COWS

by Matthew Stokoe

Cows taste like heaven but ya can't trust 'em a single fuckin' inch."

Steven went straight to the bathroom, he needed a shit.

He used a lot of newspaper wiping himself.

"These are your future, if you have the courage. They grow them in concrete boxes under ultra violet light, they feed them on pellets of their own dead. These are urban cows, boy, man-made without mystery, and they have a gift for us far more important than meat or leather. It isn't a gift they like to give, though. Not at all."

They looked like cocks those heads did with their long necks, lying all bloody on the ground."

before he was eight years old, how she used to stick the necks inside herself

She lifted her skirt and pissed on the whimpering animal.

Steven smelt shit as he worked lubricant into her arse.

The real poison comes out of your head. All your fuck-ups and sadnesses and fears drop down like some sort of brainshit into your guts and build up there. That's what really fucks you up. I told you before."

He stroked the skin around her cunt, she didn't turn.

"You'll have poison inside you too. The only way to get normal is to find it and cut it out."

In this blurring, roaring cocoon he felt the weight of the gun, and he felt Cripps against his back, arms circling to the front of his pants, unzipping, pulling down.

On the plates, equally portioned, two curving lengths of shit lay dark against veined china.

she was pulling her plate towards her, pressing her fork into the softness of the stool, lifting a piece to her mouth.

The Hagbeast waited for him to eat first. He put a section of the shit into his mouth.

They fucked in a cold room hung with photographs of surgically opened bodies.

Two eyes blinked limpidly, insolent in their slowness. A dark mass moved forward into the light. "That Cripps man is going to fuck you up, dude." It was a cow.

The cows kept coming, and each one took something from him; shavings of sensitivity, perception, care. He was being robbed, violated.

Found the vent and fucked off fast. And we grew, man. Cows like pussy same as the next guy. Plenty of food down here, too. It ain't clover but, fuck, it ain't so bad."

"I like it here, it's like the outside doesn't exist." "Yeah, well don't start making plans, man. This is cowland and you can't stay."

His shit came out pale and soft, in long thin strips without body. It left his arse filthy but he didn't bother to wipe, just trudged out into the kitchen again and sat down in front of the Beast. He ate without looking at her, shuddering as the rotting paste went down.

Steven carried her into the bedroom because he knew it was how men acted with women. He spoke memorised sentences to her and they fucked. In the early evening they made small plans for their life together - arrangements of furniture, the colour of paint.

Cripps pushed Steven's hand so that one blade of the secateurs slid into Gummy's anus.

Steven closed the shears again. And again and again, up from the arse and along the right side of the spine. Gummy's lower back opened to a rear view of guts. Easily.

It took a week of snivelling through early morning hours until he understood what he needed. A death. Killing. Killing had given him the strength to start things and he needed more of it to continue.

If a woman in a shop ran her hand through her hair in a particular way Lucy would know the agony of her childhood, the terror of her parents, the loneliness and the fear that were now the territories of her existence. So she stayed inside and didn't look and avoided the reminders of what she knew herself still to be.

"In a year when we have the kid and there isn't any more to do to this place. When we're just living and nothing is new." "What do you mean? We just keep living. What's wrong with that?" "It won't be enough. After a while it won't be enough, and we'll have to start moving in the world with everyone else."

"Listen, man, this is only temporary, right? We do a few raids until you've got enough money, then you split. Ok? You don't belong down here. This is cow country, men can't stay."

The skin of her vulva was dark brown and leathery, but it was wet too, and Steven knew he had to fuck her.

"You like cow pussy?" "Sure." "Tight enough?" "Surprisingly."

The game would be to acquire sufficient cash and get out before they were put into practice. If the cow moved too soon everything would crumble.

"It isn't going to work, Steven." Speaking seemed to drain her. "What?" "Why are we together?" "Because we love each other." "We're trying to hide inside each other. We called it love to pretend we were normal but it didn't change anything." "I do love you."

Steven felt ill. It was hard not to grab her hair and scream into her face I knew you'd do this, you bitch.

"You're an idiot to talk about happiness, Steven. We weren't made to be happy. You thought you could be like the people you saw on TV, but you should have looked closer at yourself. You aren't like them, they had lives to build their happiness on, whole backgrounds of normality. You can't do it without that. It's not even worth trying."

He ran short dreams of pushing his head all the way inside. But he didn't want to hide himself in her.

"You failed us, man. You didn't bring us more than we already had. You're a nigger down here, you don't belong. The herd should be led by one of its own."

At the edge of his field of vision he saw the roan lift her head and open her eyes. She looked at him with love and he knew she wanted him to be the winner.

He filled his lungs to shout. It was time to wake the herd.