Forget Yourself (28 page)

And all the world was gone, but I watched her. Fibre-optic cables over miles and miles.

This was our game: I lost and she won. She said that was companionship—of course I let her win. I was in love with her. We had never met. She was beautiful: long dark hair and big eyes.

My heart wasn’t in the game: I was watching her as she watched other people. It was an excuse, of course, all an excuse. She called me Norna, and that wasn’t even my real name. Why did she call me that? Well, she wouldn’t know better. She had never even seen my real face. I wasn’t Norna, I was Loke, and I wished I was thin, and maybe even a woman, but I was fat and I had a short stubby penis that people laughed at. But I always kept myself smart, I always wore a tie. Even by myself. Even with everyone gone. It pays to be presentable. At least, I thought, it might.

I wondered, perhaps I could show her myself. My real face. It wouldn’t matter anyway, beggars can’t be choosy, and there were so few of us left.

Imagine that, I told myself, romance because of plague.

This was our game—it was all we had. There were no neighbours, not really. It was all pretend. We’d sit, and pretend to watch others, we’d pretend that the kitchen opposite her apartment was full of people having tea, rather than corpses turning colour. We’d sit and pretend to watch others because there was so little else to do. Wait for rescue, they said, wait for rescue. I’d been certain it wasn’t safe to go outside, though she had gone, once or twice. She had found drugs in her neighbour’s apartment, and a diary. We read it together, hundreds of miles apart. I told her how to take the K.

We’d sit and wait for rescue, she and I, pretending to watch the world. We couldn’t even admit to one another that the world was dead. I laughed about it, late at night, when I’d gone offline. I laughed so hard.

How long had it been? It didn’t do to count the days. The messages they sent told us not to. I had shut myself away from day one—I saw a body on the street, skin black and face twisted: it was one of the kids I dealt to. I decided the street wasn’t for me. I told her about it, but she doesn’t like to think about the pain of the world. She talks about her neighbours like they’re real. She must believe they are.

Day by day I’d stopped hearing any noises from my own neighbours—they had run away and died or they had stayed and they had died. The ceiling in the kitchen started leaking—the bathtub upstairs had been left on. I tried to call the superintendent but there was no phone signal. There wasn’t any phone signal anywhere. But the internet worked, so I emailed him: there was nothing else I could do.

At first people hurried by the street outside—frantic cars racing to safety; bicycles; even carts. Everyone rushing somewhere and I stayed at home. I mostly avoided listening to the official announcements on the radio, though they had some way of sending them to every email address in the land.

Websites stopped being updated. Blogs went silent. There were fewer and fewer videos being uploaded, but I didn’t care, the videos were depressing. People filming their dying moments. Hundreds of thousands of them, like they were original. So many videos and so few people viewing them. Maybe they watched each other—maybe it was like dying together. That would make sense.

All I’d worried about was her—every day we met online at ten in the morning, and every day I was relieved to hear her voice. I’d ask her if she was sick, and she said no. She asked me if I was sick, and I said not yet.

Neither of us got sick.

I didn’t care what we talked about, I didn’t care if she won these games. She told me the man opposite her apartment was crying at the post-woman—she was triumphant. I was glad she was still alive.

Eventually the ceiling in the kitchen collapsed, but I’d stopped using the kitchen anyway—I’d gone through the rest of the building to find food, there was no shortage of that. I was no longer so scared of leaving the apartment, if I was going to get sick I would have by now. It’s in the air, they’d said. Pray. The news channels had actually told us to pray.

I laughed so hard.

I had to ask.

“Was that you, Tie?”

“A world dead of plague? Probably not, Blondie. But how would I know?”

There wasn’t time for these stories, stories that didn’t even fit together. Who cared what happened before? My world was dying.

It was after taking the water home and wiping the last drops from my eyes that I decided to find Tanned. I had to find Tanned. We hadn’t spoken for so long—this way there was a chance I could help him. We had been friends once, we could be again.

Tanned was a minor: maybe he’d downed less of the fatal drink, perhaps he’d drunk just enough to leave his insides intact—discomforted but intact. I stumbled through the cries of anguished wives, terrible sirens surrounding me.

In front was a woman, her husband doubled over, his cheek on the floor, his arse in the air.

“Crisp. Crisp. Crisp,” she cried, her husband’s name pounding through her, her body rigid. What else could she do? Where else could she move? She may as well scream his name.

Her voice faded.

I reached Tanned’s hut. He wasn’t inside: his patch of foam was untouched, his rations were properly stored away. I had to find him.

I called his name, over and over. “Tanned. Tanned. Tanned.”

I walked without direction. What else could I do?

There was a buzzing at the minors’ fire tap. The buzzing of a thousand flies. The air was thick; putrid and sodden. I covered my mouth with my fraying pullover. Beneath the flies were bodies.

Pale skin and open mouths. Eyes unfocused.

Had they gone there together, to the cooking corner, trying to find solace there? They were piled five high, near-all men, the gentle arm of a woman poking through the mass of clothing.

I gagged.

“The wives brought them here, Blondee. This is their place. They didn’t know what else to do. You’ve deserted them.”

“Tie, you need to shut your fucking face right now.”

“Do you see my face, my dear? Do you see his?”

I looked. I pulled at shoulders, rolling them over, to the ground with a soft heavy thump. I wasn’t careful—I didn’t need to be careful. They wouldn’t know, not now. I was rough, not gentle. The eyes of these husbands didn’t see me.

I saw old neighbours: faces wrenched in agonies, mouths lined with red-orange sick. One was clutching his bare hairy belly, swelling with gas.

There was Green—his beard crusted in vomit, his skin smooth, the texture of wax. There was Gut, his old lover, the one who had cried for him. But where was Green’s new wife, why wasn’t she with him? How could she be alone?

I pulled Green by the arm, pulling him free from the pile. Beneath was Jay, the first. But his wife—where was Ketamine? She couldn’t desert him now, could she? Do your duty Ketamine, keep watch, wipe away his cares.

I pulled and pushed. Arms, legs and bellies.

And there he was. Tanned.

The same as the rest of them. I don’t need to explain.

I stepped back. Panting. The effort hit me like a gust of wind. I gagged again.A woman was watching me. She was stood over to the side. I hadn’t heard her arrive, she had been stood there the whole time. I knew her face, her sturdy, manly figure. I didn’t know her name.

“Did you bring them here?” I asked.

“I did,” she replied.

I’d had enough. I wanted to go back home, back to caring for Frederick. As I went to leave the words tumbled from her mouth.

“I brought them here. You know me. I met you—I told you I didn’t know how to walk like a woman. I wasn’t sure about anything. Well I’m still not sure about anything, but I brought them here. I dragged them here—it wasn’t womanly, but then it seemed right for all the men to be in the same place. I couldn’t take them to their place, to the courtyard—where would we get water from? I had to bring them here, you see.

“At first I just took whichever of the men were just lying around. I lay them side-by-side, but they were taking up too much room, so then I placed one atop the other. I went everywhere for them. Some were hidden in places you would never think to look—some I only found because the flies led me there. When those were done I went door-to-door for more. The other wives gave them up without a word. They didn’t know what to do with them. I do—I’m going to make a fire. I had a memory, about piles of bodies burning in a fire. I can’t write it in the book though—the book seems to have gone.

“As for my own husband—he’s not in the pile. I’ve still not found him. He ran away when he was sick, with his hand over his mouth. I lost him in the dark. But I’ll find him. Eventually the flies will lead me to him. I’ll take yours too, when the time comes.”

I nodded my thanks, but she never noticed—she was already trotting away, scouting for more husbands to add to the pile. I went home.

I EXAMINED MY SICK HUSBAND
. At first I used my eyes: his hair, dark and greasy, a tangle above his too-pale face. He wore an expression of empty pain, of thoughtless discomfort. His mouth had fallen a fingers-width open, teeth stained, jaw coated in black stubble, the trunks of dead trees poking through snow.

I pulled back the covers, the skin of his shoulders snow-pale too, long strands of hair spread over them, spreading over his chest, surrounding the dark mounds of his nipples. Beads of sweat shone. His belly too as mass of dark hair and pale skin, but deflated, emptied of everything.

I pulled the covers further still, revealing the limp sag of his cock and balls, slung over his thigh—on his thigh there was pale skin and brown streaks.

I examined my sick husband. I used my hands—the clammy forehead, the delicate unopened eyelids, the furry cheeks and dry lips.

Down, down, to the down of his shoulder hair, his chest hair—soft on cool wet skin. His nipples hardened, fleshy mounds into hard pebbles. His belly hollow.

His limp cock, thick and heavy in my hand. This was Frederick’s. My husband’s cock was always pushing, always hard and ready for the attack. But Frederick’s was soft; unassuming and gentle. I pulled back the foreskin, purple head and creamy lines.

I dipped a cloth into one of our water buckets and I washed him—away the clammy skin and dried oils, away the brown stains.

I didn’t wash him as his wife. I washed him as Blondee. I was rough. Rough as I liked.

Now he smelled better.

I pressed my lips to his, cracked and dry, with the scent of stale sick. I poured water into my mouth and brought my lips back to his, flooding his mouth with it; mouth on mouth, water to water.

If she and I had drowned together, what then?

He didn’t wake up. The sun upped and downed and he had slept. The low rumble of his breath. The rise of his chest. I watched for these things. This wasn’t duty. This was love—grotesque and humiliating.

Blood spurting over lino and forming claggy pools. We just can’t help ourselves.

This is how we love the body—not through thrusting or the lust of licking. It’s the blood and the sweat and the shit.

She pooled upon the lino and so I loved the pool. Her bones in the ground.

I loved them both. Grotesque and humiliating.

Soon I was having a feast. I had taken all the food from the shelves and boxes and had them spread before me, like my very own casino night. I was alive, I was here, and I would eat. There were oatcakes, hoi-sin duck flakes, sugar grains, the olives, cocoa-powder, sweet-scented sweets, rye bread, rice (which I hadn’t cooked), soya-butter, two types of cheese and three packets of ketchup, which I was saving for last. I was sat opposite the stone woman. She was looking at the food but she wouldn’t want any. Between us the rations were spread out on a beautiful off-white silken cloth, which I had taken from my clothes box.

I could spare the food. It wouldn’t be long until the next rations anyway. I placed an olive and a piece of cheese into my mouth, my tongue curling with the flavours.

“You have to help them, Blondee.”

I was going to help them. There would be something in the book. I was going to find it, no matter what Pilsner said. He would be back at the courtyard most of the time, dispensing wisdom to people who didn’t want to fucking hear it, and then I could go get it. There would be something. Besides, I had already started helping. So far I had found three wives, each wandering in a daze, and I had told them: water, water, water. Keep getting water and keep giving it to the sick. The first had been pleased to be told what to do, to have help. The other two had nodded, their faces grey, their bodies slouched.