The Oeuvre

by Greg James

  What’s she done to me, he thought, and what’s she going to do to me?

  Police sirens howled by once more, low and high. Called the bizzies, he thought, maybe that’s all she’s done. She’s caught me, and called them in. She’s just a child. What the fuck was I thinking?

  but the eye-shadow ...

  The bedroom door opened; tentatively at first, then with a firmer hand.

  “Jim? Jim?” she whispered.

  “Pine ... I can’t move.”

  “Good.”

  “No, Pine, no. It’s not good. Bloody ain’t.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  Jim could see her illuminated by the light spilling through from the hallway. She’d been in her mother’s closet. The thin negligee she was wearing showed him too much. He wished that he could’ve closed his eyes. Her lips were painted as well as her eyes now. The effect was as crude as crayon, made by a child trying to be an adult.

  “What did you give me?”

  “Doxacurium chloride. It lasts a long time, that’s what Dad told me. He’s a doctor.”

  And you’re a child, Jim wanted to scream, you shouldn’t be doing this. But he couldn’t scream a word. The paralysis was spreading to his vocal cords. There was a tear in his eye. It never fell. A little finger lightly wiped it away. No, please god, no, he screamed inside, this isn’t me. This isn’t happening. I’m not here. This can’t be about to happen.

  But it was happening.

  He felt the duvet being turned aside. He saw her as a small ghost climbing on top of him. He heard her giggling in the dark. She was astride him, rubbing herself against him through the silken negligee she’d stolen from her mother’s wardrobe. His boxer shorts were still on. He could taste bile in his throat and feel a sickness as white as her eyes burrowing into his stomach. She rubbed against him more, but nothing was happening. Jim wept joy and horror. She didn’t know what she was doing. Her grunts and cries were an imitation of sounds she’d heard her mother and father make.

  Is this what she thinks love is?

  He saw her as chiaroscuro; the dark of the room and what she was doing, the light of the hallway and where sanity was waiting, abandoned. Maybe this will be over soon, he thought, she’ll get bored with this game and go. Leave me in peace.

  It was then that he felt her fingering the waistband of his boxer shorts.

  She wants to take them off.

  His throat made a sound he’d heard before, of harsh, dried-out membranes scraping together. He could weep no more. His tears were dry and empty. There was a rustling as she took off her mother’s negligee. In the dim light, Jim saw her as she was; a child with eyes that were desperate and hungry for adult things. She reached again for the waistband of his boxer shorts. It was her touch that did it – the soft touch of a child’s hand.

  It broke the spell.

  Jim sat up violently. His hands were fists. He hit her. She flew. Their eyes met briefly and hers were wet with apology, clean of darkness. It wasn’t his fault, her eyes said, it wasn’t hers either. It was something else, working this scene from off-stage. Her hair was spun light. Her open mouth was crowned with silver. Her flailing hands and feet were barely-lined and uncalloused; unbroken.

  In the moment that came after, the world broke her.

  Jim clenched all over at the brutal sound. He went to her, but her eyes were already empty. Her mouth was a moue. There was no blood. Her head had come down hard on the varnished floor of the bedroom. He could feel bone moving loosely beneath the skin. He picked her up and laid her in the bed. He drew the duvet over her body, making her decent. He left the negligee where it had fallen. He didn’t want to touch it. He closed her mermaid eyes and gently kissed her brow as if it were a kiss goodnight. Jim had a feeling this was something her Mum and Dad never did. Had never done. Past tense now.

  He found his clothes folded on a chair in the corner. He dressed in the dark. As he was getting ready to go, he saw a flicker of movement through a gap in the curtains. He moved closer and peered through the parting.

  The fog had cleared a little. He could see across the street. There was a street lamp and in its stuttering glow, he saw a figure: tall and thin, dressed in a dirty overcoat, with its face bowed in shadow. It was holding hands with someone else. Pine stood next to the figure. Her hand was small and pure in its long, mottled fingers. She was waving at Jim. Her mouth was moving, saying something.

  He squinted, concentrating on the motion of her lips.

  ... it’s okay ... it’s done ...

  The figure beside her raised its face, letting the lamp-light fall on its teeth and mouth, illuminating the perished nuggets of its eyes. Jim looked away. He turned around. She was still there. Dead and silent in her parents’ bed. He turned back to the window, looked out again. She was gone. The tall, thin figure was gone.

  I need to be gone as well, he thought.

  He was answered by a further, distant howl of police sirens.

  Where could he go now?

  I have to go somewhere. Everyone has to go somewhere – but where?

  *

  The fog embraced him as he left Pine’s house, closing the door hard behind him; locking in the memories. The greyness had grown thick once more. He could see clearly up to a few feet before everything was lost. He walked into it as a beggar blind.

  He didn’t find life on the streets.

  He found more death: animals – dogs and cats. Dead on the street. Some together. Some alone. They all looked like they had been running from something. Their eyes were glazed and open. Their teeth were showing; frozen in the fury of fight or flight. Their fur was damp and matted from condensation. There were birds in the gutter too; fallen from the trees that lined the streets here. He’d wandered, somehow, into the better part of town but the way ahead was still as dark and grey as before. Jim wondered if it would ever end; the fog extended away as far as the eye could see. It flowed and shifted like a ponderous sea. Occasional houses and trees broke through the shroud, trailing faint lianas.

  After some time had passed, he saw something welcome, at last.

  There was a light ahead; comfortingly yellow and artificial.

  Jim allowed himself a smile as he headed briskly towards the glow. It was lodged in a shadow. Jim recognised it – The Golden Hind: an old man pub with its time-chewed oak reeking of tobacco, stale beer and piss.

  “When the going gets tough,” he said, “the tough go down the pub.”

  Chapter Three

  Jim sat in the pub and waited to die. Nothing happened, so he carried on drinking. There weren’t many in – quiet night. He looked around the pub; at its ageing woodwork, worn-thin carpet and frosted windows. The intricate, opaque designs on the glass gave the illusion of the fog and shadows dancing as one outside. The pale and the dark coming together, flowing into and out of each other. Though Jim could see there was much more of the dark out there and that it would overcome the pale in the end.

  ... like Pine’s hand wrapped in the fingers of the tall, thin man ...

  He sipped at his pint of bitter. It was rough. He’d never liked the stuff much, but it was cheap and all he could afford. He’d struck it lucky with the jeans. There’d been a fiver in the pocket; enough to cover the pint and leave him with some change. Now all he had to do was find a bus stop, wait, get aboard and get out of town – make it as far away from here as he could. But not before he’d finished his drink.

  There was no blood on his hands this time – he could take a minute. Not too long though; the barmaid was watching him. Her skin was stained deep orange by fake tan lotion, just like the woman from the Job Centre. Her hair was glossy hazelnut done up in an oversprayed bun as well, it must be the fashion, and she was wearing a very low-cut crop-top. Her eyes caught on Jim. He averted his gaze from the bulge of her cleavage, trying not to notice the dark nipples unconcealed by a bra. Nothing left to the imagination there – but that was the idea, wasn’t it? Get the punters in. Keep them happy. Give them something
nice and fit to look at. That said, she looked at Jim like he was dogshit she’d just scraped from her shoes.

  There was one other person in the bar. Jim was sure there’d been a few others beforehand – slouching glimpses flickered through his mind. Eyes that were not eyes, more like holes torn in wet paper. Long fingers made of bone rather than meat scraping at pint glasses and unvarnished table-tops. Frayed overcoats clinging to bent-thin shoulders. He shook his head, banishing the images.

  There was one other person in the bar – an old man. He was bearded and sitting directly across from Jim at another small, round table. It was just the right size for one. He wasn’t expecting anyone else. The old man sat back in his chair, his eyes wandering to and from the barmaid’s bosom. He was clad in old boots, tired jeans and a scruffy fleece that merged with the white scraggle of his beard and untrimmed hair. Trembling fingers adorned with cheap rings nursed a similar pint of bitter.

  He looked at Jim.

  Jim looked away. He drowned his attention in the half-finished pint before him; watching the head settle, thin and dissolve. Those eyes. Shit. He looked up, briefly, and saw the old man was no longer looking his way. Thank fuck for that. Taking a deep breath, he polished off the rest of the pint and returned to the bar. The coins in his hand were warm from how much he’d been holding them. They were the best thing he’d had in his hands for a while. A couple of quid left – enough for the bus. Just enough.

  He could get out of here now, or he could spend it on another pint.

  The old man was still there, with those eyes, but they were no longer looking at Jim. One more for the road would do it. The barmaid pulled the pint for him, not speaking, and gave him his change. A few coppers. Oh well, Jim thought, it’s okay, it’s done.

  He sat back down and wondered how long the old man would stay for. He didn’t want to leave the pub before him. He didn’t know why. He did. Those eyes. They would be after him as soon as he turned his back on them. He could feel it. He’d be a dead man the minute he stepped outside. Jim looked back to the barmaid.

  She didn’t know it, he thought, but she was keeping him alive just by being here.

  *

  It was later and the old man was still there. The barmaid was sitting at another table. She’d taken her wedges off and put her feet up on the table. Her made-up face underlit by the light from her smartphone’s screen. Her thumbs tapped silently at it; texting, Facebooking, something or other – ignoring Jim and the old man. The bar stood abandoned. The pub was dead and empty. No-one else had come in. Jim was faithfully waiting for someone to go out, but the old man showed no sign of moving. Jim’s eyes flicked back to the barmaid’s legs, crossed at the ankles on the table. They were bare and shapely. He saw himself walking over there and taking a bite out of her firm calves.

  “Yeah, mate? You gotta problem?”

  Her eyes shone with the reflected light of her phone. She uncrossed her ankles, lowered her legs from the table and rested her feet on top of her shoes.

  “Fuckin’ perv. My god, man.”

  Jim didn’t say anything. It was best not to. Best for her to remember him as just another perv than someone more distinctive. Someone she might think could murder a woman and a teenage girl. Jim took a hard mouthful of the bitter, screwing his eyes when he gagged on it and swallowed. The pain was good. He deserved it. They were both dead. He could feel their blood under his fingernails and in the creases of his skin – down in the dark places with the rest of his bad memories.

  Another hated mouthful and his eyes were stinging. He shouldn’t have come in here. He shouldn’t have wasted his money. He shouldn’t have come into town today. There must’ve been a moment when he could have realised, when he could have turned his back on this and said no. But when was it; that moment? And how to remember now? Not that he could turn the clock back, step into yesterday and reclaim it as his own.

  No, I can’t do that, he thought, it’s done.

  This is now. I have to do something.

  He did nothing.

  The hours went by. His pint glass grew warmer and emptier. The fog remained outside, and the old man was there; sitting at that table, with those eyes, waiting.

  It grew even later and the barmaid was gone. Nobody had come in to relieve her shift, so she’d left them to it; Jim and the old man. The old man sat on at his table. His pint going flat in front of him. There’s always one, Jim thought, a local mental who comes to the pub for company. That’s all he wants: other people around him. How the fuck could I’ve been scared of him earlier?

  Bloody imagining things, I am.

  But he didn’t care about the old man so much now he was drunk and had her on his mind. He could smell the sharp, lingering fragrance of the barmaid’s cheap perfume in the air. Images started to shape themselves behind his eyes. Her body pressed against his. She had some nice curves on her. Jim could feel his cock stirring, and the urge to pull her closer. He saw Pine emerge for a moment from the alcoholic blur. Thoughts and feelings of sex should’ve fled from his mind. But they didn’t.

  “I wouldn’t get too close to me if I were you,” he breathed as the barmaid leaned in to taste his mouth.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Bad things. Dark places. I’m not safe. I’m guilty. I’d stay away if I were you.”

  “What if I don’t want to?” she asked.

  She thought this was a game. Jim opened his mouth to say something else but she sealed it with her own lips, and flicked her tongue inside. She was a woman; a grown, young woman. This was okay. She wasn’t Pine. Through the hormonal fog, Jim thought he saw the old man getting to his feet.

  Go on, mate, he thought, fuck off and give us some privacy.

  Her fingers were inside the stolen jeans, stroking Jim’s neglected cock. She peeled back the foreskin slowly, fingering the corona as she did so, slowly easing him towards hardness.

  Jim could hear the pub doors opening and closing. The old man was gone – good.

  “No, not that,” he said.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  He was already slick with a film of pre-cum and her teasing was becoming firmer, harder, more urgent, bringing him to the edge.

  “The other,” Jim said, “I want the other.”

  She smiled. Her head went down. Jim felt her lips close around him, and her tongue wetting the length of his cock. He was close – hard and trembling. Here it came. A rush of brightness. Pale and dark. One and the other, flowing together. The moment. The precipice. The abyss. Falling into it. Being consumed. Something good happened in Jim Hendrice’s life, just once, and then it was gone. He came hard in her mouth, and spent long minutes breathing as she licked away and swallowed it all down.

  “You see? Wasn’t that good? I’m here for you, Jim. Don’t worry. I’m not a dream. I’m real.”

  He’d not told her his name. Jim opened his eyes, looked down, and he saw the face of the old man there leering from between his legs. His hands were resting on Jim’s bare thighs and he could see the fingers. The same long, thin fingers with dirty nails that once snatched at his cock through a glory hole.

  Jim’s face darkened.

  His hands were at the dirty old man’s throat. The fingers clenching hard and the thumbs pressing down into the windpipe. The old man gagged on the pressure, and started to throw weak punches and kicks. The table and chair crashed to the ground. Jim and the old man went down together, rolling in the dust and grime. Jim could feel the grimace that was twisting his own face, and saw it mirrored in the old man’s.

  “You cunt,” Jim shouted, “you vicious, evil cunt.”

  The old man tried to get free; spitting and writhing like a possessed thing, but Jim was strong, too strong, and it was there inside him. He wanted to kill this cunt. No two ways about it. There were screams that seemed to be coming from all around him as he felt one of the old man’s kicks connect with his abdomen, missing his balls, and his filthy fingers managed to scratch livid lines down one side of
Jim’s face.

  Vicious was right.

  Then, there were hands on both of them, dragging them apart. Jim let go of the old man’s throat. He recognised the screams that were coming from all around.

  Police sirens.

  Shit.

  Voices speaking; reading him his rights.

  He remained silent.

  The boys in blue were cuffing him; he felt cold circles fasten over his wrists. He looked up and saw Pine for a moment, somewhere, somehow. Her frail cheeks were streaked with tears, and the way she looked at him wasn’t good.

  *

  It was stuffy and tasted of bad things inside the police car; dead, bad things. Jim didn’t like it. He also didn’t like being next to the old man. He stank like shit. The coppers sat in front. Jim hadn’t seen their faces, he was sure of that, but he could see they were a man and a woman. The man drove. The woman talked.

  “So, you lads had one too many tonight then, eh?”

  Jim shrugged and said nothing.

  “Taking your right to silence seriously? Fair enough. You’ll get to sleep it off at the station.”

  Jim shook his head, sighing through his teeth. He couldn’t go to the station. They’d know about the deaths. His fingerprints were on the knife that’d killed the Job Centre woman. He must’ve left something at Pine’s as well. He needed to get away, to get out of here.

  “Settle down back there,” the woman said, not turning around, “don’t make us go harder on you than we need to be.”

  Her laugh was a hollow sound; an echo inside empty space. Headlights flared ahead and the windscreen became a white mirror. Jim saw the faces of the man and the woman illuminated as bare continents of unbroken flesh. They had no faces.

  “Fucking hell.”

  The dark and the fog returned.

  “I said settle down back there, I mean it.”

  Jim turned to the old man. His unwanted companion’s face was widening into a leer; showing teeth at rest in gums that bled. His mouth began to shape a word.