Carnivore: The most controversial debut literary thriller of 2017. Jonathan Lyon
you’ll never talk to me again – and I have this pattern of falling back to you even when you’ve fucked me over and I just… it’s pathetic! I know what I’m doing means we’ll never speak again, and that hurts me, because you made me happy. I loved you, even though you’re a bad person, I still love you, but I can’t keep wondering and worrying about what I am to you anymore!’
She laughed suddenly, as though enjoying her own B-movie performance – and then breathed in and reined her expression back to despair. I glimpsed my reflection in the mirror behind her and saw that pain had made me pallid. My body felt like a zoo in revolt – its animals twisting open their cages to rampage through the halls – killing the keepers, trying to find the main doors – but the main doors could never be unlocked – and so they were trapped still, under the vast dome of paraffin that I wore as my skin – and I remained silent. She turned to me.
‘And I liked you, Leander. I thought you were on my side, I thought you could get through to him – but you’ve already got through to him, further than me, and you have no remorse, no sympathy, nothing, you’re both just standing there laughing at me, and for some reason I’m sorry. I’m fucking sorry I wasted a year on you, I’m fucking sorry that you were the only thing that made me happy, that when my friends said “Oh, you’re glowing” that it was you, and all the time you were just thinking about fucking other men. Every morning I woke up waiting to hear from you and every night I went to bed thinking about you. And it was a lie.’
‘No it weren’t,’ Francis said. ‘This ain’t you.’
‘Don’t fucking do that, don’t try to dismiss me. You saying this isn’t me?’
She fumbled desperately in the drawer before her for a knife.
‘You saying this isn’t real?’ she shouted, and stabbed the knife into her wrist, screeching more in fury than in pain.
I laughed. Francis leapt towards her.
‘Eva, Eva! You’re being ridiculous.’
‘Get the fuck away from me!’ she screamed, slicing the air.
She threw the knife at his feet, flecking us with blood. He jumped back, the muscles of his torso rippling leanly with adrenaline. She ran down the corridor, pulled open the door with a final pantomime screech, and stumbled out into the evening – leaving the wind to slam it shut.
I closed my eyes, exhaling, savouring the room’s tensions. In elevated states, my synaesthesia becomes more intrusive. And here, Eva’s half-fake hysteria lingered in the air with a taste like elderflower. I imagined licking the sugary rim of a bottle as cordial dribbled down my chin.
When I opened my eyes, Francis was resting his elbows on the counter, his face in his hands. I was unsure of his response to what we’d just witnessed, until he raised his gaze to mine – and I read its desire.
‘Where’ve you been?’ He came to me. ‘You weren’t answering your phone...’
‘I’ll tell you…’ I began to lie, but he kissed me, his hand behind my neck, keeping me against him.
He pulled down his sweatpants and kicked them off over his feet. He tried to unzip my tracksuit top, but I didn’t want him to see the belt wounds beneath.
‘Forget that,’ I said.
He tugged down my trousers and boxers instead in the same motion. The stack of £50 notes fell out, scattering across the floor. I grinned. He grunted interrogatively.
‘I’ll tell you…’ I said, but he kissed me again, biting my lips until I tasted my blood on his tongue.
I associated Francis with the colour of wheat – and this colour grew again to dominance as we kissed. Depending on the stimuli, my secondary senses sometimes associated Francis with wheat’s texture, too, and its taste, and its rustling sound.
He turned me around. I lowered my face to the granite and he lowered with me, his chest pressed into the buckle welts along my back, his teeth at my ear, gasping nearly with laughter. His joy at my return was elevated by the evasion of his guilt for his girlfriend, and his jealousy at the revelation that I’d just slept with her. He was trying to repossess me, but the intensity of his arousal was due partly to the fear that I was beyond his control, even here.
Repeatedly, he tried to unwrap his hands from my stomach to unzip my top and have full access to my back – but I gripped onto his wrists, preventing the reveal of the whip lines by keeping his arms beneath me, as if I couldn’t bear to be released.
He came inside me, pushing me into the countertop edge, his mouth at my neck, sweat pricking where our thighs’ skin met.
He untensed, reaching around to finish me off, and said ‘I love you,’ which made me come too.
‘I love you,’ I said.
Obviously I didn’t love Francis, but these words marked the end of his seduction. I was aroused not so much by the fulfilment of my desire – to make the straight boy fall in love with me and admit he’s fallen in love with me, first, out loud, without prompting – but rather by the ease with which I had fulfilled that desire. I was aroused by the efficiency of my scheme – having premeditated every move that had led me here, and with no missteps! And now that his resistance was over, it was time to be cruel.
We hugged, and for a moment my mind left our heat – into a quicksilver that felt as close as I could come to peace.
He went to the sink to drink from the tap. I gathered my money from the floor and tucked it back into my boxers. The evening light tinted the granite the colour of elderberries.
‘Why you been ignoring me?’ he asked.
He splashed himself with water, smoothing his hands through his hair, his face lifted to the ceiling.
‘I had no money,’ I said. ‘And I was depressed… about you not telling Eva. That’s why I went home with her… It’s the only way I could get the situation to an end.’
‘You could of warned me.’
‘That would have made it worse. It didn’t mean anything. It was for you. And it worked.’
He sat down against the cupboard, pulling his sweatpants on as he shook the water out of his hair. I pulled mine on too and joined him, resting my head on his wet upper arm. He was not capable of argument, so had to accept my claim that I’d been doing him a favour by fucking his girlfriend. He couldn’t really believe that, but he had to try. Much of my pleasure came from making him lie to himself in this way.
‘What’s that money for?’ he asked.
‘I need new poems.’
He wanted to ask further, but was afraid of being hurt by the answer, or of me seeing that he was afraid.
‘Dawn said you’re moving,’ he said instead.
‘Yeah.’
‘So you don’t want to move in with me?’ he asked, with a playful indignity that failed to conceal his sincerity. ‘I got a big house now.’
‘I noticed. Did you hope you could rescue me?’ I teased.
He smiled, ashamed of his own affection. ‘Maybe. And we couldn’t do that in a hostel.’
‘We can at my new place. I don’t know if it’s going to last – it’s always unstable with Dawn. You probably will still have to rescue me.’
‘Why’d you want to live with her? I don’t get it. She’ll steal from you and lie about everything.’
‘That’s what I like.’
In the pause, I admired the muscles I rested on – and thought of the thousands of pulls-ups that had formed them –