Cows by Matthew Stokoe Page A

some dysentery-struck mammal, vistas of the world made shit opened before him. Then, at last, a small amount of vomit punched through his locked throat and mercifully allowed him to swallow.
    He bent forward and gripped the legs of the table, screwing his eyes shut. Thin brown liquid ran from the corners of his clamped mouth and he jerked quickly on his chair, up and down, fighting his stomach, willing it to accept the returning waste.
    Somehow he kept it down and when he looked at the Hagbeast again her smirk had faded. It was her turn. Shit in her mouth made her twist her head in a spastic half-circle and pump her neck into a tightly stretched red bag, like some obscene mating bird.
    The force of her first retch blew snot into the air, but it didn’t part her lips. She lurched against the table, then steadied herself with weak arms while her belly shook. Bunching jaw muscles showed through the loose skin of her jowls and the sound of grinding teeth made Steven press his thighs together. How she must be damaging herself to compete with him!
    Then she couldn’t hold it any longer and puked onto her plate in a screeching explosive torrent that spattered the front of Steven’s shirt. She heaved a few more times, until it came up dry, then sat, arms rigid to the edge of the table, shivering and silent, drawing breath. Steven felt dismay creep into his already churning guts. If the Hagbeast could not master a plate of shit, how could he fill her with enough poison to kill her? He saw his plans crumbling and was about to speak some desperate goading remark when her arms relaxed and she began to function again. She cut a piece of shit with the edge of her fork, speared it, put it in her mouth and swallowed. Her movements were deliberate, machinelike. She cut another piece of shit and ate it. Small tremors rippled across her breasts and shoulders, but they did not touch her throat. She looked at him and smiled ingenuously.
    “Steven, I can’t keep eating without you.”
    He slid his fork into the thing on his plate, thankful that it had escaped most of her vomit—her own plate dripped, the shit swam in it—and entered again the body rebellion of his first mouthful, and kept forcing it in.
    “How is it?” He did not look at her as he spoke.
    “It smells like your birth. I didn’t expect this from you, Steven. You’ve started a game with your darling mother, haven’t you? Those years in your room with that fucking mongrel and your precious TV, doing nothing but wanking and picking pus out of your face, and you think you can just crawl out and wipe off the slime? Just reach into your box of dreams and slip one on like a coat? You sorry fuck, you’re not strong enough to do it.”
    “I think I’m getting stronger, Mama.”
    The Hagbeast laughed and opened her mouth in mock surprise. Steven saw bits of shit stuck to her teeth.
    “Strong? You were born a runt and you haven’t changed. How strong are you getting? Come on, show me.”
    She finished the last nugget of shit and smashed her plate against the table.
    “Get out of that chair and stand up! Mama wants to see how strong you are.”
    Her bellow hit the dead walls of the kitchen and came back at Steven in a rolling chain of thuds, each one pushing him further upright, until he stood, arms limp at his sides, waiting for the coming humiliation. God, if he could be like Cripps for just one minute …
    The Hagbeast moved close to him and their breaths combined in a sluggish cloud of shit and saliva. She was too close, he shut his eyes. He felt her fat fingers undressing him. His cells screamed, but his arms were too weak to fling her from him. Too weak to force her mouth apart until her jaws snapped, too weak to yank her head down so sharply that the spine broke a few vertebrae from the skull and stuck out into the air through the skin at the back of her neck. Too weak to enact a thousand killings wished a thousand times. He had spoken too soon.
    He was naked.
    “Look,