The Art of Pain

Gloria feels worms eating her flesh at night. They nibble and squirm across her, in her, up her. She scratches at them, leaps out of bed and jumps up and down hard on the floorboards, shaking them off.

Glo has sex with Mark in the daytime only – curtains open. The night terrors are fucked away; the worms vanish. She loves the build, the ache, but hates to climax, to lose control.

“We fill our lives with distractions, cushions to hide behind,” she says to Mark, “but we can’t hide forever.”

“I can distract you,” he replies. “Don’t worry. Kiss me.”

They met when he fixed a leak in her roof and stayed for coffee and a chat that went on longer than the repair had taken. Mark is more muscular than her exes, he feels solid, and he earns his living mending things, making things, he’s handy. She likes him on top – strong, pounding, selfish. Afterwards, he collapses, sweatily exhausted, and Glo strokes his arms. Over and over her fingers rub the bulge of his relaxed muscle, tracing the barbed wire tattoo.

She tells Mark stories of her own body art; the tiny heart that was for her Gran, the 3 stars for her best friend, the lightning bolt that was when she left Paul, the angel for her mum, the skull and crossbones in honour of Nick, the boy who inspired her. She’d watched Nick at a party twenty years ago as he held a lit cigarette between 2 fingers and thumb. He placed the tip against his other arm and pressed. His face remained impassive.

There was no sizzle or smell, just this big tattooed lad, looking at her as if nothing was happening. Glo had mimicked his non-reaction, although inside her heart was banging.

“What did you do that for, Nick?” Gloria asked.

He showed her the scorched skin mark.

“So the pain I feel will be visible to all.”

She thought it poetic and magnificent. He was 19, she was 17, and thought he was a genius. He flirted with her enough to keep her hopeful. At home later that night, drunk and a little stoned, she took her penknife and etched the initial N into her arm in 3 straight jags. There was a satisfaction in the slight pain, though she was careful to scratch rather then gouge.

The turtle on her back has a thick black spiral on it and spreads across her spine, coloured in pretty pastels. It’s for her daughter, Hope.

“The turtle represents mother earth,” she tells him.

“That’s cool,” he says.

She’d been terrified of that first tattoo, of the potential for hurt, but once the needle was in and dragging its colour through her skin the pain was replaced with a thrumming, deep down.

She won’t let Mark meet Hope. She only sees him when her daughter is at school. He pops in on his lunch break or on the way to a job. Sometimes he arrives on the off chance, late, unplanned. They have a quickie whilst Glo keeps one eye on the digital bedside clock, seeing it tick closer to the end of the school day, urging him on, panicking. She’s never been late, but she has stood breathless in the playground, flushed with sex, feeling his sperm slippery between her legs.

“Alright, Gloria?” one of the mums will say, and she’ll reply yes, she’s fine, and make a comment about the weather.

One glimpse of Hope and she morphs from Glo, all edges and attitude, into mummy.

“Hiya sweetie, how was school?”

They will chat about the minutiae of a seven year old life. It will be the most fascinating conversation that Glo will have had all day, and she will marvel at how beautiful, how smart, how incredible her daughter is. She could never have imagined being so blessed.

Hope has swimming lessons after school on Tuesdays. Glo paces, chewing hard on the inside of her mouth, remembering all the bad news stories involving pools, children and transport, until the school bus drops her safely home. She licks the blood away and thanks the universe for her daughter’s safe delivery.

At night the worms come, tickling with tiny unseen mouths, sucking and writhing. She scratches with black polished nails, turns, turns again, plumps up the pillow and tosses it onto the cool side. She had threadworms when she was young, she remembers sticking a finger up her own bottom, scratching, examining her finger tip and watching the white cotton squirm, yelling for her mother, yelling and crying.

Her mum told her to wear tight knickers and at first she thought it was something to do with starving the worms of oxygen, only now she realizes it was to stop them wriggling out of her, onto the sheets, the bed, the floor where she walked. She knows she doesn’t have them now; she has examined the toilet paper and her shit. Still, she feels them. They force her from her bed and into Hopes room. Her daughter sleeps sprawled, her breath puffing reassuringly. Gloria watches her until she feels cold and tired, able to return to her bed and ignore the doomy night terrors, sliding into sleep.

She had her tongue pierced when Hope said her first word. The barbell slid in easier than she’d expected, her tongue swelling in protest, feeling hot and unfamiliar in her mouth for days. Now she flicks her tongue rhythmically over the metal, soothing.

“Come out for dinner with me?” Mark says.

“I can’t, you know I can’t leave Hope,” Glo replies.

“Bring her.”

“Mark, that’s not fair to her. I don’t want her all cosy and happy with you and then…”

“Bring her.”

Dinner is fun. Pizza, salad, soft drinks. Hope smiling, enjoying the attention, absorbing Mark effortlessly into her world. Other outings follow: the cinema to see the latest Disney film, laughter mingling, Gloria sucking Pepsi through a straw, a bucket of popcorn balanced on her lap, feeling as if perhaps she’s in a movie too. The zoo, where they are surprised by mucous flying from an elephant’s trunk as it looms huge in front of them, waiting to snaffle the proffered feed. They ahh at the furry mammals and step back, as one, from the rubbery chomp of the giraffes.

Glo feels unclenched. When Mark sleeps over for the first, second, third time, the worms leave her alone. He’s a comforting, concrete presence; a warm body asleep alongside her. The fourth time he stays she awakes with a familiar jolt. The night surrounds her with its coffin dark. She pads through the house and out into the back garden where she looks up at the cold stars.

The razor blade slices through her skin easily, leaving a line of blood that blooms and expands in red relief. The bathroom light is harsh, showing every freckle and hair on her arm. She cuts on the palest upper part, where the marks can be concealed.

Just one, she thinks, just one, but she draws the razor over the skin again, twice, three times, four.

The knock on the door rips through the fuzziness.

“Gloria? You ok in there?” he asks, his voice tender.

She mumbles about an upset stomach.

Hope brings home a certificate for swimming her width. She shines with pride and waits impatiently for Mark to arrive.

“Mummy?”

“Yes hon?”

“Why can’t Mark stay here and not go home?”

“I think Mark still wants to have his own house, a place for all his things.”

“We could make space for his stuff here, couldn’t we?

He tosses her on to the bed where she giggles at his show of machismo, both of them pretending their thrill is ironic. They have guzzled celebratory Cava and toasted their happiness as cohabitees. He kisses her, spreads her, looking intently whilst she writhes, at first with arousal, and then with embarrassment as he traces the livid scars, the faded cuts, the secrets. He is harder than ever, pushing, hurting, biting, and when he orgasms he tells her he loves her.

Hope is at a birthday barbecue and Gloria holds an ice cube against her skin, clenching her teeth, not moving despite the burn of it, stationary when it melts and drips through her fingers and onto the floor.

“Please, please, please, please.”

She chews on a chili, her nostrils flaring with the fire.

“Let her be safe, please.”

She pulls an earring out, tearing her left lobe.

“Hey,” says Mark wrapping his arms around her. “I’ll go and pick Hope up a bit early.”

The column of fear inside Glo disperses.

Mark can’t sleep through her nocturnal disturbance, no matter how quiet she tries to be.

“What’s my job?” he asks.

“Handy man.”

“I fix things,” he tells her, “that’s my job.”

He gets up with her and accompanies her checking on Hope, washing her face, breathing in chilled air.

“Cut me,” he says.

She can’t, it’d hurt and it’s too weird, it’s wrong. When he takes a kitchen knife and scores it lightly in a diagonal on his chest, she licks the blood, metallic and thick, and when they fuck there, on the kitchen floor, she climaxes, screaming.