tremble of nerves, weighing very little.
The simulacrum hardly looked like a budgerigar at all. Its head was hidden by the wings that cut and cupped the air like a courting riflebird’s. Its breath found Scarlet’s ear and nose. She watched the man’s face and her lips parted, and the breath went in there, too. The simulacrum’s tail was spread around her shoulder for balance.
The man took her arm smoothly, her white, woman’s arm. In the elbow the vein rose purple, plump with clean blood. The strain of keeping up the simulacrum made my thinking go all timeless and godlike: here was that little crooked limb forming in the darkness of the Mum, cell by cell; here it wavered, white, needing to grasp and bring every object to the mouth; here, longer, it worked busily at its learning; scrawny and tanned, here it hauled ropes at the boat they made at the beach that summer, the summer she thought was the time of her life, that she wouldn’t get better than, now that she was self-conscious. Through the wing-beats, as through a slatted blind being opened and closed, on the far side of this moment, all the possibilities fanned out in the usual array, none of them ‘better’ or ‘worse’ if we’re talking Intrinsics, than any other; whether the arm be withered inside an old-lady cardigan in a rest home, or fuller and starting to sag, clasped around her own child’s teenage shoulders, or still shapely with youth, blacktracked and lamplit and lifeless, fallen from kerb to gutter. They shifted about, all these might-be’s, in front of one another to form the general mud of that phenomenon mortals call the future, that they choose and don’t choose, that they make or stumble into, or have thrust on them.
I thought all this in the moment it took the man to bring down the instrument. In the lamplight, from behind the mirror, it was a thing of beauty, as if he were applying a piece of jewellery to her skin, or placing one of the more decorative insects there – a scarab, a Christmas beetle, a mantid with a fresh new skin. She could go either way, even with the breath on her, even with the simulacrum on her shoulder making its own kind of beauty, matching with its cool holy love the exciting new weirdness of the man’s handsome pretence.
He pushed the needle in, through the so-soft skin. The simulacrum snapped back to itself and cocked its head to watch.
The man paused a moment. I’ll give him that – it might be the one thing that saves him in the end from the Ceaseless Pain, from the Eternal Deterioration of the Damned. With the needle in the flow, and the chemical dissolved and ready, he lifted his eyes to hers.
The simulacrum re-set its head, lifted one wing and blew along it a single rolling ball of breath that burst against Scarlet’s white neck and spilled all about, up into her carefully tangled hair, down across the wrinkled dark purple cloth of her breast, down past the label of her clothing at the back and trickling down the soft warm indentations of her spine.
‘No,’ she said.
Nothing moved but their eyes.
‘You’re sure?’ said the man.
‘Yes. I mean, yes, I’m sure.’
‘I know what I’m doing. I won’t give you too much. And it’s pure; I’ve had it myself. It’s good stuff.’
‘No, take it out. I don’t want to.’
He took it out – again, he could have forced her, he could have squeezed some in. I don’t know for certain she’d have pulled away. Maybe there is hope for him after all?
He shrugged, and gestured for the tightener. She watched him, pulling down her raggy sleeve, not noticing the escaped bead of blood smearing on her skin. The simulacrum flew from her shoulder, straight for the mirror.
‘You’ll have all of it?’ she said. ‘You were only going to have half. Will you be all right?’
The man smiled – any girl might be taken in by that weathered, carefree face. ‘I was only going to go for a little ride. Out of politeness – your first time and
The simulacrum hardly looked like a budgerigar at all. Its head was hidden by the wings that cut and cupped the air like a courting riflebird’s. Its breath found Scarlet’s ear and nose. She watched the man’s face and her lips parted, and the breath went in there, too. The simulacrum’s tail was spread around her shoulder for balance.
The man took her arm smoothly, her white, woman’s arm. In the elbow the vein rose purple, plump with clean blood. The strain of keeping up the simulacrum made my thinking go all timeless and godlike: here was that little crooked limb forming in the darkness of the Mum, cell by cell; here it wavered, white, needing to grasp and bring every object to the mouth; here, longer, it worked busily at its learning; scrawny and tanned, here it hauled ropes at the boat they made at the beach that summer, the summer she thought was the time of her life, that she wouldn’t get better than, now that she was self-conscious. Through the wing-beats, as through a slatted blind being opened and closed, on the far side of this moment, all the possibilities fanned out in the usual array, none of them ‘better’ or ‘worse’ if we’re talking Intrinsics, than any other; whether the arm be withered inside an old-lady cardigan in a rest home, or fuller and starting to sag, clasped around her own child’s teenage shoulders, or still shapely with youth, blacktracked and lamplit and lifeless, fallen from kerb to gutter. They shifted about, all these might-be’s, in front of one another to form the general mud of that phenomenon mortals call the future, that they choose and don’t choose, that they make or stumble into, or have thrust on them.
I thought all this in the moment it took the man to bring down the instrument. In the lamplight, from behind the mirror, it was a thing of beauty, as if he were applying a piece of jewellery to her skin, or placing one of the more decorative insects there – a scarab, a Christmas beetle, a mantid with a fresh new skin. She could go either way, even with the breath on her, even with the simulacrum on her shoulder making its own kind of beauty, matching with its cool holy love the exciting new weirdness of the man’s handsome pretence.
He pushed the needle in, through the so-soft skin. The simulacrum snapped back to itself and cocked its head to watch.
The man paused a moment. I’ll give him that – it might be the one thing that saves him in the end from the Ceaseless Pain, from the Eternal Deterioration of the Damned. With the needle in the flow, and the chemical dissolved and ready, he lifted his eyes to hers.
The simulacrum re-set its head, lifted one wing and blew along it a single rolling ball of breath that burst against Scarlet’s white neck and spilled all about, up into her carefully tangled hair, down across the wrinkled dark purple cloth of her breast, down past the label of her clothing at the back and trickling down the soft warm indentations of her spine.
‘No,’ she said.
Nothing moved but their eyes.
‘You’re sure?’ said the man.
‘Yes. I mean, yes, I’m sure.’
‘I know what I’m doing. I won’t give you too much. And it’s pure; I’ve had it myself. It’s good stuff.’
‘No, take it out. I don’t want to.’
He took it out – again, he could have forced her, he could have squeezed some in. I don’t know for certain she’d have pulled away. Maybe there is hope for him after all?
He shrugged, and gestured for the tightener. She watched him, pulling down her raggy sleeve, not noticing the escaped bead of blood smearing on her skin. The simulacrum flew from her shoulder, straight for the mirror.
‘You’ll have all of it?’ she said. ‘You were only going to have half. Will you be all right?’
The man smiled – any girl might be taken in by that weathered, carefree face. ‘I was only going to go for a little ride. Out of politeness – your first time and
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