Excerpt: a place like this

one

she had hair, she had skin, she had toes, she had breasts and eyes and lungs and intestines and tonsils and fine hairs in her ears, but she was clearly lacking, it seemed to Nathan, in essential she-ness, whatever property it is that earns something a feminine personal pronoun;

in any case, those biological features could no longer be thought of as parts of Stella, the unifying consciousness was gone, all that remained was a doll slumped by his apartment door, a mannequin, a Stella waxwork, which Nathan now studied from some distance, sitting on his sofa like a child, chin on palms, elbows on knees, muscles slack, face passive, as if watching a performance, taking everything in, assimilating information like a macabre plot that reveals itself in incremental horrors, each only marginally worse than the last when taken in isolation, but on reflection, when viewed as the sum of the parts, the cumulative taste of the many flavours proves too horrendous, and this was certainly true now;

for without ample warning Nathan vomited loudly, explosively, immediately soaking his hands in a semi-digested watery sludge which soon seeped through his fingers, flowing over his forearms, onto his bare shins and down to his feet, finally pooling on the moss-green carpet;

eventually it was over, but it didn’t occur to him to clean himself, already his vomit was incorporated into the play that was being enacted around him, it was no longer his mess, but some external mess;

seconds or minutes passed before his eyes began to wander away from the body, only now did he fully register the scale of the disorder, there was blood everywhere, on his walls, his carpet, the whole room was covered in it,
the bedroom door, closed behind him, was also soiled, it was as if the room itself had been bleeding, from the walls, from the wood;

of course that was impossible;

but then, only twenty-four hours ago, if asked, he would have said that it was impossible he would begin the new year with a living Beth in his bedroom and a dead Stella in his living room, but there you have it, life is full of surprises and you can't take continuity for granted, not even in this place, where little seems to change from one moment to the next;

perhaps there is truth after all in that slogan, new year, new beginnings;

Nathan jumped as a thousand robots applauded, or at least that's how it sounded, but it was just the blinds opening in every room throughout the building, letting the sunlight in, doing their job as best they could,
these days it was true that in some places that wasn't very well at all, cogs and motors were broken, rusted, or tampered with, but in the case of Nathan's bedroom they still performed as they were intended, a dozen metal slats rotated from a closed vertical position to an open horizontal position, exposing the everything-proof window;

and Beth was in the bedroom, behind the closed door, ignorant of the churning and the vomit and the death;

but he spoke as if Beth were next to him, the words blurting out unvetted by whatever filter it is we usually employ to protect others from our innermost thoughts,
- She's fucking dead, he said,
and it was true, of course, she fucking was,
- And she's in my fucking living room, he added,
and this too was true, but the logical movement his brain was making wasn't over, because another question was fired into the light, as if brain-blinds had also been opened,
- What the fuck is she doing here?
and that was the only question, he couldn't help but say it again, to keep the words real and present,
- What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck?
and that phrase repeated was now joined by tears and breathlessness, but catharsis was cut short, once again he was retching and choking, like an animal, covered in puke and tears and snot, now on the floor, cowering in his own juices, ridiculous for a man in any circumstances, but particularly now when clearly action needed to be taken, and quickly, this was no time for wallowing;

and if Stella's eyes worked, they would have seen all this, but they did not, they did not, they did not.