Cows (8 page)

CHAPTER NINETEN

H
e 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.

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

S
un 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.

He looked at Lucy, still sleeping, sunlight on her hair, and realized that murdering the Hagbeast by degrees was an unnecessary prevarication. In the clear, stripping light that filled the room he saw he had been weak and frightened, but he saw also that these emotions were now outmoded. And as hard as he looked he could see no barrier to action.

He was eager to start.

Naked out of bed he felt like a god, reaching high into the air, a theomorphic diver stepping willingly to the edge of a cliff for the plunge into transforming waters. His movements were sure and exact, he marveled at them as he dressed.

Lucy slept on.

Walking downstairs—each step certain and excited. He knew what he was going to do. This morning would corrode the past, leave it a honeycombed and fragile shadow falling to pieces miles behind him. Why had it taken him so long to act? The resolution of everything he wished was so obvious and easy. He didn’t understand.

Then he was through the door of the flat and understanding didn’t matter.

He wanted a knife but the kitchen was dark. The Hagbeast had covered the windows. Steven stood in the doorway groping for the light, wondering what the bitch was up to. He could sense something in there, something heavy and waiting. He heard movement at the far end of the room, the start of motion, a mass shunting forward, gathering speed too quickly. Like a train, or a bull, or a rhino.

Switch clicks down. Light. And there she is, three-quarters of the way across the room already. Too fast and too close. Thundering. Arms pumping, mouth sucking in air and spraying spit, blasting that body, that unstoppable bulk, straight at him. Time just to think
SHIT
! and try to make it back out into the hall. But not enough time to do it.

The Beast hit him hard in the back, bodyslammed him face-first into the floor of the hall. Sprawled on top of him, pinning him there, grinding his face into the wood. Impossible weight crushing him. Sagging fat of belly and breasts engulfing and smothering, preventing the use of arms or legs. Far up the hall Dog looked fearfully out of Steven’s room.

“Too late, Steven. Mama beat you to it, you little fuck.”

The Hagbeast lay on top of him, shouting at the back of his head. She had a length of coarse rope and she looped it around his neck.

“Did you think I’d let you do it to me, you moron? That I’d keep eating your shit until it killed me? Gutless cunt. Wouldn’t dare do it properly, would you? Well, Mama said she could still hurt you, and now she’s going to show you how.”

Her stink was overpowering—shit and stale sweat and rotting cunt blood. Steven thrashed and humped his body in short jerks off the floor, but her fat absorbed his movements and he could not escape. She lay immovable, slowly tightening the rope, pissing over the backs of his thighs in her excitement.

He felt his throat closing, pressure building in his head, making his eyes bulge. The Hagbeast had her face nuzzled close against him and he could hear her grunting with the rope. Down the hall Dog dragged itself toward him, stumping one foreleg after the other as fast as it could, panting, twisting its face with the strain on its heart, eyes locked on Steven, begging him not to die.

“See, Steven? See how Mama is still so much stronger than you? Shit was too slow, dummy. You should have known. Can’t sneak things in the back way, not with Mama.”

She hauled tighter on the rope. Steven’s face went dark and the veins above the rope got thick with dammed blood. His vision was starting to fade but he could see that Dog was close now.

Yes, Dog was almost there now. It was going to save its master, the source of all love, even if it meant death. Even if the race along the hall burst its little heart and made blood run out past its dog glory of sharp white teeth.

And the Hagbeast didn’t know. With her head pressed so close to Steven she could not see it coming.

Steven felt himself draining into the floor, going cold and slow and heavy. His lungs sucked against nothing.

The Beast was laughing.

Dog in a mist, but close. Steven could pick out the white whiskers in its muzzle and the darker hairs further back and the foamy dabs of spit along its lips. Dog’s head expanded as it came, filling his vision until there was nothing in the world but this dog face and the love pouring from its brown eyes. And the Hagbeast’s laughter in another corridor somewhere very far away … And the absence of air.

Dog was past Steven’s face, climbing awkwardly onto his shoulder, pushing its head forward, up up up to the Hagbeast. Still she didn’t see. So Dog got into position and with the last of its strength opened its mouth and closed its eyes and sank its sharp white teeth into the Hagbeast’s neck and held on as she shrieked and reared up. And let go of the rope.

Steven rolled out from under her and gulped air while she twisted and battered at Dog, trying to dislodge it from her throat. He wanted to move, he wanted to save his dog and tear his mother into bleeding pieces of flesh, but his airstarved muscles would not respond. So he knelt, slumped against a wall, dry retching, breathing in sobs, and watched the Hagbeast rip Dog from her neck in slow motion.

She held it like a spear and pulled her arm back over her shoulder, then paused and turned to smile at Steven. He tried to scream but he couldn’t and the fat arm shot forward and drove Dog’s head into the wall. Steven followed the whole of the movement, from the start of the arc to the explosion of blood and brain against the flaking plaster. Dog held his eyes through all this terminal journey and they were loving and sad at the same time. It looked like Dog was smiling, just a little bit. Until its eyeballs burst.

Then muscle power came up in a rush and Steven was a blur of vengeance across the few feet that separated him from his mother. His body flowed like water, unfettered by thought, channeling a lifetime of hate. He struck the grinning Beast mouth with his elbow and she collapsed facedown in the stuff that leaked from poor Dog’s shattered head. Steven was back on track again, back on the path that had started this morning at Lucy’s, the sure straight path that led from lonely TV nights, through the slaughter room and Lucy, to here and on to dreamland.

He lifted the Hagbeast under the arms and dragged her into the kitchen.

She woke sitting on her knees on the floor, bound and immobile. A rope ran around her forehead to her ankles, pulling her head back, stretching her throat out straight. The marks of Dog’s attack were turning blue. She had difficulty speaking, but that didn’t stop her.

“Do you think Doggie enjoyed that? I did. Fucking mongrel. No more dog suck-offs for Mama’s best boy now, eh?” She cackled and tried to twist her head to see Steven better, but the rope would not allow it and her eyes rolled in jagged circles.

“What’s the rope for, Steven? You know Mama’s going to be mad if you keep her here too long. Better let her up right now. Ooo, Steven, what’s that mark on your neck? Looks like a rope burn. Let Mama have a look at her poor boy.”

The Hagbeast stopped abruptly and ripped out a stream of phlegmy laughter. She started to choke and spat in a high curve back over her head. When she was breathing normally again, Steven wedged a small block of wood between her right rear teeth, jamming her mouth open wide. She gurgled and looked frightened.

“You were right, Mama, shit was too slow. But I don’t think you’re going to like the alternative.”

The pliers were heavy and had rubber grips. They were a solid man’s tool and he felt very confident holding them. The Hagbeast still had most of her teeth—they were a little yellow, but they were there. He started with the small lower incisors at the front.

The knurling on the nose of the pliers rasped off small pieces of enamel even before he applied much pressure. The Hagbeast whimpered and tried to swallow. Steven closed the pliers firmly and jerked them forward, splintering the tooth and snapping it off just above the gum. Her body went hard with the pain and she screamed. Blood ran backward over her tongue.

Steven let her relax a little before he crunched the pliers closed again.

The teeth at the sides were harder to break and some of them came out by the roots. There was a lot of blood and Steven had to push her over onto her side twice so she wouldn’t choke.

He was sweating by the time he finished. Fragments of tooth were embedded in the soles of his shoes, they grated against the floor when he moved. The Hagbeast was still conscious but her eyes were glazed and she had stopped making noises. Her gums were a pulpy red mess with the sharp remains of teeth poking through. The front of her dress was soaked.

Steven threw the pliers in the sink and picked up a file to smooth down the spikes. The Hagbeast passed out at the first screech of steel across enamel. It made it easier for Steven to finish his work.

When she came to, he stripped off his trousers and pants and looked down at her for one last moment—this mother who had never been a mother. She bubbled thickly up at him but he couldn’t work out what she was trying to say.

He stuffed her nose with wadded toilet paper, then backed up to her until her wedged-open mouth was pressed between the cheeks of his ass, tight around his hole. He used a roll of industrial adhesive tape to bind her there, wrapping it round and round, over his abdomen and behind her head. The seal was airtight and he could feel her shake as she fought for breath she was never going to get.

The shit was packed in his guts—twenty-five years of terror and loneliness, of brutality and an endless rain of hate. He breathed in deeply, tightened the muscles of his stomach, and shot every ounce of it in a thick pole down her throat. The Hagbeast thumped up and down, vibrating in a mad death dance as the shit blocked her from mouth to belly. Steven had to reach around and hold on to her head until she went limp.

He dragged his clothes back on, sat at the breakfast table and looked at her. It was done. The obstacle was removed. He would bring Lucy down and there would be a home here for him at last. And if Lucy and he could not be like others they would at least approximate the happiness others had. Lucy would watch TV with him and learn how to live. They would scale down and copy what they saw, and they would call it contentment.

Although he was staring straight at her, each minute that passed made the Hagbeast seem less real. It was as though she were fading back into time—almost as if killing had expunged the memory of her mistreatment … But no, she was here now and she had been there through all those years. She had made him what he was, he would not forget that.

And he would not forget the pride that coursed through him as he sat there. He had done what he thought he could never do—he had destroyed the source of his misery. And he had done it powerfully and like a man.

He left the Hagbeast where she was and went to get Lucy. They spent the rest of the day moving her things into the flat.