CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
The body of an entire day had passed and decomposed. Susan slept in her room for the rest of it, breathing and consuming nothing but relaxed air. It was fresh and yet stung her throat. Mainly due to the fact that it wasn’t her own bed, but she knew that she needed the change in scenery, a change in oxygen. She got up at one point to calm her stomach down from the cliff that it screamed on. Apart from that she didn’t leave her room once. Ever few hours she would wake to turn in her bed and hear the shuffled sounds of Kevin being busy. The frequency of his noise was more than usual. But the desire for rest refused Susan to think about it any further.
With breakfast in mind she got up the next day, just after the morning and decided to go home. She shuffled around the house to say finishing words to Kevin before she left, but he was nowhere to be found. Assuming that he went out for personal reasons, she left with quiet footsteps, hushed goodbyes and a muffled thank you.
It was one sense of relief after another. When she entered her flat, she was welcomed by the notion that change was an illusion created to shift someone from the couch. All of her pressing worries were swept under the dark stomach of her couch. The thought of getting a new phone, food, the agency, the desire to throw herself in new pools of people, had all become secondary objectives. She had just picked her life up from an alley, and the only thing she wanted then was the warm thrashing of a shower.
Her clothes were thrown into a basket and her boots were left at the foot of the bedroom door. Light from the working day cracked through the open window in the sitting room flinging its filthy body all over the place. Food waited patiently in the fridge, dancing and rubbing silently in anticipation for Susan to abuse them with the cracked whip of her tongue. But first it was the showers turn to wash away all the collected filth from the last night.
She pranced nude from her bedroom into her bathroom. The lonely voyeurism provided a slither of comfort, tickling her inner thighs. The shower head turned on, spurting and spewing with uncontrollable excitement. Her hair dropped over her shoulders with slick exhaustion. The water made the strands darken, making her skin look paler than usual.
Heat ran down her body with over excited legs, tripping and falling over every curved obstacle that lay before the downward stream. Scratching and humming sounds from the electric shower hung from her earlobes, refusing any other sound from entering. She didn’t know if it was the obnoxious sound from the shower or the water that comforted her. Hiding her hands in her bare armpits she found it difficult to create any real thought on the matter.
She spent a considerable amount of time under the shower, almost as if she was reassuring her legs that they would be able to walk again. Exiting the bathroom the idea of warm and fresh clothes became her very ambitious goal. She slid on thin layers and ended with a small white top free from any markings of use, or wear and tear. Clean and dull was the design.
She walked around her flat dangling her wet hair from her shoulders and her smooth wiped skin from her bones. Before she could appease the uncontrollable stacks of food in her fridge someone knocked on the door. It was the knock of expectation, slow and determined. Each bang built from the hope that the door would be answered for them. Susan answered the door. Having residual soap glazed across her skin made her feel clean, as if everything that stabbed her shoulders over the past few weeks had trickled away into the drain of the shower.
Mathew stood opposite her, close to the door with a strange expression. For a few split seconds she could almost see shock crawl its way up his face and cling onto the end of his eyebrows.
“Hey?!” in her head she had already broken up with Mathew. Their relationship was derived of fun, yet his very presence was a tie to the agency. Besides, she never truly felt anything great enough to make her feel like she was missing much. Over the past few days, he had played as a standby on the stage of her thoughts. Thinking about that gave Susan confidence in ending their relationship, and her job.
He wore a darkly dripped overcoat, one which lined him out like a charcoal drawing, mute from any idea of infested colour. His hair was shorter than usual, cutting their own relationship with whatever stubble he had. “What? You’re surprised that I’m here? After you forgot about the shoot this morning and the fact that you haven’t answered your phone. Impressions have been lost Susan and expectations are being built... I told you from the very beginning to take the agency seriously, and you have done nothing but undermine my reputation. How can you expect to just run away and hide in your flat?” he said with hurried words. His shoulders hunched over Susan as he poured out whatever he had to say.
His right hand rested on the edge of the door frame. There was a small crack in the wood that split all the way up to the top. With his index finger and thumb he fingered the shattered frame, pushing and pulling splinters of wood and squeezing them into the pin cushion of his flesh.
Susan let go of her hair, ready to start the “talk” and danced her hands in front of him as if trying to orchestrate his wild emotions. “I... was mugged a small while ago... and didn’t have any way to contact you... wasn’t hiding. Just didn’t have any way to contact ya, ok?” She said slowly, placing her words carefully and clearly. He inched away shock absorbing his face, while maintaining his grip on the wood.
“Mugged?! Where? Are you ok? Please tell me you didn’t get hurt.” He said with apparent worry inflicting his rapid tearing of the door frame. The more he pondered the idea, the more he rolled over the possibilities of what might have happened to Susan, the faster he tore the wood from the door.
She followed his question quickly, ready to dole out the planned answer. “Just on a night out. You know the kind of bollocks that would get your pockets emptied. Don’t want to go into details. I’m fine though so don’t worry about me. I have had a shower, a good night’s rest, so I should be fine.” He looked at her with sympathetic eyes. She could see his muscles twitch underneath his overcoat ready to reach in for a comforting hug. She knew that it would have to be now or never.
“And about the shoot. It’s not that I forgot about it, I just didn’t want to go.”
“Fully understand... I can’t.” He said, swiftly cut off by Susan. “No I don’t want to go anymore... no more shoots. The job is just not for me.” This would be the face that she would remember the most. He flicked his eyes from a look of pillowed sympathy to a strange mechanical twist of acceptance. It was paused and long, broken up by Mathew taking glances in at the flat and all of its collected dust. The layer of old skin seemed to interest him more than the conversation that played out in front of him.
“Fine” he said with a lazy tongue. First knife removed, one more to go. Susan had her hand on the hilt ready to pull. “And I think we should stop seeing each other... I can’t deny the fun we have had, but I just need time... I suppose… just time.” Throughout, his grip on the wood remained as stiff as his replies.
“I don’t care about you being in the agency.” as he said it he ran his eyes up and down along the clean and wiped edges of Susan’s physique. The window in the sitting room clattered against the wind. The rest of the flat sat silently holding its breath. Susan no longer liked the idea of voyeuristically prancing around her place.
“Yes… but I just need time to think... to rest my jaw... I feel as if have been chewing a lot of shit covered nonsense recently, and it all just needs to settle.” She said settling her hair, feeling as if she had given the best explanation ever.
“That’s not a reason.” He said bluntly tapping his syllables with the thump of his thumbs against the doorframe. He pulled a large piece of blackened wood from its home and twisted it within his fingers at head level. No acknowledgment was given to the dissipating woodwork.
“Well it’s the truth. Or maybe you just want to my dad to be the reason? Say that his health problem is the reason... that’s all you want to hear isn’t it?” Susan said folding her arms to protect her chest. It was more of an instinctive move rather th
an a calculated defence. The moment between her truth and his response was broken up into tiny shifts in where he looked. He started at her head running his eyes over her washed and swept hair. Next he rested his gaze on her neck right above her chest and arms. It was still wet with hints of soap and droplets of water roaming her skin. Then lastly he ran straight down to her knees, passing all of her unstained clothes with squeaky clean distain.
Letting go of the abused wood he dropped his handed splinters to the ground. They were all very silent when they hit the carpet. Susan tightened her arms around her chest placing a fold of her shirt between her fingers. Her patience was being pulled.
“Why do you have to be so fucking clean about it?” the words slipped from him as if riding the corpse of a soap bar. He said it tamed and with heavy purpose, quieter than everything else he had said. The words landed on Susan coated in a thick layer of threats. She gave him a smile, a very simple smile dressed in ignorance. Then she closed the door.
The door, now broken with frustration along with Mathew’s nose, hung itself in the hall outside of Susan’s flat. Everything was purposefully quiet, hesitant to open anything, for the fear that Mathews thinned emotional string would snap. Everyone watched Mathew from the empty seats that filled the self-conscious hallway. Yet he was alone.
With just enough motivation from his broken bones he leaned up against the wall opposite to Susan’s front door. Scalp clapped against the hard as fuck wall. Having found his centre of gravity he threw it in a nearby bin, which resulted in his legs losing total emotional control over their knees. He tripped to the ground holding digging his palms into the mouldy carpet.
Once all the invisible tears were counted and sucked back in, he climbed back up to a masculine stature and concluded his walk out from the flat to his car parked outside. Fists clenched with ideas of violence reverberated between each saggy bit of his fingers. Car door banged open to an alarm that shook all the way up to Susan who sat delicately on the edge of her bed with the window open.
Her knees were attached to her chest, demanding the forming ritual of comfort and a bucket of expensive caramel ice cream. Obviously she wasn’t sobbing over the fact that she broke it off with him. Her empathy forced her to consolidate with what Mathew might be going through, and hearing that loud car door bang from outside slapped her empathy levels to an almighty and creamy high.
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