The Last House on Needless Street(66)

I remember but I don’t understand. Of course the meat spoiled – I left the fridge door open.

‘What colour was the rug that day, Olivia?’

It’s not surprising, I guess, after what she’s been through – Lauren has lost it.

Lauren says, ‘I guess I have, but try anyway?’ Weird having someone hear what you’re thinking. I’m not used to it yet.

‘Please.’ She sounds so sad that I am ashamed of myself.

All right, I say. I will!



I try again and again, but no matter how hard I wish all I can feel is my silky black coat and my four padding paws.

After what seems like for ever, Lauren says, ‘Stop.’

I sit on the stairs with some relief and begin to groom.

‘You don’t want to help me.’ Tears fill Lauren’s voice.

I do, I say. Oh, Lauren, I want to help more than anything. It’s just – I can’t do it.

‘No,’ she says quietly. ‘You don’t want to.’ My tail feels funny. Warm, somehow. I twitch it to feel the cool air along its length. But the warm feeling grows. It becomes hot.

‘I can stroke you,’ Lauren says. ‘But I can also do this.’

Pain glows red all along my vertebrae. It builds into flames. My tail becomes a red-hot poker. I am crying with it.

Please make it stop, Lauren!

Lauren says, ‘It doesn’t matter what I do to an imaginary cat.’

Oh, please, it hurts! Pain pulses through my brain, my fur, my bones.

‘You think you’re beautiful,’ Lauren says in the same, dreamy voice. ‘He took down the mirrors – you can’t see what you really are – so I’ll tell you. You are small, twisted, wizened. You are half the size you should be. Each one of your ribs stands out like a knife blade. You don’t have many teeth left. Your hair grows in stringy patches on your bald head. As the burns on your face and hands healed, over and over, the scar tissue grew so thick that it twisted your face. It pulled your nose aside, and it grew over your eyes so one of them is almost sealed shut by scars. You think you are stalking around the house on four elegant feet. That’s not what’s happening. You are crawling on your hands and knees, dragging your useless broken feet behind you, like an ugly fish. No wonder you don’t want to live in this body. You helped him make it and then afterwards you climbed into his lap and purred. You are pathetic.’

She stops, and says in a different voice, ‘Oh, Olivia, I’m so sorry.’

I am running, rowing with horror. The aftershock of pain still rolls through me. Her words hurt more.

‘Please,’ she calls. ‘I’m sorry. I just get so angry, sometimes.’

I know how to hurt her back. I know the place she fears more than anywhere else.

I leap into the chest freezer and hook my claws into the lid, pulling it down over us with a crash. The dark closes over, welcome, and I close my ears to Lauren’s screams. I let soft nothing take me. I go away into the deep.

How many times can someone bend before they break for ever? You have to take care, dealing with broken things; sometimes they give way, and break others in their turn.





Ted





I go back to the bar with the lights in the trees where I met the butter-haired woman with the blue eyes. It is a warm day so I sit out back at a long table and breathe the smell of barbecue and think of her for a while. There’s country music playing from somewhere, mountain music, and it’s nice. This is the date we should have had. The real one didn’t go well. Don’t think about that.

Around me, men mill and flow. They are focused, energy comes off them, but no one’s talking much. Once again there are no women here. I wish I could keep that part of my brain turned off, to be honest. I feel bad about what happened with the butter-haired lady. The day is warm and calm begins to steal through me, almost as if I were in a waiting room. I drink six or seven boilermakers. Who’s counting? I will be walking home later. ‘Didn’t drive here. That would be irresponsible!’ I realise I am speaking aloud, and people are looking. I sink my face into my beer and keep quiet after that. Plus I remember now, I sold the truck a while ago.

As dusk falls more men arrive. After their shifts, I guess. There is a lot of to and fro but people leave me alone. I begin to understand why there are no women here – it’s not for them. What would Mommy have said if she saw me in a place like this? Her mouth narrowing with disgust. It’s against science. I shiver. But Mommy can’t see you, I remind myself. She’s gone.

I don’t realise how drunk I am until I get up from the bench. The lights in the trees burn like comets. The dark hums and time stops moving, or maybe it’s going so fast I can’t feel it any more. That’s why I drink, I say to myself, to control time and space. It seems the truest thought I’ve ever had. Faces tip and slur.

I wander through the pools of light and dark, across the patio, past the tree. I’m looking for something I can’t name. I see an outbuilding squat against the sky, a lighted doorway. I go through it, and find myself in a mineral-smelling room with plank walls and lined with urinals. It’s full of guys laughing. They’re passing something small from hand to hand and telling a story about a friend who has a horse. Or who is a horse. Or who does horse. But then they go and I am alone with the peaceful dripping and the bare bulb swinging in the air. I go into the stall and bolt the door so I can sit down in peace with no eyes on me. It’s the butter-haired woman’s fault, coming here has reminded me of her and that is why I’m upset – normally I am cautious, I only drink this much at home. I have to get out of here, I have to get to my house. But just at this second I can’t figure out how to do that. The walls pulse.