Testing

Music:

Cinnamon Horses from Wild God (2024)- Nick Cave

Content Warning:

Fetish/Sex references/language

Transcript

Testing

After the gym, Heather and Liam go to the supermarket. Within the same eleven square miles, there are five big supermarkets to choose from. For whatever reason, this time, they elect the big Asda. It is a mutual decision, arrived at without conflict. Heather and Liam are both thirty-one years old. Their birthdays fall within two months of each other.

            In their blue Tesla, Liam driving, they go round the roundabout and take the wrong exit. Instead of turning back, they continue onwards. Heather says make a U-turn, Liam says why bother. They go to the big Tesco’s instead of the big Asda. They park in the vast carpark which, by now, is densely populated with vehicles. It takes them nearly ten minutes to find an unoccupied space. Once they do, they get out of the car and take a trolley from one of the glass trolley shelters. Heather provides the pound coin. Liam pushes it into the slot and the trolley is liberated from the linked trolley-queue with a click.

            They enter the store, passing the security booth. The guard is a dwarf. He has on a blue suit. He occupies an office chair; his eyes lie, transfixed, upon the screen of his monitor.

They are in gym-appropriate clothes. Liam wears short-sleeved V-necked white and baggy black shorts. Heather’s figure is hugged in tight Lycra-like material, leggings on her lower half, a sports-bra above her open midriff. Liam has a gym fetish which he blames on internet pornography. For him, the gym is a pretence, a way of indulging his fetish. He doesn’t exercise very hard at the gym, he is not pursuing his own physical fitness with any kind of rigour and he eats too many of the wrong foods anyway. He is indulging the thrill of this gym wear-clad woman being his, of watching her squat and lunge and lift and jog. He enjoys her perspiration, he enjoys that she enjoys being looked at. Her clothing excites him; he thinks about going to the supermarket toilet to quickly masturbate, letting Heather do the shopping- after all, she is quite particular about what she wants in the house. He decides that he’d rather be with her, mutter things in her ear. Occasionally and with a pang of private gratification each time, he catches someone eyeing Heather’s arse. He feels shame about all of this. He tells himself, often, that these things do not make him a bad person. Heather, though her fiancé’s preferences and behaviours do sometimes make her feel insecure, has repeatedly told Liam that these things do not make him a bad person. But he feels unable to heed or believe anyone’s counsel and is always left feeling like a bad person all the same. Sometimes the shame is so intense that he feels like it is eating him up and making him disappear. 

At that moment, a boy in strange clothes passes by on a wooden scooter. The boy is sullenly cherub-faced, dressed in an archaic olive-green suit and stockings. White lace flowers showily just beneath his little larynx. He has on a tri-sided cap and black loafers. Liam notices the boy and gazes after him, intrigue misting his eyes. The scooter rolls slowly away with soundless spectral smoothness, bearing the boy somewhere. He looks like he is going somewhere, like he has a destination in mind. No-one seems to see him except Liam. Liam registers how unnoticed he is, this strange boy on a scooter, and wonders if he is some kind of hallucination or vision. The boy disappears round a corner. Liam turns back to Heather, feeling dependant on her for some kind of reassurance; reassurance that he is not dreaming, perhaps. But she is suddenly not there.         

            Heather thinks she might be pregnant. She has peeled off, to buy some “personal toiletries”, including pregnancy tests. When she returns, the trolley is filled with microwaveable rice and pasta packets, instant and pot noodles, cheap ready meals. And salami- as well a few other red, processed meats, all cut into industrially perfect discs. Heather suggests they buy onions, peppers, beef mince, tins of tomatoes, a bag of rice- ingredients that could be used to make something organic, something healthier, tastier. Liam shrugs, masking inner enthusiasm: her desire to eat healthily reawakens and reencourages his fetishistic thinking and turns him on, as does the box of pregnancy tests. It lies there, thoughtfully placed among all the vacuum-packed items he has tossed, automatically and unthinkingly, into the trolley.

            Liam wants to buy a huge multi-pack of crisps. Liam and Heather stand, alone together in the eerie aisle, dwarfed by the high, crowded avenues of crisps. That’s when, after a crackle, the half-inaudible announcement comes over the Tannoy:

            “Could I please have your attention, customers. A small boy called-” (the name was unintelligible) “-who was last seen riding his scooter, has gone missing. If you see a small, unaccompanied boy on a scooter could you please alert a member of staff promptly, or failing that, bring him to the entrance of the store where the security booth is located. Thank you.” 

            The voice sounds, bumbling and metaphysical, over their heads. Liam can’t quite tell whether the announcer is male or female. 

            “Did you see an unaccompanied boy on a scooter?” a voice asks him. Is it Heather’s? Her lips aren’t moving. 

            Liam has an abrupt and terrible feeling, a feeling he prefers to hide from Heather.

            “No,” he says, with forced levity.

            This feeling of guilt, of foreboding, of sickly worry, of inexplicable complicity in something hateful, stays with him. 

            Before paying, they go to the café for a coffee. Usually, Liam would try and dissuade Heather from what he sees as an unnecessary expense, but he is utterly silent and acquiescent this time. They sit.

            “Are you alright?” Heather says. “You seem…preoccupied.”

            Liam is unusually rattled. He cannot work out why he is feeling like this, where this feeling of obligation is coming from. His legs tremble, he cannot ignore the rate and insistence of his heartbeat. 

            Heather looks beautiful. Her spotless skin, her smile-marked cheeks, her slightly powdered-looking lips, her large, enquiring, sea-blue eyes., her mud-coloured hair which caresses her shoulders. Her shoulders gleam with the overhead light. Her beauty makes him desire her; desire commingles with anxiety. Her beauty is jarring because he has lost his hold on the calmness that would allow him to enjoy it, to be awed by it.      

            “I’m just…” Liam trails off and stands up. He decides to look for the missing child. He presumes the child is still missing. Surely there would have been an announcement if he had been recovered. He feels, powerfully, that this is a job for him.

            Liam leaves Heather in the café, with the trolley. He ambles, paying close attention to what he sees around him, noting, in each aisle, who is there. In the stationary section, he passes forests of pens, slabs of printing paper, hanging galleries of Sellotape spools, staplers. No children. In the clothing section he walks, disconsolately, up and down the rows of school trousers and school shirts, the hoard of untouched single-tone and striped socks, of white and black briefs, of vests. Sweatshirts and coats on hangers. He sees almost nobody. 

            He finds his way to the back of the store. There is the bakery, the butcher’s, the patisserie, the deli. In the space of wall between the deli and the free-from section, there is an open double door with a small glass screen and a Staff-only sign. The screen is tattooed in No entry symbols: two red discs each with a central bar of white. When no one who would care is looking, Liam opens this door and enters through it. The din of the main floor dwindles. He leaves the echoey cacophony behind him, venturing deeper into the narrow quiet. The passageways are constricting and tortuous. He senses that the boy has ridden his scooter down this way, that he has attempted to penetrate this maze. This place is perfect for scootering, for scootering unobstructed.

            The lighting darkens, this unstaffed staff-only area begins to feel more subterranean, more catacomb-like. Indeed, a gradient develops and the floors begin sloping downwards into the earth. There is no sign of the boy. While advancing, Liam thought, once or twice, that he heard boyish crying, sobbing. Now he hears nothing, he can’t even hear the sound of his own footsteps. He walks nervously on, treading tentatively and the building swallows him up, taking him gratefully into its thirty-year old bowels.

On the main floor, Heather is concerned. She scampers, with the full shopping trolley, from aisle to aisle, hoping that Liam will appear, hoping that she will find him standing in front of some shelf or other, tranced by goat’s cheese or a crate of starfruit. She grabs items, items which she neglected to put in the trolley before but now feels she needs: loo roll, baby corn, coriander, raisons, lube.  

            Before paying, she visits the security booth. Through the wide mouth of the shop entrance, people come and go at a constant rate, pushing empty or filled trolleys, carrying filled or empty baskets. The outside, its light and its breeze, softly teases her. It calls to her, makes an airy appeal to her.

            “Excuse me…” Heather says to the dwarf.

            “You alright, love?” the dwarf says, turning to face her.

            “Can you help me…my…” she is about to say friend. What should she say? Boyfriend, partner. She elects fiancé. She’s fairly sure that’s what he is. “My fiancé, Liam, has just disappeared. I’ve been going round searching for him for about half an hour. I think I’m pregnant with his child. Can you put an announcement out?”

            “Certainly,” the guard replies, giving her a strange look. He presses down on the console before him and speaks into a slim L-shaped microphone. The speaker-system doesn’t work for some reason. There is some brief fault which quickly resolves itself. He presses the button again and says: “Testing- testing…” which resounds through the entire building. Shoppers stop, look up, confusion or laughter on their faces.  

Heather can hear both the Tannoy announcement and the unamplified speaking voice. It’s a strange sonic effect:

            “Excuse me shoppers, may I have your attention please…” the dwarf recommences. (It is definitely the same voice as before, when the announcement was made about the missing child). “I’m looking for a Mr. Liam…Liam?…” he looks at Heather with questioning eyes.

            “Wright,” Heather interjects quickly. 

            “…a Mr. Liam Wright. Could Mr. Liam Wright please report to security at the front of the store immediately. Thank you…”

            Heather isn’t convinced that that announcement will work. To her mind, it isn’t enough. The announcer needs to appeal to the common decency that resides in most people, she thinks. She is, suddenly, utterly reliant upon the kindness of strangers.

            “I don’t think he’ll come on his own…” she says. “Can you ask the shoppers to escort him here- should they encounter him, I mean.”

            “Alright,” the dwarf says. He makes a further announcement: “Hello again. This is an announcement for all customers- a recently engaged man called Liam has gone missing…” the dwarf withdraws from the microphone. “How old? Any distinctive features?” he whispers to Heather, a little frantically.

            “He’s thirty-one…” she replies briskly. As for distinctive features, she can’t think of any. She can’t even remember what colour his eyes are. He isn’t short or tall, fat or thin. He has brown hair- that isn’t much help. For a moment, he seems quite nondescript. “He has a gym fetish,” she mutters at last.

            “A what, duck?” 

            “A gym fetish. He’s sexually obsessed with gym scenarios, gym outfits. He likes it when I get attention. Look! Doesn’t my arse look good?”

            She shows it to the dwarf.

            “Yes,” the dwarf says unenthusiastically. (He is gay). He continues, after a moment’s hesitation. “…erm…yes: if any customers come across a thirty-one year old man, called Liam, who has a gym-wear fetish, could you please escort Liam to the security booth at the front of the store as his fiancé-?”

            “Heather.”

            “-Heather is waiting here for him. Thank you.”

            “I’ll be back shortly,” Heather says. “Could you keep an eye on my trolley?”

            “Yes,” the dwarf says.

            “Thank you.” Heather pushes aside some stacked items and efficiently locates the box of pregnancy tests. She goes off to the toilet. The dwarf curiously eyeballs what’s in the trolley. One can learn a lot about a person by what they put in a shopping trolley.

            Heather goes into the cubicle. She unwraps the box, opens the box, takes out a test, tears off the paper cover, bins the paper, sits on the toilet, and loudly urinates onto the clubbed end of the white testing stick. 

            She finishes. But when she tries to withdraw her hand from the bowl, when she tries to lift up the test-clutching hand from under her, she can’t. There is resistance. Something has come up and grabbed hold of the pregnancy test. She doesn’t want to let go of the test and neither does the thing. The option to let go still remains. But not for long. The thing clasps her wrist in a coiled tentacle, latching tightly on.

Heather wakes from her dream, with a start. Sunday morning. Gym. Supermarket. The windows are full of light, full of a soft radiance. She turns over. Liam is already awake. He is sitting there, shirtless, his back against the board of the bedhead. He is lost in thought. His eyes are blue. So blue, blue and pensive. He too has just woken up from a disturbing dream. Birds tweet outside, unceasingly.

There is an unignorable stillness in the room. Something highly-strung, something beckoning. They enjoy, in that moment, an undeniable intimacy. After all, they just met in their dreams. They look into one another’s eyes and converge, like two waves. They collide with a splash of foam and a hiss of sibilance. They kiss, of course, and their ringless fingers interlock. They then fuck, in intense, naked silence.