by Michael Bray
His world exploded into bright white light.
I’m dead.
The thought lasted only a split second because the thing in the Trans Energy uniform was screaming. It stood, withdrawing the tentacles and giving Billy back the pain it had taken away. He blinked and screamed as the agony seeped back into his body. It was only when he was free of that drug like haze he understood what had happened.
The power had come back on, the hallway light banishing the dark, and burning into the thing from Trans Energy like fire. The creature grunted and squirmed as it staggered to its feet, its tentacles writhing and hissing as wispy black smoke began to pour off them. Billy watched as a single light bulb did what bullets couldn’t. The stench which filled the hallway was acrid, thick and heavy as the thing’s tentacles melted. It dragged itself across the wall, leaving sticky black streaks behind as it staggered for the door, which it threw open hard enough to chip the wall where the handle slammed into it. It staggered outside and pushed past the two hanging bodies, which clattered against each other as the thing staggered away into the night, screaming in agony. He listened as the thing’s wails faded, and once again the house was quiet, but it was a good quiet. A natural quiet. He noticed now even a quiet house, one which had power at least, made noise. The refrigerator hummed steadily, the heaters clicked as they powered up. It was good. It was normal. He also knew he was dying. He would never see Tyler grow up, he would never get to tell Angeline he loved her. He was fading. He knew his time was close.
Sorry pal. It’s time to go.
His trusty inner voice was right. There was nothing left to fight for. His stomach rolled, sending fresh agony raging through him, but he was too weak to scream.
Something moved inside him. Visions of the thing from Trans Energy leaving something behind rekindled his horror, and with a tremendous force of will, he lifted his head to look at the gaping hole in his stomach.
A tiny humanoid hand reached out, grabbing at the flayed flesh on the edges of his wound. Another tiny perfectly formed hand joined it, as whatever was inside him pulled itself out.
Billy was too weak to react and was too far beyond fear to do anything but stare.
The humanoid creature stood on Billy’s chest, pulling sinewy clumps of flesh off its domed head. Its tiny mouth scowled, and Billy could clearly see dagger like teeth glistening with moisture. It looked like one of Tyler’s action figures, a miniature human like thing that had been living inside him.
“Are you a Snifferblob?” He whispered.
The humanoid creature only looked at him, hopped down onto the floor and began to walk towards the kitchen, not looking back. It was only then Billy noticed the emptiness inside him the creature had left. It seemed the Snifferblob was more a part of him than he had ever realised. Perhaps the little voice in his head was actually the voice of his Snifferblob. He listened, trying to sense if it was still there. All he could feel was a vast empty void. For all his fighting, the thing in the Trans Energy overalls was right. There had been a Snifferblob inside him. And now it was gone. He needed to hang on, to wait for Angeline to come to him because now he was ready to say those three words that meant so much. It was only now, as he lay shivering and bleeding out on the hallway floor he realised some things were bigger than affairs, revenge, or holding grudges. Some things in the world had neither rhyme nor reason, and he had seen first-hand that sometimes, things came out of the darkness and knocked on the door which could derail a life in a split second.
Billy smiled as he watched the tiny creature which had climbed out of his stomach enter the kitchen, giving the macabre cage containing Mr. Conwell’s severed head a wide berth. Three more of his kind appeared, pushing open the cupboard under the sink and awaiting their fellow creature. They helped it to climb up into the darkness, and with one last look back at Billy, the foursome gently closed the cupboard door behind them. The silence in the house was broken only by the gentle sounds of pans being displaced, as the tiny creatures disappeared further into the darkness to wherever they dwelled.
Snifferblobs.
Billy took one last breath and smiled.
APARTMENT 11
Fifteen.
Fifteen years since I last left this place. A hundred and thirty-one hours, four hundred and eighty-seven minutes since I last saw the outside world. That’s a long time. A long time to think. A long time to wonder. A long time for the human brain to create and invent scenarios. This flat is my sanctuary and my prison. My curse and my gift.
Funny thing, the human brain. It contains one hundred billion neurons. One hundred billion divided by the number of years I have been stuck here is six point six billion.
Sixty-six was the year I was born in a quiet little council house in Leeds.
Leeds has five letters.
Five times three is fifteen.
The numbers always win. They are always right.
One hundred billion neurons within the brain. Several of mine faulty, changed. Agoraphobia. Its definition is the fear of being in open spaces or large crowds. I fit that definition, but I have a good reason. My brain has somehow become rewired, and forces this isolation on me. The one thing I felt forced to do in order to keep people safe has now entrapped me. Nature finds a way to keep up the balance, though, and the things it took from me it replaced with something else. Something special.
I spend my days writing. When I have my weekly shopping delivered I also request two notepads. I write at approximately twenty-eight words per minute, which, granted is a little below average, but enough for my needs. I use pads of A4 paper, each of which contains fifty sheets of lined paper with a vertical pink margin line on the right.
Twenty-eight subtracted from fifty is twenty-two.
That was how old I was when the accident happened. That was how old I was when I got my gift. That was my age when life gave and took away in the cruel way it knows best.
I’ll get to that in good time, though. First, I have to go back. Back to when I was a child. Back to when I can explain how I came to be in this situation. I’ve told this story before, countless times. It is within the notepads I have already filled, but with nobody to listen, I see no harm in telling it again. It will, at least, serve to show you how everything comes back to the numbers. If nothing else, at least, they tell the truth.
Seventy-one.
Nineteen seventy-one in England. Unemployment is at an all-time high. Arsenal have beaten Liverpool 2 -1 in the FA cup final. Scottish Formula one driver Jackie Stewart has won the Monaco Grand Prix.
Nineteen seventy-one.
Nineteen
Nineteen plus one makes twenty.
I was ten when it all started. Ten taken from twenty is ten again.
Ten is an important number.
Seventy-one minus the number of years since I last left this place comes to fifty-six.
Fifty-six is how old my father was when he first raped my sister.
She was seven.
For three years it went on. Seven plus three is ten. My age when it all started. Ten is an important number.
Thirteen is said to be an unlucky number.
For my father, it was exactly that.
Thirteen was the number of times I stabbed him with the knife as he mounted my beloved sister one too many times. Seven in the back, three in the side and three in the balls for good measure.
It took him eight minutes to bleed out.
When he was begging me to stop he said my name ten times.
Ten is an important number.
There were seven people at his funeral, which, as you know, was the same age my sister was when he started his vile attacks.
Seven people there and seven letters in funeral. An anagram of funeral is real fun.
Real fun was what I had when I watched him die.
Nobody cried at my father’s funeral. Not a single one.
My father was a sick son of a bitch.
Eight is the number of years I was in the psychiatric hospi
tal after the attack.
My doctor’s name was Ethan. My sister was called Erica.
Both begin with the letter E.
E is the fifth letter of the alphabet.
Five times three is fifteen.
Fifteen is the number of years since I last left this place.
Fifteen is also the number of minutes since I hit the man over the head who was trying to break into my home. Fifteen is also a very important number.
Fifteen.
I wrapped the rope around each wrist fifteen times before I tied him to the chair. He’s been unconscious now for almost ten minutes. Ten is a very important number.
Ten from fifteen leaves five.
Five minutes until midnight.
Midnight is struck at twelve.
Tomorrow is the twelfth of the month. The twelfth was also the date my sister committed suicide.
She was eleven.
Eleven when she decided it was easier to jump off the roof of the multi-storey car park than have to deal with the psychological nightmares of what had happened to her. Eleven was how old she was when she realised she was broken beyond repair.
There were six people at my sister’s funeral.
Plenty of tears were shed.
My sister was a beautiful human being.
My father was fifty-six when he died.
Five plus six equals eleven. Eleven is how old my sister was when she killed herself because of what my father had done to her.
My father mocks me even in death.
The man who broke into my home is starting to wake, his eyes filled with that vacant half focus of someone who had recently had his brain rattled. I look around and see my flat as he will see it. The newspapers which I have kept over the years- yellowed mountains reaching from floor to ceiling in haphazard towers in every available space. A lifetime's worth of clutter exists here, a home no more than a rabbit run of corridors made from junk and clutter which I can’t bear to part with. I can’t recall the colour of the carpets. I can’t recall the shapes of some rooms. It’s a distant thing to me, how this place would look without all of these things I surround myself with.
My intruder is awake now and moaning, blood starting to dry in thick clumps in his greasy hair. It looks like tar.
I tell him not to scream, that nobody will bother us here no matter how much he shouts. I tell him to be quiet and let me think. He listens, seeing in my eyes that I’m deadly serious. He knows I’m in control and does as he’s told.
Midnight. The birth of a new day.
Twelve times two is twenty-four. Minus one each for me and my intruder, and that leaves twenty-two.
Twenty-two is the age I was when I first got my gift. Twenty Two is an important number.
My intruder is agitated, and starting to panic and make noise. I ask him again to be quiet. This time, he doesn’t listen. Fear will do that every time. I’m forced to hurt him. I don’t want to do it, but I have no choice. I imagine my father and his pale, bloodless face nodding in approval as I hit the man again in the head with the skillet, silencing those noises and bringing out a fresh torrent of blood from his wound.
I ignore the mocking sneer of my dead father, and the expression that says the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I ignore it and whisper my apologies to the unconscious man.
Twenty-two.
Twenty-two when it happened. Crossing the road, minding my own business. Not my fault. The driver was drunk. He claimed he didn’t see me. It still didn’t stop him from driving off and leaving me for dead in the gutter. Twenty broken bones.
Twenty-two minus twenty leaves two.
There were two people in the car, just like there are two people here in my flat.
Twenty-two was my age when it happened. Twenty-two is an important number.
I don’t remember the pain. I was beyond that. I remember faces, swimming in and out of my consciousness, their expressions telling me all I needed to know. I was in a bad way. I remember a priest. He gave me the last rites there in the road. I was dying, but I wasn’t afraid. I couldn’t feel it.
I didn’t die. Sometimes I wish I had. Instead, I spent seven months in the hospital and rehabilitation.
Seven was the age of my sister when my father first raped her.
The same number of people who were at his funeral in which nobody cried. The word funeral contains seven letters. It is also an anagram of real fun.
Real fun wasn’t something I had during my rehabilitation. That’s when the pain I was spared during the accident was delivered to me with interest. It was also where I discovered my gift.
Depression is a real thing.
Depression affects one in five people in the United Kingdom.
One and five is fifteen. Fifteen is the number of years since I last left this place. Fifteen is a very important number.
Fifteen percent of all people diagnosed with clinical depression die from suicide.
I slit my wrists on the thirteenth of October.
Thirteen for the number of times I stabbed my father when I decided I had to kill him because I couldn’t bear to hear the sounds when he was raping my sister.
Fifteen percent of all people with clinical depression die from suicide.
I wasn’t one of those people.
My gift saved me, although I did try.
The pain as my blood spattered onto the floor. Bright red on stark white. The instinctive grip as I grabbed at the three-inch cut I had made in my wrists, blood welling up between my fingers as I waited to be taken away from this awful place.
Then warmth.
Light.
Then my wound stopped bleeding. Then my wound was gone.
Then I realised I was still in this awful place.
My gift. My curse.
Twenty-two when it happened.
Then fifteen years since I last left this place.
Both very, very important numbers.
Thirty-seven. The number of years since I last left this place added to the age I was when the accident happened.
It is also the age of my intruder according to the driving licence in his wallet. His name is Marcus. He has a picture in there of a smiling family. Attractive wife and a daughter who has his eyes.
They mean nothing to me.
Marcus.
Marcus was the name of my father.
My father is dead. I killed him when I was ten by stabbing him thirteen times.
I had to do it to stop him raping my sister.
My sister was seven when it started. And ten when I stopped it. She died when she was eleven.
My father and my sister are both dead.
I didn’t die but instead got a gift.
The gift of life.
A gift I don’t want.
I learned I could heal things by touching them. Something in the crash had reorganised my brain or triggered something locked away that humans have but can’t use. Whatever it is, I have it. My hands can sense illness. Cancers. Tumours. Broken bones. I can fix things. I can help people.
I tried to help people. Tried to share my gift.
Nobody listened. They hit me. They spat on me when I tried to fix them.
They scared me. Threatened me. Called me a weirdo and a freak, a pervert and a paedophile all because I walked with a limp and have these scars on my face and body from the crash.
Not my fault.
Not my fault.
Not my fault.
Nobody will listen. Nobody cares. And so I write it down. Just like this. Just like the other notepads. They are stacked and organised by date. My thoughts, my feelings. All on paper, all like this one.
Fifteen.
Fifteen years since I last left this place. Fifteen years is a long time to be lonely. To be isolated from everyone through no fault of your own. Fifteen is a very important number.
Marcus is moving again. His eyes are glassy and roll in his skull. He looks at me. Sees the scars. Sees the place I live in. His eyes grow wide. He’s afr
aid. Afraid of me. Afraid of how I look. Judging me. Just like them. Just like the others.
Rage.
That tight knot of fire in my belly. It sits there and simmers. Like me, it is sick. Sick of the ridicule. Sick of the mocking and the humiliation. The irony that I might be sickest of all and can’t cure myself isn’t lost on me. Scared now. Scared of what is going to happen, because I know I can’t stop it.
Two.
The number of thumbs I push into his windpipe as the rage takes over.
Fifty.
The number of seconds until he stops struggling and takes his last breath. I hope that’s all it will take, but the rage won’t be satisfied. I know that. I have no power when it takes control.
One.
The number of knives I bring back from the kitchen, still somewhere else, still controlled by that fire which has spread from my belly and has become an inferno.
Thirty-three.
The number of times I stab him, hacking and slashing. Even the feeling of bone grinding against blade can’t stop me. It’s only when the filthy knife snaps that the frenzy ends.
Two.
Fifty.
One.
Thirty-Three.
Added together make eighty-six.
Eighty-six percent of all murders in England and Wales are committed by men.
I am a man.
I am a murderer.
I also have a gift. It’s been fifteen years since I last left this place because I killed my father when he raped my sister.
She was seven.
Thirty.
Thirty minutes it takes. My hands dance over the man’s body, closing wounds, repairing skin. Tears hot on my cheeks. I don’t want this. Don’t want any of it. I don’t know how it works, it just happens. It doesn’t put back what is gone. That’s not how my gift operates. The mess is still there. The blood all over my walls. All over the stacks of notebooks and yellowed newspapers which I have delivered weekly. The broken knife still has clumps of flesh attached to the edge of the blade. But my gift grows it back. Puts new blood back into his body. Repairs broken bones, seals flayed skin. No blood. No wounds. Good as new.