Blueeyedboy

by Джоан Харрис

  And I do come across as a bad guy — but I may be redeemable, through love. Who knows? It happens in movies all the time. And Chryssie lives in a rose-tinted world in which a fat girl may find true love with a killer in need of tenderness —

  Of course it isn’t the real world. I save all that for my writing group. But I like myself so much better as a fictional character. Besides, who is to say that what she sees isn’t some fragmentary part of the truth — truth, like an onion, layer upon layer of tissue and skin, wrapped tightly round something that brings tears to your eyes?

  Tell me about yourself, she says.

  That’s how it always starts, you know, with some woman — some girl — assuming she knows the best way to mine the motherlode at the centre of me.

  Motherlode. Mother. Load. Sounds like something you’d carry about — a heavy burden, a punishment —

  So let’s begin with your mother, she says.

  My mother? Are you really sure?

  See how quickly she takes the bait. Because every boy loves his mother, right? And every woman secretly knows that the only way to win a man’s heart is, first of all, to dispose of Ma —

  8

  You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy posting on:

  badguysrock@webjournal.com

  Posted at: 18:20 on Wednesday, January 30

  Status: public

  Mood: vibrant

  Listening to: Electric Light Orchestra: ‘Mr Blue Sky’

  He calls her Mrs Electric Blue. Appliances are her thing: novelty door-chimes, CD players, juicers, steamers and microwaves. You have to wonder what she does with so many; her guest bedroom alone contains nine boxes of obsolete hairdryers, curling tongs, foot spas, kitchen blenders, electric blankets, video recorders, shower radios and telephones.

  She never throws anything away, keeping them ‘for parts’, she says, although she belongs to that generation of women for whom technical ineptitude counts as a charming sign of feminine fragility rather than just laziness, and he knows for a fact that she hasn’t a clue. She is a parasite, he thinks, useless and manipulative, and no one will grieve very much for her, least of all her family.

  He recognizes her voice at once. He has been working part-time in an electrical repair shop a couple of miles from where she lives. An old-fashioned place, rather obsolete now, its small front window packed with ailing TVs and vacuum cleaners, and dusty with the grey confetti of moths who have flown in there to die. She calls him out on his mobile number — at four on a Friday afternoon, no less — to look over her menagerie of dead appliances.

  She is pushing fifty-five by now, but can look older or younger according to necessity. Ash-blonde hair, green eyes, good legs, a fluttering, almost girlish manner that can change to contempt at a moment’s notice — and she likes the company of nice young men.

  A nice young man. Well, that’s what he is. Slim in his denim overalls, angular face, slightly over-long brown hair and eyes of that luminous, striking grey-blue. Not the stuff of magazines, but nice enough for Mrs Electric Blue — and besides, at her age, he thinks, she can’t afford to be particular.

  She tells him at once that she is divorced. She makes him a cup of Earl Grey tea, complains about the cost of living, sighs deeply at her solitude — and at the gross neglect of her son, who works down in the City somewhere, and eventually, with the air of one about to confer an enormous privilege, offers him her collection for cash.

  The stuff is totally worthless, of course. He says so as gently as he can, explaining that old electrical goods are fit for nothing but landfill now, that most of her collection doesn’t conform to present safety standards, and how his boss will kill him if he pays as much as a tenner for it.

  ‘Really, Mrs B.,’ he says. ‘The best I can do is dump it for you. I’ll take it down to the rubbish tip. The council would charge you, but I’ve got the van—’

  She stares at him with suspicion. ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Only trying to help,’ he says.

  ‘Well, if that’s the case, young man,’ she says in a voice that is crystalline with frost, ‘you can help by taking a look at my washing machine. I think it’s blocked — it hasn’t drained for nearly a week—’

  He protests. ‘I’m due at another job—’

  ‘I think it’s the least you can do,’ she says.

  Of course, he gives in. She knows he will. Her voice still has that blend of disdain and vulnerability, of helplessness and authority, that he finds irresistible . . .

  The drive-belt has slipped, that’s all. He unbolts the drum, replaces the belt, wipes his hands on his overalls, and in the reflection from the glass door he sees her watching him.

  She may have been attractive once. Now you’d call it well-preserved; a phrase his mother sometimes uses, and which to him conjures up images of formaldehyde jars and Egyptian mummies. And now he knows she is watching him with a strangely proprietary look; he can feel her eyes like soldering irons pressing into the small of his back — an appraising glance as careless as it is predatory.

  ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ he says, turning his head to meet her gaze.

  She gives him that imperious look.

  ‘My mother used to clean your house.’

  ‘Did she really?’ The tone of her voice is meant to suggest that she couldn’t possibly remember all the people who have worked for her. But for a moment she seems to recall something, at least — her eyes narrow and her eyebrows — plucked into insignificance, then redrawn in brown pencil half an inch above where they should be — twitch in something like distress.

  ‘She used to bring me with her, sometimes.’

  ‘My God.’ She stares at him. ‘Blueeyedboy?’

  He’s killed it now with that, of course. She’ll never look at him again. Not in that way, anyhow — her languid gaze moving down his back, gauging the distance between the nape of his neck and the base of his spine, checking out the taut curve of his ass in those faded blue overalls. Now she can see him — four years old, hair undarkened by the passage of time — and suddenly the weight of years drops back on her like a wet winter coat and she’s old, so terribly old —

  He grins. ‘I think that’s fixed it,’ he says.

  ‘I’ll pay you something, of course,’ she says — too quickly, to hide her embarrassment — as if she believes he works for free, as if this might be some kind gesture of hers that will put him for ever in her debt.

  But they both know what she’s paying him for. Guilt — maybe simple, but never pure, ageless and tireless and bittersweet.

  Poor old Mrs B., he thinks.

  And so he thanks her nicely, accepts another cup of lukewarm and vaguely fishy tea, and finally leaves with the certainty that he will be seeing a lot more of Mrs Electric Blue in the days and weeks to come.

  *

  Everyone’s guilty of something, of course. Not all of them deserve to die. But sometimes karma comes home to roost, and an act of God may sometimes require the touch of a helping human hand. And anyway, it’s not his fault. She calls him back a dozen times — to wire a plug, to change a fuse, to replace the batteries in her camera, and most recently, to set up her new PC (God only knows why she needs one, she’s going to die in a week or two), which prompts a flurry of urgent calls, which in their turn precipitate his current decision to remove her from the face of the earth.

  It isn’t really personal. Some people just deserve to die — whether through evil, malice, guilt or, as in the present case, because she called him blueeyedboy —

  Most accidents occur in the home. Easy enough to set one up — and yet, somehow he hesitates. Not because he is afraid — although he is, most terribly — but simply because he wants to watch. He toys with the idea of hiding a camera close to the scene of the crime, but it’s a vanity he can ill afford, and he discards the scheme (not without regret), and instead contemplates the method to use. Understand: he is very young. He believes in poetic justice. He would like her death to be someh
ow symbolic — electrocution, perhaps, from a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner, or from one of the vibrators that she keeps in her bathroom cabinet (two of them modestly flesh-toned, the third a disquieting purple), amongst the bottles of lotions and pills.

  For a moment he is almost seduced. But he knows that elaborate plans rarely work, and firmly dismissing the beguiling image of Mrs Electric Blue pleasuring herself into the grave with the aid of one of her own appliances, on his next visit he sets up the makings of a dull but efficient little electrical fire, and gets back home in time for a snack in front of the TV. While meanwhile, in another street, Mrs Electric gets ready for bed (with or without her purple pal), and dies there sometime during the night, probably of smoke inhalation, he thinks, although, of course, one can only hope —

  The police call by the following day. He tells them how he tried to help, how every appliance in the house was some kind of accident waiting to happen, how she was always overloading the sockets with her junk, how all it might take was a little surge —

  In fact, he finds them ludicrous. His guilt, he thinks, should be plain for them to see, and yet they do not; but sit on the couch and drink his mother’s tea and talk to him quite nicely, as if trying not to cause him distress, while his mother watches suspiciously, alert for any hint of blame.

  ‘I hope you’re not saying that was his fault. He works hard. He’s a good boy.’

  He hides a smile behind his hand. He is trembling with fear, but now laughter overwhelms him, and he has to fake a panic attack before someone realizes that the pale young man with the blue eyes is actually laughing fit to split —

  Later, he can pinpoint the moment. It is a thunderous sensation, something like orgasm, something like grace. The colours around him brighten, expand; words take on dazzling new shades; scents are enhanced; he shivers and sobs and the world blisters and cracks like paint, revealing the light of eternity —

  The female PC (there’s always one) offers him a handkerchief. He takes it and scrubs his face, looking scared and guilty but laughing still, though she, the woman, who is twenty-four and might be pretty out of that uniform, takes his tears as a sign of distress, and puts a hand on his shoulder, feeling strangely maternal —

  It’s OK, son. It’s not your fault.

  And that ominous taste at the back of his throat, the taste he associates with childhood, with rotten fruit and petrol and the sickly rose-scent of bubblegum, recedes once more like a bank of cloud, leaving only blue skies in its wake, and he thinks —

  At last, I’m a murderer.

  Post comment:

  chrysalisbaby: woot woot! blueeyedboy kicks ass

  Captainbunnykiller: ‘Mrs Electric Blue pleasuring herself into the grave . . .’ Dude. There’s a scene I’d give money to read. How about it, huh?

  Jesusismycopilot: YOU’RE SICK. I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT.

  blueeyedboy: I’m aware of my condition, thanks.

  chrysalisbaby: well i don’t care i think ur awesome

  Captainbunnykiller: Yeah, man. Ignore the troll. Those fucktards wouldn’t know good fic if it jumped up and bit them in the ass.

  Jesusismycopilot: YOU ARE SICK AND YOU WILL BE JUDGED.

  JennyTricks: (post deleted).

  ClairDeLune: If these stories upset you, then please don’t come here to read them. Thank you, blueeyedboy, for sharing this. I know how hard it must be to express these darker feelings. Well done! I hope to read more of this story as it develops!

  9

  You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.

  Posted at: 23.25 on Wednesday, January 30

  Status: restricted

  Mood: unrepentant

  Listening to: Kansas: ‘Carry On Wayward Son’

  No, I don’t take it personally. Not everyone appreciates the value of a well-written fic. According to many, I am sick and depraved and deserve to be locked up, or beaten to a pulp, or killed.

  So, everyone’s a critic, right? I get a lot of death threats. Most are rants from the God squad: Jesusismycopilot and friends, who always write in capitals, with little punctuation except for a forest of exclamation points that rises above the main text like the upraised spears of a hostile tribe, and who tell me YOUR SICK! (sic) and THE DAY IS AT HAND! and that Yours Truly will BURN IN H*LL (!!!) WITH ALL THE QUEERS AND PEDOPHILES!

  Well, thanks. There are headcases everywhere. A newbie, who calls herself JennyTricks, has become a regular visitor, posting comments on all of my fics on a rising scale of outrage. Her style is poor, but she makes up for it in vitriol; leaves no term of abuse unused; promises me a world of hurt if ever she gets her hands on me. I doubt she will, however. The Internet is a safe house, close as the confessional. I never post my details. Besides, their anger gives me a buzz. Sticks and stones, dude; stones and sticks.

  But seriously, I love the applause. I even enjoy the occasional hiss. To provoke a reaction with words alone is surely the greatest victory. That’s what my fiction is for. To incite. To see what reactions I can collect. Love and hate; approval and scorn; judgement and anger and despair. If I can make you punch the air, or feel a little sick, or cry, or want to do violence to me — or to others — then isn’t that a privilege? To creep inside another mind, to make you do what I want you to do —

  Doesn’t that pay for everything?

  Well, the good news is — apart from the fact that my headache is gone — that I now have more time to indulge. One of the advantages of sudden unemployment is the amount of leisure it provides. Time to pursue my interests, both on and offline. Time, as my mother says, to stop and smell the roses.

  Unemployment? Well, yes. I’ve had some trouble recently. Not that Ma knows that, of course. As far as my mother is concerned, I still work at Malbry Infirmary, the details unclear, but plausible — at least to Ma, who barely finished school and whose medical knowledge, such as it is, is taken from the Reader’s Digest and from the hospital soaps she likes to watch in the afternoons.

  Besides, in a way, it’s almost true. I did work at the infirmary — I worked there for nearly twenty years — though Ma never really knew what I did. Technical operations of some kind — also a partial truth of sorts — in a place in which everyone’s job description contains either the word operator or technician; I was until recently one of a team of hygiene technicians operating two shifts a day and attending to such vital responsibilities as: mopping, sweeping, disinfecting, wheeling out the rubbish bins and general maintenance of toilets, kitchens and public areas.

  In layman’s terms, a cleaner.

  My secondary, even more dangerous job — again, at least, until recently — was that of day carer for an elderly man, wheelchair-bound, for whom I used to cook and clean; on good days I’d read, or play music on scratchy old vinyl, or listen to stories I already knew, and later I’d go looking for her, for the girl in the bright-red duffel coat —

  As of now, I have more time, and much less chance of being caught in the act. My daily routine hasn’t changed. I get up in the mornings as usual, dress for work, care for my orchids, park the car in the infirmary car park, pick up my laptop and briefcase, and spend the day at leisure in a series of Internet cafés, catching up on my f-list, or posting my fiction on badguysrock away from my mother’s suspicious eye. After four I often drop by at the Pink Zebra café, where there is a minimal chance of my running into Ma or her friends, and which offers Internet access for the price of a bottomless pot of tea.

  Given my own choice of venue, I think I’d prefer something a little less bohemian. The Pink Zebra is rather too informal for me, with its wide-mouthed American cups, and its Formica-topped tables, and chalked Specials boards and the noise of its many patrons. And the name itself, that word, pink, has a most unfortunate pungency that takes me back to my childhood, and to our family dentist, Mr Pink, and of the smell of his old-fashioned surgery with its sugary, sickly odour of gas. But she likes it. She would. The girl in the bright red duffel coat. She likes her anonymity among the café’s
clientele. Of course, that’s an illusion. But it’s one I’m willing to grant her — for now. One last unacknowledged courtesy.

  I try to find a table close by. I drink Earl Grey — no lemon, no milk. That’s what my old mentor, Dr Peacock, drank, and I have acquired the taste myself; not entirely usual for a place like the Pink Zebra, that serves organic carrot cake and Mexican spiced hot chocolate, and acts as a refuge for bikers and Goths and people with multiple piercings.

  Bethan — the manager — glares at me. Perhaps it’s my choice of beverage, or the fact that I’m wearing a suit and tie and therefore qualify as The Man — or maybe today it’s just my face — the ladder of suture-strips across one cheekbone, the cuts bisecting eyebrow and lip.

  I can tell what she’s thinking. I shouldn’t be here. She’s thinking I look like trouble, though it’s nothing she can quantify. I’m clean, I’m quiet, I always tip. And yet there’s something about me that unsettles her; that makes her think I don’t belong.

  ‘Earl Grey, please — no lemon, no milk.’

  ‘Be with you in five minutes, OK?’

  Bethan knows all her customers. The regulars all have nicknames, much the same as my friends online, like Chocolate Girl, Vegan Guy, Saxophone Man and so on. I, however, am just OK. I can tell that she would be happier if she could fit me into a category — perhaps Yuppie Guy, or Earl Grey Dude — and knew what to expect of me.

  But I prefer to wrong-foot her sometimes: to turn up in jeans occasionally; to order coffee (which I hate), or, as I did a couple of weeks ago, half a dozen pieces of pie, eating them one by one as she watched, clearly itching to say something, but not quite daring to comment. In any case, she is suspicious of me. A man who will eat six pieces of pie is capable of anything.

  But you shouldn’t judge by appearances. Bethan herself is an irregular choice, with the emerald stud in her eyebrow and the stars tattooed down her skinny arms. A shy, resentful little girl, who compensates now by being vaguely aggressive with anyone who looks at her askance.