Unfinished
A little weird fiction that I'm afraid to send out to magazines
Some time ago I found this one page text that I didn’t remember writing and for a long time thought I’d copied it from somewhere, but as I came back to it at different moments I realised it can only be mine because it needed work. So I worked on it, but it’s so strange, I’m not sure if it’s unfinished or just not structured well or simply uncoagulated, but for the moment this is the version it’s in. I don’t have the courage to send it to a magazine because of the disjointed feeling it gives me, but I want to share it here.
The memory of the evening she’d seen them together, in high red boots, sitting on a bench near the school playground, mewling desperately, hit her again. It made her want to rip off her ears. The sound reached high, it screwed into her brain and made hole after hole there, black gaps that could not be crossed by the tiny electric messages her neurons sent out to each other. If she tore her eyes out it would only make the image clearer inside the darkness of her skull.
She’d mechanically turned around and headed home, the instinctive motions of getting a ride, being pleasant, going about her chores the only ones she knew how to make. The scene arrived uninvited in the most unexpected moments with a sort of manic glee. She’d heard cats meow before, in many ways. But that sound hadn’t resembled anything, except deep and unrelenting, unimaginable pain. The idea that it happened in a school playground, that there were schools out there hadn’t fazed her. She’d had no expectations about what that part of the world looked like. Her imagination had been a traitor when it came to the messiness of living outside of the cities. Of course, the deviant, the dangerous, the ones in transition had their place outside, but she’d never pictured, or could have pictured it. Her memories of her time there had long evaporated. She was a citizen of the city, fully immersed in its mechanism.
It’d been two years since her Charles had left home to find himself. It happened all the time and to everyone. It was just the way of things.
You felt lonely by yourself or as a unit of two so you adopted a seedling, a being to nurture. You went to the House and meditated all alone in a huge room that went high, high and never seemed to end. The only light was that of the candles you lit for yourself. Sounds became frightful in that impossibly tall chamber so everyone became silent. After a while you got up, breathed deeply twice and went in through the brown door on the left. There, you stood for a moment at the entrance and listened to all the little sounds the baby seedlings made, and stepped slowly towards the one that warmed up and coloured the outlines of the cavern inside you begging to be filled. You Took it home and gave it a name, a place in your house and started worrying about it. The worries, the same whether you had a bunny, a kitten, a puppy or a more exotic specimen, like a raccoon, a flying squirrel, or a weasel. And this made you feel oh-so-important and so blessedly happy.
But then after a while, when Charles’ budding speech and suddenly confusing manner couldn’t be ignored anymore – even if he still had the same face, his fur was intact and his squeaky voice unchanged, but able to sometimes bring forth words together with his other specific sounds – came the day she knew.“Aren't you happy?” She’d ask with a choking in her throat knowing there was nothing to be done. He wouldn't answer but looked at her with such a longing for something she couldn’t understand.
It was better to keep it short and straightforward. She had her chance to cry afterwards, but not there and then on the day he left. And she found solace in knowing that he’d become a wonderfully resplendent human and come back one day to take his place next to her and Paul. No one knew how long it would take. The hard years, people called them, the waiting years. The certainty of return and reconnection gave people strength, they were engaged in the same important task of being the seed family of a new member of the world. The cost, the arid loneliness of the transition years.
“You know sometimes I think about those old stories of people who gave birth to children, human already, and spent all that time with them, all that investment, only for them to leave after 18-20 years, " she said one evening. Paul had looked scared at this.
“Families fractured so easily and so often in those stories, it must have been awful.”
“But they’re just stories. Our companions always return after becoming, changed and new, but ours still” he said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “It's good that we don't need to see all the transformations. They have their private time and space to remake themselves.” Yet in her a desire to actually see them, see the whole thing, to witness and understand how remaking happened, no matter how nauseating, bloomed in her, carnivorous and hungry, but she covered it, sick that she could even fathom such a craving, afraid it was visible in her face.
“And what a mercy to not remember the hazy years afterwards, only the important bits that help us get back. We all get a fresh start, a beautiful start,” said Paul with that reassuring tone he had, now in his placating mode meant to end her occasional outburst.
She knew about pets and didn’t know how to turn back from knowing. True animals, they mated only with beings of their own kind, never spoke, fought for territory, grew old and died in small, unconscious, dirty lives. Some people had wanted them because they never left. She promised herself she wouldn’t think about half transformed bodies in sexual or feeding frenzy, about the violence and cruelty described in some of those restricted books she’d found in the vault at the history institute, but how easily these promises are broken.
She’d started sneaking into the old archives by mistake. Doors weren’t locked, most entrances just openings burgeoning into the body of the structure, and with information about who can go where as easily available, the system flowed perfectly. But she’d been daydreaming, or better yet, hypnotised by the angles and corners of the building she enjoyed meandering through while on her breaks. Everyone was encouraged to use resources in all the ways that proved useful to them. The institute, without being one of the more intricate, surprising constructions, had a balance to it, a joyous musicality, she liked to say. These walks through its numerous spots of colour, the sculptural light and darkness rearranged the connections in her mind and made her more effective and alert afterwards.
She’d taken a turn not realising the symbols at the entrance and there hadn’t been a soul around to point out her mistake. Once inside the books alerted her to the mistake. Her first instinct had been to turn around, but the objects beckoned with their foreignness, just a few palms aways. She’d extended her arm and took one. After that her walks acquired a quality of restlessness, an inkling of excitement when she approached that corridor. She forced herself to not time her presence there to moments when she could sneak in and break the rule. But when the halls, empty, beckoned her inside, how could she resist?
She still felt guilty for opening the books and seeing those repugnant pictures of animals preying on each other, mating, of humans in conflict, killing, so barbaric, she thought, appalling, she’d whisper and then would go on to read the words describing it all. She hadn’t slept well for a month after that and tried to convince herself that they were only stories that must have had a purpose in their time, all those millenia ago, in an attempt to shield herself from the knowledge, while gorging on it. Instead they’d primed her for what happened next. Without them she might not have felt the need to go investigate that area outside the bounds of the city. It hadn’t been on purpose, either. She’d been next to the border on an errand and was about to call for a ride. The sounds had been so unusual and terrible, curiosity had won over better instincts. Although her clandestine trips in the book vault had desensitised and informed her, she’d still been woefully unprepared to see it in person.
But now, how could she forget the two half cats, her handsome Charles and that girl, deformed, with a human face full of hair and yellow fierce eyes, distorted in pain. They were mewling so terribly. He had the flesh of his back bitten in so many places, and she had bleeding human legs and lumps of fur ripped off her arms along with the skin underneath. Plus those grotesque red boots they had on. The image flashing in front of her eyes overpowered and weakened her, forcing her to stagger a little, to lose her balance for a fraction of a second.
“Are you ok,” asked Paul every time he saw her squeeze her eyes shut in pain.
“Yes. Just missing Charles,” she lied wondering if she even wanted him to come back.
What animal were you? she ached to ask Paul in those moments, a mad need to imagine him transforming and taking those grotesque shapes, but she bit her lip bloody to keep silent. She couldn’t remember what she’d been. It’d happened too long ago. Had it even happened?
This gave me goose bumps, it's the first time I've read anything of that length for a while it captured my mind normally can't focus very well, when's part 2?