Damned If You Do (23 page)

‘It's disgusting,' said Death glumly, to no-one in particular. ‘All that effort to avoid oblivion.'

‘That's not the only reason,' I told him. ‘Sometimes it just happens.'

‘But it's so
meaningless,
' he countered. ‘Individuals are just links in a continuing chain of life, a chain without pattern or purpose. Whether you exist or not – it makes no difference. Links will be forged elsewhere; the chain will continue to grow.' He picked up a dead leaf and tore it in two. ‘Existence is so brief, so fortunate, so dependent on factors over which you have no control. It's nothing more than an illusion.' He tossed the broken leaf aside. ‘I don't know how any one of you ever manages to smile.'

‘There are some good jokes around,' I said.

‘Look,' interrupted War, still holding his left eye, ‘does anyone bloody care? The ants are getting ravenous.'

‘A few more minutes,' Death replied. ‘That's all.'

The accountant calculated that this was an ideal opportunity to spread the blanket on the forest floor. The project manager made a positive decision about the prospects of a meeting on a one-to-one basis. Refusing to delegate the responsibility of undressing to her partner, she removed her blouse, stepped out of her shoes and unfastened her skirt. Reckoning that he would profit by copying her clothing removal initiative, he slid out of his shirt, slipped off his slip-on shoes and slithered out of his slacks. After a mutually agreed pause, and without the need for arbitration or further negotiation, they tore off each other's underwear.

The groped and grasped, and groaned and grunted, and gripped and grappled, and grinned and grimaced, and grabbed and grafted, and gasped and gasped, and gasped and gasped, and gasped and gasped and gasped. They did not mention their dead colleague. They did not care about the roughness of the picnic rug. They did not mind the needles or the burning sun or the smell of sweat. They had no interest in any of these things because, for a brief, bright, blissful moment, they were alive.

Watching them, I felt myself salivating with a memory of desire, and sensed a vague stirring in my groin. But my physical deficiencies gave me no hope of relief: I was one stiff who couldn't get a stiffy.

‘If we don't release them soon they'll cut their way through the 'cking sack.'

They struggled against the sapping midday sun, diminishing energy reserves and flagging mutual desire. Their groping, straining, gasping rhythm was slowing. The accountant's buttocks were almost luminously pink; the project manager's legs had trembled their last. Their activity was treading the borderline between ecstasy and chore.

‘Maybe you're right.'

War rubbed his eye. ‘You know I am.'

The slippery, skin-slapping frenzy slid to a soft, frictional stop. The lovers renegotiated their positions and concluded their meeting.

Over and done, over and out.

The spoils of war

They lay naked, rough, exposed. Watching the bright stillness of their connected living flesh, I saw Amy.

Her face is a moon with deep crater eyes. Her face is a child's dinner plate, a carrot for a nose. Her face is a rolled ball of snow, five shining pebbles smiling. Her hair is the darkness between stars.

Her body is a composition of denials: neither small nor tall, fat nor thin, beautiful nor ugly, smooth nor coarse. It is all these things; and it is wiry like an eel, pale like ashes, rounded like the stones on a beach. I smile at her thighs, zebra-striped with cellulite; her feet, flat and squat and funny; the finger-thick gap that divides her big toe from the rest.

She is the skin that covers her, the muscles that strengthen her, the bones that support her, the veins that drive her. And she is more than the sum of these impressions, more than the surface and the shadow it casts.

She is more, because she is someone I loved.

*   *   *

‘Hold on,' said Death. ‘They're starting again.'

The pink buttocks and the trembling legs were glued together once more, the adhesive made viscid by vigorous abrasion. I felt sickness in my stomach, prickling on my back, pressure on my lungs. I was afraid of my memories.

‘It makes me ill every time I see it.' War shuddered. ‘It's such a sodding waste of effort. I feel like kicking them.'

‘Personally, I've often wondered what it would be like,' said Death.

‘But why can't they go out and
fight
someone instead?'

Death shrugged.

War opened the sack.

*   *   *

I couldn't control myself. Breath quickened, blood rushed, nerves fired. My sluggish spine shuddered, my stomach churned, my shoulders shivered with pleasure. An aching memory of sexual feeling pulsed through me.

Sex was more than the sequence of events that defined it, more than conversation, eye contact, touching, kissing, clasping, penetration, pulsation, withdrawal, touching, kissing, separation. It was more than physical attraction, more than dilated pupils, open mouths, lubricating mucus, the unique ecstasy of pain, the relishing of creeping flesh, the comedy of bruised hips, sore lips, chafed skin. It was more than the chemical rules of attraction, more than the routine which smothered it, more than the growth and decay of love and the shifting of time.

It was one of the few reasons to live.

And in the last two years of my life, it was the means to erase the last traces of my innocence, by discovering the limits of my desire. It was revenge, too: on my parents for not preparing me for adulthood, on Amy for cutting me adrift, on myself for my naivety.

It was
revenge.

*   *   *

A large army ant darted onto my left shoe, considered taking a diversionary chunk from my resurrected corpse flesh then scurried onwards to its main mission.

Ten thousand ants followed it.

I stepped aside. The bulging sack flattened as a red tide swept over the forest floor. A dark blanket of bodies picked its way towards the picnic rug, a sweeping, synergetic life form composed of prickling, acidic units. An advance party crept stealthily along the accountant's upturned sole, conquered the pinnacle of his heel, cut its way through the hairy forest of his calves and paused in the valley behind his knee. He reached out a hand to brush away a wayward insect, but barely broke his rhythm. The ants marched forwards, joined by reserve forces. They surmounted the great thigh plains, advanced over the buttock hillocks, ignored resistance from a low-flying hand, seized control of the small of the back and tore across the wide loins towards the shoulders. The army poured over him like treacle, dripped down his sides and settled on the woman's flanks: a rushing, tingling river of life, flowing outwards and upwards, spreading, swelling.

The accountant's cry of alarm and the project manager's scream which followed it went unheard by the advancing forces. A pincer movement reinforced the main thrust, reserves overwhelming their larger opponents with sudden strikes against the arms and neck. Ants prevailed over every inch of disputed territory: they filled the mouths and throats of their foes, ripped at their walls, seized their towers, desecrated their sanctuaries.

‘Seems to be going well so far,' War observed blandly, scratching his temple. ‘Some of them are getting a bit over-enthusiastic – probably the heat.'

Death hunkered next to him with a look of profound disillusion. ‘I don't know what I'm doing any more.'

‘Same as always. Breakfast, preparation, lunch, termination, dinner, sleep. What else is there?'

‘There
must
be something.'

War changed the subject, bored with Death's angst. ‘What's for dinner?'

‘I can't remember.'

‘Only I don't want chicken again.'

Death stared blankly at him.

The enemy had split into two factions: a walking, shouting carpet of ants (male) and a rolling, screaming carpet of ants (female). Both were doomed. The male carpet sprouted shivering arms and staggered towards the forest; the female carpet managed to crush some of the invaders but fatally opened her eyes to a roving squad of elite troops.

‘Watch him,' War told me, indicating the accountant's progress towards the trees. ‘Guide him back towards the clearing if he strays too far.'

‘What if they attack me?'

‘They won't touch you,' he laughed. ‘You have completely the wrong
smell.
'

There was no need for concern. The accountant collapsed onto a bank of earth on the far side of the glade, his resistance crushed by the force of the onslaught. The project manager rolled through a couple of desperate revolutions before slumping to a stop at our feet. The enemy uprising had failed; the ants had secured a glorious victory.

They began to divide the spoils of war, allocating equal rewards to each combatant. Slowly, methodically, the army stripped away flesh and fat to reveal bloodied knots of muscle, stripped away muscle to reveal bones and internal organs, stripped away organs to reveal the skeletal core. The bones were picked clean of all flesh and blood until only a few, stray roots of hair remained.

Our clients were drained, hollow, scooped-out people. Frameworks, templates, blueprints of people. Memories, echoes, distortions of people.

‘See,' War said. ‘They're all the bloody same underneath. It's not the substance that distinguishes them. It's the surface.'

I answered him by throwing up. The burning, the acid, the pungent aroma again. The feeling of being drained, and wanting to die.

The second time in two days.

*   *   *

The frenzied consumption of flesh had ceased. The thick patterns of dark red matter dispersed. Some ants were already weaving rapidly towards the edge of the forest. I was wiping my mouth when War handed me a small, brown bag.

‘Pick up the farthest ones first.'

Death moved to the left of the glade, I took the right. War ploughed straight ahead, stepping over the project manager's fresh skeleton. His collection technique consisted of using his giant hands to shovel as many ants as possible into the sack. Death plucked the ants individually, smiling at each one before tossing it into his bag, then resuming his expression of deep gloom. I combined the two methods, scooping only when I was confident that my resurrected flesh would not be stripped from my resurrected bones. And it was hot and hard work. Harvesting ten thousand wriggling insects is draining labour for anyone, but especially for the recently dead.

After ten back-breaking minutes beneath a burning sun, I sat down by the ex-accountant and rested my hand on his grinning skull.

Death approached with a weary smile. He continued to tease ants from the forest floor, picking them like wild fruit, talking to them; but when he reached me he sat down and put his arm around my shoulder.

‘Having a rest?'

I nodded.

‘Take your time.'

‘Why do we have to collect them all?' I asked.

He smiled. ‘Every single ant is carrying a small fragment of our clients, and each one is vital because it contains a tiny part of the whole. A miniature replica. Together they create a sequence of coded messages which fit together like a jigsaw. These messages will help us to recreate, if necessary, the couple that we disassembled.'

‘But even if you do catch all of the ants, how are you going to remove the flesh they've eaten?'

‘Micro-surgery,' he replied.

*   *   *

I resumed the clean-up operation, circumnavigating the glade in search of ant escapees. I stopped by the woman's remains and stared into the sapless sockets of her skull. Her head was as empty as a bucket at the bottom of a dry well; her barren, battle-scarred bones baked slowly in the sun. I knelt down and stroked her crown. An army ant crept from the corner of her laughing mouth and scurried across her cheek bone. I picked it up, watched it wriggle helplessly for a moment, then squashed it between my thumb and forefinger.

‘How many have you got?' War asked Death.

‘Fifteen hundred or so. How about you?'

‘At least seven thousand.' He turned towards me. ‘How many?'

‘I don't know.' I glanced at the bag and shook my head.

‘Let's have a look.' War snatched the sack from me, opened it and studied the contents carefully before delivering his assessment. ‘Probably about three or four hundred.' His expression was sardonic. Sweat dripped from his dark curls, rolled down his red cheeks. ‘They're all alive, at least.'

He emptied the bag into his own, then returned it.

Every ant I found from that moment on, I crushed.

*   *   *

It was late afternoon. The glade was shaded by trees and a cooling breeze blew fitfully. The intervals between discovering ants were growing longer. War's sack was swollen with life.

Memories swarmed over me, intangible, uncontrollable. I couldn't tell if they defined who I was or what I should become. Amy, Lucy, the decision I must make, my coffin existence – everything whirled by so fast and so frequently that it was impossible to focus on a single image, to separate it from the chaotic whole. These briefly bright flitting insects could not be caught.

‘Have we got all of them?' Death asked, adding his ants to War's collection.

War shook the sack and turned to me. ‘How many?'

‘Four.'

‘We're about twenty short … An ear's worth. Hardly worth bothering with.'

I gave him the remaining ants in my possession, failing to mention that they had all been squashed.

As we left the glade, Death stopped briefly and signalled for us to wait. He knelt down, plucked something from the grass, studied it briefly, then threw it away.

‘Was that another one?' War asked.

‘No,' he said.

Skylight

‘There's a maintenance exit above the stairs in the next block. A manhole. It can't be more than a few yards along the roof.
Please.
'