Carnivore: The most controversial debut literary thriller of 2017. Jonathan Lyon
the ketamine rose again in my mind, and fell back into a low note plucked on a cello.
‘I decided you’re a paradox,’ Eva said, her nose against mine. ‘It’s your opacity that’s attractive. You’re an act inside an act. What are your motivations?’
‘Motivations are for the artless,’ I said.
She didn’t answer, but shook her hair in a tremor of pleasure, and left. As the door shut behind her, Iris stood – and fetched a bottle of water from the fridge.
‘I still can’t be nice to you,’ she said. ‘I know about you.’
‘What do you know about me?’ I asked, delighted.
‘You can’t seduce me. I refuse to be seduced.’
‘I can seduce you. I’ll be so honest that you’ll become invested in me against your will.’
‘Is that your usual method?’
‘No. But I know that’s the method that will work.’
I was surrounded by the scent of thunder, and the scents that come after summer rain – of bracken fronds releasing cyanide into the air, and the odours of wood and soaked flowers.
‘How?’ she asked.
‘You are already intrigued,’ I said. ‘You wouldn’t have said “you can’t seduce me”, unless it was a challenge.’
‘Was it?’
‘Let’s make it one.’
‘Ok, then tell me the truth –’ Iris blinked as the dissociative drug fanned through her reflexes. ‘What are you doing? Why did you turn up at Eva’s door half beaten to death?’
‘Because I knew that by appearing so vulnerable before her she would forgive me.’
‘Ok, that’s quite a strong start.’ She sipped from the water bottle.
‘Honesty can be thrilling.’
‘So you used being beaten up as an advantage?’
‘I weaponised my suffering,’ I said. ‘I positioned her in the empowered role, so that she couldn’t feel like my victim anymore – she was the healer, I was the victim. Making people help you makes them care about you – or even makes them love you. Putting my health in her hands was a way of accelerating our intimacy, in the same way that being this honest with you accelerates our intimacy.’
‘Why did you want her to forgive you?’
‘She might be useful.’
‘Then why not just befriend her? Why steal her boyfriend? Why the mind-fuck first?’
‘I didn’t steal anything,’ I said. ‘And the mind-fuck is the befriending. How else can she know me properly unless I hurt her? And then come to her, having myself been hurt.’
‘So, what – the proper you is hurting people?’
‘Being hurt can be thrilling.’
‘Did you get beaten up on purpose?’
‘I’d have to really love being in this much pain to do that.’
‘Has the ketamine helped?’
I smiled. ‘I’m nearly ready to give birth.’
We stood up. She took my arm. But her touch had too many premises in it – like mist over a pond at sunrise – and I saw a flotilla of lotus leaves, leaving the shore of the living, each burning a different stack of incense – cypress and cassia and styrax and myrrh, and so on – until I seemed inside a mayhem of futures. The aroma was too strong – and, quickly, I kissed her. She let me.
‘But I’m still not seduced,’ she said.
I balanced on her as she opened the door. My movements had regained little focus.
‘I’m not finished yet,’ I said. ‘I have to seduce you with cruelty as well.’
We quit the chrome kitchen arm in arm, and glided down the corridor.
‘How will being cruel to me seduce me?’ she asked.
‘Not to you, to someone you’re attracted to. Francis.’
She didn’t reply.
‘I guessed in you a proprietary jealousy,’ I said, ‘that differed from simple sympathy for Eva.’
‘Am I supposed to be impressed by that? Most of the girls here have a crush on Francis. That wasn’t a hard guess.’
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