Ark, part 1

The monkey’s jagged fangs tears through my breast and snags in my wing. He jerks his head and throws me aside and my body hits into the wall with a dull thud. Feathers leap into the air and scatter about the wooden floor.

Don’t get in my way, bird.

The monkey roars with chattering laughter and the blood from his teeth rains down on me. I look at him with my one-eye and he merely scoffs and thumps his way down the dark corridor into the library. The house shakes and my bones rattle. My feathers betray me and linger after him. I catch a hair in my nostril. I blink multiple times to dislodge the little blood drop hanging on my lid. I can’t fly and I can’t get onto my feet. The door to the study across the hall is open and I turn my head to see with my one eye the fluffy down of the white rabbit rub, rub, rubbing against the worn carpet and the hissing snout of the big black dog with the yellow eyes. They’re fucking again and the rabbit squeals up and up. Outside, there’s the other dog in the garden crying like a wimp - hiccup, cry, hiccup, cry - licking the head of its erect penis imagining its partner rip the rabbit wet. The monkey continues to roam the house and the doors bang open and bang shut, the hanging lights swing so hard the bulbs smash hard against the ceiling. It rains a chime of glass. The clock keeps on ticking and the rabbit soon stops squealing. Out the dog struts from the study. He sits on its haunches and lifts his leg up to lick the blood clean off its muscular limb. There’s a grin and he jumps leisurely back up onto his feet. He forces his wet snout into the tear across my breast and sniffs. He asks a question.

Has the monkey found the man?

No.

The big black dog with the yellow eyes shrugs and wanders off, the blood drops off its underside like golden honey. It leaves a trail that mimics the sprint of semen and soon the other dog will find his way here and slather it up, forever following after his partner’s echo, unable to meet up. I turn my head and direct my one eye back at the study. Inside, where the lights shine bright, the rabbit has burst, split straight down the middle, an ovary on either side. A glistening curve of a purple organ peeks out from the messy tear that starts at what once was a small pink hole. The intestines slips slops, unwinds. I wonder if its eye is still intact.

Would it fit into my socket?

Would it be a pretty colour?

We’re all falling apart one by one. Our bodies are a measure of the time left and there’s still more limbs to lose, more blood to shed, more organs to be ravaged. The first one who finds the man wins an escape. I look behind in my mind’s eye and with my toes and the tips of my wing I count the numerous dead before me. All wasted away not intact; their breath ceased to function, their hearts broke the beat. Pain is prolonged and regeneration not an option. I should go and take its eye, scoop it up with the little crevice in my broken beak, swallow and train my insides to transport it up to the fallen in socket, fill it up and make my lids taut, but then I will have her scent and the dog with the yellow eyes will be after me. No, I won’t consent.

I have been here long but the dead tortoise has been here longer. She lives in the bathtub, and sometimes after perching on the coat hooks, perching on the mounted deer, perching on the window sill to stare out at the blur of garden and labyrinth, I perch on her glossy hard back and stare with my one eye at the white tiles that line the walls from ceiling to the floor. The toilet seat is black and the sink is no longer white, filled with the remains of the remains of a dead carcass. The false golden rings where the plastic curtain used to hang now flake pink bronze and rust. The spiders have made homes inside the false golden taps that arch out from the steel tub. They scatter as I peck at the taps with my broken beak to mime a heartbeat and in through the gaping gaps of my shattered maw they crawl and they follow the length of my tongue down into my oesophagus and begin to make a home inside. I rasp. My breath breathes sticky.

Bird. We’ll exchange.

The spiders inside speak in chorus. Voices and echoes of slick rain hitting against a single window pane. They rattle. Their little hairs tickle. Lines of draped web tremble to their unified breaths.

Exchange? I ask.

The man for your heart.

Have you found the man?

We know the man.

My heart races and I ache. The beat tempts them and they expand and then they contract back to their huddle. I feel their little legs prick up and down the soft tissue of my insides. Their multitudes of feet accidently poke through the membrane; I protest and they sing. Show me the man, I remind them. The spiders click and click as they begin to thread up to my eye. They build little ladders that waver in the high temperature of my living cells. They scuttle in a mass. They hitch up my collapsed socket like a piece of tarp and peel it back to expose the cavernous black. Their bodies give volume and my head tilts to the weight. Legs with sparse hair flick out in staccato and point like lashes to the bathroom door. I spy them over the curve of my snapped beak.

Go, bird, we will show.

I hop off the dead tortoise’s back, hop onto the rim of the tub, hop on to the tiled floor. I walk and walk and walk out the door. My claws scratch the tile and the dried dirt flakes. I leave the etchings of thorns in my wake.

*

The monkey storms in front of me and blocks my passage. With one hand he holds his smoking innards close to his chest and it falls over him and under him, almost catching under the pads of his feet. He growls and clamps his jaws and I can see the dirty tooth of the yellow eyed dog caught in the monkey’s chest, worn like a pendent, a trophy of war and he mumbles and chatters in broken chuckles and his tail, its tip torn off, whips across the floor and spits.

Where are you going, bird? He asks.

I lie. I point my broken beak at his split chest and he shrugs and embraces his organs tighter.

I heard you through the vent. I know of your deal. My heart is bigger than the bird’s. Take mine. Take me to the man.

A spider of my eye reaches out and steadies some of its legs on the nostril of my beak. They do not speak. I do not speak. I lower my head and walk one way but my claw lifts up but does not advance.  The monkey stands closer and imitates a man on two feet.  I cannot pass him without him following. I pause. I hesitate. I do not look. The innards he clumsily carries make my one eye water and the smoke of raw blood and intestinal bile poke and prodder – through me, under me, around me. The spiders ooh and ahh and one by one they trip out over my waterline and they reach forward, trembling across my broken beak. I lift my working wing and flap hard; the feathers break against the air and the wind makes the spiders tumble and retreat back inside. Hold up my eye, hold up my eye. You’re deal was with me!

The spiders consult and they click and click and I hear them inside me. They circle each other and spit communication and pause to measure the worthiness of my heart. The quality of the ticker, a measure of numberless time. The monkey comes closer and drops his intestines in between us. He laughs as he exposes a little of his heart, the apex of the taut muscle, its vessels of hot blood. The blood rolls down his soft innards and feathers over the membranous creases.

I cannot let the monkey find the man. My throat bubbles. It rises and inflames. The hallway shakes and echoes but the monkey simply throws back its head to laugh. It eyes scorch amusement and mimics my call to mock.

Bird, bird! We learnt to speak!

He guffaws, his tongue stretches and flips, springs. I fizzle, I burn. I lunge and pull, rip and tear. The monkey’s tongue squelches in my beak and flaps to speak. The word is silent. I stumble over the castle ruins of the monkey’s innards and the monkey bellows and collapses onto the floor. The pressure of his fall, his claws and paws burst his messy intestines and out pours the black brown burn of faeces and food not long ago digested. He screams and reveals his teeth moulded in blood. An outpouring of vessels each torn and severed gurgle over his large jaw and over his matted down.

The monkey rolls and kicks as he lies in his body turned inside out, reversed. Arms that can’t sustain themselves spawn from the fleshy blend and wrap, link and slide over the monkey’s body. The spiders reconsider and sigh and tap. They pour out of my eye to help me to stand. My wing weighs heavy with gloop and bits of putrid waste and the spiders thread over my feathers to clean me. I twist my neck and see with my one eye the monkey struggle and then pause. He chatters and turns his head to see me, his face masked and his fur wet. His jaws move up and down and his lips rub together and he points out to me and laughs. I cannot read his lips. They form shapes unknown. Then he opens his jaws wide and then clamps them furiously down and begins to choke. His body jump starts and flashes life before his eyes cloud over and he ossifies.

The monkey is dead, but his innards still heat. His tongue mourns clamped in my broken beak.

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part two: http://www.abctales.com/story/nanei18/ark-part-2

part three: http://www.abctales.com/story/nanei18/ark-part-3