Ruby and the Stone Age Diet Page 7

We wash our bodies but the sheet seems beyond help, so after a few days we throw it out.

  Fucking with Cis is wonderful fun.

  ‘Did you like it?’ asks Ruby.

  ‘I certainly did. It sounded terrific. No wonder I miss her.’

  Our toilet is blocked because of all the food Ruby has emptied down it.

  We discover that neither of us has ever cleaned a toilet. We are not keen to start now. Ruby suggests pouring bottles of bleach into the bowl and it so happens that we have lots of spare bleach because I had to buy six bottles to get a free booklet on looking after house plants.

  After a day or so the toilet is clear again and Ruby promises to throw our food only in the bin in future.

  Lovers never return. Stories about people who go out and win back their lovers are all lies.

  Cynthia successfully makes love, and feels less lonely

  Back in London Cynthia wastes no time in trying out the necklace. She disguises herself as a postman in case the werewolf detectives are still watching the old vicarage, and sneaks in to see Paris.

  He is delighted to see her.

  Cynthia gives him the necklace. They fuck happily all night.

  He is not a very good lover but Cynthia shows him how to be a better one. All werewolves are wonderful lovers.

  When he falls asleep, late on into the morning, Cynthia lies contentedly beside him. Lonely no more, she thinks, and it is a very happy thought.

  Ruby and I move house.

  We grind through the process of sorting out our benefit claims, visiting the Unemployment Office and the Social Security Office. Sitting waiting to be called I worry that some clerk has already shouted out my name and I’ve missed my appointment, even though I know that I haven’t.

  Looking round vacantly at all the noisy and quiet people sitting there, I wonder what it is that they all do. I am eager to get home in case my potted plant has flowered.

  Our spaceship crashes on a sparsely populated world killing all the crew except me and the robot.

  Outside the world is made up of bleak and empty plains split up by a few canyons where small groups of humanoids cluster amongst black vegetation, eking out their existence under a feeble blue sun.

  The spaceship is beyond repair. I take the robot and go to the nearest community, looking for help.

  At the edge of the canyon I am stopped by a force field. Scientifically primitive, the inhabitants have developed powerful mental abilities.

  ‘Go away,’ says an elder.

  ‘Where?’ I say.

  ‘Anywhere but here.’

  I trudge on across the plain. The robot is able to synthesise a little food from the rubble but, insufficiently powered by the blue sun, the food it provides is thin and unsatisfying.

  On the edge of the next canyon the same thing happens. The inhabitants will not let me in.

  I walk on alone.

  ‘Make a radio,’ I instruct the robot. ‘So I can talk to Earth.’

  The robot shakes its head. It cannot make a radio. It can’t talk either.

  It is not much of a robot.

  The house that we move to is a flat on the Loughborough Estate and it is the only squat that I ever actually open myself. I borrow a jemmy and jemmy the door, ripping off the security cage the council has fixed over the door. With the jemmy it is easy and gives me a feeling of power. Ruby has obtained some fuses from a friend and she fits them into the fusebox.

  ‘A brief prayer,’ she says, lowering her head.

  ‘Great and kind Tilka, Guardian Goddess of Squatters everywhere, please make our electricity work.’

  Right away we have electricity. The whole thing has gone very smoothly, although being on the fourth floor and the lifts not working I have a lot of hard carrying to do.

  Days later me and the robot reach the next community. There the elders also refuse me entry. They are dressed in yellow robes, with long silver earrings studded with opals.

  ‘Please let me in. I have been walking for days and I’m coming down with fever.’

  They refuse. Sweating with an alien disease, I sit down on the edge of the canyon and watch them going about their business, although under the poor light of the blue star I can’t really make out what their business is.

  When I rest against some of the black vegetation it crumbles into ash and settles quickly on the windless plain.

  ‘OK robot,’ I say, resigning myself to a friendless existence. ‘It looks like I’ll have to teach you to play chess.’

  But it never really gets the hang of it and after a day or so I abandon the attempt and we just sit and watch the humanoids scuttling about, doing whatever it is they do.

  The robot synthesises some medicine to cure my fever. It is not completely useless.

  Around this time Ruby is involved in a fight with Domino and he hits her on the side of the ear and bruises her. When she arrives back in the flat she is trembling with fury and she has a cut on her foot from storming across the concrete outside. I am outraged but Ruby doesn’t want to do anything about it, just not see him again. When any of her friends say that Domino deserves some violence himself, she brushes it off as an irrelevance.

  She spends days writing in her room, and paints a little. Ruby is a good artist but generally doesn’t bother doing anything when things are going well with Domino.

  Because it seems like we might starve to death, I think maybe I should find a job. Ruby, busy writing, agrees to phone up the agency for me.

  ‘How do thirteen-hour nightshifts in a private mailing warehouse sound to you?’ she calls, covering the mouthpiece of the phone.

  ‘No, I don’t want it.’

  ‘Fine,’ says Ruby down the phone. ‘What’s the address?’

  Cynthia is happy living with Paris

  Cynthia and Paris have a wonderful time. She lives in his room and he does all the shopping. This way the werewolf detectives will not find her.

  Except when Paris is out shopping, they fuck all the time. Werewolves can have wonderful orgasms, and so can their lovers. And she never has any desire to eat him, apart from a few small bites here and there.

  Later in the day Ruby helps me make some sandwiches. I am too gloomy about the prospect of a thirteen-hour nightshift to put much energy into sandwich-making.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s well paid and you only have to do it for a few weeks.’

  ‘But thirteen hours? At night?’

  ‘It’s only four shifts a week. Anyway, it will take your mind off Cis.’

  ‘I will not have enough time left to look after our cactuses.’

  ‘Two cactuses are called cacti. And you’ll have plenty of time left. I think your one is starting to grow a flower bud.’

  Waiting for the bus to take me to my new job I am harassed by werewolves. They are not sure whether to eat me or not because they have already had a few good meals today but they think they might anyway.

  Izzy appears in the distance.

  ‘That’s my friend Izzy,’ I say to the werewolves. ‘She is a champion weightlifter. She has immense muscles. If you give me any trouble she will beat you to death.’

  The werewolves run away.

  ‘Hi, where are you going?’ says Izzy.

  ‘I’m going to a new job doing nightshifts.’

  ‘I’m going to the gym,’ says Izzy. ‘Look at my forearm development. Pretty good eh?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She is deluding herself. Her forearms just look the same to me. It is lucky the werewolves didn’t look very closely.

  Working at the mailing firm is like a punishment from God. The workplace is a draughty warehouse near Waterloo, and outside there is nothing but other warehouses with no one around so it seems that I am working alone in a desolate city, although only a few streets away there are busy shops and restaurants.

  At the start of my shift I have to stand in a big wooden frame with pigeon holes everywhere. I collect a pallet of mail from round the corner, then sort it out into all the c
ountries it has to go to.

  It is all business mail. The businesses save money sending it through the mailing firm instead of the Post Office and the mailing firm makes a profit large enough for the owner to arrive in a Rolls-Royce, though I never understand exactly where this profit comes from.

  Each job of sorting can take hours and the foreman is keen for the work to be done quickly because if it is not then he will suffer for it.

  There is an hour for a meal and two fifteen-minute tea breaks, which makes eleven and a half hours’ work.

  At my meal break I think about Izzy. She doesn’t want to have her baby. When I asked her if this was because she was getting on so badly with Dean she seemed slightly annoyed and said no, that had nothing to do with it, she just doesn’t want a baby.

  After many hours sorting it is time to load the truck. When the truck pulls up to the goods entrance and opens its back door it seems as big as a football stadium.

  The mailbags are so heavy I can only just lift one to shoulder height, but loading the truck means carrying hundreds of them up a shaky ramp and then piling them up as far as I can reach above my head.

  I am on ‘E’ shift. The other four workers are stronger than me. They sweat but they can cope. Towards the end of loading the truck I can hardly lift a mailbag above my knees.

  Back home Ruby is writing a letter to her genitals and arranging the flowers I brought in to brighten up our new flat. Cis has forgotten all about me and is having fun with a string of devoted boyfriends.

  It is four in the morning, my muscles are shaking and the forklift is bringing up another huge metal cage of sacks to be loaded.

  ‘Mind your feet.’

  The cage bangs down.

  Here’s a gentle ballad for all you lovers out there, croons the DJ from the radio on the wall. I pick up another sack and struggle into the truck, embarrassed that I am weaker than everyone else.

  I feel ill. I want to phone up Cis and ask her to pick me up in her mother’s car. If Cis did that all the other workers would be impressed by her beauty and would not mind so much that I am weaker than them.

  She would take me home in her car. Then she would talk and talk like she liked to do, and we could cook some terrible food.

  I can see her in front of me. Here, Cis, have some business mail.

  Cynthia learns that life is still full of problems

  Cynthia prowls happily around in the backyard. Paris is away buying tea bags and a new plectrum for her guitar.

  She has not eaten a human for weeks. Contented with her life, she is prepared to make do with vegetables.

  Everyone in the house is a vegetarian.

  Paris is away for a very long time. When he arrives home Cynthia throws herself into his arms and kisses him passionately, but Paris holds back slightly. She senses this immediately. A werewolf can always sense when someone is holding back, especially while kissing.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Paris says he has met someone else.

  ‘Do you love her more than me?’

  Paris isn’t sure.

  There is a splintering crash. Cynthia thinks for a second that it is her heart breaking, but it is in fact eighteen werewolf detectives flooding in through the windows.

  Ruby has many friends but she usually only sees them when her and Domino are not speaking. When they are together she mainly just sees him. I find this hard to understand because all of her friends are nicer than Domino. Everyone else in the world is nicer than Domino.

  I practise my new song but I can’t get it right so I go and make some tea for Ruby and she tells me about the contact article.

  ‘But why a contact article?’

  She looks at me patiently.

  ‘I explained it all already. What’s wrong with your memory these days?’

  I shrug. I don’t know. It seems to have disappeared.

  ‘You remember that guy who used to live next to you in the Army Careers Office? The one whose door you ripped to shreds the night you arrived home with Anastasia?’

  ‘The one who used to overdose all the time and lie around shivering? Of course I remember him, I could never get a bowl of cornflakes in the morning without stumbling all over him. Isn’t he dead by now?’

  ‘No, he is the editor of Triple X Adult Fantasy Magazine. And he told me he would pay us good for articles about meeting lots of bizarre contact people and fucking them. Or not fucking them, depending on what they want.’

  ‘What else would they want?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Maybe they might want to piss on us and stuff like that.’

  I look at Ruby.

  ‘Do we really have to let strangers piss on us to earn some money?’

  ‘Well, maybe not. I figure maybe we could make some of it up. But anyway, we’ll answer some ads and post a few ourselves and see what kind of replies we get.’

  ‘Can I put an advert in for Cis?’

  ‘No.’

  I think maybe I will anyway. She might be lonely. She might be desperate to start going out with me again but too shy to ask, frightened that I will not want anything to do with her.

  ‘Go and steal some more magazines after you’ve helped me practise with my diaphragm. And see if you can find some nice flowers, these ones are dead.’

  Walking round to the shops I can’t find the flower stall but I do meet Helena, benevolent Goddess of Electric Guitarists. She is resplendent and beautiful in a rubycoloured dress.

  I pay her proper respect, then I ask her if she could maybe help me with the chord changes in my new song.

  ‘I’ll try,’ she says. ‘But I am finding it difficult to concentrate. My girlfriend has left me.’

  ‘You too?’

  ‘I’m afraid so. This morning she kicked down my door and told me she never wanted to see me again. Take these daffodils for your flatmate. I don’t need them anymore.’

  I buy a romantic fiction magazine and steal a sex magazine and take them back to Ruby. I feel sorry about Helena losing her girlfriend. Obviously it is a universal problem.

  Ruby is pleased with the daffodils. I put most of them in the living room but I save two for my room, where I put them next to the cacti. ‘Look at these nice flowers. Why don’t you grow some nice flowers too?’

  It is now May. Although it is pouring rain outside we are well into spring and I am sure it must be the flowering season for cacti.

  ‘Look at that tree,’ says Ruby, pointing out the window. ‘It is covered with lilac buds. Just like my dress. What do you think it is like being a tree?’

  ‘I don’t know. Peaceful, I suppose. But you would get wet all the time.’

  Next day Ruby says she will take me for a day out. I ask her if I have to bring a bucket and spade but she says no, we’re going to the British Museum.

  At first I am not enthusiastic, but when we arrive I start to enjoy myself. Ruby holds my hand and we walk round roomfuls of exhibits: ancient Egyptian mummies, Greek armour, Persian carpets, all sorts of things. Groups of schoolchildren hurry about them from this glass case to that and serious tourists look at their guidebooks.

  Some of the children point at Ruby’s bare feet and she smiles at them before their teachers drag them off to look at more exhibits. The teachers are looking after large groups of children, but they do not seem to be harassed by it. I suppose they are specially trained.

  After a while Ruby hunts out the information desk.

  ‘Can we get a cup of tea anywhere?’ she asks. ‘And where is the armour that Hector stripped from the body of Patroclus at the siege of Troy?’

  ‘The restaurant is at the far end of the ground floor,’ the assistant tells us, pointing the way. ‘And Patroclus’s armour is in the room immediately above.’

  ‘Thank you,’ says Ruby.

  We have to queue a long time for our tea but it comes in a good silver pot. Ruby tells me the story of Hector and Patroclus at the siege of Troy and right after we go to look at the armour. It is still stained with ancie
nt blood.

  Next we look at huge carved lions that used to guard the gates of Babylon and in the ancient Syrian jewellery section we spend a long time staring at the earrings and deciding which ones we like best and which ones we’d like to wear if we could take them away.

  When the museum shuts we buy a drink in the pub along the road. Ruby is happy, though I expect she wishes Domino was here.

  ‘Who is the guardian spirit of museums?’

  Ruby doesn’t know. ‘But whoever it is is doing a good job.’

  It was a good visit. If Cis was still talking to me I’d ask if she wanted to come here and if she did she would like it a lot. She’d like to be at the seaside too, with a bucket and spade.

  ‘If I’m stuck for some conversation with these contact people I can tell them all about the museum,’ I say to Ruby, being practical.

  Cynthia fights ferociously to save her life and finds herself in the sewers with rats

  Cynthia is involved in a terrible battle with the werewolf detectives. Despite being fairly small, she is in fact one of the strongest, most ferocious werewolves ever to walk the midnight streets.

  While Paris and the rest of the inhabitants flee, Cynthia plunges into her assailants’ midst where it is difficult for them to bring their silver-bullet-filled machine-guns to bear on her.

  Jaws crunching with rage, Cynthia sends several of her attackers to the werewolf afterworld before finally her legs are riddled with bullets and she has only strength left to plunge out through a window. She escapes on a motorbike.

  Round the first corner she realises she no longer knows how to ride a motorbike. The effects of eating the motorbike messenger have worn off. The motorbike skids under a bus and Cynthia’s ribs cave in under the impact.

  Fortunately she is very resilient. It takes more than bulletriddled legs and broken ribs to stop a ferocious young werewolf, particularly one that grew up strong on a lonely croft with porridge for breakfast every morning.

  While the detectives pour out of the warehouse, Cynthia stumbles down a manhole into the sewers and paddles her way to freedom.

  Rats flood out of every opening in the sewers, attracted by the blood that pours from her wounds, but Cynthia savagely fights them off and carries on swimming, blinded by blood, crazed with passion, and fearfully claustrophobic in the underground maze.