Great Apes by Will Self

Author:Will Self [Self, Will]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-06-04T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Simon Dykes, no longer an artist, merely a mental patient, squatted on the nest in secure room six and pondered the events of the morning. His madness – he felt – was beginning to take on a new texture, like a fog which, having appeared impenetrable, begins to boil then shreds to reveal tatters of landscape. Could his humanity be the delusion – and his chimpunity – preposterous sign! – the reality?

He yawned, scratched his armpit with one hand, his ischial scrag with the other. Then – without being conscious of it – fell to examining his body. His hands smoothed along his thighs, his fingertips splayed over his shins and then his feet. He didn’t feel any different – or did he? True, he hadn’t shaved for two weeks now and the stubble under his chin had acquired the pile of beard – he could smooth it this way and rough it the other. But his chest, his arms, his thighs, they were no more lanate than before.

Simon’s questing fingers sought out a pit on his right kneecap. A pit that they knew should be there, a pit caused by a bad bicycle crash when he was six or seven. They failed to locate it and the former artist brought his eyes to bear. He stared at his knee. Perhaps the fur there was thicker. He couldn’t remember it braiding together in this fashion, individual clumps flowing into mini-dreadlocks. Where was the pit? The old scar? Fingers scrabbled – yes, scrabbled – in the sparse fur until they found it, then Simon sighed. Sighed to find himself still Simon, still human.

He rolled off the nest and knuckle-walked to the window. It felt comfortable to move quadrumanously, good to stretch and grab the thin bars across the slit of window. Simon pulled himself bipedal. There was nothing to see outside, the window looked on to an internal courtyard of the hospital, but a view no matter how limited was part of the outside world. Simon was, he realised, imagining going outside. More than that – he wanted to go outside, whatever he might find there.

What did the vile piece in the paper about Sarah mean? Was she fucking Ken Braithwaite? Did chimps fuck? And what of all the other people he knew? ‘People’. The sign sounded odd to Simon – more like some garbled vocalisation than anything truly meaningful. And what of his infants, his three little males? Simon pictured them lined up, off-the-peg kids representing a series of standard sizes: small, medium, large. They were all identically clad in dark blue pullovers, with the name of their school emblazoned across their chests. They all had the same squeakily new, shit-coloured, leather satchels slung around their shoulders, and they all had the same expression puckering their muzzles, creasing up their sweet, green eyes. Then they fissioned and scampered towards him, clawed their way up on to him, one leaping for his shoulder, another grabbing an arm, the third – and littlest – shinning up his leg.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.