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

blur with the effort of trying to free itself. It’s painful to watch, and without thinking I grab one corner of the curtain and cover the moth, pushing it into the glass with the heel of my palm until I hear the crunching sound of it dying. As soon as this happens, I see all the alternative actions I could have taken. I could have caught it in an empty cup, slid a piece of paper underneath, then walked outside and set it free. Instead I crushed it.

I drop the curtain and return to bed. Nothing feels more useless than killing a moth. There’s nothing more unnecessary.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I wake from a dream in which I am trying to wrap an infant version of myself in banana leaves. I pull at the palm fronds, desperately trying to get the two ends to meet around the baby’s tiny shoulders, but the baby feels cold—far too cold for something living. There are no other leaves available, and in a panic I run in small circles with the child in my arms. The baby touches my face with one hand, and with the other points towards a banana palm in the distance. I wake up while sprinting towards the plantation.

I raise the back of my hand to my own cheek, which is warm and dry. Without getting out of bed, I lean across and open the curtains to let the light seep in. It’s a grey day and the nearby shed creaks with the effort of staying upright in the mild wind.

My mother will be buried today.

I send a message to everyone back home—Thinking of you—before lying back down and rubbing my eyes. It’s not enough, I know that, but I don’t feel as if I can say anything else. Perhaps it would have been better to send no message at all.

I can hear Jack unstacking the dishwasher in the kitchen, while listening to the morning news on the radio.

‘Jack!’ I yell towards the door until the sounds stop. ‘Is the coffee on?’

I hear him ignite the stovetop and run the tap. ‘Yes!’

I get dressed—noting that Simon has read the message I sent but not yet replied—and enter the kitchen just as Jack’s shaking a frying pan full of bacon over the heat.

I sit down gingerly at the table and he turns the heat down on the stove before bringing a cup of coffee over and placing it in front of me.

‘Voila!’ He does a jerky two-step near the kitchen fern. ‘Coffee for the queen.’

I bow regally as he picks up a tea towel from the table and flings it over his shoulder.

‘Do you want the bacon now or later?’ he asks.

‘Now, please.’

He opens the cupboard and rummages for a plate. I wait for the lull between us to become generous in nature. I want a fat pause to lead me into talking about last night. I could explain to him why it is so painful to sit like this right now. Jack has always been the most liberal of all my parents, the one who talked to me openly about adult things; in hindsight, it was perhaps because he knew us less. At some point we grew as tall as adults and that was enough for him to start talking to us as if we were. I don’t need to protect Jack from the truth of things like I do for Vincent. Jack is generally a little more resilient.

There’s a nice long break of nothing in the air, so I draw a deep breath in to fuel my opening sentence.

‘I went to a kink party last night.’

He stands up abruptly and inclines his head to the side, his mouth turned downwards.

‘Oh.’ A short gap this time. ‘With that friend?’

‘Yeah, I met him on the internet and we went to a party in an industrial lot and it was full on. Lots of whipping.’

I sip my coffee. If I can’t be candid with my distant father, who can I be candid with? I feel like grief has stripped me bare and I can really be raw and honest here. She’s going in the ground today. Today. Who has time for lies and subterfuge anymore? I look out at the water as a wave of gulls lift up into the air and collectively flap away from the riverbank.

‘Well …’ he says, looking fundamentally panicked, a strip of bacon dangling from the tongs.

‘I think I’m going to join a club. You learn things about the body, like pain, pleasure, limits …’

‘You know about the body, honey.’ He puts the bacon on the plate, then turns to the sink and rests the tongs on top of the scourer. Then he picks them up again and shakes them into the open bin. He runs them under water. I wait until his focus on the tongs lessens a bit.

‘If you need something to do, I’ll give your details to Shell. She owns Clear Skies, the funeral parlour in town. I think it would be a good idea to talk to her.’

He picks up the dishwashing liquid and covers the length of the tongs in a long squirt before rubbing at them vigorously with the sponge.

‘You don’t want to get caught up in all this … this kind of thing,’ he says while hunched over the sink scrubbing.

‘Why?’ I say. ‘Getting whipped was the closest I’ve felt to being nothing. I think I need the pain. Maybe we all do?’ I sip my coffee while he dries his hands. ‘But I’m also curious to know what it would be like to do the whipping—you know, like, where does that take you mentally?’

He picks up the plate of bacon and brings it to the table. ‘My honey muffin, you need time to heal. Stop pouring acid on an open wound.’

He places the plate in front of me and I pick up my fork, skewering a piece of bacon.

‘Well, I’m going to meet the owner of the club