Love Lies Dead

by Scott, Kyle M.

  RAZORBLADE

  CANDIES

  BOOK ONE

  LOVE

  LIES

  DEAD

  Kyle M. Scott

  Text Copyright 2016©Kyle M. Scott

  All rights reserved

  First Authorised Digital Version

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the permission of the author. All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This book was written using UK standard dictionary. Some spellings may differ from US variations.

  For Simon.

  Owner and proprietor of the hottest nightspot in town – The Mancave.

  Here’s to many more great nights, buddy. Long talks, cold beers and cool, cool people.

  BEFORE

  So much blood.

  He’d never seen anything so terrible in his whole life.

  The space where she lay looked like someone had come through it with a huge bucket of gore and liberally doused every surface.

  He wanted to throw up. Felt it rising in his swirling, churning gut. He swallowed hard.

  On the ground before his feet, her body lay, mangled. Barely recognisable as a person. It was dark, but even in the moonlight, it was clear to see that the horror that had befallen her had been beyond all imagining.

  Beyond all words.

  She looked like a discarded, ruined toy, once wielded by a child in the midst of a violent tantrum.

  Her head was badly misshapen, smashed inwards by the terrible force that had pulverised her skull and crushed her brain to mush. Teeth clung like little stones in the soup of blood and viscera beneath her neckline.

  And further down, her breasts...

  Oh, dear sweet god, her breasts.

  One of them was gone. What remained in its place looked like butcher’s meat, raw and glistening, readied for abominable consumption.

  Below that, the devastation only got worse.

  Much, much worse.

  He drew his eyes from the sheer horror of it all. His mind, what was left of it, spun in on itself, tumbling into places darker than the dying light of stars.

  This was what death looked like.

  No, worse…this was what hell looked like.

  His own personal, unchained hell.

  He could never wash away or dispel the pain of what he had seen.

  Falling to his knees, he bent over the mess of blood, organs and bone that had been his reason for living, and he wept.

  He wept for the cruelty of the world.

  He wept for the damnation of all that was good.

  He wept for his own fathomless anguish.

  And he wept for the coldness of the hole in his heart.

  He knew in that moment, staring down at the wretched, lifeless body of his precious girl, that he could never put back together the pieces of his shattered heart, no more than any medic could put back together the broken, dismantled fragments of his dead, cold love.

  A Funeral in the rain

  Jane deserved much better than this…

  She’d been such a vibrant, beautiful soul, capable of lightening the darkest corners of his heart with the merest hint of her smile. A woman so alarmingly unique in her manners and her methods, that any man would willingly fall into fire and burn themselves clean of all the wrongs in their lives, just to bask in her favour for even the most fleeting of moments.

  She was the very definition of perfection. Nature’s very own testament to all that could be borne of millions of years of painful evolution. As close to a physical miracle as anything creation had to offer.

  She was the love of Paul’s short, lonely life. The one truly precious thing to come down the dirty, shit-stained pipe of his woeful existence. His reason for living and breathing.

  Jane was his alpha and omega.

  Yes, she deserved so much better.

  In that moment, when his sadness and rage threatened to crumple his resolve from within and scatter any remaining hope to the four winds, Paul wasn’t thinking about how unfair her fate had been, nor how tragically her sweet life had been cut short by the harsh coldness of the world.

  He wasn’t thinking about the years they could have shared, or the myriad experiences robbed of her by mortality – the joys of attending university, the simple pleasure of embracing old age, the bearing of children…

  No, in that moment, as the rain lashed off his face, stinging his eyes and mixing with his bitter tears, he was simply thinking of how goddam shoddy her grave looked.

  The procession of funeral attendees had already made their mournful pilgrimage from the sodden mound of muck that rose before her tombstone, casting already dying flowers to the dirt with shaking hands as the soil turned to sludge. There had been a satisfying number of mourners that had shown up, braving the December frost and the biting wind, to bid her a final, tearful farewell. He’d been happy about that. It warmed his soul, gave him a momentary impression of peace.

  Jane had been well loved.

  Her mother, poor woman, had broken down and dissolved into a drooling, slobbering mess, wailing and screaming till it was as though he could hear the cracks spread and the shattering shards of her heart fall to the cemetery floor. Jane’s father, fighting as best he could to stay strong, had soon followed his wife down into that dark, drowning oblivion. His cries had seemed somehow even more unsettling, coming from a man of his formidable stature.

  Family members had struggling dutifully to hold her parent’s up as they slowly laid the fine oak coffin into the damp ground. For one alarming moment, Paul had thought that Jane’s father, all sanity having fled him, would launch himself onto the casket, wrap his muscular arms around it, and willingly allow the gravedigger to bury him right alongside his lost child.

  Instead, one by one, Jane’s loved ones had tossed handfuls of dirt into the freshly dug hole, and wordlessly moved aside, making their way, slowly yet not without noticeable desperation, to the side of the grave.

  It was a tradition that Paul had never fully understood, seeming only to prolong the pain. The act of burial was plenty bleak enough in its own right. He saw no need for the drawn out, overly agonising procession of dirt-throwing, snot-coated mourners to be a tradition at all.

  Let the poor girl rest, he thought. Let her rest and be done with it. She’s gone. She’s deep in the ground and no amount of elongated misery or outdated tradition will ever bring her back.

  From where he was stood, the perpetual symphony of the falling rain muted the forlorn, hopeless cries of Jane’s parents. Not much, but enough that he was grateful. He’d chosen not to attend the funeral in the usual manner, and was instead stood by the side of a huge, withering oak tree that loomed over the graves of the not so recently deceased.

  From where he stood, no one would notice him. The haze of rainfall and their own grief saw to it that his own sadness, his own painful farewell, would be a private one.

  It was better this way. It was better to let her go in his own fashion, and say his goodbyes only a little above a whisper, witnessed by nothing more than the crying heavens and the howling winter wind.

  It was how she would have wanted it.

  Her family wouldn’t understand, he was sure of that.

  Jane would understand, though. His Jane was never one for following any traditions or cowing to the expected. She walked her own path, steady and sure. No one and nothing came between that wonderful girl and her destiny.

  No one but old Father Death, he thought, wiping fresh tears from his eyes even as more overflowed and blurred his vision.

  So this was what true pain felt like. This was the bottom of the pit. The end of all good things.
r />   Paul wanted to scream right along with Jane’s mother. Together, they’d falsetto their woe-betides into the merciless storm and shake the heavens.

  Paul stood and watched, his pained frown deepening as the crowd of tired, broken loved ones dispersed, person by person, soul by soul, until the only two left were her parents.

  The consolation of others had done nothing to alleviate their agony. All the kindly pats on their backs and gentle embraces had fallen on already dead hearts, and the whole procession had finally acquiesced and left the two people closest to Jane with their own hollow sorrow.

  There was little else could be done, after all.

  For a fleeting moment, Paul considered leaving his private place by the tree and approaching them to offer yet more meaningless, stuttering condolences.

  Why bother?

  Let them wallow in their loss.

  Give them that.

  He would have his time by her graveside when they were gone.

  Above his head, the dark clouds shuddered as the first crack of thunder split the skies and the battalions of heaven poured forth their tears for the lost, dead girl. The steady rain grew to a torrent, as though any god that might be up there had lost their own composure and openly wept for such a terrible waste of a beautiful life.

  The dead branches above his head offered no shelter. Paul felt that was just as it should be. He let the cold rain soak through his clothes and into his pores. Maybe there, deep inside, its biting chill could numb his breaking heart.

  Maybe.

  As the skies grew ever darker, Jane’s parents became little more than grey silhouettes in the haze. Hunched over and broken. They looked more like shadows than living beings as they held each other tight, fighting to stay afloat in this sea of anguish.

  Paul waited. And waited.

  He had no idea how long it was before they too, with what had to be herculean effort, dragged themselves from the final resting place of their only daughter, and slowly stumbled off into the bleak and desolate morning.

  Soon, they were gone too, disappearing into the mist as though incorporeal themselves. Wraiths of the once-happy people who had raised her.

  Paul watched intently till they were completely out of sight, wondering how the remaining hours of their most awful day would be spent. He hoped that they would chose to find forgetfulness inside a bottle, rather than face the mocking tick of the clock as the endless hours dragged on, the wounds on their hearts remaining ever unhealed.

  That was certainly what he planned to do.

  First, he would say his goodbyes to his one and only love in his own way.

  Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Paul reached into his overcoat, fumbling for his pack of cigarettes. He pulled the pack free and with painfully cold fingers he searched his other pocket for his lighter. Finding it, he plucked a smoke from the pack with shaking hands and placed it between his trembling lips. The cigarette was soaked before he managed to get the lighter up to his face.

  Damn it! He tossed it to the sodden grass, not caring that he was littering by the side of someone else’s place of rest. He was too far gone for such decency.

  And what use was decency, when life itself only revelled in cruelty?

  He pushed his numb hands into his pockets, aware that it was a futile measure in such unthinkable cold, and slowly made his way out from under the drowning, yawning oak tree and onto the graveyard’s small concrete pathway towards the meagre, unimpressive burial place of Jane Elisabeth Smith.

  Of course, the grave remained unfilled. The true burial would come soon, when the groundskeeper trundled along in his little tractor and pushed the fresh hill of soil down into the hole where her coffin lay. For now, the dirt that the mourners had tossed onto the casket had turned to liquid and ran down the sides of the polished wood. It did little to tarnish the coffin’s splendour.

  That angered Paul in a way he found surprising. Why would they spend so much money on such a lavish coffin that was fated only to rot and wither right alongside poor Jane’s dead flesh, when the headstone looked so…cheap?

  He leaned forward and took in the text on the stone. It was carved deftly enough, but the words…

  Jane deserved better words than these; more meaningful at least.

  Through gritted teeth and burning tears, he read the epitaph, struggling with its familiar, predictable solemnity.

  Here Lies Jane Elisabeth Smith

  Beloved daughter of Alex and Jennifer

  1995 – 2016

  Forever in our hearts.

  Forever in our hearts?

  That was it?

  Paul was no fool. The pain he’d witnessed only minutes before in Alex and Jennifer was all too real. Its ferocity cut like a knife, mirroring his own.

  So why such a banal and predictable farewell message?

  It made him feel sick to his stomach.

  As he took in the full grave, his anger was tempered slightly by the small, ornate bubble of glass sealed in the stone, in which a photograph of a smiling Jane, carefree and shining with inner light, beamed out from the rough, grey rock.

  In the photo, it was a summer’s day, as far removed from the merciless, depressed climate that marked her burial. Her hair seemed caught in the fire of the sun and gleamed yellow, bright as a star. Her smile, wide and open, like her heart, caused sharp stabs of pain to pierce his chest so he felt like he couldn’t breathe.

  And her eyes…

  Those endless, autumnal eyes, soft and brown and deeper than a highland loch. As kind and loving as they were humble and sincere.

  As he gazed on the image of her, caught in some perfect moment of sheer, unbridled joy that she would never experience again, Paul could have sworn he heard her voice whisper on the wind, light as a feather.

  He stood by the headstone of his dead love, and cried his bitter tears into the open grave.

  THE AGONY OF WAKEFULLNESS

  When Paul woke, it felt like all the world had come apart at the seams. His head thundered along in time to the beat of his heart. Behind his eyes, the migraine pounded its red, angry drum, searing his vision and throttling his waking thoughts into submission.

  He moaned aloud into the empty confines of his bedroom, his voice cracked and weak. Outside, birds were singing their sweet songs, but to Paul it sounded like hell’s auxiliary had armed up and were headed into battle with the sole intention of mangling his day.

  He longed to climb out the window, jump into that fucking tree out there like Tarzan, and squash those happy-go-lucky little flying bastards in his bare hands. He wanted to squeeze the life out of them.

  Instead, he merely pulled himself up on his pillow, and rubbed his eyes.

  What was that smell?

  With a cry of disgust, he realised he’d been sleeping in a puddle of his own vomit. The stinking mixture of half-digested canned soup and whiskey had congealed on his pillow into a sort of pancake. Small chunks of carrot peppered the hardened surface. Paul reached for his face and let out a cry, realising that the sick was coated there, too. His beard felt twice its usual thickness, and a whole lot wetter than it should.

  Disgusted, he threw aside the covers and swung his legs over the bedside and onto the carpet. They felt like lead. He got to his feet, shaking like a skyscraper in high wind, and stumbled out of the cesspit of his bedroom, down the hallway, and into the bathroom.

  Looking at himself in the mirror, Paul almost smiled.

  What did you do to yourself last night? You look like death came calling…

  Bloodshot, red-rimmed eyes glared back at him from his reflection. His hair, dark with drunken sweat, stuck up at all angles, and his face…

  Half his face was the usual colour –perhaps a few shades greyer than usual – but the other side was a hodgepodge of dark browns, yellows and greens.

  He quickly ran the tap and cupped great handfuls of cold water, splashing them over his face. The thickening vomit soon relented and began to wash off. In no time, he looked
almost human again.

  How he felt was another matter entirely.

  The migraine was kicking his ass, and Paul knew from experience that it would only get worse. It would beat him down into the ground and it would take its sweet time about it.

  He was in for one hell of a day.

  He opened the bathroom cabinet and pulled out the small bottle of Paracetamol. It wouldn’t break the migraine, but it just might take the edge off enough for what he had to do next.

  He popped two of the pills into his mouth, gagging at the dryness both of the pills and his own parched throat, and again cupped water in his hands. This time, he slurped the cold, fresh liquid down, the pills with it.

  “Give it ten minutes,” Paul said to himself as his head swam in pulsing torment. “You really need it.”

  He gave it thirty.

  Clive, his boss, sounded furious. “What the fuck, Paul!? You said you’d be in! I need you here, today!”

  Paul groaned. “I know, Clive. I know. I’m really sorry, man. It was a tough day. Cut me some slack, will you.”

  “I’m getting tired this shit, you know that? Real fucking tired. Julia has already called in sick, and Phillip! We’re running on fucking empty here, mate.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” he asked, doing his best to redirect his boss’ rage.

  “None of your fucking business, is what’s wrong with them, Paul! They’re none of your concern. They’re my concern, you can be sure as all holy fuck about that, but they’re not your concern.

  “What should be concerning you right now is whether or not I’m inclined to fire your sorry ass. This is your tenth day off this year, mate! I’m not running a fucking charity over here. I expect my staff to be on time, ship shape and healthy as fuck. Ten days! Are you dying of something, is that what it is? Are you fucking dying, Paul?”

  The sarcasm is his boss’ voice was not lost on him, even though his thoughts were as scattered as children’s toys.