The Humanity of Monsters Read online

The mumbling has stopped and I jolt out of my reverie in time to see the new bride, Gomoa, bowing to Shigoram. I catch the ghost of a smile on his face as he inclines his head in return. He catches sight of me as he turns away and his thick black brows knot in confusion. He starts towards me, then thinks better of it. In the end, he makes do with a nod. Then he turns and walks off towards the road where a neighbour waits in an ox-drawn cart to take him to the city.

  Amah begins to wail as soon as he is out of sight and it is Gomoa who comforts her. She looks at me over the old woman’s head and gives me a wry smile. I do my best to return it. I imagine Shigoram kissing those full rosebud lips and I wonder what she tastes like.

  I have to find a way to get her alone, but it is impossible. After Shigoram leaves, Gomoa becomes Amah’s pet—as I had been when I first came to the house. She insists on taking the girl everywhere with her. Gomoa accompanies her to the market where she is widely introduced; she acts as Amah’s escort to weddings and is shown off at visits with neighbours. During the day, Amah continues to give her cooking lessons and in the evenings she has Gomoa massage her feet and trim her toenails. I remember how much I had hated this task, but the new bride does it without complaint, joking as she rubs fragrant eucalyptus oil between Amah’s gnarled toes.

  In the end, it is she who comes to me.

  They had gone out to visit relatives and I had found myself between chores. I pulled out one of my books—I had brought a whole library with me when I married—and settled beneath one of the olive trees to read. I was so engrossed that I did not hear them return.

  “Woman!” Amah’s voice was like a whip. “I see you have nothing better to do than idle away with dry paper. If you wish to keep occupied, then give me a grandchild. Otherwise, find something more useful to do with those empty hands of yours.”

  But her words lack the sting they once had. She has a new bride now, and the hope of grandchildren blooms in her once more.

  I slip the book under my cushion and I rise to relieve her of the goods she has brought from the market. I catch Gomoa’s eye, still fixed on the book’s hiding place.

  “Do you know how to read?” I ask her.

  “A little,” she says shyly.

  “Would you like to learn more? I can teach you.”

  “Really?” Gomoa asks breathlessly. Her face lights up with joy.

  “Come to my room this night, after Amah sleeps,” I tell her.

  She is so happy that she insists on carrying my bags as well as her own. For the rest of the day her steps are lighter and that evening, as she massages Amah’s feet, her laughter is sweet.

  She comes to my room after dark, knocking softly on my door. She is dressed like me, in a long tunic with bell sleeves and a low scoop neck. To keep out the cold, she is wrapped in an old quilt—the one thing she could afford to bring from her father’s house. I let her in and allow her to take in my room.

  My father had made sure I came to my husband’s house with everything I would ever need for my comfort. Once, thick rugs of the finest make piled my floor from one end of the room to another, now I have a single strip of knitted wool carpet that runs from the foot of my dais to the door. My walls, which were once lined with colourful brocades and silks, boast colourful straw mats instead. Gone also are the brass and copper trays I had once hung above the cloths. And the two cedar boxes against either wall, which once contained the best of my elaborate robes and gold jewellery, are empty. They were sold item by item during those dark times when Shigoram’s army stipend did not arrive in time.

  All I have left are my books. It is difficult to build shelves on curved walls, but I managed it. The whole back wall above the raised dais of my bed is filled with books—volumes on history, medicine, folklore and religion. I even have a number of long poems like the Song of Muster and a romance about the doomed lovers Aki and Melota.

  I choose the romance for its easy language. It is also beautifully illustrated, which I know she will appreciate. She sits on the edge of the dais, the book in her hands. Though the lantern hangs just above us, she has to bring the volume up to her face to read. I sit behind her, towering over her small frame, to read over her shoulder. We go through her letters. Someone had taught her the basics, but she has had little practice. So I have her read aloud, sounding out the words as she goes along.

  “‘Is it in the-thy poh-wer to make me ree-al?’” She reads slowly. Her voice is sweet and musical.

  Straddled behind her, I slip a hand down the front of her tunic. Her voice falters.

  “Keep reading,” I whisper gently. She starts up again, her voice quavering with uncertainty. I correct her when she stumbles over the longer words.

  Her breasts are just as I dreamed them: small and smooth and pert with large rough nipples. I run a thumb across them and feel them harden against my touch. I press my face into her hair, breathing in the clean, fresh smell of her. I cup her left breast and heft it, lightly twirling a thumb and forefinger over the nipple.

  She gasps and almost drops the book.

  “Continue,” I whisper. She tries to keep reading, but her voice is a low moan as I run my lips over the delicate skin of her neck sucking in small nips. She leans into me and I take the opportunity to hike up her tunic, pulling it up to her thighs, and slip a hand in between her legs.

  I find her warm and moist. I part the folds of her and slide a finger against the hard nub there. She shudders and lets out a soft choking sound. Then, I am plunging my fingers into the soft flesh—deeper and deeper—my hand now slick with her wetness. Her breaths grow shallow, become hard pants, and she is sucking at the air as if she cannot draw in enough. Until finally, I feel her quiver, her sex twitching between my fingers, and she lets out a final breath like a long low moan.

  I take my hand away and I allow her to stand. She flings the book aside and gathers up her quilt. She is gone almost before I realise it.

  Alone, I examine my hand. It is still wet. I put it into my mouth and suck. She tastes like salt, like tears.

  Gomoa avoids me after that. Her greetings are perfunctory and there are no more secret smiles between us. Amah notes the change but she believes there is another cause. Her hopes are confirmed when, at month’s end, there is no sign of Gomoa’s moon blood. But it is still another month before Amah pulls me aside.

  She is reasonable, almost kind, when she asks me to leave the house. She explains that her sister will be coming to help with the chores while Gomoa’s belly grows and there will be nowhere for me stay. She shows me the letter Shigoram sent after she had sent word to him of Gomoa’s baby. In it, he grants me an honourable divorce; it leaves me without shame and free to marry again—if I can manage it. At four and twenty years old, I am far past my prime.

  The day I leave, there is no sign of Gomoa. My cousins from Aqor come to help me move my belongings; I will be living with them until I can either find a trade or a husband. My own possessions fit in a single chest, the rest are books.

  Still, I make sure to leave Gomoa the romance. I know she will appreciate it.

  dead sea fruit

  kaaron warren

  I have a collection of baby teeth, sent to me by recovered anorexics from the ward. Their children’s teeth, proof that their bodies are working.

  One sent me a letter. “Dear Tooth Fairy, you saved me and my womb. My son is now six, here are his baby teeth.”

  They call the ward Pretty Girl Street. I don’t know if the cruelty is intentional; these girls are far from pretty. Skeletal, balding, their breath reeking of hard cheese, they languish on their beds and terrify each other, when they have the strength, with tales of the Ash Mouth Man.

  I did not believe the Pretty Girls. The Ash Mouth Man was just a myth to scare each other into being thin. A moral tale against promiscuity. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that the story originated with a group of protective parents, wanting to shelter their chil
dren from the disease of kissing.

  “He only likes fat girls,” Abby said. Her teeth were yellow when she smiled, though she rarely smiled. Abby lay in the bed next to Lori; they compared wrist thickness by stretching their fingers to measure.

  “And he watches you for a long time to make sure you’re the one,” Lori said.

  “And only girls who could be beautiful are picked,” Melanie said. Her blonde hair fell out in clumps and she kept it in a little bird’s nest beside her bed. “He watches you to see if you could be beautiful enough if you were thinner then he saunters over to you.”

  The girls laughed. “He saunters. Yes,” they agreed. They trusted me; I listened to them and fixed their teeth for free.

  “He didn’t saunter,” Jane said. I sat on her bed and leaned close to hear. “He beckoned. He did this,” and she tilted back her head, miming a glass being poured into her mouth. “I nodded. I love vodka,” she said. “Vodka’s made of potatoes, so it’s like eating.”

  The girls all laughed. I hate it when they laugh. I have to maintain my smile. I can’t flinch in disgust at those bony girls, mouths open, shoulders shaking. All of them exhausted with the effort.

  “I’ve got a friend in New Zealand and she’s seen him,” Jane said. “He kissed a friend of hers and the weight just dropped off her.”

  “I know someone in England who kissed him,” Lori said.

  “He certainly gets around,” I said. They looked at each other.

  “I was frightened at the thought of him at first,” Abby said. “’Cos he’s like a drug. One kiss and you’re hooked. Once he’s stuck in the tongue, you’re done. You can’t turn back.”

  They’d all heard of him before they kissed him. In their circles, even the dangerous methods of weight loss are worth considering.

  I heard the rattle of the dinner trolley riding the corridor to Pretty Girl Street. They fell silent.

  Lori whispered, “Kissing him fills your mouth with ash. Like you pick up a beautiful piece of fruit and bite into it. You expect the juice to drip down your chin but you bite into ashes. That’s what it’s like to kiss him.”

  Lori closed her eyes. Her dry little tongue snaked out to the corners of her mouth, looking, I guessed, for that imagined juice. I leaned over and dripped a little water on her tongue.

  She screwed up her mouth.

  “It’s only water,” I said. “It tastes of nothing.”

  “It tastes of ashes,” she said.

  “They were hoping you’d try a bite to eat today, Lori,” I said. She shook her head.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “I can’t eat. Everything tastes like ashes. Everything.”

  The nurse came in with the dinner trolley and fixed all the Pretty Girls’ IV feeds. The girls liked to twist the tube, bend it, press an elbow or a bony buttock into it to stop the flow.

  “You don’t understand,” Abby said. “It’s like having ashes pumped directly into your blood.”

  They all started to moan and scream with what energy they could muster. Doctors came in, and other nurses. I didn’t like this part, the physicality of the feedings, so I walked away.

  I meet many Pretty Girls. Pretty Girls are the ones who will never recover, who still see themselves as ugly and fat even when they don’t have the strength to defecate. These ones the doctors try to fatten up so they don’t scare people when laid in their coffins.

  The recovering ones never spoke of the Ash Mouth Man. And I did not believe, until Dan entered my surgery, complaining he was unable to kiss women because of the taste of his mouth. I bent close to him and smelt nothing. I found no decay, no gum disease. He turned his face away.

  “What is it women say you taste like?” I said.

  “They say I taste of ashes.”

  I blinked at him, thinking of Pretty Girl Street.

  “Not cigarette smoke,” the girls had all told me. “Ashes.”

  “I can see no decay or internal reason for any odour,” I told Dan.

  After work that day I found him waiting for me in his car outside the surgery.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is ridiculous. But I wondered if you’d like to eat with me.” He gestured, lifting food to his mouth. The movement shocked me. It reminded me of what Jane had said, the Ash Mouth Man gesturing a drink to her. It was nonsense and I knew it. Fairytales, any sort of fiction, annoy me. It’s all so very convenient, loose ends tucked in and no mystery left unsolved. Life isn’t like that. People die unable to lift an arm to wave and there is no reason for it.

  I was too tired to say yes. I said, “Could we meet for dinner tomorrow?”

  He nodded. “You like food?”

  It was a strange question. Who didn’t like food? Then the answer came to me. Someone for whom every mouthful tasted of ash.

  “Yes, I like food,” I said.

  “Then I’ll cook for you,” he said.

  He cooked an almost perfect meal, without fuss or mess. He arrived at the table smooth and brown. I wanted to sweep the food off and make love to him right there. “You actually like cooking,” I said. “It’s nothing but a chore for me. I had to feed myself from early on and I hate it.”

  “You don’t want the responsibility,” he said. “Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.”

  The vegetables were overcooked, I thought. The softness of them felt like rot.

  He took a bite and rolled the food around in his mouth.

  “You have a very dexterous tongue,” I said. He smiled, cheeks full of food, then closed his eyes and went on chewing.

  When he swallowed, over a minute later, he took a sip of water then said, “Taste has many layers. You need to work your way through each to get to the base line. Sensational.”

  I tried keeping food in my mouth but it turned to sludge and slipped down my throat. It was fascinating to watch him eat. Mesmerising. We talked at the table for two hours, then I started to shake.

  “I’m tired,” I said. “I tend to shake when I’m tired.”

  “Then you should go home to sleep.” He packed a container of food for me to take. His domesticity surprised me; on entering his home, I laughed at the sheer seductiveness of it. Self-help books on the shelf, their spines unbent. Vases full of plastic flowers with a fake perfume.

  He walked me to my car and shook my hand, his mouth pinched shut to clearly indicate there would be no kiss.

  Weeks passed. We saw each other twice more, chaste, public events that always ended abruptly. Then one Wednesday, I opened the door to my next client and there was Dan.

  “It’s only me,” he said.

  My assistant giggled. “I’ll go and check the books, shall I?” she said. I nodded. Dan locked the door after her.

  “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said. “It’s all I think about. I can’t get any work done.”

  He stepped towards me and grabbed my shoulders. I tilted my head back to be kissed. He bent to my neck and snuffled. I pulled away.

  “What are you doing?” I said. He put his finger on my mouth to shush me. I tried to kiss him but he turned away. I tried again and he twisted his body from me.

  “I’m scared of what you’ll taste,” he said.

  “Nothing. I’ll taste nothing.”

  “I don’t want to kiss you,” he said softly.

  Then he pushed me gently onto my dentist’s chair. And he stripped me naked and touched every piece of skin, caressed, squeezed, stroked until I called out.

  He climbed onto the chair astride me, and keeping his mouth well away, he unzipped his pants. He felt very good. We made too much noise. I hoped my assistant wasn’t listening.

  Afterwards, he said, “It’ll be like that every time. I just know it.”

  And it was. Even massaging my shoulders, he could make me turn to jelly.

  I had never car
ed so much about kissing outside of my job before but now I needed it. It would prove Dan loved me, that I loved him. It would prove he was not the Ash Mouth Man because his mouth would taste of plums or toothpaste, or of my perfume if he had been kissing my neck.

  “You know we get pleasure from kissing because our bodies think we are eating,” I said, kissing his fingers.

  “Trickery. It’s all about trickery,” he said.

  “Maybe if I smoke a cigarette first. Then my breath will be ashy anyway and I won’t be able to taste you.”

  “Just leave it.” He went out, came back the next morning with his lips all bruised and swollen. I did not ask him where he’d been. I watched him outside on the balcony, his mouth open like a dog tasting the air, and I didn’t want to know. I had a busy day ahead, clients all through and no time to think. My schizophrenic client tasted yeasty; they always did if they were medicated.

  Then I kissed a murderer; he tasted like vegetable waste. Like the crisper in my fridge smells when I’ve been too busy to empty it. They used to say people who suffered from tuberculosis smelled like wet leaves; his breath was like that but rotten. He had a tooth he wanted me to fix; he’d cracked it on a walnut shell.

  “My wife never shelled things properly. Lazy. She didn’t care what she ate. Egg shells, olive pits, seafood when she knew I’m allergic. She’d eat anything.”

  He smiled at me. His teeth were white. Perfect. “And I mean anything.” He paused, wanting a reaction from me. I wasn’t interested in his sexual activities. I would never discuss what Dan and I did. It was private, and while it remained that way I could be wanton, abandoned.

  “She used to get up at night and raid the fridge,” the murderer said after he rinsed. I filled his mouth with instruments again. He didn’t close his eyes. Most people do. They like to take themselves elsewhere, away from me. No matter how gentle a dentist is, the experience is not pleasant.

  My assistant and I glanced at each other.

  “Rinse,” I said. He did, three times, then sat back. A line of saliva stretched from the bowl to his mouth.