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By Root 638 0

it on the skin below his nose made Creed relaxed and tranquil, as though he had accidentally applied pressure to some vital acupuncture point. The shape of the pill and its grainy texture gave him the strangest sensation of utter peace, the hard pebbled shape of it a tiny jut of urgency below his nose. Where it touched him his skin felt cool, as though some clean, relaxing medication was seeping into him. The white pill was almost touching his lips, a small white pebble. The tiniest movement of his fingers would bring it between his lips. He wondered what it would be like just to pop it into his mouth and crunch on it, perhaps releasing the strange flavour.

At the instant Creed thought this, the liquorice smell came rushing back, pouring powerfully out of the tablet. His nostrils were suddenly full of it. He felt an intoxicating rush. The pill smelled like exotic candy. Creed experienced a moment of total primal greed, a child with a candy in his sweaty fist and no moral or intellectual structure to separate thought from action. Holding the pill and eating it seemed inseparable parts of the same whole.

The liquorice smell was filling his mind like cool smoke. But the pill didn’t seem like candy any more. That was too complicated a concept. Instead he felt the tiny shape near his mouth connecting with him in some far more basic way. He was hungry and it would feed him. That was when he knew what the texture reminded him of: smooth but coarse, rough grained and soft. The small, pebble‐hard urgency. A nipple.

Bringing the thought into consciousness should have broken the spell but it only made it stronger. Creed needed to put the pill into his mouth. In the kitchen he heard Bert whine in his basket but the sound was disconnected, random noise conveying nothing to him. He felt the edge of his thumb sliding down his sweat‐slickened face and suddenly the pill was there between his lips, giving a powerful flash of sensual memory, the taut bud of nipple triggering deeper levels of association and emotion.

Anna. He remembered her small breasts against his face, the firm curve of them, the feel of her as they made love. The hungry yearning on her face. A flash of her eyes caught in moonlight as curtains stirred over their bed. The terminal blankness of those same eyes as they zipped the body bag shut.

The memory gave him a physical pain that ran from his chest down to this groin, as though he’d been gutted with a blunt knife.

Creed lifted the pill away from his face. He was surprised to note that his hand was steady as he put it back down on the table. As soon as it was there it looked strange, as though the tablet was out of context when he wasn’t holding it. Its natural place was back in his hand.

Creed shook his head, as though he was trying to shake the thoughts out of it. ‘Nice try,’ he said aloud. Then he realized he was talking to the pill.

Creed got up and went into the kitchen. Bert peered anxiously up at him from his basket and whined at him. Creed wanted to kneel by the dog and play with him, but his knees were shaking. His shirt was soaked with sweat. If he got down on the floor he wasn’t sure he could get back up. He felt ridiculously weak. When was the last time he’d had something to eat?

Creed’s memory seemed to be functioning sluggishly. To hell with it. He went to one of the cupboards and took out a can of tuna. He opened it and flaked it into a glass bowl with a fork. He mixed in mayonnaise and sweet Swedish mustard. There were half a dozen onions sprouting in the bottom of a vegetable rack so he chopped the green sprouts and peeled the withered bulbs, discarding the soft layers until he was left with firm, pearly globes which he sliced into rings. He mixed the onion into the tuna salad then reached for one of the tiny dried red peppers that were hanging in a bunch from the ceiling. As he broke the brittle pod between his fingers he realized that Bert had climbed out of his basket. The dog was sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor watching Creed, wagging his tail.

Creed found some sliced sourdough