Christos Tsiolkas - Merciless Gods

When she returned to her armchair, the same monotonous exertions were taking place. Her disgust had disappeared. She had expected that she would find the images foul, not necessarily because they were pornographic, but because they depicted sex between men. Yes, the actors had seemed effeminate and ridiculous when they were kissing or performing oral sex on one another. But now that the older man was sodomising the younger one, frowning in concentration as he pounded away at the prostrate body spread over the desk, it seemed all too familiar. It was shockingly normal.

She closed her eyes. She would not look, she would keep her eyes shut. She heard the men on the screen barking out their orgasms. When she finally opened her eyes again the boss was zipping up his pants and the blond youth was sheepishly putting on his shirt. Now don’t ever be late again, the boss counselled. She laughed out loud.

Her body tensed as the next scene began. A large stocky man, older than the previous actors, was entering a toilet. He unzipped in the cubicle and lowered his pants. His penis was thick, so unlike her husband’s lean organ. The actor took off his shirt, revealing a flabby belly covered in fine brown hairs. She thought him ugly, obscene; he reminded her of all the sweating rude men who called her love at work, the men who scoffed down their meat pies.

He was the man who was going to abuse her son. She knew it even before Nick appeared. There was a hole in the wall of the cubicle. Her jaw clenched when Nick came in, stood at the urinal.

Her gaze was still locked onto the screen but the images had fallen away. She had removed herself into a memory, nothing concrete, not a vision or an image; the tender sensation of Nick falling asleep at her breast. She fell back into the room. Outside, birds were trilling and she heard schoolchildren laughing on their way home.

‘Fuck me.’

It wasn’t Nick’s voice. It was an American voice. For one small moment, happiness descended — this was not her son. But her relief quickly vanished. It was Nick, his wide grin, his lazy left eye that made his face still seem goofily adolescent. She saw the Scorpio tattoo on his neck, the tattoo that had caused her husband to hit out at him that first time he had run away.

It was not Nick’s body. She knew him as a skinny young man, still vividly remembered his embarrassment as the first sprinklings of black hair appeared on his belly and his chest, how he would try to hide his body at the beach by crossing his arms. ‘Don’t be embarrassed, Nicky,’ she would laugh at him, scratching at his belly. ‘You’re becoming a man. Be proud.’ He would snap at her, push her away from him.

This was not Nick’s body. He had muscles now, his torso and chest were smooth. She rose, began to pace, not looking, looking. He was on his back, the ugly man was sodomising him. She hated him, she detested him.

‘Why?’ It was a scream. ‘You didn’t need money. We gave you everything. Why? Why? Why? ’ The choked word was her defence, she threw it at the screen, no longer caring who heard: the neighbours, the laughing children, the whole world. She wanted Nick to hear it, wanted him to understand her fury.

She roamed the room, cursing him and wounding herself, smashing her palms against her temples, sinking her fingernails into the flesh of her arms, making herself bleed. She strode around and around the room, damning him to the devil. On the mantelpiece was a photo of the family. Nicky, her little Nicky.

She stopped and turned back to the screen. She watched, appalled, as Nick, with joy in his eyes, licked at the semen dripping from the other man’s penis.

She took the remote and shut off that world. There was a last fleeting glimpse of her son, the camera in his face, his eyes to heaven, as his mouth and jaw were bathed in semen. The video whirred to a halt inside the VCR.

An advertisement was on the television. She watched a young woman hold up a box of detergent, the pristine whiteness a shock after the muted yellows and oranges of the video. It too seemed obscene, contaminated by all that she had just witnessed. Her breath was retching. She threw the ashtray against the wall with such force that she stumbled and collapsed. She lay curled up on the floor, with no tears but with her entire body shaking and convulsing.

When she finally rose, the room was dark. She turned off the TV and threw open the curtains, allowing in the winter’s fading sun. She ejected the video from the player, and dropped it and its cover into the kitchen sink. She opened the window, switched on the fan above the stove, and took out a bottle of methylated spirits from the cupboard underneath the sink. She doused the video, struck a match, threw it and moved away. The flame leapt, grabbed the edges of the curtains. She rushed to put out the flames, ripping apart the fabric, throwing the still-burning material into the sink. She stood in awe as the flames flared and leapt almost to the ceiling, washing the kitchen in their fiery light. Slowly, the fire stopped dancing and she approached the sink. The video was now two shattered solid white wheels afloat in a thick black ooze. The smoke smelt toxic. She coughed and fanned the smoke towards the window. Covering her mouth, she leaned over the sink and blasted the foulness with water. There was a sizzling, more black smoke, then finally nothing. She scooped the coagulated mess into her gloved hands and threw it in the bin, spitting on it before she slammed the lid.

She scrubbed, scoured the kitchen with disinfectant. The sink she attacked mercilessly, her face, her arms, her back dripping with perspiration; she bathed the sink in vinegar till it shone silver, till all signs of blackness had disappeared.

When she had finished, when the house was once again neat and clean, when the shards of the ashtray had been collected and deposited in the bin, when all was as before except for the reproving nakedness of the kitchen window, she took a bottle of brandy and sat cross-legged in the spare room, his old room.

She took out the family photo albums, and drank and remembered. There was Nick at his confirmation, grinning proudly at the camera. There was Nick as she knew him, the real Nick, in a singlet by the sea, his arm around his cousin’s shoulder, laughing so hard his eyes were squeezed shut. There was Nick at two and Nick at five. There was Nick in his school uniform, Nick as a surly thirteen-year-old in a village square in Italy. She filled and refilled her glass, poring over the photographs, remembering, replenishing her memories, filling her eyes and her mind with her Nick.

She finished the bottle, going through the photo albums again and again. When her husband found her, she was whimpering her son’s name, over and over, a blanket of photos spread around her. He took her in his arms, placed her gently in bed, whispered to her that she should sleep.

But sleep would never again be peace. She lay there still, listening to the muted words of his praying.

WHERE DOES JESUS LIVE? I KNOW. He lives deep down in the sewer with me.

I saw Jesus just the other night. I was with Mickey. He was shit-scared, couldn’t stop looking over his shoulders, jerking his body this way and that, jumping around, grinding his teeth from all the goey he had shot up. He was petrified cos he owed Dick Cheese Saunders, that big fat fuck, two thousand bucks. Mickey didn’t have two thousand bucks. He could barely scrape together a lousy twenty.

I saw Jesus in Mickey’s eyes. For a brief moment they had stopped twitching and had swerved back to look at me. Our Saviour stared straight out.

Then a fleshy, hairy paw landed on Mickey’s shoulder and I heard a gruff, bass voice say, ‘Where ya been, cunt?’