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

he needed them. On the hardest days, locked in the bathroom, curled in the pit of the shower, I told myself that they weren’t dying. Not really. They were going to be with Art, who they loved, and that there would be another one on the way soon to help the good.

With each fresh Nut, Art became more and more affectionate, to all appearances forgetting that at some point he would consume them. Perhaps this brought him closer to them, as he knew that one day each would be just as much a part of him as all the Nuts before. As for me, I held them close from the beginning, bestowing on them all the kisses and embraces I’d give to any pure, innocent being. The loft, no longer an ovum organi quarantine, became a space for all the excess stuff that life affords. One day someone will come and take it away. It’s been so long since I went up there that I don’t even know what’s inside the boxes anymore. I don’t know who will be left to do that for me, when I’m gone. Who will divide up my life into “Keep”, “Donate”, and “Bin”? Who will decide what ends up disposed of with the rotting food and dust?

I spend more and more time now thinking about what comes after. I live in silence, and this silence will last longer than I will. I don’t know what else I could have done differently. I’m nearing the finish line but there’s no one else in the race.

Only me.

Mum’s binoculars are at home in my hands. I scan the horizon for a point of focus. My wrists ache from the weight of the leather and glass, so I push the viewfinders deep into my sockets, scanning the flurry of white for something dark, moving, feathered, but the sky is too bright. Too stark. The world is turning grey.

There are no birds left anyway. I know that now.

Beyond, the scatterers are still at work, parting the snow to sow the good numbers. Administering their long-term prescription. Is it hope, or is it duty? Their feet drag, their carts rattle and shake. They’re never old, they never make it that far. They’re probably no more than thirty. They look so tired.

There, there it is – a white van approaching with the ankh on its side. It slowly skirts the corners to avoid sliding on the ice and pulls up outside the house. The van leaves black tyre tracks tracing where it’s been, and the young men unloading the cardboard crate from the side doors leave slushy, wet footprints. Looking at the marks, you might think they’ve been dancing, turning and waltzing together in the snow.

They bring the box in for me, setting it down on the sofa in the living room. I sign my acceptance with a prick of my finger and they leave, locking the front door behind them. They won’t be back. That was their final visit, that’s what the letter said. This is my last daughter. I’m yesterday, and tomorrow there’s another way.

I secure the digital bolt and the ancient chain before returning to the living room, the old tattered blanket spread across the floor. The welcome patchwork that smells like all of her sisters, like family trees, like genetics, like love, like nurture, like the blood of all those who have been born and lost – and of me, still left, still remembering.

I lower myself slowly onto the chair opposite the crate, massaging my hands calmly with alcohol. They air dry on my lap, palms to the ceiling. I’m ready.

Nathan and Fia lied to me, you know. They’re never the same.

The day my second arrived I swore the face in the box didn’t belong to us. It was a mistake, they’d sent the wrong one. Where was the face I’d been dying to see? This one didn’t look like Nut. It didn’t move like her. She didn’t know me.

I called Easton Grove, I told them that it’d gone wrong and they needed to come and collect her or bring the other Nut back. But they didn’t. They sent around a member of staff to speak like Nathan and mix me up. Give me more tea.

I prayed for it to be a mistake. I prayed to whoever was listening to fix it all and bring back my daughter. I lay in bed and couldn’t move. But the days passed and nothing changed, and then this Nut picked up Art’s love of beef jerky, his fiddling with his ear when he was nervous. When she was five weeks old, she swallowed one of his pen lids and had to go back to the clinic, and after that we let her sleep in our room again. She was short-sighted, and would inspect her food up close for a few seconds before tasting it.

But beneath the face, her soul was the same. Nut was in there somewhere, expressing herself via a different flower. And when her time came to go and the next ovum organi arrived, I didn’t know whose face I wanted to see most, which of my babies. But this one was different again, her fur almost white, flecked with black like a snowy owl. From the very first day, I picked her up in my arms and fed her milk from a bottle, stroking her cheek as she sucked on the rubber teat.

Perhaps the best thing I ever did in my life was produce innocents with the capacity for so much selflessness. I’ve always been so excited to meet the next one. To see who she looked like, and get to know who she’d be. Waiting for one with wild red hair.

My babies took up more and more of my care as the years went by, and I wanted to go out less and less. Luckily the Grove arranged it so that I could work from home, and still the promotions