Paradise Rot

The blood was old, like it usually is on the first day of my period, and the drops had coagulated into little sticky black lumps. It has always frightened me that I can’t stop the blood. It just drips and drips from me to a rhythm I can’t control, and now, too, every drip was wrapped in an echo from the porcelain, from the plasterboard, from the firm concrete walls. They whispered to me – *Jo* … *Jo* … *Jo* … *Jo* … – as if I was leaking into the room and dissolving, flowing from my own bloody crotch like black juice from a rotten apple core.

Su

The smell of rot on my hands was faint and familiar, and when we put the container down under the stairs I remembered how, when we’d dumped the apples in it, I had imagined we were cleaning out paradise. I got a sudden urge to open the compost and look at the apples. Carral sat on the lid, and I sat next to her. Her arm was near mine. Her skin was soft, softer than I remembered, as if she was rotten too, a fallen Eve. Under us I could hear the apples rumble. Not a real sound, but a sort of internal buzzing, like how you can imagine hearing nails and hair growing or buds opening.

Reklam

Su

The women feast on the poor man’s flesh, And chew each bone whilst it is fresh, So the two women can become one with a kiss; The dream of every biologist! To grow together is their pursuit, And his red flesh their forbidden fruit, He stumbles and gasps and finally dies; From his ashes will a four-breasted creature arise.

Su

I could hear the water drip from the ceiling, from the walls, from every corner, and I thought that it dripped with us, for us.

Su

Outside the house the world was dry and sharp and normal, and it didn’t quite correspond with what seemed to grow between the brewery walls: something moist, skinless and quiet.

Su

Where everything on Pym’s body bulged, as if something under his skin was always trying to tear its way out, Carral’s skin was the pristine surface of water.