Graham Tugwell is a PhD student with the School of English, Trinity College Dublin, where he teaches Popular and Modernist Fiction. The recipient of the College Green Literary Prize 2010, he has been published by Write From Wrong, Jersey Devil Press, Red Ochre Lit, The Quotable, Sein und Werden and Thoughtsmith. He has work forthcoming in Kerouac’s Dog Magazine , Anemone Sidecar, Plain Spoke, Pyrta, THIS Literary Magazine, Battered Suitcase, Anobium, Lost Souls, Rotten Leaves, Red Lightbulbs, L’Allure Des Mots and FuseLit. His website is grahamtugwell.com.

The Thing in the Clearing Tastes Like Toast (and makes us feel like proper boys)(August 20, 2011. Issue 30.)

Staggering, he fell upon the crunching leaves, tongue slopping in his gurning mouth with each disgusted shake of his head, eyes pinched in weeping arrowheads. Connor moaned and retched, fingers pawing nose and lips.

Barry bent over him, mittened hands upon his knees, spitting rain a ragged halo around his blonde head. The little boy grinned like a happy piglet, eyebrows raised, his voice a hungry whisper. "What did it taste like?"

"Urgggh," Connor groaned, beading tears, his mouth twisting, chewing upon itself, "Urgh!"

Barry bent closer, blonde hair in his eyes— "What did it taste like?"

"Bitter. Really bitter," gasped Connor, "like—"

"Burned toast!" Barry cried, face opening in a shallow-toothed smile, "That's what I thought too. Like toast that's been left in the toaster too long! Black and hard and bitter!" His mittens clapped together. A belchy laugh escaped his neck.

Connor spat a string and shook his head to dislodge its tail. "Horrible," he said. "Really... horrible."

Barry laughed, his little eyes twinkling deep in the pink meat of his head. "Yes, the first time. But you get used to it, Connor. You do!"

"Why'd you make me do that?" said Connor, taking tears away with his fingertips.

The little boy ignored this. "Aside from the taste. What did you think?" He stepped closer. "Did you... did you like it?"

Connor said nothing. His long thin hands ran through his hair. "Did I like it?" he repeated.

Barry's tongue budded, berry-red, between blunt uneven teeth. He reached with a hand webbed in wool. As Connor rose to stand unsteady, Barry brushed a curling leaf from his back.

"I feel hot," mumbled Connor. He opened his jacket, pulled at the neck of his t-shirt. "I feel really hot..."

He flinched softly as Barry brushed hair out of his eyes.

"And strange..." Connor looked past him, at the thing standing in the clearing.

The thing he had just tasted.

At a low and shallow angle to the ground— the flexing tube of fulvous flesh, as thick as a neck, as long as a man at length, and lightly haired with flaxen fur that darkened at either extremity and along its shallow creases. Yellow leaves stuck wet to bristles.

The nearest end opened under a sharp slanting cowl, revealing a caviar clutch of moist pink orbs, a mass of plastic translucence. The other end, blunter, held higher, was punctured by a smaller, tighter throat of dripping bubbles.

This tube of meat hung between a pair of legs, thin and bent like those of a calf. With a whispering of leaves and creaking wood, it shifted weight from hoof to hoof— bubbles swarmed, bright and wet and the creature purred like a contented cat

It swung to face the boys.

Eyeless.

Barry clasped hands behind his back. Coy, he ground his shoe in dirt. His voice was very soft. "The second kiss was easier. And the third... the third was when the magic began."

And Barry looked at Connor and smiled.

"I'll help you."

"I'll help you kiss the thing again."

*

Donk donk.

Connor woke.

Something was banging on his bedroom window.

Donk.

Donk donk.

He stared at the swathe of light across his ceiling, the dull, diffuse light of an overcast November morning.

Donk donk.

He pulled the covers aside, levering long legs out of bed. Shuffling to the window, he parted the heavy curtains.

Barry stood on the slanted garage roof, a long, straggling branch in hand. He shook it— the knobbly twigs scraped against the glass.

Donk.

As the little boy grinned and waved, the heavy branch drooped—overbalancing, it almost pulled him off the roof. He let go and it fell, clattering against the basketball hoop.

Barry blushed, regained his balance.

Connor leant out into the dreary morning air. "Barry?" he called, "What are you doing?"

Barry was stout and small, with blonde flyaway hair and small watery eyes. His heavy cheeks were studded with dimples; his chin flowed straight into a pulpy neck. He wore gaudy, mismatched clothes that made him seem even plumper. He liked drawing dinosaurs and spaceships. He lived with his mother and grandmother.

"Connor," said Barry, "I found something. Out in the woods."

He pointed with his paddle-hand. Out there, under tumbling hillocks of dark grey cloud, the Black Hill rose.

Connor wiped sleep from his eyes with his palm. "What time is it?"

"Just gone half ten. I couldn't wait any longer."

Connor was a tall and serious child, his thin hair a nondescript brown, straggling over high temples. In the corner of his mouth was a birthmark, red and kidney-shaped. He was the eldest of three children, the only boy (his father's favourite.) He collected mattersley pins and spent hours in his room, cleaning and counting them.

"Barry," he said, wearily, "Get down off the roof. You'll hurt yourself."

"You'll come?"

Connor sighed. "Okay. Just get down."

The blonde boy grinned.

Connor got dressed.

There came the sound of something sliding.

Something hitting the tarmaced drive.

Then Barry calling: "I'm okay."

Connor finished dressing at his leisure.

(Barry thought the world of Connor. And Connor tolerated Barry. Their mothers were friends.)

*

Barry led the way across the field, swinging his hands and talking.

Incessantly.

"I was looking for Rufus," he said, jumping over a cowpat. "We were giving him a bath, me and nan, but whenever you say 'bath', his ears prick up and he goes all tense. He hates baths! And we'd forgotten to close the backdoor. Rufus was out and through the hedge like a shot! Ow!" Connor sighed. Barry had gotten stuck on barbed wire and had to be unskewered.

Onwards they scaled the slopes of Black Hill, through brakes of stinging nettles and slim grey trees. Before long Barry was out of breath, heaving gasps through grinning teeth, and Connor waited by the track until they were ready to climb again.

Forty minutes later they entered a clearing ringed by adolescent sycamores. Barry looked up at their leafless branches, scratching the belly of overcast. "I followed Rufus's barking. That's how I found this place!"

And for the first time Connor noticed the red leash wrapped round Barry's hand. The end had been chewed to bits.

"Barry?" Connor asked, "Where's Rufus?"

Barry looked at him, a confused expression on his face. "What?" he whispered.

Connor pointed at the length of frayed plastic.

"Oh that," said Barry, in a small and hesitant voice. "Rufus is... gone," he finished lamely, as if he wasn't quite sure.

But then his pink and chubby face brightened. "But that's okay. The new thing is far better than Rufus ever was."

"The... new thing?" said Connor.

Barry nodded, pointing past him.

Soundlessly, it had snuck up behind them.

Slowly Connor turned.

Between trees it stalked on slender legs, haunches flexing, hooves stamping on loam. A weak sunbeam seeped through cloud, shone upon the bubbles of its slanting mouth.

Connor felt his limbs deaden, his mouth dry. "What is it?"

"Dunno," giggled Barry.

"Where did it come from?"

"Dunno! Isn't it wonderful? Like we're dreaming it!"

Connor was silent. He looked at bubbles rolling in its open end, its brown knees splaying.

Barry's fat fingers worked into the crook of the taller boy's arm. "Rufus was barking and barking and barking," he said softly, "But... I... I just walked up to it... and I... Connor... I kissed it."

Barry touched his lips. "I should've been scared but it told me it'd be worth it." He laughed softly. "It tasted awful... Wrong... But the second time... it wasn't so bad..."

Barry looked up at Connor.

His little eyes were very wide.

"You can have a go."

The flexing pipe turned its open face towards them. Soundlessly the cowl slid back, shiny orbs tossing and toiling.

And the whole thing seemed to go... so deep...

Connor felt himself drawn forward—

Suddenly, Barry laughed.

"What's funny?" whispered Connor.

"Didn't you hear it? It made a joke!"

"No," said Connor flatly, "It didn't say anything."

Barry nodded. "It did. It made a rude joke."

The thing shook its wet end.

"A joke?"

Barry blushed. "I can't repeat it. Too rude."

"I don't like it," said Connor in a low voice. "It makes me feel... Strange..."

He rubbed his birthmark.

"Full..."

Rubbed it.

"Small..."

"Connor," the blonde boy said, pulling at his arm. "Connor."

The thing stalked closer, moving its open end in wide circles...

"I wanted you to see it. Nobody else."

And suddenly Connor found himself upon his knees. He knew that he was petrified and didn't want to do this; he knew that twigs were digging painful into flesh— and he knew that none of it mattered.

The thing opened wider...

Smelling like something burning...

Barry said in soothing tones "Lift your head. It'll come down to meet you."

Purring, it did.

Connor kissed the thing.

Tasted it.

And fell back upon the leaves, disgusted.

That was the first kiss.

Barry helped the second time; his fingers on the taller boy's neck, pushing him in, deeper.

And when Connor emerged from the third kiss, wet and panting, Barry looked with little eyes unblinking. "You feel it now, don't you? Like you shouldn't go to sleep again. Ever. Like we could do anything. No-one can tell us what to do! We just have to remember the taste of the thing..."

Barry put his hand on Connor's shoulder.

"Proper boys now. That's the magic," the little boy whispered. "That's the third kiss."

On hands and knees in drifts of leaves, Connor muttered, "And the world's a bigger place now..." He dragged his hand across his face, pulling beaded strings from his lips. "There's two ends," he grunted, "We can share it."

Barry nodded, cheeks wobbling.

"You can kiss the sharper end," said Connor. "I'm taller; I'll kiss the blunt end."

"Yes," said Barry, "Yes."

Connor held the little boy's face in dirty hands. "We do this together. No-one gets it more than the other."

Pale blue eyes blinked softly.

"And it's for us. Just us. We don't tell anyone. Agreed?"

"Agreed," the word slithered out on a curling breath.

And padding away on all fours, they knelt at either end of the purring thing and put their mouths amongst its soft pink bubbles.

Together, they tasted it.

Again and again.

And it was dark and starless when they wandered home.

*

Every day they clambered up the Black Hill and came to the clearing, and there they kissed the thing, together, every single day.

They smiled wet smiles and bent to kiss and learned new tricks and shared them, laughing.

Together they learned what the thing liked.

And they were very happy.

They were friends.

It lasted three weeks.

*

Connor lay awake.

The storm knocked branches against the window, sent stems of lightning strobing across the ceiling and as the room shake with thunder, he ran his tongue against the roof of his mouth, against the backs of his teeth.

Tasting them—

Bitter.

Sour.

He had made it purr louder than Barry ever could.

Every day it came to him first, running under his fingers, nuzzling him. Eating eggs from his palm.

But why wouldn't it talk to him?

Why, after all these weeks, could he still not hear it?

Why did it only talk to Barry?

What did they share when they were together?

In dark his tongue ran under his teeth.

What did they share?

The bitter taste of it...

He had to know.

*

Upwards then, through the slanting storm, through writhing trees and pummelling bushes, upwards for an hour in darkness split by lightning, with rain and wind making Connor a gaunt and ragged thing.

Climbing the black hill.

In the clearing, lit by a sizzling flash of electric light he found him—Barry— mucky on hands and knees, kissing the thing.

Like a piglet, suckling.

Barry looked up, face pebbelled with soft pink orbs, with eyes like points of mercury, deep and hollow in his head.

As Connor charges towards him, he hears him shriek— "We didn't plan it—" Blonde hair plastered to his forehead, his mouth a fleshwound black, Barry screams— "The lightning was scaring it!"

Roaring, Connor took the little boy's clothes in lurching handfuls and pulled him across the clearing, opened trousers bunching around his knees—leaves in the little boy's mouth and hair, in hands trying to protect his face.

Lightning flashed—revealed the tube-thing dancing in stammering steps—

With one bunched fist Connor burst the blonde boy's lips— "Liar! Want it all to yourself!"

Teeth and blood and leaves in pulp, and words, bubbling desperately through them— "Just telling me stories! Like Da used to!"

It danced in the clearing, rain-glistened.

Straddling his shoulders, Connor grabbed Barry by clots of hair— "I'll kill you!"—and smashed his face into the dirt—"Kiiill you!"

"You have it," gasped Barry, dirt-blinded, "Just let me watch!"

And Connor rose to kick the screaming piglet—with every kick something deep in porkflesh cracked— Fingers, ribs, collarbone—

With every kick he screamed:

"It should want me!"

"Only me!"

"I'm the better one!"

In rain and lit by lightning the thing— Purring. Dancing. Rolling pink orbs around its depths...

And Connor heard it—

He heard it!

STAMP ON HIS THROAT, CONNOR.

STAMP ON HIS THROAT.

I LOVE YOU NOW.

FOREVER.

Connor brought his foot down.