We publish quality short stories, poetry, extracts from forthcoming novels, and articles and essays on topics of social, environmental and cultural significance.ISSUE NO. 108
AUTUMN 2007
FICTION
Lion’s Breath
Miranda Siemienowicz
The rear of the park closed into a dense thicket. From the edge of the trees, Nicholas hesitated, glancing back at the other children on the graffiti-blazoned play equipment. He pushed through the undergrowth.
‘Georgia,’ he called. ‘We’re not supposed to go this far.’
The girl stopped and waited for Nicholas to reach her.
‘Don’t be a chicken,’ she said. ‘I want to show you something.’ ‘But we’ll get in trouble.’
Georgia laughed. ‘Do you want to be my boyfriend or not?’ she asked.‘Anyway, I already told Emma you were, so you have to.’
Nicholas looked back again. From between the branches the playground was a scatter of brightly lit blotches. He shrugged. ‘All right.’
The two children scrambled further through the thicket and out onto a narrow road. The houses here shouldered against each other, tall weeds sprawling from one property to the next. Georgia led the way along the road until they reached the mouth of an alley that ran off away from the park.
‘It’s down there,’ she said, pointing into the laneway. ‘Come on.’
Georgia was taller than Nicholas and he hurried to match her pace as she strode across the road. The alley they entered was lined with leaning, wooden fences, punctuated by tall gates. The tang of urine and barbecues crowded the air.
‘Where are we going?’ Nicholas whispered urgently.
‘You’ll see.’
Georgia finally stopped two or three houses before the alley met another street. The paired wings of a wide wooden gate blended with the fence beside them. Two quarter-circle openings in the wood stood for handles. She lowered her head to one.
‘Come on, look,’ she said.
Nicholas pressed his face to the wood. Past the fence, a sweep of concrete spread to the foot of a squat, dark building. The roof frowned low over a windowless brick wall and, above the door, red paint spelled the message: Girls Girls Girls. Nicholas read it aloud.
‘It’s for sex,’ explained Georgia. The magic, sibilant word rang in the empty laneway.
‘What’s in there?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. I can’t go inside - only boys are supposed to go in.’
The door of the building opened and Georgia and Nicholas sprang back from the fence. The gate swung open to a rough push, revealing a man in a long, brown coat. He glanced at the children before busying himself with his coat; fastening the buttons and turning up the collar as if the fetid breeze in the alley were far colder than it seemed. His strides carried him so quickly out of the alley that it was immediately difficult to remember if they had ever seen him at all.
‘You have to go inside,’ said Georgia. ‘I want to know how it works.’
Nicholas turned to his friend. ‘I don’t want to go by myself!’
Georgia scowled, arms folded. ‘I told you - I can’t go. If you don’t do it I’ll tell everyone how scared you were. You’re such a baby.’ She pulled the gate wide.
‘Am not.’
‘I’ll tell everyone - Nicholas is a baby!’
Nicholas narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m not! All right, I’ll go. Are you gonna wait for me, or what?’
‘I can’t wait right here,’ said Georgia. ‘What if that man comes back?’
‘What man?’
‘I’ll go to the end of the alley and wait across the road, all right?’ she said.
Nicholas nodded, sweat prickling under his arms. ‘Just don’t leave, OK?’
‘Hurry up, then.’Georgia waited for him to take another step then let the gate swing shut behind him. After that nothing existed save the bland building, rising from the concrete, and its vivid red pronouncement. The words on the wall ran in his head like a chant. When he reached the door he lifted a heavy hand to the doorknob. It turned and he heard Georgia’s footsteps fade between the fences.
Nicholas pushed the door open and a thick lion’s breath of warmth and meat met his face. He slipped inside. The gloom that filled the corridor was stifling and he waited, ears straining and eyes wide, for his vision to adjust. He was standing next to a hat stand draped in coats and bowlers. Out of the open air, the smell was overwhelming.
The sound of low voices and the occasional clink of cutlery came from an archway ahead to the right. Nicholas willed his feet forward before he could reconsider. From the arch, he took in a fleeting impression of the room - a lush carpet that spilled in from the corridor, chairs at ornate tables, shoulder-hunched figures - before sliding along the wall to the nearest corner. He fell into a crouch beside a tall stool, blood pounding.
When a long moment passed and no one questioned him, Nicholas began to look around more closely. The room held twenty or so small, circular tables; each paired with an upholstered dining chair. A dozen men were seated singly around the floor, one, back turned, barely metres from Nicholas. The man at the centre-most table had just been served and sat scrutinising the enormous pile of steaming meat on his plate. Saliva built in Nicholas’s mouth.
‘Looking for someone, young sir?’ said a voice above his head.
He looked up. A gaunt man was leaning over what Nicholas now realised was a bar. He shrank against the legs of the stool and shook his head.
The barman stretched his red, wet lips into a smile. ‘Are you hungry, then?’
‘Please, no. I just wanted to see,’ Nicholas stammered. He glanced around the room but the men at the tables were all fascinated by the central diner, who had taken a fork and was sliding it slowly into the food on his plate.
‘Not hungry?’ asked the barman, incredulous. ‘But you must be hungry. Good, strong men are always hungry.’
Nicholas did not answer and the barman straightened up, vanishing from view behind the bar. The boy clambered to his feet to see him walk down the length of the bar and out through a door at the far side of the room. When he came back he was carrying another plate of meat.
‘For you, young sir. Please take a seat,’ he said, setting the plate and some cutlery on the gleaming, wooden bar.
‘I - I have to go. I don’t have any money, anyway,’ said Nicholas, who had begun to back away.
The barman’s wet mouth rounded in astonishment. ‘Come now, we could not charge someone as important as you! You came to see, did you not? Then see - and eat - you shall.’
Nicholas took another step back and felt the edge of a table dig into his back. He glanced over his shoulder, but the archway had receded behind an infinite stretch of empty tables and chairs.
‘While it’s hot, then.’ The barman affected an elaborate bow, displaying lank hair streaked over a yellow scalp.
Nicholas tried to swallow over the tightness in his throat. He wavered. The diner was eating in earnest now, and his mouth and chin were coated in glistening juices. He was making no effort to wipe them away as he pushed more meat into an already full mouth. Most of the others were still watching intently but the man nearest them had turned and noticed the barman’s generosity. His resentful gaze took in Nicholas, backed up against the table, and the burdened plate on the bar.
The barman waved his hands angrily at the jealous glare. ‘Take no notice,’ he said to Nicholas. ‘There will also be plenty for him. This, young sir, is for you.’
Nicholas hesitated then moved to the bar. He pulled himself up onto the stool and examined the offered plate. There was enough meat for two or more dinners together; the thin slices were piled lavishly high. A raw-smelling steam rose to his nose.
‘Go on,’ said the barman. ‘Be a man.’
Cold with guilt and dread, Nicholas took a mouthful, which was met with a grunt from the seated man watching behind him. The tender meat fell apart over his tongue, filling his mouth with rich, salty juices. The barman watched, his tongue periodically remoistening his lips.
‘Do you make other food, too?’ Nicholas asked.
‘Other food!’ the barman echoed, flicking out his tongue again. ‘This, boy, is the only food the customers come for. We bring it from all over, but it’s always the same. What is important is not the simple taste of it - oh no - it is the experience.’
Nicholas pushed at the meat with his fork, cutting first a larger portion then trimming it back a little smaller. The barman watched for a moment with pursed lips before wandering back to the next room. He returned with a hefty knife and began to draw it over a whetstone the size of a doormat that was fixed to the far end of the bar. As the barman smoothed the knife over the stone the room resounded with a brilliant grinding and Nicholas felt his ears thrum. The men at the tables turned to watch, the diner and his meal forgotten at this display.
After grinding the blade, the barman brought an arm-length steel out from under the bar. He held it like a sword and ran the knife against it, alternating blade sides with each stroke. When the last metallic whine stilled in the greasy air, he returned the steel to its place and, with a conspiratorial nod towards Nicholas, took the knife out to the next room. The men turned back to the diner, who lifted his empty plate and began to lick. Safely forgotten, Nicholas looked down the length of the bar. The door to the next room was flicking in and out with the last thrills of the barman’s exit. The distant archway lay behind a clutter of tables. The man nearest him again twisted around in his chair. His craggy face was cut with harsh shadows and thick hairs stood out on the fingers of his hand, pushing up from under the band of a gold ring.
‘Don’t leave an unfinished plate, will you, boy?’ he said.
A spasm of fear twisted his gut and Nicholas dropped down from the stool and darted along the bar. He ducked under the hatch and pushed through the gently oscillating door.A great wooden table dominated the rear room, crowded with cutlery and mounds of steaming meat. The sharpened knife lay ready on its surface but the barman was nowhere in sight. To the left, a golden-brown carcass was turning slowly on a spit roast that ran the entire length of the wall. The limbs had been removed. Its smooth bulk narrowed at a slim neck and the round head faced forward, rod vomiting from its mouth. A constant, spattering hiss came from the vat as grease dripped onto the coals.
Across the room, a large metal door flung open. The barman backed out, dragging something along the floor. He turned and, with one arm, heaved a raw carcass the size of a large sack of flour onto the table; a headless, limbless torso. Seeing Nicholas, he grinned.
‘Ah, young sir. You can prepare me a new spit.’
The neck of the second carcass had been severed at the level of the shoulders and the barman was holding it upturned, balanced on the even base this created. A pair of breasts hung low on the torso - inverted, out of context. Against the blanched skin the nipples looked like ulcers. Four blunted limbs were stitched closed with flaps of skin. The barman supported the carcass with his fingers dug in between the leg-stumps. He clapped his free hand on its flank.
‘Isn’t she a beauty?’ he asked.
Nicholas felt his stomach twist and bile rise in his throat. He watched as the barman pulled a clean spit from the clutter on the table. Leaning the carcass against his chest, he clasped the rod with both hands and forced it down into the flesh. His hands still wrapped around the spit, he looked back at Nicholas, who was edging towards the door.
‘You should stay, you know. Serve the others. You’ve eaten now, you really ought to help.’
Nicholas shook his head, frantic hands groping behind. The door swung out at his touch and he stumbled through into the feeding room. He scrambled under the hatch and out to the other side of the bar. Three men were crowding together over Nicholas’s abandoned plate. One noticed him and turned, chin glistening and hands raised.
‘Now, boy,’ he said in a low voice. ‘You left this plate here. It’s no good anymore to say that you want it back.’
Nicholas ran out among the tables towards the archway. He pushed past the diner, who was slumped with his head on his arms, asleep by his empty plate. As Nicholas passed the last table, someone grabbed his wrist.
‘How long is he going to be in there, then?’ a voice wheezed in his ear.
He twisted free and dived through the archway. Blood roared in his ears as he wrenched open the front door and staggered into the alley. A blast of clean air flooded over his face. He ran.
Georgia was sitting at the edge of the thicket throwing pebbles along the road. Nicholas slowed as he reached her. His heart pounded at the wall of his chest, his eyes smarting with tears.
‘So, what did you see?’ she demanded, getting to her feet. She wiped her dirty palms onto the bright, pretty fabric of her skirt. The skin of her legs was scratched red and white from the bushes.
‘Well, what?’ she repeated. Her face glittered with curiosity.
Nicholas swallowed, his tongue thick and his trembling hands working desperately at the hem of his shirt. ‘Just people,’ he whispered. ‘Eating.’
Georgia’s angry disbelief washed over his ears. ‘Is that all?’ she exclaimed. ‘What about all that sex stuff - they don’t do that in there?’ She kicked at a pebble near her foot. ‘How stupid! Sitting around and eating? I do that already.’
Nicholas shook his head. Her colour and noise were a distant clamourand his mouth was swollen with the taste of acid and meat. No words could fit within it.
MIRANDA SIEMIENOWICZ is a Melbourne writer of fabulist fiction. She works for the review website, HorrorScope, and was on the judging panel for the 2006 Australian Shadows Award, an award for published dark fiction sponsored by the Australian Horror Writers Association.
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