The Redemption Factory (4 page)

The workers had surrounded the massive blood tank, cheering him each time his head rose to the challenge. He didn’t know how deep the tank was, nor how wide, but it seemed endless. Yet, he believed he could accurately form a picture of how the tank had been apportioned for all the running blood oozing and streaming from the unwilling throats of cows and sheep. Only now did his brain kick in, telling him how he had hit the red carpet of a swimming pool full of animal blood, doing a massive belly-flap before quickly sinking like a stone, his body rapidly losing buoyancy.

The blood disorientated him, his direction, as did his sense of survival, which he would have had if he were drowning at sea, in beautiful salty water.

Each gasp of air released a mouthful of blood. He remembered the beautiful voice of Shank telling them to bring him up, he’s had enough. Then the hateful words of Geordie saying no, others have lasted longer, test him, test the bastard Idiot.

“Out, I said. Take him out –
now
,” commanded Shank, no longer tolerating Geordie’s defiance.

Hands quickly reached into the pool and retrieved the bloody body of Paul. He resembled something which has just crawled from the womb, all bloody and slimy, slithering and squirming on the floor, a dead thing somehow reactivated. When he coughed, great bubbles of orange and pink emerged from his throat gushing out his mouth and down his nostrils and slowly but surely he realised he was still alive – barely.

“You showed favouritism, Shank,” accused Geordie. “He still had ten seconds left.”

“Perhaps,” replied Shank, removing a pocket watch from his waistcoat before smiling. “Perhaps your watch is simply wrong? Eh, Geordie?”

Geordie glared at the motionless body at her feet on the unforgiving hardwood floor. She knew there were certain lines even she could not cross. But she also knew there were lines needing to be crossed. “He still hasn’t toasted our health, yet,” she said, smiling deviously. “Even you can’t deny us tradition, Shank.”

Shank though for a moment. “He’ll do it. I’ve no doubt whatsoever. Isn’t that right, Mister Goodman?”

Paul could hear the words falling in his direction, but he could not understand their meaning. Hands pulled him up and steadied him against the massive metal pool.

“Almost home, Mister Goodman,” said Shank staring directly into Paul’s eyes, like a trainer who had just witnessed his boxer take an unmerciful battering.

You’ve almost got the job, Paul
, said the voice of his mother in his head.
Show them what a man you are, show them good and proper,
she encouraged.
And don’t forget all that meat for free each Friday. We’ll show the whole street it. Steak and sausages and chops and
…

“Here you go, Idiot,” said Geordie’s voice, breaking his thoughts. She held a pint glass full of warm blood to Paul’s mouth. “Drink it down, deep to your stomach. Drink and the job is yours. Isn’t that right, Shank.”

Shank said nothing. There was nothing he could say. All were watching. All remembered their own bloody initiation in the pool of horror and pint of terror. There would be no exception.

You can do it, Son
, enthused his mother’s crackly voice.
One
great gulp and it’s all over. Think of it as a pint of coloured
Guinness.
You can do it
…

“Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it,” chanted the crowd who had now gathered, surrounding Paul in a circle. “Do it. Do it. Do it …” On and on they went, hypnotised by their own sound.

The smell in Paul’s nostrils made him think of OXO cubes. He loved OXO cubes, especially on winter nights. He knew he would never touch another one again as he brought the pint to his lips, dreading the stench, not wanting to look behind Geordie’s shoulders, knowing a tiny calf lay staggered and drained, strung up by its skull, its long legs dangling as a small pool of blood grew from it, the same blood resting on his lips, its taste of salty iron familiar from his past as a brawler.

“You can do it,” said a voice in his head. It sounded like Shank’s voice but it was probably his mother’s. “One great gulp for mankind …”

An urgency for completion filtered through Paul, as if tiny threads of his brain were becoming unstitched. In his mind, he was in an arid region, scorching heat piling down on him, sandstorms flaying his skin. He felt his tongue swell through parched and peeling lips. In was only a matter of time before he was dead, the sand covering his body.

When the oasis came into view, it was the most beautiful sight he had ever witnessed. He drank from its water, greedily, and believed it to be the greatest taste he had ever tasted, gulping it down, disregarding the strange lumps floating on top.

Thirst. Thirst. Thirst
…

“Good man, Goodman. Well done!” exclaimed Shank,
shaking his head in admiration. “Well bloody done, indeed, Mister Goodman!”

The crowd joined in, whistling and cheering, even those who had wanted him to fail, to die before their eyes, begrudgingly joined in the congratulations.

Paul said nothing. He didn’t trust himself. The pint of blood sat in his stomach like an angry fist.

Well done, Son
, said the voice of his mother.
You’ve done us proud. I’ll have a big mug of tea waiting for you when you get home. Wait ’til Maggie Mullan hears this. Her and her skinny pork chops on a Sunday. I don’t suppose you’ll be wanting a bit of bacon with your spuds …?

“Raymond? Take Mister Goodman to the shower and see that he gets some overalls to go home in. He starts Monday morning, six o’clock sharp. Is that sound, Mister Goodman?”

For the first time since entering this marvellous and terrifying place, Paul smiled.

“That … that is sound, Mister Shank. Very sound, indeed. Thank … thank you.”

Once outside the abattoir, Paul felt free. He inhaled the cold air with the same vigour he had used when he thought he was drowning in a sea of stinking blood mixed with sounds and vibrant sinister smells.

It was dark now with evening dominating the hazy distance, seemingly in all directions at once, squeezing out the last measure. Only the rough rising shapes of trees and rusted vehicles with their small properties of light and sound were sharp enough to make a clear image in his head, to help guide him home, not towards the moonlit fields that spread as far as the eye could see, but towards the dark and ominous
woods that towered behind the abattoir. The smell of dinners being prepared in far-off homes floated on the soft breeze, signalling the close of day.

The image of the mysterious Geordie, her legs shackled and imprisoned forever, surfaced again in his head. He knew she was watching him from a window but he didn’t look back, even though he wanted to. He wanted to see her face. Was it filled with defeat? Hatred? Indifference? He wanted to look back, but didn’t. He was just glad to be going home.

D
REAMS
,
TO
P
HILIP
Kennedy, serve a very specific purpose. They say dreams have no colour, but Philip Kennedy knows that to be untrue. His dreams are in red.

Sometimes the red is as placid as oil on a candle’s drip and is almost calming. Sometimes it beads his brow with sweat. But always, that horrible whispering, accusing voice:
Why?
Why me? Why why why …?

Through sheer force of will, he smashed the present nightmare’s iron grip, waking breathless in the raw-boned darkness, almost as if he were a dream, a ghost, a figment conjured out of need.

He’d had a headache for four days. It wasn’t his first – he had a history of migraines, but usually, by morning, the pain was gone. This was different. The headaches had left a residue of pain unlike anything he had tasted. He believed that the young man, who had visited the shop two days ago, inquiring about snooker cues, had sparked all this. Not forgetting, of course, Catherine’s treacherous, but clumsy sleight-of-hand …

Everything began spinning around him as the remnants of last night’s alcohol coursed through his veins. In his head, he heard the unmistakable sound of someone trying to ease a cork from a neck of a bottle. It was an enticing hum and the unnatural progression of his thoughts lead repeatedly back to this imagined sound until he could no longer tolerate its torturous call.

Rising, he poked the patches of darkness until he found the open cabinet and skilfully fiddled a slab of wood from its place, pulling it out before capturing the bottle of whiskey with its torn label and lying words. Frantically – but expertly – he mixed the stale water from the rusted jug with just the right amount of alcohol – not so much that you could smell it but more than enough to give it that little kick.
A little kick in the arse
…

Impatiently, he swished the diluted alcohol through his teeth, swallowing the amber liquid, repeating the exercise until
the taste returned to his tongue, burning it with intensity, wishing he could explore the bottle again and again, forever and a day, never ending its flow, admiring the simplicity of its power.

The throbbing slowly began to subside and he felt only numbness and depletion while walking to the window.
Air. Need some air
…

He wrestled the reluctant window open and poked his head outside its frame, as if preparing for the guillotine. Above him the sky was disturbing and grey. He could see bellies of clouds moving overhead and thought about rain. He thought about a beach …

In due course, he made his way downstairs to the shop, focusing his thoughts upon routine tasks, passing Cathleen’s bedroom, stopping at the toilet to relieve himself in the sick light of the dingy space.

The shop itself was carefully arranged in a dimly lit, fragile ecology of handmade cupboards and drawers. The displays before him presented shelves of silverware lounging on black velvet with plenty of separation between each item. Cathleen didn’t believe in crowding the more expensive goods in the shop.

Tools, manually and electrically driven, lined the far walls like trophies and weapons; do-it-yourself books poked from wooden crates. Once, they had belonged to the men from town; now they belonged to Cathleen, held by the power of ransom. She would never use any of the tools, of course, but that wasn’t the point. What she had, they didn’t. She always laughed at their feeble excuses, how they always said for a couple of days – a week at most. But the week would turn into
a month, and before long, the docket would have accumulated enough late-payment penalties to make payment unattainable.

Getting the goods from the bad …
Never borrow
, was her motto.
Be the one everyone owes. Foster suspicion. That’s the power. The true power. Taking the goods from the bad
. She loved that last saying. Thought it up one Sunday at church.
Take the goods from the bad, the scum, because that is all they are – will always be. Scum
.

Without exception, his preferred items were the collections of old books – some of them first printing editions: Nietzsche, Tolstoy and Kant shoulder to shoulder with Shakespeare, Socrates, Shaw and Joyce.

One of Kennedy’s favourite books,
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
, was beginning to look a bit ragged – a bit like its hero – its spine withered and tarnished. It was a first edition, and more care should have been granted it, but he couldn’t resist rereading it every chance he had, regardless of how many times he had read it.

Catherine had threatened to burn the book, along with all the others, but quickly recanted seeing the storm in his face.
Weather is always unpredictable, but especially the storm
…

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist
sat next to,
Don Quixote
, his favourite.

He loved the smell from the books, the musky smell of opium which never failed to bring back the lanced days of childhood memories; of a childhood he hated and feared, but would give everything he owned to be transported back to that time.

Kennedy walked out on to the street and pulled the rusted shudders up from the shop’s front, casting a feeble light into the entrance of the shop, revealing more items ‘rescued’ from
the hands of their owners: Sunday suits lined up like naked carcasses in the local abattoir for all to see – a million threads, a thousand buttons, a universe of heart-breaking stories captured and exposed, humiliating the one-time owners; an army of candlesticks and lamps granted no light, only a silvery coating of cobwebs falsely glimmering with life, each tagged with the sale price; women’s shoes surpassed men’s boots as did the wedding rings of dainty fingers; blocks upon blocks of bed linen accumulated from floor to ceiling, standing like giant pillars of cloth, all mixed in the melting pot of personal heirlooms, too numerous to calculate.

Unenthusiastically, he made his way back to the shop, towards the kitchen.

Dirty plates loitered in the sink, grease congealing. He decided to make some coffee before preparing breakfast for Cathleen, his sick wife.

The thought of entering her room, seeing her sitting atop the bed, her nylons knotted about her massive ankles, made him shudder. Occasionally, she would wink, just as he prepared to leave, a wink that said:
don’t forget my bedpan, darling. I had a terrible night last night. Must stop eating those prunes, even though I am quite partial to them
. All this, while spreading her enormous, unnaturally white legs wide across the bed in an unspoken declaration of territorial rights.

Cathleen had already survived two husbands, both of whom rested side by side at the local cemetery like bookends of death. Unfortunately for Kennedy, there would be little chance of husband four – or wife two.

It had been over two years since he had been in that bed, but Kennedy thanked God for small mercies. Over the years,
Cathleen had piled on the weight at an incredible rate, as if preparing for the
Guinness Book of Records
. Her one-time lovely face had been consumed then camouflaged with layer upon layer of candle-grease fat, until he barely recognised her as the woman he had first met.

In the kitchen, Kennedy found a bunch of bananas in a fruit bowl on the dining table. They were dull yellow, with large brown spots the size of thumbs. Tiny fruit flies hovered above them quietly, drifting back and forth above the shine of the table. Aimlessly, he sliced through a banana, dicing it before mixing it with her bran, the horribly disgusting bran she used to
clear her plumbing
.

With all of the darkness lifted, the light in the hallway seemed more intense, spotlighting his every movement as he entered her room without knocking. She didn’t like him not knocking. Good.

A faded illumination escaped from a neck of a tiny bedside lamp, competing against the bluish glow of the ever-present television screen flashing on Cathleen’s sagging, alabaster belly.
Flicker, flicker, flicker.
Her left leg was wrapped in plaster, a remnant from an accident two weeks ago.

The television murmured softly in the background, showing highlights from a food programme in some faraway, rain-drenched place.

Catherine’s turret-shaped eyes never left her husband’s movements. She was first to speak. “Didn’t sleep …”

a wink last night,
he finished in his head.

“… a wink last night,” she sighed.

“Have you been taking your sleeping pills?” he asked, not giving a damn.

“This pain is terrible. It seems to be getting sharper. My bedsores are …

…
becoming unbearable
.

“… becoming unbearable.” A moan escaped her large mouth. “This morning, I was depressed for no conceivable reason whatsoever. Imagine that. Why on earth would I be depressed?” The derision in her voice was sharp.

“The dosage. Doctor Moore should increase the dosage, for you,” replied Kennedy, instinctively.

Cathleen had been instructed to take insulin three times a day and to keep an eye on her blood sugar. Three of her toes had been amputated over the last six months and Moore had warned her, constantly, that her health would rapidly deteriorate if she didn’t watch what she consumed. But Cathleen had more interest in a slab of cake, a box of
Quality Street
, all washed down with a nice hot mug of chocolate, than she did for any annoying needles and vegetable diets.

“I keep asking God what I’ve done …”

…
for Him to place this terrible cross on my shoulders.

“… for Him to place this terrible cross on my shoulders.”

In his head, Philip pictured Cathleen nailed to a cross. The nails were covered in rust from the smelly sweat oozing from her. He was at her feet, in the garb of a Roman soldier, spear at the ready to finish the job. She was asking for water. He smiled before shoving the bedpan in her face, his mind playing out every delicious detail in slow motion.

Catherine sniffed suspiciously. “You’ve been drinking.”

“And you’ve been pissing,” retorted Kennedy his eyes flashing at the overflowing bedpan. “How you can smell alcohol over the stench of your own piss, is beyond me.”

“You’re a king bastard,” hissed Catherine. “You put me in this situation. Helpless, depending on you.”

Kennedy smirked. “You put yourself in that sickbed, not me – you and your nose.”

“Make sure you open up early today. It’s Friday,” replied Catherine, quickly ignoring the innuendo. “The bastards always have money on Friday. Don’t be soft on them, like you were with Biddy Black, last week.”

Biddy was the weekly housekeeper. Kennedy had allowed the unfortunate woman to regain possession of her dead husband’s wedding ring without the added interest, never realising he had been set up by Cathleen who had suspected him of going soft. Even though her sickness was slowly eating her ability, being stationery did not retard her power one iota.

What a fool he had been, never suspecting that bastard Biddy Black had been on Cathleen’s payroll. But he remained silent, keeping his expression neutral; knowing the flaw of most arguments is the inability to anticipate the rebuttal.

Placing the breakfast on a side table, he turned to leave the room, ignoring the dishes from last night.

“Maybe I should hire a food taster?” she said, her face a spider’s web of suspicion as she glanced at the greasy contents resting on the tray. “Perhaps it’s only my imagination, but there seems to be a bitter taste to the food you’ve been cooking me, lately.”

“Perhaps the bitterness isn’t in the food …”

“Perhaps you didn’t cause me to fall, either, almost breaking my neck?” Her wrinkles fell into angry ellipses framing the centre of her face.

Kennedy shook his head. “Not this nonsense, again? I
warned you about that loose carpet at the top of the stairs, months ago. Told you to be careful. Thank God your weight cushioned the fall …”

“Bastard,” she hissed.

“You shouldn’t talk about God like that. It’s disrespectful.”

“You think you’re so smart, don’t you? Think no one will believe that it was you who pushed me, tried to kill me?”

“Kill? Don’t be so dramatic. You were embarrassed by your fall. It was your weight and carelessness that caused it. A loose nail, an upturned corner of carpet. Everyone knows that,” Kennedy smiled. “You really must stop watching those old Agatha Christie movies. They’re feeding your imagination. Why on earth would I harm you?”

“You know damn well …”

“Do I? Tell me.”

“Stop playing games! You think I have something; something belonging to you …”

Kennedy’s face tightened, slightly. “Do you?”

Catherine looked away from his eyes. “No …”

“Good. That’s that sorted. Nothing to worry about, then? Now, eat your breakfast. I done your pancakes just the way you like them.”

Catherine shuddered slightly. “I’m not hungry.”

“Nonsense. We need you to get your strength back as quickly as possible. The shop is a disaster without you. Also, you’ll be able to help me search for an item I seem to have … misplaced. You know how annoying that can be, believing you’ve placed it someplace only to find it gone when you check. Maybe my old memory is no longer as reliable as it used to be? Anyway, that’s why I need you to help me search
for it, when you get better …” He removed a knife from the tray, and expertly sliced a pancake into four parts. “Open wide.”

Reluctantly, Catherine’s mouth opened partially. Kennedy squeezed a pancake patch in.