Carnivore: The most controversial debut literary thriller of 2017. Jonathan Lyon
up a waterfall – until it reached the window, and leapt out into the red of the night. Dawn sat back into the table with an expression of opiated wonder – perhaps having had the same vision as me.
‘It’s your turn,’ she said. ‘You’re supposed to balance me out. What happened to your mother? Why’d you need me?’
‘I’ve told you. When I was eleven my dad shot my mum then shot himself. I found the bodies. I had an older sister, but she died when I was six.’
‘Maybe. Maybe I believe you. But you lie about who you want to be, don’t you? You lie so people show themselves to you. I know you think I’m stupid – and I am stupid compared to you, and even stupider now that you got me this bump on my head – but it’s fine, just because I don’t have an education to wear on my sleeve.’ She lifted her hands to stop me interrupting. ‘Even if you gave that education to yourself, sweetheart, but still, for all you want to twist me around – I understand you more than you think I do. And that’s why you like me. You like me because you can’t manipulate me.’
‘I can manipulate you.’
She laughed. ‘Yeah but you can’t control me completely. You can’t predict everything. That’s what you need me for.’
‘And why was now the time for this little soliloquy?’
‘Because life’s about to happen to us! I want you to know what I know. Maybe I like you because you like lies more than people.’
‘I like lies that get people to tell me their secrets,’ I said. ‘But also, my lies are confessions, in a way. Lies are fantasies – and fantasies reveal you much more nakedly than facts.’
‘Go on then.’
‘Stories that aren’t biographically true can still be true – if they reveal something about the teller’s psychology. They are psychologically true. They show what I want you to believe about me. Lies are not as simple as inaccuracies. A lie, as an evasion or a complication, is still a revelation of character – it’s a slanted truth. If I told you I was trampled by a horse when I was fifteen, and the trauma of that incident is the reason why I am now inert and deceitful and constantly in pain – you would learn something true about me. It may not have literally happened, but it gives you an image by which to understand me. Rather than listing diagnoses – like fibromyalgia or immune dysfunction or dysautonomia or insomnia or Lyme disease or myalgic encephalomyelitis or even just poverty – that all only speak to the surface of what I am, I give you instead a metaphor, of a trampling horse. And by that metaphor you comprehend me beyond facts. It wasn’t literally true – it was psychologically true. Lies are insights into the liar, if you read them right.’
‘So when you tell people about me, I’m going to be a horse?’
‘No, you’ll be a blue-ringed octopus. A many-limbed entanglement, overbearing, toxic, and drowning.’
‘You’re a charmer.’
‘I have to go,’ I said.
Worry resurfaced in her face. ‘Let me drive you there.’
‘You can’t drive like this. And I want to be cold for a while.’
‘Please don’t walk there.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘It’s dangerous,’ she said.
‘I’ll see you at the Rockway, ok? Do I get a key?’
‘Yeah, course you do sweetheart.’
She removed a key ring from her pocket and put it into mine. She hugged me, trembling as though suppressing an apology or a warning – and waved me away with defeat in her eyes.
I left, disorientated, but impressed – as though she’d managed some master manipulation that I could barely understand.
I strode through unfamiliar streets, my mind widening into the night’s intimacy. The space between the terraced houses had a presence I called ‘indisclosure’: the active sense of a city withholding its meanings. And as I said the word to myself, its sound gained the taste of cotton candy – a too-sweet taste, though I kept repeating it anyway – indisclosure, indisclosure, indisclosure.
The houses had put their wheelie-bins out in the street – for tomorrow’s collection – and they reminded me of a dream I used to have, of waking up inside a black plastic bag, in a dustbin – and feeling content there, waiting for the truck to come and take me away – from the pain I felt then, and still felt now.
Tonight that pain came as a nest of tarantulas – dressed in the smeared aprons of butchers, washing their cleavers in my blood, and promenading along my muscles like avenues in an orchard.
I walked down a bike path to a canal. The wind quickened in its confinement here, so I walked faster, fingering the key in my pocket.
I imagined the wind coming from the old Deptford dockyard, and carrying with it the sighs of sailors who’d left from there and died at sea, younger than me, as long as half a millennium ago – when the docks had been the cradle of a navy that plundered the whole world. And in this wind, in its ghosts, was a reminder that London was still growing from the profits of that plunder.
But also in this wind was an opposite reminder – that London had grown from an army’s camp – an invader’s camp – and the river that army had bivouacked beside was rising. The walls that defended it were invisible now – but they were still here – and they couldn’t hold back the water forever. All camps are temporary – this one would be washed away too.
Two figures approached from beneath the bridge. One was taller than me, but both, in the gloom, looked younger, perhaps sixteen years old. The taller wore a dark tracksuit, dark trainers, and a white snapback hat; his shorter partner had more flair, with a cyan sweatshirt over navy overalls speckled with paint, and cobalt-blue shoes. His cropped hair was shaven in whorls.
‘Mate can you lend us some money?’ the shorter one asked.
I ignored them, clenching the key, and tried to walk past. The taller stepped into my way. I tiredly lifted my eyes to his.
‘Got any money to lend us?’ he asked.
I stared without saying anything. A vein in my leg twitched, and my blood began to flush with anticipation.
The taller one stepped closer and shoved me at my hip. I moved in obedience to his fist, and inhaled, untensing myself, as if about speak – but said nothing. The other shoved my shoulder.
‘You speak English?’ he asked. ‘We need to borrow a bit of money. I need to buy a speedboat.’ He laughed.
I sighed, readying my best impersonation of an action hero, and took two steps backwards.
‘Which of you wants your leg broken first?’ I asked.
Their expressions paused, blank while processing a reaction to this bluff – and then, just as they were both deciding on sniggers, I twisted round to kick sideways at the taller one’s outer leg, my shoe flat in a right angle as its heel hit his knee socket. It dislocated but didn’t snap – he shrieked, hobbling back, rolling his upper body forwards – so I punched into his nose, upwards, and it easily broke. His blood dribbled onto my knuckles like honey and, as I skipped backwards, for a moment I wanted to lick it.
The shorter boy stared in shock. The wall beside us prevented most types of attack, so I span and ducked to kick up in a back-hook at his face – hitting his chin, but not hard enough. The jaw clattered but didn’t snap. I spun to face him again, in a low stance, my fists up. He swiped vaguely at me with his left hand – I blocked it, but saw too late it had been a feint, and with his stronger fist he struck my eye. The side of its socket splintered into steel light – and he jabbed again at my stomach. I was tensed enough not to be winded, but stumbled to