COWS by Matthew Stokoe

Author:Matthew Stokoe [Stokoe, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Spetember Press Books
Published: 2013-04-09T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 35

Morning broke mercilessly and everything was the same. Steven woke but didn't move, just stared at the wall, blinking when he had to, unaware of his body.

Programs rolled through their schedule, hour and half hour changes. Morning TV, talk shows, quiz shows... on into lunchtime soaps and movie matinees. The sun strengthened but the temperature in the room did not rise. Steven watched the wall brighten but it meant nothing. The passing of time meant nothing. There was nothing ahead or behind, to look forward to or back on. No reason to move or feel. So he lay and stared at the wall and made no effort to interpret the scrabbling TV noise.

He stayed this way for three days, blank and adrift. His body pissed and shitted for him but he did not feel the wetness or the hard pellets that flattened between his arse and the inside of his pants.

And all the time the TV babble ate closer to a part of his brain that would listen, ate across the wasteland of his shock to the last soft collection of cells that might react.

On the fourth day Steven heard what it was saying, heard words and decoded them into meaning, began idly to listen to the perfect short sentences of commercials. Then smelt for the first time the stink of his own filth, felt it itching in the grooves of his body. And another smell that was worse and came from somewhere outside the bedroom.

Slowly, achingly, he rolled off the bed and stood. His back felt broken, he had neither the strength nor the will to straighten fully. He started for the bathroom with the dim notion of cleaning himself and had to force every step. Motion was a battle against a lethargy that hung from his shoulders like a cloak of chains.

Naked body - shrunken, water-logged penis, dark shit smears. He stepped into the shower and leant in a corner so he wouldn't fall.

Into the hall without bothering to dry himself, dripping, trundling along like some sleepwalking Frankenstein.

Lucy was ripe in the kitchen. Dark skin, bloated, heavy, like she had never lived. Lying there in a cracking ice-rink of dried blood. The smell was appalling, Steven sucked it in to see how much he could bear. With his eyes closed it felt like he was standing on the edge of a rotting, canyon-wide cunt, about to fall in and be consumed by its geysering glit.

When he tore her free of the blood she bumped across the floor like a piece of furniture. He dragged her by her ankles and her arms caught on the legs of chairs.

Getting her to the roof was hard but Steven suffered it like a mule. The physical pain of lugging her up the ladder, the frustration of trying to fit her around corners, was just another part of unbearable existence

There was still something of Dog wedged between the chimneys. The upper part of its body was mostly stripped, but the lower half, beyond the reach of birds, retained a covering of dried meat.

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