Slights

by Kaaron Warren

"Of course. Have you ever had sex with a man?"

  "No fuckin' way. Have you?"

  "Of course."

  "Had sex with women?"

  "That wasn't the question. Truth or dare?" I knew he wasn't enjoying truth. He didn't answer me. I lost patience.

  "Truth or dare?" I said. "Truth or dare? Truth or dare?" I shouted it in his face.

  "Dare."

  "I dare you to strip naked." He did that, so arrogant he forgot how vile his body was.

  "I dare you to strip naked." I did that, and he forgot my earlier truth. He grabbed me.

  "I dare you to let me put handcuffs on you," I said, and didn't he love that.

  I handcuffed him, led him to the kitchen. I had tied the noose before he arrived, and it hung from the old gas pipes running across the ceiling. I knew these pipes were strong; Peter and I used them as monkey bars when we were kids, and I'd done it since, racing lovers across the ceiling for favours.

  I thought the pipes would hold.

  "Stand on the chair," I said. His short, fat penis quivered, lifted. He climbed onto the chair. I tied his feet without asking.

  "Steph, what're you doing?"

  "Steve. It's Steve," I said. I climbed another chair behind him, stroked his white dimpled thighs on the way up.

  "Oh, yeah," he said. "Go, Steph."

  I placed the noose around his neck and tightened it. He tried to look up but was dizzy; he stumbled and could not steady himself.

  "Falling," he said. I moved my chair away and sat watching as he tried to stand steady; the noose tightened, the chair tipped back and fell away.

  "I want you to remember what you see, because we're going to do this again and again until you do," I said.

  His eyes bulged; he couldn't talk, his tongue was thick. His body shook and wriggled like a fat fish which had never seen daylight.

  I watched his eyes, looking for something, listened for the bowel movement. Once he'd released all his shit and piss, it'd be too late to bring him back.

  He morse-coded me with his batting eyelids.

  "All right," I said. "You don't like it so much."

  I pushed the chair back under his feet. He scrabbled with his toes. He coughed, breath rasping in his throat. He sucked in the air like it was water.

  I gave him a glass of vodka. He swallowed it slowly, not closing his lips between sips.

  "Thanks," he said. He watched every move, his limbs shivering and twitching. He nodded at me.

  "Where've you been?" I said.

  "When?" he said.

  "Just then. Were you here? Was it black?"

  He closed his eyes, remembering. "I was very cold. And I didn't know how I got away from you." He flicked his eyes open, scared I was offended.

  "You didn't," I said. "It was cold."

  "And it was dark. I was walking and I felt really light, my feet weren't flat, I was young again." He looked down at his fat, white body. A tear spilled from one eye. "I was young. And I walked, I knew where to go. I don't know why. I just walked and it slowly got lighter and lighter. I could smell a familiar smell."

  He began to cry.

  "Shit? Was it shit and mothballs?" I spoke too quickly; I felt my heart beat in my throat. I couldn't breathe.

  He looked at me in astonishment. He couldn't believe I knew it; he looked at me with worship.

  "Tell me what you know. Tell me everything," he said.

  That made me feel good; it made me feel as if I was powerful, very powerful. I was a monarch. I was the queen of knowledge. The room made me feel that way; the feeling is addictive.

  That's what should have happened. This is what did happen:

  He looked at me like I was weird. It was okay for me to strip him naked, almost kill him, and he likes it. Mention something which comes out of everyone's asshole, and he thinks I'm sick.

  He said, "I only smelt nice things. I smelt Dad's special soap. He kept it in a leather box in his drawer. It was very expensive and no one else was allowed to touch it. He had sensitive skin. He was a delicate man."

  "I don't care."

  "I could smell his soap, and it was getting lighter. I was on a conveyor belt, moving somewhere. It was like I'd polished off a bottle of vodka. I couldn't feel the pain in my wrist or my neck. Then a face came into my mind. My grandson."

  "You've got a grandson?"

  "Yeah. Oliver. He's only one. I'm not that old," he said. He was still thinking about sex with me, gross old man.

  "So your grandson called to you?"

  "No, no, he doesn't talk yet. He's only one. I just thought of him. I thought about him heading off to school, in his uniform. I didn't see any of my own kids going. My wife held it over me. She said it made her the best parent, because she had shared all the details of their lives. Fucking bitch."

  I said, "You didn't see what I see? Smell it? You open your eyes and you are in a cold, dark room. You can see figures, people and they smell like shit. You smell mothballs as well. You hear clicking noises, click click." I clicked my teeth near his cheek. "And their fingernails are long and sharp. You know them, but only just, and they bend over you, parting your legs, fingers cold as marble probing, squeezing, scratching. Someone bites out your clitoris. Spits it down. Rats would chew it if there were rats. And you see your brother but he doesn't help you. Then someone brings you back to life."

  He shook his head. "God, I didn't see that! I didn't see what you see. I swear!"

  He made me so angry I sent him back to the room forever.

  "Are you going to let me hang you again?" I said.

  He laughed. "Forget it."

  "I'll suck you off while you're hanging." He smiled then. I wondered how long he'd been dreaming of having his cock sucked. "I'll only tie it loosely," I said. I strung him up and kicked the chair away. He stretched his fingers towards me, dreaming now of killing me. I took a packet of chips into the lounge room and turned the TV on loud. It was an action movie, so-called, lots of screaming noise, drum music. When it was over I cut him down and buried him in the backyard. I was glad of my medical training, if only to know how to control the death when I needed it controlled.

  I felt a bit sorry for making the people suffer, but I remembered a lesson Dad taught me; he told a story about two little boys playing in the sandpit, and one was happy because the sand was wet and he could make perfect castles with his new bucket and spade, and the other one was sad because he didn't have a bucket and his pants were getting wet. Dad said that feelings rarely match because people never do, even when they are doing the same thing.

  So even if I tried to make these people happy they wouldn't be so.

  Human life is so dreadful. To fear death more than to crave knowledge is weak. We are stopped still because people are not willing to die to learn.

  I find that need to know, to see, is like a tight shirt, a childhood favourite worn seeking comfort. But I cannot face my own dark room again. I want to see those of others.

  People gossiped when Gary disappeared and they thought I was weird for not joining in.

  I could have told them a couple of intimate details which would turn their tongues blue. I nearly did, once. Mentioned his job, some dull detail.

  "I didn't know where he worked. How well did you know him, Stevie?"

  "He used to tell everyone about it."

  "No, he didn't," and the fucking idiot went squealing up the street. Did you know where he worked? Did you?

  I saw my future, while I was waiting to see Gary's room. I knew things other people didn't know. I was in control. I became a grief counsellor at work, talking to them about things beneath. I'm sure it helped. The chief nurse didn't like me because the patients asked for me, not her.

  "You're an enrolled nurse. You're not qualified.

  She had no idea how qualified I was.

  "Assisted Deaths" dropped as people become fearful of death.

  Ced admired me, the things I said. He didn't mind sharing the limelight; they all loved him. Kind, funny, ph
ilosophical, everything people want in a near-death carer.

  I spoke to them, told them the truth.

  I said, "The last time I died, I did not see my father in the room. I saw the old lady I had failed to give a seat to and the sandwich maker I had not thanked. I did not think these people were dead. I did not see how that was logical. I thought they must wait for me to die without dying themselves. When you dream, you are not in control. This is what the room is like." Ms 16, there with an inherited blood disease, sitting up with lipstick on to try to look pretty.

  "I think often about that place. Their caresses, their worship. I remember the way they touch me. It gives me a slightly sickened feeling, just a cold hole in the pit of my stomach. They touch me with such desperation, such need. I feel great power over them, these people who mean nothing to me. What happens when you die? The world ends. There was some face I didn't remember, then realised I had seen him at a job interview, I had beaten him for a job. Not my fault his life was over, but I lied about my experience. Who doesn't? It was almost a thrill, to be in the room, to be queen. The smell seems worse, though, on each visit. More powerful; there are more of them. And that clicking, and I can't talk, even when I recognise people, see the shopper whose place I took in the queue, see the librarian who opened the book I sneezed into. Your husband beats you? That is not a slight. You can hate him for that. You will not be in his room."

  Mrs 48, mother of four, more concerned about leaving them behind than leaving herself.

  I told them what I saw and they went away, a little more fearful of death. What faces would they see? I could see them adding up the slights, remembering faces of hurt people. Why would the giving up of a train seat matter more than the anniversary of my father's death? I imagined people were more careful with their lives after I spoke to them. I taught them not to be petty, not to remember the slights. Because it is them who wait for me. Them who suffer.

  "I see the same look on every face," I told people, "but I couldn't identify it until I caught a train one morning. As we pulled into the station, I saw a platform full of people with the look. Boredom, anticipation, and desperation, desperation for the boredom to end. Until I realised what was waiting for me after death, I despised life. Even then, I found death enticing, because there I am queen. The centre of attention. Even after I realised what the people were waiting for, I couldn't stop their numbers from growing."

  I became popular; in demand. I spoke to the people who came to see me at the hospital, some who had returned from death and wanted to know the truth in what they saw. Some saw the dark room. I told the others they had not seen the truth; that they blocked the truth out.

  I said, "The people waiting in the room suffer. They are alive, but part of them is snapped away at each slight. The snapped bit attaches itself to the offender, and this is what he sees after death. So the more you believe you are slighted, the lesser person you become. The horror of it is that if someone hurts you, you are in their power, because you remember them forever, whereas they will soon forget. The one who does the hurting usually doesn't care what happens to the other, or will certainly forget that particular hurt. It is foolish to be wounded by such small things; the paper cuts of life, the slights, when the world is so terrible around us." The other staff members listened. They loved this stuff. It made sense of what they did.

  I met a lot of people who'd seen death after life. They came to hear what I had to say; they wanted me to hear their tales. Every one of them felt special, singled out.

  "So, what did you see?"

  "It was terrifying," Mrs 51 said. I was thrilled. I'd found a soul mate. She said, "It was very dark. I walked and walked, because I didn't want to stand still. There was a flash of something up ahead, and a voice said, 'Come to the light.' But I didn't know what the light was, and I turned and ran the other way. Into darkness. But everywhere I turned, light appeared. 'Come into the light.' It was so terrifying I had to climb the air to get away, and that was how I clawed my way back to life."

  She closed her eyes, remembering.

  "What about you?" she said.

  "The horror is the unimagined, unavoidable, forgotten slights; the man you snubbed, the woman you bumped, the teacher you teased. Nobodies, nothing events, and yet they guide your fate. In all my trips to the afterlife, I have never been guided by a light. There is no journey; there is only awakening. And from the looks of horror which come over the faces of those who have died in my arms, my mother's screams, they see what I see. I can only think that those who talk of light, tunnels, loving faces, were not really dead. Or they are lying."

  I felt in a better place than I had for a long time, so when Peter called me, I didn't hang up in his ear. "So, want to come to a thing at Maria's parents? Should be okay. Her parents ask about you, believe it or not."

  "Hey, I believe it. You're the one who hates me."

  "Ha ha ha. So, ya coming?" I could hear a difference in Peter's voice when he spoke to me. He was eleven, I was nine. We had not progressed much past there.

  "Free food?"

  "You have to bring some wine or something."

  "I'll bring a surprise."

  I brought a case of beer.

  The youngest daughter-in-law, the one married to Adrian, got very drunk on the homemade wine they had provided. She dozed, the others went to check the children, and I was left, ignored.

  Adrian came in. He bent, looked into her face, straightened, smiled at me.

  "She's asleep," I whispered, feigning concern.

  "So I see."

  "She doesn't know how to hold her liquor. I don't seem to have that problem." I licked a nonexistent, wayward drop of beer from my fingers. "Luckily."

  He smiled. I had heard reports his wife had gone off sex since the six month-old was born, and that he and his brothers were known for their appetites.

  Adrian was broad and brown. He had a smile which creased his face, a flicking tongue which mesmerised me. And I was full of magic; I was teaching people how to live their lives. And people were listening.

  "Let's go for a drive," I said.

  "Sure. I'll just tell the others."

  "Let's just go."

  I didn't wink, though I was greatly tempted to.

  We walked to my car, not talking. That's when it always fails, when I'm supposed to talk, because I can't invent words like that. I find it a terrifying challenge.

  Adrian and I flirted from our first meeting, years ago at Peter's wedding. Adrian's wife was his fiancée then, but she was preoccupied with sucking up to his parents, so we flirted and cheeked each other. I thought maybe he liked me enough not to marry her. We reached my car. He looked in the passenger side. Others who'd done that went silent, or said, "Is that where…?" I don't think he had any idea.

  "I'll take you for a drive," I said. He was leaning against the door. "Get away for a few minutes." I reached my arms around him, laid my head on his chest. He had a very broad chest. He wore a jumper his wife had knitted. Unwittingly, she had made him something sexy. The stuff she wore herself was terrible: cardigans, jumpers too short, scarves garish, little pert hats in grey. This jumper was dark brown, thick, soft, my head against his teddy bear chest and I unlocked the door behind his back.

  "Where will we go?" he said. He took the keys from me; he wanted to drive. He wanted to drive me, too, turn my wheels, and I would be an instrument. I would not speak, I'd hum and purr. I'd need some petrol which he'd give me, a nice whisky or a beer, and I would take him from A to B.

  "I'll drive," I said. Let him be the car; let me steer fate. I drove to the local park. Missed it once and chucked a U-ie, roared past a slow coach in my desire to get there. There was no one about in there; it was a very dull place. The playground equipment a sticky slide and an old railway carriage, off its wheels. Kids were scared to go in there: beer bottles, broken glass, evidence of adults hidden inside. Some kids hate the smell of an adult.

  We kissed at Peter's wedding when everyone was drunk. He pret
ended it never happened; I had the bitten lip to prove it did.

  "I want a swing," I said, and I squeezed my bum onto the child-size seat.

  "Steve," he said, rolling his shoulders, embarrassed. "Come on, Stevie."

  I swung my legs to get started. "Give us a push."

  "I push my kids all the time." He had two others, apart from the sex-stealing baby.

  So swings weren't a sexual thing for him. They reminded him he had a family.

  Maturity was what he liked.

  "I've never done this before," he said, thank God, saved me from saying it because it sounded pathetic.