RENFIELD AT THE STEREO BAR

by Kirsty Logan

Renfield lives down a narrow alley above the bar where he works. The bar is called Stereo. Renfield has a theory that every city in the world has a bar called Stereo. He doesn’t travel much, but he has Googled it. Montreal, Alicante, Frankfurt, and Saint-Petersburg all have bars called Stereo. Renfield still eats bugs.

On his morning off, Renfield walks through Glasgow. He orders fish and chips with a mug of sugary tea. He picks at the food, moving it around so it looks like he has eaten some. He suspects that hunters are watching and the appearance of normality means survival. He goes to Argos and flips through the catalogue. He browses the classics section in Waterstones. He watches the pigeons fight over shreds of battered sausage and the tourists photographing them. His destination is the Necropolis, but it is important for this to seem accidental because of the hunters. Renfield knows that the dead must have their hearts burned. He is not sure whether this counts as a crime. He knows that hearts sing through the flames.

In the bar, Renfield is a fixed point. The customers in the bar swarm and buzz, but Renfield keeps his place behind the counter. He pulls pints quickly and cleanly. After closing, Renfield locks the bar and climbs the stairs to his flat. It has three rooms including the bathroom. This is where he eats the birds. His kitchen window is small but has no blinds, and his neighbours can see in. The bathroom window is dimpled glass and shows only blurs of dark and light. He is no longer sure whether the birds are helping his life force to grow. He thought they might heal his broken neck, but their small bones catching in his throat just made it feel worse. To hide his neck Renfield wears high-collared shirts and sometimes even a neck brace. He says this is because he fell off his motorcycle. None of Renfield’s customers or fellow bartenders can imagine Renfield on a motorcycle. He does not look like he could be trusted with an object traveling at 100mph.

Renfield tries to live a simple life. He still fears that he will disintegrate. He keeps a stethoscope next to the kettle and every morning while his tea brews he checks that his heart is still beating. He leaves work early and visits Western Infirmary’s A&E department trying to find the person who stole his pulmonary artery. He runs away when the nurses approach him. He suspects that his body, used to human tissue consumption, is metabolising him from the inside.

The hospital is next to the Necropolis, and this makes it difficult for Renfield. He knows that the hunters are watching him. He knows that the dead are beginning to twitch. He can feel them under his feet, making the bowels of the city shake. Renfield leans his shoulder against the wall of the Western Infirmary and tries to understand the morse code of the shuffling bodies. He thinks it cannot be a crime, this thing that he needs to do. Then he thinks that maybe it is a crime. Renfield does not want to go back to prison.

When he gets home it is nearly time for his shift at the bar, but he leaves his front door unlocked in case his upstairs neighbour wants to drink his spinal fluid. He sometimes thinks that everyone has gone to the other side and the only thing to do is to become like them. He wonders whether it is possible to buy a bow and arrow in Glasgow. It’s easy to buy ox livers from the butcher. As long as he uses a plate and cutlery, he can even eat them at the kitchen table where the neighbours can see. It’s normal to eat internal organs because everybody remembers their mothers serving up tripe. Renfield does not like the feeling of blood on his teeth.

Renfield does not talk much in the bar. He pulls pints and measures out three colours of wine. He restocks the peanuts. Always quickly, always cleanly. He thinks about going away, escaping the frozen drizzled clusters of Europe, the Cyrillic letters shushing at the edges of his mind. He thinks about the cracked red earth of Australia spreading so far and so flat that it curves away under the horizon. He thinks about sun glinting off snow and the silence of wooden walls against the Canadian mountains. But the steady siren of the Necropolis will still reach him from across the seas. He lines the pints up neatly on the bar, punctuates the row with a packet of salt and vinegar crisps.

Renfield knows that the dead must be burned. He knows that limbs never stop twitching. He knows that the burning hearts will sing out his name. He knows that he will starve if he goes back to prison because he will have nothing to tempt the birds to his window. He does not like the way that insect shells dig into his gums.

After his shift at the bar, Renfield locks up. He posts the keys through the letterbox for his boss to find in the morning and he climbs the stairs to his flat. In the kitchen Renfield finds that a bird is still fluttering in the trap he set. He digs his thumbnail into the bird’s skin-soft throat. He waits for the blood to dry on his knuckles and then he flexes them slowly. It is too dark to see, but he imagines the rusted flakes piling by his feet. He thinks about how he could not breathe in jail, about bars between him and the sky, about tempting bugs into the tears in his mattress. The hearts have begun to beat under the city and Renfield can feel the vibrations coming through the floor. They make something deep in his belly shrink. There is no more time.

The flames are redder than the sunset and the hearts have already begun singing his name.