Wildlife by Joe Stretch Page A

of his body reminds Roger of soft radio static. There is an expectancy to it. A fragility. A need to be broken. He keeps listening. Running blood. Distant whirring. Distant beats. Then, all of a sudden, from the lightless world beneath his skin, Roger hears a bleep.
    For fuck’s sake. (How gay!) Roger takes the stethoscope from his ears and does up his belt. A bleep! (How gay!) What a shame. Roger runs into the bathroom and stares into the mirror. This is so gay, he thinks. His pupils shrink inside his spectacled eyes. His sleepless grey expression becomes even greyer. My bathroom is well lit. My body is bleeping and whirring. This is well shit. I wish it wasn’t. I don’t need my body to be making silly sounds. I definitely don’t. I will never sing and dance on the West End stage ifmy body is bursting with technology. Is life horrific? Yes, life is horrific.
    Still in front of the bathroom mirror, Roger starts picking his nose. The mission gets tricky. A thumb joins his index finger inside his nostril and the two digits pull hard on a hair bringing tears of pain to Roger’s eyes. He inspects the bogey. It is green and hard at one end and colourless and liquid at the other. The hair which holds the bogey isn’t black. It’s shiny and bronze. It is a wire.
    I’m getting all technical. My poor nose. Roger flicks the wire away, and the bogey. He listens as both land in the bathtub. There is a thin ringing sound as it lands. Bollocks. This would never have happened during the French Revolution. They ate rats. Real men. Real women. Fewer wires.
    Before taking his seat at the computer, Roger presses play on his CD player and skips to track 7 of the
Les Misérables
soundtrack. ‘Bring Him Home’. This is an incredibly beautiful song. The ageing Jean Valjean pleads with God to allow a handsome and injured young man to survive and to take him instead. Roger sings along with the deep, troubled vocal, momentarily forgetting that he suspects himself to be full of electronic equipment.
    Allow me. Allow me. Instead of hairs I’ve got wires up my nose. No word of bullshit, my cheerful little friends. I’ve got some kind of technology growing out my fucking face. I’m still gonna shag a million girls.
    I can’t be arsed turning into a piece of technology. The idea bores the crap out of me. I heard a bleeping coming out of my appendix and I was like, piss off, dumb bleep. Bleep-bleep. Whatever. Fuck the facts of life.
    I feel like a suicide bomber. Bloody wires up my nose. I might explode. If you hear a loud bang, El Rogerio has detonated in public. Allow it.
    SUBMIT.
    Roger Hart leans back in his comfy black chair. He puts fingers up his nose. He can feel them. The stiff, sharp and interlocking wires that grow in each nostril. He shudders. His whole body wriggles with disgust. He checks his emails. Anka Kudolski, the tit shadow from Channel MANC, has replied. She wants to meet in Wow-Bang. Dirty bitch. What am I thinking?
    I should tell someone, thinks Roger. I should call my mum and tell her about my wires.
    But Roger can’t tell his mum. He wouldn’t know how to. What would he say? I can’t remember when I last fell asleep. I’ve not spoken to another human in a year. I’ve got wires growing in my nose and when I listened to my insides, Mum, I heard bleeping and whirring. No. Roger can’t possibly call his mum. His mum is a pleasant-seeming Media Studies teacher. She is a resident of Lancaster. She wouldn’t like the idea of Roger, her son, bleeping, alone and full of bronze.
    Roger returns to his blog and notices that many fans have already posted comments under his last submission. They want to know if it’s true. Does El Rogerio really have wires in his nose? Roger shudders again. His shoulders shaking. Spasming. He’s really worried. He’s breathing nervously through his mouth.
    Allow me. Allow me. El Rogerio never lies. I swear. I’ve