Nicola Barker - Darkmans

Kane gazed down at his hand, bewildered–

Con…con…con…

— then he slowly opened his hand and he inspected the coin.

‘Is that it?’ he asked, flatly.

‘Why?’ she grinned, pulling back. ‘D’you think it’s worth more? D’you think I’ve undervalued it?’

Kane didn’t answer. He continued to inspect the coin–

Con…con…congruity?

‘The traditional amount is a penny,’ she was explaining. Kane stared up into her bruised face–

That two things are in sync?

In parallel?

He drew a deep breath, ‘So how…?’

His foot spasmed–

Jeesus!

–‘So how much did you pay Beede for his?’ he winced.

‘Beede?’ Elen seemed surprised by this question, as if the idea of buying a wart from Beede was quite preposterous. ‘Good God , no,’ she chuckled, walking back over to the sink, ‘I didn’t buy Beede’s wart. You couldn’t buy a wart from Beede…’

Con…con…congruity?

Con…con…congruent?

Kane’s brain began buzzing–

Con…con…congruere—

It hiccoughed–

Ruere…

He blinked–

To fall?

Ruere…to ru-to ru-to…to ruin?

Kane frowned. He turned. ‘But I don’t understand…’ he muttered. ‘Don’t understand what?’ she asked, pumping some soap on to her palm from the dispenser.

‘I don’t understand what the difference is…’

To fall

To ruin

‘…I mean between us —between me and Beede…’

Elen reached out her hand to turn on the tap and in that same instant Kane was flung, unceremoniously, back into that cold, white room — that wet room — and she was clawing, terrified, at his neck, his cheek, and he was swiping her away from him, laughing, because it was, it was–

Funny!

Her fear—

Hilarious!

Delicious!

— then suddenly he was in another place — a darker place — but it was still the same memory, the same transaction, the same idea —and he was tying her to a bench. And she was screaming. She was furious. And he was applying a gentle blade to her. There was a doctor. There was a servant. They were bleeding her together. They were letting blood. They were definitely in cah… ah…ahh…ahhh! … . Caaa-HOOTS!

Kane sneezed himself back into the red, leather chair again. He stared down at the coin, his nose prickling, his eyes tearing-up, shocked.

‘Bless you,’ she said. And then: ‘I suppose I just thought it might be a little too straightforward for him,’ she murmured, ‘a little obvious — a little crude , even…’

What?!

‘But not for me?’

Kane glanced up, livid.

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ Elen back-pedalled, ‘it’s more of a generational thing,’ she tore off her apron, ‘Beede’s very old-fashioned.’ Kane gazed down at the coin again–

Coin—

Cuneus—

Kunte—

Cunt

— he shuddered.

‘And the problem with his foot was much more severe,’ Elen tried her best to mollify him as she screwed the apron into a tight ball and dropped it into the bin, ‘much more serious.’

‘Is it because of my line of work?’ Kane demanded, paranoid. ‘Is it because I’m a dealer?’

Elen didn’t answer him. A small strand of her hair had become caught around one of the buttons on her overall and she was struggling to disentangle it.

‘Does that just make you automatically assume,’ Kane continued, furious, ‘that I’m the kind of person who thinks pretty much anything can be bought and sold?’

Elen freed her hair then unbuttoned her overall, pulled it off and folded it up. It was almost as if she hadn’t heard him.

Kane turned the coin over in his hand. He felt cheap — dirty — paid off. ‘You think I’m fickle…’ he murmured, ‘feckless, superficial— just like he does…’

Still, no response.

He twisted around in his chair. ‘Elen?’

Her name felt odd on his tongue as he spoke it — like a dirty thought; like a swearword.

Elen was placing her carefully folded overall into one of the open cardboard boxes behind the chair. She straightened up. ‘You can put your boot back on again now,’ she told him, turning to inspect her reflection in the small mirror above the sink, ‘the treatment’s over.’

Kane leaned forward and grabbed his boot–

Boat

‘So how did you finally get rid of it?’ he murmured, shoving his foot back into it–

Boat

— then feeling himself pitch, unexpectedly, to the right–

Wooah

‘Pardon?’

Kane pressed his lips together for a moment, feeling unstable, slightly nauseous, clinging on to the chair’s arm for support.

‘Beede’s w-wart,’ he stuttered.

‘I used a rather more traditional technique,’ Elen explained, apparently oblivious, ‘involving an Ash tree and a pin. You push the pin into the tree, then into the wart, then back into the tree again…’

‘And that’s it?’

Kane struggled to focus.

‘Pretty much. I mean you say a few words…’

‘What do you say?’ he gasped.

‘Uh…You say…’ she frowned, arranging her hair over the bruised side of her face, ‘you say, “Ashen tree, Ashen tree, please take these warts from me…”’

‘Ash,’ Kane murmured, drawing a deep breath and then grabbing for his laces and pulling them stiff. He glanced up as he pulled and saw a huge sail tightening behind him. The wind that blew into it — a hot wind, a dry wind — filled the sail with a deafening clamour, a thunderous babble–

Asche, it howled, aska, arere, ardere, ardour, arson…

— he saw words clashing and merging and collapsing and rotating. He saw chaos — an infinity of teeth, tongues, mouths, breath. He saw a storm of confusion. And he was holding the line hard, and the words kept on filling it, and the vessel kept on ploughing — relentlessly — through the water…

Then the shoe-lace snapped, under pressure–

What?!

Kane gazed down at the lace, dazedly.

‘Do you need some help with that?’ Elen was kneeling down in front of him, smiling. But she wasn’t smiling at him, she was smiling beyond him. She was smiling over his shoulder, at someone behind him. He leaned back, terrified, then gazed up at the light fitment–

The fly

Where is it?

— searching for the fly. ‘ But what if HE is the fly?’ a quiet voice whispered.

Eh?

He quickly looked down again, aghast.

Elen had taken a hold of his laces and was retying his boot. ‘You’re not fickle at all,’ she was murmuring.

‘You’re kind and sweet and brave and incredibly loyal.’

She tied a tight double-bow then reached out her hand and caressed his chin with it. He saw compassion in her eyes, empathy, sympathy —and he felt himself sinking into it, helplessly — deliriously — into the tenderness of her touch, into her kindness, into her pity , but just as he was falling into it, collapsing into it — there was a hard, sharp knock–

‘Elen?’

What?

Kane was jolted back to consciousness–

Where?

— and he was surrounded by smoke. He jerked forward, automatically, starting to choke, longing to cough, but he felt a pair of strong hands on his shoulders, at his throat–

I can’t…

‘It’s all so very sudden , Elen,’ a voice was murmuring, a male voice, plainly distraught. ‘What brought on this decision? I thought you liked it here. I thought you were happy at the practice…’