“It’s the same thing.”
“The guy’s a fucking butcher. You’ve seen what happens because of him. Is it right? Come on, man, tell me. Is that sort of shit right?”
“Of course not. But I can’t do it.”
“Cripps ain’t going to leave you alone, you know. You think today was bad, but he’ll take you into that room again and again and you won’t fucking believe what he does to you. Did you like it today? Do you want to feel that way every day? It’ll happen, dude. And sooner or later, if there’s any part of you left to think, you’ll want him dead just like us.”
“I can’t do it.”
Steven shook his head, his vision blurred. He was back in the slaughter room under fountains of blood. Dicks stuck into him on every side and he was foundering, sinking fast in a bath of cow guts. The air was red and it was hard to breathe. His eyes rolled shut and he fell through the red air and, like streamers of come in hot water, the Guernsey’s words stuck to him and trailed behind.
“Think about it, man. One day you’ll want it as bad as us … If you last that long.”
He woke outside a storm drain at the edge of the meat plant. It was still night and his clothes were damp. He walked home. It was okay because it was too late for people.
The kitchen light was on and the Hagbeast sat at the table, fork in her fist and an empty plate in front of her. Through the window the city dawn sky looked sick—a febrile, unlaundered sheet smeared with the sweaty excretions of the dark hours.
“Where’s my fucking dinner? I’ve been waiting all night, you animal. Where were you?”
She looked ill. The rolls of fat under her chin were gray and her eyes watered. It seemed an effort for her to remain upright in the chair. Steven was too tired to speak. Unutterably tired. He collected her plate and another and stumped to the bathroom. Under the deadness and exhaustion and self-loathing there was a dim remembrance of some plan, already in motion, that must be fed and fueled.
The bathroom was stark and dirty under early-a.m. fluorescent light. Steven squatted over the plates. His shit came out pale and soft, in long thin strips without body. It left his ass filthy but he didn’t bother to wipe, just trudged out into the kitchen again and sat down in front of the Beast. He ate without looking at her, shuddering as the rotting paste went down. But it wasn’t as bad as before, tiredness and familiarity had dulled his stomach’s rebellion.
The Hagbeast ate as well yet had built no immunity, the first forkful made her vomit. But she didn’t stop and Steven liked the wet gravely choking noises she made as she forced herself through the plate.
“And you didn’t leave me any fucking breakfast, either.”
Steven finished, left the Hagbeast in a pool of puke, made it to his room and collapsed on the bed. Dog dragged over, sniffed his blood-caked clothes, then cuddled in and went to sleep.
CHAPTER EIGHTEN
Late afternoon, too late for work. Steven opened his eyes and lay wondering how he felt. He had dreaded waking, thinking it would bring with it the final, crushing ramifications of his time in the slaughter room—an inescapable knowledge of debasement. He had expected to rise tainted with the guilt of having taken life. But it wasn’t so. He felt relaxed, flushed of the dross that usually chained him to indecision and fear. Like the time on the bus, he was freed of something. He felt unaccountably good.
On the way out of the flat he passed the Hagbeast, still slumped over the kitchen table. She appeared not to have moved since dawn. His breath caught and his head swam in a rush of blood. He moved carefully toward her. Could it have happened so quickly, after only two meals? He reached out a slow hand and searched for a pulse in the fat neck. Thoughts of the future jittered his arm. But when his fingers touched her skin she twitched and snorted and turned to look at him, eyes bleared and straining to focus.
“Where are you going?”
“Work.”
“Cunt scum. How could you leave your Mama here like this all night? How could you, when all Mama ever wanted was the best for you?”
“You don’t look good.”
“Ha! Don’t fool yourself, Steven. Mama knows all about the food.” She paused to suck a mouthful of snot out of her nose and spit it on the floor. “I can take it longer than you. Where are you going?”
Steven left the flat. Her mad shriek tore at the wood of the door as he closed it behind him.
“What about my fucking breakfast?”
Upstairs, fourth-floor madness reigned still. The flat was a dump and Steven found Lucy trying to look up her cunt with a mirror. She was glad to see him and came into his arms with relief.
They sat next to each other on the couch and played at being in love. Each of them knew it wasn’t real, but both of them needed the deception.
“Shall I come and live with you?”
“Soon.”
Steven carried her into the bedroom because he knew it was how men acted with women. He spoke memorized sentences to her and they fucked. In the early evening they made small plans for their life together—arrangements of furniture, the color of paint.
And they fucked again. He pumped seed into her until her thighs were slippery with it. A child was part of the happiness the TV had shown him, and by the time it was born the Hagbeast would be dead and they could all be together in the safety of his flat. His flat. HIS flat. Yes, it would be. He would make it happen. He would fill his flat with Lucy and a child and a studiously copied way of living.
In the middle of the night he got up and ate some raw meat from Lucy’s fridge to make sure his shit was potent.
Lucy kissed him at the door as he left in the morning. He thought of the word wife and he smelled pine needles and the split-cedar planking of a cabin and the brand-new leather upholstery of a Jeep Ltd. standing in a patch of sun. Tumblers were clicking into place, gates opening and closing along a maze, marking out a path that was his to take if only he could stay strong long enough.
He fed Dog then went looking for the Hagbeast. She was on the floor outside her room, soaked with piss and vomit and only half-conscious.
“Wake up, Mama. Breakfast time.”
She didn’t move when he kicked her, so he took hold of one of her ankles and dragged her along the passage to the kitchen. Her dress rode up over her thighs, then further to her hips, and Steven watched the scummed-over, gray-haired cunt spread stickily open. Lumps of fat around her ass snagged on splinters of wood and ripped. The Hagbeast woke groggily.
“Let go of me, you shit. Let the fuck go of me.”
Dried puke flaked from her chin. She struggled to sit up but Steven kept pulling.
“Not far to go now, Mama.”
He heaved her into a chair and left her there, snorting back to life, while he went to the bathroom.
His shit was the color of almond skin and almost liquid. It squirted out of his hole in a juddering stream and slopped over his thumbs as he held the plates under his ass. The meat at Lucy’s had worked well.
“Here you are, Mama.” Steven served the shit with slices of white bread. “Eat it while it’s warm.”
The Hagbeast lifted her drooping head and clumsily dipped a piece of bread into the steaming mess.
“You think you’ll win, but there’s too far to go. You’ll weaken. I know you, Steven, you haven’t got it in you to kill me.”
“I’m not trying to kill you, Mama. I just want you to eat properly, not all that junk you used to make.”
“Cocksucker.”
The Hagbeast swallowed her shit-soaked bread and started to gag. Steven ate as well but, to his surprise, found it almost bearable. He was suddenly hungry and started to eat faster, sucking the shit out of his bread before he swallowed, dipping in again before his mouth was empty.
“I can still hurt you, Steven. Do you want me to show you?”
“Just eat.”
“What makes you feel so safe? What makes you think you’re better than me?”
“Nothing.”
Steven
kept his face hard but something cold took hold of his balls. Had she heard through the ceiling? Did she know about Lucy?
The Hagbeast vomited past a mouthful of bread and shit. Some of it came out of her nose. She hawked and spat, then pushed her dripping face at Steven. He trembled.
“Oh, yes, there’s something all right, you cunt. I can smell it on you. I’ll find it, you know I will. And when I do, I’ll take it away from you and ram it up your ass.”
“There isn’t anything, I promise, Mama.”
The Hagbeast was eating again, slowly and with concentration, taking small mouthfuls and keeping them down. Sweat made tracks in the dirt on her forehead, and under the filth her skin was white and waxy. She was having trouble holding her spoon.
“You need showing, Steven. It’s been too long, you need showing you can still be hurt …” Her words slurred then stopped. She fell sideways off the chair and lay convulsing on the floor, bubbling white foamy bile into a pool around her head.
Dog pulled itself painfully into the room, gave the Beast wide berth, and came to Steven. Steven stroked the animal’s head and looked into the soft trusting eyes. He would take Dog with him into his new life and Dog would walk again and all its crippled love would be rewarded.
But right now fresh terrors gripped Steven. The Hagbeast was suspicious. Given time, a very short time, she would snout out Lucy and destroy her.
On the floor she stirred and started to get up. Steven kissed Dog quickly and left for work before she could dig into him for more clues.
CHAPTER NINETEN
He wanted to walk to the plant that morning but mornings, like all other times in the city except late, late night meant too many people and the agonizing reiteration of how little he was like them. The bus was more controlled, people stayed separate and did not force themselves into him, they were fenced off behind the hard backs of the seats. He sat in the darkest part and thought.
They would both be waiting for him, Cripps and the cow. One wanting to continue his education in self-exploitation, the other in retribution. But he wished for neither. The thought of another bout of butchery made his stomach turn, and the importuning of the cows had no meaning for him. Today would be a day of conflicting stresses, of wills brought to bear to tug him in one direction or another. They would split his strength between them when he most needed it intact.
Assigned to the grinder again he ruined beef all day. Once or twice he saw Cripps at the far end of the hall, entering or leaving the slaughter room, but the foreman did not approach him. Near the end of the shift, when Steven was beginning to think he would escape the day without the attentions of man or cow, the Guernsey hissed through the grille and brought back reality.
“Hey, man, you look better today. You think about what we said?”
Steven stayed on his stool, but turned to face the vent. “Not really.”
“What do you mean ‘not really’?”
“It’s got nothing to do with me. Figure out some way to do it yourself.”
“Listen, man, it’s got plenty to do with you. You think he’s going to leave you alone now that you’ve killed a few cows? You’re fucked in the head. The dude’s going to keep at you until you turn into one of his slaughterboys. You’re going to have to do it over and over. You think you can stand that? Look how bad you were after one day.”
“I recovered.”
The horn sounded and the line shut down. All the men left their stations and headed for home, but Steven stayed where he was.
The Guernsey laughed. “Big deal, you made it through yesterday. You should see what he’s got lined up for you tonight. Killing cows was just the start. It don’t stop there, you know.”
“What’s going to happen tonight?”
“Next step toward turning you into Superman.”
“What?”
“Wait and see. Do yourself a favor, help us get rid of him. You won’t like tonight. Whoa! Time to go. Later, dude. Think hard.”
The cow turned quickly and disappeared down the duct. Steven heard steps and Cripps was there, at his shoulder, smiling and waiting.
They walked silently through the deserted process hall to the slaughter room.
It was empty, the slaughtermen had gone with the other workers today. Steven’s feet squelched in congealing blood and made wet echoes against the walls. Cripps led him to a slaughter platform and they stood leaning on the rail looking down into the open well of a grabber at something covered with a tarpaulin.
“Well, boy, the other night was a little strong for you, wasn’t it? Don’t worry, I’ve seen it happen that way before. You can work through it. Believe me, what you think of now as horror will become glory. You will count this early sickness as small payment for the freedom it brings.”
Cripps held Steven’s face in his hard hands and looked into him. Steven felt like a woman, like a woman on TV melting to the demands of her lover. He did not love Cripps, though, indeed felt not the slightest affection for him. Cripps was a force that transcended personality, something to which the ordinary labels of like or dislike did not apply. The cows would call him evil, but that was a shallow description. They judged him against themselves and other men, and because of this their comparisons were flawed from the start. The concept of morality had no meaning for Cripps.
No, Steven did not like Cripps. He was frightened of him, revolted by his pursuits. But here, under his eyes and his hands, the force of his will was unmistakable. At this second, despite the feeling of violation his previous killings had brought, it was impossible for him not to want what Cripps said to be true.
Cripps led Steven down to the bundle in the grabber. “Your next step, boy. A hard one, perhaps, but necessary.”
He reached over and snapped the tarpaulin away like a magician. Gummy looked up at them, his savaged lip an unpleasant color in the bright light. Naked on elbows and knees in a pool of piss, bound with rope like a turkey. The bones in his scrawny back made sharp ridges under his pale old-man skin.
“Ya bastards! Ya shouldn’t be doing this to me. I showed you how to use a cow, ya little bastard. I told you what they’re for and now you’re doing this to me. It ain’t fair on old Gummy. It just ain’t.”
Cripps ignored Gummy’s blatting.
“There, boy, another chance to find yourself, to realize your potential. Human this time, or almost. More potent, more efficacious. Take hold of these and force yourself through it.”
Cripps handed Steven a pair of secateurs and moved behind him, close, pressing against his back, gripping Steven’s wrist firmly and guiding the shears toward Gummy’s ass.
“Open him up, boy. This old sack of shit will be your passport to a new world. A world of men that does not play home to fear.”
Gummy tried to look over his shoulder at them. “You’re a mad bastard, Cripps. You were mad the day ya got here and you’ve gotten worse. I’m not a fucking passport, I’m an old man. I’m just an old man …” Gummy started to snivel and repeat himself.
“Don’t wait, boy. Don’t lose your nerve. Trust me and open him.”
Cripps pushed Steven’s hand so that one blade of the secateurs slid into Gummy’s anus. Gummy tensed and whimpered and pleaded with them to stop. But things had gone too far for Steven to listen.
Cripps breathed into his ear. “Now, boy. Don’t wait any longer.”
He squeezed Steven’s hand closed. The blades made a soft crunching noise as they scissored together and cut through the muscle of the rectum. Gummy screamed and vomited and sprayed blood from his ripped ass. The ropes bit into his forearms and thighs.
Steven closed the shears again. And again and again, up from the ass and along the right side of the spine. Gummy’s lower back opened to a rear view of guts. Easily. Then Steven hit the ribs and the going got tough. He had to apply a lot of pressure and twist them sharply sideways to make them snap. Spurted blood dripped from his face, off the point of his nose and the end of his chin, and back into Gummy.
&
nbsp; Gummy lost consciousness and stopped screaming. Steven clipped him open all the way to the base of his skull.
When it was finished Steven stood looking at his handiwork, knowing what he had done, panting and unbelieving. Nausea came and he vomited into the gaping body. With the puke went his strength and he fell backward onto Cripps, who lowered him carefully so that he sat with his back against one end of the grabber.
“Easy, boy, easy. Sit there and rest. The first man is the greatest hurdle and you are past it. Sit there and feel the glory of it fill your body. You have done what only a very few ever dare try. You have changed yourself. This and the time with the cows has changed what you are. You’ll see. When the sickness passes you’ll see.”
Steven wasn’t listening. The enormity of what he had done overloaded his senses and all he could see or hear was the frozen black void in which he hid. Outside there was pressure against his skin as Cripps kissed his cheek. Then he was alone, with the darkness and the silence. Cripps was gone and time passed. And when enough of it had passed there was standing and walking, onto a bus and off again.
Until the fourth floor and Lucy’s flat and a long slow dissolve into function.
He found himself by her bed, looking down at her as she slept. On the floor, surgical photos and texts had the glossy red look of pornography. At this moment, though, they meant nothing—not madness or despair or titillation. He was conscious only of the desire to be next to her, curled against her. Asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Sun through an open window woke him. In its light he felt bright and clean and new. Lucy was warm beside him and he felt no pain—no small waking aches, no apprehension at the day to come or fear of the years massed behind it, no anxiety at decisions to be made. He stretched and flexed the muscles of his body, they were hard and wanted action. On this morning the road to his future was clear and sharply marked. The killing of Gummy still existed but its horror had become part of him. It was not as it had been yesterday. While he slept it had changed, been absorbed, so that it was now a dynamic heart that beat deep and sure and untroubling within him. He had expected it to suck the life out of him like a tapeworm, instead he felt reinforced, strengthened, capable.
Cows Page 7