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  “Why won’t you come and eat with us, Henri? Pets eat when their owners tell them to. I’ve brought you some dog food,” Christoff said.

  The other boys laughed. Christoff passed the can to the boy on his left who kept glancing at the door. Christoff kicked him in the face. It came so suddenly, Henri had no time to prepare for the pain, the ringing in his ears, the crack and thud that echoed between the breathing of boys. He reached out, pleading blindly, silently with his left arm. Tears stung his eyes. Christoff fished out a pair of black scissors from his pocket as the other boys dragged him out.

  “Show us your tail,” they chorused like a small warped choir.

  Henri shook his head defiantly, gulping as Christoff waved the scissors, catching bits of light. His thoughts bled into one stunted footstep limping as it tried to cross the clatter of a fork, the sinewy gleam of scissor blades. Henri’s body shook, his nose hurt, he felt light-headed. The boys were interchangeable to him. They all spoke with one voice, Christoff’s. Christoff edged closer, enjoying the fear in Henri’s eyes. A tubby child with one lazy eye, he relished tormenting a boy more different than anybody he’d ever seen. He spat in Henri’s face.

  “What are you?” Christoff asked, fascinated. “My mother says you shouldn’t be here.”

  Henri turned his head away, struggling as the other two boys held his arms back. He looked up at the swirls of circular patterns on the white ceiling desperate for an exit. He wished he hadn’t gotten out of bed that morning. He wished he’d never left the safety of home. He wished he’d never been born.

  The boys turned him over. Christoff cut into his trousers, yanking his tail out. They turned him over again. Christoff’s cheeks were pink, his blue eyes wild.

  He picked up the can of dog food, dramatically announcing, “We can’t eat until you’ve eaten.”

  Henri desperately wished someone would burst in to rescue him but nobody came. They appeared to be apart from everything else, a limb of time that had fractured from it, operating without its consent. Christoff grabbed the fork from the floor. One boy shoved Henri’s face into the can of dog food, the open lid like another mouth cutting him just above his lip. Its rotten scent filled his nostrils.

  “Eat or we won’t leave,” Christoff instructed. Smiling, exchanging a look with the others, he scooped a forkful of jellied lump from the can, holding it up to Henri’s lips. Henri opened his mouth reluctantly. Tears ran down his cheeks as forkful after forkful Christoff fed him until only a quarter of it was left. Henri gagged numerous times, spittle shooting from his lips, he coughed, spluttered. Each time as punishment he was force-fed more. The boys emptied the remainder of the food inside his bag, shoving the can and fork in. They tried to set his tail on fire using matchsticks, only to be interrupted by the ringing of another bell.

  After they left, Henri grabbed his bag. He got to his feet unsteadily, slowly and dejectedly walking towards the door. On the other side, Marlena, the girl he had made a bracelet for the other week, was waiting in the hallway. Her pixie-like face was flushed, worried.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  Oh God, Henri thought, she heard everything. And the smell. He knew it by the way she caught his eye before looking away guiltily, as she unconsciously sent a finger just beneath her nose.

  In that moment, he wanted to die. He wanted to disappear. He hated being different. His mother had lied. He wasn’t special. He was cursed.

  He ran, leaving Marlena clutching smoke from his tail. He bolted down the hall, past the reception and out through the gates. He opened his bag, found the fork that had betrayed him and flung it at the school. He hoped it would do the one thing he wanted, uproot it as if by magic, leaving behind a chasm in its place.

  That night he couldn’t sleep. The tin canned mouth appeared in his doorway making the sound of a toilet flushing. Henri’s nostrils filled with the scent of dog food again. He started trembling. The mouth told him he was due his next set of injuries. He followed it out into the cold and the dark on all fours. He met the night with his heart pounding, his pajama bottoms damp with piss. Small rockets on it threatened to take off powered by urine and heartache. A baptism of snow fell on his skin, unable to remove the sting of humiliation. Henri crawled as the mouth expanded. He hated himself, hated his tail. He crawled because he deserved it.

  In the morning, Ann found him in a neighbour’s yard, half naked with scratches on his thighs. He had one bloodshot eye and was crying into an empty can of dog food.

  For three months Henri’s tormentors continued. The teachers did nothing. The children said nothing. Their silence conspired against him. Until one afternoon, after arriving home from school, he burst through their kitchen ahead of Ann who had been emptying the freezer. He grabbed a knife. Tears streamed down his face. “Cut it off, Mama!”

  “No, calm down, please,” she said, trying to swallow the dread rising.

  “I’m a freak! Cut it off or I will,” he screamed, face red eyes shining dangerously.

  “Henri, give me the knife.” She set down a pack of frozen peas on the counter slowly.

  “No, you did this to me. I HATE YOU! This is all your fault.” He pointed the knife at her. The cold kitchen echoed his words. All your fault. The bread crumbs on the chopping board lingered close to the edge, as though they would fall into the gulf between them that had been steadily forming.

  Suddenly the tap dripping sounded louder than a close range gunshot. She dived for her son. They wrestled on the floor. He wriggled his body, raising the knife. She grabbed his stomach; he kicked her in the face, a jolt of electricity travelled to her brain. She let go, watching him vanish through the door.

  “Fine,” she yelled, standing, breath ragged, running up the stairs to find him before her bedroom mirror with his trousers off.

  “Okay,” she said, “I can’t bear to see you like this anymore.” Her shoulders sank, she smoothed the flowery duvet down.

  “Please don’t send me back to that school, promise?” he asked.

  She sighed, stilled her trembling body. In her mind’s eye she saw the procession of rag dolls covered in blood coming towards them, the sound of school gates opening a symphony in the background.

  “I promise.” She grabbed a small, white sunken pillow from her bed.

  It was after dinner by the time Ann decided she could no longer delay the inevitable. The fire crackled in the living room. Stacked, chopped logs taunted her. The axe beside them cut the edges of the silence.

  She grabbed the axe, took Henri into the kitchen thinking that the equation of a boy, his mother and an axe had several outcomes. She spread an old black paint-stained sheet over the table. Henri sat on it biting down on the pillow. She remembered being pregnant. How she’d ran her hands over her belly each morning, amazed at its growth, its widening circumference. She recalled listening to the radio at nights intensely, hearing something travelling through the frequency to deliver a message to the child inside her and when she held Henri for the first time and he looked her in the eye blinking gunk away, she knew that message had been delivered, that he had entered her womb before.

  After he was born, sometimes she found herself holding the Love Larry Inc. card, starring at it in wonder, grateful that it had satisfied the type of longing and loneliness a woman who craved a child knew only for another kind to sprout up in its place. In those dark, empty days before Henri came, Ann had followed the echoes of a child’s laughter through the house, arms outstretched, heart thudding. Long before Henri crawled towards her at six months old, tail protruding from his soiled diaper, a dangerous light in his iris spreading until she thought his right eye changed colour.

  Ann imagined Henri’s tail was wood, a dead thing. Sweat popped on her brow. She counted to ten slowly inside, testing the weight of the axe, waiting for something to change her mind. She brought it down in a firm stroke. Something shattered behind her eyes, scattering into the grainy static. Henri’s face went white, he grimaced, the pillow dropped.r />
  “I’m sorry I’ve been a bad mother,” she said, her head now almost completely shorn gleamed ominously, the sprigs of hair giving her a demented look. She steadied her left hand on the table, lifted the axe with her right, smashing it down over her wrist with all the strength she could muster. She screamed. Henri stared, horrified. The axe fell to the floor with a thud. Blood covered her clothes. The pain was so intense Ann thought she would faint. She stumbled towards Henri, bleeding as he bled. Faces twisting, they watched his tail and her hand on the floor, spinning towards the axe in the warped silence as if for one more stroke of destruction.

  Outtakes

  The hot water bottle exploding on my leg was a bad omen.

  At Paddington station, Balthazar sent me a text. Balthazar was my boyfriend of exactly one year. He was the interesting and good-looking father of two lovely girls. Elaborate stories wriggled out of his mouth like fluorescent, scaly fish. He had rumpled brown hair and green eyes. He didn’t seem to own an iron. Always slightly dishevelled, he laughed through everything. If I’d told him one of my legs got bitten off by a crocodile he’d have said, “Oh hon! That’s terrible! Want me to come and massage your stump?” Soft chuckle, soft chuckle.

  In the beginning, he loved to say my name, Desiree; eventually he started calling me Desi for short. Balthazar knew something about everything, including octopus festivals, chortling volcanoes and placenta-eating women. He was a veritable talking, languid, brown-haired Wikipedia. He’d been to art school at Goldsmiths and when that didn’t pan out, as is often the case with dreams of our youth, he settled into the role of a psychiatrist, an intelligent creature in a position of responsibility.

  His text said: Hon got something to tell you. Make sure you’re standing somewhere quiet. xx

  The strap of my zebra-striped bag ate into my shoulder. I dropped it, vaguely registering a thud. I missed-called him. He called me back straight away, delivering a velvet-gloved blow as though it was some anecdote pulled out of a hat, a distant fanged thing that couldn’t really touch us: “Ah, I’ve been sleeping with Tara.”

  What? No! Aloud I said, “Are you serious? Is this a joke?”

  Although at first we’d been intimate, in the past six months Balthazar hadn’t been able to get it up. No hard, throbbing, jerking, insatiable erection for me. No sir. I was practically a fucking nun in my late twenties. In that familiar, disconcerting unravelling that occurs when you receive bad news, I could only see me. People swirled around but I could only hear my heartbeat, my shallow breaths, I saw big grey brains curling, parting, and then reassembling into the silhouette of a woman.

  “She’s absolutely furious with me, she’s been calling continuously!” he said.

  “How long has this been going on?” I asked, leaning against the wall.

  “About two weeks. Oh Desi, I’m so sorry, she’s just… there. We’re only compatible sexually. In every other way we’re completely wrong for each other!”

  “And why did you choose to tell me this now, Balthazar? Just as we’re about to go to Tavira together? Don’t you think that’s cruel? Why not two days ago?”

  “I just couldn’t bear you not knowing, I’m sorry, I’d still like you to come with me.”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t already pay the train fare for Stroud!” I spat.

  “I know,” he said wearily.

  “Do you really think I’d want to come with you now? You must be out of your fucking mind.”

  “Look, I really fancy you,” he whined. “But there’s a disconnect somewhere between us that’s baffling. And the whole sexual thing… well it’s a pain you know. Part of the reason I started sleeping with Tara was to prove to myself there wasn’t something wrong with me. But how to tell you?”

  “I’m not the one that can’t get it up!” My voice sounded thin to my own ears, terse. I wanted to reach inside my head and stop it sending parts of the bomb to my chest, heart and throat.

  “I’m sorry.” His voice was a ghost now.

  “What do you expect me to say? No, really? I’m getting off this line,” I yelled, ignoring the concerned looks a few passersby threw my way.

  I sat on my bag and watched people rush past, as if reading their faces would give me answers. Balthazar was occasionally unpredictable but I never suspected he would cheat. He was generous, thoughtful and attentive. I could not believe he had done it with Tara, the woman who lived doorsteps away from him, who he’d disparaged. She’s a lunatic! She’s been stalking me! I should have guessed, men are usually fucking or want to fuck women they dismiss as crazy. Tara lived out of a van like a wild, nomadic creature. She was the kind of woman that would dance around Stonehenge naked, stay in some eco-village with strangers, build giant composts, piss in buckets of hay and expect an internal revelation when the sun came up.

  I was the opposite, dusky-skinned, creative and adventurous but I was a city girl, I barely owned the right pair of boots to traipse around the countryside for long walks, something Balthazar loved to do. Balthazar happily introduced me to friends and family while Tara climbed poles and windows to interrupt gatherings declaring her love. It was Shakespearean. I wasn’t going to compete, not my style. Getting my own van and bandying about the British countryside in it which would never work because:

  a) I’d freeze unless it was summer;

  b) I’m bad at map reading so getting lost would be a frequent occurrence;

  c) I’d be craving spicy food consistently;

  d) No access to the internet might make me temporarily insane;

  e) What if I accidently fell asleep having left the van door open and some creature ate me? This would be a genuine concern.

  Me in a van travelling through the countryside equalled a series of calamities. There was nothing I wanted to do. I shifted my weight to the side. My appetite was gone, which meant only one thing: I was definitely upset.

  The next day scalded leg in tow; I caught a flight to Lisbon while Balthazar travelled to Tavira with his ten-year-old daughter Alice. I figured I’d booked the time off work and still wanted to travel. Easy Jet didn’t even serve a meal on flight. I have a small build but spend a lot of time thinking about food. At breakfast I start planning lunch, at lunch time I begin to imagine dinner. This cycle rarely deviated from its course.

  In Lisbon I stayed at El Rancho, a hotel hidden in an ancient gothic building that looked nondescript from the outside. You had to go two floors up to find it, tucked away inside like the architectural equivalent of nesting boxes. Its glass doors parted if you clapped or waved. I pretended to flap as though I’d sprouted wings in the small metallic ancient lift that creaked all the way up as if it would get stuck in the ether. I flapped my new wings and the doors opened. The inside was comfortable and cosy. My room had a large, sprawling dark wooden bed, wide white windows, a cream coloured bathroom and satellite TV with some English speaking channels. The guy at reception was very friendly. He even told me where his favourite restaurant was.

  The next morning, the friendly receptionist was replaced by a thin man with a ferret face and a pinched expression. I needed an adaptor plug to charge my mobile phone. He gave me clear directions. I told him my room was a little cold and he offered to turn the heating up while I was out.

  I found myself on the narrow winding streets littered with quaint, tiny shops. After a jaunt that was almost fruitless, I bought an adaptor and returned to the hotel. I ate a sandwich, watched a couple of Family Guy episodes, sent a scathing text or two to Balthazar’s apologetic ones, crashed for a bit.

  By 3pm I decided to use the Internet room upstairs. I took my bankcards, my phone and I left my purse. I carried two 50 euro cents coins, locked my room door and spotted a scowling cleaner outside fiddling with towels. I handed my keys to the guy at reception and asked him to turn up my heating. Upstairs the machine required 1 euro coins specifically so I ran back down to get my purse. Within the space of five minutes my bed had been made, the receptionist had turned up the heating and my pu
rse was missing.

  “My purse has disappeared,” I said, rushing up to him. “It’s purple with a red rose on it. It was in my room and now it’s gone!”

  He looked at me blankly. “No, I have not seen this purse.”

  “Ask the cleaner!” I replied, my voice rising. They exchanged words in Portuguese. “Look I have two hundred euro in that purse, all the money I was carrying on me and now it’s gone, whoever stole it is still in this hotel.”

  We went back to my room where they both pretended to help me look for it. I was furious. You bastards, I thought. One of you is a thief checking for a purse you’ve stolen. I was livid; my skin so warm the hot water bottle exploding on my leg seemed like a distant memory. I confronted the receptionist again.

  “All I know is both of you went into that room within a couple of minutes and now my money’s gone,” I said, frowning at the unapologetic faces before me.

  “I trust our staff more than I trust a stranger’s words. They have worked here for many years. How do we know that you are not making this up to get out of paying your hotel bill?” the receptionist countered, his collar tight against his neck. He waved his arms as though conducting the scene.

  “What?” I spat. “You are an imbecile. That is ridiculous. Why would I make this up? I’m a client in this hotel, a guest in your country and frankly your lack of sympathy is making me suspicious.”