Negative Spaces

I'd been checking my e-mail when my son's lego tower had toppled.

"Daddy" he'd said. "When you gonna finish lookin' your 'pooter..?"

"Soon" I'd said, for the umpteenth time. "Soon."

So he rebuilt his tower, this time the design both higher and even less structually conventional than its predecessor. The tower teetered... It swayed... And then collapsed in a multi-coloured rain of plastic bricks. The architect began to wail. "Daaddeeee..."

"Don't worry." I'd said to him.
"I'll stop." I said.
"I'll help you."

And with that, with those eight simple, everyday syllables, my life started to unravel.

It started with a tic. My off-hand would flip on its wrist, and the fingers pinch together convulsively - just for a split second. As if they were catching a fly. It didn't happen often - only if I was stressed, or tired. If I thought anything of it, it can't have been much, I don't remember worrying over it. Then there was what happened on the phone. I doodle while I talk, but I mean, everybody doodles.

This was something else. When I surfaced after a fifteen-minute conversation with some insurance guy over a niggle on payments, I found my left hand had sketched a thumbnail picture of a winding, wooded road, at what looked like dawn or maybe dusk, skewed on a slight slant off to the left, with a single figure standing in silhouette almost straddling the white line. There was a well-chewed HB-soft pencil clutched between my fingers, an unfinished line still under the point. Almost as if it noticed me looking, the hand put the pencil back down on the pad. I flexed it experimentally, the wrist ached slightly. I sat down, suddenly exhausted.

I picked up the sketch and squinted: it looked familliar somehow but I couldn't place it. "I'll stop." I said out of the blue. "I'll help you."

It got worse from then on. The doodling. I woke up with a hangover on the sofa after a dinner party my wife threw, only to find the road scrawled all over the cushions in smudged biro. I got a strange call from my Mother on her sixtieth asking me about the little scene she'd found inside her birthday card. I could have sworn I'd dashed off 'Happy Birthday Mom xxx' just like every year before. The final straw came in the Summer. It was our custom to sleep nude when the weather got too humid to bear and that night my wife awoke to find me, still fast asleep, drawing the road on her back with her eyeliner pencil.

She packed me off to a shrink after that. The same one that's just woken me up. Dr. Brunel.

He's clutching a handful of papers; he looks pleased with himself: Cheshire cat grin and one-hundred watt eyes. He snaps his fingers in front of my nose again, just for good luck. "Wake up Daniel." He says, "You're awake."

My hand hurts, and there's an indent on my index finger matching a groove on my thumb. What has he had me up to..?

First he shows me a slightly better defined version of the sketches I've grown used to over the last few months. You can see the leaves on the trees, and that the figure is a woman: close-cropped hair, flaring like a halo about her blurred face.

"You drew like a machine." Brunel says excitedly " - Like an automaton, you're the best example of automatic writing I've ever met..!"

"Great, do I get a discount..?" I ask, rubbing my wrist.

"And look here - I'll bet you've never seen this before. I asked you to zoom while you were under."

He passes me another sheet of A4 - this one's a close up on the woman's face. Jutting out stark and harsh from the paper in charcoal hardpointing. She'd be pretty I guess, if she weren't screaming. I've done her gums well, and her teeth gleam like pearls. Her tongue rears out of her mouth like a snake;I can almost hear the hiss.

Brunel's been playing with me like I was some kind of organic video-recorder - the next sheet is the same full view, but dated and timed: gaps left in the crosshatching tracing digital letters and numerals.

11:sept:1989 03:11 am

"That date mean anything to you Daniel..?" Brunel asks expectantly.

I shake my head, "I'd have been at university I suppose." I say, "Freshman year." I hate it when Doctors use your first name. What are we... Bosom buddies..? Will he be coming to my kid's birthday party..? Will it stop him looking at me like I'm some species of bug..? Or taking my money..? A whole lotta 'nos' queuing up to answer those rhetoricals.

"So neither the date - nor the picture itself - mean anything to you..?"

"I kinda remember the picture, but that's it - I couldn't tell you where it is, or if I've been there."

He hands me the last picture, this one printed on slick photgraphic paper, still smelling of ink:



And then I know.




Brunel's saying something about extreme stress, and pictures getting imprinted as negatives on the synapses of the brain, but it doesn't matter.

I know.

The trees flash by - lit strobe-light-bright by the headlights of my car. I'm fucking off my head - laughing, punching the horn, shaking my head like a wounded bear; joke-shop eyeballs jiggling and joggling like marbles in my skull - the cat's eyes on the road blur by under the hood like fireflies weaving across the sweating tarmac. Like lines on an oscilloscope: neon-bright pixels leaking from a damaged screen. I see her far too late of course. I'm not sure I even recognize her as different from the telegraph poles flanking the road. I only brake after I feel the impact. Something flies up over the roof like a giant white bird. The car slows. My arms are wood, my neck a metal ratchet as it cranks round on my shoulders. I cannot get my hands off the wheel. I see a boneless, unmoving shape slumped on the asphalt behind me - lit up a bright bloody red by my brake lights. The car still doesn't seem to be coming to a halt. I shout through the open window:

"Don't worry."
"I'll stop."
"I'll help you."

But then my foot slips off the brake and her body winks out like a snuffed candle. My eyes still rivveted to the rear-view mirror, I flail like a child at the sea-side, my feet hunting for the right pedal to tread. The car moves further away on its tyres. The gradient of the hill slopes away. Nothing to do with me. Then I hit the gas by mistake. The car lurches and speeds up. Everything seems too hard. I can't get my hands off the wheel. Can't concentrate. Can't get my hands off the wheel.

"Don't worry."
"I'll stop."
"I'll help you."

But it's only a whisper this time. The car just won't stop.

The doodling stops after that. But I start to wake up at odd times in the night with my car keys clutched in my hand - squeezing them hard enough to leave welts on my palm.

On September the first I wake up at two am in the morning - in my car. The engine idling softly, exhaust pluming out into the night air. I can't seem to get my hands off the wheel.

On the eleventh I drink a whole thermos of coffee and stay up late with the kids at my side, watching old cartoons and eating popcorn. My wife goes to bed at one-thirty, even though I beg, literally beg, for her to stay up with me.

It's half-past two now and the children are asleep on the couch, out like little lights. I catch myself nodding. I cat-

- The trees flash by in a strobe-light blur; the asphalt rasps under the tyres like the low, grating yowl of a cat in pain. I hit the brakes but my foot slips off the pedal, leaving blinks of red in the mirror. The car does not slow. It's too late anyway, I'm reaching the crest of the hill.

I see her framed under the trees, clear as day. But when the car hits her this time, she doesn't fly away.

The hood crumples up around her hips like a wave hitting a breakwater, and I dive through the exploding windscreen like some erstwhile Romeo into her waiting arms.

She holds me down on the warm road. She's a human-shaped hole in the universe. I see galaxies whirl in her breast and stars flare in her belly. It hurts when she puts her fingers in me.

"Don't worry." She says.
"I'll stop." She says.
"I'll help you."

...Continued...

Under Pressure

The Champagne designed to be sipped at twenty-thousand feet is different from the stuff mere mortals slurp at sea-level. Less gas. Drink it on the ground and it tastes flat, like day-old Cola left tepid in the glass. But let it flow over your tongue while you watch the clouds scatter beyond the plexiglass windows, and it is once more, pure heaven.

Atm is the trade abbreviation for an atmosphere, which in the wine world is the measurement for the working pressure used to produce sparkling wines. Technically, it's the normal air pressure at sea level: about fifteen pounds per square inch. In the production of a standard sparkling wine such as champagne or spumante the pressure should be six atm. Which means, that the green, dew-speckled bottle sitting on your table top, contains a liquid that is pushing out at a pressure of ninety pounds per square inch.

Ninety pounds is a skinny guy, standing shoulder to bony shoulder with a whole bunch of his friends, all trying to get out of that bottle. Now, if you should happen to fly that bottle up to the top of the troposphere, where the air is thin, and the pressure low... Suddenly those skinny guys beef up. And a bottle becomes a bomb. A case becomes a disaster.

"Excuse me stewardess..?"
"Yes Sir, how may I be of service..?"
"This Champagne tastes funny - does this stuff ever go off..?"
"I don't know - we've never had any complaints before... May I..?"
"Of course, be my guest."

He watches her mouth studiously as she lifts his glass and puts it to her lips. Rich, red lipstick leaves a smear on the rim as she sips the very smallest of sips. Then her perfect retroussé nose crinkles as bubbles of carbon-dioxide irritate the delicate membranes inside. She says:

"Uuuh - You're right - it's like drinking straight Alka-Sletzer. Please, accept the airline's apologies, I'll get you another bottle right away."
"Don't worry about it - I shouldn't be drinking anyway - All this turbulence has gone straight to my stomach."
"I'm sorry sir, the captain is doing his best. Rough weather out there."

He watches her retreating back up the aisle to the cubby-hole behind the curtain, his puffy eyes tracking the lines of her sheer-stockinged calves up to her trim thighs, following the cut of her pencil skirt, the liquid geometry of her buttocks as they move under the starched material.

He slumps back into the padding of the seat and inhales - the dry, over-conditioned air rasping over his teeth and into his lungs, leaving his pallete arid. He wishes now he hadn't complained. He closes his eyes and hears the clink of expensive bottles being sorted and examined, hears his stewardess say:

"These aren't the ones we usually stock, are they..?"

Then he feels a sudden draught. Thinks nothing of it. Then he remembers he turned the blower off about a hour ago. Which is strange. Then he remembers he's on a plane. And suddenly he jerks upright, his face batting against the yellow cup of the oxygen mask that's just fallen from a concealed flap between the nozzles of the twin fans. Becomes aware of his heart hammering in his chest. The intercom is saying something, a man's voice, with an edge just below the professional calm:

"Please do not be alarmed, we are experiencing a temporary failure of cabin pressure due to extreme weather conditions outside. Normal pressure will be restored presently, if you feel light-headed, please use the masks which should have deployed right over your heads, if you have trouble in using them, please call your flight attendent. We apologise for your incoven-"

His stewardess emerges from behind the curtain and takes a single step - one perfect leg lifting; skirt hemline riding up slightly over toned and silk-sheathed skin; a patent leather stilleto arcing down toward the close-packed weave of airline carpet.

The sound is not unlike an exhaust backfiring on a scooter - a rapid high-pitched popping, rude and unexpected - a staccato ripple of breaking glass.

The stewardess stops, simple surprise chasing sudden pain on her face. She shudders. A halo of green glass shards sparkle in the sudden sunlight and ricochet off the bulkheads all around her, wreathing her body like some medaeval stained-glass angel weeping in a cathedral window.

She staggers, grace gone, to collapse at his feet. The back of her head is flayed right down to the bones of her skull. The jagged ivory path of her vertebrae glints like a row of broken teeth in a punched mouth. Her pelvis is bared: both buttocks ground away to bloody gristle. Her legs are carved-up like cheap meat on a butcher's block; tendons and ligaments glowing obscenely white amid a morass of purple and ruby-red.

On his knees now, he heaves her over onto her good side and sits smoothing her hair as the plane lurches, and begins its descent.

...Continued...

Spring-Heeled Jack

It's not the start of the story, but rather the end, the part I always remember. It reminds me of a big musty bed shared with my little sister in my Grandparent's draughty old house, where we would cower and clasp eachother giggling like fools - half scared, half delighted, as Granny told stories in the dark.
____________________________

"This isn't funny Josh, it's getting dark already and I can't get my mobile to work - are you going to be able to get the car started or not..?"
____________________________

Granny would never start her tales in the traditional way, but rather she would start with "When ahh were naught but a girl." and then unfold the story from there. She was awful old my Gran. As wizened as an orange left out in the wind, she'd never admit to an age and yet, for all her claims of aching backs and ricketty knees, she somehow remained as and spry and hearty as a hawthorn bush, all whip and prickle.

She told us many stories over the years: stories perhaps that parents now would shudder at and not permit - penny-dreadfuls and burlesque - the big bad wolves always got cut in half and those stupid, bone-grinding giants would slit their own stomachs as Jack laughed. River sprites and leering elves and goblins and golems and gollywogs.

And of course Jack.
Jumping Jack.
Spring-heeled Jack.

____________________________


"Ah fuck it - let's just push the damn thing off the road and walk, it can't be more than a couple of miles, I recognise the road. We cross the river soon and then we should be able to see my Gran's old place across the moor. We'll get someone out to the car tomorrow. Better get your boots on though - the snow's thick."
____________________________

Gran lived in Winston: a little village hidden away in Yorkshire, between an old oak forest and high ridge of hills. A river ran through it, cold as Winter and rippled with fish. But Gran hadn't always lived there. In her youth she'd worked as a servant girl in Lavender Hill London and - she would tell us, her eyes far away and suddenly blank - one day as she was crossing the common, a strange figure leapt at her from the dark mouth of an alley. Jack.

"He leapt out t' shaddas at me grinnin' like the very Devil." She'd say and continue to tell of how this fiendish figure had pushed her to the frosted ground and ripped at her dress with his claws which were - and here Granny would loom close over the bed and hook her fingers and we would obediently shriek - "as cold and as clammy as a corpse's". Then she'd "Let out a scream anna whistle loud enought' wake dead" and brought the whole neighborhood running. Jack would escape by half bounding, half flapping across the rooftops "like a bloody great broken-winged bat."
____________________________

After half an hour's slog through the snow and still no bridge I realize two things: that I'm totally out of shape compared to the child that used to run all over the village before breakfast, and that we're lost. Quite seriously lost, considering we're wearing stupid fashion-imitation outdoor gear rather than the real stuff, and now the sun is gone the temperature is falling right off the scale. Beth's breath begins to steam like Granny's old iron kettle. She is silent, all her concentration set on putting her feet one in front of another. The uninterrupted whiteness and the great, overwhelming silence makes it hard to talk somehow, or maybe it's just tiredness, but it still feels like church.

I fall into a dull, leaden rhythm - boots crunching into the pristine crust and out again, breaking a path for my sister behind - and my eyes scan the snow-softened scenary for anything that the child long past remembers from his ramblings. It's cold, every breath is like sucking on ice.

I snort reflexively at how ironic it would be, were we both to die on the way to a funeral.
____________________________ 

According to popular folklore, little Mary Stevens' story ends with the escape of Jack across the rooftops of old London town, but according to Granny it is actually where her real story begins. Because - as she used to whisper in the warm light of the bedside lamp - when she moved back to her village...

Jack followed.

"The footprints in the snow suddenly ended..."

"That day, my wee ones, the snow were piled up like clouds on the hill-tops and mi breath came out mi mouth like steam from a kettle. Ah were walkin' 'ome cross back field from tarn when ah 'appened upon some tracks. Like normal footprints they were, but not right somehow. An ah knew, knew it right then it were 'im. Summin' crawled right up mi spine an' put up alla the hairs on mi neck straight as wires. 'Cos ye see children, the tracks they just started all at once from nothin' in t' snow. Ah hadda follow 'em too, ah couldn't 'elp it - cos they were 'eddin like an arra right for mi old Mum's 'ouse. This house."

At this point my Sister and I would squeal and gaze horror-struck out of the window, which my Gran would leave unshuttered, the curtains undrawn. And outside the window the snow would roll across the field like a great white ocean: frozen and frosted, crisp and brittle in sharp starlight.
____________________________

"Josh we've been walking for hours - you said it wasn't far - where the fuck are we going..?"

My Sister never swears, and that, coupled with the sheer noise of her voice bursting out of the great cathedral silence all around jerks me out of the trance I've been plodding through for the last couple of miles. I turn, my limbs leaden, suddenly exhausted.
"I'm sorry sweetheart, I think we're in trouble. You wanna try your phone again..?"

Then there is a strange wooshing noise behind me, and an explosion of snow. Beth screams, the noise furious, her breath blasting out like a fire-extiguisher in the luminous dark. I don't want to turn round. I'm seven again, and listening to my Granny's stories. And now as then, I can't help it, my eyes drag my head around, until I'm looking at it. Looking at him. Looking at Jack.
____________________________

And Gran would point out of the window with one shaking hand, gaze into our terrified little eyes and continue: "An when ah got t' 'ouse, e'en though it were colder than a witch's tit that day, ah were sweatin' like a shire'orse. And them footprints - well they got within a couple o' yards o' this very window and just stopped - just ended - like e'd jus' disappeared. An' near where they ended there were a tile come down offen the roof, stuck up in the snow like a teeny-tiny tombstone."
____________________________

Up close it looked nothing like the pictures in Gran's book. Just like she'd said. Blackness slid over it despite the starlight reflecting off the snow all around. It towered over us by a meter or more. Its head dark and featureless save for a banked-coal glimmer of eyes. No arms but more fins, or stunted wings perhaps, jutting out from a torso much too short for its height. It jigged gently on its legs, up and down, never still. It stank, even in the clean frosted air - a noxious smell, like stagnant swimming pools brimming with chlorine and rotten weed. One minute maybe, maybe two we watched it, watched it not breathing even as our own breath tumbled out of us like waves of fog in the icy air.

Quick as a knife it moved, a pale hard pincer grazing my cheek, hard enough to bruise but not hard enough to cut, and then it was gone - squatting down - its legs bending impossibly backward like a giant cricket's - and then whoosing, soaring, vanishing upwards with a sucking vaccuum that plucked at our frosted clothes.
____________________________

Then Gran would sit back and breathe and smile to show us the worst was over. "Well ah got inside the door and slammed it shut behind just as quick as a bird, an tied downt' latch wi' mi best knots ah kin tell ye. Fer a while ah just stood there and caught mi breath, then ah went t' find mi Mum."
____________________________
Spring-Heeled Jack streaked down again like a comet not fifty yards from where we stood, throwing up a great fantail of snow with the force of his landing. Then in a curious series of hopping bounds he began to move away over the moor at a diagonal to the path we'd been making. Every now and again he'd pause, and twist his head around in our direction.

Children again, brother and sister holding hands in the darkness, terrified, we followed.
____________________________

"- Ah found 'er in the kitchen proddin' at' fire. She turned 'roun and gimme such a clip roun' the eer as ye wouldn't wish on ye worst enemy. Then she told me not ta shove anymore snow downt' chimney. 'It's Jack' ah told 'er mi eyes bright wi tears, 'Spring-Heeled Jack's jumped up on our roof' ah said, 'e was the one that done it Mum, not me."
____________________________ 


There were lights in the darkness ahead, electric and warm. Our limbs suddenly full of energy, we rushed over the snow toward them, trampling through and over the marks of Jack's passing
without thought. And then we were at the window, and the footprints suddenly ended.
____________________________

"'No such thing as Spring-Heeled Jack my little lass' mi Mum said, wipin' away mi tears, but ahh knew it alla same, Jack was on the roof- lookin' out fer me." Then Gran would close the curtains and fuss with the blankets, tucking us in snug as mice in a sack. She would stroke our brows and soothe our fretful faces, cooing nonsense words and lullabies until we slept.

...Continued...

Homo Suburbia

The baby wakes him, chuntering in her crib - the little teeth pushing slowly through the thin of skin her gums making her short-tempered and fractious. Silently beside him his wife rises to offer her breast. Grey light slides uneasily behind the curtains, he doesn't know wether to get up or not - the alarm clock says it's five-thirtyish - he's got the option of another hour or so's sleep. Then the baby vetos the decision by refusing to return to the land of nod. A ball of softly flailing limbs pushes him off the edge of the bed and into his slippers.

The baby's wails awaken him. The fire has burnt down to a dull orange glow amid a heap of blue-grey ash. His woman shifts under the heap of furs and draws the infant closer, pushing her chapped nipple to his fumbling lips. The baby's cries soften and cease. An ember pops and hisses. At the cave-mouth the cold dawn sky brightens the rock and air sharp with Autumn grazes his cheeks. He rolls out of the furs and stretches, sinews popping in his neck and old scar-tissue across his back twanging tight. Strapping his feet and ankles with swathes of hide, chewed and pissed on, he strides out to the mouth of the cave, to consult with the other men.

Bracing his fingers across the nape of his neck he swivels his shoulders round and about as he clunks down the stairs to the kitchen. His eyes hurt from lack of good sleep and his belly rumbles. He hopes, he suspects vainly, that there is milk left over in the fridge for cornflakes. A cat meows somewhere from the depths of the house; he's not the only one up early. His suspicions were right - the fridge is devoid of milk. Emergency sandwich time. He juggles hard cheese and mayonaise, lettuce and bread; a tomato gets dropped to splat on the tile. Colateral damage in the war against hunger.

The meat from the last hunt is finished. The men decide to first visit the stash from the last kill they'd hidden a few hours walk distant. They hope to find the half-carcass of the great-tusk still resting, shallow-buried in the permafrost, untouched by the scavengers and the long-tooths. They take up their chipped axes and fire-hardened short-stabbing spears and march out in rough single file. Only Twisted-leg stays behind with the womenfolk to guard them from harm, or decoy away any large animals.

The cheese he finds is covered in soft aureoles of off-white mould. He bins it and hunts through the back of the fridge for a can of Tuna. Something winds itself around his ankles and purrs. Staggering he grabs the nearest surface to steady himself and roundly curses the cat for trying to kill him. Dealing out slices of bread like playing cards he smothers each in mayo and flattens out a layer of Iceberg on the top. Busy hacking at the can with the opener he fails to notice the cat which leaps stealthily up onto the Dishwasher behind him.

Most of the meat at the stash is rotten, animals or perhaps just the wind has shifted the snow off the tops of the stacks and the weak sunlight has set maggots writhing in the half-thawed flesh. Old pad marks are scattered around the site, but none they think are new. The men use their spears to prise off the top sections of the buried carcass in the hopes that the deeper layers remain untainted. Sweat starts out of their skins despite the deepening cold. Intent on uncovering the food, they fail to notice another shadow converging on their own across the snow.

Finally levering off the top of the can he sets it to one side for a second to hunt the knife. Quicker than he can turn or lift a hand the cat leaps onto the surface and buries its muzzle into the can, rough pink tongue busy amongst the chunks of fish and oil. Exhaustion and hunger flash into anger and he slaps the cat off the kitchen top and onto the floor, the cat taking the tuna can with it - spraying ruddy hunks of fish all across the terracotta. A paw whips out the rake the back of his hand as he bends to retrieve the can. Furious now he sweeps up the cat in a crushing embrace and heaves it out onto he back porch, slamming the plate glass slider in its frenzied little face. A sudden elation sluices through him and he grins and waggles his fingers derisively as the cat leaps vainly at the handle. Victory.

The long-tooth is on top of one of the men before anyone hears it; its great bladed inscisors hooked into the man's chest just below the collar-bone; its huge, musclar hind legs raking out the mans bowels in great arcs of blood and shit. Leaping back the men surround the great cat and prick at it with their spears - the blunt points scraping along the cat's fur as it shakes its head and roars - amber eyes darting, seeking weakness, seeking fear. Tripping over his own feet the man falls backward, bruising his tailbone in the hard-packed ice. It is only happy accident that brings his spear up, its butt slammed into the ground with the force of his falling body. In the same instant great cat leaps - its body blotting out the wavering sun above him. He smells its musky sweat and sees the light caught along the edge of its claws. The spearpoint takes the beast in the belly and punches out right through its spine, leaving it writhing spastically above him, until the haft of his spear bows then breaks with a splintering of wood to drop the dying cat onto him, his face pressed into its dirty fur. The man beneath soils his breeks convulsively either in relief or fear, he cannot tell. The others pull him out from beneath the corpse and then begin to butcher the big cat, now strangely small in death, with chipped flint sharp and shiny.

He pulls on his clothes and goes to work. The traffic is light and the parking lot empty. He swears he will come into the office early every day from now on. The day passes without event, and a little tediously - the colleague normally sharing his workspace absent, ill aparantly, flu. He hopes he doesn't get it and finishes all the stuff in his in-box in record time - working without the usual rigmarole of distractions and banter. He leaves early, whistling as he manoevers his car out of the now congested lot. Even stops to buy flowers on the way home, so great is his joie-de-vivre. He puts his key in the door and turns the lock softly, hoping to surprise his wife.

The cat's flesh is diseased they say, some thread-like worms in its lungs and liver. Useless. The meat from the stash will only fill one sled. His leg hurts: his knee twisted beneath the cat as they fell. They decide to load up his sled and send him back alone while they continue on to forage along the game trails till near-dark. He grunts at this dubious wisdom but accedes. Thankfuly the journey is without incident, beyond stopping at a fast running stream, still filled by off-flow from the glacier, to wash out his shit. The camp is strangely quiet as he approaches, womenfolk huddled over their skins, scrapers moving rhythmicly, but their eyes all slither away from his. He cannot see his woman among them. Throat hoarse from the wind and the cold he gives no holler of greeting as he reaches the cave mouth.

The house is quiet until he reaches the bottom of the stairs. Then he hears his wife's rough breathing and the familliar groan and squeak of their bed. Dropping his shoes he mounts the staircase cautiously, his feet slow and clumsy on the steps.

Over the low moans of the wind he hears the rough sounds of his woman's pleasure. As his eyes adjust to the gloom in the cave he sees the shape of her spreadeagled across the furs, twisted-leg's heavy buttocks thrusting at their junction. The baby gurgles in the furs nearby. He wonders now, if his son is really his. Intent on their union, neither of the lovers notice as he heaves a frozen length of meat from the sled, heavy and jagged with splintered bone.

Dragging up the stairs like a man on the way to the chair, he nears the open door of the bedroom he's shared with his wife for eight years. In the nursery to the left he hears his daughter shifting in her crib. Through the mirror on the vanity table he sees his wife folded over on the edge of the bed, her hair plastered across her face by sweat and sperm. And his colleague, looking remarkably spry considering his bout of flu: working his tongue into her as she grinds her cunt into his face. He knows there is a gun on his side of the bed. Two strides and he's there.

...Continued...