Duet

by O'Gorman, Brian

  “Outside, two minutes,” was all he had to say to him.

  He had waited outside long enough to get three quarters of the way through a cigarette. He thought his anger towards them might abate a little, but it didn’t, in fact it felt a damn sight worse. They both came out of the door and walked over to him, they both had the good sense not to say anything but to just let him speak.

  “I’m sending you both home. You are both suspended with immediate effect and until I can run a full enquiry about what the fuck you are both doing, not only disobeying orders but conducting yourselves in the most disgusting and degrading manner whilst wearing the uniform. Both of you get out of my fucking sight right now.”

  Greg had tried to speak, saying something about the water being dangerous, like he didn’t already fucking know it. He almost gripped the little fuckstick and punched him right in his smart-arse little mouth. He didn’t want to hear any shit, he just wanted them to take the bollocking and go the fuck home before they made it a damn sight worse for themselves. He needed to show them who was the boss and why he was the boss. Lucky for them that they decided to just leave. Louis had grabbed his arm and led him away to the car and they left. Once they were out of sight he had gone back into the nursing home and demanded to talk to the old bitch in the corner of the room. Tina, the boss had resisted but he told her that if she didn’t do what he wanted that he would go to the papers and tell them what she had been up to with one of his officers in the spare room. She had coloured and then shown him to June without any more fucking about.

  “Such an angry man you are, and you should be. If I had been responsible for the deaths that you have been I would be pissed off too,” said June before he had even sat down.

  “What are you talking about?” he had said slightly taken aback.

  “I can stop you in your tracks with just two words sunshine, I will say them and you will sit and listen to me, do you understand sonny?” said June. She kept her eyes focused on the view outside of the window, she never looked at him, nor did she want to.

  “I know about you June, I know about your cheap tricks, you don’t convince me about all that spiritual shit and destiny and any of that bullshit. I want you to tell me why my officers were here and what the fuck you said to them to get them to disobey my orders,” said Soames, his face was pulsing with his rising blood pressure.

  “Joe Braden,” said June and she turned her gaze onto Soames. He had been silenced and he sure as hell didn’t like it. He was breathing hard and his bottom lip was gibbering silently. She had kicked him in his metaphorical balls and he knew it.

  “I think you should sit down Mr. Soames, what do you say?”

  Soames sat in the chair next to her like a naughty schoolboy that had been caught eating the crayons.

  “Do I have your attention now?” said June

  “You could have read that in the papers,” said Soames, he was trying to sound tough but the bass had gone out of his voice. He knew that there was no way she could have read it, his name was never mentioned in connection with what happened. June looked at him and smiled as if she was reading the thoughts as they were going through his mind.

  “You know as well as I do sonny, you had doubts about Braden and you didn’t chase them up. You could have saved lives and you know it. The guilt you carry around is eating you up, that’s why your wife walked out on you and that’s why you can’t get through the day without shoving that white powder up your nose every few hours. How much are you in debt now? Are you still awake every night wondering if the heavies are going to show up and break your legs?”

  Soames remained silent. He was beginning to tremble. There was nothing that she had said that wasn’t true.

  “Now that we have all of that out of the way, you need to lighten up on those two officers. They might just be able to save this town if they start warning people now. You my friend are just getting in the way,” said June.

  “I just caught one of them…”

  “With their pants down, yes I know, but she needed it so she can think clearly. That’s what people like you don’t understand, you have to give in to your natural needs otherwise you carry it all around with you and it clouds your judgement. Just like you will spend the rest of the day wondering what might have happened if you had shut that door and whipped out your old dingus. Well, I can tell you sunshine, because your mind is full of bullshit like that and all that coke you shove up your nose, you might not make it through ‘till morning.”

  “You don’t know that. It’s all a trick,” sneered Soames.

  “Sure it is honey, and you can go on believing that for the rest of your life. Now you listen to me, you need those two because that water out there is deadly and getting people to listen is going to be a tough job. People these days, they don’t believe anything, even when the proof is staring them in the face, just like the fact that you don’t believe that I can see right into your mind even though I have just told you what a fuck up you are. Now why don’t you go and do your job Soames and stop wasting my time before you let more people die, what do you say.”

  Soames felt his anger flare and he stood up, almost knocking the chair over as he did so. “I don’t have to take orders from some crazy old bitch like you. I have been doing this job for too long to let anyone, especially not some stupid little puke kid, a lesbo cunt and an old bitch like you put it all in jeopardy.” He levelled his finger at June. “You mark my words, you interfere with my officers or this investigation again and I will have you arrested and thrown away in a prison cell to rot, do you understand?”

  June looked up at him. If she had any fear of Soames and his temper she was showing no outward signs of it.

  “Believe me Jack, I understand perfectly. Now go and peddle your papers, this conversation is over,” she said and turned back to the window.

  Soames stood there for a moment, curling and uncurling his fists. He was trying to think of a comeback, but the old fucker had got his number.

  “Bitch,” was the best that he could come up with and then he left.

  Soames stormed out of the home and back to his car. He had driven halfway back to the station when he had pulled his car over to the side of the road and pulled his little baggie of gear out of his secret pocket. It was already cut and ready and before long he was haring down the narrow country lanes with his scalp buzzing with his latest hit. He was going to get rid of Greg and Louis and any evidence of that old senile bitch and solve this one himself. He was going to make up for what happened with Braden on that fateful day and he was going to be the best D.C.I. on the force again. This case was going to give him back his life and his confidence and nothing and nobody was going to get in his way.

  Once he was back at the station he was going to get to work on everything that had been gathered so far. He was going to need a lot of coffee to get through this lot. Perhaps he was going to pull an all-nighter again, just like he had done many times before. He knew he had to go the extra mile to stay ahead of the game and all those others who wanted to be in his position. He filled up the coffee machine with water, a new filter and a few extra spoons of ground coffee and set it to work. He was about to sit down at his desk and fire up his computer when he felt his stomach lurch. This had been happening more and more often as of late. He didn’t know if he had been given a slightly dodgy batch of gear, but it seemed to be liquidising his bowels more often than not. He felt the lurch again, followed by a stomach cramp which almost doubled him over. His arm twitched, sending his box of pens hurtling to the floor. Desk Sergeant Patterson looked up from his work to see what was going on and Soames waved him off. He clenched his lower muscles as tight as he could and made his way to the bathroom as fast as he could without actually running. He was thankful that, because it was getting later in the day, that the station was quiet and so were the toilets. He bustled himself into the furthest cubicle and slammed the door shut. He managed to shove down his trousers and squat a bare second before his waste rush
ed out of him in a series of sickening jets and plops. He put his head in his hands and groaned, swearing on his life that today was going to be the last day that he ever put that shit in his body again. He felt as if his stomach was going to knot again so he stayed where he was, waiting for the next bowel purge to happen. What he couldn’t see beneath his exposed buttocks was the water in the toilet bowl was fizzing quietly beneath him, like a glass of soda water that had been freshly poured. After a moment, it died down again and the shit that he had freshly laid in the bowl was gone. The water looked like it was as fresh as a mountain spring. It stayed still for a little while and then it began to grow. The water level in the bowl began to rise silently beneath Soames. It was less than two centimetres from his exposed buttocks when it stopped for a moment, almost as if it was planning its next move and then it suddenly shot upwards. Soames felt the cold water make contact with his buttocks and his dangling penis and start cascading out of the sides of the bowl and he tried to stand. But the water had already eaten through his fleshy arse and his old man before he could even react. As his brain was sending the signal for him to jump off the can the water had eaten all the way through the tops of his legs. When he found that he couldn’t stand up he looked down and saw that he could actually see the skin and muscle on his upper legs being burned away from within. All that was left behind was the bones. Soames could have sworn, even in this bizarre moment that he could see a streak on his left femur where the bone had been knitted back together after he had broken it when he was six years old. He hitched in a large breath with the intention of letting it out as a scream, but the water had turned into a fountain and most of the flesh on his upper body was almost gone. His last thought before his brain went into its final shutdown was that somewhere in that old folk’s home, that senile old bitch June Dobson was laughing at him. She had known all along what was going to happen to him. She had beaten him. He had been beaten by that silly old cunt. Just as he was passing out for the last time, a little smile ghosted across his mouth. Then, just like his life, his mouth didn’t exist anymore.

  2.

  June Dobson felt Soames go, but she wasn’t laughing, she wasn’t laughing at all. At the moment of his death Tina had come to sit with her and had brought a pot of tea along with her. She set the tray down on the table in front of June and then sat down in the chair next to her. June had spent the whole time since Soames had left just watching the early evening sun glisten off the reservoir. She was going to say something to Tina but when she tried to speak she realised that her throat was as dry as the bottom of a parrot’s cage. She gestured towards the teapot and Tina obliged by going and refreshing the pot in the kitchen. A few minutes later she came back and poured June a fresh cup. The auxiliaries went to work handing out tea to the rest of the residents. There was an almighty fuss when one of the residents wouldn’t give her cup up to be filled. June would normally watch such a circus with a smile on her face, wondering if she ever got that bad when the darkness came. Today she didn’t even turn around to see who it was causing such a stink, her mind was on Soames. Soames was a piece of shit, there was no doubt about it, but she still hadn’t wanted him to die. There had still been some good within him she had felt it. She had felt that little pang of regret that he hadn’t been able to save Joe Braden, nor his ex-wife from her maniac partner. She knew that he had once been a good man and a good police officer and she had hoped that she would have been able to tap into it and he would have prevented what was starting to happen. Instead, she feared that he had already been killed by it. She could only assume because, although she knew he was gone, she couldn’t see what it was that had killed him. It could have been his coke habit, perhaps he had snorted a dose that had been cut with a shit load of drain cleaner, but her instincts told her different. Tina handed her the cup of tea. She drank some of it off and the first two swallows hit her throat like a blessing. She looked over at Tina. Her head was down and there was a steady stream of tears running down to the end of her nose. June reached out a hand and put it on her shoulder.

  “Don’t you worry kiddo, nobody knows about what happened between you and that lovely police officer,” she said.

  Tina’s head came up. “But what about their boss? He was so angry.”

  “Now don’t worry your little self about him, he has got bigger fish to fry my dear believe me.”

  June drank another mouthful of her tea. She swallowed it slowly, frowning slightly. There was something about the tea that wasn’t quite right. The taste was off, almost like it had been stewed in the pot for too long. She looked down at her cup and then realisation flooded through her. She didn’t get fooled very often, not even these days when the clouds came over her mind, but this time she had been out foxed. The quarter cup of tea began to fizz. The bubbles rose three quarters of the way up the cup and then dropped down again. The tea that had been in there had vanished and been replaced by clear water. Except, it wasn’t really water and she damn well knew it. It had already got in and it had got to her. She had drunk part of the creature. She had a pretty good idea that this was going to be the end of her, that she was going to check out right now. She waited for it to start, the burning sensation from within whilst it began eating her away from the inside. After a moment she figured that if it was going to eat her away it would have done so the moment her lips touched the cup. Tina was watching what was going on with a deep frown on her face.

  “What was that?” she said pointing at June’s cup.

  “It’s something pretty nasty my dear. You should stay away from the water, all of the water is infected,” said June.

  “What do you mean infected?”

  “Take a look around you my dear and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  Tina glanced at the room behind their chairs and she gasped. Her hands came up and covered her face. All around the room in the various chairs and sofas the residents were no longer sitting in their chairs and enjoying their cups of tea and varieties of biscuits. They were all dead, their skin burned and bleached right off their bones. Some of them still had internal organs that were sitting in their laps or trailing onto the floor. Some of the pots of tea were still fizzing as the thing in the water absorbed the freshly brewed tea. June slowly stood up and looked at what had happened to the residents. She wanted to feel afraid, perhaps even horrified but there was nothing, her emotions were beginning to flatline. There wasn’t much time left. She turned to Tina.

  “Keep away from the water. Get as far away from here as you can. Perhaps you could go and find Louis and just keep running. It’s not done, not by a long shot. I think it’s just beginning.”

  “But what about…”

  “Me? Don’t you worry about me my dear, I think it needs me for something. Now go, get the hell out of here. There isn’t much time. If you can, go and find Louis, she is your best chance.”

  Tina looked her up and down and then she fled through the room of corpses, leaving June alone.

  June turned back to the window she had sat and looked through for so many years, all the time waiting and wondering why she had been brought here and what her fate was going to be. Now she knew, now her time has come.

  I’m sorry honey, I’m so sorry, I tried to save you I swear to God I tried.

  “Don’t you worry my love,” she said out loud. “It was bound to happen sooner or later. I’ll be home soon, you mark my words my love.”

  She felt it invading her blood stream, taking the human parts of her far away. Then it started on her brain. She felt its hunger, its never ending need for food. She felt its fear and its need to survive at all costs. She tried to talk with it, reason with it in the walls of her mind, but there was no way it was going to listen. Her body stiffened and then it began to convulse as the thing finished invading her.