From the Neck Up and Other Stories Page 7

  It’s difficult to think in the presence of so much wealth. The leathery, crowned perfection of the pomegranates in Miriam’s lap, and the warm smiles of the bunch of bright green bananas beside Poppy. It comes to me that we can’t give up. And our best chance is not here, trapped in the centre of the burning biodomes.

  Lonnie says, “Jim. Jim. Where’s Jim?”

  I think I know the answer to that question. And it gives me some sort of answer as to where we can go. If a place has already been destroyed, why would they fight over it?

  “I can take you to him,” I tell her. “Would you like that?”

  “Jim,” she says. For a moment I think she’s too far gone to understand, but then she stands up and looks at me expectantly.

  I say to the others, “We need to get the produce to a safe place.”

  “Where?” says Suroopa. She gets up too and that’s enough to get them all moving.

  I pick up the handle to my trolley once more and turn away from the bloody track I’ve left, leading them away from the common room. They trail after me. We move away from the noise of the fighting. In my mind I hold a map of these domes and how they link. If the plants are burning, the doors might have automatically shut and locked, which will give us a little time. Still, I can’t risk a direct route. I wind around the edges, using the less frequented corridors, where you can almost feel the cold through the walls.

  Whenever I look behind me, I’m surprised by the way they all walk, in an orderly fashion, pairs holding hands in some cases. When I was a teacher, I would have thought nothing of it. Form a crocodile, I would have said, and they would have obeyed. Another image I have failed to capture on glass, and perhaps by now my slides have melted together as the fire sweeps through the living quarters. All of it will burn: the woollen antimacassars, the cuddly toys and the jigsaws, the board games with the plastic pieces squirming in the heat.

  I lead the crocodile. “One,” I say. “Stick together.”

  We’re not far from the Winery when the alarm bell finally starts to ring. It gives long blasts. I suppose Blossom Farm must have reconnected it and taken control in areas. We all know what it means. Return to your sections. Adopt lockdown procedures. But my section is burning.

  I carry on walking and the others follow. The cold intensifies. The solar lights flicker. It must be late afternoon by now. The sun will soon set.

  The Winery walls are black. The barrels are warped and charred, the green glass on the shelves has produced a smooth, melted mess of strange shapes. The smell of smoke is older here, greasier, and the snow has started claiming the ground through the hole in the outside wall, where once there was an emergency exit, forgotten by everyone but Daisy. I was right: it’s getting dark already. Or maybe it’s just that the sun can’t shine through those huge black clouds. They block the sky, and suddenly the fear comes back to me again. Fear of the dark sky, the endless snow, and that huge expanse of freezing, dirty air, flowing over those mounds where the dead live.

  Lucas will be long gone by now, miles away with the emergency kit, the tent, the solar heater, all the things he needs to survive, and I am glad.

  I stop walking, and the others stop too. They look at me with such expectation, waiting to be told what happens next. All I have to do is assume that tone of voice once more, and they will obey.

  But that voice doesn’t come so easily anymore. I hear the crack and whine in the words when I say, “We need to wait outside.”

  Nobody speaks.

  I set off again with my trolley, but I can hear they haven’t moved.

  “Outside?” calls Suroopa.

  I turn back to her. “Where else is there?”

  “Why outside? Why not just here?”

  The answer to that won’t come to me. All I say is that it seems important to stand in the snow and be outside of the domes. Perhaps I want to be near Daisy again.

  “The fruits will freeze,” says Sue.

  “They’ll be all right for a short while.”

  “No,” says Suroopa, in sudden decision. “Let’s wait here.”

  “Jim?” Lonnie’s loud voice surprises me, from the back of the group. She pushes her way forwards. “Where’s Jim?”

  I point through the hole in the wall. “Out there.”

  She doesn’t hesitate. She sets off, still clutching her two satsumas, and I go with her. We walk through that hole in the wall, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world to be outside once more. My lungs constrict. It’s like being clutched in a freezing fist, and squeezed, and it hurts, it hurts, but Lonnie keeps going, getting snow on her plain brown shoes, holding her satsumas before her. In only a few steps I’m shivering.

  My eyes adapt to the dusk slowly. I make out the hills beyond the complex, the lines of the fence, and I look for the mounds. But they are no longer there. The snow has covered the bodies, and made a smooth, level field of them. No trace of them remains.

  “Jim!” calls Lonnie. She keeps walking. Out of the shelter of the building the weather grows in confidence. It can claim us. The wheels of the trolley seize in the snow and they will no longer turn. I have to leave it behind as I chase after her.

  I grab her and lead her to where I think Jim’s body must be. “Here,” I shout. The wind is strong, and it steals my voice.

  “Jim!” she calls. She shakes free of me and strides away. It occurs to me that maybe Jim isn’t here at all. Maybe he’s in the biodomes somewhere, safe and warm and hoping someone is looking after his Lonnie. I go after her, but she is quick with new-found purpose and it’s so very cold here; a cold that numbs, paralyses.

  What am I doing? What the hell am I doing?

  I sink down into the snow and close my eyes. Is this it? This final burst of guilt and pain, is that all I’ve been waiting for?

  I want to let go. Maybe now I can let go.

  I feel a light touch upon my face.

  Lucas. Lucas is here, with me, and he takes his hand from my cheek and helps me to stand. We retreat back to the shelter of the building, by the hole. He shows me how he has made skis from the signs he took from my storeroom, straps them to my feet and wraps me in extra layers of material. Peering out through the hole are the others, watching these preparations.

  “Why?” I ask him.

  “Why what?”

  “We won’t survive.”

  “Nobody will,” he agrees, and the way he says it makes me think it’s not such a bad thing anymore. “The trick is in how you try.”

  The night is falling fast, and the crackle and roar of the domes on fire is fighting the wind for dominance. “You ready?” says Lucas, and I nod.

  Suroopa calls my name: “Mel!”

  She holds out one of the white plastic bags. She doesn’t step through the hole, and her hand trembles as it emerges into the cold. I take the bag, and look in it.

  A pomegranate. A banana. Raspberries, chillies, persimmons, plums, a cucumber, a courgette. A handful of lychees. It’s like one of those old still life portraits, with the fruits filling up my eyes, belonging together in a way I haven’t seen before.

  “Keep them safe,” she says.

  It’s a promise I can’t make, but I understand why she asks it of me. I hold the bag tight and abandon my own melons, still in the useless trolley, to the cold. The seeds sit in my pockets, anyway.

  I will have to find a new name.

  Lucas and I head out through the snow, away from Blossom Farm, in a direction that leads to places I don’t yet know. Our tracks will leave thin lines in the white canvas of the landscape; between us, we are making delicate brushwork.

  MANY-EYED MONSTERS

  When the first one emerged from my mouth it interrupted one of the rare luxurious moments of my life. I was indulging in a bit of pampering, in the textbook fashion; the kind that was meant to make other women jealous. A deep bubble bath. White wine, condensation forming on the slippery curve of the glass. Candles swaying to mood music, and the rise and fall of my breasts as I breathed
in the steam. It was meant to be the perfect example of luxurious relaxation, and yet I could see clearly the valley of wrinkles, that criss-cross of aging skin between those shining globes of mine. No amount of white wine was going to take away the persistent thought that I really needed to moisturise more often, and I was getting old. Not as old as dear Aggie next door – surely I’d never be that old? – but certainly on the downward slope.

  It started as a feeling of fullness. Cold wine in a hot stomach, I thought, but then the feeling moved. It became a tug, an ache, and it climbed inside me, higher, higher, until my throat was tight and sore. I sat up and put my hand to my neck, leaning over the side of the bath, caught in that fight between the desire and the disgust of sickness. And then I opened my mouth, heaved my chest, and out it popped.

  A small, wrinkled bag of skin. A bag of skin with eyes.

  It watched me. There were so many eyes, each with its own lid and lashes. Brown, green, hazel, grey, and one very blue one right at the top of its fleshy, circular body that resembled my own skin, although it was slick with mucus. Did the slime come from my stomach, or was it creating its own sticky substance? I don’t know.

  I do know it didn’t repulse me. It was much like anything that the body produces. It’s difficult to be really appalled by the smell of your own faeces or the chunkiness of your vomit; these things come from inside you. And so I felt – not much, actually. I poked it with my foot and then tried to scoop it up with the aim of flushing it down the toilet. The skin pouched under my fingers, and the thing shuddered. That was when I realised it had feelings.

  I crouched down and made eye contact with it. I chose a pair of brown ones that happened to be close to each other.

  “Hello,” I said.

  It rolled forward, closing each eyelid in turn as it travelled over them, and pushed itself against my right ankle.

  Magnetism – that’s the only way I can describe it. A force sucked it in and held it tight against me. It was warm and wet, attached to the hollow underneath my ankle bone. A hum passed through my foot and spread upwards, until a tingling sensation reached my head and left me dizzy.

  The eyes that were turned in my direction all held the same expression. Love. I felt that it loved me. It was my many-eyed monster.

  “You can’t stay,” I told it. I tried to pull it free, as gently as possible, but it wouldn’t budge. I thought about taking nail scissors to it, just to trim around the edges until it let go. I even took the scissors from the medicine cabinet. What would be underneath that thick layer of skin? Blood, muscle, folds of fat. Or something else. Something not human at all.

  I put the scissors back, and my eyes fell on the can of instant freezing solution that Alan used on his verrucas. It seemed like a kinder option. The applicator was a rubber tube over the nozzle; I put it as close as I could to the spot where the monster’s skin met mine. Already I could feel our flesh melting together, although there was no pain. It was as if it was burrowing into me. The thought shocked me into action. I pressed the trigger.

  It hurt me as much as it hurt the monster, I think – a jet of pure pain, but I held it for as long as I could. The place where our skin joined turned white, but my monster clung on, even as its eyes filled with tears.

  I wiped them away with my hand.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said to it, and it blinked and looked at me with forgiveness.

  “I just… I can’t go around with you permanently attached,” I told it. “I won’t be able to get my shoes on. And you’ll freak out Alan. Personally, I sort of like you, and I don’t want to hurt you, but this isn’t going to work.”

  It regarded me. I had the feeling I had communicated with it.

  “Come on,” I said, in my softest voice. “Be reasonable.”

  There was a faint sucking sound and the monster came free and rolled backwards on the bathroom mat.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll show you a safe place to stay.”

  It followed me to the bedroom, rolling along behind, and I cleared a space in the chest of drawers. It trundled into place among my winter jumpers, apparently not affected by the laws of gravity.

  “Be good,” I told it. It looked a little disappointed as I closed the drawer, but it did as it was told. Then I sat on the bed and looked at my ankle.

  The patch I had tried to freeze throbbed, and there was a growth of thick black hair springing up from it in a circle. I ran a finger along it. It was coarse, like Alan’s beard when he didn’t shave for a few days over a bank holiday. It prickled when I rubbed it. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.

  I removed the towel, stood up and looked at myself naked in front of the bedroom mirror. The patch of hair was very obvious. I went back to the bathroom and shaved it as closely as I could, but it still left a dark patch. A bit of tinted moisturiser soothed the skin and covered it up nicely.

  By the time Alan got back from football I felt almost back to normal. It was hard to believe there was a many-eyed monster hiding in the bedroom. Of course, I didn’t say a word about it. It wasn’t that I thought he would make a fuss, or think it morally repellent, or anything. I just thought it really wasn’t anybody else’s business. Even his. He was never interested in women’s stuff anyway.

  A few days later – in a cubicle in the ladies’ bathroom at work – I coughed up the second one.

  * * *

  This one had all brown eyes, little ones, spaced quite far apart. I watched it roll up my leg and attach itself to my thigh. I wiped, pulled up my knickers, and asked it gently to come free. It was as open to persuasion as the first monster. I popped it into my handbag and examined the immediate growth of hair it had caused. At least it would be covered by my skirt for the rest of the day. I could shave the spot later, along with my ankle, which needed daily depilation. I went back to my seat and carried on with my administrative tasks, not feeling anything much. If anything, I felt calmer than before. It was as if I had expelled some unwanted feelings and now my mind was clear. I had quite a productive day, I would say.

  I coughed up another one every now and again. I could feel a monster coming on, and even learned to control it until I could get to a private place. Once we went out to a pizza restaurant and I managed to eat an entire American Hot before we got home and I could expel it in the bedroom. That one was covered in half-digested orange pepperoni pieces, and didn’t look amused. It insisted on attaching itself to my neck, which was a real pain to shave later.

  I had twenty patches of circular hair growth – one for each monster – when I first saw another person cough one up.

  It happened at the supermarket. An elderly man was pushing one of the smaller trolleys down the baked goods aisle, taking his time on his swollen legs, and as I waited for him to go past the bagels he stopped, leaned over to the side and coughed up a slimy, wrinkly little many-eyed monster.

  I’d never looked at one objectively before. It was beyond disgusting. Just being near it turned my stomach. It rolled towards him and made its way up his trouser leg, and I thought of it joining with his old, mottled skin. He didn’t even look down. He started walking once more, and then I realised this wasn’t the first time for him. His legs weren’t swollen underneath his brown corduroy trousers. The monsters were attaching themselves to him, and he was doing nothing about it.

  I watched this shambling figure make its way into the refrigerated section with the sudden certainty that there was something very wrong about the monsters. It was a horrible, evil thing, this vomiting up of little bags of skin with questing eyes. The fact that I was doing it too was beyond shameful. I wanted to scrub my insides with bleach. I was determined to never, ever bring another many-eyed monster into the world.

  When I got home, I went upstairs and stood in front of the chest of drawers where they all lurked. I couldn’t bring myself to open it. I knew I should get rid of them all, kill them, smash them into bloody pieces of gore and goo. The only problem was the eyes. Why did they have to have eyes? Perhaps it was
a defence mechanism. It made it impossible to hurt them.

  I wanted to cry, but tears wouldn’t come. Instead, the familiar sensation came over me: another monster was on its way. It built up and up, and would not be controlled or denied. My chest heaved, once, twice – and there it was. Number twenty-one emerged and attached itself to my left arm. It had only three eyes, all green, and long blond lashes that made it look very feminine. It was adorable.

  * * *

  Alan never noticed anything was wrong. I felt separate from him. I wasn’t angry or annoyed with him, I just couldn’t say for sure that I loved him. I don’t think I loved anyone or anything anymore. The feeling was, somehow, beyond me.

  “Have you seen Aggie?” he said, when we reached the first commercial break for the home makeover programme we liked to watch on Wednesday evenings. “I put her bins out for her this morning, but she hasn’t wheeled them back yet.”

  “No,” I said. “She’s probably just busy.” I didn’t speculate on what an eighty-three-year-old widow might be busy doing. I had a lot of other things on my mind.

  That was when the first advertisement for Smoothcare appeared.

  Hairier than you can bear?

  Soothe your woes with Smoothcare!

  The screen showed your usual semi-naked perfect teenager who looked like she didn’t know anything about the concept of unwanted hair. She held the device, which looked a bit like a mini vacuum cleaner, and smiled with delight. Then she placed the perfectly circular nozzle over the perfectly circular patch of black hair just below her exposed collarbone and held it there.

  When she removed it the patch of hair was gone.

  I looked at Alan. He was watching the screen with interest.

  Patches here and patches there?

  Smooth away with Smoothcare!

  A suspicion began to form in my mind.

  “I’m just going to the loo,” I said. I tried to act casual, making myself take the stairs slowly. In the bedroom, I ignored the drawer that held my monsters and opened Alan’s sock drawer instead. There they were. They all trained their eyes upon me, blinking fast in the light. There were too many to count; in fact, there weren’t any socks in the drawer at all.