"I replaced the jug when she was asleep. She slept deeply: I could have done a jig in there and it wouldn't have woken her. Lost to the world."
He grinned. Mad, thought Steve, the man's mad.
"God, it stank in there. You know how women smell sometimes: It's not sweat, It's something else. Heavy odour: meaty. Bloody. She came on towards the end of her time. Hadn't planned it that way."
Fifteen: she touches the meat.
"This is where the cracks begin to show," said Quaid, with quiet triumph in his voice. "This is where the dread begins."
Steve studied the photograph closely. The grain of the print blurred the detail, but the cool mama was in pain, that was for sure. Her face was knotted up, half in desire, half in repulsion, as she touched the food.
Sixteen: she was at the door again, throwing herself at it, every part of her body flailing. Her mouth a black blur of angst, screaming at the blank door.
"She always ended up haranguing me, whenever she'd had a confrontation with the meat."
"How long is this?"
"Coming up for three days. You're looking at a hungry woman."
It wasn't difficult to see that. The next photo she stood still in the middle of the room, averting her eyes from the temptation of the food, her entire body tensed with the dilemma.
"You're starving her."
"She can go ten days without eating quite easily. Fasts are common in any civilized country, Steve. Sixty per cent of the British population is clinically obese at any one time. She was too fat anyhow."
Eighteen: she sits, the fat girl, in her corner of the room, weeping.
"About now she began to hallucinate. Just little mental ticks. She thought she felt something in her hair, or on the back of her hand. I'd see her staring into mid-air sometimes watching nothing."
Nineteen: she washes herself. She is stripped to the waist, her breasts are heavy, her face is drained of expression. The meat is a darker tone than in the previous photographs.
"She washed herself regularly. Never let twelve hours go by without washing from head to toe."
"The meat looks..."
"Ripe?"
"Dark."
"It's quite warm in her little room; and there's a few flies in there with her. They've found the meat: laid their eggs. Yes, It's ripening up quite nicely."
"Is that part of the plan?"
"Sure. If the meat revolted when it was fresh, what about her disgust at rotted meat? That's the crux of her dilemma, isn't it? The longer she waits to eat, the more disgusted she becomes with what she's been given to feed on. She's trapped with her own horror of meat on the one hand, and her dread of dying on the other. Which is going to give first?"
Steve was no less trapped now.
On the one hand this joke had already gone too far, and Quaid's experiment had become an exercise in sadism.
On the other hand he wanted to know how far this story ended. There was an undeniable fascination in watching the woman suffer.
The next seven photographs — twenty, twenty-one, two, three, four, five and six pictured the same circular routine. Sleeping, washing, pissing, meat-watching. Sleeping, washing, pissing —Then twenty-seven.
"See?"
She picks up the meat.
Yes, she picks it up, her face full of horror. The haunch of the beef looks well-ripened now, speckled with flies' eggs. Gross.
"She bites it."
The next photograph, and her face is buried in the meat.
Steve seemed to taste the rotten flesh in the back of his throat. His mind found a stench to imagine, and created a gravy of putrescence to run over his tongue. How could she do it?
Twenty-nine: she is vomiting in the bucket in the corner of the room.
Thirty: she is sitting looking at the table. It is empty. The water-jug has been thrown against the wall. The plate has been smashed. The beef lies on the floor in a slime of degeneration.
Thirty-one: she sleeps. Her head is lost in a tangle of arms.
Thirty-two: she is standing up. She is looking at the meat again, defying it. The hunger she feels is plain on her face. So is the disgust.
Thirty-three. She sleeps.
"How long now?" asked Steve.
"Five days. No, six."
Six days.
Thirty-four. She is a blurred figure, apparently flinging herself against a wall. Perhaps beating her head against it, Steve couldn't be sure. He was past asking. Part of him didn't want to know.
Thirty-five: she is again sleeping, this time beneath the table. The sleeping bag has been torn to pieces, shredded cloth and pieces of stuffing littering the room.
Thirty-six: she speaks to the door, through the door, knowing she will get no answer.
Thirty-seven: she eats the rancid meat.
Calmly she sits under the table, like a primitive in her cave, and pulls at the meat with her incisors. Her face is again expressionless; all her energy is bent to the purpose of the moment. To eat. To eat ‘til the hunger disappears, ‘til the agony in her belly, and the sickness in her head disappear.
Steve stared at the photograph.
"It startled me," said Quaid, "how suddenly she gave in. One moment she seemed to have as much resistance as ever. The monologue at the door was the same mixture of threats and apologies as she'd delivered day in, day out. Then she broke. Just like that. Squatted under the table and ate the beef down to the bone, as though it were a choice cut."
Thirty-eight: she sleeps. The door is open. Light pours in.
Thirty-nine: the room is empty.
"Where did she go?"
"She wandered downstairs. She came into the kitchen, drank several glasses of water, and sat in a chair for three or four hours without saying a word."
"Did you speak to her?"
"Eventually. When she started to come out of her fugue state. The experiment was over. I didn't want to hurt her."
"What did she say?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing at all. For a long time I don't believe she was even aware of my presence in the room. Then I cooked some potatoes, which she ate."
"She didn't try and call the police?"
"No."
"No violence?"
"No. She knew what I'd done, and why I'd done it. It wasn't pre-planned, but we'd talked about such experiments, in abstract conversations. She hadn't come to any harm, you see. She'd lost a bit of weight perhaps, but that was about all."
"Where is she now?"
"She left the day after. I don't know where she went."
"And what did it all prove?"
"Nothing at all, perhaps. But it made an interesting start to my investigations."
"Start? This was only a start?"
There was plain disgust for Quaid in Steve's voice.
"Stephen —"
"You could have killed her!"
"No."
"She could have lost her mind. Unbalanced her permanently."
"Possibly. But unlikely. She was a strong-willed woman."
"But you broke her."
"Yes. It was a journey she was ready to take. We'd talked of going to face her fear. So here was I, arranging for Cheryl to do just that. Nothing much really."
"You forced her to do it. She wouldn't have gone otherwise."
"True. It was an education for her."
"So now you're a teacher?"
Steve wished he'd been able to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. But it was there. Sarcasm; anger; and a little fear.
"Yes, I'm a teacher," Quaid replied, looking at Steve obliquely, his eyes not focused. "I'm teaching people dread."
Steve stared at the floor. "Are you satisfied with what you've taught?"
"And learned, Steve. I've learned too. It's a very exciting prospect: a world of fears to investigate. Especially with intelligent subjects. Even in the face of rationalization —"
Steve stood up. "I don't want to hear any more."
"Oh? OK."
"I've got classes early tomorrow."