New Animal by Ella Baxter (speed reading book .TXT) 📕

‘I want you to say to me, I’m going to ruin you, in a low voice,’ I tell him as he kneels up on the bed facing me.

He frowns, confused. ‘I’m going to ruin you?’ He wobbles slightly and places one hand over his crotch.

‘More heat, please,’ I say.

He raises a hand half-heartedly, before dropping it and looking out the window. ‘I am going to absolutely ruin you.’

‘Say to me: I’m going to obliterate everything you know to be real.’

‘Amelia, no. I don’t want to.’

‘Say the other bit then.’

‘I will ruin you. I. Will. Ruin. You.’

‘Perfect,’ I say. ‘Now lie down and put the pillow under your hips.’

Adam falls asleep afterwards, which most men are wont to do, but I kick him near his knee.

He sits up and opens one eye.

‘You need to leave,’ I say, trying to look less mean by hunching my shoulders and letting my long fringe fall across my face. Crankiness is pinned to the structure of my features. I was made to look mad; it’s in my genetics, and I have to make a lot of effort to seem tiny and cute. ‘I sleep better when I’m alone.’

I switch the bedside lamp on, and stare at him while he shields his eyes. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he picks up his clothes using his toes and passes them back to his fumbling hands. Pausing, yawning, and sighing before each action.

‘Why do I feel like I’m not going to see you again?’ he asks while standing up and placing a hand on the doorknob.

Turn it. I will him to turn it. Turn the handle, Adam.

I shake my head. ‘Don’t be silly.’ I take one last look at him.

I stay sitting upright listening to him step quietly down the garden path, only relaxing when I hear the front gate open and shut. I crawl across the bed and pull the curtains closed, before lying back and pulling the sheet over me, smoothing it down on either side until I can feel that there are no creases. My spine curves into the mattress. My jaw releases with a creak and my molars stop aching.

I open the dating app on my phone and scroll down the screen until I find Adam’s smiling face. I delete it, and keep refreshing my recent matches until four new ones pop up. I copy and paste a message to each of them.

Free tonight?

Free tonight?

Free tonight?

Free tonight?

CHAPTER TWO

At eleven a.m., the landscape already crackles on its way to reaching forty degrees before lunch, and the sound of Kathmandu water bottles being refilled ricochets between the three major holiday parks. Radiant heat beams off the coastline in long fumes, shuddering over highways and interstate buses as the liquid inside our bodies hits a quivering boil. The Northern Rivers in summer shakes the shit out of you.

I stand blinking in the light on the welcome mat in front of the main house. My mother leaves the front door unlocked and a coffee on the console table in the hallway for me each morning. I let myself in, pick up the coffee, and then stroll through to the lounge room where Simon and his partners Hugh and Carmen are sitting on the couch. Everyone has been buzzed about Simon’s new throuple, and the three of them have accepted our enthusiasm with grace.

‘Morning,’ Simon says, looking up from the laptop which is balanced on his knees.

‘Come and check this out,’ says Carmen. ‘I think we found one we like.’

I walk over and look at the screen.

‘It’s a two-year-old Carpet python called Harry,’ Simon says.

‘Hello, beautiful …’ murmurs Hugh, while Carmen, who is running the mouse along her thigh, hovers the cursor between the snake’s nostrils.

My mother clacks in from the kitchen, wearing heeled sandals and a sundress, her figure like an ancient fertility sculpture that could be placed in the bottom of a grain barrel for luck.

‘I still think a dog would work better than a snake, if anyone else is on board?’ She passes me a platter of marzipan fruit, which she makes each week as a snack for the bereaved. Mourners need sugar; it helps keep their blood pressure from dropping and stops them from fainting.

‘Our reptile licence came yesterday,’ says Simon.

Our mother scrunches her nose and drapes her hair over one shoulder, combing her fingers through the length of it, and I smooth down my own, trying to make it sit flat against my head. I know she gets up early to blow her hair out each morning; I can hear it from the bungalow. People often compliment her hair, admiring how groomed and polished she is.

‘We can discuss it later over dinner,’ she says. ‘As a family.’ She beams at Carmen and Hugh, before grabbing her keys from the table and heading to the door.

‘Or you could move out,’ I say to Simon. ‘Then you could have as many snakes as you want.’

‘Goodbye, Amelia,’ he says as I pass him my half-drunk coffee and follow my mother out the door, carrying the marzipan.

Outside, the season continues to announce itself everywhere like an extrovert. Trailing coastal succulents that have been unremarkable for most of the year are now filled with dark pink flowers blooming all at once. Nature has no sense of pacing. The footpath beneath them is stained magenta from where their petals have been trodden on by enthusiastic, early morning joggers, and the effect is like tie-dyed waves underneath my shoes.

We walk to work along the road that runs parallel to the beach, separated only by the screw pine trees and pearlescent dunes. On days I don’t work, I wade out past the break and stand listening to each wave hit the shoreline behind me like a series of overlapping sighs. If you look long enough at the green water you can see the white streak of foam marking an ungodly rip that spirals between the two headlands. A dead baby whale