Decay Inevitable

Sleeping, she allowed the flux of a new code to infuse her, amalgamating, refreshing her with otherness.

She was losing her hold over her own identity, the original that had mapped out her character from the start, although she could no longer remember enough about that being to gauge whether or not that was a good thing. The mirror was showing a woman where there’d been a girl the day before. When her mind wasn’t distracted by the fizzing of synapses as new thoughts – too complex for her to even begin to unravel – started to bloom, she considered the circumstances of her birth. All that diabolical screaming. And, just before the shock of the real, a feeling of being invaded with freshness, of being augmented with substance. The man who had wrapped her in a towel and warmed her – the thought of him made her shiver with love. She would do anything for him. Anything. Although a tiny part of her wondered why, when she regarded him with nothing but affection and respect, she saw all others as nothing more than meat.

She resisted going into the street in case she brought attention upon herself – and also because her transition was incomplete – so she was only tangentially aware of what was happening outside. The murmur of traffic, a skitter of shoes on the pavement. At night, through a grille in the ceiling, she saw the houses lose their shape to the darkness, squares of pale colour dotting their invisibility: people who could not sleep. An hour later, her breathing decreased to one inhalation every four minutes; as she felt the bones of her pelvis dissolve and re-knit into a broader shape, she heard a telephone ringing on one of the floors above her. An answer machine cut in and she heard giggling voices tell the woman she was becoming when they would arrive. Same time tomorrow night. She recognised the voice. The person who owned it was called... Susan... Suzanne... Susannah. Susannah.

What is my name?

It seemed that by the following morning her transition was complete. It took a few hours to emerge from torpor, by which time she felt refreshed and dangerous. The curve of her body was noticeable through her ill-fitting clothes. She felt a scar creep across her hip, watched a constellation of freckles birth themselves on the bridge of her nose. Yet as she studied her new aspect in the bathroom mirror, it became evident the change hadn’t ceased, that it went beyond this new physicality. Something was niggling her; a memory she’d never had before, one that seemed to call at her before the shock of the new. She couldn’t fully understand how this was. There was a compulsion to achieve something, to fulfil a pledge she couldn’t recall making. And other things too: the vague itch in her bones which might or might not be the calming of her marrow after such an upheaval. What did it mean? Only a tiny part of her gawped at the rushing of these events – presumably the area of her mind that groped for clues to who she was – for her name, the stock of memories she treasured were dwindling like tail-lights in mist.

Who am I? What is my name?

Enough of her remained to know she was being possessed or, more accurately, subsumed, but the thrill of the experience erased any fear.

Later, as the dark came again, she rubbed moisturisers into her skin, enjoying the sheen that it created, the softness. She inspected every bit of her body and when she was finished, she started again, until she was intimate with all of it.

She whispered, “Who am I?”

Footsteps on the path outside. She could hear Simon and Susannah and Joe? Joel? Jonathan laughing. Perhaps she should persuade them to go for a drink. Wasn’t that what usually happened when she had visitors? But no. Alcohol, and all its attendant possibilities, held no frisson for her; rather, other appetites had begun to develop, along with her psyche and the ripe shell in which she was contained.

Vacating the bathroom, she wrapped herself in a white towelling robe and went downstairs, the activity in her bones reaching a new level of intensity. Only when they piled through the door carrying suitcases and food parcels did she finally realise the nature of its energy.

They stared at her. The door swung shut.

“Dawn?” gaped Susannah.

Dawn... of course.

“In a manner of speaking,” she replied, untying the robe, watching her body spill to the floor.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: M

THEY JOINED THE motorway at Brent Cross. The traffic was heavy, but fluid, winding into the first curves like the swift channelling of water. They had arrived at Elisabeth’s parents’ house around lunchtime. Katherine, her mother, accepted them both with a curt nod; she had always resented Will for his treatment of her daughter. He was in no mood now to pick up on an argument five years old, especially as he thought he had acted correctly, ending a relationship swiftly because it had seemed to have run its course. That Cat was already sleeping in his bed at the time should not have been an issue, but Katherine had berated him for weeks afterwards, strafing him with phone calls long after Eli had accepted the outcome.

“I need to borrow your car,” Elisabeth had told her as she made them both mugs of tea in the narrow, sunlit kitchen. Katherine had handed over the keys without a peep, but gave them both icy, unblinking stares. Elisabeth was old enough now not to be told where she was going wrong. Still, with her mother unrelenting with this slow- burn look, Elisabeth told her: “I know. I know,” as they left the house.

THEY WERE A mile shy of Rugby, the radio masts clearly visible, when the car in front of them lifted into the sky. The beginning of Eli’s startled cry was eclipsed by an explosion that seemed to rupture the air itself. In the moment before their car was flipped over by the shockwave, Will thought he caught a glimpse of what death meant. It shimmered in the core of bloody colour spraying from the split petrol tank of their doomed neighbour; it engulfed the car with a film of uncertainty, before the flames tucked in and ruined the illusion of insubstantiality with some of their own. And then a pocket of dark to hide in for a while, as all around them pieces of the sky and the earth swapped places.

HE REVIVED FIRST, certain that Elisabeth was dead. A lump the size of a walnut had risen from the side of her head, just above her ear, which was torn and bloody. A tooth had been chipped and her lip was swollen and red. A worrying amount of blood had darkened the area of her T-shirt that covered her breasts.

“Eli.” Will reached over and dug into her throat with his fingers, searching for signs of life. It was there, a pulse stronger than he was expecting. He breathed out, shocked by sudden tears. He must not fold now; they might still be in danger from the fires. Although the windscreen was a riot of cracks, rendering the glass opaque, he could see how the sky was orange and waxy with movement.

Will managed to kick open the corrugated mess of the door. His seatbelt was preventing him from falling on top of Elisabeth; the car had come to a stop on the passenger side. Grabbing hold of the steering wheel, Will released the belt and hauled himself through the gap, gritting his teeth to an agony that never came. Now he could see the road, or what remained of it. Great jags of tarmac had been forced into the air, as if from a tectonic collision. Smoke rose, either in urgent, pumping cones of black or gently wafting veils, depending on the severity of the flame that fuelled it. Will stopped counting when he reached twenty charred vehicles. Another dozen or so had escaped the fires but disintegrated in the ensuing pile-up. Rounding the crimped bonnet of the Golf, he saw a limb on the roadside, neatly encased in a pink cardigan sleeve. The fingers were gripping a half-eaten chunky Kit Kat.

Will rubbed his face as he felt the heat draining away from it. Fainting wasn’t going to be of use to anyone. He pressed his shoulder against the roof of the car. By rocking against it, his movements becoming progressively