The Animals Praise the Antichrist by Alex Older

Author:Alex Older [Older, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction - category to be assigned
Publisher: Melchisedec Press
Published: 2020-05-12T05:00:00+00:00

Your mum, for once, had been wondering where we were. She’d been at home a while, had asked Mats what time we’d left that morning, and couldn’t understand how we could have been out for so many hours, especially in the rain.

Your lies were convincing enough. We’d set off for a walk into the woods, picked up the route of the abandoned railway line and followed it all the way to the nearest town several miles distant. Having spent some time there, and had tea and cake in a cafe to avoid the worst of the weather, we’d realised it would be too dark to take the same trail home and so we’d had to come the long way round, over the moor-top road. We were very tired and very damp, but it’d been a stimulating walk and we’d had plenty of exercise.

While we changed, and you made a fuss of Liv, your mum cooked us some pasta, the first time on any of my visits she’d made us something to eat. There was so much to ponder, so much to take in: the nightmarish trip, our meeting with Manus. But I didn’t want to think about any of it. Looking out of an upstairs hallway window, I could see lights from houses in the village flecking the night. There was a rich atmosphere of an ordinary Saturday evening, at least in my head. Saturday night sitcoms were showing, to be followed by a disaster movie. It didn’t matter that we weren’t watching. Just knowing they were on was homely. Over on Two they were showing À bout de souffle, a French classic we’d both heard about and which you’d said you were taping. All of this seemed to be enough for me just then. Lamps in the dark as winter set in, a simple meal being prepared, films on TV. I felt a desperate urge to burrow into the moment. I didn’t want to know about Manus in the church with his secret work, or imagine my dad getting ready for the pub, with the smell of aftershave drifting about and the sound of pinging as the sunbed cooled down. I didn’t want to remember the lies we’d just told your one remaining parent or the sight of you in the woods clawing at yourself, convinced your were ancient and ugly. Everything was so screwed up and, for the first time ever, I found myself caring. Your mum’s kindness had put me in a really strange mood.

You didn’t feel the same way at all. After dinner, you lay lifelessly on the bed in your black and blood-coloured room and went over everything again and again. Only your mouth moved. Mushrooms, Manus, embarrassment, old age, Helen, Walter, the cottages, the church: on and on it went. I remember it as though a single light was shining on your lips and the only sound was the sound of your deep voice, deeper than ever, but that can’t be right, there must have been more lights, and music playing too.

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