“The point is… you’re alive when they start to eat you…”
“You what, mate?”
“Nothing.”
You’re not her husband. How old are you?
Doesn’t matter. I’m her husband.
She must be forty by now.
Well out of it. She’s dead.
You killed her, Grace. You made her into this fucking beast.
And you made me into the same kind.
Just fucking shut up.
I paid the cab with some notes and some change that I managed to scrape out of my jacket. He saw the gun, I’m sure. I didn’t care. He dropped me three streets away from my flat. I limped the rest of the way. Rain started to fall. It felt cold and good against my shaved head. Cleansing.
I got into the flat, bumped into Daryl.
Daryclass="underline" “You did it?”
Me: “Aye.”
Daryclass="underline" “You’re not trying to draw a psycho pension. You really are crazy.”
I nodded and limped through to the living room. Daryl said he was going to bed. I didn’t answer him.
Just went over to the video and put on a movie. One of Liz Fairbride’s early works. My wife. That blonde angel, moaning just for me. And I wasn’t old enough to be her husband, but maybe back then I would’ve been. I put the gun on the floor, sat cross-legged. Something white against the black blood.
Kitty’s tooth.
I pulled out the canine and turned it in my fingers as my wife breathed. The slap of flesh against flesh, getting quicker now.
Then I flicked the tooth to one side, unzipped my combat trousers and wept silently as both me and my wife came together.
That was love. That was beauty even after the semen dried.
WHERE THERE’S A WILL… by Amy Myers
I’m a wicked old man, so all my dearly beloved relations fondly tell me. They don’t know the half of it. They’ve got a shock coming their way when I’m finally hauled kicking and screaming into the afterworld. Not yet awhile. I’m a hundred years old today, and in full possession of all my faculties. Silas Carter at your service. Just like that creepy old bore Humphrey Bone claims he’s at mine. Who needs lawyers? Death and di-vorce is all they’re good at. Just as well-he’s got a shock heading his way, too.
Look at that marquee out there. No need for it at all. A little bit of rain never hurt anyone. Anyway, it’s always sunny on my birthday; that’s what darling niece Mary coos at me, bending over me with all her cleavage showing-as though there were anything to look at. Thank the Lord I never had kids of my own. I’m at liberty to see my relations as clear as God made them, and an ugly sight they make. She with her holier-than-thou simper, Don with his knobbly knees, shorts, and binoculars, always twittering on about birds (the feathered kind, alas), and “young” Nigel, Mr. Artsy-Craftsy himself, and more of the craft than art if you ask me. A long-haired skinny white wiggling grub, he is. Never see any of them except when they’re crawling here on pilgrimage to my bank account.
Now they’ve had the nerve to stay in my house, without so much as a by-your-leave to me. “We’ve fixed it all with William,” Mary beams, as though they expect me to leap up in my wheelchair and cry out, “Oh, whoopee!” because my servants and family have saved me the trouble of organising my own birthday. Leap? That I should be so lucky. It’s no fun being old, being wheeled everywhere. You have to work hard to make your own fun when you’re a hundred years old.
So, believe me, I have.
“It’s high time you updated your will,” Mr. Humphrey Bore Bone snuffled to me some weeks ago.
“You’re right, Humphrey,” sighed I, pretending to be all tired and weary, though only ninety-nine at the time.
I’m not only wicked, you see. I’m also very rich. Perhaps that’s the reason for it. Never had a wife, well, not for the last seventy years, so I can please myself what I do with my money. Oh, the pleasure of freedom. I’ve only mentioned these particular relations, but I’ve a vast family out there. All the Christmas cards check in dutifully once a year, but now they’re all screaming down on me like vultures licking their lips in person at the thought of a slice of my golden pie when I hop it.
“How about charities?” Humphrey said dolefully to encourage me on my will updating.
“How about them?” I said rudely.
“Have you no favourite causes?”
“Only one. Mine,” I snapped. Then I relented. Humpity-Humph is a boring old stick but he means well. Perhaps. “Tell you what, Humphrey, you find me a charity that looks after blind atheist stamp collectors with moles on their cheeks or aged aunts who run homes for stray elephants and I’ll support them.”
He couldn’t, of course, so when he sent his bill in I didn’t pay him-don’t believe in encouraging failure. And, I informed him, I’d be writing my own will, and sending it to him in due course.
Humphrey’s eyes had glinted, the first sign of life I’d seen for a long time. He told me that one day my jokes would take me too far. Maybe he’s right. Jolly good. Nothing like living dangerously when you’re a hundred-in your mind, at least. Fat chance I’ve got of fighting off sharks or climbing Everest from this chair.
The vultures have landed. I can see them all outside in the garden, gathering for the big feast at my expense. Why should I have to pay for my own birthday party? You’d think if they all loved me so much they’d be queuing up to treat me. No way. I reckon that everyone in that mob below flatters himself he’s entitled to walk in and help himself to my money the minute I’m dead. Well, I’ve scotched that little plan. I’ve outlived my brothers and sisters-told them all I would, and I did-so it’s the next generation and the one after that I have to watch. Mary’s in the former category, Nigel and Don in the latter. They march together in the vanguard of the “Why don’t you leave it all to me?” brigade. The Three Gargoyles, I call them: always goggling at me with their ugly faces and nothing but water running in their veins.
They’d no sooner arrived yesterday than they bounded up to me to ask if I’d like a trip to my old home next month. Bah, humbug. I grew up in a two-up two-down terrace house in Huddersfield. No, I’ll stay here in my Surrey mansion, thanks very much, where Woeful William answers my every whim. Most of these are to press Venus’s boobs. I’ve got a bar behind the library books; one touch on the carved lady’s tender parts on the panelling underneath and out floats nectar-or whisky, if you prefer its real name. And that’s one thing the Three Gargoyles don’t know about. Let ‘em stick to water. They’re welcome to it. If any showed up in my veins they’d burst with shock.
Here come the Gargoyles now. I can see them marching purposefully from the marquee towards the house, and-oh, goodie-Humphrey Bone the Bore is with them. Only William to collect on the way and we’re off. Mary’s at the front, of course, mutton dressed as lamb, or as I like to think of it, soggy shepherd’s pie with a white topping. Don’s on one side-trousers today, I see! Even a sporty blazer. I am honoured. I can do without the sight of his knees on my birthday. And I can glimpse darling Nigel’s supercilious nose poking out on Mary’s other side, as he struts along in his artsy pale cream suit. No artist starving in a garret, he. Nothing but the best for him-especially if it comes courtesy of my bank account. Any one of them would see me dead tomorrow if it wasn’t for the fact they can’t be certain who’s in my will because I might change it. If only I could see their faces when they find out…
Ah well, time for my big appearance. I’ve been smothered with cards and presents today. Even the Queen sent a card via a minion. She’s the only unselfish one amongst them, and she’s not getting a slice of anything. Her blinking government will get their paws on anything coming her way in the way of tax. Perhaps I’ll send her a lump of stale birthday cake in compensation.