My sixth post in No F’s February.

Playing with Anna Judd in February

Snow drifts outside, but here, in the protective envelope of the house, it is warm. We’ve come a long way as a species – in some ways, in others, we’ve a long way to go yet. And inside of me is buried both the progressed and the savage. Not battling like wolves, but living in a tentative harmony, a symbiotic arrangement where both take a turn.

If I were in Paradise, it isn’t if I had eaten the apple, as much as made apple crumble from it, and then eaten it with custard, which is to say I enjoyed my sins - enjoyed releasing the savage, giving it its head and letting it loose.

It was with this in mind that I wrapped the scarf around my neck, tucking the ends into my coat. The door closed easily behind me as I left, the wood as shrunken back in the cold, dry air as people had become in the snow, and my boots crunched on the powder as I tramped down the pathway and out onto the street.

Tonight, the savage was loose, walking with my hands in my pockets, the left clutching a knife in my palm, fingers curled around it as though I was clutching sand on the beach and trying to prevent it from leaking through my fingers. I could feel every ridge of grain, every pore in the wooden handle as though it were part of me, and the savage inside me was running ahead, from pool to pool in the streetlights, my attention absorbed by looking ahead as I prowled the streets of center city.

The cold gave me the excuse I needed to keep my collar turned up, as though I were a golden age private detective tailing a mark, but I wasn’t looking just to follow. I wanted an experience more visceral than just observing or tailing.

And then there it was, an opportunity as a man lurched out of a bar into the snow on the street. He pulled his coat tight, making a nest of it at his neck, and shivered before the coat had a chance to capture any heat. He looked sheepishly into the night and then saw me; he hesitated for a moment as though thinking, before turning away and starting to move slowly down the pavement in a line that was less than straight.

It didn’t take long to catch up with the drunk, his stagger becoming more exaggerated the further he went, and I almost felt sorry for him; almost. It was the progressed part of me that was sorry, but tonight wasn’t its turn. The savage was off the leash.

The knife felt so large in my hand as the adrenaline rushed through my veins; my heart pounding so loudly that I could feel it in my ears. I was electric, my mind wildly jumping and arcing, and the savage was truly free as I reached the drunk.

Within moments, the smell of iron was in the air, the scent heavy, and I could taste it, splashes of it on my face, warm against the cold, so that my skin wished it were a bath it could soak the heat from.

The progressed, developed part of me winced, pulled away, turned inside, as the savage ripped and tore. The was full of the taste of flesh on my tongue, my mouth awash with what had been life, and the fresh flesh slithered down my throat with gusto, relishing the barbaric nature of the feast until my hunger had been sated and sluggishly turned for home.

I have made peace with the beast inside, the savage side of my nature, and I find nothing wrong with that. I don’t suppose there is any reason to change my nature when this is who I am, and at peace with these parts of me held in this taut balance.

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Moral: If we accept ourselves, but don’t recognize where improvements can be made, then they never will be.

© Emma Steel