Nancy found an entire torpedo in the forest
just lying there like a beached whale,
coated in wet leaves
and decorated with glittering snail trails.
‘It’s a fucking torpedo,’ she said.
‘Is it… live?’ I said.
I didn’t know how torpedoes worked.
Were they like mines?
‘It’s inert,’ she said, suddenly an expert,
‘torpedoes don’t explode on land,
everyone knows that.’ She whistled like a plumber
surveying a damp patch, ‘He’s a beauty alright.
I reckon he weighs at least 600 pounds. 640, I’d say.’
‘He?’ I said, but Nancy was already straddling it,
spanking its rudder like the rump of a prize horse.
‘What’s a torpedo doing in a forest?’
Nancy rolled her eyes.
‘You always ask the most obvious questions, don’t you?
Can’t you just enjoy the moment?’
She’d already unzipped her trousers
and was touching herself, grinding up
against the girth of the weapon
and groaning gently. ‘Careful,’ I said.
Her orgasm gathered to a scream.
She pressed her sweating face
on the warhead and fell asleep on top of it.
The torpedo precisely matched the length of her body. 13
To my tired gaze, it seemed
as if they were both breathing,
Nancy and the torpedo, their chests
rising and falling together
like unsuspecting ocean waves.
I pictured them both in action,
underwater, Nancy’s legs wrapped around
its speeding shaft, her red eyes fixed like sniper
dots on the target ahead, a string of bubbles
flying out behind her like a chiffon scarf.
Eventually she woke, refreshed and cheerful,
patted the torpedo goodbye, hoisted on her backpack
and we continued our journey
as if nothing had happened.
‘Where are we going?’ she’d ask, every ten minutes or so.
‘We’ve just got to keep moving,’ I’d reply, pointing
in some arbitrary direction and striding with purpose,
trying to channel the sexual energy
of a self-propelled missile, ‘Keep on moving.’
The dread swished around my gums
like someone else’s tongue. If I had owned a penis
it would’ve secretly shrivelled in my pants.
‘We’ve passed this clearing before,’ Nancy said.
‘Different clearing,’ I said. ‘Those are our footprints
from four days ago,’ she said. ‘Different footprints,’ I said.
Then we saw the torpedo. Nancy laughed.
‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that’s a different torpedo?’
It was getting dark and cold. ‘I love you. I just love you
so much,’ I said, as Nancy remounted, hugging it
and whispering into its back, her mouth almost kissing
the metal. That’s when I lost it. 14
‘I’M SORRY I’M NOT A FUCKING TORPEDO!’
‘I can’t… blast through shit I’m
lost and I’m useless and I’ve got no fucking
idea where I am or what I’m doing. There. I said it.
Go ahead and dump me because I’m a piece of shit.’
There was a long silence.
Nancy straightened her spine like a dressage rider,
looked at me for an age then said,
‘How many...
