THE HEALTH SUITE

Her steady swim had left her disjointed and weightless, able only to lie prone on the sun-bed secured under the glass sky. She felt as clean as a dish-washed cup, unstained inside and out.

Even in their frenzied search for salt moisture and hot meat, the Dream Beasts could not penetrate the Swimming Pool building to tear her apart. The sharp echo of voices in high hard spaces exerted a force field that prevented them from entering. Heavy with soft damp in her bathrobe, anchored by exhaustion, she could stop running. The seamless walls and changeless climate of the Health Suite were unassailable. Her towel turban cushioned her ears against the baying of police cars and the yelp of fire engines as they circled among the surrounding catch-nets of particulate smog and traffic.

The soundless trees outside were late-sun yellow. Leaves fell without a whisper of regret. Last spring, she had been startled in the burrow of her bedclothes, by the foetid smell of piss and mouldy earth. A sticky brown ooze seeped from between her legs. She had felt her nipples tugged, the sting of milk in her breasts, the shove of paws at her flank. She had seen teeth and eyes glitter in the dark.

She had not slept since.

In the Steam Room, heads vanished in soft fierce clouds as bodies dissolved. Heat seared the flesh off cheekbones and exposed eyeballs while burning air scorched the inside of throats, wrinkling windpipes into pink plastic hoses. The woman could barely see her legs stretched out before her. They were slick with moisture, smooth as pearled shells.

Showering after the sauna, she scrubbed at the thought of moss matting her hair, recoiled at the memory of a ridged scar the length of her thigh. All summer she had prickled with electric fur, her senses interactive. All autumn she had felt with her eyes, smelt with her ears, seen with her nose, heard with her skin. All year she had been desperate to hide and desperate to run. Ecstasy and terror had combined in a fatal high.

Now in the bubbling Jacuzzi she floats free of the earth. A neutral space in a tepid, hygienic bath of chemical daylight. She is as safe as laundry. She no longer slinks through the secret night with blood on her tongue or searches the shadows for mysteries without answers. She no longer dances up hills, a forest in every breath, a meadow under each pad, alive to the sound of shrieks and howling. Her dark red heart no longer beats to the rhythm of hoof and horn, claw and fang. She is no longer huntress or hunted.

In the Meditation Space where synthesised ghost birds cry unanswered and water runs uphill, she rests empty as a winter nest. On the sun-bed afterwards, she lies down in a doze as deep as Astro turf. Her eyes are opaque as mirror glass, her soul an air-conditioned room. She no longer wanders in the wild moonlight. There is no wilderness. There is no death. She need not run hunting for life. The Dream Beasts sneaked up in the lift with sachets of decaffeinated coffee and sweeteners of Prozac and caught her off guard.

“Birth’s not hygienic.” they whispered as they surgically removed her womb.

“Kindness has no wrinkles.” they smiled as they glossed her new face.

“Death is defeated.” they nodded, pumping centrifuged plasma into her pale heart.

“Then there'll be no need for dreaming.” the Green Woman said and at last she slept.