by E. M. Reapy
You make a decision.
You kiss him back. You go harder on him, meeting his sour tongue. You make some noises, push your breasts against him.
‘Oi, mate, this one’s a keeper,’ he says to no one and tears his singlet off over his head. It ruffles his hair. He smiles. You smile back.
When he goes to unwrap the blankets, you relax. You let him strip them away. He smells faintly of sweat and soap and garlic. He pulls your top and slobbers on the skin on your chest. He fingers your top down further with one hand and with the other he loosens the blankets more and your legs become free. His mouth is on your nipple now. You’re confused that you feel a little aroused. He puts his hand down your shorts, forcing it in further and further. You don’t mean to but you whimper. His fingers wriggle towards you, pressing hard against you.
He shoves one, two inside. Your breath gets heavier. His eyes are closed. He dips them in and out. He stops. He takes his hand out of you and tastes it. He smiles.
‘You’re not a dirty one, I know it. Don’t need a rubber now, do I?’ he says as he grasps his shorts, pulling them downwards, unleashing his bristly pubes, his erection.
It’s now.
Now you kick him as hard as you can into the balls. You drive all the force you’ve got behind it and leap from the couch. He flails backwards and tries to break his fall, his arms reaching behind. He lands on the table but he’s too heavy and it upturns on top of him. He roars. You topple the two-seater over as you rush past it to block him from the door. You run out the sitting room to the hallway, eye your rucksack and you run to the door and it’s unlocked thank fuck and you run and now you can hear his hollering and noise behind you. A light goes on. You half look back. Jett has pulled up his shorts but is still topless. He’s running. He’s fast.
Oh God Jesus.
You’re going down the dirt track. You’re no athlete and you haven’t eaten properly in weeks. He’s gaining on you. You need a plan. You hear an engine start. You look around. The forest. Down the road. You run but your legs are turning soft.
The ute is pulling out of the driveway. Your body is burning. Your muscles are burning. Your lungs are burning. Your mouth is so dry. You see the trees. The engine is getting louder. Jett is still following. You run through the woods. You stall, almost skidding off the edge. There’s a big drop. A river. You look behind. He’s almost caught up. You pray. You don’t know if the water is deep. Should you dive? You’ll fucking maim yourself. You’ll crack your skull. You’ll lose your bottom jaw. Teeth. Or miss the river and slam onto the ground. Your wrists and shins will be white broken timber jutting out through your skin.
He’s too close now. They’re too close now. They’ve probably got guns. They’ll probably tie you up and torture you before they kill you.
You take a big breath.
You jump.
★
The impact against the rocks sends a shockwave of pain through your body, up through your head. You take a second, bite down on your lip, massage the pads of your palms which feel burst, flattened. You don’t think anything’s broken. Or maybe you’re too full of adrenaline to notice. They’ve got a torch scanning down and you duck behind some scrub.
You’ll be able to follow the water, you’ll find some fish or something. It’ll lead you to the Murray River. Where there’s a big river, there’ll be a big town, eventually.
You freeze suddenly when you see their light veer towards you. You crawl under brambles of a hedge, its thorns claw skin from your face. The lapping of the water is replaced by shouting. It’s not far from you.
Jett says, ‘You shit slut. I’ll fucking get you. I’ll take you apart.’
They zig-zag the flashlight again and it misses you by a fraction.
Your heart is racing but your mind is calm.
They shout again. This time at each other. They’re arguing. They don’t know where you are.
You’re still. You become one with the hedge. You think about nothing.
You don’t know how long it takes for them to leave. The ute door slams twice and they rev the engine for a while before the vehicle rumbles away. You wait until it becomes a far-off hum before moving.
You look at the star-freckled sky.
You think about nothing. It’s all you have. All you are. All your stuff is gone. You have no money. You have no friends, no lover, nowhere to go. You have nothing.
You stare at the sky and you realise you are free.
You realise this and you say, ‘I have everything.’
★
You don’t think you’ve broken anything but the more you walk, the more bloated your foot gets. You walk anyway. The Fletchers will come looking. Hunting. Every footstep makes you weak. You keep going. You follow the river which is wide and loud as it flows.
The sun is high and ferocious so you guess it’s around midday. You guess you’ve been shuffling along, taking tiny breaks, gasping for water for about eight hours. You don’t know if you can drink the river but maybe just one mouthful, just one, that can’t do much harm?
You bend low, wet your hands and face, they dry immediately. You wet your hair. It stays damp for longer. You sup a drop from your palm. Your mouth and throat sing. More. More.
‘Fuck it,’ you say and wade deeper into the water, lowering down, gulping great mouthfuls until your belly is jiggling with liquid. The sun is too hot now. It’s too bright. You climb up to the forest and look into it. It’s eerie, silently full of life. Sun rays break through some of the gaps and light tiny pathways. You stay close to the edge, where you can see the river. You don’t want to go into the forest properly. You’re afraid of who’s on the other side of it. You check around.
You lean against a tree, check the forest again. No one. Would they find you here if you fall asleep? Maybe. You need sleep though. You try to keep your eyes open but you’re drifting, drifting low, your head goes low.
You let go.
★
A jagged pain wakes you, thudding down your side. Your face sweats and your mouth gets watery. The pain shoots across your stomach, clasps it from the other side. It jumps. It groans. You get up and fall again after leaning on your right foot, forgetting the old ache with this new one.
‘Oh no,’ you say.
You get your shorts down on time.
The cramping happens until the sun no longer breaks through the cracks of the forest roof. Nothing is solid. You’re grimy and weak. You go down to the river, the fucking prick of a river and wash. You’re hungry, there’s nothing left inside you. You’re hungry. You don’t know what to do. You cry and go back to the forest, further down to avoid the trees and smell of earlier.
You’re going to die here.
How will anyone come across your body?
You’ll be eaten, the birds will take your eyes and the dingoes will ravage the rest of you. How will you be identified? Will anyone even notice you’re not in the world anymore?
Your chest feels heavy. Your eyes sting. You lean against another tree and notice the night set in.
The forest isn’t eerie anymore. It’s breathing. It’s watching.
You take off your canvas shoe and hold your foot tight. The throb numbs when you cut the blood supply off. You jitter when insects fly near. You hear twigs snapping. Everything here is natural, except you.
You think about your father to calm yourself. After the buildings went bust, he got a part-time job as a bread man, delivering fresh sliced pan and baked goods to the shops and restaurants. The change suited him so much. He didn’t come home sore and exhausted, he came back lively with stories from people around the town.
When you told him you were going to Australia, he tried to smile but his Adam’s apple was jumping up and down.
‘Would you not go over to London to your sister?’ he asked.
‘No, Dad, Sydney’ll be better. It’ll be sunny.’
‘London’s an hour on the flight from Knock though.’
‘Australia’s only a day
away. You could be sick in bed watching telly for a day. Something inside is telling me to go there.’
‘Don’t go falling for someone because I won’t visit grandkids that live the other side of the planet,’ he said.
If he knew what you did, where you are, what would he say? If any of them could see you now?
Or Malley with his skinny arms and tight fists. Perceptive. Alternative. Someone that always got invited to a party. He was only aggressive to women. That didn’t count. He’d probably shout at you for being so stupid. Shout at you because he loved you. You wipe your cheek.
Who are you lying to?
If he saw you now, if he knew what you did, he’d do nothing. He wouldn’t care.
A rustle jerks you out of your wallowing and back into the forest. It comes nearer. Your heart thumps.
Shit, it’s a big animal.
You sense its presence. You smell its heat. The forest is black but your eyes adjust enough to see different shades of black. Your hearing amplifies.
The creature can sense you too. It’s beside you. You stay still. It breathes. You don’t want to scare it.
You feel it coming. Feel the warmth from it. It sniffs. It’s at your hair, your neck, your shoulder. You don’t move. Your heart is booming. It sniffs more, nudges your head. Your stomach grumbles loudly and it moves away, the ground crackles underneath it.
★
The sky starts to leak daylight but your only thoughts are of food. You want food. You don’t know what to do about it. Your foot is fat and dead looking. You can’t get the shoe back on. You curse and plead but it hurts too much so you leave it off and try walk as far as you can again, further down the river. Maybe a town will come soon. You could get a Red Rooster chicken roll. Or a pie, filled with steaming curry.
You keep walking.
Trudging.
Sighing.
★
You wonder how long it takes the body and mind to adapt to new things. You’re so hungry and thirsty that it becomes something that is just there, part of you now. Same with the dull pulsing in your foot. You can’t remember what it was like to not feel this way.
You spot a tree with only one ripened orange hanging from it. You rush over and pick it. Hold it for a couple of moments. Feel the weight of it. Look at its naval. Peel it, surprised at how weak your hands are. You get the skin off and put it in your pocket. The citrus scent is more than enough to make you salivate. A juicy, fat, sunny orange. You devour it, eat the fruit, the seeds, the pulp and the rind, the lot.
You remember eating bowls of ice-cream and sliced oranges in your granny’s house on a Sunday evening before School Around the Corner, Glenroe and bed. The end of the weekend. Would you ever see her again? She was frail when you left Ireland, her memory in tatters, living in an old folks’ home with kind nurses and a big statue of the Virgin in the hall. When you said goodbye to her, she called you your auntie’s name.
★
Your skin blisters from sunburn. Your lips are cracking and bleeding for want of water. You shouldn’t drink the river again. Kids in developing countries died from diarrhoea, you saw that on TV. You need water though. The need is giving you headaches. It makes you nauseous. It slows your steps and your thoughts down.
You need water.
You go on as much as you can, try not to collapse. You’re wilting. Your throat is closing from dryness. You’ve stitches scratching your side. You breathe deep and loud as if you’re about to sleep.
You don’t care if it happens again. Nothing is worse than this thirst. Maybe you’ll be immune this time, have a better tolerance. You go down to the river and drink. You sup it greedily and it cools you.
It makes you violently sick.
You continue on, much slower than before. Your body is dry and empty. You have to keep going.
Are you far enough away from them? If you walk a little more today, more tomorrow and the next, surely a town or a village would come? Can’t be nothing forever?
You don’t drink any more of the water. Instead you sit in it.
You let the current flow against your swollen foot. You’re fucking it up more walking on it but what are the options? Go back to the Fletchers? You laugh out loud. When you think about the Fletchers, what you nearly let happen, this hobo crippled trek doesn’t seem so bad. And yet, sometimes you think about it in a different way. What was the ride if you’re going to be fed and roofed? It could be over in a minute if they were really keen. They’d just use your body for friction, then release. But for it, you’d have had some food, some money. You could get as drunk as them.
You shake your head and guilt gnaws at your chest. These thoughts. You don’t know what’s wrong with your thoughts. You can’t trust them anymore.
Something whacks into your hip as you lay across the bank with your leg in the river. You’re blocking it. It’s a narrow silver tailed fish.
‘Oh!’ you shout and grab a hold of it. It resists against you, even though it’s no bigger than your hand. It’s struggling forward and backwards. You’re losing your grip so you fling it onto the grass behind you. You hop over to it. It’s still. When you inspect it, it flaps and panics in a fit. It stops again.
‘I’m sorry, buddy,’ you say. It flurries around. ‘Come on. Choke.’
You leave it flailing for a few minutes. When it seems dead, you pick it up and look at its yellowish eyes, its big black pupils. Some cultures eat raw fish. Surely that can’t kill you? Surely you’d have a better chance of dying if you didn’t eat it? Wasn’t there water in their eyes too?
You check the brightness of the sun, looking skyward for a second. Was a fire possible? Wasn’t this country all kindling, ready to go up in flames?
You hum and look around. You hop to the edge of the forest and pick up some twigs and bring them over near the fish. Grabbing two rocks you try and channel MacGyver, grating them off each other, hoping for a spark.
‘Come on, light, you bollocks.’
Nothing happens. You sit down and sigh and look at the fish.
‘Probably going to have to eat you as you are. Hope you taste good.’
You lift it and put a voice on for it, ‘I taste alright, you bitch.’
‘Hey,’ you say.
‘State of you,’ it says.
‘State of you,’ you reply.
‘Ya slag. Ya fucking eejit. You’ll spend the rest of your days out here, on your own, going mad. You deserve it too. So fucking thick.’
‘Hey, come on, lay off me,’ you say and squint at it.
The fish writhes again, resurrected. You scream. How long can they survive out of the water? You slam it off the ground five times and it bleeds. You didn’t know fish could bleed. You never thought about it before. You pick up the rocks and bang them off each other. Twist them against each other. Scrape them. Throw them away and pick up the fish, hit it off the ground again to make sure it’s dead. You wipe the grit and muck off it and look for the softest bit of its body. You sink your teeth into its underbelly, just past its throat.
You suck its eyeballs till they pop in your mouth, fishy juice that tastes of the river but juice all the same.
It’s the worst meal you’ve ever had. You get your shoe and hobble along, trying to stay out of the way of the molesting sun. You tongue free stringy skin that has got caught between your teeth and spit it on the ground.
You keep moving. You’re gagging thinking about the fish. Just remember something else, Fiona. Irish college. Being in the Gaeltacht, chanting ‘Amhrán na bhFiann’, over and over until it was memorised. And the Bean an Tí, waking her ‘guests’ at 5 a.m. for breakfast because she had to go milking after. If you didn’t get up, she poured water on your head. If that didn’t work, she banged a stick off your headboard and threatened to call your parents.
You got your first kiss in Connemara, after a Ceilí Mór, with a Wicklow boy who had red hair and so many freckles, his skin was blotched brown against the pale. He was thirteen, a year younger than you
. He gripped your hand and you walked around the back of the hall. His teeth scraped your lips but you were delighted with yourself when you went home. You weren’t a child anymore.
You limp and remember the other lads you’ve shifted. Picture their faces. When it comes to Malley, you make him much bigger and taller than he is in real life. You do it so he can be more physical in your memory. So that him being so rough with you could be matched by some sort of brawn.
Last thing you’d heard about him was that he was seeing someone else. Some other fucking idiot had swallowed his charm and would face his wrath soon. Or maybe it was just you who annoyed him? Maybe you were the only one.
You heave a sigh.
How could you miss being with a man who made you feel lonelier in a relationship than you are out here in the wilderness?
But he didn’t always do that. Though you could never say it out loud, when you made up after an argument, after he got aggressive or you got crazy upset, it was electric. It was raw and charged passion. You stuck it out for that. For the way he’d be affectionate and promise no more heartache. He needed you. You needed him to need you, it made you feel complete, wasn’t that what a woman was for? Wasn’t that what a relationship was?
The night that it snowed outside and the water supply got cut off, you lit candles and set the duvet on the living room floor. He sang along to Pearl Jam and said with an intensity that made you tremble that he would die for you.
Big statement.
Empty statement.
Anyone could say something immeasurable like that. He wouldn’t visit your family, he accused you of cheating if you spoke to other men, he’d itch his fingers and snarl if you asked him a question he didn’t want to answer. But he’d die for you.
He’d die for her now probably. And you’ll die here and never be found.
★
You wake early, the dawn just beginning. Your face is wet from lying on the ground. You touch the grass. Dew drops. You lick the beads. You take off your t-shirt and mop the grass with the sleeve until it’s soaked, squeeze the drops into your mouth. You do this until the sun dries everything and starts burning the skin on your back.