Human Remains

direction but not seeing me. She was here because she had to be, not because she wanted this; not because she was willing. The coercion did not in itself appeal to me, but there was something about her presence that was undeniably arousing.
    ‘Audrey,’ I said, in the dream. Even then she didn’t cast a glance in my direction. She looked sulky now as well as bored, a petulant child who had been forced away from an enjoyable activity into a chore.
    Vaughn pulled down her tights – tights, not stockings – of course not stockings; why should I imagine something so appealing to encase those lovely, slender legs? – and lifted each of her legs in turn like a farrier shoeing a horse, sliding the nylon off the foot and laying the tights to one side like a shed skin.
    And she stood there in her bra and panties, functional, unmatching – the bra greying and with a hole in the lace; the panties large and black cotton. Clothed, in Vaughn’s kitchen, she had been, not beautiful exactly, but undeniably sexy. She was certainly attractive, in any case – attractive enough to raise my ardour. But now, in my dream, everything was dulled. Her hair was not that lustrous shade of chestnut, falling in shiny waves around her shoulders. It was brownish, hanging in lanky threads. Her face ashen, her eyes a dirty grey-blue. Nothing about her was conventionally attractive.
    Vaughn was unable to stop, even though I wanted him to.
Go no further, Vaughn
, I wanted to say –
stop now. I don’t
want to see the rest
. But he continued automatically, as though he was following a programme that could not be brought to an early conclusion.
    And half-awake now, my hand under the sheets moving fast, I find myself pumping and grunting away watching Vaughn stripping the last fragments of grey nylon and black cotton from the skin of his indifferent, apathetic, complicit girlfriend. Naked, she’s worse. Frumpy, sagging, grey hairs sprouting in patches from between her legs; even her knees are lumpy and spotted with moles. Despite this, despite the fact that she would clearly rather be anywhere on the planet than standing naked in my bedroom, I achieve an orgasm of gasping, heart-stopping, free-falling depths. Like staring into the abyss, and watching it stare right back at me.
     
     
    I woke up late after my evening with Audrey and Vaughn. I lay there with the sunlight coming in through the gap in the curtains, thinking of my late nights with the bottle of whisky rapidly depleting and wondering if it was too early for me to consider counselling for my problem. And as for the masturbation – well, thanks to the dream, or was it a nightmare, of wanking over Audrey’s prolonged and disappointing strip, I feel quite positively that I will be able to pursue a path of abstinence for at least a week. There is something deeply offputting about having to change your sheets and have a shower in the middle of the night because you’ve soiled yourself in a nightly emission like a hormonal teenager. Even my subconscious thinks it is a disgusting way to behave.
    I got up eventually and made breakfast, then washed and dressed. It’s a bright morning so I’ve taken myself off for a walk while I think about how to fill what remains of the weekend.
    On the main road a badger lies on its side, its head flattened by the wheel of a car. It’s relatively fresh, just starting to enter the Bloat stage, its four legs raised and straightened by the gases of Putrefaction that are distending its abdomen, the blood around its head still red. I stand and observe it for a little while. There is no pavement here, just a wide grass verge with a hedge and fields beyond.
    I think about going home and getting a bag of some sort and taking it away somewhere so that I can watch the process unfold, but of course there is no point in intervening. It defeats the whole object. The decay must be allowed to take place here, where the animal died, otherwise it is not a genuine process. I leave it, reluctantly, thinking about coming back tomorrow evening after work, if there is time, and assuming that the council haven’t found it by then and shovelled it on to the back of their roadkill van.
    After luncheon I do some studying, looking into tag questions, embedded commands and double binds, thinking about the badger, thinking about Leah. Each of them is so different; each has such different needs.
    She told me what had happened to her, eventually. It didn’t take much to get her