Vivisepulture (7 page)

But heartbreaking drivel nonetheless. Like a sobbing maiden in a period drama, Michael clamped a hand against his heart, feeling as if some monstrous thistle had materialized there, skewering the delicate tissues with brutally sharp barbs.

Then there was another photo, of the most banal variety: a self-taken picture of the two lovers cheek by cheek, the camera angle crooked, the image ever so slightly blurred.

That’s the worst one of the lot, decided Michael.

No, not quite: the photo tucked beneath it was more repellent than the others combined. Sitting on the scarlet-upholstered bench of a Gondola, Michael and Melissa drifted along a romantic, stinking, rat-infested Venetian canal. They appeared absurdly happy, clutching hands, grinning as if to bounce the sun’s rays off their teeth back into the stratosphere. The snap had been taken by a gondolier whose oleaginous charm Michael had found threatening. He had bullied them to have the picture taken. Yes it would not be cheap, he said. But what price can be placed on such a gorgeous memento? They would treasure it forever, exhibiting it to their grandchildren as proof that they had once been young and prey to the splendid romantic passions of youth. 

It wasn’t merely the photo Michael loathed but the frame in which it was mounted. Cut from cheap pink card, laced with faux-wood curlicues, it sported a grotesque cherub in the top-right corner. This beaming, pot-bellied Cupid gripped a golden bow with an arrow nocked to the string. Michael considered it obscene that a baby should be the symbol of amorous love. What was more, he despised this particular Cupid because either its marksmanship was poor or the romantic elixir basted on the arrow-tip was faulty.

Melissa had abandoned Michael a fortnight after Venice.

“Fuck this,” muttered Michael, tossing the photo on the coffee table. He had better things to do than brood. Things like purchasing a bottle or three of Calendar.

With considerable effort he got to his feet. His legs were wobbly, his vision blurred, and he suspected that if he failed to get a drink soon he’d get the DTs instead. The molecules in his emaciated body were vibrating in the strange, familiar way that preceded withdrawal.

In the hallway, he put on his boots and leather jacket then picked up the walking stick he would need for the trek to the petrol station.

Michael was proud of the stick. It wasn’t the curl-handled affair favoured by geriatrics but an honest-to-goodness hazelwood knob stick, the sort wielded by Oliver Reed when playing Bill Sykes in
Oliver!
It did not suggest infirmity. On the contrary, Michael was certain it gave him an eccentric and dangerous appearance.

He tugged the front door key from his pocket.

“Oh fuck. Money,” he sighed.

Returning to the living room, he grabbed his wallet from the sideboard then paused, spotting movement out of his eye-corner.

What on earth was it? A spider? A mouse?

Or something worse: an hallucination.

A thin scalpel of panic twisted in his belly. Hallucinations were common enough during
delirium tremens
. But sometimes they preceded seizures. And that would be
bad
.

Oh shit, I can’t have a fit, I mustn’t . . .  

He glanced across the living room. The moving something was not scuttling over the floor like a spider or mouse but wriggling slowly and weirdly on the coffee table.

Squinting, Michael saw a vague wobbling pinkness that resolved itself into Cupid. The cherub’s head had already risen from the frame like some glistening pink bubble and now, tiny hands braced on the frame itself, he was heaving upwards like a bather climbing out of a swimming pool. His body shook with effort but gradually, his chest rose up, followed by his belly, lower regions and legs.

Pursing his lips, Cupid hitched up his loincloth, that had become snagged during the ascent. Then he stooped, tugging the bow and arrow out of the frame. Sweat dribbled from his golden-curled scalp. Raising a leg, the spirit of love farted silently. Then he looked at Michael.

I
am
hallucinating, thought Michael miserably. What if I have a seizure?

He cast about wildly, seeking somewhere soft to fall when the spasms began.

Cupid rolled his shoulders, rubbed his neck then performed a few knee-bends as if loosening muscles that had spent too long in a cramped space.

Wings fluttering, Cupid rose into the air, hovered, then swelled into a baby of full-sized proportions.

“Screaming fuck,” whispered Michael, trembling.

Sniffing, Cupid lifted his shapeless chin and, with crawling slowness, his glossy pink skin wallowed into a sickening green colour. Lesions blossomed over his body, seeping pus-tinged blood that dripped onto the carpet. Bloodshot exploded through his eye-whites. His flesh decomposed and one putrescent flap flopped from his cheek, exposing the greyish white bone beneath. Scarlet veins spindled through his stubby nose and the curls covering his scalp thinned into greasy scraggles. His lips opened, baring teeth as sharp as a cat’s and as green as a corpse’s. The gums bled prodigiously, the garish discharge trickling over the cherub’s chest and belly. His feathers, dove-white moments ago, glowed as red as superheated iron. Casting aside the bow and quiver, he fanned out his fingers and long yellow nails sprang out as swiftly as flick-knife blades. Ochre talons curled from his toes.

He hovered a moment longer then hurtled toward Michael.

Stunned, Michael had no time to react. Cupid clutched Michael’s jacket, fingernails piercing the thick leather. Yowling, Michael toppled backward onto the floor. Opening his mouth impossibly wide, Cupid bit into Michael’s ribcage. The pain was extraordinary - and energising. Flailing madly, Michael rolled onto his side, grasped Cupid’s shoulders and ripped the cherub loose. Cupid struggled in Michael’s grip and roaring, Michael hurled the thing across the living room. Cupid barreled through empty air then, wings working furiously, hovered once more, tatters of coat-leather, cashmere sweater and skin dangling from the needle-sharp fingernails.

Cupid attacked again. 

Despite his panic, Michael was better prepared. Dodging sideways, he caught Cupid’s arm and flung the
putti
full-strength into the wall. Cupid impacted with a glooping splat then bounced onto the coffee table, scattering photographs. He lay still a heartbeat then rose once more.

“What the bloody fuck are you?” Michael knew the answer as soon as he asked the question. Like it or not, he
was
hallucinating. He was terrified but his wits were intact: he knew drunks were confronted by all sorts of ghastly illusions. Giant lobsters, spiders, aberrations that would’ve alarmed Bosch . . . all seemingly real yet none existing beyond the imagination.

Glancing down, Michael saw his jacket
was
ripped. And he
was
bleeding. But surely, these were also figments of his imagination?

“You do not exist,” breathed Michael, petrified yet jubilant. “All this is a dream -”

Cupid launched another assault. Michael’s defiance vanished. Yodelling with fear, he dived out of the living room into the hallway. Following, Cupid swept through the doorway then swooped but Michael was already sprinting up the stairs toward the bathroom.

Tripping over the top step, Michael sprawled on the landing then rolled onto his back. Cupid was waiting. The cherub dived like some pudgy hawk, plunged his fingernails into Michael’s chest, thrust his face against the stricken drinker’s ribcage and
chewed
.

Michael dug his thumbs into Cupid’s eyes - eyes that, according to myth, had overseen a billion blossoming romances. Shrilling, Cupid recoiled. Momentarily free, Michael plunged into the bathroom, slammed the door and slid the bolt. For a heartbeat he stood in darkness, listening to Cupid’s yells of pain. Then he yanked the cord and hard light ricocheted off white tiles.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” gasped Michael.

Suddenly, claws were gouging the opposite side of the door. Michael cast about for a weapon. A toothbrush? A shaving razor? Pathetic! What about that  bottle of mouthwash? Would it scald Cupid like holy water splashed over a vampire?

A vampire, thought Michael suddenly. Cupid certainly wasn’t
a vampire
, but tiny connections sparked in Michael’s mind. Stripping off his jacket and jumper, he inspected the bite marks in his chest. No, they were not the neat double-pinpricks of a dandy. Concentrated on the upper left side of his ribcage, they were the ugly clusters of a wild beast.

Understanding flashed like lightning.

Cupid wanted to dig out his heart and eat it.

The frantic scraping against the door continued.

A weapon, a weapon . . .

If holy water wouldn’t repel the abomination perhaps hot water would.

Michael yanked the showerhead from its fitting then wrenched the heat dial to maximum. The shower was a poorly manufactured foreign model, bereft of a temperature-limitation device. Often, Michael had nearly been parboiled by the wretched instrument. Now it might save his life.

After a few cold spurts, the shower spat steaming water.

Michael would not open the door to Cupid but if the
putti
broke through the flimsy wood, he would prepared.

Perching on the toilet he waited like a gunslinger listening for the church bell that announced it was time to duel.

When he woke up, Michael believed he was in Heaven.

He was smothered by white clouds, gently swirling. Had he passed over, as the euphemism went? No, he decided. The clouds were hot and wet and he could hear shower water drumming inside the bathtub.

Sitting up, he winced at a throbbing pain in his skull. Probing his scalp, he discovered a contusion as big as a hen’s egg. Evidently he had fainted, knocking himself unconscious on some hard surface.

But that did not explain the shower pumping scalding water or the teeth marks carved into his chest.

With a croaking yelp, Michael remembered Cupid. For a second or two he whirled into a terrified panic. Was the malign sprite still present in the house? Hovering patiently outside the bathroom door? Or lurking elsewhere, with the patience of a funnel web spider poised for an ambush?

Suddenly, the tension easing, Michael laughed at the whole foolish saga.

The previous night, his strongest fear had come to pass. He
had
suffered a seizure and it
was
preceded by
delirium tremens
- literally translated as the
shaking madness
. 

At the time, the madness dimension had felt  unspeakably awful. Now it was comforting. It explained everything. Cupid had been an hallucination, a freakish contortion of the mind, and it seemed so real Michael had injured himself attempting to resist it. The fingernail gouges stippling his chest were caused by his own fingernails as he grappled with the apparition. Though deeper, the bitemarks had not been engendered by Cupid’s savage teeth but once again, his own fingernails as he doubled his efforts to cast off the pouting, rotting, evil-reeking
putti
.

No enemy existed except Michael’s Calendar-scrambled mind.

Michael ventured onto the landing. Gouges and incisions sagged into the bathroom door but they too were his handiwork. Wasn’t it possible that, terrified, he had not attempted to open the door but to claw his way through - as if his capering brain had plunged him into an animalistic frenzy?

In the living room, Michael peered at the Venice photograph. Cupid was missing from the corner of the frame but that did not prove anything significant. Most likely, Michael had torn off the cherub in a fit of rage. He
never
liked the tubby little fucker. Perhaps this act of petty vandalism triggered, if not the hallucination itself, the form the hallucination had adopted.

“Bloody hell. What a bizarre night,” he sighed.

Monstrously hungover, he donned a woollen coat - he was too vain to venture out in his tattered leather jacket -  grabbed the hazelwood knobstick and strolled to the petrol station.

In a celebratory mood, he bought three bottles of Calendar.

Home again, he put the bottles on the carpet by the sofa, switched on the television and drank. Diagnosis Murder was on the box and Michael dreamily imagined he would quite like to be a crime-busting MD.

The first bottle was soon gone. After starting on the second, Michael fell asleep.

He woke with a sour belch.

Stale whisky clung to his teeth and grabbing a bottle from the coffee table, he swilled it away with fresh whisky.

Slouching on the sofa, Michael noticed snow-speckled darkness against the window. Night, again. He fidgeted. Then he spotted Cupid sitting on the television set, legs dangling in front of the flickering screen.

Except for a slow blinking of the eyes, Michael grew absolutely motionless.

Cupid watched him, grinning. His appearance was unchanged from their previous encounter. His skin was green and rotten. His eyes swam with bloodshot - except for the irises, which were sour yellow discs.

Cupid tipped his head forward as if to say
Are you ready?

Michael told himself Cupid was an hallucination but knew in his rapidly pumping heart he was not. He
couldn’t
be, because Michael was still drunk from the afternoon. He was not withdrawing. He was not delirious. He was not on the cusp of a seizure.

“Oh fuck,” he murmured, philosophically.

With a
phuff
of wings, Cupid rose from the television then hurtled at Michael, swooping low over the coffee table then angling up toward his face.

Michael dived sideways, flipping over the armrest. Bouncing off a cushion, Cupid rose, flapped in gleeful circles in the middle of the room, then swooped, uttering a shrill cackling cry.

Accustomed to Cupid’s tactics, Michael aimed a punch at the cherub’s face. Cupid dodged, giggling, then swooped again. Michael rolled, scrambled to his feet and, suspecting it was impossible to lay a fist on the creature, flung himself into the hallway then slammed the door against the pursuing
putti
.