The Gate 2: 13 Tales of Isolation and Despair

DOES LAURA LIKE ELEPHANTS? by Steven Pirie

It’s late Friday evening in the pub, and Laura’s in her wheelchair too close to the fire in the hearth. The heat burns her leg and stings tears under her eyelids. Her world spins sideways when her head lolls to her shoulder. She feels spittle on her chin, and phlegm in her throat. She gags, but no one notices. She’s been gagging all evening, but Pete and the others are good at not noticing. And her thighs are still chaffed from Pete fucking her earlier. Or was it Don? Since the incident, anybody could be fucking her and she’d not know.

And Pete says: “I hear there’s a two-for-one offer on entrance to the zoo.”

“I’m not surprised,” says Maureen. “The zoo’s crap. I’ve been, and I counted just the one bored-looking penguin last time.”

“They have got a new elephant,” says Don.

Pete grins. “A new old elephant. I heard it was one Whipsnade didn’t want any more. Maybe it was a defective one.”

“Laura used to like the elephants,” says Don. He sighs. “And the lemurs.”

They turn toward Laura, and she twitches in her wheelchair, feeling their stares upon her as harsh as any fire in the hearth. She feels her eyeballs flicking in their sockets.

Maureen laughs. “Now she can’t tell them apart, eh?” She leans forward, turning Laura’s ear toward her. Laura’s world spins once more. “Do you know the difference between an elephant and a lemur, Laura?” She taps Laura’s head, and inside the sound booms like in an empty chamber. “Is it the sort of thing you think about alone in there all day?”

“Don’t,” says Don. “You shouldn’t be laughing at Laura.”

“Then again,” says Maureen, “maybe we should go to the zoo, Pete. You could take Laura. It’ll be nice for her to be amongst the moth-eaten animals, seeing as she’s defective herself. It’ll be like she’s with equals. Maybe you can swap her for a smarter looking chimp when no one’s looking.”

Don downs his pint. “That’s not fair,” he says. His face has reddened. “Laura can’t help the way she is, and you shouldn’t be mocking her.”

“It’s true Laura did like animals, though,” says Pete. “Back when she was compos mentis, I mean, back before the incident. Perhaps a day out in the fresh air will do her some good.”

“Then it’s settled,” says Maureen. “Tomorrow, after lunch, we’ll all have an afternoon at the zoo, and if we can tell Laura apart from the gibbons, intellectually, then the coffees are on me.”

Later, back home, it’s cold and dark downstairs alone. Laura can’t shiver, not since her brain and muscle and sinew all but parted company, and when Pete’s pissed-up, when he can’t be bothered carrying her upstairs to bed, he leaves her in the wheelchair downstairs in the corner by the fish tank. It’s safer that way, he says, in case he falls backward on the stairs. As if Laura would mind snapping her neck as she tumbled. Sometimes he leaves her down when Maureen slips away from Don and comes back for a nightcap.

Laura knows each fish by name; even the dead ones Pete forgets to flush. The tank heater rumbles and gurgles, and the bubbles from the fish-shit encrusted diver ripple dull rainbows on the living room ceiling. The shifting colours are hypnotic. Beyond the glass the fish bob aimlessly, sluggish and directionless like the stray thoughts in Laura’s head.

Did she ever like elephants? She doesn’t think so. But then, she’s not sure it’s she who stinks of puke and urine since Pete’s not bothered changing her bag since lunch time. When you’re not sure of that, how can you be sure of anything?

The tank thermostat trips and the heater switches off. The fish shift, startled by the silence, like they do the dozen times an hour the heater starts and stops. And somewhere, in the dark depths of Laura’s brain, as if triggered by the sudden quiet, a neuron fires. A second answers it, and a third, and Laura knows there’ll be a storm soon. It’s the only way her mind works these days, by unleashing raging torrents of activity. It’s only by letting axons burn freely can she think.

Do I like elephants? she asks herself.

She feels lightning streak in her head and hears the rush of wind in her ears. The colours on the ceiling deepen to a painful hue. A dull ache grows behind her eyes. Her limbs don’t move, yet in her mind she sees them thrashing against her wheelchair. But by morning she’ll know the answer. She’ll know if she likes elephants, and in some small way that’s one more step toward knowing herself once more.

And lemurs, she adds, what about lemurs?

It’s warm, Saturday morning. Laura’s slumped in her wheelchair outside in the garden to the rear by the bins. Out of the way, Pete says, while he trundles the Vax over the carpet by the fish tank. The carpet by the fish tank is threadbare by Pete’s Vax.

Don’s here. Laura knows his cheap aftershave. It goes everywhere Don goes and lingers where he’s been. Sometimes, during the neuron storms, Laura thinks she smells it on her blouse.

“Sorry about last night,” Don says. He leans inward to fuss with Laura’s blanket and pillow. “Maureen’s a right arsehole when she’s pissed. We all have our own ways of dealing with the aftermath of the incident, and Maureen’s is to be brash and mocking. She doesn’t really mean it. I’ll bet she’s sorry this morning.”

Don lifts Laura’s chin with a finger. His skin is warm and firm against her cheek. Laura shudders; it’s a caring touch where Pete’s is now only a carer’s. She knows there’s a subtle difference.

Don stares down into her eyes. He looks tired, with more crow’s feet than Laura remembers. But Don’s eyes are ocean deep, and the flecks of orange in his pupils add fire to his gaze. Maureen and Pete won’t look into her eyes like that. Perhaps they’re afraid they might somehow be drawn in, to swap places, and maybe rightly so considering none of them truly understand the incident.

“Don’t you go worrying,” says Don. “It will work out in the end.”

He smoothes a fold in Laura’s dress, and for a moment his fingers brush and linger against her breast below. She wears the pink bra, delicate and feminine, not like the great ship-building plates Maureen wears. Laura’s bra is lacy and sheer, so much that a hint of nipple pokes through, hardening against Don’s knuckle. He turns his finger in small circles against the nub.

Laura sees Don’s face flush. “Yeah, well, I’d better go.” Don stands, panting, awkward. He covers his groin with his left hand. “Maureen expects us at the zoo, and you know what she’s like when she expects something. I’ll see you later.”

Laura wants to cry out to him: “Don’t leave.”

In her mind she reaches out. But what good are arms that don’t rise, hands that won’t grasp, lips that can’t kiss?

Laura wants to weep.

It’s a small zoo. Its paths are hilly and broken, and Don pants as he shoves Laura’s wheelchair around the potholes. Laura feels his breath, rhythmically warm and cold against the nape of her neck. Even as the neuron storm of the night before fades, Laura remembers she’s felt his breath on her neck like that before.

“It’s bloody worse than I remember,” says Maureen. “It’s all weeds and a few motley wildebeest. Those tortoises haven’t moved since the last time I was here.”

Pete grips Maureen playfully by the earlobe. She yells and falls into him, and the two fumble against each other. Even Laura notices their embrace lasts longer than it need do. Behind her, she feels Don look away.

“Stop moaning,” says Pete. “We’re doing the zoo even if I have to lead you around it by the ear.”

“It won’t take long,” says Maureen. “Most of the animals have gone anyway.”

“Still, it’s fresh air for Laura,” says Don. “It’ll do her good. The trip’s for Laura’s benefit don’t forget.”

They walk under a rusted monorail overtaken by weeds, a relic from a time when the zoo held grander thoughts. Beyond that the trees grow unchecked, arching into each other across the path. Through this darkened, tangled canopy the branches hang down like the snapped synapses in Laura’s brain. Laura stiffens; she’s suddenly unsure whether she’s inside or outside her head. It panics her. It’s like the incident all over again. She’s not sure she can live through another incident.

“Follow the signs,” says Pete. “Elephants, this way.”

“Elephant,” says Maureen. “Just the one. I read in this morning’s paper Whipsnade’s reject went tusks-up last Thursday.”

“Poor bugger,” says Don.

“Ah, here we are; Elephant House and Coffee Shop,” says Pete. “Who’s for cappuccinos?”

“And a cake for me,” says Maureen.

Don nods. “Pick a table near the fence, and I’ll nip in for the coffees.”

Laura hears in colors. She feels in sounds. Since the incident, it’s a forced synaesthesia that most people would fear. But when the neuron storms fade Laura will grasp at any sense that comes her way however jumbled.

She feels the lumbering thud of the one good elephant beyond the electrified fence, hears the drying mud clinging to its skin. She smells its bulk, and tastes the cleaving of the air by its trunk.

Ah, yes, elephant, she thinks, I remember elephants. But do I like them?

“When are you going to tell Don?” says Pete.

Maureen shifts uneasily in her seat. “We’ve been through this. I’m not moving in with you while she’s there. It’ll be too weird.”

Across time and space, the elephant sings to Laura. Its song is flat and endless like the Savannah. Where it lilts, it does so sifting over memories of the herd, filled with dirge and eulogy to bleached white bones abandoned in the scrub. Laura drinks its soul and shudders at the bitter taste.

“Well, there might be some news on that,” says Pete.

“Oh?”

“I got a letter from Social Services. They tell me there’ll be a place soon for Laura at the Twilight Years Care Home, seeing as she’s worsening.”

Maureen laughs. “It’s not really called that, is it?”

“Something like it.”

“And is she worsening?”

“Nah, but I thought it couldn’t harm to say so.”

Laura soars with the elephant’s soul above the African plains. Wind and sand sting her cheek. Over leaping gazelles and lumbering buffalo they fly. And the land is forever and the warmth never ending. They see elephants in the distance, dark shapes plodding-slow, as only elephants can be.

These are your kin? thinks Laura. She knows the answer; she tastes it in the elephant’s thudding heart. Then this is where you should be, not trapped here alone in such dreadful captivity.

“Tell Don, and then come over tonight,” says Pete. “We can put Laura downstairs out of the way until whoever it is pegs it at Twilight Years. Come over; I’m tired of shagging Laura. It’s like poking a bean bag.”

Maureen frowns. “I’m tired of fucking a cabbage is not the basis for ours to be a good relationship.”

“You know what I mean.” Pete takes her hand. “It’s you I want.”

“Look, Don’s on his way back,” says Maureen. “I’ll slip out tonight and we’ll talk about it, right?”

Alone in such dreadful captivity, Laura repeats. Just like me.

There’s a storm Saturday night. Laura is locked in the conservatory. The air is stuffy and warm, and sickly with the aroma of scented candles seeping in through the ill-fitting French doors. There was a time, Laura thinks, back when she knew about lemurs and elephants, when Pete would put scented candles out for her. Now he lolls about drinking beer and farting as if she’s not there.

Lightning flashes beyond the glass windows. It burns an image onto Laura’s eyelids—the tangle of trees in the woods beyond the garden fence. She holds it there, tracing the detail of each branch, each twig delicately connected to its neighbor, held frozen in an instant of time. In her mind, Laura fingers the tree bark down to the wet earth below; loses herself in the nooks and ridges of the wood; invades these miniature worlds of grubs and insects and life and death.

Laura pauses, suddenly afraid. It’s in contemplating such intricacies of the world that brought on the incident. It was then that the universe rushed into her head. Human brains weren’t made to understand entire universes. It was little wonder veins popped.

Laura reins her thoughts, pushing them back outward into the meaningless macro world of Pete and Maureen and candles, and of Don sitting at home blissfully unaware of all of them. Rain bangs down upon the conservatory roof. It’s insistent, like Pete’s grunts and Maureen’s groans from the living room floor. She sees the rise and fall of Pete’s buttocks reflected in the conservatory window; up and down like two pale, nervous ghosts.

Laura sighs.

Life moves on.

Laura wonders whether it’s time she did so too.

The pub does a fine Sunday Lunch. Sunday lunch and darts at the pub was always something of a ritual back before the incident. Laura’s in her chair, tucked in the corner under the rubber plant. Her head is forward, her chin resting on her chest like she’s nodded off asleep. She sees Pete’s fingers trace circles on Maureen’s thigh beneath the table. Occasionally Maureen reaches down and grips his hard-on just to keep him going.

“Did you see Jonathon Ross last night?” says Don.

“Nah,” says Pete, “I had other things to do.” He winces as Maureen glares at him and grips him harder below.

“He had that bloke who does the stunts as a guest. You know, the hangs-upside-down-and-doesn’t-eat-and-drink-for-a-month bloke. It’s bloody marvellous how he went for a month without sustenance.”

“That’s all trickery,” says Pete. “I bet he took water through a straw in his arse or something.”

Maureen spills her beer. “That would be a good trick in itself.”

“Besides,” says Pete, “Why bother?”

Laura feels the spin of the world beneath her feet. The rumble of the planet through space dislodges dust in her head. Beyond that, she feels the grinding of the galaxy against the interstellar clouds. It’s a journey, she thinks; all of them embarked upon a journey they can’t get off. All of them locked in a rotating prison without keys.

She explores Death, flitting spirit-like and fey across the old cemetery on London Road. The headstones are old here, chipped and blackened, and strewn with moss. The dead below these slabs have long since accepted their fate. But they still cry out to Laura as she swoops by. Their mews are weak and pitiful. There’s no sleep down here, they say, no rest in the dark, damp earth. And the sodden ground tries to suck Laura down. How much easier would it be to let it do so? What’s left for her in the physical world, after all?

“It’s an endurance thing, I suppose,” says Maureen. “Man against Nature, and all that.”

“What’s bloody natural about hanging upside down for a month?” says Pete.

Maureen grins. “I don’t know; ask bats.”

Laura feels bile rise in her throat. With her head thrown forward and downward like this she’s not in the best position to deal with vomiting. She forces her eyeballs upward in their sockets trying to see across to Don, but he’s stuck in some stupid conversation. She’s not surprised; stupid conversations were always the norm where Pete and Maureen were concerned. Laura’s chest hurts, and there are lights behind her eyes. She’s all but ready to die. Except there’s one more thing she must do.

“I think it’s impressive,” says Don, “Hanging about like that for an entire month.”

Pete shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter; it’s all a trick.”

“It all looked pretty real to me,” says Don. “Jonathon Ross said the guy’s stunts were officiated over.”

“Lots of things look real to you, Don,” says Pete.

There’s a short silence.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The thing is, Don,” says Pete, “is that Maureen’s moving in with me.”

Don looks on open mouthed and wide eyed. Laura slumps further forward in her chair. She’s choking and can’t breathe. There are shooting pains in her left arm. She reaches out to Don across time and space, and finds his soul amongst the chaos of the world.

“I’m with you, Don,” she says, her voice loud and clear inside Don’s head. “I’m with you now and always.”

“Well bugger me,” says Don.

Laura’s buried on Thursday. It’s raining, and Pete’s worried his suit will get wet. Maureen’s not there. She says she doesn’t do funerals, not unless it’s close. Don’s there. He stands across from Pete, his eyes hidden behind darkened glasses. The opened grave is a chasm between them, a divide that sets them a world away from each other, yet somehow joined by Laura lying between them.

“She’s better off,” says Pete. “She died back in January with the apoplexy.”

Don nods. He hesitates to speak. When he does so, his voice is thin, quiet, and unsure. “I touched her soul, you know.” Don studies Pete’s face. There’s no hint of understanding. But then, even Don can’t really fathom what truly went on with the incident. “Or, perhaps Laura found mine. It’s the same thing. We were two free spirits trying to make sense of the world when our worlds met.”

“You were having an affair?”

Don nods again. “I suppose there’s no reason to hide it now. You’ll not understand, and if you do you’ll not believe me. But our souls merged that night, and it was so intense it all but broke Laura’s body. That was the incident. It wasn’t madness that took her, or the depression, or the alcohol, or the popped veins in her head, rather she bore the brunt of our fusion and pulled away. Maybe she did so to save me, I don’t know. It’s a noble thought I like to carry with me. It’s a terrible thought I have to live with.”

Pete shakes his head slowly and turns away. What he’s thinking, he doesn’t say. Don wonders if that’s part of the reason Laura never found his soul.

Don stays by the graveside, watching as Pete ambles down the damp pathway to the waiting limousine. When he nears the cemetery gates Pete turns back.

“Hey, Don,” he calls. “You do know you’re as fucked up as she was?”

A month goes by. Don’s comfortable with Laura’s passing. Each day he was forced to look upon her in that vegetative state was a torment on him. And he’s fine with Maureen washing Pete’s shirts. The bitter days when he thinks they deserve each other are growing fewer.

But his head feels different, that’s the curious thing. Don’s lost count of the times he’s wandered trance like only to wake at one or other of Laura’s favourite haunts—the Mystical Shop on King’s Road, the Spiritual Library on Faulkner Street, the pagan stone hidden away down Duke’s Close—places they’d say only the two of them knew about, and where they’d meet secretly when for all they knew Pete was busy seeing Maureen.

Don’s at the zoo. He sits alone, staring in at the elephant being hosed and brushed by its keeper. It’s tranquil, here, a place where Don can sift through memories of Laura.

He smiles, thinking how they’d argue playfully about her passion with the mystical. Mumbo jumbo, he’d call it, and she’d wrestle him to the grass, pin down his arms and kiss his mouth. There’s more to life than meets the eye, she’d say, and Don would roll her over and wish they were naked.

In the depths of his mind, he feels Laura stir. She pushes a thought against him and Don resists at first but then welcomes it. There’s pain above his eyes. For all he knows, it could be veins popping in his head.

“Everything’s connected, Don,” says Laura. “Everything touches everything else on a fundamental level. It’s all one if we just reach out to each other.”

“I don’t understand,” says Don.

“It doesn’t matter. Take my hand. Come with me.”

Together they soar high above the zoo. The wind is in their hair, the damp air in their faces.

“Do you like elephants?” says Don.

“I do, Don, and I love lemurs.”

Laura pauses. At last she’s whole again. Their two spirits entwine.

“But most of all I love life… and you.”

Steven Pirie lives in Liverpool, UK, with his wife and son. His fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies around the world. His comic fantasy novel, Digging up Donald, published by Immanion Press in 2004 and again in 2007, has attracted excellent reviews. A new novel, Burying Brian, was published also by Immanion Press in December 2010.

Steve’s website is: www.stevenpirie.com