Blueeyedboy

by Joanne Harris

  But seriously, I love the applause. I even enjoy the occasional hiss. To provoke a reaction with words alone is surely the greatest victory. That’s what my fiction is for. To incite. To see what reactions I can collect. Love and hate; approval and scorn; judgement and anger and despair. If I can make you punch the air, or feel a little sick, or cry, or want to do violence to me – or to others – then isn’t that a privilege? To creep inside another mind, to make you do what I want you to do –

  Doesn’t that pay for everything?

  Well, the good news is – apart from the fact that my headache is gone – that I now have more time to indulge. One of the advantages of sudden unemployment is the amount of leisure it provides. Time to pursue my interests, both on and offline. Time, as my mother says, to stop and smell the roses.

  Unemployment? Well, yes. I’ve had some trouble recently. Not that Ma knows that, of course. As far as my mother is concerned, I still work at Malbry Infirmary, the details unclear, but plausible – at least to Ma, who barely finished school and whose medical knowledge, such as it is, is taken from the Reader’s Digest and from the hospital soaps she likes to watch in the afternoons.

  Besides, in a way, it’s almost true. I did work at the infirmary – I worked there for nearly twenty years – though Ma never really knew what I did. Technical operations of some kind – also a partial truth of sorts – in a place in which everyone’s job description contains either the word operator or technician; I was until recently one of a team of hygiene technicians operating two shifts a day and attending to such vital responsibilities as: mopping, sweeping, disinfecting, wheeling out the rubbish bins and general maintenance of toilets, kitchens and public areas.

  In layman’s terms, a cleaner.

  My secondary, even more dangerous job – again, at least, until recently – was that of day carer for an elderly man, wheelchair-bound, for whom I used to cook and clean; on good days I’d read, or play music on scratchy old vinyl, or listen to stories I already knew, and later I’d go looking for her, for the girl in the bright-red duffel coat –

  As of now, I have more time, and much less chance of being caught in the act. My daily routine hasn’t changed. I get up in the mornings as usual, dress for work, care for my orchids, park the car in the infirmary car park, pick up my laptop and briefcase, and spend the day at leisure in a series of Internet cafés, catching up on my f-list, or posting my fiction on badguysrock away from my mother’s suspicious eye. After four I often drop by at the Pink Zebra café, where there is a minimal chance of my running into Ma or her friends, and which offers Internet access for the price of a bottomless pot of tea.

  Given my own choice of venue, I think I’d prefer something a little less bohemian. The Pink Zebra is rather too informal for me, with its wide-mouthed American cups, and its Formica-topped tables, and chalked Specials boards and the noise of its many patrons. And the name itself, that word, pink, has a most unfortunate pungency that takes me back to my childhood, and to our family dentist, Mr Pink, and of the smell of his old-fashioned surgery with its sugary, sickly odour of gas. But she likes it. She would. The girl in the bright red duffel coat. She likes her anonymity among the café’s clientele. Of course, that’s an illusion. But it’s one I’m willing to grant her – for now. One last unacknowledged courtesy.

  I try to find a table close by. I drink Earl Grey – no lemon, no milk. That’s what my old mentor, Dr Peacock, drank, and I have acquired the taste myself; not entirely usual for a place like the Pink Zebra, that serves organic carrot cake and Mexican spiced hot chocolate, and acts as a refuge for bikers and Goths and people with multiple piercings.

  Bethan – the manager – glares at me. Perhaps it’s my choice of beverage, or the fact that I’m wearing a suit and tie and therefore qualify as The Man – or maybe today it’s just my face – the ladder of suture-strips across one cheekbone, the cuts bisecting eyebrow and lip.

  I can tell what she’s thinking. I shouldn’t be here. She’s thinking I look like trouble, though it’s nothing she can quantify. I’m clean, I’m quiet, I always tip. And yet there’s something about me that unsettles her; that makes her think I don’t belong.

  ‘Earl Grey, please – no lemon, no milk.’

  ‘Be with you in five minutes, OK?’

  Bethan knows all her customers. The regulars all have nicknames, much the same as my friends online, like Chocolate Girl, Vegan Guy, Saxophone Man and so on. I, however, am just OK. I can tell that she would be happier if she could fit me into a category – perhaps Yuppie Guy, or Earl Grey Dude – and knew what to expect of me.

  But I prefer to wrong-foot her sometimes: to turn up in jeans occasionally; to order coffee (which I hate), or, as I did a couple of weeks ago, half a dozen pieces of pie, eating them one by one as she watched, clearly itching to say something, but not quite daring to comment. In any case, she is suspicious of me. A man who will eat six pieces of pie is capable of anything.

  But you shouldn’t judge by appearances. Bethan herself is an irregular choice, with the emerald stud in her eyebrow and the stars tattooed down her skinny arms. A shy, resentful little girl, who compensates now by being vaguely aggressive with anyone who looks at her askance.

  Still, it is to Bethan that I owe much of my information. From the café she notices everything. She seldom speaks to me, of course, but I overhear her conversations. With people like me she is cautious, but with her regulars she is cheery, approachable. Thanks to Bethan I can collect all kinds of information. For instance, I know that the girl in the red duffel coat would rather drink hot chocolate than tea; prefers treacle tart to carrot cake; favours the Beatles over the Stones, and plans to attend the funeral at Malbry Crematorium at 11.30 on Saturday.

  Saturday. Yes, I’ll be there. At least I’ll get to see her away from that wretched café. Maybe – just maybe – she owes me that. Closure, as the Americans say. An end to this parade of lies.

  Lies? Yes, everyone lies. I’ve lied ever since I could remember. It’s the only thing I do well, and I think we should play to our strengths, don’t you? After all, what is a writer of fiction but a liar with a licence? You’d never guess from my writing that I’m as plain-vanilla as they come. Vanilla, at least, on the outside; the heart is something different. But aren’t we, all of us, killers at heart, tapping out in Morse code the secrets of the confessional?

  Clair thinks I should talk to her.

  Have you tried telling her how you feel? she suggests in her latest e-mail. Of course, Clair only knows what I want her to know: that for an indeterminate time I have been obsessed with a girl to whom I have hardly spoken a word. But maybe Clair identifies with me rather more than she is aware – or rather, with blueeyedboy, whose platonic love for an unnamed girl echoes her own unrequited passion for Angel Blue.

  Cap’s advice is rather more crude. Just fuck her and get it over with, he advises, in the world-weary tone of one trying vainly to hide his own inexperience. When the novelty wears off, you’ll see she’s just like all those other bitches, and you’ll be able to get back to what matters . . .

  Toxic agrees, and pleads for me to write up the intimate details in my WeJay. The dirtier the better, he says. And by the way, what’s her cup size?

  Albertine rarely comments. I sense her disapproval. But chrysalisbaby responds to what she sees as my hopeless romance. Even a bad guy needs someone to love, she says with awkward sincerity. You deserve it, blueeyedboy, really you do. She does not offer herself, not yet, but I sense the longing in her words. Any girl would be lucky, she hints, to earn the love of one such as I.

  Poor Chryssie. Yes, she’s fat. But she has good hair and a pretty face, and I have led her to believe that I prefer the chubby ones.

  The problem is that I play it too well. She now wants to see me on webcam. For the past couple of weeks she has been talking to me through WebJournal, sending me personal messages, including photos of herself.

  Y can’t i C U? she messages.

  Out of t
he question, I reply.

  Y? U ugly?

  Yeah. I’m a mess. Broken nose, black eye, cuts and bruises all over me. I look like I went twelve rounds with Mike Tyson. Trust me, Chryssie. You’d run a mile.

  4 real?? What happened?

  Someone took exception to me.?

  O!!! U mugged?

  I guess you could call it that.

  !!! Oh, fuck, oh, babe,i just wanna give U a great big hug.

  Thanks, Chryssie. You’re very sweet.

  Does it hurt??

  Dear Chryssie. I can feel the sympathy coming from her. Chryssie loves to nurture, and I like to feed her fantasy. She’s not quite in love with me – no, not yet. But it wouldn’t take much to draw her in. It’s a little cruel, I know. But isn’t that what bad guys do? Besides, she brings these things on herself. All I do is enable them. She’s an accident waiting to happen, for which no one could possibly hold me to blame.

  Babe, tell me what happened, she says, and today I think maybe I’ll humour her. Give a little, take a lot. Isn’t that the better deal?

  All right then – babe. Whatever you say. See what you make of this little tale.

  10

  You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy posting on:

  badguysrock@webjournal.com

  Posted at: 14.35 on Thursday, January 31

  Status: public

  Mood: amorous

  Listening to: Green Day: ‘Letterbomb’

  Blueeyedboy in love. What? You don’t think a killer can fall in love? He has known her for ever, and yet she has never really seen him, not once. He might have been invisible as far as the woman he loves is concerned. But he sees her: her hair; her mouth; her small pale face with its straight dark brows; her bright-red coat in the morning mist like something out of a fairy tale.

  Red is not her colour, of course – but he doesn’t expect her to know that. She doesn’t know how he likes to watch through his telephoto lens; noting the details of her dress; the way the wind catches her hair; the way she walks with such precision, marking her passage with near-imperceptible touches. A hand against this wall, here; brushing against this yew hedge, turning her face to catch the scent as she passes the village bakery.

  He is not a voyeur, he thinks. He acts for his own protection. His instinct for self-preservation has been honed to a point of such accuracy that he can sense the danger in her, the danger behind the sweet face. It may be the danger he loves, he thinks. The fact that he is walking a dangerous line. The fact that every stolen caress through the lens of his camera is potentially lethal to him.

  Or it may just be the fact that she belongs to somebody else.

  Until now he has never been in love. It frightens him a little: the intensity of that feeling, the way her face intrudes on his thoughts, the way his fingers trace her name, the way everything somehow conspires to keep her always in his mind –

  It changes his behaviour. It makes him contradictory; at the same time more accepting, and less so. He wants to do the right thing, but, so doing, thinks only of himself. He wants to see her, but when he does, flees. He wants it to last for ever, but at the same time longs for it to end.

  Zooming closer, he brings her face into mystic, near-monstrous proportions. Now she is a single eye, its colour a hybrid of blue and gold, staring sightlessly through the glass like an orchid in a growing-tank –

  But through the eye of love, of course, she always appears in shades of blue. Bruise-blue; butterfly-blue; cobalt, sapphire, mountain-blue. Blue, the colour of his secret soul; the colour of mortality.

  His brother in black would have known what to say. Blueeyedboy lacks the words. But he dreams of them dancing under the stars, she in a ball dress of sky-blue silk, he in his chosen colours. In these dreams he is beyond words, and he can smell the scent of her hair, can almost feel her texture –

  And then comes a sharp knock at the door. Blueeyedboy starts guiltily. It annoys him that he does this; he is in his own home, hurting no one, why should he feel this stab of guilt?

  He puts away his camera. The knock is repeated; peremptory. Someone sounds impatient.

  ‘Who is it?’ says blueeyedboy.

  A voice, not well-loved, but familiar, comes to him from the other side. ‘Let me in.’

  ‘What do you want?’ says blueeyedboy.

  ‘To talk to you, you little shit.’

  Let’s call him Mr Midnight Blue. Bigger by far than blueeyedboy, and vicious as a mad dog. Today he is in a violent rage that blueeyedboy has never seen before, hammering at the front door, demanding to be let in. No sooner are the safety locks released, than he barges his way into the hall and, with no kind of preliminaries, head-butts our hero right in the face.

  Blueeyedboy’s trajectory sends him smashing into the hallway table; ornaments and a flower vase fly into shrapnel against the wall. He trips and falls at the bottom of the stairs, and then Midnight Blue is on top of him, punching him, shouting at him –

  ‘Fucking keep away from her, you twisted little bastard!’

  Our hero makes no attempt to resist. He knows it would be impossible. Instead he just curls into himself like a hermit crab into its shell, trying to shield his face with his arms, crying in fear and hatred, while his enemy lands blow after blow to his ribs and back and shoulders.

  ‘Do you understand?’ says Midnight, pausing to recover his breath.

  ‘I wasn’t doing anything. I’ve never even spoken to her—’

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ says Midnight Blue. ‘I know what you’re trying to do. And what about those photographs?’

  ‘Ph-photographs?’ says blueeyedboy.

  ‘Don’t even think of lying to me.’ He pulls them from one of his inside pockets. ‘These photographs, taken by you, developed right here, in your darkroom—’

  ‘How did you get those?’ says blueeyedboy.

  Midnight gives him a final punch. ‘Never mind how I got them. If you ever go anywhere near her again, if you talk to her, write to her – hell, if you even look at her – I’ll make you sorry you were born. This is your final warning—’

  ‘Please!’ Our hero is whimpering, his arms thrown up to protect his face.

  ‘I mean it. I’ll kill you—’

  Not if I kill you first, blueeyedboy thinks, and before he can protect himself, the hateful aroma of rotting fruit fills his throat with its hot-house stench, and a lance of pain drives into his head, and he feels as though he is dying.

  ‘Please—’

  ‘You’d better not lie to me. You’d better not hold out on me.’

  ‘I won’t,’ he gasps, through blood and tears.

  ‘You’d better not,’ says Midnight Blue.

  Lying dazed on the carpet, blueeyedboy hears the door slam. Warily, he opens his eyes and sees that Midnight Blue has gone. Even so he waits until he hears the sound of Midnight’s car setting off down the driveway before slowly, carefully, standing up and going into the bathroom to investigate the damage.

  What a mess. What a fucking mess.

  Poor blueeyedboy; nose broken, lip split, blue eyes blacked and swollen shut. There’s blood down the front of his shirt; blood still trickles from his nose. The pain is bad, but the shame is worse, and the worst of it is, this isn’t his fault. In this case, he is innocent.

  How strange, he thinks, that for all his sins, he should have escaped retribution so far, whereas this time, when he has done nothing wrong, punishment should descend on him.

  It’s karma, he thinks. Kar-ma.

  He looks at his reflection, looks at it for a long time. He feels very calm, watching himself, an actor on a small screen. He touches his reflection and feels the answering sting from the abrasions on his face. Nevertheless he feels strangely remote from the person in the looking glass; as if this were simply a reconstruction of some more distant reality; something that happened to someone else many, many years ago.

  I mean it. I’ll kill you –

  Not if I kill you first, he thinks.


  And would it be so impossible? Demons are made to be overcome. Maybe not with brute strength, but with intelligence and guile. Already he senses the germ of a plan beginning to form at the back of his mind. He looks at his reflection once more, squares his shoulders, wipes blood from his mouth and, finally, begins to smile.

  Not if I kill you first –

  Why not?

  After all, he has done it before.

  Post comment:

  chrysalisbaby: awesome wow was that 4 real?

  blueeyedboy: As real as anything else I write . . .

  chrysalisbaby: aw poor blueeyedboy i just wanna give him a great big hug

  Jesusismycopilot: BASTARD YOU DESERVE TO DIE.

  Toxic69: Oh, man. Don’t we all?

  ClairDeLune: This is fantastic, blueeyedboy. You are finally beginning to come to terms with your rage. I think we should discuss this further, don’t you?

  Captainbunnykiller: Bitchin’, dude! This fic pwns. Can’t wait to see the payback.

  JennyTricks: (post deleted).

  JennyTricks: (post deleted).

  JennyTricks: (post deleted).

  blueeyedboy: You’re very persistent, JennyTricks. Tell me – do I know you?

  11

  You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.

  Posted at: 01.37 on Friday, February 1

  Status: restricted

  Mood: melancholy

  Listening to: Voltaire: ‘Born Bad’

  Well, no. It wasn’t quite like that. But not too far from the truth, all the same. The truth is a small, vicious animal biting and clawing its way towards the light. It knows that if it wants to be born, something – or someone – else has to die.

  I started life as a twin-set, you know. The other half – who, if he had lived, Ma would have christened Malcolm – was stillborn at nineteen weeks.