Carnivore: The most controversial debut literary thriller of 2017. Jonathan Lyon

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СКАЧАТЬ camp – and the river that army had bivouacked beside was rising. The walls that defended it were invisible now – but they were still here – and they couldn’t hold back the water forever. All camps are temporary – this one would be washed away too.

      Two figures approached from beneath the bridge. One was taller than me, but both, in the gloom, looked younger, perhaps sixteen years old. The taller wore a dark tracksuit, dark trainers, and a white snapback hat; his shorter partner had more flair, with a cyan sweatshirt over navy overalls speckled with paint, and cobalt-blue shoes. His cropped hair was shaven in whorls.

      ‘Mate can you lend us some money?’ the shorter one asked.

      I ignored them, clenching the key, and tried to walk past. The taller stepped into my way. I tiredly lifted my eyes to his.

      ‘Got any money to lend us?’ he asked.

      I stared without saying anything. A vein in my leg twitched, and my blood began to flush with anticipation.

      The taller one stepped closer and shoved me at my hip. I moved in obedience to his fist, and inhaled, untensing myself, as if about speak – but said nothing. The other shoved my shoulder.

      ‘You speak English?’ he asked. ‘We need to borrow a bit of money. I need to buy a speedboat.’ He laughed.

      I sighed, readying my best impersonation of an action hero, and took two steps backwards.

      ‘Which of you wants your leg broken first?’ I asked.

      Their expressions paused, blank while processing a reaction to this bluff – and then, just as they were both deciding on sniggers, I twisted round to kick sideways at the taller one’s outer leg, my shoe flat in a right angle as its heel hit his knee socket. It dislocated but didn’t snap – he shrieked, hobbling back, rolling his upper body forwards – so I punched into his nose, upwards, and it easily broke. His blood dribbled onto my knuckles like honey and, as I skipped backwards, for a moment I wanted to lick it.

      The shorter boy stared in shock. The wall beside us prevented most types of attack, so I span and ducked to kick up in a back-hook at his face – hitting his chin, but not hard enough. The jaw clattered but didn’t snap. I spun to face him again, in a low stance, my fists up. He swiped vaguely at me with his left hand – I blocked it, but saw too late it had been a feint, and with his stronger fist he struck my eye. The side of its socket splintered into steel light – and he jabbed again at my stomach. I was tensed enough not to be winded, but stumbled to the water’s edge. He knew how to box, and pushed his advantage, smacking me in the temple and then the neck – I choked, tasting thickening mango – and tried to weave out of his way on my back foot.

      I let him punch my eye again. Verdigris-green shattered into my throat – but I spat it back out into his mouth, sweeping at his front foot, and ducked under his arm to tug him backwards over his other leg. As he fell, I span round to strike my elbow into his cheek. Something cracked – but it might have been me. My nerves were livid. The space around me was splitting, as though allowing a sharper air to replace it. I was more vivid now and, somehow, now – finally now – in my body properly. I gripped onto his arm and stamped on it where it met his shoulder until it broke. He screamed as I stamped. I imagined that I was crunching burnt pinecones – I could smell the smoke of a bonfire of fir and chestnuts – and then I kicked him in the jaw until it, too, broke.

      I felt like I had just been born. The shivers of the wind around me harmonised with the waves of wind in my spine. I breathed further than I could formerly breathe. My eyes could see backwards and upwards – the present was balling out into a vibrating sphere. I reached to stroke the boy’s head: its shaved hair resembled velvet – the fringe of a dress I wanted to kiss, or the fur of a foxglove.

      I wished to further my assault on his partner, but a punch to the side of my chest winded me – I staggered over his body and looked back. There was third boy, my age, my height, hooded, holding a knife tipped with my blood. My coat had stopped his stab penetrating far. I axe-kicked at his hand to knock it open – he dropped the knife, but the boy on the ground grabbed my heel to trip me. I stamped on him, and the third man lunged to grip me by the throat. I tasted nutmeg, a cloud in my windpipe – and kneed him in the groin, but he didn’t release me – so I stamped again on the other boy to prevent him pulling me down. The night brightened as I lost air – and I embraced my strangler, inhaling his sweatshirt’s tranquil reek of weed, bending his choking arm inwards, surprising him off balance. In my advantage, I twisted into the skin of his neck – in the shadow, it clotted like cream around a pair of freckles the width of my two front teeth – and I bit him there so sharply that I tore off every layer of skin – but not enough to make him bleed. His grip relaxed – I kneed him again in the crotch and spun round to find the knife.

      But it was not on the ground; perhaps it had fallen into the canal. This quick search was a misjudgement – the two boys on the ground jerked to grab a foot each, nearly tripping me onto my back. As I squatted, I jabbed with three fingers joined in a screwing motion into his eye – it softened, though didn’t burst into the jelly I wanted; he dug his head into the tarmac to get away – and before I could complete his blinding, the third boy tackled me.

      I writhed, excited by the firmness of his biceps, and bit at his wrist, my jaw so wide it nearly detached to reach his flesh with my cuspid teeth – chewing and grinding until I tasted gristle and his arm-hair on my tongue. Yelling, he punched at my head with his free hand – and with each hit, I became younger, larger, more precise; and my teeth kept to his wrist, hopeful of bone; with each hysterical hit, I was resurrected – until finally he knocked my jaw loose, but not without its prize of meat. With my left foot, I kicked against the ground to slide out from under him – and he screamed at his ripped wrist, the tendons exposed, his hand useless, a severed vein gushing onto its unresponsive index finger, pointed in some broken reflex as though in accusation.

      I squirmed faster, but still he pinioned my thighs – until I dragged my left arm loose and reached to rip at his ear. My grip slipped in his sweat, but I dug my nail back into its helix and tore down again – his head jerked to follow it; and I twisted it backwards, desperate to part the skin from his skull – but skin is hard to rip.

      I shoved him further sideways to roll out from underneath him – but as I tried to leap away, one of the other boys snatched at my coat. I stretched back my shoulders to lose it over my arms – and he fell as I shed it, and shrunk – now only in my polo-neck. But before I was fully upright, the shorter boy with the splintered chin slapped my foot – and my face smacked into the concrete. I bit my tongue, tasting its own blood – the third now on my palate – and this mixture had the tartness of pomegranate seeds.

      The third attacker dived onto me, gripping me in a headlock – his armpit’s deodorant leaking into his sweat, the smell of a ripening peach, its case breaking to the yellow fruit beneath, but soured by detergent – I sniffed longer, until at the back of the aroma I found hyacinth. He heaved his body onto mine, his knee in the small of my back, shouting ‘Cunt! Cunt! Cunt!’

      Then, my head was concussed into the stone – and I saw the cobalt shoe of the shorter boy at my face. As he stamped me with one foot, and the asphalt assumed the flavour of salt in my throat – I watched his own blood webbing across the tongue of his other trainer. I wanted to skewer this foot to the ground with a knife to stare at it for longer in various lights – but the knife was gone, and I couldn’t worm my head away.

      As his partner beat me, my vision seemed to swell – the geometry of the canal and the towpath was altered, distending, the rules of perspective suddenly re-complicated, as my gravity increased, competing with the city’s. Sounds fawned to my ear – the boys’ screams and pants, but also from further, I fancied, I could hear exhausts and bar chatter СКАЧАТЬ