yet there was nothing at stake. No love lost, as they said. There was leisure to consider all this. The emotional universe found room in a split-second for elaborate expansions.
FASTER.
With a glance at the redhead for permission, the young vampire jammed a third steel skewer through the upper part of my right arm, the hand of which was still holding my child’s head. The metal went through the long hairy bicep at an angle, missed the humerus, dragged at a knot of nerves. Pain jangled like a stumbled-into wind chime. Blood and oxygen frothed around the wound in my throat. It reminded me of a school biology experiment we’d done with bicarbonate of soda. Which in turn reminded me of a line from Jake’s journal: I have lost, I thought, mental appropriateness . My legs were afloat. I was a cripple tied to a post in a fast-flowing river. The redhead pulled a military knife from her boot and cut the umbilical cord. She was beautiful. Her lipsticked mouth worked slightly with concentration.
THAT’S IT. FASTER.
‘Grab it, Noah,’ she said.
The Bob Dylan youth, Noah, reached down for the child – and the child bit him.
Noah snatched his hand back, bloodied. ‘Ow!’ he said, half-laughing. ‘That fucking hurt .’
‘We’re wasting time,’ the grey-haired vampire said. ‘Give me the things.’
The woman had a leather satchel. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Do it.’
There was a separate frail rage that I’d done all that exhausting work of getting this child out safely into the world and now here they were, erasing it. Separate, that is, from the overwhelming desire to close my eyes, turn my head away, let them take him. What did it matter? Why should I care? Did women getting raped suffer this profane indifference? Were some abuses so extreme it was easier to surrender the self than sustain it?
‘Watch that mouth,’ the redhead said. ‘Careful...’
‘The things’ were a cattle prod, a ketch-pole and a woven steel-fibre sack. They worked as a team and I got it all in dreamy detail, the prod’s dry zaps, my fingers one-by-one prised back, the child’s jerks and flinches, his high-pitched yelps and snarls showing white canines and a shrimp-pink tongue, the two-tone shimmer of the woven steel bag that reminded me of zoot suits or the iridescence of street oil, the redhead’s delighted absorption and pearly skin and pounding stink. She had no malice towards me. This was something valuable to her, that was all, a necessary object. Despite the cold coming in I felt as hot as a new-baked loaf. I watched my offspring lifted, throttled, jabbed, bagged, tied. The darkness closing over his head tore something between us.
For a moment all sound and movement ceased, as if someone had pressed a pause button on reality.
Then the helicopter’s whine and chop ripped through – and everything rushed back into motion. The aircraft was right outside, whisking-up snow and shooing-in freezing air.
KILL THEM! KILL THEM NOW!
There was a burst of automatic weapons fire, barely audible over the racket of the propellor blades, then the first of the wolves – last night’s black – was through the door.
The animal’s bite and slash tore a third of Noah’s face off. He went down onto his knees with a falsetto shriek and a violent shudder as if he was revolted. Simultaneously the grey-haired vampire, holding the sack with my child in it, shot straight up through the air and came to rest with his back against the ceiling and the wriggling bundle pressed tight to his chest. A second grey wolf sprang at the redhead. She got her left arm up and the creature’s jaws locked around it, its momentum knocking her backwards into the range. For a moment she looked like a woman at a bar resisting an insistent bad-breathed drunk. Then I saw the detail of her little round nostrils flaring as in complete silence and with a kind of delight she stabbed the animal repeatedly in its belly with the knife she was still holding from cutting the
FASTER.
With a glance at the redhead for permission, the young vampire jammed a third steel skewer through the upper part of my right arm, the hand of which was still holding my child’s head. The metal went through the long hairy bicep at an angle, missed the humerus, dragged at a knot of nerves. Pain jangled like a stumbled-into wind chime. Blood and oxygen frothed around the wound in my throat. It reminded me of a school biology experiment we’d done with bicarbonate of soda. Which in turn reminded me of a line from Jake’s journal: I have lost, I thought, mental appropriateness . My legs were afloat. I was a cripple tied to a post in a fast-flowing river. The redhead pulled a military knife from her boot and cut the umbilical cord. She was beautiful. Her lipsticked mouth worked slightly with concentration.
THAT’S IT. FASTER.
‘Grab it, Noah,’ she said.
The Bob Dylan youth, Noah, reached down for the child – and the child bit him.
Noah snatched his hand back, bloodied. ‘Ow!’ he said, half-laughing. ‘That fucking hurt .’
‘We’re wasting time,’ the grey-haired vampire said. ‘Give me the things.’
The woman had a leather satchel. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Do it.’
There was a separate frail rage that I’d done all that exhausting work of getting this child out safely into the world and now here they were, erasing it. Separate, that is, from the overwhelming desire to close my eyes, turn my head away, let them take him. What did it matter? Why should I care? Did women getting raped suffer this profane indifference? Were some abuses so extreme it was easier to surrender the self than sustain it?
‘Watch that mouth,’ the redhead said. ‘Careful...’
‘The things’ were a cattle prod, a ketch-pole and a woven steel-fibre sack. They worked as a team and I got it all in dreamy detail, the prod’s dry zaps, my fingers one-by-one prised back, the child’s jerks and flinches, his high-pitched yelps and snarls showing white canines and a shrimp-pink tongue, the two-tone shimmer of the woven steel bag that reminded me of zoot suits or the iridescence of street oil, the redhead’s delighted absorption and pearly skin and pounding stink. She had no malice towards me. This was something valuable to her, that was all, a necessary object. Despite the cold coming in I felt as hot as a new-baked loaf. I watched my offspring lifted, throttled, jabbed, bagged, tied. The darkness closing over his head tore something between us.
For a moment all sound and movement ceased, as if someone had pressed a pause button on reality.
Then the helicopter’s whine and chop ripped through – and everything rushed back into motion. The aircraft was right outside, whisking-up snow and shooing-in freezing air.
KILL THEM! KILL THEM NOW!
There was a burst of automatic weapons fire, barely audible over the racket of the propellor blades, then the first of the wolves – last night’s black – was through the door.
The animal’s bite and slash tore a third of Noah’s face off. He went down onto his knees with a falsetto shriek and a violent shudder as if he was revolted. Simultaneously the grey-haired vampire, holding the sack with my child in it, shot straight up through the air and came to rest with his back against the ceiling and the wriggling bundle pressed tight to his chest. A second grey wolf sprang at the redhead. She got her left arm up and the creature’s jaws locked around it, its momentum knocking her backwards into the range. For a moment she looked like a woman at a bar resisting an insistent bad-breathed drunk. Then I saw the detail of her little round nostrils flaring as in complete silence and with a kind of delight she stabbed the animal repeatedly in its belly with the knife she was still holding from cutting the
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