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I liked what I read – the study of the living – and when I went downstairs to make tea, I noticed the living all around the house: a small white spider crawled on the windowsill, the boards bulged as if beetles and larvae were crawling inside them, and in the kettle on the kitchen counter the water had begun to bubble, a sign that I was among the living.
I didn’t know then that the hiss and bubble from her mouth would soon be heard in other places, in ways I didn’t yet understand. An apple is never just an apple.
From my bed I could hear her pee at night, a faint, muted trickling against the toilet bowl, which made me imagine, half-asleep, thin flowing golden ribbons.
Can we pls stop with the piss
She was wearing that thin pale-yellow wool sweater again. The yellow was so close to her skin tone and hair that she seemed naked, a sexless, matted nakedness. I cut the yolk from my fried egg and put it in my mouth. The yolk burst under my tongue, and I imagined it was her skin I was tasting, but she didn’t move, just continued to twirl a finger in her ponytail, looking down at the novel opened in front of her. I licked the sticky yellow from my teeth.
Suddenly we heard a knocking coming from down in the flat. Carral lifted her arm, as if she was conducting an orchestra, signalled for the movement of bodies, wine and clouds to stop, and declared: ‘I think we’ve got company.’ We heard several more knocks. I caught her arm. ‘I don’t want company.’ ‘Little Jo, it’s probably just the neighbour.’ ‘I don’t think anyone should see us like this.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘It’s dirty here. And we look weird.’ ‘We are wine, we are cheese, we are crackers.’
From the outside it must have looked calm, two people kissing each other quietly, but I know what happened inside of me, and I was suddenly afraid to be sucked into him and disappear.
Outside the house the world was dry and sharp and normal, and it didn’t quite correspond with what seemed to grow between the brewery walls: something moist, skinless and quiet.
Her skin was soft, softer than I remembered, as if she was rotten too, a fallen Eve.
The women feast on the poor man’s flesh, And chew each bone whilst it is fresh, So the two women can become one with a kiss; The dream of every biologist! To grow together is their pursuit, And his red flesh their forbidden fruit, He stumbles and gasps and finally dies; From his ashes will a four-breasted creature arise.
When I write this, I think that there are two versions of myself and just one managed to get out, first out of the brewery, then out of the town, out of the country, back to Norway. The other is still there, with the other ghosts in the house, shut in while the storm and the sea tears at the walls outside. I bend over this white sheet and pull her out, the one who is left in the brewery, pick her up from the bottom: Arms, swollen fingers, broken skull, burst lungs. Her face is white, covered in lime, algae skeletons, beer froth, and sea foam. I
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