C. M. Rosens

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‘GERALD’ 

© 2021 All Rights Reserved 

C. M. ROSENS 

CWs: parental neglect, abuse including food restriction and deliberate withholding of comfort from a child, toxic masculinity, development of disordered eating and associated thought patterns, animal abuse/killing, physical abuse framed as punishment, emesis, and other Horror/Gothic tropes including cannibalism.

He couldn’t even think of her name anymore without remembering how she’d tasted. He filled the oil lamp for his father, remembering Mrs Antram and her kind eyes, the lines around her mouth, her grey sheep’s curls, and the slippery ridges of her brain, a similar shade of grey threaded with blood vessels, hidden underneath. He remembered the creamy, jelly-like texture that held its shape in his mouth until he chewed, the raw animal aftertaste on his tongue, but reminding him of eggs. Mrs Antram had taught him the words for all the parts of the oil lamp, and now they nestled in his head rather than hers.  

His father nodded, made him wash his hands, and said it was time for dinner.   

Ricky wasn’t allowed to eat too much dinner. Everything his mother cooked was dry and plain, boiled mercilessly to steam in the pans, but his father ate stoically without complaint and Ricky had to, too. At least today there was something. There usually was when Dad got Mum a new girl. She should be dead by now, and he didn’t know her name either. 

There was even a slice of Victoria sponge cake for dessert but he wasn’t supposed to have any. To him, it smelled impossibly sweet, the edge of forbidden fructose driving every other thought out of his head. The dead girl got a slice of cake taken to her on a small china plate. 

Ricky didn’t dare look over his shoulder as his mother hummed a little excited tune on her way down to the cellar. He focused on the sticky table edge, and the dark stain taunted him with shiny jam-thick glaze and the forbidden image of moist light flesh, sugary and risen to perfection, bleeding raspberries and clots of fresh cream. Maybe he could have what the ants left, when it was stale and crumbling to biscuit dust on the plate. Maybe the insects would fill him with cake he wouldn’t ever taste, like Mrs Antram had filled him with words he didn’t know. 

Maybe the dead girl would taste all the sweeter for rotting. He wouldn’t be allowed to find out. 

He wondered what her name was, or at least, what name his mother was using for her, but he wasn’t supposed to ask.  

There wasn’t any meat left in the outhouse. He’d cleaned up too thoroughly. His stomach gurgled, and all he could think about was cake. It clogged his farsight as surely as if he’d had a taste, pulling his focus away. His concentration was always worse as the days got lighter. He could read livers and the slippery parts of an animal easily in the darker, colder months, when the sharp blade of winter opened him up to the secrets steaming out of the guts in the frostbitten air. But now everything was hazy with the flourishing of Spring, everything thick and fertile and vital, and he was just as cold and dark inside and nothing matched, nothing fitted, he didn’t fit, and he couldn’t see the future, only wished he could crawl out of his own skin. 

There was something under his skin, he knew. Something waiting, something strong, something he had grown to love. Like everything he loved, he couldn’t touch it. He kept it jealously, his nameless secret, not wanting anyone else to give it a name or explain it to him, because that would feel like they were putting their grownup fingers on what should only belong to him. 

He clung to his secrets, hoarding them like stolen sweets. One day the big secret inside him would emerge, and then he would be whole, complete, and every season would feel right, and he would be able to see whatever he wanted. The Voice in his head told him so, but it didn’t speak to him often. That was a secret, too – and so was this, his taxidermy practice, something his father could be proud of him for. Ricky wasn’t sure which he was more excited about, the hope of an approving nod, or the prospect of his completed companion. Ricky had taken to his father’s hobby with intense interest, learning how to make other creatures as hollow as he was and fill them back up, and how to thread needles that stabbed through his own flesh just as easily as their skins. Like everything else, he learned the hard way. 

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