COWS

by Matthew Stokoe

The Hagbeast. The unloving mother bitch cunt stood hulked over a two burner stove, stirring a pan of rancid pork.

Snapped in half and still killing itself to please.

The air they breathed was not his air and the light that fell on them came from a warmer source than his sun. He longed to imitate them, to share in the mass normality that rolled in cathode waves across the dead nights of his loneliness.

He was adrift in their world, unsure of his significance, and to open himself to a point where conversation could take place would only have revealed how unlike them he was.

glowing inside with the knowledge that she would never change, that no other man could ever mean anything to her and that she would always live only for Steven.

"Our hearts are only two pounds, not much room for love."

From the second she had squirted him from her cunt they had loathed each other.

"You're a fucking idiot, Steven. You think going out there for a day makes you like them? You think you got strong today? Show me how strong you are, cunt. Walk out of here and find somewhere to live... You moron. Without me, without this home I've given you, how long would you last?"

"You moron. Staring at the people out there won't change anything. You can't be like them, don't you know that? You're part of me, you little fuck, part of this place, and you'll die here."

At this moment, though, they meant nothing - not madness or despair or titillation. He was conscious only of the desire to be next to her, curled against her. Asleep.

You thought you wanted your memories - fields of grass, space to chew cud, time for contemplation, all the things every cow before you ever dreamt of. And you could have had it, it's all here - food, safety, silence. But Cripps' death didn't give it to you, did it? It didn't work like you thought because you aren't the same as your memories.

You were bred for death but you lived, and the old pleasures no longer satisfy.