He stared at Janice for too long. She was listening to an old woman repeat herself.
“Alright then,” Graeme said. “Get your mate. But it’s a grown-up party so if you can’t take the heat, stay home like a good little girl.”
The look on his face made Selena’s blood run cold but she nodded and grabbed Janice by the arm.
“Come on,” she whispered. “We’re out of here.”
The ride to the party was silent and uncomfortable. Graeme brought them to a tiny, scruffy flat that smelled like cat piss. Janice wanted to leave but Selena made her promise not to ditch her. They sat on a dirty sofa that was ripped and covered in dark brown stains. Graeme’s mates were all old and ugly but they had cans and joints. Enough hash to share. They passed spliffs to Selena and her friend but none offered the powder they shoved up their noses.
Selena did her best to flirt with Graeme but he kept ignoring her to talk to Janice. How could she? Janice kept looking away from Graeme, pretending to be coy, probably. She crossed her arms to cover the breasts Selena envied. She played hard to get and it worked, as far as Selena could see.
Selena watched his eyes follow Janice, his hand travel up her thigh – even though she pushed him away. Selena saw him look at her friend the way she wanted someone to look at her. Anyone. A little attention, that’s all. But not even a couple of winos wanted her, yet her geeky friend got all the attention. It wasn’t fair.
Selena’s heart grew darker and darker as all of her insecurities and jealousies combined together and melded with her sadness and loss. A great big pit of nothingness lay within and she had no idea how to fill it.
Any pair of hands were better than none so she sat in the lap of the least repulsive of Graeme’s friends. She whispered in his ear all the things she would do to him and meant every word. He pinched her wrists, his eyes a warning she didn’t heed. As he led her out of the flat, Janice ran after her.
“Wait for me,” Janice said, her eyes pleading with her friend.
Selena’s voice was cold, like a stranger. “Nah. Have fun.”
Graeme grabbed Janice from behind with a creepy smile on his face; he carried her into another room. Selena heard her best friend scream then closed the front door behind her.
All Seeing Eye
He sits alone in a dirty chair. No other furniture in the room. Murky windows, dirty floor, grime on the walls. Dust covers all. He sits in his dirty chair and hears no sounds, only the smallest sensations as unseen things touch him with light hands
Fine threads of a spider’s web connect him to the ceiling. He’s been there forever and a day more. He sees it all because he can’t escape it. At least not completely. Like a television in his brain, his eyes see not only the empty room but his other life too, the one where he can touch and speak – if he wants.
All of the suffering, all of the hate, all of the people he’s murdered, all of the lives he’s changed. Living in his head doesn’t help. Nothing helps. Nothing can change the past and he wouldn’t want to try. Here, he is King. Here, he is the All Seeing Eye.
Memories or ghosts? He can’t tell what the flimsy apparitions might be. They don’t scare him, they’re just reminders. They serve him. Maybe they feed on the pain he’s caused. Maybe they feed on the emotions he once had. Now he’s an empty shell and there’s nothing for them to feed on so he has to make sacrifices. Treat them sometimes.
Even when the lights come on, he’s never quite there. His soul stays put while his body drifts from place to place, doing whatever it can to fill the emptiness that keeps exploding into something bigger. He sees every movement but he never manages to feel it. Not the old women crying before him, not the hysterical girls, not the weeping men, not the children who can’t understand why. He has no problem doing the deeds of a devil because it doesn’t exist. Not really.
Reality is reversed. But he sees it all and sometimes it’s hard to tell which life is real.
In his head, the room is real. The dirt, dust and spiders are real. Everything else is the hallucination. The drugs take him there but he could explain that if he tried. Here is he a God. He can change the room with a thought. But he doesn’t. Because he’s comfortable in the dark. He is the spider. The rest of the world are the flies. One day he will catch enough and be sated – the apparitions will drink their fill. One day.
The light flickers off and on and he feels himself slipping. His soul being sucked back into his body. Time enough to see the blood and smell the fear. Then it’s over and he slips his payment onto his tongue. The sacrifice feeds the apparitions who carry him back into his room and kneel at his feet in the darkness. A dark God. One who inflicts pain and takes tiny blue and white pills to stay in his Kingdom.
When the world is dead and gone, he will be safe in his dark room, surrounded by his soulless guardians.
Searching
Jean sang along with Sinead O’Connor as the iron hissed and steamed under her hand. Ironing had to be done, even if her back ached after working two shifts in one day. It was the stairs in the office building that hurt - hauling a heavy vacuum cleaner up and down so many times in a week wasn’t good for her spine. But they needed the money. If they had money then Jamie wouldn’t need to mess about with the likes of Graeme Moore. Besides, Gemma needed all the help she could get, with a baby on the way.
Jean tutted and ironed out wrinkles in one of Jamie’s shirts. It felt like she was fixing the world with each stroke of the iron. She couldn’t fix Jamie though. No matter how hard she tried. It wasn’t the flats or the fact he didn’t have a father. It wasn’t that he’d left school early or that she hadn’t been around when he came home from school because she worked so much and couldn’t afford a babysitter. It wasn’t any of those things. He could have risen above all of it if he tried.
The problem was, he didn’t try. He was a good kid at first. Never a bad word. Smart, polite, respectful. Then he got drawn in by what other people had, things he wanted too. Nothing was enough after that. Not even Gemma. Sweet, sweet girl. Naive but sweet. Good for Jamie. Clean, hard-working – she would keep him on the right track. If he let her.
She glanced at the clock. The real reason she decided to take on the mounds of laundry that seemed to multiply overnight. She hadn’t seen Jamie for days. The last time he came home, she knew something had gone wrong. His face was slick with sweat and his eyes were wild. He had brushed past her without a word, showered, left – hadn’t come back.
Her stomach had turned when she picked up the dirty clothes he left behind. Even now, her stomach ached at the memory. The clothes had been covered in rusty red stains. No matter how many times she washed them, the stains only faded – never quite disappeared. Mistakes always faded but still managed to stick around. Even her own. She burned the clothes, threw them in the incinerator – but she couldn’t burn the image from her mind, her baby was in trouble.
The clock kept ticking but nothing happened. The song ended and Jean pulled another shirt from the pile. The love she had for her son soaked into her chores. “Please, God. Please, protect him.” She didn’t hear herself mutter the words but they kept slipping from her mouth in time with the movements of the iron. Side to side, smoothing out creases, wiping away the problems.
Somewhere, deep inside, was the knowledge she wouldn’t see him again, that it was too late to save him from himself. His eyes; sweet Jesus, she had never seen him look as scared. Not even the time he had accidentally smashed the tiny china doll her mother had left her. He was only a little thing himself at the time but even he knew how important it was to her.
She had wanted to scream at him, slap his face, break his toys, but she calmly picked up the pieces, one broken chip of a memory at a time. She threw the only thing she had to remind her of her mother in the bin and moved on. She couldn’t do that for Jamie. She couldn’t move on, no matter how chipped and broken he was.
She gave up on the ironing and made a cup of tea, pulling out the chocolate biscuits she kept hidden i
n the back of the press. She took a sip of the scalding hot tea and decided she had been off the cigarettes for long enough. Standing on a shaking chair, she delved into the emergency supply on top of the wardrobe. Two cigarettes and a cheap green lighter. Shaking fingers held a cigarette to her lips and the lighter took a couple of tries to produce flame but finally, she inhaled.
The smoke tasted ashy at first, made her cough. Then it was a beautiful nicotine rush. Two years off them yet they still managed to produce the same euphoric feeling. Perfect with a cuppa. She stopped thinking about Jamie and relaxed.
Proud of herself for staying off the fags for so long, but sometimes you needed one. Just one. To make it through a bad day. Better than the drink, or so she always thought. Easier to think through. Helped her search for an answer. Even if the questions were impossible. Even if the answers didn’t exist. There was no helping Jamie. She could drag him to school but she couldn’t make him learn, she herself learned that lesson the hard way. Jamie had to figure it out for himself. That was the answer the nicotine brought to her.
She gave an appreciative glance to the cigarette and was distracted by the lines of her hands. She wasn’t as old as her hands looked. Years of cleaning and hard graft had been hard on them. Time itself had been bad enough to her. Pregnant straight out of school, desperate for a husband when her mother died. Nothing good had come of it even if the baby had been that something to love, that little person who loved her back. Now it wasn’t enough. She idolised Jamie but she knew he would have been better off elsewhere. Better off with a father, better off with a mother who didn’t have to work seventy hours a week just to keep their heads above water.
Jean smoothed out the skin on the back of her hand with her finger and thumb and remembered what it was like to feel young. Like Gemma, she had been naive – too willing to believe anything, too desperate for love. Maybe Jamie was like his father after all. Maybe it was in the blood, that careless, irresponsible, mean streak that left broken women and fatherless children in its wake.
A heavy knock on the door made her jump to her feet. Her heart pounding in her chest, she hesitated, not wanting to see uniforms. Cold sweat down her back, her fingers trembled as she turned the lock, opening the door a few inches only. Two men stood on her doorstep. No uniforms. No bad news. Not yet.
“Jamie here?” The one who spoke sounded gruff and puffed out his chest, accentuating his height. He wanted her to be afraid, she could tell. The other one though, he really did intimidate her with his blank eyes and dark soul. She could feel it, evil, like her mother used to warn her about. She thought she felt her mother’s spirit beside her, chided herself inwardly for her morbid thoughts and shook her head in answer to the men.
The silent man held her gaze but didn’t speak. The other stepped toward her and leaned his arm on the doorway, forcing her to look up at him.
“You sure about that?”
“He hasn’t been home in days. You see him, you tell him he’s wanted, you hear?” Anxiety made her snap at him, something told her not to be timid in front of that man.
He paused, looked at his companion and nodded. “Alright. He comes back, let him know Graeme is looking for him, alright love?”
Jean nodded and retreated back into her home, shutting her door carefully. She thought for a second, holding her fingers to her lips, smelling the nicotine that never washed away. She secured the chain – jumped when one of the men kicked the door. One of them laughed but they moved on, leaving her grateful she kept that second cigarette.
She curled up on her sofa and prayed for her son. This time, she hoped he never came back.
I Win
Shane fell through the doorway when she opened it for him.
“Silly cow, you did that on purpose,” he said, spittle flying in her face.
“I didn’t. I heard you trying to . . . . “
“Oh, just shut up, Mags. Jesus. I’m only in the door and you’re starting.” He pushed her aside and kicked off his boots, leaving them in the hallway. Mags picked them up and followed him into the kitchen.
“Where’s dinner?”
“In the oven,” she said, glad she had the presence of mind to turn on the heating or he’d be kicking up a fuss about that as well. She put his boots away and waited while he took out some milk and drank straight from the carton. She ground her teeth, he was doing it just to annoy her.
Shane left the carton on the counter and opened the cooker. He observed the dried out meal in disgust. “Are you for fucking real? Am I supposed to eat this crap?”
“It’s after three in the morning, Shane, it was fine at dinnertime.” Mags had spent ages making it just the way he liked it. She wasn’t sure why she bothered.
He picked up the plate and threw it at the wall, barely missing her head. Tiny broken chips flew at her, sticking in her hair. She held up her head and watched him pass, annoyed rather than scared now. That was a brand new plate.
“Where were you until three in the morning, Shane?”
He ignored her, not wanting to listen to her nagging if he told her he’d been with some young one for the last few hours. Not that the girl would want the word spread around either. The teasing bitch had said no at the last minute but he couldn’t stop. Not when his business was falling apart – debt up to his eyeballs now. All of his assets were about to be liquidated just to pay some of the creditors. Everything he worked for was turning to piss before his eyes.
The idea filled him with an impotent rage that boiled up and spewed over, giving him heartburn. He turned back and punched Mags in the face. Enough to hurt her, but not enough to send her to hospital. She didn’t cry out, mores the pity, that always gave him a good excuse to hit twice.
He mumbled something under his breath and thought about the girl’s cries of protest. He pictured her in Mags place, tried to get himself going, but nothing happened. He roared, an incoherent roar, and raised his fists in the air, looking all the world like an ape.
Mags stared at him, her chin trembling. Years and years of this shit, it had gotten old a long time ago. The only thing keeping her around was money and he hadn’t given her any of that in months, the greedy bastard.
He punched the wall and howled with pain when the resounding crack of his knuckles reverberated throughout his body.
“Fucking hell.” Tears burned his eyes. Fucking business. All those years of hard work for nothing. He couldn’t even get a decent dinner from the bitch.
“You better not wake the kids with your noise.”
That nagging woman again.
“The kids, the kids! Always the fucking kids. They’re not my fucking kids! I don’t give two fucks if they wake up!”
He pointed his finger right in her face. Her eyes crossed and she batted his hand away. He pushed her to the floor and stalked away, kicking the pregnant cat in the stomach. The cat yowled and fled out an open window, leaving a few drops of blood in her wake.
“Leave my cat alone!”
Mags gasped in horror at her daughter’s scream. No, baby, not now. Not when he’s in the height of it.
Shane was already leering in the girl’s direction. Thirteen years old. Not his child. Fuck, why did she ever move in with such a monster. Mags saw his fist curl and ran back into the kitchen, picking up a knife, anything to threaten him with.
She got to him just as he lifted his arm to hit her precious daughter. Darling, darling, darling, so sorry, so sorry, so sorry. The knife slid into his back – easier than she had expected. He gave a little grunt and turned around slowly, so very slowly.
Ignoring the wide eyes of her daughter, Mags sank the knife deep into Shane’s chest – every punch, every kick, every bad word giving her the strength. She had already been sick of him, he had to go and push her too far. Well, fuck him. He should never have raised his hand to her child. Not ever.
Shane’s mouth widened into an O shape as he sank to the ground and gazed up at her for a few seconds, unable to move.
“Tha
t’ll teach you, you bastard. I win. Me.”
Blood flowed, soaking her slippers ruby red. His last gasp was noisy, it almost made her laugh. Almost.
She sat down on the floor, edging away from the pool of blood, and looked up at her daughter.
The girl kicked Shane, hatred seeping from her pores, and nodded at her mother. “Thanks, Ma.”
Gift
Janice Malone unknotted her school tie and took a deep breath before she turned over the pregnancy tests. All three of them. Just in case.
Blue cross. Smiley face. Double lines. Positive. All positive. No mistake.
She knocked them to the ground in her urgency to throw up in the toilet. Nothing came up except a dry retching sound but it felt like her insides had spewed out of her mouth.
Tears came. Self pity. How unfair was it all? Raped by a scumbag. Ditched by her best friend. And pregnant. Selina Davis was shagging a different fella every weekend but Janice – the one everyone called a frigid because she wouldn’t sleep around – was pregnant because some old, fat bloke raped her.
Janice imagined his evil DNA growing inside her, a black, cancerous toxin spreading through her bloodstream, choking her organs, seeping from her skin, infecting her baby. His baby.
Oh, Jesus.
She dug her palms into her eye sockets and saw colours, pretty ones, but not enough to distract her from her life ending. It was all over. School, college, any hope of a job and getting out of the shithole she lived in. And her ma. Janice’s stomach turned. Her ma would kill her. Kick her out, probably. The one thing, the one thing she’d always said – don’t come home with a baby.
But it wasn’t her fault, it wasn’t, not really. She still had the faintest shadow of a bruise from where he’d held her down. The bruises lasted longer than she expected and the consequences would last longest of all. How could she have a baby? His baby, worst of all. An ugly, horrible man who plied her with drink and has until she wasn’t capable of stringing a coherent sentence together. She said no, though. Of everything, she remembered that. Who would believe her though?
Sixty Seconds Page 3