Cows by Matthew Stokoe

the first screech of steel across enamel. It made it easier for Steven to finish his work.
    When she came to, he stripped off his trousers and pants and looked down at her for one last moment—this mother who had never been a mother. She bubbled thickly up at him but he couldn’t work out what she was trying to say.
    He stuffed her nose with wadded toilet paper, then backed up to her until her wedged-open mouth was pressed between the cheeks of his ass, tight around his hole. He used a roll of industrial adhesive tape to bind her there, wrapping it round and round, over his abdomen and behind her head. The seal was airtight and he could feel her shake as she fought for breath she was never going to get.
    The shit was packed in his guts—twenty-five years of terror and loneliness, of brutality and an endless rain of hate. He breathed in deeply, tightened the muscles of his stomach, and shot every ounce of it in a thick pole down her throat. The Hagbeast thumped up and down, vibrating in a mad death dance as the shit blocked her from mouth to belly. Steven had to reach around and hold on to her head until she went limp.
    He dragged his clothes back on, sat at the breakfast table and looked at her. It was done. The obstacle was removed. He would bring Lucy down and there would be a home here for him at last. And if Lucy and he could not be like others they would at least approximate the happiness others had. Lucy would watch TV with him and learn how to live. They would scale down and copy what they saw, and they would call it contentment.
    Although he was staring straight at her, each minute that passed made the Hagbeast seem less real. It was as though she were fading back into time—almost as if killing had expunged the memory of her mistreatment … But no, she was here now and she had been there through all those years. She had made him what he was, he would not forget that.
    And he would not forget the pride that coursed through him as he sat there. He had done what he thought he could never do—he had destroyed the source of his misery. And he had done it powerfully and like a man.
    He left the Hagbeast where she was and went to get Lucy. They spent the rest of the day moving her things into the flat.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

    E vening. They were drinking coffee in the kitchen. Lucy had her eyes on the body. “Will you let me have her, Steven? Something that ugly must have stones in her. Can I look inside? It can be a present to mark the start of our life together. Let me open her up.”
    Steven sighed. This weirdness of Lucy’s unsettled him, it did not fit with his picture of how things should be. In his dreams he’d seen an instant normalizing of behavior when they began living together. It was clear now that things were going to take a little longer.
    “Okay, but she goes tonight.”
    Lucy kissed him and unzipped her wallet of scalpels. He left her to it and headed for the bedroom, picking up poor Dog’s body on the way, holding it close. He needed to sleep for a while.
    When he woke at two a.m. he was giggling. For a long moment he was inside the TV, running across green fields of crops to a white sunlit house with animals playing all around where Mom was waiting to hug him to her big soft chest and say, Gosh, I love you so much, Johnny, I could eat you right up, you’re so scrumptious.
    Then he was back in the room, the room that would have to be changed so much. The TV was on and everything it showed looked possible.
    Out into the hall. Into the flat. Into HIS flat now. The walls glowing with pleasure to see him how they always wanted—lord of the place, uncontested and safe. And he did feel safe. He was certain of everything. In here, with the Hagbeast gone, his dreams of love and comfort would harden into reality around Lucy and himself, undisturbed by the currents that tore at the world outside.
    He knew what he would find in the kitchen and it was all right. It was part of a necessary transition.
    Lucy