girl flesh

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There had been a boy, sleeping in front of the butcher’s shop. One of Manchester’s many street urchins, he had occupied the doorway across from the cemented pathway leading into Mr Byrne’s.

Simon had spent minutes of dawny mornings trying to find anywhere else to look, mouthing around cheap-bought cigarettes, waiting for his early shift to start. The boy would be laying down on the coir door mat, slumped over to one side, cheeks red with the frigid air and black lashes blending in with the coal smeared under his eyes. Factory boys, the lot like him, working graveyard in those textile mills, putting hands to jobs that paid grown men too little.

He must’ve been around Tommy’s age, a few years younger than Simon himself. Looking at him too long made Simon’s chest swell up with guilt, so he wouldn’t look at him at all. He had other things to feel guilty about already.

“Come here to me now you,” Mr Byrne would call then from behind him, swinging open the rusted bars of the shop, “I’ve something to tell ya.”

His employer hailed from Ireland, so none would work for him. Simon had no real sense of patriotism and an impellent need to work, so he had come to introduce himself and had found a meat cleaver in his hand not long after.

The job had been dirty, but he liked it. There’d been something satisfying in forcing the blade through the bones, hearing them crack, scraping along the curve of them to free strips of connective tissue. The fatty grease smeared over his palms had been rich, and reminded him of the waxed soaps his mother would cook up in the kitchen, large blocks to be used for washing or as lamp oil.

“Mind the shop while I’m gone,” Mr Byrne instructed, fingers flipping through wads of quids as if counting them, depositing Simon’s weekly check on the clean corner of the butchering table. “It’s manky outside. Don’t suppose we’ll have any visitors, but ya never know. Everyone’s off their rockers with those Army fellas coming in.”

Simon had given him no response because he’d known it wasn’t needed, and Mr Byrne had been on his way to make the latest deliveries. He suspected that Tommy had been spying in from the back windows, because his knocking came just as the front door swung closed.

“What’re you doin’ out? It’s pissing down,” Simon clicked his teeth as he unlatched the glass for his little brother to climb through, hauling him by under his armpits when the boy almost left wet boot imprints all over his employer’s desk. “You’ll catch your death.”

Tommy stuck his hands down the side pockets of his coat and bounced his shoulders. “Mum needs me to go to the grocer.”

“Well, you could’ve waited for the rain to stop,” Simon pointed out with genuine irritation, knowing that Tommy was more interested in the meat cuts he was perusing than in his brother’s reprimands. “C’mere. Your hands wet?”

“No.” Tommy stuck out a palm for him to deposit part of his check into. That was the deal: every few days, his younger brother would sneak down to the shop, and Simon would give him the majority of his salary. He’d hold just enough to himself to pay for cot and fare, and the rest would go to keeping his sanity safe. He was gone, but he needed Tommy and Mum fed. It was the least he could do.

“It’s too much,” his younger brother bleated, frowning so much that a wrinkle dug its way between his brows.

“You can’t come here on Sunday,” Simon told him, “m’ doin’ a job on the boatyard. You need to take it now.”

The lad had scuffed his shoes against the damp planks of the flooring, and stared down at the money in his palm. He wouldn’t curl his fingers around it. “He’ll find it.”

The house built itself brick by brick in Simon’s head, as if he suddenly were standing right in the middle of it. The cupboards, the stove, the bed slats, the secret hideaway under the bathroom’s tile.

“You can’t come here on Sunday, Tom,” Simon said again, trying to put some conviction behind it.

That had appeared to be that, because Tommy’s fingers had closed around the cash, and Simon had led him out of the front door, for once. He needed to climb the side wall if he wanted to exit from behind, and with the stone all wet, Simon had been afraid he might slip and break something.

“Will you come back?”

Tommy had stared at him, planted firmly in the pathway, lips pressed together as if he expected his brother to shoo him away. Simon had wanted to say yes, like every past time he had asked. But he couldn’t. Not without enough money to make him a man.

The stare match had lasted so long that Simon begun picking at his nails, mouth too pasty to speak. He rolled a finger against the palm, and a glob of grease had come loose from where it was stuck under the nailbed. It was still moist, leaving a sheen on his fair skin.

“Put it in the wax,” Simon told his brother when the idea came to him. “Tell Mum to wrap it in foil and put it in a block. It’ll melt over the fire when you need it. He’ll never think to look there.”

Tommy’s throat had worked hard over his next swallow, but he had nodded and tipped his hat like an old man before he started down the street. Simon had watched him go, planting himself against the doorpost so he wouldn’t go after him.

When his brother had disappeared around the corner, Simon’s gaze had fallen on the boy. He was awake now, and his eyes were open. He hadn’t lifted his head from the mat as he stared at Simon, his eyes both glossy and dull with something that couldn’t have been anything other than sickness, even when too akin to exhaustion. A fly had buzzed to his temple, and tiptoed its way to his lash line. It had dipped its wiggly hands into the sclera, attracted to the moisture.

The boy hadn’t flinched. He had simply closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

--

You have skin that dimples like raw dough. Even rough with dehydration, the fat of your upper arm is plum and soft, bending around his fingers like a bread loaf left out to leaven. The thought makes his stomach twist with hunger, so Simon is quick to let you go once you’re past the threshold of the dormitory.

They’ve tried to insulate it the best they could: on the first days, he had helped Laswell and Izzie hang the heaviest of the blankets over the doors’ casings, stuffing old rags and scraps of fabric in the gaps between the panel and the pavement. The windows all needed to be barred, so he had taken turns with Nikolai, working outside in the snowstorm, nailing planks until he’d no longer feel his hands.

Even with those precautions, the temperature indoors is barely warmer than it is out, so he’s not surprised when you huddle without permission towards the ever-lit fireplace across the entrance. The light of the flames burrows into the contours of your face, and you bend away from him when the wood creaks under his boot to your right. You’re looking at him from the floor, eyes wet and displeased, and he pretends not to notice as he leans forward to coax the tip of a fag into the flickering coals. It catches when you speak.

“Will he beat me,” you say, and with the way you’re staring at him, it speaks as an accusation more than a question.

The paper of the cigarette sticks to the wet rim of his mouth, and the tip trembles as he responds. “He has that habit.”

It has the point of your brows coming closer, peaking into a disappointed little curve. Simon has no interest in reassuring you — he’s no priest nor lawman. He knows what Price is capable of and knows it well, and you’ve done no such thing to be deserving of any protection.

But with the way you turn back to the fire, looking like you’re mightily considering facing it in place of another man’s wrath, he thinks you’re probably more useful under some degree of voluntary cooperation.

“You’re not in trouble for listenin’,” he drawls, lazily. “You’re in trouble if you pretend you didn’t.”

Your pretty lips tighten, and you go back to ignoring his existence, stilling in your silence for so long that he gets bored and walks back outside to finish his smoke in peace.

The stank hits him before he can realise the source of it, and his chest rumbles with a scoff as he settles down heavily on the bench next to Price, knee joints cracking loudly like wood popping in the fire. “Smells like piss.”

“Taste like it, too,” the boss replies, one corner of his lips pulling into a too-taut grin. Price’s hands work around the cigar, passing the sharp blade of a pocketknife against the charred end, cutting away the wrapping one half inch after the other. “It’s the damp. I’m on my last two as well. God help me if I have to get stingy with whiffs.”

Simon scratches his chest as he chuckles, and his vocal cords rasp with disuse. “Could always start on fags like the rest of us muck bastards.”

“Allow me one sin, Simon.” John’s nose twitches, a barely there thing, as he shoves the unfinished cigar along the one spare in its casing. “What have you got for me.”

“Six men,” his second responds, leaning back in his seat until his nape can rest on the wall behind. Simon’s mouth parts, cracked lips releasing opaque smoke into the thick cold air. “More, before. No tracks on the snow, but with the way it’s been comin’ down, doesn’t really mean anything, doesn’t it.”

“Carriage stop?”

“Cabin. Killed her husband and kept her.”

“Kept how?”

“You tell me.”

Price hums, rubbing the meat of his index over the nail of his thumb repeatedly, and Simon gets the embarrassing urge to justify himself.

“If it isn’t anything, we can just leave her with the snow,” he adds too quickly, like a child caught with his hand down the cookie jar.

“It’s worth a shot,” John replies placidly, and Simon’s shoulders relax. “Just working on the how.”

“Got any good ideas?”

“Let’s go find out.”

You jolt when they re-enter the room, knees scrambling under you, but keep still in your spot on the floor until Price drags a chair out from under the table and sets it in the middle of the room. Even then, you keep staring vacantly like a nightjar until he gestures towards it with a sigh.

“Miss,” he calls, hand tightening on the wooden back of the seat. You hesitate a moment more before you stand, readjusting the hide so it covers your shoulders, sending a glance towards Simon when he comes to stand next to the door. He doesn’t think you’re stupid enough to try running, but he’s seen fear make fools of men much bigger than yourself before.

“Have my men hurt you?” Price asks, taking a few steps back when he notices how you lean away from his closeness, planting himself in the room with wide-set feet and his arms crossed over his chest.

“Yes,” you’re quick to respond, and the look you send in Simon's direction is nothing less than incriminating. Perhaps you think it finally safe, poor thing. Nikolai lured you in like a doting father, and now you have the leading man holding out chairs for you and soothing your nerves.

John has the decency to consider your answer, turning his head over his shoulder towards Simon’s direction. That way, you won’t know that you don’t stand a chance: there’s more amusement than reprimand in the steel blue of his eyes.

“I’ll rephrase,” he spells gently, bending his head down to look at you. “Have my men hurt you unnecessarily?”

Simon can see the flush of irritation crawl up your neck from where he stands, but you’re a quick, clever girl, so you swallow it right up. “I suppose I should say no,” you hiss through your teeth after a moment of reflection. Well, swallow most of it.

“I suppose,” Price repeats, and his chin dips along each word like he’s hammering them down on an invisible plank before him, shifting on his heels, “you’ve had a difficult introduction to us.”

Your mouth quirks into something nasty, but you have impeccable control over the rest of your face. “That’s one way to say it.”

“Our manners lack, but you can be certain, we’re no more friends to the men who murdered your husband than you are,” John agrees diplomatically, and his chest expands in an inhale as he turns opposite to you to walk towards the decrepit surface of the table, leaning his weight back on it. “You may do well to not believe me, but they’re dead and here you stand, and that is certainly not out of their own kindness.”

You stare at your feet, back into your conservative silence, and perhaps you think that will bother either one of the men in the room. Unfortunately, Simon thinks himself most comfortable with others’ uncomfortableness, and Price doesn’t differ much. So he resigns himself to stare at the fluctuating dust until you face defeat.

“Certainly not out of your own,” you respond after some pointed pondering. From the stern set of your eyebrows, you don’t seem too happy to be speaking in more than monosyllables.

But John is quick to respond, glad to take your stilted muttering as an offered olive branch. “No,” responds, soft, “but need makes faster friends than fondness ever did.

My men said the cabin belonged to you and your husband.”

The sole of your leather moccasin scuffles against the planks when you rub it on the floor in a nervous gesture. “It did.”

“And then the men came. How long they stayed?

“I don’t know.”

“Days?”

“I said I don’t know.”

“They kept you upstairs?”

Your eyes shift, nailing on the wood panel behind Simon’s back. You look like you’re wishing it would blow open. But you appear aware enough that running will get you nowhere, because he watched the way your chin droops back down in acceptance.

“Sometimes.”

“Sometimes,” Price repeats. “And the rest?”

Eyes on the floorboards. “The cellar.”

“Locked?”

“Yes.”

“Always?”

“Most times,” you correct, bristling with petty impertinence. You realize the mistake as soon as the words leave your mouth. “I mean-”

“You mean they let you out.”

“They needed chores done.”

“No one here is new to the unhappy things we must do to keep alive,” Price reassures you, with the tone one uses to quieten a spooked filly. His hand lift in front of him in a pacific gesture. “And while doing all that, you heard men talking.”

“Not much.”

“But some.”

“They drank.”

“Mhm. And men with whiskey in them talk nonsense.”

“They do.”

“Especially dangerous men. They like hearing themselves.”

You’re battling with yourself again. Simon watches the movement of your hands under the hide, the nervous working of one finger over the other as you take them through your head as you would through a tangle of spun yarn. “They fought over food.”

“Mm.”

“One had a bad cough. They had medicine, a lot of it, I believe. He kept... he seemed in a bad way.”

“Mhm.”

“They’d argue over card games. They... talked about poker parlours in Strawberry. Rigged. They make money from it.”

Price shifts his way forward, stepping slowly around the chair.

“Did they mention where they were going?”

“No.”

“Any towns?”

“No.”

“Military posts?”

“No.”

“Railways?”

“No.”

John stalls somewhere behind your shoulders. He doesn’t need to touch you for you to know he’s there. “And yet you remember plenty else.”

“They were waiting on something,” you add carefully. “Weather maybe. I don’t know.”

Simon’s forehead wants to wrinkle, so he exhales slowly to force it into relaxation. From the way Price’s eyes are quick to find his own, his boss shares the same questions seeping into his foremind.

“What makes you say that?”

“They kept looking outside.”

“At what?”

“I don’t know.”

You flinch when John moves his hand to the back of the chair, and you follow him with your gaze when he comes to crouch in front of you. Your neck strains like you want to rear it back, but you limit yourself to looking down at him over the curl of your stiff lip.

“You’re a bright woman,” he says quietly. “Brighter than you’d like us believing.”

Your chin lifts. “I never said I’d like you believing anything.”

“No,” he agrees. “You’ve been careful not to say much at all.”

“You think because I poured drinks and scrubbed pots I was one of them?”

“No.” Price shakes his head patiently. “I think surviving men like that requires attention. And attentive people notice things.

The trouble is you’ve been very particular about what you don’t notice.”

“I’ve told you the truth.”

“Like a miser spends money,” John hums, his voice laden with a good amount of mirth. He rocks back on his heels when he stands, rolling his shoulders as if they sit tight for his frame. “You told me what you can spare.”

The next time he speaks, his voice is directed at Simon. “See that she gets no supper tonight.”

“What?” You object, looking like you’re nearly feeling brave enough to stand without being told to.

“You’ll still work. Water, wood, whatever Nikolai needs. But no meals.”

“You’ve taken me here. That’s insane.”

“It’s practical.”

Your face flushes, angry in the face like a martyr Saint. “I told you everything useful.”

“I don’t believe you know what useful means yet.”

Simon shifts away from the door when Price makes for it, reciprocating the loaded nod he gets in passing. Stiff wind frosts over the right side of his head when the door opens, light flashing over your distraught face, and then you two are alone again.

You gawk at the wood in front of you and your mouth twitches hard, jaw curling surely around a spew of insults and curses that could make the snow tumble off the roof. But you’re smart enough to remember Simon is still in the room, which is why you fix on him before you allow yourself to talk.

“You’re godless, cruel creatures,” it’s what you settle on, but the sibilant tone you mutter the words sounds far more insulting.

It’s almost enough to make Simon smile. He tilts his head as he regards you, one hand already reaching for the door handle. “If we wanted to be cruel,” he points out, unperturbed, “we would’ve taken your shoes.”

--

The goat stew makes a scant meal for the whole of their group, and Nikolai has to thin it with more boiled snow to yield enough from the broth to fill everyone’s bowl. Simon almost regrets the two-hour nap he indulges in when he oversleeps through the lunch bell, because when he groggily makes it to the firepit, any real amount of meat and vegetable has already been spooned away, and what he is left with is mostly lukewarm, salt-flavoured water. He cuts downy chunks of fungal mould out of dry bread, dunking it in the greasy sludge, and dreams of fried little fish in paper pockets and cornmeal johnnycakes.

When he walks back into the dormitory after, he finds you sitting in front of the hearth in self-confinement. Someone, most probably one of the women, has lent you a thick, wefted dress to restore some minim of your modesty, but without the proper underlayers, you still need the fire and the hide around your shoulders to stave off the cold. You don’t turn your head to look at him, passing your hands between your loose hair to comb out the knots, but when he returns from grabbing his rifle, he sees the way you rub his gaze away from your nape as if it stings.

In the afternoon, he goes hunting with Alejandro. One of the younger men, like Johnny or Gaz, would be more apt, but the boss marshals them into working on the caravans. Hunting is not ascribed for him: the knowledge he carries from the motherland about animal foraging is limited to net fishing and meat butchering. But where Simon lacks in nurture, he makes up in nature. Age has battered his stamina into endurance, which makes him able to sit motionless behind a sight longer than anyone he knows.

They try on the low thicket of thin spruce near the gorge, settling in the undergrowth on their abdomens until he can feel his legs going numb from disuse.

“Fuck,” Alejandro looks away from down the barrel of his rifle to smack his forehead gently against the receiver. His voice has an edge of exasperation. “Three days and not a single elk. Not even birds in these pinche montañas.”

“S’only been a couple o’hours,” Simon tries, but he’s never been good at reassurance. He keeps staring down the sight as he readjusts slightly against the ground, the points of his elbows aching with his weight.

“Could be four, you’d see exactly the same thing. Nothing.”

“Where’d you try yesterday?”

“Down those rocks on the left,” the other gestures, lifting an arm to point at it, even when he knows that Simon won’t watch him. “Wanted to go check out the creek near the lake, but it got dark.”

“Go now,” Simon says unhurriedly.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Alejandro scoots until he gets his knees under him enough he can sit on his haunches, and wipes down the snowed sleeves of his jacket. “Shoot up if you need me,” he offers, huffing when he leverages himself off the ground. His steps are crisp in the silence of the valley, the layer of firn on the ground crumbling under his soles. Simon tracks him with the tip of his rifle when he turns around the slope he’s hunkering on, his silhouette shrinking as he walks towards the distance.

In all honesty, Simon does not fancy himself a good hunter. Like many parts of his personality, it’s something he must do to upkeep survival. Like many parts, it’s what he does just to sink his teeth into something.

It’s an exercise in meditation, sitting ducks like this. There’s a peculiar enjoyment in walking the fine line between focus and distraction. He likes what the waiting does to his head, letting the discomforts of his body melt away into the ground. He doesn’t feel the throbbing of his joints, like this, nor the famished rumbling of his stomach nor the burning of the cold air into his nostrils. He lets his anatomy go, heavy and inconvenient. There’s only the sight, the trigger and the snow.

He shouldn’t have brought you back.

The truth sits ugly in his chest now, ever since he placed you up on his saddle. Your place is in the ashed snow of your cabin, along the ice-hard corpse of your husband. And yet some rotted part of him had wanted otherwise, and now he has to suffer the fucking consequences. Maybe he should just take you into the woods and put a bullet in the back of your neck.

He imagines it: the way you’d look over your shoulder, eyes glinting as the barrel he’d press on the curve of your spine. Your hair would kiss the metal, tumbling over your back, catching against the rib. How your mouth would part as you turn around to face him, cheeks flushed crimson. Saliva stringing between upper and lower lip, catching the sunlight.

His hand moves over his stomach when it grumbles, forcing his nose to cringe. He needs something more from dinner than fat and water, or he’s quite sure he’ll start teething at the lumber of the buildings.

When he looks back up, there’s a doe in the middle of the valley. Skinny ballerina legs stumbling over the thick snow, her wedge-shaped head turned up to nose at the light gusts of air. She’s young, Simon wagers, with chest and shoulders still meager, but they could find enough meat in the thighs and belly.

He crawls forward despite his limbs’ protests until he can peer down the edge of the hill. No more tracks in the snow. She’s alone.

He grips the trigger like he’s shaking a hand as he lines up the shot, lungs forcing oxygen inside, cheek warming up the stock. The doe swishes her white, cottony tail, one front hoof suspended in its motion as she calculates the next best place to put it down.

The shot is a clap, a full thump of a heartbeat, there and then gone in the white of the mountains. Sleet dampens it as Simon scrambles upright, shaking his shoulder to dispel the hurt of the recoil, boots digging against the frozen soil as he tries not to slip. The animal is on its side now, the earth its pillow.

Hunger twists hard through him as he starts down the slope, blood rushing over his ears. He bends his knees to start down the slope, arms out to keep his balance. Steak cooked bloody, salted meat, liver and heart, kidneys in a few days.

His own breath billows opaque around his head, so thick with the heaving of his chest he almost stumbles as he pushes forward. He’s warm all over now, sweat pooling at his nape and under his armpits. Even the barrel of the shotgun seems scalding, heated through the fabric of his gloves.

When he gets down there, the only thing left is an imprint in the snow.

Simon whips his head around, tugging down the scarf to free his ears. He shot it. He’s sure he shot it, and it fell, he didn’t miss. He saw it — the bullet, slashing through bone and sinew, the skull jerking sideways. The spray of blood when it came clean through.

But now, the red on white is reduced to a couple of shy drops. Did it get back up?

“Christ’s sake,” he mutters under his breath, tugging off one glove as if the skin could come off with it. The flakes are still melting, wetting his hand, product of body heat dispersing. His neck tautens as he scans the horizon, trying to find a line of tracks.

The wolf is on the edge of the trees. He can’t be sure it’s a wolf, black and shaded as it is, but its eyes sure reflect like one’s, and its maws are strong enough to pull his bloody deer into the underbrush.

“Fuckin’ cunt,” Simon hisses, manning his shotgun again. The ammos find their place into the chamber as he straightens the rifle. “Fuckin’ cunt- oi!"

The shot makes the animal jump, but its teeth don’t move from their place around the doe’s larynx. It arches, back protruding, and puts the effort on its hind legs to tug the prey faster.

They both make a sprint for it, the canine trying to retreat into the woods, and Simon trying to follow it, lungs burning with the frost. “Let it go, you daft cunt,” he yells, voice booming, stopping only to shoot fast rounds at him that hit leaves and dirt.

By the time his boots are crushing the dry, fallen foliage, the wolf has gone into the thicket. Simon stands there at the confines of the patch of trees, ears red and one glove off, feeling like the biggest sod the earth has ever spat out.

“Ghost!” He hears somewhere behind him as Alejandro resurfaces from the distance, panting. “What happened, hermano? I heard the shots.”

The mountains around him jut against the sky like pearly, polished teeth. Simon thinks they’re laughing at him.

--

The hag curls over his bed that night as he stares up at the ceiling. The wooden beams of the ceiling creak high and shrill when she hooks her talons on them to crawl in his field of vision, contorting her sinuous body until she can peer at him. Her neck is so thin he can count the vertebrae under the translucent, grey flesh. She tilts it back, upside down, and her skin glistens in the moonlight. It has the same quality as a fish’s.

Her head moves, hair sliding off her face, and her eyes take a red sheen. She unhooks one clawed hand from the beams and reaches for him, the most elegant of acrobats, suspended backwards in the air. Over the nest of darkness, he watches as the meat parts in the concave of her chest, starting from the hollow of the throat, sliding down towards her navel as if an imaginary knife is gutting her. Inside the wound shine a thousand dreary teeth.

When he blinks his eyes again, the sun is warming the curve of his cheekbone. It’s real, and vibrant, warmer than anything he felt in weeks. He has barely time to understand that he’s awake when someone knocks on his doorway, and he turns his head on the cushion to find the oldest of Johnny’s children standing at the entry of his room.

“Simon,” she calls timidly, looking away when she rubs the apple of her cheeks as if she doesn’t want him to see her cry, “they need your help digging the hole.”

He walks down the stairs to the parlour, but he knows what happened before he even sees the body. Roach’s face is the tight one of a man who died in pain, but the line of his spine is relaxed on the cot and his hands folded over his lap as if he simply waited patiently to go. The skin that is exposed, what little not covered by clothes and blanket, resplends with spit-like sweat.

“I’m not sure he would’ve made it even with a doctor’s help,” Laswell reflects aloud, standing up from the chair at the corpse’s hips.