I saw you from the top deck of the 243. I was with Marianne. We were going to see a film. I don’t remember which one. This is what I remember: seeing you. In fact I see you a lot in crowds, coming towards me along an underground platform, turning into a supermarket aisle. But this time it was really You and not just a shadow in a stranger’s face. I am used to the mirage of you.
I’m going to present to you an option: The Life. It’s a modular option. You can choose which modules suit you, but really the idea is to build them up. You won’t appreciate it fully unless you can see the whole. That’s the idea.
Christmas for Kong had never been as bloody, nor as violent and carnal, as legend might lead one to expect. For so many decades the community on the other side of the barrier, seething with their own concerns, had made tribute to the great Kong, the King Kong. Fashions and tastes changed from generation to generation behind the barrier, but the offerings remained as steadfastly, as solidly, uniform as the dread Kong himself. It is no wonder, of course, that the people thought of him as a god. And as a god he could not go blameless when a typhoon capsized the fishing boats and destroyed the market. But as a god he could be placated; a quiet Christmas could be predicted by a doubling of tribute. Not just a young girl, scented with clove oil and drugged to calmness, but also a teenage boy picked by a lottery, and a basket of glass blown into shapes too delicate for Kong to handle. The glass shapes represented fishes, fruits, sometimes eggs (for fertility), female shapes (for luck in marriage) and flowers. For the people behind the barrier, flowers symbolised prosperity. If Kong overturned the basket while ripping the human offerings from their stakes, then a bad year was foretold. If the basket remained more or less intact then the people could rejoice in a great and fortuitous year ahead. He ate the offerings. This is what he has always done. For the offerings to take place at Christmas was natural: the Winter Solstice heralded the triumph of light over darkness and a true beginning to the next twelve months of survival and trade.
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Maybe you wouldn’t expect so, but Mick remembers breathing. He remembers the little noise his lip made when they’d part, and the rise of his chest, and his lungs filling. He remembers the little temperature change in his nostrils when they’d suck in new air, and the baby-turbulence at the roof of his mouth when he’d breathe out.
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Three things just happened to Riva Cercas.
In the afternoon. Air too still in the house to breathe. Blood stopped in veins, backing up, thickening. Go into motion; push through. Fingers into fist. The muscle doesn’t rise like it used to. Moles slide along skin under which a bicep is now less visible. Push through.
It wasn’t long afterwards that I began to think of myself as apart from other people. I no longer felt part of the mass ebb and flow. I became, perhaps a little too, aware of my own uncontrolled jostling in eddies of circumstance.
Physical signs quickly followed. The first was probably the sharpening of my back teeth. I ran my tongue along them and drew my own blood. The taste of it was exotic and quickening. I cut my tongue a few more times, just lightly. Blood drained down my throat.
Boyd managed to get away after tea. Fishfingers, frozen peas and oven chips made a warm lump in his stomach. Johnny and Fraggle were meant to be meeting him on the corner of Main Road and Hill View. Boyd touched the cans of pop he’d stashed in his hoodie’s front pocket. He’d had to walk like a crab to avoid shaking them up. His mam had nearly caught him.
‘Why are you walking like that?’
‘I dunno,’ he’d answered and she just said, ‘I don’t get you kids’ and let it lie. He managed to swipe a packet of rich tea biscuits from the kitchen cupboard before he legged it.
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Reenie goes downstairs in the muffled silence of the night. She finds that the glass door into the living room is slightly ajar, and that’s how she knows that Mick has been through. He could never stay in bed; it’s no surprise that now he’s dead he’s a restless spirit.
People, shivering inside thick coats, bunched in couples and small groups around red formica high tables. The train station café was cold. Cold enough that Melly could see the wetness of her breath. Cold enough that Lou curled her fingers inside her gloves, letting the knitted fingers flap free. She lifted her paper coffee cup with her fists. Melly wore her scarf wrapped three or four times anaconda-like round her neck. Her woollen cap was pulled down over her forehead. Only her eyes and flushed red cheeks were visible to Lou. The rest of the space between Melly’s cap and scarf was filled with frenzied red hair.
Melly watched bursts of steam gather around Lou’s chapped lips as Lou sipped the coffee. Lou didn’t own a hat. She kept her hood up. The hood framed her face with a ring of fake fur.
‘This cold is hellish,’ Lou said, breaking the ice.
‘I wish I were dead,’ Melly said, re-freezing the space between them.
