I wrote my own explanation, included in this piece that was part of novel but which has subsequently been dropped in the editing process. *boohoo* *sob*
It felt like ball bearings in his bowels,
an uncomfortable weight of doom and dread and the sense that he had done
something wrong although he wasn’t sure what.
He picked up a spoon, examined it and set it back on the table. He couldn’t pinpoint what he was afraid
of. It was an unnamed thing fopping
about his in stomach and turning him off his cornflakes.
‘It’s too late,’ said a voice, like the
voice of the boy from the radio, ‘there’s nothing you can do.’
He looked at Mammy. Daddy winked at him as he ate his cereal
noisily, each mouthful crunching like he was walking on gravel spread across a
grave. He slobbered in the milky spoons
and the surplus dribbled down from his mouth back to the bowl.
She sipped tea, sucking back saliva not
wanting to scald the roof of her mouth with it. She nibbled the corners of her
toast. Her not eating was an equal irritant to his robust pigginess, she
masticated slowly swallowing in ten minute mouthfuls.
He wanted to get back to his room, to the
radio, to the static, restful and soothing as a lullaby, to the boy and his
voice which broke like a beacon through the fog of his mind. The boy understood him.
Daddy cracked an eggshell with the lip of
his spoon setting Kai’s teeth on edge.
He was queasy as Daddy slurped the soft jellied insides of egg from his spoon. Eyeballs, the inside of Kai’s cheek had
ridges. Bite marks on the soft part and
his jaw was sore from the grinding of his teeth in the night. He caught sight of his reflection in the
mirror of the coat stand in the hall and rose abruptly to slam the hall door
shut.
Mammy and Daddy looked at him, Daddy no
doubt sneering but he couldn’t see him, he was looking down at the table again.
It wasn’t his appearance he was afraid of,
it was the space. A lie of 3-dimensions
in something that was flat, the deception of everything appearing to be the
same in the glass only to discover when you examined it closely that was
totally different, because it was reversed.
He had a strange notion, one that he couldn’t quite shake, that the
place in the mirror only mimicked the room it reflected for the part of it that
could be seen. That there were other
things there too, hidden at the periphery of sight, unknown things and his
reflection wasn’t safe. They were
waiting to find him when he strayed in the glass. He was avoiding mirrors.
And he didn’t trust doors, not open ones
and especially not the wardrobe ones. They had to be shut, closed
completely. It was important when he was
trying to sleep, that the things in the dark spaces behind the doors could not come
out. Even if the wardrobe was empty when he looked inside who knew where it
might lead to when it was shut, some unknown place down a black corridor of
mystery. The world was a dangerous
place.
Mammy was looking at him. He looked up and tried to smile but he wasn’t
able.
‘She knows,’ said the voice.
She doesn’t know, thought Kai, she doesn’t
know anything.
‘She knows about Theresa,’ the voice said,
‘and she lets it happen.’
Kai wasn’t sure what to think.
‘She knows about you,’ said the voice.
She couldn’t, thought Kai, there is nothing
to know. But he picked at the skin
around his thumb nail growing less sure.
She was talking to him. About the chickens. He focused really hard on understanding,
they were laying more now spring was here and the weather had improved. Her and Daddy were away for the day.
‘…can you collect the eggs?’ she asked ‘I
don’t want the hens getting broody!’
He grunted.
His nostrils flared. Suddenly
brimming with anger and disgust, he didn’t want to go near the squawking pests
who shit their own beds and cannibalised their eggs given half a chance.
‘We’ll be back late,’ she said, ‘we’ll
probably grab a bite to eat on the way home.’
She was looking at Daddy, her features arranged in an imitation of
happiness, a faded carbon of joy.
Daddy looked up and leered at them, the
yellow drip of egg yolk on the front of his shirt matching the nicotine stains
on his teeth.
He nodded.
‘I suppose they don’t care what you have
for dinner,’ said the voice ‘I suppose they don’t care if you want to go too.’
‘It’s a lovely day outside’ said Mammy ‘the
daffodils are up early this year.’
He grunted again. She must be mad. Outside the window was grey and dull and the
flower beds were overrun with weeds choking all the daffodil bulbs.
‘You should go for a walk for yourself,’
she said, ‘get some fresh air.’
‘Yeah,’ he said and nodded, but he left the
table and went straight back to bed. Fully
clothed he faced the wall.
He lay and he listened and he fiddled with
the bandwidth enjoying the repose of the static, waiting for the voice to come
clear. He heard his parents leave, he
watched the shadows move across the bedroom.
‘We’re going,’ she shouted up the stairs
but he didn’t stir.
He must have fallen asleep, he could hear
voices.
‘Help us Kai,’ they said, ‘help us Kai, help
us,’ they squealed.
‘Kai, Kai, Kai,’ like a mantra squeaky and
high pitched, his name transmitted at sonar frequency.
He heard them outside all the way up to his
room where he was lying on the bed.
‘Ick, ick, ick, Kai, Kai, Kai,’ and a scratchy
noise, like nails scrambling against a hard surface.
He rolled over and got up from the
bed. Then he was in the yard though he
had no memory of walking down the stairs and away from the house. They knew his name and they would not stop
saying it.
‘Kai, Kai, Kai,’ like an agony scraping
over his soul.
‘Kai, Kai, Kai,’ they screeched, ‘help us
Kai, save us.’ Their voices grew louder, there was a sound of tapping and of
scratching.
He was in the chicken coop before he
realised it was them, the unborn chickens squawking, chirping from the shells. They were trapped, locked-in, desperate to
get out.
He
pictured them inside, watery with transparent skin, featherless and slippery,
their black pupil eyes swimming in membrane and goop. The claws and beaks that tapping and scraped
were the only parts that wouldn’t run through his fingers. He didn’t know what to do. If he cracked the eggs for them they would
die. He stood in the hen house arms raised
in surrender.
‘I can’t help you,’ he shouted at them, ‘I
don’t know what to do.’
‘You’re not ready to be born,’ he said.
‘Kai, Kai, Kai,’ they said, ‘help us Kai,
it hurts, it hurts in here it hurts,’ a chorus sweeping over him.
‘It’s hurts us Kai,’ they said, ‘help,
help, help, we’re stuck.’
And he felt it, their pain at being trapped
in the shells, the cramping and the desperation to escape. He was wild with the want to help them, to
save them and to make them stop saying his name.
The chicken coop was dark, he switched the
light on and he searched for the eggs in the straw of the nesting boxes and for
the eggs that had been laid elsewhere too.
Guided by voices he found them one-by-one.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ said Kai, ‘I have
you, I have you now.’
Their pleading mounted a crescendo; he
could not stand it any longer the unborn chicken voices.
‘Do it Kai, do it,’ they said, ‘end it.’
He tugged his hair. Then he caught an egg and threw it. A swift volley against the wall and it
smashed with a thunk. The egg oozed
downwards but he felt a relief as the chicken’s soul escaped its prison.
‘Me, me, me, me,’ chirped the other shelled
foetuses.
He grabbed and shattered another and
another against the floor. The fourth
egg didn’t splatter, he had to stomp on it with his foot before he felt the
release.
Fast and hard, he annihilated the remaining
eggs in an ecstasy of splintering and goop.
The voices quietened to silence.
He heaved with relief. The
chickens stared at him before they shook and ruffled their feathers and slowly,
slowly one-by-one lapped up their children.
The relief seeped and away and all that was left was horror, he looked
around him and the shed was destroyed.
He awoke back in his bed as the car pulled
into the farm, its front lights flashing across his bedroom wall.
It was a few more minutes before the angry
reverb of the steps on the stairs warned him.
That Daddy was coming for him, he swallowed, beneath the covers cowering
and afraid. The door swung open and
Daddy fell through it, afterwards Kai remembered the smell of drink on his
breath. Kai felt a kick in his back.
