Ventriloquists

by David Mathew

  Yasser made sure that his eyes met Maggie’s. ‘I was wondering,’ he said, his nervousness at bay for the instant, ‘what you were wearing under that bathrobe.’

  Still smiling, Maggie answered, ‘Have you ever been with an older woman?’

  Yasser shook his head. The answer was a lie but he believed it would be what Maggie wanted to hear.

  ‘I don’t mind if you think of her sometimes,’ said Maggie, standing. ‘But not now, okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘The answer’s nothing.’

  Maggie opened her dressing-gown; she was naked underneath it. With her fists bunched on her hips she was able to keep the gown open for Yasser’s eyes.

  Less than half a metre from those eyes, Maggie’s breasts bobbed in midair, or so it seemed; miniscule rises and falls, in time with their owner’s breathing. Her groin had been shaved to a coconut-coloured stubble.

  Only a few seconds passed; to Yasser these seconds were feasts of time – he could watch her forever. The stiffening of his penis told him so; the sweeping tingling that sugared the coating of his scrotum during moments of excitement (and not only sexual excitement) told him so too… And yet… And yet her father was who knew how close. Max as well. For all Yasser knew, even Tommy could be outside the front door, fresh from caving in Yasser’s windscreen and ready for the next challenge in his diary.

  ‘Give me your hand,’ said Maggie.

  They all know I’m here, Yasser told himself; in the small hours of the morning. Who’d believe a visit to carry on talks in the abduction summit?

  This was one side of the argument. The other side said (firmly): She’s a grown woman, Yass. Coming on to you…

  Yasser held out his left hand; it trembled only slightly.

  Maggie took her hand, twisted it gently at the wrist so that it was palm up, and then, having stepped forward, pressed the palm and fingers up against her vagina, her legs wide apart for a more productive contact.

  Her lips felt hot on Yasser’s hand; she was damp; she pushed his hand a little harder. When she looked up at the ceiling, Yasser, still sitting, followed the sight of her body skyward, attracted by the undersides of her breasts, the sweep of her throat. All the time his erection drummed in his trousers.

  Did she know this? Suddenly she looked down at him, scary-eyed (hopefully) with longing, and said, ‘Let me see.’

  Yasser made to stand up, but Maggie indicated that he was to remain seated by placing her free hand on his shoulder. Rubbing her wet lips with his left hand, he went through the difficulty of opening his zip with his right. What he produced was three-quarters ready.

  ‘Show me how,’ Maggie instructed.

  Needing no further invitation, Yasser tweaked his helmet slowly, taking care of that pesky remaining quarter. A light fuzz of sweat had appeared on his brow; it made the wound to his temple sting. His heart was going at it like a Sufi drummer.

  ‘You’ll be real man for me, won’t you, Yasser?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good boy.’

  And Maggie bent at the waist. The angle was right for her to take his tip into her mouth, but she didn’t do so. Instead she teased him with a couple of licks to the underside of his glans.

  ‘But not out here, though, eh? Not where me da sleeps,’ she continued.

  She led Yasser into the bedroom.

  He had had a reason for coming here, after all.

  Unpatrolled Borders

  1.

  By telling the tale, Connors had reasoned, he would be led to a border, the crossing of which would take him back to the world as he knew it; where exactly he’d end up he was not fussy. Where was possible? Soaking wet in the garden of Number 11: this was fine by Connors. Drugged and addled but otherwise of sound mind, in a hospital bed somewhere: this would do equally as well. Gorged on faith in the logical, to Connors it had seemed like a workable plan: tell it all to exhaust it; tell it all to make it go away… So it was that on the second night after shoring up on Toenail Island, with his belly full of unrecognisable berries and his temples ringing under the pull of a few cups of liquor that would put his usual pint of wifebeater lager to shame, he had said to Elvis Leader (also to Chelsea) that he wanted to tell a story. And the three of them had perched by the fire that the human contingent of the trio had built, and Connors had started talking while Elvis kept a nervous eye out on the silently grinding shadows encircling their makeshift camp.

  It hadn’t worked. The following morning, Connors had woken up confused and alone; the boy and the dog were elsewhere. Light was thin, and desperate streaks of rain clutched hard to the wind gusts teasing his face. It was cold; and for the first time in as long as he could remember – possibly the first time ever – Connors had screamed. He had screamed until his lungs felt bruised; the only sight that had stopped him was that of Elvis and Chelsea, returning from over a rise, where they’d gone to evacuate their bowels.

  Now, once again, they were walking. Mid-morning (as Connors calculated it) had since been and gone, and his stomach complained for sustenance; it was time for some sort of lunch. At the shack on the edge of the harbour township, where they’d eaten the gas-inducing berries, Connors had purchased more of the same, but he had done so in the sure belief that there would be alternative foodstuffs to buy before long. However, up to now, this had not been the case; and Connors had been forced to admit that as they plodded on, stride after weary longing stride, it was looking less likely that an oasis was waiting over the next hill. But what choice did Connors have, but to continue on foot? Another mile. Another five miles… By this point his feet were sore with blisters, his calves burned with the exertion; and yet… Connors could think of no better way than to stroll on in as straight a line as he could manage, in the hope of locating the next township, or the coast on the far side of Toenail Island – whatever materialised first. And if the boy insisted on keeping pace, despite Connors’s warnings that he himself had no idea what he was doing and was made of no leadership material, then whose fault was that exactly. Not Connors’s.

  All the same, Connors remained uneasy about Elvis’s presence. When Connors had announced, that first night on the island, that he intended to walk out of town until he was too tired to walk any further, Elvis had lost no time in making his opinion plain that it was a bad idea; and yet, now seeing that Connors meant what he said, the boy had added I’ll come with you.

  Why?

  The boy had shrugged and said, I’m tired of the sea. It does you good to get your land legs every once in a while.

  My sentiments exactly, mate.

  When Connors had broached the subject, as tenderly as he was able, of Elvis’s parents, the boy had turned away from him and muttered that there was no one special in his life. An odd response, Connors maintained; but the kid was entitled to his privacy – if he didn’t want to discuss his back story, that was his prerogative, surely. But what was Connors’s business was why Elvis seemed determined to venture deeper into land that was riddled (by folklore or fact) with cannibals. It had taken Connors a night to realise that Elvis had not answered the question at all. Not wishing to board another ship, and wilfully pacing your way into imminent danger – these were two different matters altogether.

  ‘Time for lunch,’ Connors decided.

  Their picnic spot was halfway up one more in a seemingly endless succession of wet-lead hills sprouting tufts of orange-red vegetation. Their witnessing sky was a patchwork of shades of brown and beige; the air, charged and still, was spoiling for a fight. ‘Feels like a storm,’ Connors mentioned; but the boy ignored him. Silently Elvis busied himself by gathering some of the vegetation, leading Connors to the conclusion that the boy longed to start another of his beloved fires (they knew that the orange leaves ignited); and although they didn’t need a fire – not at midday, and not to eat their feast of berries – Connors could not find the heart to ins
truct the boy to desist. Let him have it. What was one more blaze, after all? If Connors’s prediction about the weather turned out to be correct, they wouldn’t even need to dampen the fucker down when they’d finished with it. Sighing wearily, Connors sat.

  Chelsea barked.

  For a second Connors imagined that she had barked at him; but no – and she had not barked at Elvis either. As taut as a railway line now, she stared up the hill, a thin grumbling rumble leaking from her jaw.

  ‘What’s she heard?’ Elvis asked.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Connors admitted; but the thought occurred to him that whatever it was that Chelsea had been made aware of, it was close. Her bark had been the first since yesterday.

  She barked again.

  Connors scrambled to his feet. ‘Come on, Elvis,’ he said. ‘Let’s see what she’s got in mind.’

  A few metres away, Elvis replied, ‘What about our berries?’

  ‘Fuck the berries.’ And Connors resumed their path up the incline, sticky with perspiration, guided by hope.

  Had they managed to cross the island? Was it the sea that Chelsea had sniffed out? Was it meat? Was it people?

  ‘Come on!’ Connors repeated. Although his breathing was laboured, he set his party a new pace within a few strides. He was excited. For Chelsea to have barked, after such a monastic silence, there must be something at least to see from the crown of the hill they climbed… The bag containing their provisions – the bag given to them gratis by the shack-owner who had sold them the berries and two canisters of water – bumped against Connors’s backside as he ascended. He could hear the water sloshing in the canisters; his throat was sore and dry – he had needed their pit-stop – but the tease of what lay beyond was too alluring for him to stay and rest. A rest could follow later on…

  Almost breathless, Connors reached the top of the hill… and then he waited to believe his eyes. He wanted what he saw to be something else. The more he glared, however, the more stubbornly the picture held steady.

  It wasn’t any sort of ending that Connors might have anticipated, but as he remained fixed to the spot, taking in the sight of the vast wall in the milesaway distance, he could not lose the fear that this was the end nonetheless.

  He waited until Elvis had caught up, and then said, ‘And what the fuck’s that?’

  ‘Wow. That must be the Nail,’ Elvis answered. ‘I didn’t think…’

  ‘You didn’t think what?’ Connors prompted.

  ‘I didn’t think the stories were true.’

  ‘And what stories would they be?’ Connors asked, sensing his own impatience.

  Chelsea barked – but not from beside them. The dog had not moved from her original spot.

  ‘There’s something here she doesn’t like,’ said Elvis, quietly.

  ‘There’s something here I don’t like, Elvis! What stories?’

  ‘I told you!’

  Chelsea barked.

  ‘Told you on the first night! You asked me why it was called Toenail Island.’ He pointed at the wall that sliced across their vista from left to right. ‘There’s your answer. That’s the Nail.’

  Having already been grabbed by a breathlessness that now receded, Connors fell into a silence from which he was not certain he wished to emerge. Very little more than a breeze was in motion – the progress of any wind perhaps buffeted by the Nail – and were it not for the touch of this breeze to the sweat on his face, Connors might have imagined himself dead. He was dead. And this was a hell-dream… Then Chelsea barked once more, the smell of something rotten fetched his nostrils, and Connors was back at the top of a hill, with a child companion, a dog, and a pocketful of change that he was tapping addictively, while remembering what Elvis had taught him about the origin of Toenail Island’s peculiar name.

  The story goes, the boy had said, that God lay down wounded, on a rock. The seas that formed around him were the tears of a billion generations. And they submerged him, as sure as bathwater submerges a bather. But just like when you’re in the bath – some of you sticks up above the surface. Your toes, for example.

  Folklore and superstition, Connors had believed at the time; but now, in context, he was less sure of his determination. Why shouldn’t they be on the very tip of God’s toe (which toe?) especially if the inward face of a colossal protruding nail was really what it was that they faced? Why not? Nothing else made sense, after all. Why should this?

  ‘I have literally no idea what to do next,’ Connors announced.

  Chelsea barked.

  The sound was like a shot of neat adrenalin, a bolt to Connors’s heart. What was near? What was it that the dog didn’t like? Connors swivelled at the waist, on the lookout.

  Nothing.

  Something else rancid on the breeze, but nothing to see; just the stink of what lived between toe skin and Nail… It occurred to Connors that an assailant – invisible and light as the wind – was approaching, skirting rather than treading a close-by incline.

  Connors slapped his knees. ‘Come on, girl!’ he called to Chelsea.

  The bitch was not for moving.

  ‘It’s one way or the other,’ Elvis reminded him. honesty

  Although Connors resented the intrusion, he knew that the boy was right: it was back the way they’d come, or onwards towards the Nail in the water.

  Then the dirty man appeared to Connors’s left.

  2.

  With him, from foot to brow, he brought a stink of death and sweetshops. At first glance he appeared to be buzzing with flies; it was only as he strode closer to Connors that the latter realised his mistake: the man was made of flies. From head to toe: the shape was humanoid, but the solidity was down to compressed insect life. Although hundreds buzzed free at the silent thump of every footfall, they recollected on shoulder, on forehead. Only the eye sockets were empty – a wrinkled moving black – and the mouth writhed with an expression that seemed reluctant to settle.

  Connors released a held breath. His hands shook.

  Halfway back down the hill, Chelsea barked madly. She rocked from side to side, her tail lowered, her teeth bared, as Elvis said, ‘I dig the threads’ calmly.

  And the insect man stopped walking.

  The drone of flies was this arrival’s sole communication, at least for a few unworded seconds. He had ceased his advancement four metres from where Connors stood (with Elvis now clutching at his arm). The flies that formed his mouth made the figure grimace; and a voice emerged, so high-pitched and squeaky that it was like that of a cartoon gopher. It said:

  Are you lost?

  The timbre surprised Connors; it amused him too, though he tried not to display his mirth. If this was an offer of assistance, honestly provided for all its unconventionality, he did not wish to offend this would-be guide. He nodded his head.

  ‘More lost that you can imagine.’

  Where do you want to go? the insects buzzed.

  And this was a killer question. Where indeed? Connors and the party he’d adopted – they were not off to see the Wizard of Oz; they were not in Never-Never Land; they were not bearing the One Ring that would bind them all.

  Shrugging helplessly, Connors said, ‘Home, mate.’

  Home?

  More specific, Connors decided; this was the best chance they’d had to date.

  He swallowed a gulp and said, ‘Beds. Bedfordshire… I started in Bedfordshire.’ It sounded lame; it sounded desperate.

  The man made of insects hummed, as if in pensive consideration. Across the water? the voice peeped in query.

  ‘Yeah. That’s one way of putting it… How come you speak English?’

  The pitch of the drone rose higher. For an instant Connors was concerned that he had asked something insensitive.

  What is English?

  ‘Never mind. Where do you go from here?’ Connors replied. E
lvis’s pinch on his arm had grown tighter and more uncomfortable; and still, from down the hill, the dog barked. The compound effect was to set Connors’s nerves more on edge: very badly and right now he wanted to be away from this place; but with no other markers – not even place names in this dream – he was wildly lost. Suddenly the insect man’s original question struck Connors as sublimely humorous.

  His not-quite rhetorical question having elicited no further response, Connors tried another tack. ‘What’s beyond the Nail?’

  Beyond?

  ‘Yes, beyond. Further than. On the other side of.’

  Ocean, the insect man answered simply.

  ‘And what’s on the other side of the ocean?’

  Nothing. We all live here, the insects buzzed.

  Were they communicating among themselves? Connors wondered briefly. He looked down at Elvis. ‘Do you wanna come with me, son?’ he asked, his belly contracting at the sight of tears in the boy’s eyes.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Past the Nail. Or did you intend to stay on God’s Big Toe until you hit puberty?’

  ‘What’s puberty?’

  ‘It’s when your knackers… Never mind. Are you willing?’

  ‘I thought you said no more ships.’

  ‘I did. Bloke can change his mind, can’t he? Or we can swim.’

  Elvis took a step back. ‘Swim the ocean?’

  ‘Why not? It’s my dream: if I drown I’ll wake up properly – I probably got a lungful when that flood…’ He was staring at a quizzical expression. He stopped talking. Intending to ask more of the collection of bug life, he noticed that the shape had moved slightly: not only had it taken a few steps closer, it had also altered its shape visibly. Where before it had appeared stocky, now the overall form was tall and thin, long-legged like a spider. ‘Where are you going?’ Connors inquired of this new stranger in their midst.

  The answer was soon revealed, though not in words. The humanoid set off down the hill that Connors and Elvis had climbed, his speed a matter of future legend.