Lauren Beukes - Broken Monsters

Below the waist is a different story. Oh boy. That’s a whole other section of the book store. There’s a dark gash, right above where his hips should be, where he has been somehow … attached to the lower half of a deer, hooves and all. The white flick of the tail sticks up like a jaunty little flag. The brown fur is bristled with dried blood. The flesh appears melted together at the seam.

Officer Jones is hanging back. The smell is terrible. She’s guessing the intestines are severed, on both sets of bodies, leaking shit and blood into the conjoined cavities. Plus there’s the gamey reek of the deer’s scent glands. She pities the ME having to open up this mess. Better than the paperwork, though. Or dealing with the goddamn media. Or, worse, the mayor’s office.

‘Here,’ she offers, fishing a small red tub of lipgloss out of her pocket. Something she bought at the drugstore on a whim to appease Layla. A candy-flavored cosmetic – that’s sure to bridge the gap between them. ‘It’s not menthol, but it’s something.’

‘Thanks,’ he says, grateful, which marks him out as an FNG. Fucking New Guy. He dips his finger in and smears the greasy balm under his nose; cherry-flavored snot. With sparkles in it, Gabi notices for the first time, but does not point out. Small pleasures.

‘Don’t get any on the scene,’ she warns him.

‘No. No, I won’t.’

‘And don’t even think about taking any pictures on your phone to show your buddies.’ She looks around at the tunnel with the graffiti that grows on bare walls in this city like plaque, the weight of the pre-dawn darkness, the lack of traffic. ‘We’re going to contain this.’

They do not remotely contain it.

Jonno is yanked from sleep’s deepest tar pits by an elbow to the jaw. He comes up flailing and disoriented, only to find himself fighting bed sheets. The girl from last night – Jen Q – rolls over, her arms flung above her head, revealing the sleeve of tattooed birds that runs up her chest and over her shoulder. She’s oblivious to having nearly concussed him. Her eyelids are flickering in REM, caught up in a dream that makes her breath jagged, similar to the panting delight he elicited from her earlier when she was riding him, his hands on her hips. When she came, she flung her head back, flicking her mane of braids. His bad luck to catch one in the eye, which called an abrupt halt to the proceedings as he teared up, blinking in pain.

‘Easy …’ he says, rubbing her back to bring her out of it. He can feel the dark corona of a hangover hovering around his head waiting to slam down. But not quite yet. Perversely, the pain from the elbow jab seems to be keeping it at bay.

‘Mmmgghff,’ she says, not properly awake. But he’s broken through the skin of her nightmare. He runs his palm down the curve of her waist, under the sheets. His cock stirs.

That’s twice in one night she’s hurt him. It’s entirely possible she’ll break his heart next. It was the way she kept saying afterwards, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,’ but couldn’t hold back the giggles, collapsing onto his chest, crying with laughter while his eye streamed.

‘That’s not exactly a gesture of solidarity,’ he complained at the time, but the soft weight of her felt sweet, her whole body shaking with laughter.

‘Do you want to fuck again?’ he whispers into her ear now.

‘T’morrow,’ she mumbles, but parts her legs to accommodate his hand anyway. ‘S’nice. Keep doing that.’

She sighs and rolls over, so that he can move in behind her. He pushes his hard-on up against her ass, his fingers sliding over her clit until he realizes that her breathing has deepened because she’s gone back to sleep. Great.

He flops onto his back and looks around the room, but there’s not much in the way of clues. 1 × wooden ceiling fan. 1 × Scandi modern cupboard. Reedy blinds over the window. Their clothes all over the floor. No books, which is troubling if he intends to fall in love with her. Did he tell her that he’s a writer?

He wonders what the Q stands for. An actual last name or a DJ add-on? Jen X would have been too cutesy, he supposes. Not her style, based on what he has to go on. Which is, to summarize this in one of the easily digestible lists he churns out in lieu of making a respectable living:

1) The set she played last night at the so-called secret party, for which a hundred people showed in a studio in Eastern Market under a T-shirt shop. He can’t remember the music she was playing, but it was that time of the night when everything merges into doof-doof bass.

2) The way she danced, her braids twisted up on her head, to prevent exactly the kind of injury she had inflicted on him. The first thing he noticed. She moved like she was happy. And she smiled when he caught her eye. He liked that. Not too cool to smile.

3) The way she plucked the cigarette impatiently from his mouth when they were outside, still strangers, bound only by the camaraderie of being smokers, having to stand out in the cold with the fuzzy promise of emphysema in the distant future. They’d been talking about Motown and techno. That Rodriguez documentary. The bankruptcy. All the easy conversational set-pieces. He thought she was going to take a drag, and instead she kissed him.

4) Making out in her car. There are snapshots in his memory, Instagrams really, because they’re blurry round the edges: following her down a hedged-in alley round the side of a house to a detached cottage, kissing her neck while she messed around with the keys, the smell of her skin making him crazy, swearing, laughing, her sharp ‘shhhh’ as the door fell open and they tumbled inside.

5) The shapes of furniture in the darkness as she led him straight through to the bedroom. Both of them drunk. Or him, definitely. He could tell by the way the room went all tilt-a-whirl for a moment. Kissing, tugging off clothes. The way she felt inside.

Shit. Did they use a condom? The thought makes his stomach flop, but not for the reasons it would have a year ago.

She gives one little rabbit snore, and he ducks as she flings out her arm again. No good. He can tell by the clarity of his thoughts that he’s not going back to sleep. He has become an expert on his own insomnia. Usually it’s fear that jerks him awake in the middle of the night, heart racing. He leans over the side of the bed, fishing for his phone in his jacket pocket. Four forty-eight. That’s later than his average, which is usually around two in the morning. He should get laid more often. No shit, Sherlock.

Jonno does not check his inbox, even though the number above the little envelope insists that he has new messages. New voicemail too, according to the digit attached to the cartoon speech bubble. It used to be that the only icons that could inspire such terrible dread were plague signs. A black X over the door.

He opens the browser instead and looks up Jen Q. Only a couple of pages of search results, usually limited to a listing at a festival or a gig guide. A tiny profile on some music review site. But she’s social media-ed to the eyeballs. All the usual suspects and even a MySpace page, which means she’s probably a little older than he thought. He clicks through her selfies, inspirational quotes, self-promos. ‘Xcited 2b playing Coal Club 2nite. $5 cover!’ It’s all surface shit, posing for the world. He knows the feeling.

His hangover is settling in. He’s going to need something to keep it at bay.

He throws back the covers and swings his legs over the edge of the bed, waiting for the swirl of nausea to pass. Jen doesn’t stir. She has raccoon eyes from her mascara. Cate would never have gone to bed without taking off her makeup.