by Adam Lowe
Becki was waving to her, and had left a bevy of art’s finest maestros and divas and ingénues to join her at the glass and steel balustrade. She slid her arm beneath Karrin’s to link them together as they stared for a moment at the Rainbow.
‘Is he here,’ Karrin whispered, finally.
Becki laughed quietly. ‘Are you really asking me that?’
‘I guess not. He’s got star billing.’
‘Karrin—understand. The Rainbow was already commissioned. And even if it wasn’t—it is special. Enjoy it for what it is. As Art. Then move on. But enough of him. What kept you? I was beginning to think you’d bailed. Cold feet again?’
Moving away from the barrier, with arms if not mind still linked with her mentor, Karrin forced herself into calm. Becki often avoided answering merely by ignoring the question, an arrogance that she, Karrin, had to ignore in turn. ‘I know Becki. I was so held up in the shop, a couple of time wasters who would not take the hint.’
‘Should have shut up shop early. God, Karrin. This is a chance for you to get out of that bloody back alley of yours and make your name.’
‘Can’t just close. You should know that. And not so much of the back alley,’ She grinned and hugged Becki’s arm. ‘I’m making a nice profit this quarter, thanks to the last two artists you sent me. Best shows I’ve had. Thanks. I really will owe you.’
‘Course you will.’ Becki grinned tugged her toward the throng, her arm still looped with Karrin’s in a gesture of sisterhood for all to see. ‘You do know I’ll collect. No matter. You’re here now. Come and meet Benny. He’s setting up a new exhibition that I think you two could really connect. I’ll set you going then it’s down to you. Circulate darling. Get your face under the right noses.’
Not advice Karrin could afford to ignore. She circulated herself to standstill and then drifted to the bar for a fresh glass to ease the next round, hugging her Blackberry to her breast like a baby. More names and contacts had gone in it tonight than she’d collected in years of slogging round the circuit on her own. Becki had really come up with the goods. She is so going to own me. Awash with so many names and faces, and so much red wine, she was more than happy to park herself in a quite corner whilst her friend did her ‘thing’ with the departing guests.
She took a fresh glass and wandered off to view one of the halls that she had not had time for yet. The party had circulated in sections covering the big Names and of course the Installations that the press always loved so much. She wanted to see the Outsider Gallery. Its one bit I have an ‘outside’ chance of ever being exhibited in. And I need to walk off this damn wine. I need a clear head. If I get half the things I’ve been promised tonight? I’ll be in there damn soon, she told herself.
She glanced at her watch. Almost one a.m. Surely Becki and her staff had kicked out the last few by now?
The two women had arranged a late supper. But at this rate it could turn out to be an early breakfast. She sipped the last of her wine and pulled a face, realising she had been clutching the glass by the bowl and turned it from room temperature to blood heat. It hit her stomach, acid and unrelenting, to join the rest of the evening’s quota.
Not good on an empty gut. She rubbed at her forehead and tried to focus on her surroundings. She had come full circle back to the top floor now and stepped out of the lift as she had at the start of the evening.
The rainbow shards claimed her attention yet again, glittering now with eerie intensity under dimming lights. Somewhere she could hear Becki’s strident tones wafting up from the atrium floor. Looking over the balcony Karrin glimpsed the last few guests being ushered toward the exit.
With their going a quiet settled and only the rainbow was left whispering in soft tinks and chinks as thick chunks of coloured glass collided in slow motion. The sound was mesmerising, doubly so in her wine induced haze, and she watched the sheets of silicate swaying for some moments without any real thoughts running through her mind. Swallowing the last of the wine in her glass regained her attention. She grimaced and ran her tongue around her front teeth to push off the gritty wine lees that lingered there. Becki needs to speak with her caterers, she thought. The wine waiters are crap.
Across the space, through the glass forest, a movement caught her attention. The lift had opened and someone stepped out. ‘Becki?’ she called. ‘Can we eat now?’
The half obscured outline paused—looked at her—turned away. She recognised it—him. ‘Russell-fucking-Willis. What the hell is he doing here now?’
Rhetorical question, she thought. Of course he’s bloody here. He’s one of Becki’s star turns. She stared at him through the evidence of his stardom, which twisted and turned between them. He was staring straight back at her his familiar face framed momentarily in a wafting section of green, pitted, glass. It distorted his features, throwing his image back at her as a rippling gargoyle. She shuddered, gripping the rail in front of her; fighting off the panic that numbed her legs and fingers and face.
Six floors below Becki was crossing the floor, her heels clipping on marble sharp and clear, pausing directly under her now, on the edges of vision waiting for the upward car. Across the void the far lift was preparing for descent.
‘Russ? What are you doing here? Hey!’ She ran around the gallery barrier, and called out to him again. ‘Russ?’
She could see him, smiling at her. Waiting. Watching. A few paces more and she would reach him. She stopped some three metres short. ‘Have you been here all evening?’ she said. ‘I didn’t see you . . . ’
‘I’ve been here all night, Kara mia, and I’ve seen you.’
‘Oh.’ She was thankful at being too shocked to blush. The idea of him watching her was creepy, which helped her raise some rapid defences. Before today she had always relapsed into the gauche student in his presence, eager for her Master’s approval. But after a year of bitterness and a lot of very expensive therapy--He was just a really creepy guy. She was an artist. She ran a successful business. She was her own person now. ‘Really?’ she said. ‘You surprise me, though I wasn’t really looking.’ That tautness around his lips was heartening. A hit. She thought. Go on you slimy bastard. Say something else. I’m ready. ‘Glad you made it,’ she added. ‘Glad you’ve arrived in fact. Nice to know someone else from our class actually has a living the way they intended. From their art.’
‘Oh, I’m here,’ he said. ‘Always will be.’ He nodded at the Rainbow. ‘Immortality. It’s what we’re all after. Right?’
‘Depends on how you go about it, . . . . So, you and Becki—she says you’re not together now.’
‘No need.’ He nodded again at his glass memorial.
Glancing at the shards Karrin had to smile. All that angst and jealousy, wondering what Becki had that she didn’t. And really? she thought. It’s nothing. He’s a user. A lying, cheating snivel-nosed loser. ‘So, good for you,’ she said aloud. ‘What next? More rainbows?’
‘No. Once the statement is made—once it’s out there—anything else can only be a reflection.’ He grasped the balustrade and looked down. ‘I have one final statement though. And I wanted you to be the messenger.’ He took a last look at her, and waving his fingers at her in mocking farewell, swung up onto a seat running along the side and stepped out into the air.
Watching him fall wasn’t like slow motion. Not as such. But she would play those few seconds on constant repeat, so that it did get to feel that way.
His hair lifted, his shoulders hunched in that odd way that they always did when he walked. One leg, then the other, arms bent and out, almost as if he were steadying himself for his descent. Almost as if he intended to catch the updraft and fly up and out of the atrium and became a part of his precious rainbow.
What he did was plummet. She turned away, stomach boiling and imagined falling with him. She did not see, but she heard him hit the ground, and his body made a curiously musical, bell-like sound. Loud, deafening, and then the black cloud came down in a high-pitched hum, as though she
was enveloped in an impenetrable, cloying, swarm of insects that wrapped around her head, as dense as velvet and cold as glass. She knew there were other sounds, voices, some close and some away off down that long black tunnel. Karrin hung in stasis, vivid glimpses of colour whisking past her in blurred gyrations. In her memory the Rainbow was forming, bursting, and reforming, over and over in kaleidoscopic tumult.
Then Becki was beside her trying to pull her hands together, and shouting at her to;
‘Stop screaming and listen’.
‘I have to get down there. He needs help,’ Karrin leaned back, struggling weakly at the hands clasping around her own.
‘I imagine he’s beyond help,’ said Becki. ‘Wait with me, Karrin. Security has everything under control. The Police will want to speak with you I think.’
‘Police? He needs ambulances, paramedics.’
‘The Police will be here for you, not him.’
‘What?’
‘I saw, Karrin. I saw what happened.’
‘But . . . ’
‘I saw what you did. I never imagined you would react that way.’
She seemed sincere. To all intents and purposes Becki was the concerned friend calming and reassuring. On the surface she was all that Karrin could want under duress, yet she had the feeling—‘Saw?’ she whispered.
‘You were arguing, Becki said. ‘Don’t you remember? And then you tried to lift him up, he fell . . . ’
‘No. No, that wasn’t the way. He climbed up.’
‘I saw, Karrin.’
It was not true. Karrin knew it. Becki had not seen her do anything, she couldn’t have seen it. She couldn’t have. ‘I need to see,’ she moaned, and ran to the stairs. Becki did not attempt to stop her.
At ground level she stopped to look at the remnants. Crimson smears ran through the gyrating swirls, marking the place where Russ had fallen. In the centre of the smears lay a cream coloured blanket; rumpled and blood soaked.
Karrin stepped forward. People were talking to her. She ignored them. They were distant, far and far away, and without words. She did not understand or need to listen to them. They were nothing. Droning insects returned to keep the people away. High and insistent, breaking through to the centre of her skull and messing with her senses.
A few steps closer, and she could see smears of blood all around her. Spatters had streaked the closer stanchions and gouts of scarlet gloop were pooled nearest to the blanket in thick, viscous lumps—looking more like jammy rice than blood spill. She swallowed hard and forced her bile back down her throat. Yet she could not help herself from staring.
Someone was next to her, holding her arm. Becki.
‘Where has he gone?’ Karrin turned dull eyes toward her oldest friend. ‘Where . . . ’
‘Probably the ambulance guys already scraped him up,’ Becki replied. ‘The little cockroach was still breathing when I got to him. He wasn’t for long. He’s dead, Karrin.’
‘Poor Russ. I never thought he’d . . . ’
‘I saw, Karrin. I read all those emails you sent him so I know you wanted him dead. No one will blame you. I can’t blame you. Me least of all.’
‘No. He jumped.’
‘Karrin. I saw,’ Becki replied. ‘I saw what you did.’
‘So the Police are here? It’s not fair Becki. I never did it. Believe me. I never killed him. You have to know that. Please Becki. Help me. Please.’
Becki glanced around her. ‘Let’s get you somewhere safe, shall we? Then we can think.’
The familiar face before her was wavering, the voice distant, and through it there was something Karrin felt she should be doing, had to be doing. Something she should be saying—to someone—about something. ‘Me?’ she mumbled. ‘What happened?’
‘I saw,’ Becki said. ‘But they don’t have to know, do they?’
Nothing works like bad publicity to make yourself a name in art. From here in her own rooms she could earn a mint. Not that she would ever get to spend that much of it. There was little to spend it on in a private and very secure nursing home. She could paint all she wanted, and sell almost everything, and no one ever knew what she did—what Becki said she did.
She has to be right, Karrin thought. If I could remember, then it would all be good. Maybe I could get out of here? If I could ever see what went before that bloody blanket. If I painted as Camera obscura, seeing what went before.
Her subject matter seldom changed. Rainbows over red boiling sunsets. Rainbows over deep grey seas. Rainbows over cemeteries and rooftops. Time and again she re-assembled those images from her black tunnel, searching for that memory and always failing. It was gone, lost over the rainbow. Somewhere she would never find it. Not in this life.
She even painted him, occasionally. She didn’t need to try remembering his face, because he came to see her . . . when no one was there. Mostly he came to peer through the window, smiling that crooked smile, and mouthing words she could never quite hear. Sometimes he followed Becki when she came to visit and stood behind her; watching and grinning.
‘He’s there Becki. I tell the Doctors, but they won’t believe me and now nor do you.’
‘No, of course not. Why would we?’ Becki patted Russ’s arm. ‘He’s dead, after all . . . Aren’t you dear? I know, because I saw. I saw what you did.’
Jan Edwards is a writer with more than 30 published stories, plus articles, poetry and reviews. She is an editor at the award-winning Alchemy Press. She has a degree in English Literature with Creative Writing and is Co-chair of the Renegade Writers group. But you might also know her as a Reiki Master.
Play Time
by Marie O’Regan
Tommy stood still, head cocked to one side, listening to the night-time noises of the playground. By day these places were full of the sounds of children squealing with delight, maybe crying at some mishap—a fall, or a bang to the head or knee, perhaps an argument with a friend or a tussle with a bully. But overall playgrounds were happy places, full of joy. Even their name showed that to be true.
Night-time was different. By night the only sound was the wind moaning through the creak of the swing’s chains and the whispering of the leaves on the trees—the slow sigh of the night’s chill as the playground waited for morning to come and banish the darkness. That was all the noises could be, he decided. He’d listened to, and catalogued, each of these sounds, one by one, until he was satisfied, huddled as small as he could make himself: a small dark shadow on the last swing on the row.
He sighed, wishing it was earlier. There was no-one left to play with—all had gone home for their dinner, full of the day’s adventures and ready for sleep to claim them; only to release them in the morning, eager for more. Their mothers had come for them, reducing their number by degrees until he was the only one left. He eased his weight back and kicked off with his feet, letting the swing carry him gently backward—he wasn’t sure where his mother was; and it was late. Shouldn’t she be here by now?, his mind whispered, and he told it to shush. She’ll be here. She’ll come.
He tilted his head at a new sound—one unexpected at this hour. There it was again, the high-pitched tinkling of a girl’s laughter. He craned his neck to look behind him into the bushes, then scanned the rest of the playground, but could see no-one. Digging his heels into the earth below him, he brought the swing to a standstill, quieting the creak of the chain against the crossbar. A sudden gust of wind whispered through the trees, and errant leaves danced in the air before him. Tommy . . . Now he knew he was imagining things, because the wind couldn’t know his name. Footsteps skittered off to his left, and he whirled around to see what was there. The sodium light guttered fitfully, barely illuminating a small circle around it, but it was enough. A shadow was cutting off part of the lit circle—a girl–shaped shadow, from what he could see. Boys didn’t have pigtails. Maybe it’s not pigtails, his mind whispered again. Maybe it’s horns! He whimpered, and this time the laughter wasn’t just in his head. It rang throughout the p
layground, and Tommy saw a light come on in a house behind the park.
‘Silly, girls don’t have horns.’
Tommy gasped—and felt icy fingers play his spine. The voice—and the pigtails, apparently—belonged to the girl standing at the edge of the light, staring at him as if he’d said something stupid. He hadn’t, had he? He was only thinking.
The girl grinned at him, then, and he knew, he just knew, that she could hear what he was thinking—even if she said nothing about it.
He took a deep breath before asking, ‘Who are you?’
‘Who do you think I am?’
Tommy frowned. ‘That’s kind of a stupid question,’ he said. ‘How am I supposed to know that?’
The girl moved back a little, so that all he could see was her eyes. The rest of her stood in darkness, but her eyes glowed with yellow light, and oh, how they danced.
‘I guess that’s true.’ She moved a step closer to him, and the wind screamed. ‘My name’s Mary.’
‘You’re out kind of late, Mary.’
‘So are you,’ she retorted, and she inched a step closer, twisting the cloth of her dress in her fists. ‘Shouldn’t your mother have come for you by now?’ Her skin was pale, her mouth pinched—she looked so cold.
Tommy looked around at the gate on the far side of the playground, and sighed. No one was there. ‘Yeah, she should.’ He looked at Mary once more, his face hopeful. ‘Maybe she got delayed, met someone . . . you know, got talking.’ It wouldn’t be the first time his mother had been a little late, delayed by another mother who wanted to chat; but it was never more than a few minutes, and she always ran so fast to get to him, so he wouldn’t worry. He looked towards the gate once more, hoping he’d see her racing towards him, her red hair flying back in the wind, showing him her relieved smile when she saw him waiting. There was nothing.
‘Kinda late, though,’ Mary offered. Her voice shook, and Tommy wondered just how long she’d been waiting here. ‘I mean, it’s dark.’