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

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СКАЧАТЬ that morning – but under his blows, I grew more exuberant, like a whole world I had never participated in before was being revealed to me. My old ultramarine pain was gone – overruled for now by joyful shallower agony. I had known that my world was not the right one – I had known that I was not living as everyone else was living – but here, finally, I was being allowed to exist where they existed – here, finally, I was experiencing a correctness in being alive, a comfort in simply being, that felt not like a state or stasis but a curve. I finally understood it, and stood in it, and accepted it and was accepted by it – the land was no longer alien to me; my body was no longer merely half here – I was here, wholly; I was present, I was finally present! Perhaps this was what is called Stendhal syndrome – overwhelmed to nausea by aesthetic pleasure...

      ‘Stay on his legs! Who fucking kicks like that?’

      ‘There’s only two hundred pound here,’ the taller boy shouted, turning out my coat pockets. ‘Get his shoes.’

      Hands tore at my boots, and then slowed to unlace them – as hands tore at my waist, reaching beneath me to unbutton the fly. I flailed under the weight of two bodies. My socks were pulled off – and the money within them found. Then the mass on my thighs lifted – I kicked faster, but hands were already at my waist, dragging down my jeans and boxer-briefs until I was naked – and the money within them found also.

      ‘Let me kill him.’

      ‘Pick that up – count it!’

      ‘Let me fucking kill him!’

      ‘You’re not allowed to.’

      What? I thought. Who didn’t allow him? Was I the performer now – in someone else’s play?

      The second weight stood, and the foot left my head. They twisted me onto my back, serrating my flesh against the cement. My gaze was pure exhilaration; they were shaking in terror.

      ‘Shit!’

      ‘He’s got a boner!’

      They recoiled – I clutched for the oldest boy’s testicles and squeezed one with my thumb into my palm until it flattened – and as he screamed in an agony that must have felt like levitation, I rolled sideways into the canal.

      The water vibrated with joy – and I felt keener, faster, staring at them, safely, from a few meters away.

      ‘Have you got it?’

      ‘I’ve got it.’

      ‘Let’s go.’

      The taller boy threw my clothes and shoes into the water. The shorter one vomited, leaning on the third as he tried to stand. I treaded water, watching as they hobbled towards the bridge, groping at each other like drunken lovers.

      A bicycle light skimmed through the darkness towards them – too late to witness our communion. Its strobes illuminated the boys’ retreat. They gave way.

      But I could not long remain in this cold – my clarity was yielding to heaviness. The water coiled around my legs like a moray eel, deepening towards a mile-high dam it wished to suck me into. In the dark I could see only my coat, a few strokes away – so I swam over, and found by it my jeans, but could not see anything else.

      Kicking with one leg, paddling with one arm, I strove for the opposite bank, my lungs clenched as though stuffed with sackcloth. The bank was further than it ought to have been; possibly a current I couldn’t feel was resisting me – but my will was stronger than my muscles, and I achieved the shore. I climbed onto the bank in a crawl, wheezing, and sat to drag on my jeans and coat. But I couldn’t let myself pause here – so I crawled to the steps towards street level, spitting blood over my hands, my vision a whirlpool.

      At the pavement, I tried to stand under a streetlight, but instead fell into a flowerbed. Its briars revived me – enough to claw forwards, with fists of soil, across and out onto the road. Cars cruised by with interior musics. I collapsed under the folds of my coat, looking up at clouds purpled by London’s light pollution.

      As my body began to understand itself again, its adrenaline dwindled, but was replaced by a more exquisite thrill – of realisation.

      The robbers could have guessed to search my socks and boxers – but Dawn’s antic mode this evening suggested she had betrayed me. Perhaps they had followed me from her doorstep. And so my suspicions about my whipping weren’t just paranoia – Dawn was arranging my injuries. Our game was real – I loved her more, for this.

      And now it was my turn to play.

      A car was approaching along the lane I lay in. And as I blacked out, I ejaculated.

ACT 2

       The call to adventure

1.

      I woke in a man’s arms.

      ‘No,’ I tried to say, but my teeth turned to brass and unscrewed me back into ultramarine.

      I woke as a car door closed on my face. I couldn’t differentiate between words and textures. But I knew that a man was in the driver’s seat beside me.

      ‘Not to hospital,’ I said.

      ‘You have to.’

      ‘No… to 24 Orgrave Road, SE5… something. SE5.’

      ‘Is someone there?’

      ‘My… girlfriend,’ I managed, and blacked out again.

      I woke in a man’s arms. He was holding me against a column of names.

      ‘Ravel,’ I told him.

      The door buzzed open, he dragged me into the lift. As it rose, charcoal covered my eyes.

      I woke in a woman’s arms.

      ‘What happened to him?’ she asked.

      They carried me onto a sofa.

      ‘How much was the journey? Take it!’ she said.

      His protestations dissolved into glue.

      I woke as a woman pulled off my jeans. My wet coat was already gone.

      ‘Eva!’ I said.

      ‘What happened to you?’

      ‘I’m… cold.’

      ‘Not for much longer. Shit!’

      She drew the jeans off over my feet and tucked me into a blanket.

      ‘You need to go to hospital.’

      ‘I need whisky.’

      ‘You need that treated.’

      ‘Then СКАЧАТЬ