Wildlife (30 page)

Anka has stopped wanking Roger. She has simply made a circle with her thumb and her forefinger. She's holding this circle down by her side and Roger is thrusting his penis in and out of it.

‘You've had a tough time, Roger.'

Anka is having to raise her voice over Roger's grunts. ‘You've been talking so much crap online. You won't do that any more. You'll be asking me questions. Relevant ones about my day. We'll cook. We'll sleep. We'll eat!'

Roger's penis is already weeping colourless fluid. The little circle that Anka's made with her thumb and forefinger is glistening. Roger is having a brilliant time. ‘This little circle,' he's saying, through the moans and inhalations of his pleasure, ‘I love this little circle that you've made with your thumb and your forefinger!'

‘This little circle, Roger, is only the beginning. There'll be more. Once my body is healthy. There will be so much more. Remember the sex we had in Wow-Bang? I imagine
it'll be more like that. We'll be athletic in bed. Moonlight coming through the bedroom window. We're just normal people. Humans. It's just that we've been so nervous. So ill. But, yes, this little circle is just the beginning!'

Roger is pushing in and out of the little circle at top speed. This is it. He's clinging onto Anka's sides and shoulder, his fingers hold her bones like handlebars.

‘I'm going to come,' cries Roger.

‘Come,' says Anka. ‘Come, Roger.'

A rhythmic rattling sound can suddenly be heard. The sound of football studs tap-tapping across hard floor. It's the players. The professional footballers. It's half-time. Anka listens as the door to the changing room is pushed open with force, giving way to a cacophony of groans and complaints. ‘That was bullshit.' ‘Bent cunts.' ‘Fucking sky.' ‘Meteor!' ‘They're shit anyway.' Roger doesn't register any of this noise. He has not felt this real in years. He doubts whether he has ever felt so real and full of pleasure.

Some of the footballers have come into the shower room and have begun watching in polite silence but with evident amusement as Roger thrusts into the little circle that Anka has made. Roger doesn't notice. His eyes are squeezed shut. Anka looks up at the players with stern eyes, warning them to keep quiet, to let Roger enjoy the little circle she's made with her thumb and forefinger. The footballers obey, though some hide smiles with sideways hands.

‘I'm gonna come!'

He means it this time. Roger's entire body spasms and he lets out some very real noises, jolting his penis into the circle with short, random, staccato movements, his whole body relaxing blissfully onto the floor. The first spurt of liquid is projectile. It flies a good metre. The second lands
on Anka's jeans, just above her knee. The third coats the little circle and the rest of Anka's hand. I'm tired. These people have come to an end.

The footballers watch in sentimental silence. They smile and they even weep. They suddenly regret all the gang bangs and the call girls and spit roasts. They realise life is simple.

Roger says nothing. He's just floating. His body buzzing. Eyes still shut. A smile, blindly drawn, coating his lips.

The footballers begin to back slowly out of the shower room. In the dressing room, the manager has arrived and is shouting for silence. ‘It's no excuse,' he's saying. ‘We were hopeless before the sky fell. It's no excuse.'

Anka has sat right up. She's holding her hand up into the light, fingers crooked, dripping with human semen, lines of it running down her arm towards her elbow.

Roger comes round. He has broadened his smile and sat up cheerfully on his elbows before he, too, catches sight of Anka's dripping hand. He regrets the bullshit, the porn, the words, the glue and the wires of his lonely years. He and Anka watch as the liquid drips from her elbow and onto the cold floor. A future grips them. A wire looped around a neck, pulled from either end. A future grips them. It's Saturday afternoon.

HAVING BEEN HANDED
the sharp knife, the dickhead does not hesitate in cutting the penis off his forehead, causing Joe and Sally to fall backwards onto the stage floor.

‘Get them back in line,' he shouts, now with just the balls and the stump bunched above his eyes. There's no blood. He's clearly in no pain. ‘Get them back in line!'

Janek, Life and Joe are held in position next to the podium. In front of them, the elderly audience are still very much entertained. Many have stood up from their tables and come forward to linger at the foot of the stage. They regard the three individuals with intrigued but cautious expressions. Perhaps the same expressions these same people used to regard the freak shows of the late-Victorian era. ‘Let's see some,' shouts a woman whose scraped silver hair is failing to hide her baldness. ‘Let's see some of this black blood.' The crowd make noises of agreement. ‘Show us how he can't care!'

The dickhead gestures for Janek to be brought forward. The audience roar with approval. Outside on the football
pitch, Anka and Roger are yet to emerge from the tunnel. Lampard is yet to run one on one with the keeper. The sky is yet to fall.

Janek is aware of being gripped by the shoulders. His brain is boiled, seared, served in his skull, topped with a sprig of mint. To him, the greying crowd that bay for his blood seem perfectly normal and happy; just another gang of geriatrics who bounce and gyrate to the beats and melodies of the N-Prang. He's held in front of Ian the Dickhead and can't help but stare up at the bloodless penis stump on his forehead.

‘Janek,' says Ian, ‘have a flick through these.'

Janek takes a stack of postcards from Ian and begins to look through them. He smiles at the first image, then, looking up, he notices that Ian is holding his nose in amusement, using a frantically pointing finger to inform the audience to watch Janek carefully. The first image shows a little boy, crying and naked in a dark cage. The little boy is sitting in a circle of his own blood. A small piece of timber attached to one of the bars has nine lines carved into it. Tears are falling from the little boy's granite stare. Janek looks at it carefully. Smiling. Listening to the very cool, high-spirited music. The driving music. The walking-to-work music. The sex music. The posing music. The just-let-go music. The second image depicts the aftermath of a car bomb in a desert state. An Arab has been blown limbless. A woman no longer has a head. Listen to this perfect party music. Listen carefully. It's so perfect for a party. So perfect for the bus, for the club, for the tube. The third image shows an old lady begging for cash on a British street. She's had the crap kicked out of her. She should have been listening to this well-wicked sex music. Totally she should. The fourth image is gang rape. Happy
hardcore. The fourth is a child soldier, black skin, sunshine on his forehead, clinging to a Kalashnikov. Chill out. 100 per cent chill out. The fifth image is a mass grave. Hundreds of dirty dead scribbled together. Jazz. The blues. Dead bodies everywhere. Hip hop. Murder. Indie. Rape. Classical. War. Reggae. Genocide. Pop rock. Robbery. Janek stares down smiling at the mass grave, noticing, with amusement, that some of the dead are wearing football shirts dating back to England in the early 1990s. He glances up at Ian and at the members of the audience. In some part of Janek's brain a little man with claws, backache and a beanie hat whispers, soberly, ‘What a joke. What a complete joke.' Out of the window, in the outside world, Anka emerges from the tunnel riding on Roger's back. Again, Janek smiles, listening to the good songs, staring at the mass murder, thinking of his unfair life.

‘I get it,' he says, pulling the earphones from his ears and handing back the postcards. ‘Yep. I accept all this completely.'

The dickhead places the cards into the inside pocket of his white blazer and looks a little confused. His back bends. He's leaning towards Janek with a rising face, saying, ‘What do you mean?'

‘I just mean,' says Janek, ‘I'm not a great guy. Am I? I won't be the one to save anything. I'm not a great guy. Because I thought . . . No. No. Forget it. I understand.' Everyone is staring at him. ‘But when we realise,' says Janek, ‘when we finally realise what our little story is about. It's painful. Because . . . Because. I thought I was going to be all right. I really did. Even when I was dancing with my dead mum, I was thinking to myself, it's OK, Janek, don't worry, this is a low point, a strange point, clearly, but you're
a good sort deep down, this is just a blip, you'll be fine in the end. But I'm not, am I? This is the end. And I'm some guy a dickhead made for a laugh in a laboratory and . . . well, that doesn't bother me at all. Not really. Whether I was made in a womb or a white room doesn't matter at all. What bothers me, what I regret, is not speaking up sooner. For example, when my world was changing, when everything I saw became so sexy and rhythmic, I should have said something. I should have said that I didn't believe. Not fully. But instead, I was telling myself to bear with it. I was thinking, sure, my life's like a sexy video, I'm losing the plot, but in the end I'll be fine. In the end I'll find, you know . . . In the end I'll find my way to the Fuck Festival. I was really serious about that. I genuinely wanted to be happy . . . but . . .' Janek holds out his hands in despair, pointing at the audience, at Ian the Dickhead, at Joe and Life. ‘Now all this. And I'm just the guy with headphones in his ears, the guy who can't tell right from wrong, the guy who smiles at murder and giggles at gang rape . . . I'm a seriously good bassist. I am a seriously good bassist. There's a part of me that still loves Life, too. There's a part of me that still wants to make love to her, to crane my neck and watch it go in and out but . . . but when you're alive, while we're alive . . .' Janek pauses and stares fiercely at the ceiling and says, ‘We are weighted down. We truly are, all of us. Life is what you make it? Is it fuck. We end up in rooms like this one, just thinking, how? How has this happened? And what you realise is that you barely had a choice. And the only real option is to obey. To nod my head. I can't tell right from wrong. Whatever. Sure, I can only sway along the streets, lost in my own shit. Talking bollocks. Misinterpreting pain. I'm a twat. I get it. Very clever. I'm
an arsehole.' Janek pauses to put the headphones back into his ears. He points at Life. ‘So,' he says, stuttering slightly, before clearing his throat and seemingly finding his rhythm and singing: ‘So let's go, yo, I have spoken, take that ho and slice her open. I've shagged her, I have sucked her tits, so stab her, I won't give a shit.'

There is a round of generous applause. A few old couples turn to each other and nod with enthusiastic smiles. Good, they think. Good speech and a good rap to finish. Next to Janek on the stage, Ian looks a little worried. As if he too has been dragged here and had little choice in the matter. He thinks carefully about his dickhead past for a moment and then, apparently reassured, turns to the audience with renewed vigour. ‘Yes, yes,' he shouts, clapping his hands. ‘That was good. I enjoyed it, too. We did, I must admit, make these people extremely well. It will be nice, I'm sure, in the Wild World, to hear such heartfelt speeches concerning the nature of life and suchlike, as well as such lovely rap songs. It will, no doubt, be comforting, sweet and surely quite profound. Yes. Don't be shy. Give him a good clap.'

Janek nods hopelessly as old people applaud his effort. It's over. In the remains of his brain, he's thinking things, things like, life could be good, sure, I could have craned my neck each morning and each night and been a happy festival goer. Just in and out, in and out, in and out. I could have. I could. It would've been good.

‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, like the young man said. Let's cut the stomach of this beautiful girl here. Step forward, Life.' Life is pushed forward by her guardian, causing Ian to smile broadly, saying, ‘Oh, when I see you like this I'm reminded of how horny we all were when we
made you. How we fought like schoolboys to sculpt your nipples and violate your once brainless body. Could you pull up your dress for me, Life?'

On the floor at Life's feet, Joe Aspen is crouched, staring down, both his fists full of perfectly white hair. He looks up when he hears Ian addressing her. Their eyes meet. His and Life's. Eyes. Both blue. I am not desperate to remember. But I can.

Life obediently pulls her red dress up over her knickers and holds it just below her breasts. Ian gulps and his stump twitches. He mutters, ‘Yes, we were so horny.' Then he stares down at the knife in his hand.

‘Lie, what are you doing?' says Joe, scrambling to his feet. ‘Don't just let him.'

Ian, the former dickhead, holds the tip of the blade against Life's belly. The crowd are hushed. None of them notice when, outside, a piece of the sky falls and crushes a talented footballer. They're staring at Life's stomach, licking their lips, waiting for a moment of colour and revelation.

‘Not too deep,' says Life. ‘I want to survive. I just want to see.'

Joe is staring at her. Joe is dying to catch her eye. Those torn unwillingly from love will often die to catch their former lover's eye. Just for a second. Just long enough to stare like you could stare through flesh. To show them, with a desperate intensifying of your expression that you are still very much in love with them. To stare in such a way as to remind your former lover of the times, the good times and the quiet moments. The brilliant bits. When you whispered I love you. When the wind blew and you grabbed each other. When you behaved outrageously in tricksy bars. When you spoke sincerely of the future. Promised it to each other.
Without doubt. Promised it. Promised it in the day, holding hands in Manchester. Then, stirring in some rare hour of the night, forcefully re-entwining your bodies and promising it again.

‘No,' says Life, turning to look at Joe. ‘Whatever happens. You and I are over.'