Gary McMahon - Silent Voices

The word faded, as if drawn in mist. He reached out and rubbed the mirror clean, and saw a fleeting, jerky movement behind him. He spun around, but of course there was nothing there. He was spooked, seeing things. He could no longer trust even his own senses. Sight, sound, smell, touch… liars, all of them. He doubted now that he had even seen the word written on the glass.

He took off his jacket and laid it on the next sink along, draping the collar over the taps so that it wouldn’t fall onto the floor. Then, without looking down, he began to unbutton his shirt. He did it slowly, methodically, not wanting to rush. Still there was no pain; no feeling at all. His entire back was numb, as if the nerves had been stripped away, the meat cleaved off the bone.

He placed his shirt on top of his jacket.

Even facing forward, looking at himself in the mirror, he could see the red blotches as they crept around his sides beneath his arms, caressing his small love handles. He turned to the left, looking at his right side, and the first of the boils came into view. Whatever had entered him — possessed him? — that night, when the acorn had disgorged its occupant, had done this to him. It had crawled inside him, letting out the twenty-year-old pollution but also bringing its own toxins, mingling them, stirring them up.

He turned the rest of the way around, craning his neck so that he could keep an eye on the damage in the mirror. Last night he had noticed the suggestion of something within the mass of ruptured tissue, something with eyes. Today that formation was clearer, the picture taking shape.

A rudimentary face was forming out of the chaos across his back, the marks and striations, the ruined flesh. A face that was at once familiar: features that somehow resembled his own.

The face sat between his shoulder blades, its eyelids level with the centre of his back. Its nose stuck out of the skin, the nostrils perfectly formed, and he could even make out the bone structure he’d stared at every morning in the mirror, the cheeks he’d spent years shaving every other day, the lips with which he had kissed his wife and his children countless times.

Brendan tried not to think about his dead twin often, but right now he was unable to think of anything else.

He’d heard the story many times as a child, and even researched the facts when he was older. He had not thought about it in any great depth since his own children were born, but now the memories surged forward from the darkness at the back of his brain.

He recalled the doctor’s description by rote; it was like a fairy tale, an old story told to ensure his good behaviour. An old story about how, when he was in the womb, still an egg, more or less, he had been one of a set of twins. His egg had absorbed the other egg. The process was called Vanishing Twin Syndrome. It was a quaint term, and he supposed it was named that way to lessen the blow, but it added to the fairytale quality of the account, making it into a story rather than a statement of fact.

Brendan, in his own pragmatic way, preferred to call it a case of in utero cannibalism.

He recalled what he had read in books and online. During the first trimester of pregnancy, a foetus would spontaneously abort and the foetal tissue would be absorbed, by the other twin, the placenta, or the mother. It was more common than people might think. The latest figures estimated that Vanishing Twin Syndrome occurred in 21-30% of all multiple pregnancies.

A common thing, then: one twin consuming the other.

At least it had not happened to Jane. They had been blessed with their own twins, and because of no genetic history of multiple births in her family, they supposed that his genes were responsible for the happy result. He was a twin. And his twin’s face had now appeared on his back, like Jesus in a bowl of cornflakes or Elvis on a cheeseburger bun.

No sweat.

Nothing wrong with that.

He stared at the face in the mirror. When it opened its goat-like eyes, he was not even shocked or surprised. It seemed so natural, so perfectly natural, that the face on his back would open its eyes and smile. There were no teeth in its mouth — not yet, anyway — so the smile was rather crude, unformed, but it was friendly enough in its way.

The bathroom floor tilted sideways and Brendan set his feet apart to ride out the movement. Then, when the room settled down and stillness was restored, he said, “What do you want from me?”

The eyes in his back closed; the face sunk into the pus-lathered spots and pustules. Brendan felt dampness on his cheeks. He reached up and brushed away the tears. How strange , he thought. How strange it is to mourn someone who has never really lived .

The bathroom door opened an inch or two before hitting the bin. “Hey,” said a voice. “What’s going on? I need to use the bog.”

“Just a minute,” said Brendan, rushing over to lean against the door, to prevent it from opening any further and allowing an outsider to intrude upon this family business. “There’s a bit of a mess in here… just cleaning it up. Could you use the ladies instead?”

The man grunted, huffed and puffed, and then went away.

Brendan went to the cubicle and wiped at his shoulders with paper tissues. Then he layered them over his back, like a second skin, before he put back on his shirt and his jacket and moved the bin away from the door.

He took one last look in the mirror before leaving. The smile he presented looked odd, disjointed. It made him look as if he’d lost his mind.

“Loculus,” he said to his retreating reflection, wondering again what it meant, and if he was even pronouncing it correctly.

BRENDAN LOOKED ILL when he sat back down at the table. His hands shook as he gripped his glass, and he slopped beer down the front of his shirt.

This time Simon did not ask if he was okay; he was beginning to feel like a mother hen, clucking around the favourite chick. He felt bad for thinking it, but Brendan was still putting up walls, keeping him out, and if that was the way he wanted to operate, there was little to be done about it for now. He could only push so hard before breaking something, and that had never been his aim.

Simon finished his beer and began to stand. “Same again?” he said, pushing the chair back from the table.

“I’ll get them.” The voice came from slightly behind him and off to his right.

Across the table, Brendan’s eyes widened.

Simon turned slowly. He knew exactly who would be standing there, but still it came as a shock to see Marty Rivers scowling at him, his broad shoulders blocking out a substantial amount of daylight from the window.

“Jesus,” said Simon, brushing against the table and making the glasses wobble. The moment stretched, becoming elastic.

“No. It’s just me. Marty. I believe you two characters have been looking for me.”

“You were there, weren’t you? Inside the flat when we came round.”

Marty nodded.

“Why didn’t you come out?”

Marty shrugged. His shoulders were huge. His entire frame was massive: wide chest, squared-off waist, thick arms. He looked exactly like what he was: a fighter. “I like to come to people on my terms. Even old friends. Now… what can I get you?”

Simon told him the round and as the enormous man walked across to the bar, he glanced at Brendan. “You’re fucking quiet,” he said.

Brendan nodded. “Aye, sorry. I’m distracted. Just let me get my breath back — yeah?”

Marty returned with the drinks, setting them down on the table. He pulled up a chair and sat alongside Simon, so that the two of them were facing Brendan across the table. Somebody chose that moment to turn on a CD player behind the bar. Low music stalked them through the tables and chairs — a female vocalist singing a bluesy tune.