TURBINE | KAPOHAU

The grimoire had to construct the simulacra from meat, bone, gristle, but Bev knew Nora would’ve had no truck with that; she was a committed vegetarian, even on Sundays, even for whitebait, so he did the thing that seemed obvious to him, and made her flesh from mashed potato, her teeth from individual pieces of corn, her bones from carrots, her muscles from straps of boiled cabbage. The grimoire didn’t mention seasoning, but salt, pepper and butter seemed obvious. He laid it all out in a copper coffin and — as the new moon loomed empty and dark overhead — began his profane incantation, yeah nah yeah cunt bring her back or something if you’re not too busy no worries if not. 

On a dark and starless night, the world held its breath, the wind dared not blow, then Nora opened her eyes. She spoke in three voices, mother maiden and crone all in harmony, all from the same throat, and spoke, ‘I have dwelt in endless eternities, always on the edge of being. I have seen stars eating stars. I have heard soundless screams being drawn through the void like angels falling to earth. Do you know what lurks beyond the veil? I do.’  

Classic Nora, she loved her cryptic crosswords and sudokus and whatnot.  

‘Yeah righto,’ he said, ‘let’s go home.’  

She held up a potato hand and he clasped it and tried to pull her out of the grave, but it came off in his hand, leaving a protruding carrot wrist-bone.  

‘Entropy is inevitable,’ said Nora squishily, ‘this body is more fragile than most, but in the scale of the universe, in bottomless aeons, they are but the blink of an eye. There is nothing beyond death, nothing, boundless emptiness, an eternal 2pm, a thought that might matter always on the tip of your tongue, inchoate for eternity.’   

Bev didn’t entirely know what to make of that, so he reached for the default response of any husband who’s managed to stay married for over six decades, ‘aw darl, I’m sorry about that. You want a cuppa?’  

Thunder boomed, and a moment later lightning split the sky. It began to rain, first a mist, but quickly a torrent. Bev couldn’t hear Nora over it and worried the mashed potato might be turning into soup, so he clambered down into the coffin. Nora grabbed him by the shoulders. She was impossibly strong.  

‘I want a cuppa,’ she said, ‘I want a thousand, with a thousand sugars. I want to dive off the tallest cliff in the world. I want to be set on fire and salivate at the smell of my own flesh cooking. After so long in the silence, I want to feel. Dear husband, if our moment must be brief I need you to know: you must always do, you must always feel. You must devour me whole.’ 

‘Aw darl I’m fine, I had a pie before I came out,’ he said. The rain was already beginning to wear away at her, to fill the bottom of the coffin with a mix of mud and mash.  

‘My time is short, dear husband, and you have a chance to do something you can never do again. Consume me one last time, let hunger and delirium and desire become one. Eat me, coward.’  

‘Oh alright,’ said Bev, ‘if you insist.’  

Once Nora got an idea in her head, there was no talking her out of it. They’d gone all the way to Scotland to climb a specific mountain because she’d seen pictures of it online and thought it looked nice. Bev thought it looked like a mountain, but he went and got the plane tickets anyway, because he knew once she got a certain look in her eye the decision was already made, even if her eye was a gummy pit of potato he’d carved out with a tablespoon. Where to start? It seemed rude to eat her face first, she should see and hear everything going on, and — of course — she’d want to talk him through it. She liked to talk, did Nora, a pitter-patter like rain on a tin roof, or perhaps rain on the bottom of a copper coffin. He couldn’t start with her feet either, that felt unseemly, like something out of a French movie. He had her hand in his hand still, and it felt like a good place to start. Instantly he regretted not adding enough butter and cheese, but in his defence it was a huge serving, and he wasn’t made out of money. It was moist at least, what with the rainwater and all. Bev and Nora both were slick to the skin, even though he’d peeled hers off. It was when he got to the crunch of baby carrot finger-bones (nestled in so lovingly, hours before) that he was struck by an electric thrill, and his eyes lit up, and Nora said, ‘yes yes, now you understand.’  

No other man in human history had eaten his potato-wife during a storm and crunched down on her crisp carotene fingerbones with fervid delight. It was better than cracking open a fresh-roasted potato on Sunday, better than watching the ABs run the ball across the line, better even than — he had to admit, he had really rather enjoyed — Scotland. 

‘We are singular,’ said Nora.  

Well that didn’t make sense, there were two of them, but his mouth was too full of her hand to correct her. ‘Mhmmp es dr,’ he said, which was usually a good thing to say.  

Once he was done with her hand, he put an arm around her waist like they used to when they danced and with the other hand he lifted up her wrist-carrot to his mouth, winked cheekily as though he were about to dip her low, then bit down. Nora cried out in…good pleasure. Bev stopped for a moment, chewed then swallowed.  

‘Darling what’s a word for pleasure but like…heaps of it?’  

‘Ecstasy,’ said Nora, ‘rapture.’  

She did love her crosswords.  

‘Ta,’ he said, then got back to work.  

Her wrist, then her arm, then her shoulder. He could swear, despite the cold, despite the wet, despite the potato, that she was as soft and warm and lovely as she’d been the day they met. They two had become one many times, they had a lot of grandkids at this point, but never quite to this extent. Nora was inside him deeper than any spouse should ever be. She’d been right, just like she’d been right about Scotland: sometimes you needed to get out of the house and do something crazy and wild like you were young again e.g. devour your potato wife. Eat her shoulders, her collarbones, her breasts, her soft disintegrating tummy. Get to the legs by the time they’re mush and take deep draughts of the muddy wife-soup from out the bottom of the coffin, which hit his mouth like water from a mountain spring. There was so much of it, always more as the rain belted down, but he slurped greedily, blind to the pain in his stomach, and when he was done, he returned to Nora’s lovely face, melted to the base of the coffin, barely even there anymore, but smiling.