Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker (best story books to read .TXT) 📗

Aubrey read this paperwork before I did. She had them all spread across the floor of my flat while she crouched on her knees, squinting in the low light. Her face was squeezed between her fists as she stared at the words, and I saw her lips silently mouth “Fuck.”

I was on the phone at the time to Mum’s landlord, and when I started to say the things you do to get someone to hang up, Aubrey began piling up the papers and stuffing them into a brown envelope. This she put into a shoebox with other letters and forms to store. She gave me the brightest smile when I hung up, and it was for that reason I needed to see what had disturbed her enough to lie.

After she’d gone, I pulled out the envelope and discovered that not one piece of Mum was still helping anyone. All the parts, roughly scooped from her middle, were sent to private institutes for genetic research into DNA manipulation. There was no mention of investigating cancer, the greying, or even anything else that could save a life. The last letter in the pile was a copy of the agreement I’d blindly signed to not follow up on the donations, and to trust that Mum’s last act was to further the same technology that had been used to synthesise natural creatures, and feed original research into longevity, living batteries, second chances.

Surprisingly, the idea of Mum’s parts not living on in someone else didn’t upset me. I was relieved. A warm tingle ran down my back. It felt good to know that Mum’s kidneys weren’t working to clean out a stranger’s mistakes, or that her eyes weren’t looking at things in new ways and betraying their history. I preferred the sterile, neater option. It felt more like an end. Like freedom.

My quiet disturbed Aubrey, and so it was probably a strategic move to introduce me to Rosa and Eleanor. Fresh faces, open me up. So imagine her shock when I actually enjoyed myself. I loved that I was a complete unknown to them. When the four of us met, we talked in a vacuum. Everything we discussed only mattered at that table and would never shake the world. This was extremely comforting. Whatever I said, I could predict the response to the degree that I could direct dialogue to hear that which made me feel better.

This birthday with Art, my thirty-second birthday, was the first time I hadn’t been asked by any of them to go for a meal or a drink. Aside from Aubrey’s recent hostility, I could only imagine that I hadn’t heard from Rosa or Eleanor because I had Art, and maybe even Nut. Rather than feel sad, I felt surprisingly emancipated, and for once in my life I wasn’t answering the call of others. I called the shots.

Soon after my birthday, I dreamed that Art and I were digging a hole in the middle of the back lawn.

As our shovels met the earth, the ground started to sag and give, sucking us into the deep soil like quicksand. We threw aside our shovels and scrambled against tumbling rock and stone to escape, pulling up clumps of turf in our fists. When I turned to check that Art was safe; I saw that he’d climbed onto the opposite side of the sinkhole and we were now separated by an expanding chasm. Making a megaphone with his cupped hands, he shouted at me to jump across to meet him, presumably because his side of the garden was the one with our house in. Though he must have been no further than ten feet away his voice was distant and echo-y, as if he was calling from across a vast lake.

Just as I was considering making the impossible leap, the sinkhole retched, and regurgitated the nose of a huge, moaning white cow. Her head ducked and bobbed as she worked herself free, her nostrils snorting out lumps of soil and long, sticky worms. With one last heave, her enormous frame emerged from the wet earth by the strength of her spindly legs.

Standing sidelong, she took up the whole width of the lawn and obscured my view of Art completely, her deep huffs masking the sound of Art’s call. Both terrified and entranced, I longed to touch the oily hair that fell in loose curls around her eyes and under that expansive mud-stained belly like a waterfall. The cow rocked on her heels before turning slowly towards the far end of the garden. I pressed my back against the fence to let her pass, and as I watched her go it occurred to me that I couldn’t see any udders. This felt so completely wrong that I had to question whether this cow was a cow or some other animal in disguise.

I turned back to Art to alert him to this but he’d vanished, and the only explanation I could think of was that he must have tried to rescue me and slipped into the sinkhole. But looking into the deep, I could only see old pieces of trash; a broken washing machine, a kettle, three worn out shoes. No trace of Art. I fell to my knees and cried, the heels of my hands already sinking into the soft and yielding mud. Entirely weakened, I let myself be taken, and my last sight before being consumed was of our house, red against a blazing blue summer sky, and the silhouette of Art through his study window, working with his head down at his desk.

I awoke as the mud slicked over the world.

It wasn’t yet day, and there was no sign at all of the sun. I reached over for Art’s reassuring warmth but my hand grasped at a cold bedsheet, nothing more. There were still a few silk petals on my pillow from yesterday.

Next to Art’s side