TERMINAL, page 5
THE BOY
A black and white boy emerged from the static, not yet tuned in. Lisa stared at the snowy screen with a face that had never been so soft while a dumpy nurse slid a plastic scanner all over his wife’s taut belly. David looked through the monitor at her insides. They looked just like everyone else’s. His nostrils flared and his fingers ached in old fists, but then David saw him move, his son, trapped in a plastic bag. He watched with wet eyes as the tiny boy wriggled vague and alien in that choking amniotic fluid. He had an urge, a new urge. He wanted to grab a scalpel and cut him out of that suffocating sack. Give him freedom. Give him life.
"Isn't he beautiful sweetheart?" Lisa said through chapped lips.
“He's got his Daddy's big hands."
David looked at his son’s developing hands, too big for his thin arms, clenched in fists like hammers made of new flesh.
"Let's call him Patrick, after your brother."
That night he lay next to her watching her chest rise and fall. It was a hot night and the moon caught the dew that formed on her swollen breasts. A subtle light seemed to emanate from her, as though the life growing inside her were contagious somehow, causing life to take hold where there was none before. He shut his eyes tight against it. Life, unbounded, verdant and copious, proliferated in his own bedroom, despite all his efforts to stem it, despite the decades of war he had waged against it. His eyes ached like a bruise as he hid from all that bounty, but behind them, in the space between his retina and his brain, grew an image of a new shoot in tarred earth, indelible, and provocative.
THE PLAN
David dissolved back into the world. His head on his hands on the wheel, all three covered in his thick spit, and the black blood that dripped from the burst skin of his beaten brow. Beneath that brow his eyes crossed as he swam through his mind, stitching together a tapestry of events from the patches of memory that fell through him. He saw stuck pigs and dead kids. He saw white lines and shattered glass. He saw lights and eyes and a sack and a snake. Yes, the snake. That Goddamned snake. He had got himself out of that massive greasy python but he wasn't safe, and he knew it. Maybe he never had been safe. Maybe he never would be. Not while that thing was out there, slinking through this never-ending night. It would be back, of that he was certain. If he knew nothing else he knew that one thing. The dial in the dash caught his attention, a white finger dithering in the dark, pointing at a red “E”. He was running on empty. He cast around, looking for a solution. His hand found the spare can of diesel in the foot well of the vacant passenger side. The lid was loose, but it was still full. It still had fuel left to burn, even if his own flames were dimming. Come on David, he thought, you can do this. You've got a bag full of knives and a spare tank of diesel. You’ve never had a problem you couldn't cut and burn your way out of. You can kill anything you set your mind to. Now what did he know? He knew how to kill a human. Watch them, read them, learn them like a language, then, when the time was right, when they were dozy and distracted, lure them away from the light making alligator promises till they were alone in the shadow of something, then strike with all the lashing anger of that ravenous animal. But this was different. The snake was different. The snake loved the dark, thrived in it like a plant in the sun. He needed to do the opposite. He needed to lure this monster out of the dark and into the light. Now what did he know of this snake? Of his snake? He knew it wanted bodies. It always had. Ever since he'd felt it writhe inside him for the first time when he was thirteen years old, that's what it had wanted. It had gaped up at him, swollen, angry, hungry. And, as luck would have it, he had three of them. One of his own, and two that he’d bought with cold hard cash, screaming and hollering behind him as he dragged them down with him. So a plan was formed. He would take the van and his bait out into the open and wait, wait for it to hear their screams and taste his dripping salt on the air. It wouldn't take long. It knew his taste well enough, and he its. The snake was hungry, and when it was hungry it was demented, and it knew David and his offerings were out here, somewhere in this dewy pine absence. It would find him, and when it approached, just before it swallowed them whole, he’d dash the van with diesel, light it on fire, then dive out of its way, burning it from the inside out, taking the beast down, slaying it for once and for all, and freeing himself from its raging appetites after all these screaming years. Yes, he decided, it was time to cut this off at the head.
It was time to kill the snake.
E
The van screeched to a stop at the top of the curve of an empty overpass. David turned the key towards him and pulled it out. Under a clear sky and a full moon the engine died for the last time. He got out of the van through a creaking door and stepped onto solid ground for the first time in what felt like many years. Decades. Four and a half of them. This was it. This is where it would end. He strutted and fretted across his concrete stage, his knees trembling with a fear that shook the ages. The eye in the sky looked at him through the empty blackness, and he felt her gaze. She was ashamed of him. He was ashamed of himself.
He held onto the cold hard barrier and waited. A gale blew through his tired old soul, just a cobweb between his aching ribs. A single drop of rain fell and caught his cheek. It wouldn’t be long now. From the top of this greyscale rainbow David looked out over the jagged landscape. Far away he could hear his snake screech as it carved through the trees searching for him, its blazing eye burning away the night they shared, and getting closer all the time. He thought of Lisa, the light that shone out of her murk. The way the combination of their genes had made something new, something that seemed to be healing her from the inside out. Something that had no right being so good, coming from two so terrible. And he felt something grow inside him. A new part of himself. A part he'd never had before, as if he had grown a second heart. This new organ swelled in his chest and it was good, oh it was so, so good, but there wasn't room inside him for so much machinery. No room in that crime scene chest. He felt a pressure build, forcing his vital fluids in new directions, pricking behind his eyes and tugging at his lips till he was crying like a new-born. Pathetic, helpless, honest. Then the gravel between his boots began to shake.
He’d been found.
The overpass shook with an unearthly rumble as in the distance David’s snake rattled its tail and cut through the landscape, light and noise fighting each other to bring the serpent to him sooner. Its vicious hiss pierced his ears, slicing through his brain like the sharpest of his knives. The long one. The one he used on his father. And then it turned toward him, its single, furious eye blazing and ravenous and trained right on him. It bleached the darkness, exposing him, seeing into him, into his soul, white hot and phosphorous. The very earth quaked in fear of it. He didn't have long. He had to exact his plan now, and he had to get it right. He had this single, solitary chance. He had to get it right. The snake was coming for him and for his two friends in the back, and he would give it two thirds of what it wanted. Rain pattered the van as David spilled the pale blue fuel around the cab, his hands shaking even before the familiar fumes made him any weaker. Here it came, the Great Snake, the monster inside him outside him, thundering ever faster, ever nearer, screeching like a burning child as it hurtled forward, thrusting, inevitable. Don't let it smell the diesel, he wished, hoping the wet wind would keep him one last secret. A noise beat out of the van, the two in the back had smelled his crime on the air and now they shouted into the roof of their makeshift crematorium, kicking the walls, moaning and pleading and praying all over, but the sound only brought the snake ever closer, and their fates ever nearer. The sound gave him a moments regret. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Those were supposed to be his noises, not the snake’s, but there they were, howled at the moon, wasted as bait. He swallowed his lust for the last time. Snap out of it David, he thought. This was no time for regret or histrionics. This was it, his one chance to terminate the interminable. He steeled himself, the snake was almost upon him, massive and hard, its one bright eye unblinking. It was time to light one fire, and douse another.
“EAT THIS YOU FUCKING CUNT!”
He struck a match and flicked it through the open window onto the fuel soaked plastic of the van interior. From nothing to orange blue heat. The flames licked the floor and walls like a grateful lover. He stood behind the incandescent van. The snake would have to eat all this if it wanted him, or them. "Take your fucking medicine you bastard!" David shouted into the air as the light from his one eyed monster blocked out anything that wasn't its own sight or sound. But just as it ought to swallow the van, just before David could dive out of its way, the snake dipped beneath him, under the overpass, burying its head and letting its tail follow, tunnelling away, then bursting from the ground behind him with a thunderous roar and running off into the night looking for a new hole to hide in.
“COWARD!” David shouted. “YOU FUCKING COWARD!”
He knew where it was going. It was going to find Lisa and that little blank boy inside her. It wanted to swim up her and into him, eating them both from the inside out, her all at once, him over years and years. No. NO. He couldn’t let that happen. He could be anything, that child. Anything. If only David could keep his demon away from his boy. He looked down at the attaché wrapped round the knives at his feet. Stained human leather. Tired old skin. The ground rumbled as the last of it ran beneath him. Only a sliver of opportunity remained. He grabbed the first knife his hand found then jumped over the concrete barrier and onto the cold thrashing back of his demon snake as the white hot van exploded on the overpass, taking two more tormented souls not gently into the blinding light. David paid them no mind, he rode that bucking snake, flogging and flaying its cold, hard armour, his hands and feet scrabbling through the spraying rain at the slick surface of its metallic back. Of course the snake fought back, turning and writhing beneath him, trying to fling him out into the darkness, rattling and shaking and loosening his teeth. He bit through his own tongue and it split. Blood, spit and wind. "DIE YOU BASTARD" he screamed into its constant neck, beating and stabbing at it, slicing and screaming at it, speed and storm forcing his fluids out of his face and up his sandstone cheeks. He plunged the knife down. Down, down, down. It didn’t slow, but at least it screamed under him, a thin metal scream full of steam and venom, and then it dipped down, dragging him down, its fat, greedy, cowardly head aiming for a hole that yawned ever wider in the distance. A hole of pitch black, growing, closer, here. "NO! NO! YOU WON'T GET AWAY FROM ME" he screamed. "YOU WON'T GET TO THEM", but the head was already in, worming its way towards the only love he'd ever felt, towards its new home, deep in the heart of his unborn son, deep in the belly of his unloved wife. His knife carved crude words into the thing’s back. If he couldn't kill it he could mark it, warn them. "He's coming for you boy! He's coming for you! Don't let him in! Don't let him in. Don't be like me. Don't be like your Daddy!” he screamed, but the snake was already almost gone, sliding thick and wet into its uroboric orifice, only its tail remained above ground with David clinging to its back, black against the sideways sky. He held on to those last few seconds with his sharp knife and his fragile love until he arrived at the horizon of his life. The snake dragged him screaming up to the hard rim of that deep hole, then pulled him down for the final time. His head met the concrete of the speeding edge and he is at home in a deep bed, and he is at the beach at a low tide, and he is back in her womb in the dark.
Forever.
Never.
Always.
EPILOGUE
A flash of light, brilliant and eternal, bleached the scene. Everything that had ever been, gone in an instant.
"Where am I?" David asked. His words left him like golden arrows, slicing the white light, light that vibrated kindly and sang back to him.
"You're everywhere now David."
"Who are you?" he asked.
They laughed a gentle laugh.
"We are your victims David."
He spun around on feet that didn't exist, squinting into the light with delicate muscles that were nothing more than a web of memory.
"Mother?" he asked.
"Yes son. I am here."
He felt her presence, a serpentine goddess.
"I am your mother. I have always been your mother. I will always be your mother."
"Oh Mother," he said. "Oh Mum, Oh Mummy…” he cried from notional eyes and the tears floated away from him, blinking blue, iridescent motes on an everlasting breeze. "Did you know me? Did you know me at all?"
"I know everything David."
"Oh I spilled so much blood Mummy! It's all over my hands!” he said, and looked down at hands that had ceased to be.
"I saw it David. I saw all of it. We all did. We watched you through a billion eyes. Those aren’t stars in the sky…"
"Oh Mummy please don't be mad!” he pleaded. “I just hoped they'd take me with them! I watched as they fell out of their eyes and I screamed for them to take me with them! I wanted to go with them! I was just trying to find my way back to you!”
“Shhh, child. You showed us the worst of the world David, the places you went with your knives, the things your father did to your brother, and you helped us make an important decision."
He could feel her leaving, a familiar feeling. He could feel her slipping away.
“No! Don’t go!”
"Do you forgive me Mummy?"
"DO YOU FORGIVE ME?"
She disappeared down a dark tunnel, and she was gone.
She was always gone.
The light fractured into a million shards, each inlaid with a complex pattern, like the roots of an ancient tree wrought in a mother's pearl. And with that David contracted down to a needle point, the atomic essence of him. It dropped down to the earth alongside his headless body where it lay beside the tracks, at the place where the train he had mistaken for his own self-hatred had disappeared into its tunnel.
From the eternal light David brought with him a sphere of vision. It showed him a dome - as above, so below. He could see up into the heavens, and down into the earth, and he could see back and forth in time, into and out of all the pain he inflicted. Up or down, which way would he go? There was only one way David could. He felt the little of himself he was left with begin burrowing, down, down, deep down into the fetid dirt. He wriggled and wriggled between clay and grit towards a beautiful light. A network of stars. A constellation deep underground. It was vast, he saw, spanning the continents, larger than anything he'd ever seen. The largest thing on this planet of earth that he had reaped with his scythes and his sorrow.
The mycelium glowed blue and phosphorous, welcoming him.
“Come to me”, it said, and he did.
They touched.
They decoded him.
A new disease was born, and the end began.
ANGELA
ADAM M BOOTH
CONTENTS
TWO BIRDS
IN BETWEEN
THE GRINDSTONE
THE PITCH
SHE'S LEAVING
NO ANGEL
A BAG OF BIRDS
TIME FLIES
HE'S HERE
LEAVE
THE ROOK
OFFICE HOURS
SECRETS AND LIES
AN ANGEL
SHE IS SUSPENDED
FROM THE HEDGEROW
IT BURNS LIKE AUTUMN
THREADBARE
LET US PRAY
THERE IS A MAN AT THE DOOR
THE READ LETTER
A BURNING BIRD
ONE HAMMER
THE DITCH
For all the Angelas
From The Other Place I sing this song.
A starling song of love gone wrong.
TWO BIRDS
Angela was one of only two people to go into work on the Thursday between Christmas and New Year. Christmas, as ever, had been a solitary experience and when she’d been asked if she could perhaps make it in to do the mandatory reports one morning between the two holidays she agreed, but did her best to make her answer look reluctant. Yes, she said, she should be back from a delayed Christmas dinner at her cousin’s house in Newcastle and would probably be able to make it in. She had sighed and grunted about it all afternoon, and the people with whom she sold health insurance to the great British public understood how greatly she had been inconvenienced, but there would be no Christmas dinner. There wasn’t even a cousin. There was nobody, and Angela had been hoping they would ask her to do this for months. As the bearded spectre of Christmas loomed up at her out of autumnal hues she had clutched her chest and begged the night for it. For someone. For anyone.
She arrived to the wide empty office and, from a grid of switches, turned on just the lights above her bank of desks. The stark lights clattered above her as they warmed up and the comma of a moon that punctuated the sky outside illuminated nothing, leaving the vast room almost completely black, except for the cold pool of light she settled in. She arranged her desk, and although it was cold and dark out there, Angela’s heart kindled its own flame and beat like a flaming bird in a cage of bone. She waited.
