He’s about to say something, but I have to get out of this room. I turn around and then walk very swiftly down the corridor. I use the stairs rather than the lift. I run down them. I don’t know if I pass anyone on my way to my studio. I don’t know if anyone sees what I am carrying. Ben’s blood-soaked towel leaves drops on the concrete leading up to my studio door. The thin pink lines of blood and water that were running across Ben’s skin now form themselves on my arm and trickle down my wrist. Absentmindedly, without really thinking, I lift my arm up to my face, and lick.

I suck the blood out of Ben’s towel for what feels like hours. I lie down on the floor, the towel hanging from my mouth and spread out across my chest. I’m in bliss. I can’t really describe how it feels to have another person’s blood in your veins, feeding to your heart, even just a little bit: a human’s blood, not a pig’s, two legs, upright and elegant, hints of something—of foods and memories and experiences, of birth, of being ill and getting better, of love and grief and fear—in its flavor. I feel huge; I feel like, if I were to stand up and run toward my studio wall, I’d just break through it. Like I could trample on cars and people outside, whole families under one foot, roaring until shop windows shatter. The sun would be drawn to me and would be consumed by my hair, which would grow and grow and then spread across the sky and turn day into night. The ground would quake around me; little moles that had been sleeping would emerge from their holes, and rabbits from their burrows, and I’d pluck them out of the ground like bean shoots and swallow them whole.

Part Two

Chapter 4

4