Ark, part 2

I run because the spiders tell me there is no time. They’re lying. I can feel them scuttle down to my heart, find their way to the rubber tunnels to scale the chambers of my sustaining organ. They go down one way and they find a dead end, back up they go and discover another route, something to lead them straight through the soft watery flesh with walls that stretch ellipses. Storm through if they could but my heart would stop. Slow and slow they must adventure so there is no pain, there is no choke. To the man before they eat me. To the man before they kill me. I run and the monkey’s tongue lops in my beak.

The spiders direct me to the garden and before me rises the hedges of the labyrinth. The flowers above are untouched, in bloom, open and wet with dew but below in a wave, their stem peeks from the brush and bramble beheaded; the petals are crumpled on the ground, embedded in large paw prints. The mud speaks as I claw through. My wing drags behind me and sticks and unsticks. The feathers peel and pop from my skin like hair ripped from the scalp.

Who goes there? Is that you my one love?

The other dog appears and sniffs when he sees me. We stare at one another. He waits for me to speak but I cannot speak. The monkey’s tongue hangs limp from my mouth. The dog pants and licks the air, his eyes growing dim and sceptical. But then the spiders speak up in chorus again.

Speak, bird. We have re-wired your chords.

I speak and I tremble at the first breath. My voice leads out my empty eye and the spiders make a chamber for my sounds to boom off their round bodies. I speak and speak and breathe. The air tickles and dries. My voice sounds strange to the ear, inefficient and short like crackles through electrified bulbs.

Let me through, I say.

The dog scoffs. My love has charged me to guard and I will guard.

I am impatient and stamp my feet but it squelches in the mud and I am stuck. Why do you obey?

Because he is my love and he will gift me once he succeeds. Arrogant, desperate dog. Deceived and dumb.

Succeeds what? I scoff but the air expels weak through the holes in my beak. The monkey’s tongue does a little wave.  Does he know where the man is? I ask.

I cannot say. I will not say. That is none of your concern.

And what about you? When he finds the man, what about you?

He will gift me.

The rabbit is dead.

The slut? I knew.

I must find the man; I must but how to move forward? What do I do? I wait. We wait. Our minds count down, count up. We tread through the seconds leading up to the full, swollen minute. The spiders then call for my attention; they whisper so I can hear. I listen while my one eye bewares the other dog as he bewares me. He could sever me with one bite and he is deciding on it. His tail slows down and he seems to want to approach, but the spiders finish their chorus and it becomes clear. My claws pull out of the mud and I extend first. Oh, other dog, you are deceived. You are dumb.

The seconds surge and break.

Well, I have a gift for you, I say.

What are we for you to give me gifts?

Wonder why he does not swell for you? Here. I spit out the monkey’s tongue and it slaps onto the ground, its pale redness lustres against the green of wild grass and the dog approaches, head bent down, neck outstretched to inhale its wetness, its musk. He left his remains inside her.

The other dog pants harder, does not question. His penis engorges, rises with black blood and he no longer recognises me there. He shunts the monkey’s tongue along the grass with his wet nostrils and straightens it out to see the full length of the fleshy body, turned and twisted like a napkin into a headless swan. He lowers onto his haunches and his member towers against his torso, the tip expels sticky like melted candy and catches in his hair. He leans over the monkey’s tongue and his penis brushes up against the lump and the dog yelps, exclaims, pants and exuberates. He lays, he waits, his eyes roll and then he moves and vibrates on, over, up against what once was the monkey’s tongue, now no longer so defined. The other dog stitches hard into the ground, the stalks of grass rub apart broken, the mud catches, the tongue is suffocated, overwhelmed, subsumed, loved. The slick of cum, of dried blood calls the early morning cockerel and I walk on. I enter the labyrinth but the spiders twist my neck with their weight. I walk sideways to accommodate. The spiders continue to observe, to linger, to look on at the other dog as he how-how-howls to come. I catch a small childish voice amongst the many: I wish it were his heart and not thine, and my heart, oh my heart, misses a quarter beat to its time.

*

The spiders were here before the man came and they tell me of his history as they walk me through this maze of high green grass and leaves blue-printed and cut to mirror walls, a controlled place.

The man came through a door, unspecified, from somewhere else, not here. He came and he walked through the halls, the rooms, lighted the candles, the lamps, dusted the floors, the books, bathed his body, the mirrors. The grounds around this house were ruins of a past master and he came and he built and toiled for flowers in spring and summer, for trees and rotting leaves in autumn, for loneliness in winter. He built this labyrinth for our homecoming, us of the ark, but before he could complete the map, he became lost in its maze and then he disappeared and we came.

I turn a corner and come upon a square where the maze is incomplete, a square of broken paving stones, reaching out towards an unkempt mess of greenery half-made, half-wrought. A stone bench sits discoloured and rusted where the nail heads peak. But I see no man. I see no form. No one other than me and my heart wrenches and my chest heaves.

Where is the man? I ask the spiders of my eye.

Not here, not yet. Walk further beyond this maze, bird and you’ll find him, don’t cry.

I’m tired, I hurt. My neck strains and I cannot further. I step and step but before I get any closer, up into the air violently, tossed to fly, and my feathers break upon the uplift and spread in the momentum. I fall quick and hard and the spiders drip drop out of the chasm of my eye. I try to save them, but I collapse over them and some are crushed underneath my breast, squashed flat beyond saving. The paving stones rattle and the broken spiders limp back into my eye. They lift up the lid and crawl and crawl one by one, and behind me I hear his breath underneath the recurring ringing, the hard and fast pumping of my scrambling cells. My one eye counts the little legs scattered before me and I blow and they scuttle away as if they still lived, as if they weren’t dead.

The big black dog with the yellow eyes speaks. Bird. Who knew it’d be you to get this far?

I get up and manage to turn. My foot is broken and I limp. I gaze over the dog and he turns his lip.

I will find him. I will win.  I spit.

You’re a fool. The man is to be found by me! He desires my strength, the form of my body, the sheen of my teeth, the power of my jaw. And you, you sold your heart, garnered a deal at the crossroad. Do you know who they approached first? Me. They came to me as I slept. Tickled in my ear and spoke in dulcet chorus. You are all fools and I will not be beaten by a fool such as you.

The spiders…the thought is incomplete. I must counter. I must fight. There is not time to think of the spiders and their deception, their haunting lies.

Dog, you have not found him yet. Do not be so sure of your victory.

The big black dog with the yellow eyes growls and bares his teeth. Why don’t you obey? Why must I fight all of you for you to understand my power, my superiority over your body? Why must I kill you for you to understand?

Then come and kill me. You have no authority over me. You speak as if you lament the kill, regret the decision you have to make. Don’t patronise me.

Fine, bird. The big black dog with the yellow eye rumbles in his throat, murmurs a small cadence, a lullaby. His muscles spring taut, he hunches and assumes a position to consume and feed. I tried to make you understand but I remain misunderstood.

Fool. Don’t be so high.

He runs at me so quick I barely perceive him before I am thrown again. I fall onto my wings, shatter the bones and cry in pain, in hurt – lightning and thunder lacerates my mind and I cannot see! I cannot see! I cannot get up! I cannot resist!

The dog comes up to me and looks over my chest. He pins a dislodged wing with a paw and I scream and shriek.

Oh, bird. To have to kill you is a shame. You were next after her. But now you’re too close and the competition must be slain. Of all of them, of all of us of the ark, I thought you would understand.

No. I spit, I gurgle through the blood that sits at the back of my throat. I won’t consent.

Consent, consent, consent. Did you teach the rabbit that word? What is it but a word of which I do not know its definition? Bird, you have overstepped your construction and I am the arbiter and the consequences must be met.

Why do you talk so much of things that make no sense?

The big black dog with the yellow eyes laughs. Oh bird, if I could let you live!

I cannot fight. My body is broken and cross-wired. I lift my neck to peck, to pick at the big black dog with yellow eyes but he simply backs away, playful before he tires of the dodge and pins down my neck with his other foot. My head is turned sideways and I look up at him from my one eye. He stretches open his jaw and his teeth come forward from under his lips. The gums are stained purple and pink and the tongue curls at the back of the throat for the maul. I do not hear the spiders. They do not make a sound. Help me. Help me. I cry and cry inside but they do not answer. My heart rises too quick for my lungs and as much as I breathe and breathe I suffocate. I do not feel. I cannot control the muscles of my shoulders, of my hip.

His spit blurs my sight and I close my lid, too scared to see and anticipate the pain, the thousand slung arrows with heads of poison into the flesh of my chest. The heat, his breath. His weight comes down harder and I shake, I tremble. The teeth! The teeth! And his canines come through and thrust into the flesh, through the feathers, through the bone! I scream-

He roars.

…

Why does he roar?

Why does he sound in pain?

I open my one eye slow and the big black dog with the yellow eyes is scratching at his body, his stomach. He runs back and forth and yells and barks. Black spots move over his head, the spine of his back. They spin and somersault and my eyesight focuses and suddenly I see depth. The big black dog is no longer black. From his head, his snout, to his hard belly, his flesh divided, teased and peeled back. Blood and muscle, yellow fat. Shades of pink and patches of poppy heads.

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part one: http://www.abctales.com/story/nanei18/ark-part-1

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