Dot in the Universe

by Lucy Ellmann

  On her return, after being kept on hold and having BAD MUSIC played to her for an eternity, Dot was finally given permission to join the crowd that was awaiting reincarnation. She found herself seated next to a Russian girl who’d died of exposure from sitting all night on a couch after her boyfriend dumped her. She was still wearing the same clothes she’d died in: COTTON SHIRT, BARE MIDRIFF, and JEANS decorated with paper straws all round the waistband. Dot was tempted to say that this was no way to dress in Russia! But she stopped herself. Perhaps the girl would get a BETTER life this time around. People are so quick to dismiss death as a BAD thing.

  O Egg, O Egg

  Wombs are of great interest in the Underworld — they’re the only way out of the TOMB! WE no longer see sex as anything to do with engendering life, but that’s how it’s viewed in the Underworld. Sex only EXISTS because of death. They wait, they watch, a queue of souls bickering over who’ll get to inhabit the next fertilised egg. No sexual act is frowned upon THERE. Each copulation is greeted with cries of RELIEF and HOPE.

  What do WE care about the preservation of the species, eh? Sex has lost all heroism for us. But in the Underworld it’s considered COMMENDABLE, a charming ritual that smooths over all the preceding bureaucratic wrangles. Reincarnation is so COMPLICATED, conception comparatively simple: not many decisions to be MADE except how rushed, how rough, how sweet.

  Once assigned an egg, you have to drink muddy brown water from the River of Lethe to make you forget the Underworld and your previous life (any mention of the Underworld or afterlife or GHOSTS will be treated as a JOKE in the real world, so it’s important that you too can mock them convincingly).

  The boat was covered with shells now, courtesy of Belinda Lurcher. They even had a light dusting of silver sparkle spray-paint on top. Dot handed her obol over to Charon and clambered on board, barely able to contain her joy. Everyone was clutching little bottles of Lethe water. Dot was glad to see the Russian girl was drinking hers: soon she would forget all her troubles.

  The boat sank under the weight of all those shells, but no matter. They walked the rest of the way. When they dragged themselves up on to the opposite bank, the earth already felt more SOLID.

  Everyone was very excited, but they had to wait around outside the Fur Factory first, while animals chose their markings for the next life (yes, dogs with a nice black spot over one eye CHOSE that). The wait gave Dot a chance to consider her position. She had FUMED about the delays and corruption in the Underworld, but now that the time had come to LEAVE she felt a little nervous. Could a new life really be worth all the PAPERWORK? And no one had asked her yet WHO she wanted to be. Why wasn’t anyone taking her order? She didn’t mind, as long as she was someone FAMOUS. (She’d only ever heard of famous people being reincarnated so this didn’t seem too much to ask.)

  Finally everyone was directed over to a row of giant funnels that hung from the sky. They looked INDUSTRIAL and kind of BEAT UP, and seemed to be made of dented tin or aluminium. Everybody stared at them dubiously, but in the end they did as they were told and huddled underneath while the machinery warmed up. Then, one by one, souls slowly drifted up into the funnels! It was somewhat UNDIGNIFIED, Dot felt. But you put up with a LOT in the Underworld.

  Dot Reborn!

  Once she was inside the funnel, the suction seemed to increase, to an almost unbearable level. She was moving swiftly up a long grey tunnel. Far ahead she could see a small square door. It was yellowish, and had curved edges. Dot wondered briefly if Belinda would approve of this yellow, before she forgot Belinda completely. She wasn’t aware of having gone through the door — perhaps she fainted? — but the next thing Dot knew she was warm and wet and nestling amid soft dark blobs. SUCCESS: Dot was a BLASTOCYST.

  She had never known such peace, such freedom from responsibility! No dishes to be done, no sins to repent, no thank-you cards to write. Just herself alone, a SPHERE, in a warm bath of blood. She lazed around, no, REALLY lazed around, for DAYS. No sights, no smells, no tastes. She gradually forgot such things existed. It was PARADISE.

  Then she was EXPELLED. Dot was furious. There must be some mistake! She couldn’t have been there more than eleven, twelve, maybe thirteen days — Dot wanted the full nine months!

  But there was no mistake. Dot had been awarded the next available ovum (this was what she’d signed up for on some form or other), which happened to be that of a MARSUPIAL. Dot was a possum!

  Without any time to prepare herself for the birth trauma. Dot was blasted from her mother’s aching cloaca. Dot was now supposed to claw or paddle her way to the POUCH (something Dot had never done before and was no GOOD at). In some disarray, Dot contrived to FALL OFF With most marsupial families (not dysfunctional, just rather BUSY), this might have been a fatal mistake, but Dot’s mother happened to NOTICE Dot wiggling around on the ground and wanted to help her. So she LICKED Dot, and continued to lick her until Dot ESCAPED this licking by jerking, curling and straightening her bug-like body and swinging her strong little arms. In this way, Dot eventually managed to put a distance of 2 CENTIMETRES between herself and her mother.

  Her mother moved closer to Dot and SAT DOWN. Dot thought she would be crushed, CRUSHED, but wasn’t! Instead she now felt warmth and fur and knew enough to grab at it, and thereby got hold of her mother’s tail. So Dot finally began her epic journey to the pouch! If you discount all the initial flopping around, she reached it in record time: 16½ seconds! Her mother had SAVED HER LIFE.

  All Dot had to do now was find a TITTIE. But a whole crowd of embryonic siblings had beaten her to it. Each had a teat firmly clamped in its mouth. By clawing, squirming, scratching, straining, sort of SWIMMING, yanking her way along, Dot eventually found one too. She was safe! She had everything she needed: milk, warmth, comfort, a mother who had SAVED HER LIFE, and surprisingly little oxygen (but she didn’t need much).

  There is something cosy about a pouch, that outside womb, something a little TEA COSYish. You could have put Dot and her siblings in a TEASPOON! People are always DOING this to possums, to prove they are the size of a PEA or a BEE. Just a blob of life, a spot of bother. A dot in the universe.

  Dot’s mother was a Virginia Opossum but she lived in Ohio. Like other Virginia Opossums she had a whitish snout and a grey body. The fur stopped halfway down her tail so that she could grip things with it and hang upside-down. Her ears were misshapen from frostbite, but otherwise she was healthy. She had FIFTY TEETH and her favourite meal was: wasps, centipedes, a box turtle and some wild cherries. Dot’s father’s favourite meal was a garter snake followed by grasshoppers. They caught sight of each other one day behind a mulberry bush and mated quickly, lying on their sides. Then he disappeared. He didn’t phone, he didn’t write.

  She found a nice cave in which to give birth. Possums trust anything pouchlike. They look for caves or holes or tunnels whenever they’re in trouble (they only ‘play possum’ as a last resort).

  Dot was her mother’s TWENTY-THIRD CHILD in an unceasing series of nurturings, a CARICATURE of motherhood (the monstrosity of it all). Dot’s mother had carried her last litter in the pouch until she could no longer MOVE and the pouch was dragging on the ground and the babies were all STICKING OUT, baby possum asses everywhere. Later she got them to ride on her BACK, which was slightly easier.

  DOT’S MOTHER WEIGHED DOWN BY POSSUMS IN THE POUCH

  DOT’S HALF-BROTHERS AND SISTERS RIDING ON DOT’S MOTHER (BEFORE DOT WAS BORN)

  Dot’s Infancy

  Once Dot forgot all about being reincarnated and was getting used to being a possum, she sucked her milk with gusto and was content. She was EMBRYONIC after all and embryos are PRETTY EASY TO PLEASE. Dot knew nothing but MILK and FUR and POUCH. She didn’t even know if she was male or female (her BODY had barely decided), and she didn’t CARE.

  Her mother made loud clicking noises as she went about her business in the woods and brambles. Sometimes she scrambled jarringly up a tree. But Dot didn’t mind. She had a tight hold on her t
eat and some fur and never let go. She was only vaguely aware of her siblings who, like Dot, were now starting to grow their blond baby fur. They all hung on.

  Everything was going fine until Dot’s mother was caught in a TRAP. She wasn’t skinned or made into Possum Pie, but instead shipped — alive — to Yale University for the purposes of scientific RESEARCH. Dot’s mother had the misfortune of belonging to a species of interest to scientists, on account of her urogenital system: in a caricature of womanhood, the monstrosity of it all, Dot’s mother had TWO VAGINAE and TWO UTERI.

  Each uterus was a fusiform body, elongated caudally into a narrow uterine neck. The necks of both uteri ran parallel for 3 millimetres, ensheathed in a common mass of connective tissue. Each uterine neck opened into the vaginal cul-de-sac of its own side at the os uteri, situated ventrolaterally on the uterine papilla. The median septum between right and left vaginal cul-de-sacs arose in the midline at the junction of the uterine papillae. The anterior vaginal canal of each side merged with the lateral vaginal canal which was long and convoluted. Posterior to the bladder the two lateral vaginae and the urethra joined to form the urogenital sinus which was long relative to the anterior components of the system.

  Fig. 1. — The urogenital system of Dot’s mother. The various transverse sections AB, CD, etc. are not drawn to scale. a.v.c., anterior vaginal canal; a.v.e., anterior vaginal expansion; bl., bladder; cl., clitoris; l.v., lateral vagina; m.v.c., median vaginal cul-de-sac; os. ut., os uteri; p.v.s., posterior vaginal sinus; r.s., receptaculum seminis; u.b., position of opening of ureter into bladder; u.g.s., urogenital sinus; u.o., position of opening of urethra into urogenital sinus; ur., urethra; ut., uterus.

  Fig. 2. — Longitudinal section of vaginal complex with cross sections at various levels. Symbols as in Figure 1.

  Fuck Science

  Dot would have been FINE, would have had a GREAT LIFE as a possum, wandering around eating bugs all night with her crocodile mouth, sleeping all day in some pouchlike burrow, hanging upside-down from trees by her tail and opposing her opposable thumbs. But she didn’t get to because SOME SCIENTIST wanted to study Virginia Opossum pouch young. Any baby possum would do. Some used in the study hadn’t even attached themselves to a teat yet — they were still coming down one vagina or the other when the mother was killed. Others were just born and were found crawling in the dead mother’s fur, LOOKING for the pouch.

  All in all, the scientist collected (KILLED):

  23 maturing preovulatory oocytes

  38 uncleaved fertilised or unfertilised eggs

  17 cleaving eggs

  27 unilaminar blastocysts

  32 bilaminar blastocysts

  36 trilaminar blastocysts

  22 foetal embryos

  51 advanced foetal intrauterine stages

  100 newborn young

  100 pouch young

  All that marsupial MIGHT wasted, the wonder and efficiency of it all. Dot’s infantile happiness THROWN AWAY, so that some guy could better understand marsupials. But do marsupials understand US?

  Dot was still attached to the teat she liked so much. But the scientist wanted to understand how she was attached to it EXACTLY. So he did a cross section of the nipple, slicing right through Dot’s head as she sucked.

  This was of limited benefit to SCIENCE, but it sure meant a lot to DOT. For she was back in the Underworld, this time as an embryonic possum that looked like a BUG, a tiny blonde fuzzy DOT that could only grab at things and squirm around and suck. She had to negotiate the Underworld like this, sightless and AGAIN with no National Insurance number. Belinda Lurcher wouldn’t even come near her, Dot was so lowly: she was a Lesser Mammal after all.

  Dot DIED for this:

  Figure 48. — Transverse section of the nipple of an opossum. The young one had been recently born and was hanging to the nipple. The specimen was prepared by cutting thin slices through the head of the young animal, the nipple being sliced as it was held in place in the young animal’s mouth. The slice is shown as seen under a microscope. Eighteen little ducts (M.D.) convey the milk along the nipple to the offspring.

  You know, chicks have a DARK SIDE. They look helpless and fluffy but actually they’re kind of SCRAWNY under all that fluff and they can PECK. Sheep recognise each other from PHOTOS. They EXIST. To each other animals are wholly real. The earth and sky are real to them, their bodies, pain and pleasure, their mothers, their children. It’s all perfectly real until WE take it away.

  WHY is there no place for animals in our Underworld? The Ancient Egyptians had all kinds in theirs: the ostrich, duck, goose, pigeon, pelican, vulture, heron, falcon, eagle, guinea fowl, ibis, flamingo, swallow, bee, fish, worm, eel, crocodile, scorpion, dung beetle, python, cobra, panther, lion, leopard, jackal, cat, dog, mouse, cow, ox, pig, antelope, hippopotamus, donkey and baboon all get a mention in The Book of the Dead. Mexicans too expect to find animals in the afterlife: the dog you kicked here will be there to bite you. What do WE get? Barren rock, fire, devils, torment and remorse. Dante mentions animals (a leopard, a lion, a she-wolf) but they’re only there to serve US, or to SYMBOLIZE something.

  What if we had to ANSWER to animals some day for what we’ve done to them? What if they demanded retribution? Put us all in PENS, with our shit falling through metal grates on to sawdust below, no room to TURN AROUND? What if they took all our EGGS away? What if they lined us up and slaughtered us one by one in front of our friends and family, so that they could EAT us? What if they yelled at us for peeing indoors, stuck fire-crackers up our asses, or flung us down apartment-block stairwells for fun? What if they castrated men and artificially inseminated women? What if they fed us human flesh to FATTEN us quicker? What if they MILKED us (DAILY)? What if they stuck BITS in our mouths, whipped us and made us CARRY them places, or forced us to jump over HURDLES that broke our legs? What if they clothed themselves in our hair and skin, made pillows from our down, BOILED OUR BONES to make Jello desserts for themselves? What if they ROASTED us with apples in our mouths and the LEG MUSCLES OF OTHER PEOPLE draped across our backs? And considered our foetuses and testicles a special delicacy? What if they watched NATURE SHOWS on TV about us mating or fighting and COOED over cute footage of our babies, while cramming their mouths full of us, sliced? What if they REALLY GOT THEIR OWN BACK — and justified it on the grounds of THEIR science and religion, which confirmed we were there to be used?

  What if WE were sent down mines to test the air? What if whales blew US up if we happened to beach ourselves on some shore? What if dogs sat in the sledge while WE pulled, or made US smell suitcases for bombs or sent US barefoot into burning buildings to help DOGS get out alive? What if donkeys made us pull WHOLE HOUSES for them, and cats put our babies in bags and drowned them? What if we had to accompany animals to THEIR wars?

  What if they put us in zoos and STARED at us, or tried out every goddam chemical in our eyes? What if they stuck jellyfish genes in us to make us GLOW, or cloned us and harvested our organs for the benefit of PIGS? What if they permanently catheterised WOMEN to make HRT for mares?

  What if lobsters rose up and BOILED US ALIVE, and oysters ate us raw and wriggling, with a dot or two of Tabasco? What if chickens put OUR day-old infants on conveyor belts and sent them sliding down chutes and twirling through funnels to a battery-farm future? What if bulls won all the BULLFIGHTS and rabbits pulled us out of hats?

  What if they let their children secretly TORMENT us? What if they FRIGHTENED us continually, stole our land and FUCKED us whenever they liked?

  The Arts barely acknowledge the EXISTENCE of animals (unless you count Stubbs, Saint-Saëns, sadistic cartoons, Aesop’s fables and that lousy White Fang). It’s all got to be about US: endless tales (SO MANY TALES) of us managing to meet up and mate, and paintings of us getting undressed, or killed, or RICH. What is the point of encouraging our CHILDREN to like animals, giving them pets and toy bunnies, and reading them animal stories, when, as adults, they will only KILL, EAT, and ABUSE animals and buy animals
for their own children to abuse, eat, kill?

  Scientists are so SMUG, so sure they’re RIGHT, so sure that they KNOW something. Medicine’s their big success story. So where’s the cure for cancer? People still die of FLU! Scientists only want to SUBDUE us and create Weapons of Mass Destruction. THEY should be destroyed, THEY should be dissected, not given PRIZES and interviewed on the radio by awestruck laymen.

  They know they’re doomed: scientists out in public are always looking over their shoulders, like presidents ripe for assassination. They KNOW their systems suck and they’re failing us.

  What’s Science ever done for the Rare Spotted Cuscus except CUT IT UP and give it a Latin name (Phalanger maculatus — yeah, great)? What’s Science actually done to stop everything going WRONG? Where’s Science when there’s a strange man FARTING IN YOUR BED? Where’s Science when you’re nearing SIXTY, still craving your dead father’s approval (though you’d make do with your FATHER-IN-LAW’s)? Where’s Science when you’re walking down a hot city street after drinking too much MADEIRA?

  WHERE THE FUCK IS SCIENCE?

  The whole world respects ONLY Science now! Every spare penny goes on keeping it afloat. Science will OUTLIVE us, their computers babbling to each other and checking themselves for viruses long after WE’VE ALL DIED of the drugs scientists invented and the radiation they released. What good will it do us then that they classified every species or built AEROPLANES? That won’t bring your dearest AUNT back. It won’t illogically remind you of APRICOT NECTAR.

  Seek wasteland, seek wilderness. Cling to anything they haven’t EXAMINED yet.

  Dot Wins a Prize!

  Belinda’s makeover was complete: she had filled the Underworld with low-voltage halogen lighting, chrome cladding, sequinned tumbleweed, faux tortoiseshell, sanded floorboards and glass-topped tables. In her new embryonic form, Dot kept slipping on the tables and getting splinters from the floorboards! She was lost for a time amongst a decorative corner display of BUN MOSS BALLS.