Tail

by Julian Duenker

CHAPTER SEVEN

  The weather continued to cry over its undeserved hatred. Susan cruised along a road heading towards an increasingly desolate part of the city. Once used buildings scarred by traumatic events spilled across the wet muddy plains. Unused warehouses born from the money boom’s silver lined womb plagued what was left of the empty spaces. Her car drove a fair distance from anything resembling life. Trees and shrubs had gone to a better place, evicted by the demanding fumes of nearby factories.

  As she drove, she fondled the very motive for driving out in to such a sparse place, where the only company clean enough to talk to were the shrubs that lined the road. Dangerous? She fucking knew it. But something about the sharp edged kick she got from her escape was enough to motivate her to cut her ties with her city life and spend the next while relaxing in her car. She couldn’t bear the smell that had collected in her flat. What to do next? Well perhaps occupy yourself by thinking about some really heavy and depressing stuff, and that’s exactly what she did.

  Kevin was an only child still reeling in from a car crash that killed his parents. Very traumatic shite, regardless of how attached one is to their parents. They were all he had, which happened to be the part that stuck with Susan the most seeing as it directly affected her. Every so often when she felt the need to care for him, he would throw his feelings under the bus like every other man that participated in the seemingly man seminar that every boy has to take. Feelings are weak and all that chest bumping bravado. It was always a useless effort for Susan to try and talk to him about it. The first acknowledgment of his family was enough for him and nothing more. Our family she would always say back to him.

  The death of his family was so traumatic is that it sent him a flight from land to land to finish his puberty. She always took it as a slice of life but the part that stood out to her was the fact that she had never seen any of them. All she had to go on was Kevin’s apology for losing any photos of them across his enlightening journeys and adventurous tales. Sometimes it was hard for her to believe that he had lost the only photos of her only relatives. She prayed that it was merely a convenient excuse for him not to have to bring up his family, but her boots shook afraid that he was telling the truth.

  The absence of music filled the car. Her boots covered by the shadows of the pedal cave twisted in their seams. Her right boot pressured itself to act instinctively, while the boot on the left waited, halting, assuring itself that Susan’s soft skinned father would take care of himself. Their leathery thoughts shivered up Susan’s legs, tickling her hairs. Unnerving to feel while driving.

  She pulled up behind a collection of abandoned buildings. The image of a boring apocalypse wouldn’t have been far off. Her movements were paused by the dank embrace of her own head, sitting and enjoying the hard hitting melody from the rains own tortured worries. The car filled up with foggy smoke. Her neck felt heavy leaning on her head rest. Playing back a simple tune in her head, the rain acted as the fast paced drum. It calmed her boots down, easing the worries behind their black laces.

  She no longer saw outside the windows. The combination of smoke and her limp mind filled the windows with fake images of her flat, spreading straight to the frames of the glass.

  The stains of her couch fitted within the plastic rims of the windows. Looked as if her ensemble of furniture were somehow projected onto the interior of the car. Her arm flung to the back of the car fumbling around for something comforting to grasp onto. With the tips of her fingers she thought she felt the corner of her pillow. It was overbearingly white with the slightest hint of dampness. She tried to pull it forward into her lap, but it seemed to be attached to something. She forced all the strength she could possibly muster out of her steamed muscles.

  In her half eaten state she looked to the ever growing back seat of the car. All she saw was her bed, with the blankets forming an oval shaped interior. It demanded her to bind her sleep to it. The bed was furious, shown by the fact that it stapled the pillow to itself. It was clean however, absent of any apparent filth. To Susan the freshness protruded through the quilts, leaving a trace smell of bought perfume. Fucking weird though like and she knew it.

  The bed politely asked her to leave the boots behind. Too much thick air flew through her eyelids for her to be able disagree. The bed appeared like a bought paradise to her. The ideology and dirt common fears of outside no longer existed to her. All that was left was the hairy arm of the bed, selling the lubed idea of a safer future for her. A confusing sense of comfort.

  In colour’s family picture, Mr Black was always the admired one, told by old whispers that they would be the one to succeed. It gave Mr Black an unparalleled amount of confidence. Which he, an actual shade of colour, used to full affect every night. Everyone ignored Grey. Colours’ silence would break Grey’s confidence to achieve even the slightest of tasks. It forced Grey to seep within the mundane, to become unnoticed to the eyes of anyone. But every night Grey would slip beneath black’s performance and control what he couldn’t reach. Black stayed darkly ignorant to the ravings of the monotone, but Grey didn’t care. She enjoyed every moment of the night, embracing every little joyous surface that she painted.

  Susan’s socks pressed up against the wet glass. She jolted the slightest bit. Her hand dug into her crotch acting as the most basic form of heat. The hole in the thigh of her jeans was fingered by her index. Her other hand was huddled around her neck.

  Her lips cracked open in rhythm to the pained edges of her eyelids. All she could see was the subtle battle between Black’s dominance and Grey’s serene love for herself outside in the night. Susan momentarily focused on the handbrake, thinking for that brief moment she was in her bed.

  Frightened by the lack of light it sunk in for her that she had slept in the car for a considerable amount of time. Engulfed by burnt ideas of what could have happened she tried to stay calm, whispering tiny packed words of comfort to herself. Climbing into the front seat she placed her shook hands on the steering wheel. It took her a reasonable amount of time for her to gather her thoughts and remember how to drive.

  The car engine started, alerting any fictional evil people that lurked in the shadows of Susan’s well deserved fear. Her neck swung around the car trying to cope with the thought of her being in the middle of the night be herself. But she had no one to blame apart from her little friend called impulse. The vulnerable car swam through the waves of confident MR Black’s shades. Susan drove with stuck haste and fast fear.

  Mr Black swallowed the corners of the car park, bringing those terrible nightmares to fruition, while Grey tried to separate the patches of lit up cement from Mr Black himself. She circled the street lamps quietly forcing Black to find other territories to terrorise. Yet with all of this he would be the colour to be praised, lauded by wet flesh clapping. All she saw was the light blinding out his stretched coal skin.

  As Susan drove through the night her car sputtered muffled words of exhaustion. The nocturnal tide took its toll on the smoothly bent metal of the car. She wrapped her sides with the loose hangings of her jacket, holding them with her armpits. She wasn’t necessarily cold, but yet a desire for familiar warmth arose between her layers of skin. And with the slow thumps of the night it succeeded, making it the only viable thought that roamed around in her skull.

  Her car parked. Her keys were wrapped around her index finger as she leaned up against the wood of her front door. Even though she wasn’t in the slightest bit drunk she still managed to tumble her way into the front of the flat.

  The faint yellow light from the hallway ran all the way into her home, slicing through Mr Black on the carpet until the yellow glow reached the bottom half of her room. She closed the front door quickly before any of her nightly terrors came to a melodramatic climax.

  Her boots shuffled against the grain of the floor. They never enjoyed the rough texture of the carpet, but yet it always instilled a warm realisation that they were once more safe at home. Stemmed from the day, baby bl
ue pain made them think about Kevin. Thinking about Kevin was one thing, but to be stuck pondering about his past is another. Her left boot tripped itself against an imaginary hump in the carpet, burdened by the heavy worry about Kevin and his youthfully young state of mind.

  All Susan had was the dreamt imagination of what her family could have looked like after hours spent gazing into the bathroom mirror. That feeling, that one green and lonely feeling created that empty hole which tormented Susan’s spine.

  While the tangled laces of her boots were preoccupied with their own back-seated self-discussions Susan finally caught onto a cord of a lamp. She tugged with a tired lack of patience. It was still miles better than Mr Black’s portfolio of work outside.

  She walked into her bedroom and pulled the blanket of skin off of her. First her boots went, then the jacket greeted the floor.

  Even though the bedroom had an apparent lack of light, it still flashed itself with toxic and faint colours in the corners. Purples and reds danced with each other teasing the warm blue that hid underneath the sheets of her bed. Susan tried to ignore them but they managed to make her legs feel as if they weren’t hers. Digging her chin into the folds of the blanket she held onto her legs and thighs trying to keep them attached to her hip.

  That precise feeling, that desire to hold onto warmth controlled her tangled movements. She wanted to go under the covers. She even saw the warm blue glow, but her cold legs refused her from moving into the warm embrace of her bed. Her contradicting bones screamed through their own marrow until they reached her head, banging on the inside of her skull. Jarring.

  One by one she plucked her worries from her spine and left them outside her room. First was the memory of her non-existent family, then was the worry of Kevin and himself, followed by the lost memory inside her bedded car. She slowed down to the pace of sleep and climbed under her blanket.

  The flashing colours in the corners tamed themselves until there was nothing left but the limp light in the kitchen. Every piece of heavy breathed furniture had settled down allowing Susan to finally shut down.