New Erotic

Kopek sat on a large concrete block that had once formed a part of St Paul’s Cathedral and regarded the sky through a pair of dark glasses. He could not locate the sun. He cast no shadow.

A young girl knelt before him, playing with her pet spidercat. She appeared to be about ten years old. She was wearing a pale green halter neck dress, which was rather too flimsy for the time of year.

Kopek, however, was wearing a black leather trenchcoat, ski boots and driving gloves, a black velvet waistcoat and britches and a white cheesecloth shirt. But he was still cold. He fumbled a paper handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose almost covertly.

“Are you crying?” asked the girl.

Kopek shook his head imperceptibly, then shaped his mouth to say ’No’. But the word died on his lips. He sniffed. He chucked the snotty handkerchief away. It was snatched by the wind and flung high into the air.

He thought he could hear a clock ticking.

The girl picked up her spidercat and kissed it. Its little legs wiggled. She giggled and tickled its hairy underbelly. The spidercat squeaked with pleasure.

Kopek shivered with revulsion.

“I am no longer at home here,” he whispered. “London is incomprehensible. I do not empathise with the ruins. I can divine no pattern. The twisted metal… the shattered concrete… the dying weeds… They have lost their morbid appeal.”

He should never have returned. Both he and the City had changed. And not for the better, either.

“Anguish,” said the girl. “Yes. Your face looks anguished.”

Anguish. Angst-wish. Kopek frowned.

“It’s all so unreal.”

He grimaced. His words were incongruous.

“I’ve noticed that.” The girl smiled at him. Her face looked curiously lopsided. Insane. “If you stare at things too hard, or for too long, they sort of go blurry. Everything merges. Gets mixed up. Y’know.”

The spidercat sprang from her lap and scuttled off in pursuit of some flearats, which were skipping across the remains of Ludgate Hill like flat stones across a lake.

Kopek started at the sudden flurry. He had grown unused to violence.

“How long has it been since the Evolution?” he demanded brusquely.

“Long?”

“Time.”

“Time?” The girl shrugged. “There’s no way of telling.” She shifted position and sat with her legs crossed. Her bare knees peeped from under the ragged hem of her dress like two small, frightened animals. “All moments are the same moment.”

Kopek turned away and gazed to the north-west. Towards Islington. Home.

A massive construction crane stood on the site of his old house. There had once been a plan to turn Barnsbury Square into an enormous, multi-storey car park. But now…

“Some people call it The Rood,” the girl informed him. “They say that it’s a religious symbol which has survived from the Old Age. And others call it Crane. They believe that it’s actually the skeleton of a Dead God, who will one day return to rule over us. While others still…”

Kopek removed his glasses. The irises of his eyes were as dark as the pupils. He pushed his hair back behind his ears. It was rather greasy, he noticed. And a lot shorter than he liked.

“What’s your name?”

“Pardon…?”

“Your name?”

“Name?”

“Yes.”

She laughed. “I don’t understand.” The wind flung her long auburn curls across her face. “Name… Name… Don’t understand…”

Kopek growled and flung himself on top of her. The girl smirked in weary resignation, opened her legs and let him get on with it. What transpired was not exactly sex, but neither of them seemed to mind.

Kopek noticed that the girl’s eyes were a disconcerting shade of green. She made a curious noise in the back of her throat. It sounded like… a distorted name…

”Diane…”

He should never have returned. Never.

Kopek lay on his back beside the girl’s body, his left hand cradling the cold puppy fat of her violated belly. His brain was hot. His eyes were flecked with green… His hair was streaked with auburn… His genitals were… confused…

A flock of sparrowflies wheeled and buzzed across the bland, unevocative sky. The spidercat returned with a half eaten louserabbit clutched in its mandibles. It sniffed inquisitively at the girl’s feet, then scrutinised Kopek with a strange intensity.

It was a phantastic tableau.

Reluctant to disturb it, Kopek nevertheless grabbed the first hefty, blunt object which came to hand and – with an economy of movement – pulverised the spidercat’s mutant skull.

The colours were shocking. Murky yellow pus. Bright red blood. Grey brain matter. White bone fragments. Black fur.

Without sound and without grace, the creature toppled onto its side. Pathetically, its eight legs kicked at thin air. Its tail switched aimlessly back and forth. But only for a few obscene moments.

Kopek regarded the bloodstained object in his hand. It was a part of one of the many skeletons that had been disinterred from the smashed Cathedral.

The imaginary clock stopped ticking.