is he going to make her stay here and watch until they tear the rat open? Until the babies spill out onto the hay?

  “Shit. You okay?” Luca suddenly seems to remember she’s there. “Sorry, mate. I wasn’t thinking. We don’t have to stay and watch. You all right climbing back down?” He puts a hand on her shoulder, but it’s the same hand he prodded at the rat with and she cringes away. “Okay, manage on your own then.”

  The worst thing is that she can understand why he’s so fascinated. There’s something enthralling about the small cruelty unfolding before them, the unborn rat-children meeting their end beneath the teeth and claws of the creatures she and Luca had petted to sleep. Is there something wrong with both of them for wanting to watch?

  “Take it steady on the way down.” Luca has a long strand of straw stuck in his hair. She resists the temptation to take it out for him. “You have to watch out for gaps. And don’t pull too hard on the bales cos they might slip.”

  The last thing she sees before she slithers over the edge is the mother cat, quick and efficient, tearing open the rat’s belly so that a long rope of pink shrivelly things spill out, slick and covered in blood. The last thing she hears is the small wet sounds of the kittens, taking tiny, hungry bites of fresh tender meat.