The Beauty

by Aliya Whiteley

  The cooking duties have fallen to Adam and Paul, to keep them out of mischief during their own swellings. Alas, their cooking is terrible! They take the dried ingredients we have left and serve up lumpy stews and leaky grey omelettes, which Thomas eats with gusto. He's the only one.

  It can't be past two in the afternoon, but already it's getting difficult to discern any edges to the room. Is Thomas asleep again? He doesn't move as I stand and stretch out my legs. Uncle Ted is out. I don't ask where he goes. The others are doing chores, or at least watching their Beauties do the chores for them. All of the manual tasks have been taken away now and our muscles are dissipating, leaving us with weakening arms. We have become reliant.

  ‘Want to hold her?’ says Thomas. So he is awake after all, looking at me with the hope of kindness in his eyes. It occurs to me that his new role might not give him everything he needs. There is loneliness, fear and even guilt in such heavy responsibilities. And he is the first to feel these things. Thomas never did like to go first, even in the classroom.

  I walk over to him. Bee does not bother to follow. It has stopped sharing with me lately and does not show me visions. Or maybe I stopped sharing with it. I don't know which. All I'm sure of is that I often find myself checking my hip for signs of a lump and feel such relief when there is nothing to be found.

  ‘All right then,’ I say. The smell is awful, like curdled milk. He throws back the top blanket and Holly is there, crinkled yellow skin, sticky brown hair in clumps and a face like a painting, not quite human, yet too human to be real.

  Thomas holds out his arms. The image of Betty taking off Doctor Ben's head comes into my mind. I say, ‘No, I'll just watch her.’

  ‘Okay.’ Is it my imagination or does he seem relieved at that? He wets his lips with his tongue, and says, ‘I don't really like to let her go, and Betty can feel it.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But if you wanted to hold her, then I'm sure–’

  ‘No. It's fine.’

  He looks around the empty room. ‘Everything has changed, hasn't it? I wouldn't say this in front of the others, but it's not what you promised.’

  ‘Later,’ I say. ‘It all comes good later. When has there ever been a bumper crop without a harsh winter? Maybe we don't get the benefit of this harvest, but Holly does. I didn't understand before.’ I still don't understand now, but he needs something to imagine, and I'll give him a long straight road in his head that leads to better times. I don't have to believe it to make him see it; I've learned that now.

  I talk and talk about Holly's life-in-waiting, and he laps it up. It'll be like before, I tell him. She will be the mother of new women, and humans and Beauty will live in harmony. The Beauty will be our benevolent guardians, stopping us from listening to the worst things in our hearts, making everything perfect this time around. Maybe there will be cities again, but with no crime, no pain; harmony in form and intent. And what will it matter if some of us are pink-skinned, and some of us are brown and some of us are yellow? We'll overcome such unimportant matters.

  I could go on forever, spinning this new world of tall towers and hand-holding, but Holly is opening and closing her mouth, wriggling in her blanket. No sound comes out, but I feel her hunger. She transmits it. I've never felt something so clearly from a Beauty, even from Bee. It's intense and painful. Unwelcome.

  ‘She's hungry.’ Thomas hesitates, his body curved over her.

  ‘You want me to get some milk from the kitchen?’ I ask him.

  ‘Listen, I've not been giving her milk.’ He swallows. ‘Please don't freak out if I show you this.’ He takes off more blankets and reveals his familiar fat pale body; I've seen it many times. I expected a long red scar where Holly pushed her way through – but the skin looks clean and whole, apart from one puckered red mole on his hip.

  He manoeuvres Holly to the mole. Her mouth puckers. The mole expands in response to her need. It opens, uncurling, the edges pulling backwards, and inside is a moist purplish hole that begins to weep a white liquid. Holly's head cranes forward – I didn't know she had such strength already – and she latches on, her lips fitting around the folds. Thomas shudders and his eyelids flutter.

  ‘It feels good,’ he whispers.

  To watch this makes me feel wrong inside, like nothing has before, even death. That blind expression of pleasure on both their faces, and the sucking sound; I am repulsed and excited. It sickens me and attracts me and my body responds to the idea of it, even as my mind tells me it is horrible, horrible.

  I don't move. I watch Thomas feed his baby.

  He opens his eyes and says softly, as she feeds, ‘Are you disgusted? I am, sometimes. Do you know what's even worse? Betty uses this new hole too. When we... Betty has a long thin yellow tube that comes out of it. Between its legs. And it puts that in there. It feels like nothing I've ever felt before. So good. I couldn't stop it. I don't want to. It's like when I come with my cock, but ten times stronger. And longer. It lasts for minutes.’

  ‘Don't tell the others,’ I say.

  ‘Not even Adam and Paul?’ he asks.

  ‘No. Let them come to it on their own. Like you did.’

  ‘Yes, maybe that'll be better.’

  If the other side found out, William and Eamon and the others, they'd find a way to kill Thomas and Holly, for sure. And the teenagers. They'd find a way, or they'd die trying.

  ‘I guess it's a good thing I'm not using my cock for it anymore,’ Thomas says, with a shrug that makes the baby grumble against his hip. ‘Look.’ He flips back the final blanket. At first I see only a hairless flap of skin, like the medical books said a woman should have, but then I see the stub of his cock, no more than a nub. There are no balls in the remains of the pouch beneath. ‘I use it to piss with and that's it. No feeling in it.’

  ‘None?’ I ask.

  ‘Just enough to tell me where I'm aiming.’ He smiles, but I can't make my face mirror his. ‘It doesn't hurt,’ he says. ‘None of it does, now. Having Holly; that was the worst pain I've ever felt. Maybe that's why all of this seems so petty now. Who cares where the milk comes out of? She has to be fed. Doesn't she?’

  ‘Don't tell anyone,’ I say. ‘Not anyone. For Holly's sake.’

  ‘I won't. Besides, Betty will protect me. And all the babies, when they come. I wonder if you'll have a baby. I didn't think – it makes you complete, Nate. In a way I can't explain.’

  Holly keeps feeding. Thomas pulls the blankets back around them both and I am glad not to have to look at his changing body any more. He is like a fattening caterpillar. I can't bear to think of what is happening inside him to make him a producer of babies, of milk. And yet he remains Thomas. I don't understand how he can be Thomas and a mother and a caterpillar, all at the same time.

  Behind us, there is a sound.

  I turn around smartly and see Bee moving to the door. It leaves without waiting for me, without hesitation. Betty remains still, beside Thomas.

  ‘What?’ he says.

  ‘I don't know. Stay here.’

  By the time I've reached the front door I can hear the shouting. William's voice is as loud as I've ever heard it; I scramble to the campfire, shoeless, feeling the bite of the icy ground under my feet. William's strident voice becomes distinguishable words. He says, ‘…must be done. Stay back, we're making the rules...’

  ...and I see the men who wait outside William's house. On the ground there are two beheaded bodies of the Beauty, leaking yellow-grey liquid from the stumps of their necks. The other Beauties have formed a line, Bee in the centre, walking slowly towards the house.

  The men hold out hoes, shovels, knives: weapons that jut from their readied hands, making the sharp shapes of battle. Hal and Gareth are as tall as pillars and sitting between them, underneath the bell, are Adam and Paul, their faces the colour of paper.

  William shouts: ‘It must be done, for the sake of us all. We have ruled that it's a crime to put such things in us against our will.’ Are his w
ords directed at the Beauty? They walk on, showing no sign of stopping, and William's voice pours on in a scream. I see it like a ribbon spooling from his mouth: ‘Judgement has been passed, and now must be carried out, do it, do it–’

  Hal and Gareth raise their long knives and swing them, down and round, into the sides of Adam and Paul. The knives stick in the bumps. I see Hal and Gareth working to tug the blades free and Adam and Paul’s blood is like glue on the knives, their bodies moulding to the blades, and red and yellow intermingle while their arms and legs and heads twitch. They slump down dead in deference to the knives, the knives are the masters of the body now. And yet the blades won't come free. Hal and Gareth tug, tug, tug, and the knives don't work free.

  The Beauty reach them. They start to pull Hal and Gareth apart, beginning with the heads, which are twisted round and popped off. Then the arms, then the legs. The knives are forgotten. There is blood as copious as a river after rainfall. It soaks and sprays William's porch like the painting of a child who can't resist the thrill of the deep rich red.

  The Beauty go on, moving through the other men. I see William disassembled, and Eamon, and Landers and Keith D and other men I have known so well. Some of them run for the woods, and some even make it, but a few of the Beauty peel off in the shape of an arrow and follow to the trees, in silence, with certainty.

  The other teenagers, Jason and Oliver, come out of the orchard. They stand stock-still, their faces a picture of terror. I think, if I am to describe this day, I must remember their faces, and so I fix the stretched cheeks, the peeled-back lips, in my mind. Then I touch my face and realise I am making the same expression.

  Jason and Oliver stumble away into the woods. I am alone.

  I reach for Bee with my mind and feel nothing. There is the sound of wailing amidst the trees. It goes on and on. It's surely not a human sound. The Beauty must be making it. I listen to it, waiting for it to stop, for something to happen. Maybe Uncle Ted will appear and start to issue commands, clean up that mess, bury those bodies. But there's nothing. Just the ceaseless wailing.

  Eventually the cold penetrates my feet, and brings me to the knowledge that I must move. So I do. I return to Thomas, who sits in the room just as I left him, Holly in his lap, his eyes closed.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘Don't. I can't hear it. I can't hear it.’ His voice shoots up, spiralling into shrill denial.

  But I must speak. I say, ‘They're dead.’

  Thomas says, ‘No.’ When he opens his eyes, they are alive with confusion and dread. ‘Don't let them hurt her.’

  ‘Nobody will. They're all dead. The Beauty killed them all.’

  ‘All of them?’ The worst thing is the hope in his face. Holly is more important than the rest of us, to him. ‘The whole Group? William? Everyone?’

  ‘Some ran. The Beauty have gone after them.’

  ‘Everyone,’ he says. Then he adds, ‘I'm very tired.’

  ‘Me too,’ I whisper.

  I can hear the wailing of the Beauty through the window. I crawl up next to Thomas and Holly, and I make us into a protective pile. I need an answer, a different ending to this story.

  An answer must come to me.

  *

  The icy depths of the graveyard remain undisturbed come the morning. The frozen cobwebs hang in tatters from the bare branches and the Beauty bury their dead lovers elsewhere, out of sight. In the woods, I think. With the bodies of the women that Uncle Ted strangled once upon a time, to protect us. The things that get done in the name of protection.

  Maybe new Beauties will erupt from the fresh corpses. Is this a circle, a journey in which we come back to the beginning and feel so much more complete in our knowledge? I’m losing my taste for such easy words.

  I sit next to my mother’s grave. Bee stands outside, silent. I am never truly alone now. Bee will always pull on my senses and I would give my voice, all my stories, to go back to how things were. Loneliness – that was a rare gift, like a hole in the brain that I worked hard to fill with my thoughts. Now I no longer have a hole to fill, and so I do not think so much. I only feel. How I hate such feelings.

  My mother would flick through her glossy magazines and sigh. ‘We never appreciate what we have until it’s gone,’ she would say, and I used to think in my head, never out loud, that it wasn’t too late. If she wanted that life so badly she could go back. How little I understood.

  I put a hand on the cold wooden cross that marks her spot. It’s not that different from touching Bee.

  A voice says, ‘I thought I’d find you here.’

  Ahh, the relief I feel in hearing that voice! I can’t help it; I spring up, I go to Uncle Ted and I put my arms around him. He has a smell so familiar that I close my eyes and imagine myself young again, young enough to be swung up into the space between his arms where happiness lives. But when I open my eyes I see his Bonnie standing next to my Bee and I step back. I pick up my problems once more, and own them.

  I say, ‘I thought you were dead.’

  He says, ‘They knew I was no threat. I hid in the woods. I know them well enough to keep out the way when it’s needed, and to come out when trouble passes. I wish I could say the same of you. You can’t hide in here all day. There’s work to be done. I’ve called an emergency meeting.’

  I laugh. I didn’t know I could make such a sound again. The graveyard soaks it up. ‘A meeting?’ I say. ‘Did you not see what happened? Who do you think is going to show up?’

  ‘Typical overblown Nate. You’re alive. I’m alive. Thomas and that thing he calls a baby, and Oliver and Jason. No doubt more of these bastard crosses will start growing inside all of you soon, and if we want them to be more human than mushroom then we need to have order. Agreement.’

  ‘And you,’ I say. ‘A baby will probably grow in you too.’

  I see the flare of disgust on his face. He steps back and rests his hand on the stick on his belt. ‘That’s not going to happen,’ he tells me, and Bonnie makes a strange wail. Then I understand – the way he makes Bonnie keeps its distance, walk behind him, never touch him. This is not only in public. He does not touch it at all. I can’t imagine the strength of will this must take, or what it might do to a man. I wonder if it isn’t sending him crazy.

  ‘How can you–’

  He cuts me off. ‘Meeting. Now. In the kitchen. There aren’t any answers in here, Nate.’

  ‘I know.’

  There are no answers anywhere in this place. Not in the graveyard, the kitchen, the vegetable patch, the orchard, the clearing or the clifftop. Ted will try to inject us with meaning, but it cannot be done. At least, not the meaning he wants. I wait until he is gone, and then I lean over and am sick next to my mother’s grave. The vomit is stringy and yellow. It tastes of mushrooms.

  *

  The kitchen is warm, and comforting. It would be easy to imagine nothing has changed.

  I’ve not had much to do with Jason and Oliver before. They are still young, training to be carpenters and woodsmen, and the life of an apprentice is a busy one. I saw them at the campfire and my eyes would skim over them as I told my stories, but the truth was I considered myself to be above them and I did not bother to make friends.

  I see now that this was a mistake. They know Ted well and they are loyal to him, in the way that men of manual labour are. They trust others who work with their hands and think those of the mind are sly and consider themselves above others. What can I say? They are right. So now I have no ally but Thomas, who hears nothing I say any more unless I put the word ‘baby’ in the sentence.

  ‘All the hard tasks have been taken over by the Beauty,’ says Ted, leaning back against the stove, a position of power. ‘So we only have to cook for ourselves from our supplies and raise Holly right. These are our tasks now.’

  I notice he does not mention the idea of other babies to Oliver and Jason. They stand close together in front of the pantry door. Thomas has been cajoled into having a wash and getting dressed. He wears a woollen
dress and holds Holly to his chest, jiggling her up and down while she makes small mews of discomfort, projecting her need for Betty who has been left outside with the other Beauties.

  I wonder if the others do not feel her pain. From her mind she pushes forth a feeling, her desire for a figure that can only be described as father. She sees Betty as her father.

  Jason raises a hand. He has a smooth, pleasant face, without the scars of acne that one might expect at his age, and he wears a red band in his long brown hair. ‘So are we all cooks now?’ he says.

  Thomas jerks up his head, and Ted says smoothly, ‘Thomas remains the lead cook. The rest of us will listen to him in this department. And we can start to plan for the future. When Holly gets old enough, there will be lessons to teach. A future to plan for.’

  This must be the reason he has not simply left us and gone off into his beloved woods for good. I picture Holly as a toddler, a child, a woman. Other children to follow. Yes, Ted has the future of all mankind in his sights, the continuation of the race, bred back to humanity. If the Beauty have different plans for Holly, what will we do?

  I don’t want to think on his plans, his battles. I feel sick, so sick. I want to crawl away and never speak again. But that is not the fate Ted has plotted out for me.

  He says, ‘Nate, you remain the storyteller. You speak of our past. There are so many to remember now. William, Eamon, everyone who has fallen. And the women, of course. You must still speak of the women.’

  The others murmur agreement as I shake my head. I say, ‘I can’t. I’ve lost the taste for it.’

  ‘You think this is about your taste?’ says Ted. He speaks slow and soft, his narrowed eyes on me. ‘This is about those who died for you, and we will remember them. You will make their sacrifices worthwhile, and in their memory we will find the strength to go on. Can you not agree that it is the only fair and just thing to do?’