Blood Beasts 1

I have taken to eating on the patio since Farr returned to Dubai. I think of him often as I sip my glass of ice-cold Sancerre leaning back on the lounger for all the world to see. We had a massive row about the buddleia before Farr flew out of my life. I wanted the bush cut down to give our moss-ridden lawn some much-needed sunlight to help the grass grow back. He insisted that we keep the butterfly bush to save the insects. In the end we compromised, we always compromise, and cut the thing level with the wall. I look across the garden at the clusters of Peacocks, Red Admirals, Painted Ladies, Cabbage Whites, gathered on the purple blooms, smiling to myself,

I miss you Farr, for all your faults and forceful ways. I wish you were here now forcing yourself on me, kissing me, loving me in our garden of romance, as the sun goes down. Come back soon, honey. I get scared living here on my own.

Lately, I've been joining Farr on protests. By that I mean real protests, not marching round the square chanting and waving banners. Disruptive protests. Squatting on the motorway, holding up traffic. Climbing on the roof of trains. Banging gongs and dustbin lids as hard as we can to make our voices heard in Parliament, broadcasting our opinion with high decibel loud speakers.

Farr's right, he's always right about these things: if we don't act soon to reverse climate change the world's wildlife will disappear. Sure, a few species will adapt, Farr tells me. The question is: how will they adapt? Is the virus a freak occurrence? Or is it the result of humanity tearing down the rain forests, melting the ice caps, exposing us all to new adapting species that threaten our existence.

I finish off my wine and survey our walled garden. The grass is parched and dying. The moss has turned brown. Already, there are leaves drying, curling, falling, to the ground. I feel tired.

The evening draws on. Some swifts fly in and out of our eaves. I take my glass, stand, and walk towards the kitchen door. Some dead leaves rustle underneath our hydrangea, beside the garden wall.

Strange, there's no breeze tonight, not even a zephyr. Can't be an animal. Must be a bird, I decide, a baby bird, poor thing, with a broken wing. Maybe I can catch it, take it to the RSPCA.

I open the kitchen door, pop the wine glass on the window ledge, pad across the lawn to take a look. Get down on my hands and knees. The rustling stops. My garden's still, silent. I could hear a pin drop.

Why do I feel so surprised? Probably just my imagination playing tricks on me. I have quite an imagination, in bed. Ask Farr, he'll tell you. I think I'll take a shower, go to bed, read my book, get some sleep, dream of Farr...

There it is again: that rustling noise.

I want to, need to go indoors. I stand and brush the dry soil off my knees. There's something sticky on my calf, warm, stickily familiar. When I was a little girl, I stole two punnets of berries from some boys blackberrying on the mudhills. They started throwing stones at me. One struck me on the back of the head. My hair, face, and eyes were drenched with blood. Blood ran down my back, under my striped tee-shirt, my shorts, into my knickers, down the backs of my thighs, calves. My plimsolls filled with blood. They took me home to Mummy, my tee-shirt wrapped around my head. I had to have stitches, plastic skin, I feel the skin on the back of my head at night, bald, and bare. I need to go indoors. There's something sticky on my thigh, warm, stickily familiar. I scrape it off with the blade of my hand, hold it in the fading light. I sniff, smell it, a feral animal. I resist the urge to taste it...

God, if only Farr were here, this is blood.

I inadvertently smear my face with blood, a frightened little girl once more. My stomach heaves my pizza supper onto the lawn. I get down on my knees and heave-some-more, heave until I'm hollow inside, reach and tear a leaf off the nearest bush, wipe the braque off my face, the thick congealing curd off my leg. I run inside to shower.

Lock the door! Shut the windows! Go to bed!

There it is again: that rustling in my head.

My darkest dreams come true.

Blood Beasts on my pillow!

Slime across my sheet!

*****

My nightmare ends at three-twenty-six in the morning. I wake up in a cold sweat, switch on the bedside lamp, touch my pillow, and stroke the crumpled sheet with my naked leg, wishing Farr was here to curl up with. Pushing back the duvet with both feet, I find normality: no blood, slime, or smells, just clean. I get out of bed and draw the curtains. There's a half-light here, the first signs of dawn. My body feels hot and clammy. I badly need a shower. I think of Farr in Dubai, four hours ahead of me, travelling to work, in fifty degrees, shorts, short-sleeved shirt, his hairy arms and legs, driving me wild, driving me. My phone lies on the bedside table, ready,

I hope he's free.

'Hello, Farr?'

He's free.

My spirits soar, my heart races, 'Darling, it's me, Helen.'

'Hello me,' he drawls, 'What gets you up so early this morning?'

'I was missing you, baby. I had a terrible nightmare, about blood, and slime.'

He mocks me, he makes me feel stupid.

'Slime? Come again?'

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

'Don't mock me, Farr. I dreamed I found a pool of slime under the hydrangea. There was blood. I dreamed it made me sick. Dreamed I sicked up on the lawn. It was horrible, horrible!'

'Hey, calm down, Helen. It was probably something you ate. What did you eat?'

Go on admit it.

'Pizza, I...'

'You ate pizza before going to bed?'

I stretch my arms and yawn, 'Yuh.'

'Cheese?'

'Yuh.'

I feel him smile, sorry for me, missing me. I feel childish, I wish I hadn't mentioned the dream.

I distinctly remember the bloody putrid mess in the flower border, sicking up all over the lawn,

'I know, baby,' I love to call him baby, 'know what you're saying. Don't eat pizza before I go to bed at night. Silly me, naughty me, tell me off, give me a good spanking when you get home. When do you get home?'

'Next month,' he promises faithfully, 'I'm flying home at the end of next month, Helen.'

'I can't wait that long! Can't wait till next month!'

'I have an important meeting in ten minutes on biodegradables.'

I can't believe my ears. Talk about changing the subject, 'You have a what?

'You heard.'

I perk up, think of my protest in Parliament Square, 'Biodegradables? That sounds interesting.'

'It is. Honey, is there anything else we need to talk about? Anything that can't wait?'

He's like this with me, Farr. Hot and cold. One minute he's all loving, manly, sexy for me. The next, it's as if he doesn't know me. Still, I can't complain, I don't need to work. He keeps me in clover. I think of the pool of blood, smearing my face and thighs, running inside to shower,

'Nothing that can't wait.'

'Speak to you tonight then.'

I shiver, feel as if something dark and wet just walked across my grave. I speak, my throat's dry,

'Yes, tonight.'

He cuts my call.

I pad downstairs to the kitchen, boil the kettle, make myself a mint tea, rhubarb jam on toast, go back to bed, and read myself a bedtime story about a lion, a witch, and a wardrobe imagining there is a lamppost in my mind, a lamp in my mind, in my mind, my mind, drifts, off, to, sleep.

I wake up with a start.

Silence.

I can't hear any birds. There's daylight in my eyes, dawn. My body feels sticky, sweaty, dirty. I need a shower. Blood-smell creeps thru my window, tang. I can't hear any birds. Sick smell. For crying out loud! I live behind a wall. Blood smell. Birds live, in the trees, behind my wall. I can't hear any birds. The smell pervades my nose. I run to the shower, can't wash of the smell. I wrap a towel around my breasts, my waist, my wet hair, I pad downstairs to the kitchen. The door is open. I locked the door last night. The door is open. Heart, pumping blood, blood-smell in my nose, a metallic smell, a sick smell, I step outside into the garden, I walk to the hydrangea,

The grass is clean! My lawn is clean!

I get down on my hands and knees.

Heart pumping hard, blood-smell in my nose, a sick, acrid, smell, I look under my hydrangea,

The soil is clean! Thank God! The soil is clean!

The wriggling starts.

There's something sticky on my thigh, warm, bloody familiar. I can't scrape it off. I sniff, smell it, a feral animal, resist the urge to taste it. I sit cross-legged on the lawn and pull off the towel,

I feel the wriggling stop. Stuck to my thigh is a black sheath full of blood. The wriggling starts.

The sheath crawls up my thigh,

blood beast on my thigh,

slime on my

The dizziness passes, the moment rewinds, context lost. Where am I? Who am I? The tide of memory ebbs...and resumes:

'There's something sticky on my thigh: warm, bloody, familiar. I can't scrape it off. I sniff, smell it, a feral animal, resist the urge to taste it. I sit cross-legged on the lawn and pull off the towel, I am naked, I feel the wriggling stop. Stuck to my thigh is a black sheath of blood. The wriggling starts. The sheath crawls up my thigh, blood beast on my thigh, slime on my...

*****

Ecocide! Flaming red letters on a deep-green banner. A slogan on the tee shirt of a rogue priest, glued to the steel of a power plant. The dying grass presses its cold, sharp tendrils into my naked skin: stabs of reproach, of retaliation; under my wavering gaze the roses, buddleia and wisteria grey out, my mind assaulted by alternate realities: sterility, a wasteland of dunes, dusty and brown; this is the endgame, the death of nature, the empty victory of myopic masculine technology.

A rustling footfall somewhere near: something scars the pristine sand with chitinous claws. Huge and hard, the scorpion-shadow looms before me: intimidating, radiating menace. On my back now, my bare flesh glistening, breathing fast, my thighs spread of their own volition. My knees rising, separating in sacrifice, my self-sacrifice, my atonement for what we've done. Forgive me, Mother Earth, for I have sinned...

'You did this,' Farr says, swaying towards my traitorous, willing body. His sting arches, long and smooth, traversing the space between my knees, blindly swaying above my patient thighs, the drop of poison at his tip glistening, distending, growing, 'Your selfish greed which raped the planet!'

I thrust up to meet my nemesis, shameless to the last, panting in anticipation; the pleasure, the pain, the ecstasy...

Absolve me!

Punish me!

Expiate my guilt!

And

reality

shifts.

*****

The dark, pulsating, corrugated slime-tube lies quiescent on my thigh amidst the sunburned lawn and drooping floral beds. Its slit-end stares me down, drips haemorrhagic mucus. Slowly quests, sampling my sweat and emanations, seeks its destination, prepares to slither forth...

I strike it off with the back of my hand, turn onto my front. On all fours I'm heaving dry-retching, dirty, naked in the roses. I sit in the shower, cradled in a corner with the spray drizzling down, the healing, cleansing rain.

'Clean for Farr, Helen,' he says, 'be clean for me -- you're natures bounty; everything I do, I do it for you. You are my rose, my English rose; open your blossoms, my special darling, open yourself to me.'

I am transported into his arms, the bed soft beneath me, his muscular body arching above: feverish, rhythmic, powerful, dynamic...

relentlessly pounding...

In wanton excitement I see myself through his eyes: curvy, warm, juicy, a throbbing caterpillar in the iron grasp of his limbs, his pincers. The ovipositor, fleshy, hot and mindlessly thrusting, has reached its destination, its home. It spews forth its glutinous load, inserts secretions deep into my willing cavity, my waiting nest.

Sensation fades as I shudder through the gasping crescendo; arousal recedes; a not-unpleasant paralysis seeps into my muscles, my eyelids flutter to a close... and relax...

The seeds spew forth a swarm of nematodes, larvae burrowing and foraging within me. His parting

whispered

words:

'You'll feel no pain as they, like moles, devour your flesh; their sanitation-hormones grant you unrelenting joy. In this last sacrifice, Helen, you set the world to right.'

I want to scream: 'I did not choose this hell-fag of yours! I am not a grubbing caterpillar but a gorgeous bright fritillary; my destiny -- mine! mine! -- is unlatched freedom: to leave the earth and soar away and fly!

I lie here mute and feel the rancid churning in my womb.

The words no longer come.

And I no longer care.