Come Home
To be weightless again.
The lightness is eviscerating. Freer than flight. I teeter on the edge of a perfect void. And wonder, is this what I’ve always yearned for? To be nothing, and yet not.
But this is nonsense. Nonsense. I can feel the threads of thought unspool from my grasp, much longer and I will unravel completely. Because what am I without a body? Just echoes.
But then there is his voice, emerging from the void as if he’s been here all along, waiting.
‘Kit.’ To hear him is like the warmth of sun in winter. ‘All OK? I’m about to patch you in.’
At the patter of fingertips, sensation flourishes. I am reborn.
Even Sperlman’s is a kind of blessing: in pain is clarity and recognition, a self long forgotten. The remembrance sweet enough to choke—
This is what it is to be myself. This me. Not that. But this. How else can I say it? Me. And not. I, fox. I’d laugh if I could.
Smell is the loudest. A firecracker so bright it blinds. But, gradually, it subsides into definition. This and that, distinct scents, just themselves, until names step forward to claim them: sweat and mud, the smell of human beneath almost imperceptible.
Her face – my face – lies ahead of me, barely recognisable. A huge landscape of flesh, the slightly parted mouth a fault line. Her colouring is pasty yellow, though that’s likely just because foxes can’t perceive red.
I lick a streak of mud from her cheek and find the oils of the skin sour. But where is this taste? In there, or out here? Neither?
My back is crushed by her arms. I rise and fall with the movement of her chest. I have to scrabble at her shoulders to pull myself loose.
‘Wait! Let me.’
Buckley’s voice comes from everywhere, inside and without at once, so it’s only as the pressure lifts that I realise he’s beside the pallet, unpeeling her grip.
I jump to the floor. His feet are almost beast-like, the large toes curl within frayed socks.
‘I’ll open the window,’ he says and the feet bound skyward, one then the other, ground shuddering as they land. With the creak comes fresh air and the intoxicating jumble of its smellscape.
I peer up the length of his legs, to the pale face far above. When those lips move, the voice is birthed inside my head.
‘Be careful.’
Outside is car fumes and dog shit; the sticky grit of spent bubblegum, chemical mint mixed with the leather memory of past feet.
Electricity cackles overhead. An ocean sigh of foliage hides the skitter and crawl of small creatures. Someone, somewhere, is shouting.
The world is singing. It never truly stopped, I just lost the ears.
I patter along the pavement, sinking into every sensation. The delicious fetor of a black bag; the ripeness of a puddle, its taste in tarmac tang. The thrum of a fly dives from my paw and vanishes into sound.
Smelling the old scent of a dog fox, I sprint over the rubber reek of road, to the perfume of cut grass. Urine is flaked up a stem – a mouse, here not so long ago. But of Tomoko? Nothing.
She’s not out by the nearest industrial dustbins I find, though the rot set my stomach grumbling from down the street. Nor is she in the quiet back gardens. I vault fence after fence, only pausing long enough to sniff.
She’s not even by the rabbit hutch, though their scent must be a temptation for every fox within a mile. I press my nose against the cruel wire and listen to their quivering. Tomoko was still learning to hunt when we were last foxes together, but she must be adept by now.
I leave the hot smell of their blood and pace the pavement with its flat-lined concrete.
The moon is opened from its wink into a watchful eye. I return its stare, chill tickling through my fur. My empty stomach pulses in time with my heart.
A woodlouse clambers up from a fissure in the paving slab, its antennae flex thoughtfully. As I study it, my fur starts to prickle and I flatten myself to the ground.
Because, of course, she’s been watching all this time. Her musk is so overwhelming I don’t understand how I missed it.
She steps from the hedge, coat mottled with the brown of a cub. Her ears are perked, head tilted, a question that reaches right to the heart of things, yet I never know the answer.
There’s a wicked glint in her eyes. A meaningful blink and she runs.
Tarmac flashes by in a slick river, paws so fast I’m almost taking flight.
I was a bird once. Flew over cities, saw the secret patterns of land.
Our steps ring sharp between the houses, the night alive and shouting.
I was an elephant once, earth alive with sound.
We dodge under monolithic cars, their smog of petrol.
I was a whale once. One note in the ocean’s song.
Tomoko twists through darkness and street light, more fire than flesh.
I was a tiger once. Forest burning bright.
The strain of lungs. Pain and pleasure.
I was a spider once. Impulse. Desire.
Racing through the dark, together.
Everything I’ve been, everything I could be. Even if it’s hurting me, can I really give all that up?
Tomoko dives through a hedge and I follow. Her fleet shadow melds in and out of the night. But at last she stops and I rush to meet her.
I was a fox once.
I can hardly see through the ache of my eyes, but that doesn’t matter – she’s here. I find her ear and chew, listening to her pant slow into contentment, join the mutter of the wind. Her ear has the texture of felt, paper, air.
I was human—
Once.
I keep chewing even when there’s nothing left, I don’t want to stop, can’t stop, to do so would be to admit . . .
But eventually my jaw slows of its own accord. Her scent still lingers, one last breath, exhaled into the dark. Then gone.
Silence. It crushes my lungs and tears into the softest parts of me. Because that’s all that’s left now – me.
I hide my muzzle beneath my paws, my heart huge inside my chest. Why can’t it just be still? Why can’t I disappear too?
Static builds at the edges of my hearing. I’m ready to let it take me, but the voice won’t stop.
‘Come back, Kit. Come home.’
‘Can’t.’
‘Of course you can.’
‘Not strong enough.’
‘Nonsense. You’re the strongest person I know.’
My paws are numb, but, somehow, they manage to support my weight. One step, then another. With each, I think this body will give beneath me – but it doesn’t.
The world hangs beyond, almost wraith-like, a memory before I’ve even left.
This is it.
But his voice pulls me onward, a thread reeling me home.
The light from our window is a beacon. I jump up and look back one last time. But what am I hoping to see? A glimpse can’t compensate for never again.
Buckley’s feet push themselves round as I land, mournful grey creatures, whiskers of thread along the seams.
I leap onto his knees and he startles but after a second the muscles beneath my paws relax. There’s a bedrock of bone beneath the give of flesh and I settle against his stomach. His large hands glide across my back.
I breathe in his balmy nebula, the smell of home, and let my thoughts unwind into the dark.
A smell wakes me. Melted tallow, stark cologne, the hint of leather. Human.
A white dome towers above, rising with the rasp of labouring lungs. I look up the mountain of belly to the pinched eyes. Mr Hughes.
The ground shifts beneath me and I tumble to the floor. Buckley is gabbling, Mr Hughes shouting, so loud it’s just noise.
I think to flee but Mr Hughes is blocking the doorway. I hide beneath the desk, breathing in dust and stale biscuit crumbs.
As Buckley’s legs move away, I whimper, but no one is interested in me right now. He’s placed himself between my Original Body and Mr Hughes.
I’m down here, I want to shout. This is me.
The polished points of Mr Hughes’s shoes turn towards me and I bristle. But he’s not coming for me – he’s going to shut down the projection.
I leap. Flesh gives beneath my teeth. The dryness of cloth moistens with the taste of iron. Then fingers bite into my neck and I’m flying. The wall slams into me.
Pain. Mosquito whine.
I blink.
Get up, Kit. Get up!
I waver from the floor. There’s yelling, the clatter of fingers on keys. I edge a paw forwards but pain snatches it from beneath me.
Come on!
I’m struggling upright again, when the feeling starts to drain; my inner sky clouding over.
Don’t leave me. Please, don’t leave.
But I can’t hear my whimper. Sound has already receded. My ears pop as if dropped into a vast chamber.
The paw before me lies obstinate to my will.
Move! Please . . .
But there’s nothing I can do. so I just peer at it with fondness. I’m glad it was me, if only for a while.
I see the collapse more than feel it. The room seems to shudder as my jaw bounces off the floor. Then sensation leaves me completely.