There's Nothing There

The minotaur and the griffin are in my chest cavity again. They tore through the air and ripped a space between my ribs – and yes, there was nothing there – but their homing instincts overrode my force majeure. They’re huge. They purport to alleviate my pain, but the smell of sun cream and the hum of mosquitos is distracting enough.

Cold sangria. A jug of it, set down on the table, tantalising the hairs in our nostrils. My sister’s a superb mixologist – is sangria a cocktail? – and she beams as if she’s just given birth. The jug drips crimson condensation onto the ribbed plastic furniture.

She’s talking, but the mythological creatures – unwelcome little tyrants – are at it again. Fighting. Always fighting. The griffin, he’s a pretty thing – set usually to guard the gold of kings and nestle into cavities, fist-sized, snuggled in the folds of flesh and blood, pretending not to abhor my beating, empty depravity.

The minotaur is less vain. A bullish trope, attempting to towrope my empty shell into holiday enjoyment, his head of brutal strength shattering the last of my ribs, counting my breaths. Outflow, inflow.

She asks me about work. Her husband’s in the pool with the kids – he’s a geologist, or something – no one ever asks. I try and remember what happened at work – did HR do something funny again, or Gary from Legal, what’s he been up to? – but what I really want to tell her is the truth.

Sis, there’s a griffin and a minotaur and both are clashing, preserving whatever the hell’s left in there – and don’t ask me – and the griffin, he’s pretty vain, too vain to really care about the empty nest and the missing heart that was once rightly ensnared, but the minotaur, he’s stronger. Stronger than the fleshy sides of front and back; he seems bullish, but he’s just a guard, roving around, preparing for another attack.

There’s nothing to protect.

Gary from Legal said something funny, I say, instead. I wrack my brains for something funny – anything funny – but what I say is stilted: The government are reviewing a new data protection law and he’s not sure about it.

She blinks. She leans forward and pours more sangria into my glass, trying to protect me from the outside without a comment – once upon a time, she would’ve ripped me apart. I drink and the alcohol collects in the little dip in the centre of my tongue. I hold it there; it warms.

My arms are working again, which is something. The mythological entities taking up my chest cavity are to be thanked, I’m sure; the towropes that dragged me to the side of the river, sticking their fingers down my throat and dredging up weeds, spittle, semi-dissolved rubbish. Far below their usual remit, I’m sure, but there they were.

One minute there was a cavity and the next they had ripped a space across my flesh and delved to join the broken ribs, smashing through the density. I told them. I told the hospital staff, and they, with fractured smiles and swollen eyes, attributed them to the gas and air – there’s nothing there – and we all laughed – we three – as they tried to extract them carefully from burned aortic stumps.

There’s nothing there, they said, the cavity climbing up like a depravity in that burned-out surgery, shiny equipment causing stars that lined up neatly, Orion’s belt, and we, with eagle eyes and horns, knew that they were lying.

They wouldn’t let on. They couldn’t admit to the presence of the eagle-man and bullish-man, dancing where the thing used to be – the humming thing – the beating thing – the thing that sent the liquid around. It wouldn’t sound good, not for medical professionals, upper lips and serious stuff, so they zipped me up – bottom to top – and pretended I was whole.

The kids scream and the husband chides. Someone’s splashing someone and the mozzies are out in droves, lulling through the dusky air, shooting stars across a David Hockney, creeping ants across a navy palm. I blink. My eyelids are heavy.

She asks me if I like the sangria, and I lick my top lip and smile. Actions are easier than words, I’ve found, especially when it’s a bat of an eyelid, a glint of tongue. So much easier than explaining – so much easier than tearing my chest open and showing the collision, the unwelcome guests who insist on pounding away in my chest, distracting me from everything. From beauty, from ugliness, from her husband’s dull geology.

I wish he were a specialist in ancient beasts; perhaps he would know the cure. Perhaps then I would be distraction-free and able to enjoy the purple mountains in the distance, the way that the outdoor lamp is collecting moths, the way that, if I squint, I don’t have to see anyone at all.

I remember that two-way questions are required in polite discourse. I ask her about her job – an actuary – or something – I can’t remember – and she jumps on the moving train, heralding from the pitter-patter top.

It’s wonderful, so interesting at the moment, they’re planning the Christmas party already –can you believe it? She’s in charge of decorating the office. They’re thinking of doing a fairytale theme – interesting beasts and wild, twisted stories – and she smiles behind her mahogany hair and insists that her lack of imagination is going to declare the event a bust.

Good.

Don’t let the beasts cloud into the office too, taking over, unwelcome, storming across the printer, flooding the desk, the way they did for me. I haven’t told her. I haven’t told her that my desk was flooded and an eviction notice put up – I haven’t been in months – and the bank is clenching the gold too, butting head-to-head with my cavity friends.

She doesn’t ask why I’m smiling, because she’s overjoyed that it’s happening. The first one since my wife climbed the tightrope between the moon and beyond.

It’s supposed to be drifting from Earth, the moon, but I wonder if, perhaps, she’s pulling it.

It might explain why the mythological, heraldic protectors are raining down from heaven, dredging me up from the riverbank.

The questions my sister asked are the same as the doctor’s – why is there nothing there? I was all gas and air – that’s what you all said – when I pointed to the minotaur, tearing apart my flesh, and the griffin, keeping watch. Why did you jump off that bridge, you asked, as the beasts extracted carefully what was there, leaving only air.

There’s nothing there, I had to say, as aortic stumps sat slovenly, attached to nothing, and I – watching the griffin fight the minotaur over the shiny surgery disarray – had only one thing to say. She went first and took my heart away.

“Bedtime.” My sister claps. “Let the grown-ups holiday now.”