Wildlife (31 page)

Ian is weeping. Quite unexpectedly, he has started to cry.

‘Now I just want proof,' Life mutters.

‘We made you,' weeps the dickhead. ‘We did. We were trying to be cool. We were horny. We made you.'

The tip of the knife is pressing hard against Life's stomach.

‘No,' says Joe, shrugging and sweeping his white hair backwards off his face. ‘That's just it. That's the amazing thing. You didn't. We are real. That's what's so sad.'

Joe grabs Ian by the wrist. He does not flinch. He yanks the former dickhead's hand towards him, pulling every inch of the knife inside him. Ian immediately lets go of the handle and begins to back away from Joe's pierced stomach. Not daring to look down at the wound, Joe reaches out and grabs Ian by the collar of his shirt and stares into his eyes and then at the stump. The remains. The delicate testicles. Joe grits his teeth and he smiles. ‘It's red,' he hisses, still not looking down. ‘It's red, isn't it? Isn't it? It's red.'

Releasing Ian, Joe sways round like a skittle preparing to fall. He looks at Life. She's watching quite calmly. In her eyes, Joe can see the future. Life's future, without him. She will, he can tell, mourn him for a while, be sad for a bit, then go on. Quietly continue. This is how it will be. He wants to say he loves her. He can't. She wouldn't reply. He would die in the middle of an awkward silence. Those terrible seconds that wait for love. For a verdict.
Joe just falls to the floor, breathing some shallow, closing breaths. On the other side of the stage, near to where Janek is tapping his foot and nodding his head, Joe can see little Sally. He smiles. She's playing with the severed penis of Marlon Brando. Pushing it in front of her and then crawling after it eagerly. Beak is playing too and it looks like fun. Joe's happy because they're happy.

Rolling onto his stomach he pulls himself in the direction of the travel seat and, reaching in, succeeds in removing the yellow corpses of Dolly and Sam the Man. It's then that he feels Life's hands on his shoulder and happiness for the last time. She helps to pull him back round onto his back and they stare at each other. Joe holds up the two corpses to show her. He hasn't got the strength to tell Life their names. He just shakes them at her, hopefully, trying to mime some meaning with their weak little bodies. Life just shakes her head. She'd like to speak but fears what she'd say. Instead, she watches as Joe turns onto his side and stands the two corpses up on the floor, holding each of them under their arms. She watches as he begins to bounce them in the direction of each other, like children do with dolls or action figures to make them walk. She watches as Joe makes the two corpses meet and then presses their faces together gently. Joe turns to her and smiles. His smile is real normal. Life watches as the corpses kiss.

I AM JOE
Aspen. I might have told you so at the beginning but it didn't feel right. Keeping pointless secrets is a popular reason to live. Although, I should say, I did not live. I did not survive. I pulled that knife into my stomach. And I died.

It was a silly thing to do, kill myself. It was also pretty pointless. You see, I couldn't bring myself to stare at my wound to see what colour I was bleeding. If my blood had been black I would've been so disappointed. I would have been stumbling round that banqueting suite, dying, unloved and so pissed off. I'm a wet really. I couldn't have handled it. So instead I kept my eyes averted from the truth and made Dolly's dead body kiss Sam the Man's. After a minute or so I found I couldn't move any part of me. I stopped breathing. I'm dead, I thought to myself, I'm a corpse.

Death is not what you might think. Death is like the ultimate form of politeness. Something happens to you, like you have a heart attack, crash a car, jump off a high building or pull a knife into your stomach and it's as if your whole body gets stage fright. You freeze. You shit
yourself. You stop breathing. You worry a little bit. And then above you people start crying and talking to each other like you can't hear. But you can. You can see them too. It's quite embarrassing. Because they're talking to each other, saying stuff about how you were a good guy, an honest guy, a sweet guy, a confused guy who died too young, who loved life too much, who loved Life too much, who would have been more suited to earlier times when we, the humans, were closer to the natural world. I tried to speak but I couldn't. I just had to lie there and listen. I couldn't even blush.

Luckily, they put me into a coffin quite quickly. Nail me in, I was thinking, nail me in so I don't have to listen to this any more. But they didn't. They left me in a room in an open-top coffin. People came in to chat to my corpse. Life came in. Janek. Roger and Anka came by and kissed as if I wasn't there. Even Ian came, wearing Janek's beanie to cover up his stump. He seemed upset. He seemed insane. Each of them banged on about their problems. They banged on about the colour of human blood, the beauty of human semen, the problem with leading lives, the pain involved in love. If I wasn't dead already, this would've killed me, or at least sent me to sleep. But I listened. I did. I listened carefully as they dribbled the plot of this story onto me. Dribbled it into my coffin. And it was as I was staring up at Life, listening as she moaned about living, that I suddenly became aware that my ability to move was coming back to me. I could feel it in my fingers. I became sure that if I wished, I could reach up and touch her. I was sure I'd be able to speak, too. I could have told her to shut up, to drop it, to face it – life's painful. But I didn't. I just lay there like a corpse in a school play, only one that wouldn't be getting up to take a
bow and smile at the clapping. Fuck it, I thought. It would be impolite. Dead as I am, it would be impolite. That's what clinched it. If people go to the trouble of dressing you in fresh clothes and laying you in a coffin, of weeping over you and gripping your cold hands with theirs, then the least you can do is pretend to be dead. It is only polite, I thought to myself, as I watched the wooden lid move over me. It is only polite, I thought, as the lights went out, as the sound of weeping quietened and the hammer began to bang.

I have written this story in my own blood. For paper, I have used the calendar that Life placed beside me shortly before the lid was closed. I have written over images of wildlife. Let me say that again. Imagine I'm shouting. I am. I have written over images of wildlife. Photographs of puffins, crocodiles and great white sharks. I have written blind, not knowing the colour of my ink. Red or black. Dead or alive. Dogged, even in death, by these are old-fashioned concerns.

It wasn't long after I was buried that I experimented with moving for the first time. I thought about trying it during my funeral, which I could hear only faintly as it took place beyond these wooden walls. But I figured that would have been as impolite as it gets. That would have been a total piss-take. So I lay quietly and tried to decipher the speeches and enjoy the hymns. It wasn't until afterwards when I could feel the silent soil packed tightly around me that I dared to knock-knock on the lid above my face. I suppose I was shocked. I knock-knocked. Still living. I scratch. I have two, maybe three more things to say.

Why am I still alive?

Why?

I don't know. Not for sure. But during these dark, tight-fitting days I have thought a lot. An image keeps recurring in the black. A human being, all four of its limbs knotted together like ribbons. A firm tug on a foot or a hand and the human unravels. It unties. It lies inert on the floor.
The last thing they gave us, as a present, I mean, was ourselves
.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that the ink is black, that my blood is black, that I was made in a laboratory by ironic arseholes with no sense of grace. That's why I'm still alive. I was sculpted by a tit-wrench with no sense of honour. That's why the dickhead's knife didn't finish me off. Why I continue to talk.

Maybe, maybe.

Knock. Scratch.

But I think back on those days and I wonder whether something different wasn't happening. Is it possible to love yourself too much? If every fat inch of your proud brain was bent in that way, enchanted by itself, could an individual learn to cheat the ancient hobby of death? I think they could. I think I have. I think that's what this is. I bet I'm not the only talking corpse down here. I bet if I lay still I could hear others, tapping sentimentally on the lids of their coffins, muttering about themselves, their shit-shifting personality, their life, about how their time on earth was too short-lived, about how that's a shame, a real shame. We think too highly of ourselves, our self-love outlasts our condemned bodies. While alive, we make ourselves so real. Too real. Unkillable. Unlikeable. The dickhead was right. Whether we're robots or humans, I don't reckon it matters. We're a wacky bunch. Too wild for death. Roger Hart was right, too: we'll talk ourselves stupid, write ourselves pointless, staring at screens, ripping new arseholes for ourselves,
describing them, marvelling. We're bullshitters, nowadays. Expert at describing but not at living. I guess it's no big deal. Just passing thoughts. The only thing that matters is the journey of our heart.

I'm glad I died so full of frustration and young love. I feel it draining out of me down here. It fertilises the soil. It cannot be recaptured. Pain fades like a pop song. To silence. To this.

I like to imagine my gravestone above me. I hope it says: ‘Here lies Joe Aspen. He was only joking.' But I bet it doesn't. It's probably just my dates. Jesus, I died young. Dickhead!

Let the Wild World burn. Let the rest of them burn. Roger, Anka, Janek. Let them go on and on with you and the others. You can enjoy the world. I know you can. Make it fun. It is not mine. Me, I'm wondering what became of baby Sally. I'm wondering what became of Beak. I hope he grows up to be a good cat. A cool cat. Did Dolly and Sam the Man get decent burials? They should have been cremated or buried together. I should have seen to it. And then of course, there's her. I wonder what became of her. She broke what chews and spits my blood. My red blood. My black blood. She broke my blah-blah. I am lifeless. In every sense. I am without Life.

And this story. It's over. What colour is the text? Tell me it's red. Go on, don't be mean, tell me it's red. I can dip fingers into my wound and hold them an inch from my eyes. But there's not even a speck of light down here. I can't see. So fuck it.

Let me shut my eyes softly like a good corpse should. Let me cross my arms and flatten my hands across my chest.
Yes, this is how it should be, perfectly polite and convincing. I was a fool to pull that knife inside me. I was in love. We are. We are in love. I was a dickhead. We are!

I died. I did. For life. For
it.
For
her.
And now I'm alone. I'm off. I'm going off. I'm fucking off. Because I stink. I stink of memory. And the pop song is all but sunk in silence. I have nothing but my memories of wildlife. Nothing but this grave, this description and this joke. Yes, that is it; this joke.

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Epub ISBN: 9781409077893

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Published by Vintage 2009

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Copyright © Joe Stretch 2009

Joe Stretch has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by
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ISBN 9780099532071