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

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СКАЧАТЬ I probably have antiseptic, but you need more than that. Shit, you’re bleeding.’

      ‘Surface wounds. Decorative.’

      ‘Shit,’ she said, and left.

      Eva returned with a tray of three tall glasses – one gold, one white, one green.

      ‘Drink all of these. You can’t talk to me till you’ve drunk all of them.’

      I obeyed, shifting onto my un-stabbed side to drink first the milk, and then the whisky, and then the juice.

      ‘What was in that?’ I asked, tipping the last glass’s leftover algae along its side.

      ‘Protein shake with spinach.’

      ‘I’ve never felt so virtuous.’ I sat up a little.

      ‘Get back down.’ She took away the tray and lifted up the blanket to apply antiseptic to my cuts. ‘Turn over.’

      I did so and she yelped. ‘Shit, were you whipped? You’ve been stabbed. What the fuck?’

      ‘I went swimming,’ I said, warming to the attention of her hands.

      ‘The taxi guy said you’d been in a canal?’

      ‘I went swimming,’ I said again.

      ‘Who did this?’

      ‘A blue-ringed octopus.’

      She sighed in irritation. ‘So you were attacked and thrown into a canal. Why? And why did you come to me?’

      ‘You were the first person who came to mind. I remembered your address from last night. Were you not expecting me?’

      ‘I’m supposed to hate you. Did you forget that when you drowned?’

      ‘Do you hate me?’

      ‘I don’t know. Maybe not. This afternoon I was… angry.’

      ‘I remember.’

      ‘Your eye is so fucked up.’ She squeezed more ointment onto her fingers.

      ‘Is that Savlon?’ I smiled.

      ‘What? Yeah. Why’s that funny?’

      ‘Nothing. It’s a good parallel.’

      ‘With what?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      She sighed. ‘I was crying all afternoon.’

      ‘Same.’

      ‘I don’t think you’ve cried for centuries.’

      ‘My body cries in other ways.’

      ‘I can see that. But why would you come to me?’

      ‘I like you.’

      Her hand twitched to her face, unsure of its response. In the shadows behind her I saw the outline of the taxi that had taken me here – and this shadow changed into a coach from a fairy tale – and then into a pumpkin – and then into a hearse – and I imagined myself inside the hearse, driving across a moor in the middle of England at night – and the moon was looming over me like a mother offering her breast to a child – and we sank.

      ‘I threw out Francis’ clothes,’ she said eventually. ‘I hate him. He lied to me. But I don’t know what to think about you. You didn’t actually lie to me. Or even if you did… yesterday, you were…’

      ‘I like you,’ I said again. ‘I came back with you yesterday because I wanted to come back with you. Why does everything have to have an agenda?’

      I thought of how slowly yesterday she’d pulled off my trousers and kissed the inside of my thighs – and of how, later, a helicopter had passed overhead and she’d woken and told me she was burying herself with her own hands and I’d said I was cutting open her stomach and pulling out a snail-coloured snake and taking it into my mouth – and then we’d fallen back asleep.

      ‘You like being confusing, don’t you?’

      ‘Am I confusing you?’ I asked, lifting my head till my lips were at hers. ‘I wanted to see you.’

      She did not move. I relaxed back, smiling, as her instincts wrestled with each other. With her long neck and loose black hair and long loose white dress, she looked like a goddess painted on the walls of a pyramid.

      ‘Your pockets are empty,’ she said.

      ‘No phone, no money, no shoes, no keys,’ I gestured at my naked body. ‘Just this.’

      ‘Do you want to wear a dress?’ she asked.

      ‘Do you want to kiss me?’

      Her gaze paused, I met it. She hesitated as I rose, but again did not pull away. Her lips parted, I kissed her. Briefly, the taste passed into the sound of a plucked string. I fell back.

      ‘You should have drunk the whisky last,’ she winced.

      ‘I’ll have some more.’

      She retrieved the bottle, filled a third of my glass with whisky, and handed it to me. The contact of her finger on mine repeated the sound of a plucked string in my mind – but more clearly now – a viola treated with reverb. She filled the emptied milk glass with the same amount for herself and drank it in two gulps.

      ‘Do you have any water?’ I asked.

      She stood to fetch some, coughing from the whisky.

      My body was a muted growl. Her absence felt like an impression on a pillow – and I longed instantly for her return. She had less certainty than she’d had earlier today; out of costume, she could no longer simplify herself into a stock character, so she could not speak or think in the clichés that had given her courage. My costume, meanwhile, had become more elaborate – these injuries had advanced my performance.

      She returned with a pitcher of water and a scarlet dress. As she set them down, I gripped her wrist with an urgency I had no words for and pulled her to me until she knelt either side of my hips, close enough to kiss. I pressed my fingers into her shoulders so that their blood turned white. She kissed me back almost in panic. I lifted her dress to lift myself into her – and we fucked, her nails cutting across my bruises, her knee against my stab wound. Each shock rose into pleasure as the endorphins and alcohol overruled the pains of my body’s surface and its deeper myalgia – until briefly she seemed like their antidote.

      Her eyes were closed, my eyes were covered by her hair. I slid my hands down her arms to her elbows, and came as she did.

      I untensed and let my head fall backwards. She lay across me, reaching over the side of the sofa to sip from the water jug.

      ‘Is there cum on my dress?’ she asked, smiling.

      ‘You can’t see anything, it’s white.’

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