Tainted

The night had slipped in. She could sense it. She could feel the badger start to move inside her. She could feel it nosing its way towards the first of her brain-truffles that it would encounter on its long, slow journey through her body. It was time for her to move as well. It was time to move her head and shake up the creature's environment so that she could try to protect her brain.

She began her journey. She left the house. She locked the door by feeling. Although she could not see it, she was told by the coldness that the night was already deep. She shook her head again, in her habitual attempt to give herself some deluded sense of balance. She could feel one of the new-born truffles in her brain wobble and descend. She had no sense of time. Her thoughts fell into, and were agitated by, the slurried whirlings of her intermittent headaches, caused, she was sure, by the nosing of the badger.

Creases of noise came inside her like waves. She was nosing her way along the street. She could already smell the damp soil of her destination like the magnified aroma of a recently unearthed truffle coming straining through the dry-honking pollution of the urban blare that was magnified in the night. She could smell it out, no problem, and that would be her compass. The feeling of the badger was stretching throughout her, almost as if it had turned from a creature to a cloud, and now she felt the cloud-creature looking out through her eyes and she abandoned herself to a suspicious trust of it, because she had no one else to trust and nothing else to do and her journey had to be safe otherwise there was no point in making it. She sensed that her guide was somehow bigger than earlier, and bigger still than yesterday.

She turned into a path alongside the now-closed park. The traffic-noise was blanketed away the further she walked. The badger was getting more animated. Her journey was set out of kilter as she was forced into a sway and a stagger to match the tacking lurch of it inside her. She could hear the overflow stream from the river nosing through its concrete culvert, doubling its echoes to challenge the noise of the night. She could sense the animal eating its truffle inside her head, but for now she felt no pain. The cold had temporarily killed it.

And now she detected a sharpening in the attention of the truffle badger as its hunger diminished. She felt that it could sense every turn and twist of her journey and was now watching out for her, so now the night genuinely held no fears for her. Without hearing it, she felt it imply "left" or "right" or "not yet" or "wait" or "go now" or "duck", as she bent beneath a branch and went nosing into the mossy contamination of the forest, as if it were some dunghill that she as a worm was compelled to burrow into.

She could now hear the waterfall, and she could sense the power of the river it produced, as it went nosing towards the trapped particles of the sea. She knew the muddied ditch was there. She scraped across it. Just making it the three yards was a journey in itself. She shuffled across dry land and knew where she was. She was out of breath. She moved on further, and then she knelt and scrabbled at the leaves of the tiny grave, as if her hands were washing them away. She felt for the wooden cross. She felt for the letters on the inscription. It still said "The Blood is Still Corrupt." She spelt out the word "TAINTED" in the soil of the grave, then dipped her fingers into the dirt through the letter N. She removed something. A truffle. In the shape of a heart. She plunged her thumbs into it, then plunged her tongue into it, just at the moment that she could feel the badger's tongue strike and start licking the remaining crumbs of fungus from her brain, causing the pain to scrape again across her forehead, and she felt herself falling into something new, something called sleep that she had some dim recollection of and she knew was the thing that normal people did in the thing they called the night. She could feel something melting into her. She could feel herself melting away. She could feel herself falling through grave-soil into something that felt like fire.

And then, for the first time, the truffle badger spoke to her.

She could sense the words before she heard them, nosing into the new smear of agony across her brain, and each word smelt of something that had made a journey through the forest night. And its voice, when she finally heard it, was neither male nor female.

"You will have to let go at some stage."

"What?"

"You will have to let go at some stage."

"Why? And why are you talking to me now, after all this time?"

"Because now is the time to talk. Now you are finally receptive."

"Why now?"

"Because now you have released all the poison from your brain. And now I have eaten it all."

"Why do you do that?"

"It feeds me, because it is not poisonous to me. It strengthens you, because it is poisonous to you. We both gain."

"Why do I get the headaches?"

"It is the poison, fighting for its survival."

"It's not you, then."

"No; not I. I am associated with heart-pain, not head-pain."

"What is heart-pain?"

"The pain of letting go."

"You said I'd have to let go. What will I have to let go of?"

"The memories. The child; the memory of the child. The sin; the memory of the sin. The torture; the memory of the torture."

"And what will remain of me then?"

"You will live your life. Alone in truth."

"But still tainted."

"No. Your blood is now pure. The corruption has all been consumed. Just. You are no longer tainted. That is why I am talking to you."

"So all the time I've been trying to protect myself from you..."

"I've been trying to help you."

"How do I know I can believe you?"

"I was not sent here to lie."

"Where did you come from?"

"From your dreams. I am your creation."

"When?"

"I was born at the precise time that they stopped torturing you. I was fully formed. Adult."

"So you did not witness my destruction."

"No, you were destroyed before I existed. But now you will shortly be resurrected."

"Following my crime."

"Yes."

"I never knew that I had done wrong. That is why I refused to confess."

"I know. I could smell the memory of it. I can sniff things out."

"So, was I corrupted?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"You know how. And the child was the evidence."

"What happened to the father?"

"You do not really want to know. And I am not in a position to tell you."

"Did he choose what they call loyalty or what they call treachery?"

"I am not in a position to tell you."

"So I am not allowed to know."

"No."

"I've been stripped of my identity."

"Yes. But now you can get it back."

"Will I get my sight back?"

"No. That is the result of the carrying out of their evil, not the taint within your system."

"I see. But this stain has now been removed."

"Yes."

 "From me and from any of my future children?"

"From you, yes, but you will have no children. That is no longer possible."

"I see. What will you do now?"

"I will no longer exist. I belong to your soon-to-be previous life."

"But not this one."

"No."

"This 'alone in truth' one."

"That is correct."

"So this is goodbye."

"Yes."

"Well, goodbye then."

"Goodbye."

She woke up. She stood, brushed soil from her face, turned and moved away, shuffling back - unguided - in the direction of her house. She could hear the distant traffic. She could feel herself melting back into herself. She could also feel the tears, but not see them.