Dead in the Trunk: A Short Story Collection

by Craig Saunders

  No, I will not wait. I will bolster myself with pills now. The voices will not mind. They will accept me no matter what I do to my body. Only the mind, the soul, the essential spirit of a person matters to them. My body may be frail but inside that cage I can see a way out, an access door to their plane. They urge me into happiness, and I have found a way to join them.

  Some people claim they can see ghosts, these shady apparitions coming to them at night. I know better. That, to all with a mind to understand those others that come to our dreams, is merely delusion. The voices have no bodies. Whether they are angels, or ghosts, or spirits from another world, no one could ever know. But they do not come when light fades or stabs with shards of brightness, no, they come when they are not called, when moods are low or high, when despair or joy encapsulate the soul. They are creatures of spirit, and are drawn to like. My spirit soars daily sometimes, and they reflect only what is in me. Just as they are inside me, I am inside them.

  If I could see them, I believe I would descend into a pool of blue tears, submerge myself in joy and sorrow, never to join them. But I cannot see them, and I know they accept only those with happy hearts.

  While I may not be happy, I can bring that emotion. I have taken my pills, and soon the feeling will come to me, bringing with it a sense of relief, perhaps, or maybe softer voices.

  They are quiet, for a time. I am between states, a non-entity to them at present. While there is nothing in me to warrant their attention, I am dull and bland and pointless in their eyes (should they have eyes. I use this merely to state what they see in me, for I am shackled by the need to have others understand, although I imagine they simply feel their way through the aether, without tentacles but with feelings themselves, drawn to emotions, not sights or even sounds). I am nothingness with a shell, the shell unmoving now, laying on a carpet surrounded by a bottle, and an empty jar of pills. I have made myself this way, and without the body I feel, suddenly, light. I am full of air, swirling on the smoke and dancing between the dust and particles that frequent my earthly tomb. Nothing would please me greater than a visit from my detractors now, all those people who thought so little of me and schemed and plotted and wanted to take away my chance of perfection. The shell I stare down at could never be perfect, not while it was a cage. Perhaps that is the only way a body can ever achieve perfection. As a cage for the human soul. Mine was close. It walked, it slept, and it ate and defecated. It let nothing out but words and chained its thoughts inside. Free of it, at last I see why it has held me for so long.

  Now, with the air for my company, a thin strand of consciousness still tethers me to the body. Had I a blade I would sever it. Then I would be happy. Then the voices would come to me, and take me with them to their Narnia, or utopia, or heaven. Then I would truly be free to float on an air of happiness, to become as one with it and join it making love for eternity with nothing but words and feelings like a picture of yin and yang, sadness and happiness swirling together to make the perfect mood, for the perfect moment in time, without end. But I have no blade and the voices do not come.

  I realise I feel nothing. I am alone, tied to a vessel full of shit. I see some of it has seeped through the trousers it wears. Some vomit coats its mouth, dribbling a stream down one cheek to meet a tear sliding down there. Perhaps I have made a mistake. The tear tells me all I would know. The body has feelings too. It must. It cries while I am free. But, I think, this is merely cunning, trying to get me to return before my chance at freedom comes.

  But what if I am wrong? But what would I do should I leave my shell behind, unhappy. I had thought the pills would bring me joy, and freedom, and life without judgement beyond mortality in the bosom of my friends, my voices.

  Yet I cry.

  Why, I wonder, would my body cry? It has no soul, for my soul is free. What can it be without me? How can it feel?

  I have no answers. And the voices do not come.

  I am unsure of time here, outside my body. I have had many thoughts, but have been unaffected by mood. I am alone, with nothing but my body and a room to look at. There are no ghosts here. Just a spirit, and perhaps, a dying carcass holding me back from perfection. I find I am unaffected by my impending death. I am sure they will come for me. The voices have been my friends for more years than I can remember. They will not leave me alone, with nothing but a body to keep me company.

  I can see the eyes no longer flutter underneath their long eyelashes. The chest heaves no more.

  And slowly, I realise I feel release. I am happy. With my happiness comes noise at last. The air around me fills with it. I look around but I can see nothing but dust and my corpse. But I can hear again.

  I hear voices. Even in death, they come to me. But this time their words are sweet, and comforting. They are happy for me.

  *

  I wrote this for Shock Totem, a magazine. It didn't make the cut. But I still like it. Another outing into the unknown, for me...flash fiction. First time I wrote flash fiction.

  Wrote only four other flash pieces. All of them went to a publisher, got accepted, and are in an anthology. So there's that. That's nice.

  In a Town Like This

  In a town like this, Samson Davis thrived. He wore gold and drove a big car.

  In a town like this, Samson Davis was found in a public toilet with his young mistress.

  Marsha Davis wore no gold when she moved on.

  And like that, they both were gone.

  *

  And so, from one extreme to the other - flash, to the novella...

  A special inclusion in the collection. Something to get your teeth into. It's the penultimate tale. I hope you enjoy...

  It's also available in an omnibus of British Horror, called, cunningly, 'Great British Horror, Volume 1', which features work from plenty of big horror names, Iain Rob Wright, Graeme Reynolds, Matt Shaw, Willie Meikle, Michael Bray et al. Good chaps. All proceeds from that project go to the Centrepoint Charity in the UK.

  All proceeds from the sales of Dead in the Trunk go toward donuts.

  Insulation

  I.

  The moving man spoke, but Yvonne couldn’t make out the words. The lights were too strong, the noise pounding, just a white sheet of pain hitting her right in the centre of her brain.

  Where?

  Where? Was that it? Was that what he was saying?

  That made sense, in as much as she could make any kind of sense from the flood of noise roaring through her head.

  ‘The bedroom,’ said Yvonne. She sat on the couch. The couch was in the wrong place. It felt wrong.

  The moving man said something else, but she couldn’t talk anymore. Could, but didn’t want to.

  She opened her eyes to see what the man was doing, for a second, and then closed them immediately. It was midday and too damn bright. Summertime was always worse. The light, the sun. It set her off without fail.

  Spots danced brightly in the middle of the room. Where her peripheral vision should be was only shadows. The mother of all migraines was coming on, a conga line, full of feet, kicking the shit out of her brain.

  Footsteps, impossibly loud, came up the stairs. There was a bang, making her wince.

  If they’d smashed up her mother’s dresser she’d kill them.

  The movers scraped something on the way into the room. Something about the cadence of wood, scraping on painted walls, flakes of paint dust hitting the carpet, maybe. She couldn’t hear all that, but felt like she should.

  ‘What was that?’ she managed.

  ‘Miss?’

  ‘What did you just break?’

  ‘It’s not broken. Just…ah...a scratch.’

  Thumping now, real thumping. Like a body thumping up the stairs, being dragged feet first, the head hitting the risers.

  Not the sound of furniture dragged up the stairs over carpet, but of the blood in her brain. Blackness crept from the edges of her vision to the centre. All too soon she’d be blind, maybe for the rest of the weekend.


  ‘Be careful. Please be careful.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Two hours of driving in the heat and the sun. The trees flashing by, the dappled light which made things worse. The dark glasses she usually wore hadn’t helped. The morning sun when she set out slanted through from the east. The motorway was OK, but by then the damage had been done. Her migraine was already on the way.

  First day in her new house, a new start away from the bright city lights of London, and she’d be spending the rest of her day in bed.

  They’d put the bed up if she asked. She just had to pluck up the energy and overcome the fear of voicing the words when her own voice drove spikes through her forehead and right the way out the back.

  *

  II.

  At four o’clock that morning, in the apartment downstairs, Simon smoked like a man in front of a firing squad. One more puff. Time for one more? One more...

  He smoked tip to tip, often burning his fingers when he got to the roach, or his lips, or both.

  His tobacco came from the local newsagents, his weed from a guy named Dave, who kept a samurai sword on his wall, or a guy named Paulo, who drove a Volvo and worked days at an insurance company.

  Simon was sure it was the tobacco that was making his teeth yellow.

  The weed cost a fair amount, but money wasn’t an issue. He owned his apartment outright. His parents had died when he was nineteen, and left him everything.

  Being an only child had nothing but upsides. Like when you kill your parents, you get all their money.

  ‘PWNED!’

  He didn’t get angry. He picked up a sniper rifle.

  He held his joint between his index and middle finger. Used his ring finger to right-clicked his mouse, brought up the scope.

  Waited. Scrolled the wheel, zoomed in.

  Left clicked. Head shot. Sweet.

  ‘SHIT 4 BRAINS.’

  He pulled off his headset and left the game.

  Four in the morning: the golden hour, when the whole block slept.

  The sun would be up soon. He couldn’t see the sun from his computer room, because he’d blocked up the window. He didn’t need to look out of the window to know the sky was getting lighter. He’d looked it up online.

  5.05, like clockwork, David, the annoying guy from the apartment downstairs would slam his front door. His car would start at 5.07, perhaps 5.08, if annoying guy walked a little slower than usual.

  Then he would beep. Just twice, but enough. Enough so Simon hated him. What the fuck did he have to beep for? 5.08am, beep fucking beep.

  But he couldn’t hear annoying guy from his sanctuary. Insulation. That was the trick.

  At 5.10am Simon went to bed. He woke at midday when the new woman upstairs moved in.

  Thudthudthud…then the sound of splintering. Loud in the bedroom. Simon pulled the covers over his head.

  Shut up, thought Simon, tossing in bed, legs covered in sweat. He sighed, got up and hitched his piss-stained pants higher before he pulled on his combats.

  The bedroom wasn’t as well insulated as his game room. Two feet of insulation round the walls. A raised floor, newly laid over a foot of insulation he’d built up. A new oak door. It was getting there, but the ceiling wasn’t complete.

  Maybe it was time to finish off the ceiling. He could keep most of the noise outside then. Most, not all, because no matter how much insulation he had, somehow the voices still got through.

  *

  III.

  It was three days until the migraine passed. Three days of hell, leaving Yvonne wiped out by Monday when the last of the pain had faded away. Her eyes still hurt, her head was tender, the muscles at the base of her skull sore to touch, even.

  Something beeping outside, really early, woke her first. She’d dreamed that someone spoke to her. Some dark voice, and though she didn’t often hear voices in dreams these voices spoke. She couldn’t make out the words and had no sense of what was said.

  Most people dream, they dream in picture and motion. They have a sense of what was said, but they don’t actually have hearing in the dream.

  Yvonne, too, for the most part, but this was different because it was just the noise and some kind of blackness. Voice without picture, like being tuned into a radio in the dark.

  She woke from the dream shaking, but she didn’t know why. Soon after she fell asleep again and slept soundly until 10.30am, when hammering woke her. At first she thought she was being noisy, like when someone hammers on a neighbour’s wall to tell them to shut up, without having to risk some kind of fight by actually going round and asking.

  She was sleeping. She wasn’t making any noise.

  But it wasn’t hammering on the ceiling with a broom handle or the flat of a hand. It was big hammering. A claw hammer, not a pin hammer. Thick nails into thick wood, rather than pins into plaster for a photo of a loved one or a dead pet. Pretty much construction from the sound of it. And right below her bed. It sounded like someone was trying to get through her floor to her still tender ears.

  She wasn’t a morning person. But then, she worked from home, so it didn’t really matter what time she got up, as long as she got her three chapters done and whatever else needed doing. Sometimes she spent a little time fielding queries from her agent, or she might get sucked into doing an interview. What’s it like to be a writer? How did you get started? When did you know you could write?

  She was a romantic mystery writer, but there really wasn’t any mystery about her writing. She wrote pretty much the same plot, with interchangeable characters, over and over again. There wasn’t much skill to it, other than disguising that what she did was work, pure and simple. It wasn’t quite the same as finding and replacing names in her word processing program. It wasn’t far off, though.

  She pulled on a dressing gown and padded down her hall to the front door. It wasn’t a big apartment, but it was a beautiful old Georgian conversion on the Brighton sea front with the whole of England behind her. She could sit in her living room and watch the sea and the people go by with a cup of tea if she wanted too. That wasn’t why she chose the apartment though. Looking into the sun all day in the middle of summer wouldn’t do her any good at all.

  She checked her hair and face in the mirror in the hall. She had to crouch down to do it. She didn’t have much choice. She wouldn’t, either, until she hung the mirror from the wall.

  She looked like crap.

  The black bags under her eyes she could do something about. She put her sunglasses on and things seemed a little better. There wasn’t much she could do about the rest of her face, save a couple of hours showering and making up and maybe even another three or four hours dead sleep. But the hammering hadn’t stopped and the rhythm wasn’t tired.

  She undid the three locks on her front door and stepped into the hall. The hall was one of the reasons she’d decided on the apartment. It was well keep. A sign of a good apartment block. Good carpets, well maintained, a good paint job.

  It should be, too, she thought, the obscene amount she’d paid for a 75-year leasehold.

  She knocked on her below-stairs neighbour’s door and waited, feeling like shit and knowing she looked it, too.

  *

  IV.

  Simon grunted and swore at the knock on the door, but he put the hammer down. The best part of the frame was done anyway. He planned on knocking off for a bit for a joint and a bit of trolling on a couple of forums he frequented.

  He opened the door in his pants and a heavy metal tee-shirt. He didn’t know the band. He’d taken it from a friend’s house, back when he’d had friends.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sor...’ Yvonne began.

  The young man in front of her smelled, as well as being filthy. The apartment, too...it smelled of something really unpleasant.

  ‘Do you mind not hammering on my floor? Your ceiling?’

  ‘It’s annoying, right? Being woken up in the middle of a sleep?’

  ‘How d
id you know I was sleeping?’

  ‘Obvious. You’re a good looking woman, a little old, maybe. You don’t look the type to go out in slippers and a dressing gown. Not even for walking down the stairs to moan at your landlord.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah. Little shit, what, 5’5”? Mid-twenties, tops. Owns this whole building? Bullshit, right?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not bullshit, OK? I own the building. I’m doing some renovations. You obviously like your P and Q. Me, too. Sometimes I’ll be knocking. Sometimes I won’t.’

  She looked like she was going to start shouting, for a second. Then she deflated. All the piss and vinegar just went out of her.

  Simon knew people. He read a lot. All of it online.

  He read almost as much as he played.

  People say marijuana makes them sleep. It didn’t make Simon sleep.

  It didn’t make him schizophrenic. The latest flavour of the month on drugs research proclaimed marijuana could bring out schizophrenia in people predisposed toward mental illness.

  It didn’t work like that for Simon.

  Now he’d knocked the woman down, he’d build her back up again. The last impression she’d have was that her first impression had been wrong.

  Seems like a cock, she might say to her girlfriends, but he’s actually not that bad.

  That’d be just about right. Enough for her to be wary of him, but not scared. That’d be good.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘To be honest, I’m a late sleeper – late to bed, late to rise. I don’t like noise much, either. I’m sorry if I seem like a cock.’ Cock seemed the right choice of words. She’d be thinking in those terms. She wasn’t a cunt woman, he could see that in her haircut. She’d stick true to form.