Speak Gigantular Read online

  The thumbnails grew bolder with each appearance. One day, during lunch at work when the office was empty, they filled the seats, becoming larger and larger until they obliterated the Mac screens. They appeared on the work noticeboard, faces scribbled out by marker pens, on the desks and in the drawers of her colleagues, who took her to one side asking why she was circulating pictures of herself. They sat beside her on train rides home trying to communicate to her, dark eyes small, haunted reflections she tried to block out. She became obsessed with trying to find the original among them; perhaps if she could identify it, get rid of it, she’d somehow root them all out.

  She couldn’t fuck Jonno properly for a while because the thumbnails keep clambering into bed with them, mimicking the sounds of her climaxing until she couldn’t tell where she began and they ended.

  On an afternoon during her company’s quarterly roundtable, Birdy stood by the large flip chart for her ten-minute presentation on regional developments and potential projects with new and existing partners. She could hear the thumbnails under the murmurs of her curious colleagues, a quiet rustling, rumbling in the distance. Her colleagues tilted their faces up expectantly. Birdy’s mind went blank; her hand trembled erratically, trying to silence her thumbnails with the blue marker pen. She gazed past everyone as if hypnotised, held by some force. The thumbnails, hundreds of them, were tumbling through the open skylight onto Birdy’s desk, like a waterfall of images executing their perfect landing.

  After a half hour break, the team came back to discover Birdy’s desk on fire; crackling and snapping as objects melted and smoke filled the air. The fire brigade was called. The team waited downstairs in the café anxiously. Birdy sat on a table by herself trying not to cry. Martin, red-faced, scowled at her from across the room.

  The thumbnails accosted Birdy in the hallway of her flat. The muddy river in the ceiling from the leak in the bathroom above had instructed them too. Birdy imagined the pull of the tide occupying hiding places. She wondered then about the watermarks she’d missed spotting. She’d have to leave in a few months before the water submerged the flat. All watermarks formed a dangerous alliance, however small. The thumbnails now were thin, hollow-eyed. Tufts of hair pulled from their heads. Crusts of dried blood surrounded their nostrils like dormant red bulbs. Two front teeth were missing from each one, as if they’d taken a wrong exit and some cruel beast had ravaged them, collecting parts like souvenirs. They watched her change in the bedroom, followed her around whispering, “Birdy, do you remember the first time?”

  Of course she did. She flew inside herself when the needle hit the snake in her arm, greedy green veins that grew fatter. She flew from her centre in a dizzying ride with no ceiling or floor erected as boundaries. She flew above the houses and appeared as a dot on Google Maps. While she travelled, she caught bits of conversations between the night sky and the ground with a sweaty palm. The rush of blood to the head, the distorted light Birdy had eaten from to feel bigger. Each time she took a bite she grew.

  She yelled, “See? I can be bigger! I don’t have to feel like I’m looking at the world from knee-level anymore. It can look up at me! I don’t have to be small.”

  But when the thumbnails began to appear, they were disgruntled. They floated in inappropriate places in case there was a chance of rain. They called to the tide. They flew at Birdy in her dreams, arms outstretched and dead-eyed. They opened their mouths and she slid in. There she exploded like a bomb and the bits of her body never reassembled.

  Birdy curled into a foetal position on the grey lino kitchen floor. Some of the thumbnails had impaled themselves on cutlery that had thinned into needles. She noticed then that their faces had withered even more. She began to cry. She lay there looking up at that first time as if shrouded in a dirty cloud. When she came down she’d slumped into Jonno’s arms. He stroked her hair, kissed her forehead. The kiss grew gnarled fingers. Through their drug-fuelled haze she saw Jonno the magician holding a small bag of white powder.

  “Baby,” he said. “Let me show you this trick: bag of coke, now you see it, now you don’t.”

  She picked up after six rings. “Hello?”

  “I’ve been calling your mobile. What’s going on?” Jonno’s voice was deep, croaky and sleep-lined.

  “Martin gave me a warning, he threatened to fire me! I can’t lose my job!”

  “Shh, Birdy, calm the fuck down, they can’t sack you just like that. There are procedures they have to follow, there’s probably a disciplinary action first. What did you tell him?”

  “Don’t worry, he doesn’t know you’re a biochemist or about your hideous tempering with my body. I don’t know what’s going on; I’m having bad reactions to these experiments of yours. What are you putting in these cocktails we tried? I’m not right anymore, it’s messing with my wiring or something!”

  “Birdy, shut up, not on the phone. You want to walk to the police station and make an announcement? Listen to me, relax. You’re not helping yourself by panicking.”

  “Martin said he got pictures.”

  “What pictures?”

  “The last ones you took of me, someone sent them to his house, his wife found them.”

  Silence, then the line crackled, the echoes of something lost. Jonno said, “I’m coming over” and the line clicked off. Birdy still held the handset. Only she stood at the end of Jonno’s mouth, looking down on its curved line as though it was a well to drink from. And the phone would be a useful instrument, she just hadn’t figured out how.

  Birdy remembered then that she and Jonno had argued about Martin while he was taking the pictures.

  “I don’t like the way he looks at you with a kind of longing.” Click.

  “You’re being ridiculous, he’s my boss. He gave me a job.” Click.

  “Yeah, and now he wants to collect. I know how men think, OK? I know how I’d think. You can’t see it.” Click.

  “Come on, he’s been like a father to me.” Click.

  “You’re so idiotically naïve sometimes, Birdy. He didn’t like me on sight.” Click.

  “You didn’t like him either, you’re so paranoid.” Click.

  “Yeah, I’m paranoid. Keep your distance, I don’t trust him.” Click, click, click!

  Suddenly she saw Jonno with all the faces he wore, the mystery in him that had trapped a curious boat, a one-winged plane and wrong footed other means of transport. Ever since Jonno had arrived in her life things had happened. The dull, fevered ache that kept getting hungry, the pattern in the sky with six tentacles that followed her everywhere, the timer on her heart she couldn’t shake off. Her pillow was made of blades, not feathers. A boomerang in the air became an elbow looking for a body. She recalled the looks of contempt he’d shot her, sandwiched between strokes and conversations. The smoke-rimmed kisses he left down her stomach designed to call flames to set her alight. Jonno’s addiction to damaging people, the beauty he saw in destruction. She wondered what she’d done with all these signs. Had she deliberately shoved them in a drawer to gather dust?

  She was drunk with knowledge. Cruelty was a currency in relationships. She couldn’t feel her face; she touched it tentatively as if trying to familiarise herself with the lines and angles. Two of her front teeth fell out. Oh, God. She ran to the bathroom mirror. She couldn’t escape herself there. She looked gaunt, sickly. She pulled her hair back, a handful of braids fell out, dropping into the sink leaving a bald patch. The light in her eyes had gone. She turned the tap on, the fat black braids slid down, she looked into the darkness of the plughole struggling to breathe, trying to see something she could hold on to. She ran through the flat turning all the taps on, watching the water spill. She searched the floor for her teeth. She couldn’t find them.

  She heard Jonno coming up the stairs leading to her apartment. He had a key. She opened the kitchen window. The remaining thumbnails leaped out, her two discoloured teeth gleaming in their mouths. She knew Jonno commanded them with every step. The front door lock t
urned. Her spine caved. Outside, the thumbnails, those lost fragments of herself flew past the metal gods pretending to be lampposts. Maybe they were headed to the roots of trees for second lives, or maybe to the tide.

  The Arrangement of Skin

  The crows emerged wet with saliva. Each sported one blue eye. In the garden, they congregated near the washing line as though it was their tightrope, a tenuous line of breath.

  Carolina watched from her kitchen window. They flew at her face, as if she were salvation in a glass house. She checked the garden door was locked, that the sleep marks on her arms hadn’t migrated to her face. She busied herself making a sandwich. Muffled sounds from the basement seemed like a distant thing. Carolina loved her basement, it craved the things she did. Broken wrists, spines she attempted to re-grow in maroon plant pots, sour pink tongues. Her basement understood wanting to be filled with things beyond comprehension, like a thousand injured women queuing inside you and tiny breakable houses.

  Carolina lived in Clapham, in a Victorian house with a black slate roof that was nestled behind some shrubbery on a quiet street. It was decorated in muted cream tones but the plum sofa, Moroccan throw rugs and bright lava lamps rebelled. Her kitchen had a large farmhouse table, a black Victorian style stove and some cast iron pots hanging on the wall. Upstairs, the smaller second bedroom held an old, empty wooden cot. The window was half open. Street symphonies of squealing tires, clicking heels and loud voices filtered through.

  Carolina finished off her sandwich with relish. She was a heavyset woman with a permanently weathered expression and thick whitish-blonde hair. She knew lots of the answers on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and whiled away her evenings listening to LBC radio station well into the night, blue eyes intermittently becoming grey.

  Halloween arrived, the time of year those little visitors came to her door. She always ensured she had a selection of sweets and chocolates, the house was warm and the scent of baked apple pie lingered. She always prepared her coins in anticipation.

  Around 8pm, nine-year-old Otto’s skeleton costume caught on the rusted spike of a gate, causing a tear in one trouser leg. He lagged behind to inspect the damage while his pack of friends rushed ahead. He heard their squeals of excitement just ahead of him, around the corner. A couple of doors after his accident, he lifted Carolina’s lion door knocker and asked if his friends had stopped by already. She said, “No, but I can help you with that, dear,” pointing at his torn costume. Her smile was welcoming, her eyes kind. He took off his mask; it was rude to talk to someone with your face covered up. His brown curls sprang free.

  He stepped into the hallway, leaving his perforated guardian angel as she lay, bleeding on the pavement. Inside, Otto missed the children’s faces pressed against the glass of the clock, a different face for each step; their breaths small ice storms. She gave Otto money. They chatted for a few minutes; he laughed and ate three cubes of Belgian chocolate. She prepared the sweetest cup of warm milk. He took large gulps. It tasted delicious. After a few minutes, he felt light-headed. The living room began to swim. He slipped off the sofa. The last thing he saw was Carolina standing over him, watching his face curiously.

  Carolina decided to make a chicken sandwich for her guest. Living alone in winter was particularly lonely. It was nice to have company. Earlier in the day, the EDF energy man came to read the meter. He waffled on about new meters and the length of time it would take to visit properties in the area. Eventually he left, a jacket grey moving through her doorway. The microfibers travelled through the air, down her throat and into an asphalt road that bent to a different time, to the iron lake that showed Carolina’s reflection aged twelve. And Villa Holm, Småland, Sweden. A home, mausoleum and witness with its undulating green grounds and large, decadent rooms, making prisoners of them all. Then, Carolina liked to fish, talking while they dangled on hooks, dripping translucent rays on her feet.

  At dinner she’d slam her prize in the middle of the table before her father Olan. She’d wait for a reaction but his eyes flickered over it dismissively.

  “Carolina, pass the butter,” he’d instructed coldly.

  Sometimes her spoils were dead squirrels, an Ostrich egg, a man she’d met in the town centre whom Olan had politely escorted out. Olan was remote; his face serious with wire-rimmed spectacles and a furrowed expression. A psychologist, he lost himself in his work. Their quiet dinners were often interrupted by violent screams from a room above. They came from her mother Agneta, the one from whom Carolina had never experienced any real affection or mothering. She knew Agneta had had several breakdowns and she appeared to Carolina to carry the shattered bits of her life with slender, tapered fingers. Once Carolina caught their old housekeeper sniggering on the phone to someone, saying, “A psychologist with his mad wife and weird child, can you imagine?”

  Agneta was a fragile, beautiful, waif-like woman. She seemed incapable of existing without assistance yet she was deceptively physically strong. On one occasion, she smashed plates up and down their staircase, screaming throughout, rushed at Olan wielding an old hunting knife while he entertained guests, demanding to be freed from her confinement. She cut her stomach before the shocked guests who looked at Olan with pity, confusion and disdain. Crawling on the floor, gripped by some terrible pain, she claimed Jesus had visited her. Olan had to drag her from the room. Arms flailing, Agneta hollered that she would take bites out of all the guests before they left. The guests looked on in horror, ashen-faced and embarrassed, although whether it was for themselves, the psychologist or his mad wife, was never quite clear.

  Some days Agneta cried relentlessly, hollering in her room, turning it upside down searching for an amulet she said Jesus had left her. She watched her daughter suspiciously. When Carolina slept, she felt Agneta slipping into her head, planting images of bloody soil, broken limbs and battered faces.

  Carolina couldn’t recall exactly when it began. But she remembered watching bread rise in the oven thinking it looked like skin. She saw blood vessels in the loaf exploding like tiny, runny planets. That same evening, she spotted her father’s study door open, light flooding the cold hallway. She entered and walked up to Olan who stood by the French windows looking out into the grounds and further still into the woods. A creature on all fours with pale, moonlight hair darted between the trees. It was Agneta. Father and daughter stood rooted to the spot connected by something they dared not define. They knew this had been coming. Agneta had refused to come back into the house for three days and was now completely feral. Tired and weary from years of suffering, Olan made no move to retrieve his wife. They watched the lake darkening and stayed until the night swallowed Agneta whole.

  Carolina carried the sandwich to the basement door on a rose patterned tray. The muffled sounds became louder. She set the tray down and unlocked the door. Otto’s face in the crack of light was pale, sweaty as though he’d been wrestling with something.

  “Please,” he said, voice breaking, eyes glimmering darkly, “Let me be your apprentice… I can learn from you.”

  Agneta stood behind him silvery and snarling, clutching her stone amulet. Carolina shoved Otto backwards, shaken by a reminder of her future, watching him tumble down the stairs. Her mouth curled. She counted to ten before retreating into the kitchen. The clock read 5pm. Deal or no Deal would be starting soon. The thought of having an apprentice excited her. She began to think of all the things she could teach him. She opened the window so that later the glassy-eyed crows Agneta sent could return to her womb for their nightly death.

  Snapper

  I’m scooping up a broken map of fish bones from my soup when you say, “It’s great honestly, you should see the craftsmanship on this thing! And God knows how old it is.”

  We’re sitting in Lazzaria restaurant, complete with dim lighting, cabaret style setting, deep red velvet curtains and oddly-shaped nooks. Renaissance art fills the walls, ornate chandeliers dangle from pristine white ceilings and exotic scents linger in the air. It feels
as though we’re in a play. Our supporting cast of diners are found objects who stumble onto set randomly. The sound of cutlery clinking against plates is surprisingly comforting. The opera singer is the only guest star; she seems to be simultaneously singing at several tables as if she’s on wheels. Her voice carries into people’s meals. A daffodil in her hair grows from being watered by wine, elderflower and gin.

  I say, “A samurai sword as a gift? Isn’t that a weird thing for a client to do?”

  “Nah, it’s a nice gesture.” You break a piece of herb bread from the deep violet bowl in the middle of the table. “He was just trying to show appreciation.”

  “Are you legally allowed to possess it?” I ask. “I mean, it’s a weapon.”

  “I don’t know, Perry Mason.” You chuckle a little. “But I’m keeping it.”

  You finish the bread with relish, crumbs spilling into your lap. There is a stain on your crisp, blue shirt from a piece of tomato shaped like a tear. The sight makes me smile. I like that you’re not quite polished. I imagine you at school as the kid whose shirt was never tucked in properly, whose shoelaces frequently came undone. I picture teachers liking you despite themselves. In my mind’s eye, you are holding a white piece of chalk from your youth, drawing outlines around our snapshots that will be eroded by the weather. I watch you, recalling the memory of our first meeting.

  I was holding a bag of oxtail on Green Street at Upton Park when the accident happened. It was evening and the throngs from the market had vanished, most stalls packed up. Only a few people were ambling around here and there. My newly braided hair was tight on my scalp. Just as the cars collided, I felt a headache coming. Nearby, a man was leaning against the window of the closed Percy Ingle bakery smoking a cigarette and a woman was putting tights on in the phone box up ahead. I wondered then if we all felt the sound of the crash reverberate through us simultaneously as a black Mercedes careened into a Blue Honda Civic making a U-turn. The Honda Civic tossed in the air, before crashing against the boulder on the side and then landing upside down. Exhaust pipe smoke curled in the air, a silent signal calling to passing ignitions.