Kattar moved to backstage, around the chipboard blank scenery, wires hanging disconnected, copper and rubber tubes, nails in the walls. A power box was fixed to the wall near some steps leading into a dark way back farther. He opened the box, full of switches with stickers and worn away diagrams for instruction. One switch glowed green so he flicked it. Music filled the room, muffled from out front in the theatre. Closer, the sound of whirring machinery sprung into life, grating and squelchy.
Rumbling travelled from the stage on the other side of the scenery. He hesitantly moved to retrace his footsteps, peeping around the splintered wood to spy the open stage floor. There, in the middle of the stage, the flooring opening up, a square trapdoor controlled by robotic pulleys. From below a bulk rose, difficult to see, to make out at first, rounded and bent. It pushed from beneath, a portion of it caught under the sides of the trapdoor. The trapdoor gave and a foot sprung up, dirty and bruised. The body ascended, twisted, inverted, guided by rope, flopping at the knees, cracked skew-whiff at the ribcage. Discordant grimy guitars rattled in minor chords, reverb in a whirlwind around the theatre. Her thighs ready to split, like an unpicked sausage. Someone’s daughter. Someone’s daughter. If this is Anna then that’s too bad. The woman’s dress had fallen inside out and over her face, her hands peeking out from under the hanging material with wrists bound, a tattered bra rotted into her skin, the rest of her naked and bare. Someone had stripped her, hoisted her up, hidden faceless. Kattar couldn’t decide how to react. The sight of her was a world. The dress was stained, with dirt, excrement, patches of fluids. He found a clear section of hem and lifted it, to confirm her deadness. The shadow underneath showed a face beaten and shocked, lacerated cheeks pointing to a forehead with letters carved, the right way up for him, upside down for the woman. ‘Queen of Worms,’ it said in bloody cuts, as worms slimed through her hair and balled squirming inside the hole of her open mouth. Her eyes were shut.
Kattar dropped the hem of the dress, which fluttered back to cover the woman and her worms. This felt forensic. His neck hairs prickled like he was under observation, a study onstage. Now who was making him an actor? Shitty move, thinks it’s clever. But the body is real enough. The music tore his nerves, wearing him down, twangs turning into fuzzbox mush, distorted whines percussive and deconstructing feedback until his ears pounded hot. Was it louder, or he more sensitive? There was something in the music he couldn’t background anymore. Squinty, he glanced at the pit, but all was vacuum.
Blue flames emerged from her fingertips, softly curling them. The blue grew, flowed ethereally across her hands, took hold on the binding of her wrists, turning to warm orange flickering faster. The binds burned away and her arms swung free, her hands alight flung sideways, rocking to and fro. The flames travelled along her arms and ignited the dress, which burned with white intensity up her frame. At this the body screamed and gurgled, expelling worms in a cascading arc, contorting against the flames. Violent as the yells were they carried an unnatural music, frequencies spectral. Kattar stood transfixed with astounded curiosity because she sounded long dead. The flash of fire enveloped her, and a wriggling cocoon of light undulated spitting cinders and rolling sparks. Kattar held out his hand, reaching cautiously, to find no heat to the flame. The sparks at his feet travelled over the dark floor to catch every wiggling worm, and crisp them up on collision leaving charred pellets in their place. Mid flow the smouldering brickettes briefly formed the words ‘FIND ESPE’ in fierce orange before continuing to scatter and then cool to coal dust.
The light on the woman diminished and she hung blackened, swinging gently, tannery shine like midnight.
ses
Backstage the music stopped. Tassels bumped him as he fled, clomping the boards to the wings, spider silks on the musty breezes, catching on white candle flame and fizzing to collapse. Sawdust scrunched underfoot, newly hacked wood supports and beams surrounding him, obstacle, false perspective ways, sending out giant blooming splinters.
Roaches, polished chestnut segmented, burrowed furtively in and out of the walls. Kattar rushed like a hunchback, shoving a path through, that felt like it was closing, both around him and wherever the EXIT was. Poles woke up from the floor, disinterred and prehistoric, cracked cartilage scaffolding. He scooted between them, dodging, feeling his way under the dingy light, growing gloomier, tucking his poorly palm to himself tighter, the air teaming with the shriek of felled planks.
He arrived at the very back of the backstage, where the sawn timber made a step down to a dark opening. Kattar limped through, a meshy material parting like a mosquito veil.
Insect zappers lined the walls of a hallway, acting in the place of lamps, their electric blue luminance ruffled by the singing flies bashing themselves in rapture. He walked forwards, a little unsteady, a fly whizz ear flyby nearly tripping him up. They were near his mouth.
He turned a corner and a floor opened up. This one windowless, plastered white wall, decorated with friezes and moulded pillars. A banqueting table filled the length of the floor, every seat taken by animated people, intent in their voices, debate in the gesticulations, listening tilts, acquiescing nods, remonstrating fingers and declarative looks, black tie, power evening wear, unbuttoned after the meal had been taken away, rowdy politeness, the etiquette of game theory, body language and bantering for position. Deep scars striped most faces, other faces with slashed red gashes across them, blood running in trickles onto haute couture satin lace and white shirts underneath suits understated for status. A woman with angelic curls, wrapped in conversation, spoke quickly, her jaw partially excised from one side and flopping about wildly, blood spray garnishing the scarred and drawn face of her dinner companion. The man next along was without his scalp, a scarlet tonsure dribbling crimson streamlets over his features. As the man lifted a lustrous goblet he revealed a hand with half its flesh removed, and what remained appearing gangrenous and veiny.
A lady farther along beckoned to Kattar, waving a sparkling purse his way. No one else had seemed to have noticed his presence. Kattar walked along the chattering table, throat dry, head pounding, legs heavy. He didn’t want to talk to her. He didn’t know what to do.
Up closer she was like the rest, her tanned skin draping from a malnourished frame, some layers of skin coming away in fragile sheets, splitting like wet tissue. The man sitting to her left leant forwards and his brain fell out onto the white tablecloth, gentle splash-back raining over the guests opposite. The talk, all the words, bandied to fill the floor, one moment a recognisable phrasing revealed in the cacophony, the next moment it disappearing to become part of the symphonic din. Several of the dinner guests shoved long pins into their voice boxes, rooting about as if tuning their speech.
The woman coughed, jowls shuddering. “Could you do me a favour, dear boy?” she said. Her voice was hoarse and haughty, her swamp green eyes surrounded by scleras the yellow of a public toilet porcelain urinal. She sneezed and pink mush slid down her philtrum, which she then licked away with a quick and pointy tongue. “I’m quite stuck here, you see. Can’t leave until the big guy shows, and lord knows when he’ll grace us with his presence.” She used her purse and motioned to the chair at the far head of the table, difficult to make out under the troubling candelabra light but definitely empty. “I’ve got a gift for him. Had to sacrifice many cairn bairns to get my claws on it. You look like you’ve got fresh legs. All you need to do is take it to the top of the table for me. I’m worried that if I stood up now I’d come something of a cropper, having had more than my share of nectar. I’m a bit sloshed, I’m afraid.” She giggled, and coquettishly gazed downwards to her lap. Where her legs tucked underneath and met the tablecloth her dress draped over her wasted thighs, nothing but bone. She opened her purse and rummaged clumsily inside, plunging her hand in to an extent which was impossible. Kattar moved, hoping to escape her while her attention was solely on her purse. “Ah ha!” she said, following with a triumphant fleeting wretch. She plucked a pinprick of light from the purse. It shone like a glowing dandelion seed, the tip of a magic wand, candlelight without gravity. “Hold out your hands, like a cup,” she said, and placed the softly radiant ball onto his met palms. He felt as if he held the sun and one clap could destroy all. The tiny spark danced in a low bounce as it settled in his hands. Then it moved by its own will and drew itself across his wound, its warmth permeating the welts and scratches. The ripeness of hurt and decay withered at its touch until his palm sat relieved and unblemished.