It was a cold green summer night when he picked her up from the alleyway, all wet from a downpour. He smothered her in his coat, and with his hands hard around her neck, kissed her deeply and brought her home for good. She a complete stranger with a presence that his mind could not make borders for, she reeked of a wild, damp fury.
When she became his it was a struggle to get out of bed, to untangle his body from hers. Often, when she moved across the room he would look at her and she would sense him intuitively, turning her whole being towards him. Her intelligence frightened him in these moments because she seemed quicker, sharper, more alert. His mind did not work this way.
She did not admire herself in the mirror, her beauty far beyond anything he had ever known he couldn't tell whether she knew this or not. When he brought her food she grabbed at it without hesitation, no move she made without purpose; if there wasn't anything she needed she would sit still and relaxed, her hair the colour of blackstrap molasses.
He left her alone in the house when he went to work, he sometimes imagined her screaming wildly with other men: the flat-nosed guy in the local shop, or the small African postman. In his business he could not focus, he looked her up online endlessly, even though he knew she didn't exist there, he wondered about her real name, he could tell she wasn't who she said. He imagined other identities for her, based on things she'd spoken about; as if random conversations were clues to her being in the world.
He would drive himself crazy, ruminating: how she could just show-up, like a lost object. He created pictures about their future together - was this an attempt to keep her?
He asks how she would like to decorate the property; he wants her to make a mark. When he speaks this way she says she likes things the way they are; he searches every part of her for a sign she's holding back, maybe something bad happened to her when she was a child? The fact she wants everything to remain the same unsettles him to the core.
When he comes home from work she always meets him at the street-door, her lips searching before he even has time to put down his gloves and keys. Lately, he wonders whether she meets him here so urgently because she has something to hide, like she's been busy clearing away the evidence: burying her shit.
–Hello, Mr, she says. The shape of her eyes, almost Egyptian, though she is English. Her waist and hips in a navy-pleated skirt; he watches her move, she pulls off his coat without care for its quality, he hears the lining tear as strands of her sweet, thick hair get entangled in his watch. He yanks his wrist, her eyes widen: her body retracts and opens-up when he hurts her. He pushes her down on the lower step, then puts everything into her mouth, he is all the way in the hollow of her throat; her body twitching and crouching, he notices that she has made small damp patches on the floor. Did she pee? He pulls her by the hair upstairs; she prefers it this way, she stares lost into the unknown when he is too tender. He pushes her face, she hisses and pulls him inside her. He wonders where she goes in these moments; she seems a member of a secret sect, part unknowable like all sharp women are. He only ever treated woman like this before that he thought below him. When she is finished she curls up in a ball and lies still like a coiled foetus. - Well Goodnight Then, he says.
She dreams of lost city-streets in Istanbul: dark passageways and half-men in the shadows. In her purse, alongside the nightstand, is a small purple string key ring. A pointless item, but she keeps it with her and who knows the reason?
One night he wakes to find her vomiting in the corner of the bedroom. She is bent over, gagging and holding a large brown bucket. As she leans forward the notches in her back rise against her flesh. Her protruding spine, the open mouth, a clicking sound deep within her stomach: the scene is unnerving, she has always been an image of health. In the first month they met she had some mass removed from her uterus; she was told it may be still possible to have children, she didn't seem to care, she got up that very afternoon and left the hospital; rosy. He argued with her in the car on the way home: asking why she wasn't concerned about her fertility - did she not want to have babies? He became obsessed. He felt subhuman in this moment, all nervous system, oh how she drove him mad with insane thoughts, degenerating him to create ugly, precious fantasies, mostly of a sober domesticated kind. He no longer recognises himself, he aches for the days of culture over monstrosity.
She seems very unwell, she's stuffing her long puny fingers deep inside her throat, she is panting heavily, grabbing for air, and her eyes are streaming with run-mascara; the whites of her eyes haemorrhaging spidery red vessels. Her hand prods manically, her knuckles shiny with saliva; her whole fist is now in her throat. Raw. She shudders, like a wasp has moved up her spinal fluid. He touches her on the small of her back - "are you ok? I have to leave now". She retches again and this time it's not dry, she spits-up a pile of black hair, it looks pubic. Colour returns to her face and she walks to the bathroom, turns on the tap, her lips under the fresh stream of running water. She walks back to him and kisses him with an open mouth, she smells curdled.
•
When he returns from dining with clients, he opens the door, unsure of what he may find. The air smells of defecation, he opens all the windows and doors and searches as frantically as he does for her virtually. She is nowhere, she is gone now completely, oh how she is irreplaceable! He knew this, feared this day would come. He reaches for the whiskey, he keeps it for visitors, he hasn't drunk since 2009, but he cannot go on. He gulps it in one go and pours another, his insides aflame, just like he remembers.
But wait - in his peripheral vision he sees a shadowy figure dancing across the grass. It's his lover. She is on all fours, pulling herself up on fully stretched legs and arching her back in the shape on an inverted-U, as he approaches her through the glass doors she flattens the front of her body and raises her rump in the air. She is rolling on the frost-dew grass; she is writhing and rubbing herself in a manner that fascinates him. She turns her head and smiles. Something is wrong she is no longer his. Her bones are amiss. They are chiselled-out incomprehensibly. Direct. Her lips are no longer kissable; her nose is a light-pink stub. She is blacker and bushy, she darts across the lawn, in a slinky unconscious way, that he has never seen in any female.
He runs towards her unbalanced, he reaches out to her and is attacked with blows from her sharp, clawed forepaws; she spits and growls at him and then retreats towards the Ancient Sycamore. For once it is she who is very much in charge of what is happening.
Her clothes are there in a small pile on the lawn. She has picked up speed now; she is so fast; sleeker, fitter. She is darting and narrowing, darting and narrowing, running further away from the house. Her lace scarf is trailing behind in the wind. All humanity shed. She looks back at him. Oriental eyes glistening. Feline femme fatale. Then in a flash...she is gone through the thicket, it is almost 1. A.M.
With mania flapping in his chest he picks up her belongings from the lawn: her burgundy silk maxi dress, gold hooped earrings and suede sandals, and folds them on the kitchen table, finishing the bottle.
Days, and then a week pass-by and still there is no sign. He has taken to working on the kitchen counter, his lap-top looking out towards the garden, every third minute his eyes wander to the glass doorway, hoping, he has even taken to praying to an unknown entity. These days he cannot sleep, to the new night sounds of shadow and teeth, he can hear the screams of copulation outside. Beasts! He wonders whom she is with? More stuck nights pass and he replays the reels of their romance in scenes. Indignant he wonders whether when she's out roaming she considers how lucky she is? He thinks he can still have anyone.
This morning he gets up and looks out through the glass door like he does everyday, and on the ground, sitting in a puddle of jellied blood, is a mangled chunk of pink meat. He looks closer: it is long, pink, fleshy. His eyes go wild, is he seeing things? Is it human? Did she trap and kill it? He cannot tell. She left this for him as a present. At last she is back! He sips from the bottle of whiskey and with tears in his eyes roars out an inaudible sound, a wailing from times uncivilised; just like the screams he hears in the sleepless middle-night. Uncontrollably he pleads with murky hope that one day she will see sense, admit the truth of her whoring, come back.