Lane THE BLUE MASK

1. Auflage 2023
ISBN: 978-1-914391-06-4
Verlag: INFLUX PRESS
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 274 Seiten

'A novel of considerable power, its gritty drama of damage and disillusion well served by a hard-edged and often vigorously compelling prose style... an undeniably dark novel, yet its explorations move us towards a clearer view of the unsettling world we inhabit.' - Guardian 'A poet of misfits, outsiders and the forsaken, his empathy for their suffering ever poignant.' - Adam Nevill, author of The Ritual 'The reader of a Lane story can never escape the feeling of being located squarely in banal reality. It's this that makes any intrusion of the supernatural so shockingly effective - because the picture he creates is so palpable, and because we recognise some version of these lonely streets from our real lives.' - Sublime Horror Neil is a student at Birmingham University, living a typical life of gigs, clubs, politics, sex. One night, after a row with his lover, Neil follows a stranger onto a canal towpath. The stranger turns on him and attacks, viciously carving up Neil's face and leaving him mutilated beyond recognition. Neil's recovery is a journey through surgical reconstruction and sexual alienation. His attempt to track down his attacker becoming a search for his own hidden, destructive self; a search that leads him to question values he had always taken for granted. First published in 2003 and long out-of-print, The Blue Mask is a hardcore emotional trip exploring the trauma of change and the nature of violence and of love.. WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY JOSEPH O'NEILL

Joel Lane was the author of two novels, From Blue to Black and The Blue Mask; several short story collections, The Earth Wire, The Lost District, The Terrible Changes, Do Not Pass Go, Where Furnaces Burn, The Anniversary of Never and Scar City; a novella, The Witnesses Are Gone; and four volumes of poetry, The Edge of the Screen, Trouble in the Heartland, The Autumn Myth and Instinct. He edited three anthologies of short stories, Birmingham Noir (with Steve Bishop), Beneath the Ground and Never Again (with Allyson Bird). He won an Eric Gregory Award, two British Fantasy Awards and a World Fantasy Award. Born in Exeter in 1963, he lived most of his life in Birmingham, where he died in 2013.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lane, Joel

Leseproben

2

It was only warm when the sun was shining on you. Matt was glad of his fluffy black sweater, though he’d still have worn it in an August heatwave. He’d been outside all morning, leafleting in Sparkhill and buying vegetables from the cheap greengrocer’s along the Stratford Road where the window displays were on the outside: boxes piled high with chillies and root ginger. Three hours later, here he was in the Physiology lab, staring at a decerebrate rabbit.

The creature was, for all ethical purposes, dead. Its cerebral cortex had been removed through the front of its skull, leaving the sluglike cerebrum intact behind a red curtain of tissue. The heart and lungs would keep going for a few hours, which was the point of the exercise. Maybe the exposed back brain harboured some dim, atavistic longing for the chance to do what rabbits normally did in the springtime. But Matt doubted it. Even dreaming was a function of consciousness. Still, he could have done with some warning before today’s practical.

Fighting back nausea, he picked up the scalpel and inserted it into the warm sternum. You were supposed to peel back the ribs like an eggshell to get at the heart and lungs. The steady heartbeat shuddered through the stiff points of the creature’s bloodstained fur. At least there wasn’t a face looking back at him. Carlos, Matt’s partner in these practicals, stopped filling syringes and glanced anxiously at Matt. ‘Y’all right there?’

‘Suppose so.’ Matt swallowed a burning thread of bile. ‘I don’t know. It’s ironic. The only time I touch meat is in the lab. Except when I’m in bed with Neil.’

Carlos nodded philosophically. ‘Yeah. I worry sometimes, what this does to us. Did you hear about that med. student last year who stuck a dead rabbit up his arse?’ Matt stared at him. ‘It’s true. Exam fever, I guess. Just flipped. He couldn’t get it out again. Spent the night at the QE, having this rabbit removed with forceps. He quit after that, never took his Finals. You might have met him. His name’s Warren.’

‘Whaaat?’ Matt cracked up. ‘You bastard. Fuck!’ The laughter brought more bile into his mouth. Lucky it was cold in here. But time and the rabbit’s heart were ticking away. They’d better get on with it.

Afterwards, they had a fifteen-minute break. Matt went for a walk. A prickly light rain shadowed the campus, blurring its shades of grey. He knew Neil would be in the library, but there wasn’t time to look for him. Poplar trees shivered in the vast courtyard as if stepping out of the shower. He brushed droplets of water from his cardy, which was more resistant to penetration than its owner. A smear of light glistened from the wet sky.

The second practical was another heart-lung experiment; but this time, they were the subjects. You had to put on a plastic mask with a breathing-tube, then ride an exercise bike. It seemed pretty kinky to Matt. As usual, Carlos took care of the measuring and recording while he did the messy stuff. The mouthpiece tasted vile, rubber overlaid with chlorine. He shut his eyes and cycled down the long, tree-lined road from West Bromwich to Handsworth. Every two minutes, Carlos measured his heart rate and changed the airbag. Quite what this was meant to prove, Matt wasn’t sure. No doubt he’d make sense of it when revising for the exam.

To finish with, you had to keep cycling with the same airbag; then, when you started to feel dizzy, you stopped. The abnormal readings at that point would bring home the physiology of asphyxia. Matt grinned at Carlos. ‘Just like old times.’ But with the mask in place and the pedals going round as if driven by themselves, it seemed about as sexy as an operation. After a few minutes, the air in his mouth tasted stale; but he wasn’t tired. The rain must have stopped: sunlight was pouring through the long window, drifting past his face. He was swimming in it, his legs kicking behind him as he rose to the surface. But something was pulling him down.

‘Matt! Matt, are you okay? Jesus Christ!’ Matt felt the floor against his back. Carlos was crouching beside him, his hand on Matt’s chest. For a moment, Matt thought he was taking the heart rate. ‘You blacked out there, man. Got off the bike and just collapsed.’ His eyes searched Matt’s face with a mixture of concern and secret curiosity. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Fine.’ The dense sunlight had been replaced by the lab’s pale electric light. Matt’s face was wet. He took a deep breath, drinking the air.

Dr Finn was striding towards them, looking panicky. ‘Matthew, isn’t it? Are you all right, son?’

‘Mmm.’ Matt stood up, brushing the dust from his jeans. ‘Never got the warning signals.’

‘Don’t take up diving.’ The lecturer glanced at Carlos. ‘Is he always this pale?’ Carlos nodded. ‘Okay. Do you want to take him outside and get a cup of tea? I’ll clear up your stuff.’

‘Cheers.’ They walked together down the half-lit corridor to the exit. Matt felt hungover. Not only the last few minutes but the whole day seemed blurred, less than real. Outside, the rain had stopped but the sky was still dark with bruises. Worried-looking students, weighed down with shoulderbags full of books, scurried between the redbrick faculty buildings. At Derek’s Cafe in the Guild, Carlos bought Matt a black coffee with lots of sugar. I should get a tan, he thought. As long as I look like a Goth, everyone thinks I’m ill. I’ve only got to frown and they assume I’m suicidally depressed.

The cafe was rapidly filling up with students: bright-coloured sweaters, ethnic jewellery and unimaginative haircuts. A group of SWP members were agreeing with each other about the election. ‘If New Labour wins,’ one of them was saying, ‘all the anger will be forgotten. The only reason the ruling class will let things get any better is to stop the revolution evolving from a dream into a programme. It’s the good cop-bad cop strategy: first Labour, then the Tories, then Labour again. Same shit, different arse.’ Matt drank his coffee and tried not to listen. The hard left depressed him. Did they really think Thatcherism had brought the revolution closer? Neil had said once that any popular revolution in England would be fascist, not socialist.

‘Are you off home now?’ Carlos said.

‘No. I’m meeting Neil in a bit. Then I’m doing Nightline. Neil’s got a rehearsal. This play he’s written.’

‘What’s it about?’

Matt shrugged. He wasn’t really sure what Nights of Insult was about, though he knew what happened in it. ‘It’s about some tenants in a house. They’re in all kinds of trouble. It’s almost like the house is under siege. Then they work together and begin to sort things out.’

Carlos grinned at him. ‘You’re like a married couple, you two. I’m a bit jealous. Heterosexuality is so fucked up, men and women can’t even be friends. Still, I can’t change the way I am.’

‘I wouldn’t want you to. I mean, I really wouldn’t.’ Carlos raised a finger, laughing. ‘Sit and swivel.’

After he’d gone, Matt settled down with a horror anthology he’d found in the second-hand bookshop in Selly Oak. It was one of the Not at Night series, with blood-red covers and thick, dusty paper, dated 1932. He shared Neil’s love of old books, though their reading tastes diverged somewhat. ‘You don’t understand,’ he’d said to Neil that morning over breakfast. ‘This is the first time these stories had been published in Britain. Before that, they’d all appeared in the now-legendary Weird Tales magazine.’

Neil had perused the red jacketless cover, the heavy black print on the cheap paper. ‘Yes, but they’re shit.’

Arguments of this kind were more playful than the earnest mindfucks Matt was used to getting from older lovers. Indeed, one of the things he loved about Neil was his total lack of any compulsion to pass on wisdom. Most of his exes were mature men who’d lectured him on the meaning of love before sinking their world-weary cocks into his slightly plump arse. Neil didn’t try to mould him or use him to prove a theory. There were only six years between them, though in the student world that was like two generations. They took it in turns to do the housework: Matt was more domesticated, but Neil was at home more.

And despite his advanced years, Neil was stunning. His face combined the best features of Morrissey and Johnny Marr: dramatic eyebrows, gentle eyes, fine cheekbones, a soft mouth, a firm chin. His hair was red with black growing through, like a flame above charcoal. Theresa was so taken with Neil that Matt had threatened to break her arms if she fucked him. He didn’t quite trust her not to. Whether he trusted Neil, he didn’t like to think about. Matt himself looked like an adolescent Robert Smith: spiky black hair, a semi-skimmed milk complexion and a tendency towards flab.

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