Flash Fiction #8: A Senseless Crime

 

Anya stands in the patio doorway, gazing out into the rainy garden.  I wonder what she makes of it all, oblivious as she is to the menacing sound of thunder, the shrill wail of the wind.  Can she still appreciate the violence of the storm, its fierce and godlike nature?  Or does her soundproof world render everything peaceful, benign?  Her slender silhouette has a stillness to it, a serenity, as if the absence of one sense has freed her from distraction, tension, whatever it is that leads me to constantly, nervously fidget.  Our flimsy deck chairs jerk and dance across the lawn, tumbling and rolling apart only to collide again.

 She doesn't hear me approach, has no idea that I'm there until it's too late, until my right arm is wrapped tight around her waist and my left hand is over her mouth, cradling her jaw, caressing her throat.  She moans, and it is a hollow sound, unable as she is to convey feeling through her voice.  I carry her to the bedroom and she expresses in other ways her delight at me taking her by surprise when I wasn't due home for hours.  It is a game we play often.

Later, Anya brews some tea in the kitchen, wearing nothing but my shirt.  She carries the cups back to bed and together we lie there in silence, drinking and dozing.  Soon Anya is fast asleep, but I can't seem to drift off – the foul weather outside still rages, and I feel restless in the pit of my stomach.  I carefully ease myself off the bed and get dressed.  Things to do are definitely in short supply; I don't much fancy having a drink, and going for a drive on a day like this would be sheer stupidity. 

I content myself for a while with flicking through television channels, then scanning the first page of a paperback over and over.  The restless feeling returns and I find myself pacing, itching for I don't know what.  The sound of the rain on the roof, constantly hammering, is starting to drive me mad – for once, I envy Anya.  There's a girl who'll never know a sleepless night.

The doorbell rings once, then a second time only a moment later.  It’s Laurel from work.  Laurel whose pencil skirts know exactly what they’re doing.  Laurel who laughs louder and longer than is necessary any time a man she likes tells a joke.  Laurel who I fucked two weeks ago and haven’t been able to get out of my head since.

She smells like the rain.

“I missed you,” she says, stepping over the threshold and out of the downpour before I can invite her in or tell her to get the hell out of here.

“My wife is asleep upstairs,” I whisper hoarsely, by way of response.

“Don’t worry baby,” she smiles.  “We can be quiet.  We shouldn’t need to be, anyway – right?”

“Please go,” I say.  “I’ll see you tomorrow–”

“I can’t wait,” she tells me, and presses the full length of her drenched body against mine.  I feel her cold wetness blotting through my clothes, and a shiver goes through me as her thin arms circle around my waist.

Her lips are slick, salty against mine.  When her hand works its way inside my boxers, it is clammy and moist.  My cock stiffens despite my resistance, and all I can think of is my sleeping wife above us, separated only by wooden beams.  I suddenly want Laurel out of here, far away from our empty mugs and battered lawn furniture.

But she won’t go.  At least, not until I give her what she wants.

I push her against the now-closed door, reach inside her raincoat, under her dress, and yank down her knickers – no doubt expensive, probably ripped now.  I push myself inside her and she squeals with an almost childlike delight.  It pierces my eardrums and I wince as I thrust into her again.  Knowing that Anya can’t hear it doesn’t make me feel any better.

It’s over quickly.  Not soon enough.  Laurel insists on kissing me hard before she leaves, as if to leave her imprint on me, a memory of her that will not fade or wash away.  I try not to grimace as I close the door behind her.

I check myself in the hallway mirror: no lipstick smudges, no unsightly love bites.  The perfect crime.  I decide a shower is a good idea, and head up to the bathroom.  Anya and I meet on the stairs.  Her lips part as if to say something, but when Anya chooses to speak it will be with her hands.  She takes in the state of me: hair disheveled, clothes covered in damp patches, flies still down.  My wife is deaf, not stupid.  When she asks me everything with just that one look, I can't even shake my head to deny it – I smell like the rain.

  

Book Review: Blueeyedboy by Joanne Harris

Joanne Harris rocketed to fame with her culinary fairy tale Chocolat, which is to date the title that readers associate her with.  What many people seem to be unaware of, sadly, is her work in the seedy thriller genre.  While her latest offering, blueeyedboy, claims on the cover to be "From The Author of Chocolat", it has much more in common with her darker novel Gentlemen & Players.  For one, both books are set in Malbry, Yorkshire - a not entirely happy place.  St Oswald's, the grammar school that acted as chessboard and battlefield in Gentlemen & Players, is obliquely mentioned, although it is by no means necessary to have read that book in order to enjoy this twisted little fable.

B.B. is approaching middle age and still lives with his mother.  His inner life is played out in comfortable anonymity on the Internet, where under the nickname blueeyedboy he blogs about his troubled past.  His posts are part fiction, part confession, almost always revolving around the same themes: his formidable mother, daydreams of murder, and a growing fixation with a girl in a red duffel coat.  A girl that blueeyedboy seems to know...

To say anything else would be to give away a number of the twists and turns in this novel.  It is safe to say that Harris is on form here, taking pleasure in yanking the rug out from under the reader time and time again, and populating her sad story with a host of entirely believable characters, from the mannered Dr Peacock to the ridiculous hippy Feather, and angry, troubled shells like Nigel and Bethan.

The unreliable narrator here brought to my mind American Psycho, and while Harris's style couldn't be more different from Bret Easton Ellis's, blueeyedboy does make a suitably British companion piece to that novel.

Top 5... Books With WTF? Endings

Have you ever enjoyed a novel, only to feel let down by a weak, poorly thought out, or simply insane ending?  As if the author gave up on making sense and decided to let his pot-smoking dog write the final chapter instead.  Some writers base an entire novel around an ending that doesn't make much sense - a prime example of which is Jeffrey Eugenides and The Virgin Suicides.  Below are five examples of how to do it properly: these books will leave you baffled, bemused and scratching your head, but ultimately grateful for the experience.  I've included no spoilers, so that you may go on to enjoy these mad, mad stories for yourself.

5. I'm Not Scared by Niccolò Ammaniti

This novel's opening premise is as bizarre as its ending - the central character, a young boy in 1940s Italy, discovers a hole in the ground which conceals a captive child.  Initially, I expected the story to play out like a fairy tale - is the boy a monster, or some kind of spirit?  Neither - the explanation is much more logical, although no less surprising.

4. The Snow Garden by Christopher Rice

The main characters in Rice's second novel all see their freshman year of college as a chance to reinvent themselves and shed the troubles of their former lives.  This means that, as a reader, you grow to empathise with people who are not what they seem.  The climactic scenes in this book are among the most bizarre, grotesque and well-written endings that I have ever read.

3. Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis

I'm pretty sure that you could include most novels from Bret Easton Ellis's oeuvre here, from the abrupt, mid-sentence ending of The Rules of Attraction to the peculiar revelations of American Psycho.  But Lunar Park is my personal choice for this list, simply as it is the most frustrating.  It seems to switch genre every couple of pages, transforming from a standard Bret Easton Ellis sex-and-drug-fuelled romp into a ghost story, a missing child drama, a horror tale, and ultimately, pure meta-fiction.  I'll admit to not very much liking this book for the entire time I was reading it - that is, until its poetic, redemptive final few pages.

2. The Accidental by Ali Smith

Amber, a most peculiar woman, arrives out of nowhere to disrupt a troubled family's holiday.  The husband assumes she is a friend of his wife, and the wife assumes the opposite.  The truth is, nobody knows who Amber is or where she came from.  She inserts herself into the daily lives of their children: young, curious Astrid and anxious teenager Magnus.  For a little while, you suspect this is going to be one of those stories where a magical stranger changes a family's lives for the better - but nothing could be further from the truth.  The final few chapters of The Accidental confound the reader so much that it is impossible to resist the urge to go back and read from the beginning, in the hopes that you missed some kind of clue that will give this book some kind of meaning.

1. Thirteen by Sebastian Beaumont

If you're a fan of the films of David Lynch, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.  The central character is a taxi driver who has spent so long working the night shift that he feels disconnected to real life.  Into his fractious world walks Valerie, a terminally ill woman who lives at 13 Wish Road.  As the driver's hold on reality begins to crumble, he discovers that there is no Number 13 Wish Road - the street ends at 12.  Soon, he is meeting more people like Valerie - individuals that seem to know him, even though he has never met them before.  Thus begins a surreal, riveting journey into madness.

Flash Fiction #7: Two Minutes

It's surprisingly easy getting your hands on a pregnancy test when civilisation has all but crumbled around you.  Pharmacies are one of the first places to get looted - people stocking up on painkillers, bandages, caffeine pills, cough syrup, fucking contact lenses - but nobody's in a real hurry to pee on a stick.

I'd witnessed the end of the world along with a handful of others, fled my house without even a backwards glance.  I'd adapted to a life underground, only returning to the surface on salvage missions with Ty.  I'd quickly schooled myself in the arts of self defense and interrogation.  I've earned, quite rightfully, a reputation among our new community as quite the hard-ass.  But none of that prepared me for the agonising, seemingly endless two minute wait.

Two minutes.  Long enough to ponder what the hell I was going to do if it was positive.  If I was going to be relieved if it turned out negative - after all, it's not like bringing a child into this world would be the responsible thing to do.  I hadn't said a thing to Ty - at this very moment he thought I was fetching more medical supplies, not crouching in a doorless restroom, wishing I still had a watch so I could track the passing seconds.

Could I be a mother?  Before the world ended, I'd always just assumed I'd make the decision when I was older and more mature.  While life had forced me to grow up a hell of a lot faster than I'd intended, I still wasn't sure whether I had what it took.  Kids were hard work, apocalypse aside.

Ty would be thrilled, though.  We've known each other for a year, and been together for less than that.  But I know he would make a great father.  I've seen him protect strangers, horrible people who didn't deserve saving.  But he did anyway.  Because that's who he is.  If they ever do manage to rebuild, to launch an Earth 2.0, Ty would make an excellent blueprint.  Me, not so much.

Two minutes.

Of course, it was positive.  Life just wasn't complicated enough these days.

"Little Death" Extract 6: Haunted (continued)

"Your coffee, sir."

"Thanks," Zach takes the proffered cup with one hand and digs a folded, Xeroxed photo out of his jeans with the other.  "I don't suppose you've seen this girl around, have you?"

The teenager behind the counter squints at the photo for a couple of seconds, then shrugs.

"Don't recognise her.  But we get tons of people in here."

"Alright, well thanks anyway."

The sheer logistics of the task before him begin to dawn on Zach.  How many people will he have to flash this picture to before he can say in good conscience that Georgina isn't in Bellevue?  When he'd first accepted this peculiar job, he had planned to check into the hotel room that the Forresters had booked on his behalf and spend a couple of days drinking the local liquor before reporting back that there was, well, nothing to report.  It wasn't like he owed Quentin and Eleanor anything.  But his own morbid curiosity had reared its head, and first thing this morning he had located the phonebooth from which the Forresters' mystery calls had been made.  To his misfortune, the culprit had not been loitering nearby with a placard that said "It Was Me", and so Zach had taken to canvassing.  If he found no trace of Georgina after a few days, he told himself, he would return to Florida, cash his cheque and hop on a plane to Jamaica.

“So you’re saying you don’t believe in ghosts?”  The urgent, almost shrill nature of the question makes Zach falter on his way to the door, unsure if it is intended for him.

“Not necessarily,” a second, lower voice says.  “I just don’t think places are haunted in the way that you think.”  The speaker is a pretty young blonde.  Her companion is a swan-necked redhead with a pixie cut.  Zach backtracks and sits as inconspicuously as he can at the table next to theirs, facing the front of the cafe so that their conversation takes place in his peripheral vision.

“What do you mean?”  Asks Thin Red.

“I just imagine that if the dead were going to hang around, it wouldn’t be places they were drawn to,” says Honey Blonde.  “It would be people, don’t you think?”

“Not places, but people...  People are haunted...”  Thin Red says, seemingly rolling the concept around on her tongue.  “I like it.”

“But either way, to answer your original question – no.  Truthfully, I do not think there is anything wrong with our place, or with you, that couldn’t be cured by a couple of sleeping pills and a glass of whiskey.”

The trace of impatience in her voice makes Zach smirk.  This girl speaks sense, and he gets the impression from their brief exchange that she is often talking this girl down.  He is taken off guard by a sharp, unexpected pang; how long has it been since he had this kind of casual, throwaway conversation?  Out of nowhere, he is filled with longing for Jacksonville, for dinner with friends, for drinks and human company in general.  He’d withdrawn from everyone and everything after William died, and one by one his friends had stopped trying to reach him.  Not that there were many of them at all; he and Will had always been something of a closed club.  Except, of course, for when it came to Georgina.

“Well either way, that dreamcatcher didn’t work one bit.  You might as well return it, get your money back.”

Honey Blonde hums noncommittally, and drains the contents of her cup before picking up her bag and standing.

“Are you working tonight?”  Thin Red asks, following her out of the booth.

“Yeah, the new girl quit so I’m stepping in.  Although I’m not sure it counts as quitting when she only showed up for a handful of her shifts.”

“Excuse me,” Zach says to the two girls, and they both pause, turning to him in unison.  “Sorry for interrupting.  I was just wondering if...”  He fishes the folded picture out of his pocket yet again.  “...If either of you has seen this girl?”

They both give the photo their full attention, more than the cretin behind the counter had done.  The redhead squints in such a way that suggests she would be better off wearing glasses, but is prevented from doing so by vanity.

“No, sorry,” she says, and the blonde shakes her head.

“Nevermind,” he says.  “Thanks anyway.”  These words already feel carved onto his tongue after just one morning. 

“Are you alright?”  The blonde asks as he turns away.

“Peachy,” he says, with a smile that isn’t convincing enough for either of them.

***

The rest of the day is spent at the police station.  He is told by the desk clerk that somebody will be with him shortly.  “Shortly”, in Tennessee, apparently translates to “never”.  After he has watched the clock for what feels like an eternity, after he has examined every pamphlet on the coffee table and read every poster on every wall of the reception area, Zach goes back to the woman behind the desk.

“All I want is for somebody to take a look at this photo,” he says, holding it out to her.  “I just need to know if anybody has seen her.”

The impatience with which the woman looks at him suggests that Quentin Forrester’s constant calls have made them intolerant to out-of-town missing persons cases.

“I’m sorry sir,” she tells him.  “I wish I could help.  But I’m telling you, honestly, there are no officers here.  There’s been a...”  Her previously hard face creases and softens as she holds back a sob.  “Something terrible has happened.  To a girl.  A local girl.”

Her message is clear.  They cannot spare a man, or a single moment, for Georgina.  And Zach silently agrees.  He mumbles something that might be an apology, or a condolence, and leaves.

Back at the hotel, he tries to sleep, but the sun is still painfully bright as it descends behind the houses.  The sky is orange and violet, like that of some alien world, when he leaves his room again, driven out by pangs of hunger.

The manager at the hotel had recommended a place just a few blocks away, and Zach is grateful for the closeness.  Despite having done little more than sit since he got up this morning, he is exhausted.  As he approaches the restaurant, he spies the pretty blonde from the cafe this morning through the window, working.  Not a complete write-off, then, he thinks of the day.

His shoulder collides with that of somebody hurrying out of the entrance.

“Sorry,” he begins, just as the other man barks:

“Watch yourself!”

Their eyes meet for a second before the man turns away, striding off, and Zach’s heart leaps into his mouth.  The face looking back at him had been a perfect mirror image.

“William,” he utters, before logic or reason can tarnish what he has seen.  But his double has already disappeared around a street corner.

“William!”  He shouts, running after him.  His legs are weak when he turns the corner, but there is nobody in sight.  What had he been wearing?  Is there a doorway he might have vanished into?  Somebody gets out of a parked car, and Zach almost jumps on them, before forcing himself to think rationally.  What would he ask?  Had they seen anybody around who looked exactly like him?  Somebody who had been dead for over a year?

“I’m losing it,” he whispers, and the sheer act of talking to himself again makes him cry out in despair.  He sinks to his knees on the pavement, face burning with rage and the threat of tears.

Not places, but people.  Laura’s words from earlier that day sound in his ears.  People are haunted, says a voice in his head, and now he can’t stop hearing it, echoing and ceaseless, like a prophecy fulfilled.