Day Three (Chapter Two - Pain - Meat)
Dec. 3rd, 2003 01:28 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
wulfboy.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
just_writing(Reposted from my mainline journal)
Holly
Green, dark enough to be a different colour. It's not a leaf; leaves are not so fleshy, so hard, so shiny, so sharp, so cyrved. A weapon, clutched in the careful branches of a bitter tree. Red berries, scattered on the snow around it, slowly freezing. Not a branch, but a bush. Not a thicket, but a forest. Barely contained by the high iron railings, it reaches out into the street, sometimes the shiny upside, sometimes the darker underside. Sharp, like the night air. Scratching, like a scarf. Not tame holly. Not tame nature. Lit by a street-lamp, flickering. The light is going. Whistle a carol.
Going.
Mittened hands into jacket pocket.
Going.
Walk faster.
Gone.
The holly whispers and scratches, reaching out. It wants to taste you. It hates you.
You aren't alone any more in the street, in the dark snow, near the holly, by the house and there are red berries falling, falling, falling, pattering on the snow.
* * *
I woke late, of course. My sleep had been fitful, I kept hearing something that half-woke me but had fallen silent by the time I became aware of the room (fleetingly) and started again as soon as I dropped back off to sleep. Curving up out of the dark, down into the dark, over and over like a roller coaster. I finally realised I was properly awake, sitting up from an already-forgotten dream of mechanical trees. I felt blindly for my alarm clock, held it close to my face, registered the time, dropped the alarm clock into a pile of clothes next to the bed, and curled back up. Roughness of blankets against skin. My head was pounding with the fading good-cheer of the previous night. I managed maybe ten minutes of being warm, coasting along the surf of sleep, before having to jump out of bed and throw up my the poky little shower-bathroom-toilet. I retched for a while, a thick reddish-brown, frothy soup of beer and carrots that tasted a little like Oxtail soup.
I stood up, caught my reflection in the mirror, and saw the first of the scratches. It ran from the left side of my nose up under my eye, quite close to my ear. I traced it with a thick finger, watching myself frown. It was ridged, not clean, not deep, not bloody. Just a scratch. I spotted three more on the back of my hand, not quite parralel, reflected in the mirror. A fourth on my arm, just above the wrist. There were more, all over my forearms, another few on my neck, my face. I stood shivering in the bathroom in my shorts, looking at them. On my belly and chest, on my lower legs. Maybe fifty in all, like tiny, thin, painless stripes of a whip. Straight lines, lightly scored into the skin. I knew I'd been drinking last night, but it looked as if I'd been pushed through a hedge afterwards, which I didn't recall. They weren't the marks of my nails (I checked under them for skin, just to be on the safe side). They certainly weren't the marks of anyone elses' nails. Maybe I'd had a fight with a cat? I had no obvious wounds. My wrists and fingers were free of the sort of aches that speak of a misty scuffle after the pubs shut. My thighs did not ache with running. I hadn't fought with anyone.
I hurriedly dressed, realising that I really should have telephoned work three hours ago. I decided to phone Gavin instead and see if he knew what had happened. I didn't feel up to a trip to the telephone box, and that left only my own 'phone, such as it was. I had a friend who blamed his lack of success with the ladies on the brick of a phone he carried around. But he never made any effort to buy a smaller, more classy handset. I think he knew more truth about himself than I did. Haven't spoken to him in years.
I groped down the side of the sofa for my 'phone, and felt an unexpected sharp intrusion. I jerked my hand back . . . which was the wrong thing to do, of course. I could feel the skin parting as if in slow motion, unzipping down the back of my hand. I made a noise that was half yelp and half invective. Blood was already beading all along the cut, and it felt deep. The red beads ran together quickly and efficiently, and started to patter down onto the sofa cushions. Blood isn't the worst thing that's been spilled on them, and I stared stupidly at the spatters for a moment as fluid ran down my wrist. Then the pain came as the air hit the exposed nerves. I swore properly this time (but not too loudly; not enough to attract any attention from the neighbours) and ran through into the kitchen.
I held my hand underneath the cold tap, rapidly numbing the pain, and continued to swear despite the fact there was nobody there to hear. My hands were shaking, for some reason. The area around the cut was soon insensitive. Water splashed down my shirt-sleeves, raising goos-bumps on my forearm. I tried to keep the hand under the tap and search for some plasters at the same time. Needless to say I couldn't find anything, either to clean the wound with or to wrap the hand in. The water swirling in the sink was a jolly, cheerful pink colour. There was no suggestion that the blood flow was slowing and I racked my brains to try and remember if there was an artery in the back of the hand. I still wasn't entirely awake. I leant against the cupboard over the sink, and let the cool formica soothe my troubled brow.
I stood there. Feeling my blood wash away for what felt like an hour but couldn't have been more than maybe five minutes. When the water down the back of my hand was cold, not lukewarm with blood, I ventured a look. The wound was ugly, not as deep as I'd first thought, but still slowly bleeding. I could feel the place I had numbed my hand regaining it's feeling as the blood thawed it out. I gently touched the edge of the cut, and was horrified to see the skin shift and move, a flap of it loose and all scrunched up. I bit my lip and gently teased the skin back across the cut, making a bit of a pig's ear of it in all honesty. I cradled myself, and did a proper search for medical supplies. I ended up ripping up a pillow-case, wrapping my hand around it, and debating whether to go to the doctor or up to casualty. I was starting to get scared. What had cut me?
If it was something rusted, I decided, I'd go to up to the Casualty. If it was something stupid like a pencil, I'd bray the fuck out of it and teach it a lesson it'd never forget. I turfed the sofa cushions onto the floor, and had a proper search.
I found my 'phone (no credit, no charge, no messages, no style) and chucked it on the bed. I found two-pounds fifty in assorted fluffy change. I found three mismatched socks that felt very unpleasent indeed. I found an unopened red-foil packet, two newspapers each over six months old, a copy of "The Watchtower" with a lurid picture of an exploding planet of the front of it, and a torn dustjacket. That's all. Nothing else. Nothing sharp. I ran my fingers gently over the fabric of the sofa, questing for something, but all I felt was a dusty roughness. I checked the back of my hand - blood was carefully soaking an intricate pattern into the back of the linen I'd wrapped it in, looking a little like a line of snowflakes.
I looked up and realised how quiet the house was, and how cold it was, and how alone I was, and decided to take the walk to the telephone box after all.
(later)
I didn't make it to the telephone box. I took my two-pound-fifty into town and had a burger and some fried pieces of vegetable that might have been potato. Sat in the window with a torn-up pillowcase around my hand, feeling coarse-grained bread-bun warm-meat-patty-sandwich against my fingertips, let the sounds of the place wash over and around me. The burger joint is usually warm, and while it's not actually a friendly place at all I can convince myself that it is if I squint my eyes slightly. I dripped warm ketchup onto my shirt, and managed to smear it all over my fingers, and some more traced a warm route down my chin, making me laugh as I tried to stop the entire thing disintegrating in my hands. The linen made my movements clumsy.
I was being watched for much of the meal by a tramp with the sort of eyes that would have made me uneasy had there not been a thick pane of glass between us and several dozen people within easy reach. He had food in his thick wire-brush beard and trailed down his front. It looked like egg yolk, some of it fresh, some of it decidedly not fresh. He stole my appetite, and left me with nothing except feelings of angry pity. I tried to ignore him, couldn't, threw the rest of the burger away and went to the toilet. I looked rough as fuck. I ran my unmangled hand over my chin and the scratchiness confirmed what the mirror was suggesting - that I needed a shave quite badly. Definitely before I returned to work. I cleared a little more of the sickness out of my guts (but didn't get rid entirely of the feeling that I had swallowed something rancid that was sat in my stomach slowly decomposing and tainting everything else). The tramp had gone by the time I came out. All the people eating their meals were strangers. It was obviously past school-chucking-out time, as there were maybe two dozen kids (mostly lads) pushing and shoving and throwing fries at one another and shouting.
It was starting to get a little dim, so I decided to walk home. I realised dully that I hadn't 'phoned work and it was probably too late to do so by now. It didn't worry me especially. I'd make a convincing lie up about having been "too ill" to phone, and I had the wound on the back of my hand as proof of something, provided I could come up with a way to exploit it. I stopped briefly at the cashpoint, running my figners over the raised digits of the cashcard and pondering whether to withdraw a tenner or go the whole hog and have twenty, but not go out at the weekend. Then I walked home, composing a suitable story for work tomorrow and humming . . . something. Something familiar. My mother won't slight you . . .
My legs felt heavy as I turned down into my street, a plastic bag cold and stretched under my fingers containing some beans, some bread, some milk and a bottle of something good to drink. I'd also bought a couple of chocolate bars and shoved them willy-nilly into my jacket pockets. My search around the kitchen earlier had shown me to be in need of sundry domestic items. I don't know why, but I can't keep milk for more than a day or two, even in the fridge.
There was nobody on the step when I got home, and nobody on the stairs, and the house was quiet, as if it were asleep. I suddenly realised I hadn't spoken to anyone all day apart from the sad girl serving in the burger place. When I let myself into my "apartment" I thought for a moment I'd been burgled, and then remembered that it was I who had thrown the cushions all over the place. I put them back, sat down on them, stuck some television on, and ate the beans out of the tin with a fork while watching something forgettable.
I reached over, groped for the Snickers in my coat pocket, and something stung my finger. I jerked my hand back, terrified that it might be a spider or a wasp or something that would lay it's eggs in me. I poked the jacket with my fork, leaving three-tined trail of bean-blood on it. Nothing moved so I had a cautious look, probing the black wool for some hint of what had hurt me. Nothing. I pulled the jacket closer and had a proper look.
Wedged between the Snickers and a Mars bar was a dark jade green waxy holly leaf.
Green, dark enough to be a different colour. It's not a leaf; leaves are not so fleshy, so hard, so shiny, so sharp, so cyrved. A weapon, clutched in the careful branches of a bitter tree. Red berries, scattered on the snow around it, slowly freezing. Not a branch, but a bush. Not a thicket, but a forest. Barely contained by the high iron railings, it reaches out into the street, sometimes the shiny upside, sometimes the darker underside. Sharp, like the night air. Scratching, like a scarf. Not tame holly. Not tame nature. Lit by a street-lamp, flickering. The light is going. Whistle a carol.
Going.
Mittened hands into jacket pocket.
Going.
Walk faster.
Gone.
The holly whispers and scratches, reaching out. It wants to taste you. It hates you.
You aren't alone any more in the street, in the dark snow, near the holly, by the house and there are red berries falling, falling, falling, pattering on the snow.
I woke late, of course. My sleep had been fitful, I kept hearing something that half-woke me but had fallen silent by the time I became aware of the room (fleetingly) and started again as soon as I dropped back off to sleep. Curving up out of the dark, down into the dark, over and over like a roller coaster. I finally realised I was properly awake, sitting up from an already-forgotten dream of mechanical trees. I felt blindly for my alarm clock, held it close to my face, registered the time, dropped the alarm clock into a pile of clothes next to the bed, and curled back up. Roughness of blankets against skin. My head was pounding with the fading good-cheer of the previous night. I managed maybe ten minutes of being warm, coasting along the surf of sleep, before having to jump out of bed and throw up my the poky little shower-bathroom-toilet. I retched for a while, a thick reddish-brown, frothy soup of beer and carrots that tasted a little like Oxtail soup.
I stood up, caught my reflection in the mirror, and saw the first of the scratches. It ran from the left side of my nose up under my eye, quite close to my ear. I traced it with a thick finger, watching myself frown. It was ridged, not clean, not deep, not bloody. Just a scratch. I spotted three more on the back of my hand, not quite parralel, reflected in the mirror. A fourth on my arm, just above the wrist. There were more, all over my forearms, another few on my neck, my face. I stood shivering in the bathroom in my shorts, looking at them. On my belly and chest, on my lower legs. Maybe fifty in all, like tiny, thin, painless stripes of a whip. Straight lines, lightly scored into the skin. I knew I'd been drinking last night, but it looked as if I'd been pushed through a hedge afterwards, which I didn't recall. They weren't the marks of my nails (I checked under them for skin, just to be on the safe side). They certainly weren't the marks of anyone elses' nails. Maybe I'd had a fight with a cat? I had no obvious wounds. My wrists and fingers were free of the sort of aches that speak of a misty scuffle after the pubs shut. My thighs did not ache with running. I hadn't fought with anyone.
I hurriedly dressed, realising that I really should have telephoned work three hours ago. I decided to phone Gavin instead and see if he knew what had happened. I didn't feel up to a trip to the telephone box, and that left only my own 'phone, such as it was. I had a friend who blamed his lack of success with the ladies on the brick of a phone he carried around. But he never made any effort to buy a smaller, more classy handset. I think he knew more truth about himself than I did. Haven't spoken to him in years.
I groped down the side of the sofa for my 'phone, and felt an unexpected sharp intrusion. I jerked my hand back . . . which was the wrong thing to do, of course. I could feel the skin parting as if in slow motion, unzipping down the back of my hand. I made a noise that was half yelp and half invective. Blood was already beading all along the cut, and it felt deep. The red beads ran together quickly and efficiently, and started to patter down onto the sofa cushions. Blood isn't the worst thing that's been spilled on them, and I stared stupidly at the spatters for a moment as fluid ran down my wrist. Then the pain came as the air hit the exposed nerves. I swore properly this time (but not too loudly; not enough to attract any attention from the neighbours) and ran through into the kitchen.
I held my hand underneath the cold tap, rapidly numbing the pain, and continued to swear despite the fact there was nobody there to hear. My hands were shaking, for some reason. The area around the cut was soon insensitive. Water splashed down my shirt-sleeves, raising goos-bumps on my forearm. I tried to keep the hand under the tap and search for some plasters at the same time. Needless to say I couldn't find anything, either to clean the wound with or to wrap the hand in. The water swirling in the sink was a jolly, cheerful pink colour. There was no suggestion that the blood flow was slowing and I racked my brains to try and remember if there was an artery in the back of the hand. I still wasn't entirely awake. I leant against the cupboard over the sink, and let the cool formica soothe my troubled brow.
I stood there. Feeling my blood wash away for what felt like an hour but couldn't have been more than maybe five minutes. When the water down the back of my hand was cold, not lukewarm with blood, I ventured a look. The wound was ugly, not as deep as I'd first thought, but still slowly bleeding. I could feel the place I had numbed my hand regaining it's feeling as the blood thawed it out. I gently touched the edge of the cut, and was horrified to see the skin shift and move, a flap of it loose and all scrunched up. I bit my lip and gently teased the skin back across the cut, making a bit of a pig's ear of it in all honesty. I cradled myself, and did a proper search for medical supplies. I ended up ripping up a pillow-case, wrapping my hand around it, and debating whether to go to the doctor or up to casualty. I was starting to get scared. What had cut me?
If it was something rusted, I decided, I'd go to up to the Casualty. If it was something stupid like a pencil, I'd bray the fuck out of it and teach it a lesson it'd never forget. I turfed the sofa cushions onto the floor, and had a proper search.
I found my 'phone (no credit, no charge, no messages, no style) and chucked it on the bed. I found two-pounds fifty in assorted fluffy change. I found three mismatched socks that felt very unpleasent indeed. I found an unopened red-foil packet, two newspapers each over six months old, a copy of "The Watchtower" with a lurid picture of an exploding planet of the front of it, and a torn dustjacket. That's all. Nothing else. Nothing sharp. I ran my fingers gently over the fabric of the sofa, questing for something, but all I felt was a dusty roughness. I checked the back of my hand - blood was carefully soaking an intricate pattern into the back of the linen I'd wrapped it in, looking a little like a line of snowflakes.
I looked up and realised how quiet the house was, and how cold it was, and how alone I was, and decided to take the walk to the telephone box after all.
I didn't make it to the telephone box. I took my two-pound-fifty into town and had a burger and some fried pieces of vegetable that might have been potato. Sat in the window with a torn-up pillowcase around my hand, feeling coarse-grained bread-bun warm-meat-patty-sandwich against my fingertips, let the sounds of the place wash over and around me. The burger joint is usually warm, and while it's not actually a friendly place at all I can convince myself that it is if I squint my eyes slightly. I dripped warm ketchup onto my shirt, and managed to smear it all over my fingers, and some more traced a warm route down my chin, making me laugh as I tried to stop the entire thing disintegrating in my hands. The linen made my movements clumsy.
I was being watched for much of the meal by a tramp with the sort of eyes that would have made me uneasy had there not been a thick pane of glass between us and several dozen people within easy reach. He had food in his thick wire-brush beard and trailed down his front. It looked like egg yolk, some of it fresh, some of it decidedly not fresh. He stole my appetite, and left me with nothing except feelings of angry pity. I tried to ignore him, couldn't, threw the rest of the burger away and went to the toilet. I looked rough as fuck. I ran my unmangled hand over my chin and the scratchiness confirmed what the mirror was suggesting - that I needed a shave quite badly. Definitely before I returned to work. I cleared a little more of the sickness out of my guts (but didn't get rid entirely of the feeling that I had swallowed something rancid that was sat in my stomach slowly decomposing and tainting everything else). The tramp had gone by the time I came out. All the people eating their meals were strangers. It was obviously past school-chucking-out time, as there were maybe two dozen kids (mostly lads) pushing and shoving and throwing fries at one another and shouting.
It was starting to get a little dim, so I decided to walk home. I realised dully that I hadn't 'phoned work and it was probably too late to do so by now. It didn't worry me especially. I'd make a convincing lie up about having been "too ill" to phone, and I had the wound on the back of my hand as proof of something, provided I could come up with a way to exploit it. I stopped briefly at the cashpoint, running my figners over the raised digits of the cashcard and pondering whether to withdraw a tenner or go the whole hog and have twenty, but not go out at the weekend. Then I walked home, composing a suitable story for work tomorrow and humming . . . something. Something familiar. My mother won't slight you . . .
My legs felt heavy as I turned down into my street, a plastic bag cold and stretched under my fingers containing some beans, some bread, some milk and a bottle of something good to drink. I'd also bought a couple of chocolate bars and shoved them willy-nilly into my jacket pockets. My search around the kitchen earlier had shown me to be in need of sundry domestic items. I don't know why, but I can't keep milk for more than a day or two, even in the fridge.
There was nobody on the step when I got home, and nobody on the stairs, and the house was quiet, as if it were asleep. I suddenly realised I hadn't spoken to anyone all day apart from the sad girl serving in the burger place. When I let myself into my "apartment" I thought for a moment I'd been burgled, and then remembered that it was I who had thrown the cushions all over the place. I put them back, sat down on them, stuck some television on, and ate the beans out of the tin with a fork while watching something forgettable.
I reached over, groped for the Snickers in my coat pocket, and something stung my finger. I jerked my hand back, terrified that it might be a spider or a wasp or something that would lay it's eggs in me. I poked the jacket with my fork, leaving three-tined trail of bean-blood on it. Nothing moved so I had a cautious look, probing the black wool for some hint of what had hurt me. Nothing. I pulled the jacket closer and had a proper look.
Wedged between the Snickers and a Mars bar was a dark jade green waxy holly leaf.
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