Bitterhall by Helen McClory (story books to read .txt) 📕

me in the living room of our place choosing what film to go out and see, what drinks we could make from the leftovers we had. The sound of the post through the letterbox. Picking up the post and sorting it. The sound of buttering toast, phone notifications buzzing beside the plate. Going out to work in the blue light. Leaves coming off the trees like yellow letters. The moments before I went in to see my supervisor, looking down at my phone with veiled desperation. The weekly skype call to mam and da. The twice-weekly text to Stephanie. The weekly argument with Effie about the dishes. The twice-weekly trip to the big supermarket – with Anna sometimes since we got out around the same time of day. Waiting at the bus stop. Walking through the park. Dogs spotted. Cats peeped. And all the while yearning for Tom, a pure, scalding need, which is only really possible in the absence. I know well enough that the tender, careful, early stage of love is a momentary thing so desperately wanted to enjoy it, though I was struggling with how.

What else is passion, but suffering – we all have the dictionary definition in mind. That which is in the old Christian sense suffering in the body and mind, and in the old romantic a gilding tawdry swoosh of feelings and fluids. At heart both types of passion are a disruption to the norm, the norms of the body and the norms of routine. And so old fashioned as to be kind of arcane, but then, I had a proclivity to that. Visionary stressors at least half cliché, with all cliché’s specificity and audacity. Tom, present or absent, was my feint at an opulent, medieval disruption. I so rarely have it, in my life. There’s too many of us on this planet to have any of the wild agonies of spirit and love from those old near hallucinatory lapis lazuli and vellum eras, was my thinking, so I had unconsciously always tried to be sensible in my desire, to keep it level, to never overstep my portion. I didn’t go looking for medieval levels of desire, just as I only took a scholarly interest in magic-as-science and science-as-morality, funny little asides as currency or full unhinging and holy suffering there. No. Like a tree whose bark calmly swallows whatever presses against it, takes it, rust and all and never begs, so were my life and my days. Some other time I’ll talk about how desire is a punishment, for a woman. It is terrible to want in this way. So we do, and it wrecks us. So then, I was hungry for the passion of him while carefully aware of his everything else and his expiry date, and trying to keep my head up. And there, Tom pushing me against the wall and tonguing me, hand on my tit. And elsewhere, Tom slighting me by turning away and a drawn out bray in front of his office mates as I came up to greet him. Singular Tom in his healthy uninterrupted incarnation. I thought I knew that was all the passion in him. What a charming uninkling, then.

Repeat

In the kitchen at Tom’s house there appeared a toy on the top of the fridge. It caught my eye because of how ugly it was – a white and neon Eeyore with pervert’s eyes. We were making dinner. It was one of the few times I was outside of his room those early days, though right enough I was sore, sawing into a loaf for garlic bread. Standing stirring an orange stew Tom was talking away, and music was playing on speakers, the kind of thing that can stand to be ignored.

‘What the fuck is that thing?’ I said.

‘The song?’

‘No that,’ I pointed with the knife. The beast sat icy white, flopped over on one side.

‘Funny story,’ Tom said.

‘Is it.’

‘Actually, yes. That, babe, is a clone.’

I looked at the thing again, got up close, ‘I don’t like it, it’s looking at me. A clone?’

‘Daniel made it. At his lab.’

‘Christ almighty, kill it.’ I had it by the throat and pretended to stab at it in the belly. ‘It’s heavier than it looks. Deeply suspicious.’

He left his stew and took the thing from me. I noted a look of fondness in his eyes.

‘Ah but it took a lot to make this one.’

‘What happened to the original if this is the clone?’

‘We burned it,’ Tom said, and in his voice a distinct pride, and a smiling, abashed look, which he covered up with a quick tonal shift. ‘The original was a thing from work. A promo thing. It had spyware in it. For a vodka company.’

‘Sure, sure.’

‘I came back and Daniel said, “Look we can do something with this.” And he wanted to show me where he worked anyway.’

I resumed my bread duties. ‘What’s it like then, his work?’

‘What’s he told you?’

‘Nothing,’ I said, which was a strange lie to give. ‘I can’t remember that he’d mentioned much at all beyond saying he worked in archives. But here it’s clones? 3D printing then. That would be for copying rare objects, mm? For museums and stuff?’

‘Yes, that’s it’ said Tom. ‘We went over there and he unlocked the lab and fired out a copy of the original promo thing.’

I saw two shadows entering a deserted building, walking downstairs, their faces swept clean of any feeling. I got back to sawing the bread a while. Broke the silence at last to say, ‘So then you came back and you burnt the original. Where, outside?’

‘It took ages to make the copy. We had coffee. It hailed on the way back.’

‘But where did you burn it?’ I said. I was suddenly keen to move us on to the actual burning which was, it seemed, a kind of ceremonial act. Something itched at me, let it be said. His look. He was still holding the beast.

‘Must have smoked a lot with the