Ugly Things

by Mark Yarwood

  I watch Kevin walk away from me and enter the kitchen. He opens the cupboard and takes out a bowl and fills it with cornflakes. He adds milk and seats himself and begins to spoon great globs of soggy cornflakes into his mouth. I move closer to see the milk running down his face.

  ‘Mate, you know that I’m not even going to finish these cornflakes,’ he says, looking up at me. ‘I don’t have to anymore.’

  I tell him that Maggie didn’t cure him. He doesn’t owe her his loyalty.

  He smiles with milky teeth. ‘Mate, you don’t understand loyalty. You knew I loved her, but you screwed her anyway.’

  So, this is what this is about? Revenge?

  He shakes his head. ‘No mate, this is about becoming more than just a dead old body. This is fame, riches and immortality. I’m beyond revenge now.’

  There was no sound, just a hand gripping my neck, and pulling me backwards. Another set of hands pull my arms behind my back and ties me up. It’s Pete and friend, nodding to me like we’re old mates. They put me into one of the kitchen chairs facing Kevin. A while back, these types of men would have kicked sand in Kevin’s face on a beach, and now they are taking orders from him.

  I jump up and try and make it round the kitchen table, but their hands push me back down again. They shake their two heads simultaneously. Kevin eats half the bowl cereal and then pushes it away from him.

  ‘You look better with the beard,’ he tells me. ‘Janet loved you with that beard. That’s why she got me to hide your razor blades and electric shaver. It was a real pain trying to buy all the razor blades from all the shops.’

  ‘Where are we going to keep him?’ Pete asks and points to me.

  ‘Here will be the best bet,’ Kevin says and finds a cloth to wipe his hands. He looks at the towel he’s picked up and, before he wipes his fingers, throws it back down with a smile.

  I see the two heavies walk away a bit, one lighting up a cigarette. I force myself back on my chair, like kids do in school, hovering for a moment in mid -air before I hit the kitchen floor. My head hits the floor as I roll backwards and end up on my knees. I’m up and running round the lounge as the two heavies chase me, reaching out their meaty hands, swiping the air. They tackle me to the ground and one sits on my stomach as I breath heavily, exhausted, finished.

  But they aren’t finished, but not by a long way.

  Kevin looks over at me. I’m breathing hard and exhausted under a mound of heavies. They don’t call them heavies for nothing. Kevin looks up from my red face, smiling, and then swapping it for a grin that grows bigger with every passing second. He catches the eye of the heavy on top of me.

  ‘Give him a going over will you,’ Kevin says. ‘And film it. There is paint in that cupboard. Let’s make this artistic.’

  Kevin looks through the cupboards and drawers until he finds what he’s looking for. He turns round and lets a large white tablecloth fall from his fingers and stretch out like a flag. It’s creased because it’s never been used, never even taken out of the packet. He puts it on the floor, spreading it like one big canvas. I try to grip the carpet of the lounge as they pull my body from the floor. Tuffs of it remain under my nails as I’m dragged to the cloth and dropped down on top of it. For a moment, it’s like I’m about to get my nappy changed, until a can of light blue paint gets emptied onto me. Magnolia follows and Kevin stands there a little disappointed, shaking his head.

  ‘Mate, that’s all there is.’ Kevin shrugs. ‘It’ll have to do.’

  I hear one of the thugs leave the front door and then come back again, and when I look up he’s looking intently at the tiny video camera he’s carrying. He eventually points it at me, while thug number two sits astride me. He looks down, almost like a dentist about to perform a procedure. He throws off his jacket and rolls up his shirtsleeves. I put an arm over my face, but it’s wrenched away. I open my eyes as a fist expands in my vision, swelling to block out all over objects. My head cracks into the floor and paint shoots from my face and spits back down at me. My blood streaks across his shirt along with blue and magnolia paint.

  With one eye bulging, I see Kevin moving away from the scene, his back to me. With the back of him in view, I can imagine that it’s the same weak- minded, obsessed fool he’s always been. Maybe he is. Obsessed with Maggie. Obsessed with her art.

  I clench my eyes shut, focusing on the silent whirr of the video camera as a fist hammers my ribs. I want to cry out, but I keep my mouth and eyes clamped shut.

  In my mind, I scream out for Billy Wallis, the only man who might be able to stop this now.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  My goose-pimpled body looks grey in the morning light, as I lie stuck to the tablecloth that was once so nice and clean. I turn over and the cloth is stuck to my back. I get up and stand, blinking, looking round my flat, and feel the burning bruises covering my body.

  I stand up with the cloth hanging from my shoulders like I’m some beaten up comic book hero. One of the heavies sits on my sofa, reading a magazine and ignoring me.

  I place my hands gently round my ribs, grit my teeth and look down to see the purple fist marks. My eyes pulsates in their sockets. I let out a moan and the reading heavy just looks at me and shakes his head.

  Even my beard feels bigger. I hope they get a rash on their hands, like all the women that have kissed a bearded man. Don’t let them moisturise. Hide the Vaseline.

  I wonder what will happen to the work of art on my back. I wonder if it will be sold for more money. But most of all, I wonder if I will be sold with it- framed- hung on some rich person’s wall. Human art is the next step. Perhaps tramps will be grabbed off the streets and made to do unspeakable acts for a bottle of booze in the name of art.

  Prostitutes. Tramps. Life’s lost souls. They could be human works of art. See what they’ll do for something to eat or drink.

  Janet is dead and it’s all my fault. I should have made her understand that I loved her, and that she didn’t have to serve her mother like this.

  Maybe, I start to think, even the money would make all this crazy pain worth it, but I know I won’t see a penny of it, not now they plan to get rid of me. They’ll point the boat at Maggie’s house with me tied to the steering wheel, or whatever you call it. They’ll need a body.

  They have the letters with my prints all over them. See the building burn, the tall one I used to work in, and then see my threatening letter turning up in the hands of the police.

  I’m done for.

  The door opens sharply, banging on the wall of my cottage, shaking me down to my bones. Billy stands in the doorway looking like he’s had no sleep for days. He looks at me and then at the heavy who comes to greet him. With one enormous hand, Billy pushes the heavy backwards, sending him crashing over the back of the sofa.

  ‘Get out!’ Billy bellows, and neither the heavy or me know who he’s talking to.

  ‘Just get the fuck out!’ Billy roars and brings out a silver flask from his coat and swigs from it.

  I move past him and smell the alcohol. He looks up and smiles slightly. ‘It’ll be alright from now on. I won’t let them get away with it. They can’t kill my daughter and get away with it.’

  I watch him for a moment, sitting there, with tears coming from his eyes. The heavy gets up and looks at the big crying lump, and then begins to leave.

  ‘And somebody tell that Kevin fucker to get his arse here!’ Billy shouts and swigs from his flask again.

  So much for the summer. It came and went and I didn’t even notice, not when I was too caught up in the animal acts I had been seduced into performing. Janet. I hate her for what she turned me into, but I love her too. In her mother, Maggie, I figure I’ll see all that I hate about Janet. That’s why I march to her house, crunch my feet into her driveway, my paint splattered cloak stretched out behind me.

  I pound on the door with my fists and then ring the doorbell. Slap the letterbox.

  Maggie smiling, a cigarette in her mouth, standing with th
e door open. She looks me over, especially the cloak. ‘You’re crazy, but I do love you darling,’ she says and laughs a little. ‘Do come in. You must be freezing.’

  I walk straight into her lounge and stop dead. I look around at the two uniformed policemen standing around, admiring a piece of our art work on the wall, while my favourite plain clothed policeman sits sipping a cup of tea. They all look at me with raised eyebrows.

  ‘That’s an interesting get up,’ the detective says and sips his tea again.

  From the lounge, I head to the kitchen, waving Maggie to follow me. I stand with my hands on my hips, staring at her, watching her thin smile and the wisps of smoke escaping from it. ‘Why the fuck didn’t you warn me the police were here?’

  She waves the cigarette in her hand and swirls of smoke follow her hand. ‘I just thought it was too interesting not to witness. Why are you wearing one of our paintings? That is one of ours, isn’t it? Don’t get me wrong, honey, I think it was a brilliant touch, you walking in here wearing that.’

  ‘Fuck off Maggie,’ I say with every bit of venom and strength I have left, which isn’t a lot. ‘You’ve destroyed my life. You’ve taken away everything that I had.’

  Maggie asks me what I had. Really, she says, what did you have? A house? No job? No purpose?

  I step closer and let her see the hatred in my eyes. ‘You murdered the one person I had any feeling for. Your own daughter.’

  Maggie looks round for somewhere to flick her ash and finds a teacup. No, she says, she didn’t murder her own daughter. How could she do that?

  ‘So, she’s still alive?’ I ask.

  She shakes her head. ‘No, she’s dead, but that’s the way she wanted it. Now she’ll live forever through our art.’

  Immortality? Immortality? This art -covered superhero has steam rising off him as he vibrates across her kitchen floor, his fists clenched. ‘Should I tell them in there what you’ve been up to?’

  She glances towards the lounge. ‘It’s surprising what a few million pounds can buy you, isn’t it? We were just finalising the deal.’

  ‘So, your daughter’s murder means nothing to you?’ I shout.

  ‘She sacrificed herself.’ Maggie smokes the cigarette and waves the grey smoke from her face.

  I grin. ‘I told Billy. I told her father what happened to her.’

  Maggie gives me a twisted little smile, a smile that means she knew exactly what I was going to say, that all this has been planned far ahead in advance. I was never very good at chess and I’ve just proved it.

  ‘Billy came here, all burning with rage,’ Maggie tells me. ‘I thought he might rip me limb from limb, but he couldn’t. I told him that I had nothing to do with it, that she killed herself. He grabbed me and looked at me with those eyes. You can never tell a lie when he looks at you with those eyes.’

  I step closer to her, fixing her with my eyes. ‘What did you tell him?’

  She shrugs a little. Maggie tells me she told Billy that Kevin helped her die. Kevin stuffed that piece of rock into her windpipe, blocking her airway. She must have struggled, Maggie says calmly, picking some fluff from her dress. Even though it’s what she wanted, Maggie tells me, she would have struggled as the blackness came for her, as her eyes bulged, ready to pop from her head.

  My fist curls and uncurls and Maggie sees it. She doesn’t look at my fist, but she sees it in the glimmer in my eye, the way my mouth twitches. My face burns, as does my stomach and chest.

  ‘Go ahead, hit me,’ Maggie says and taps her cigarette into her teacup. ‘It’ll make everything even better. Go ahead, really, I mean it, darling.’

  Maggie sticks out her chin a little and I see how sharp it is. Underneath the skin she’s had pulled tightly back and tucked under her ears, there is sharp bone. I uncurl my fist and shake my head.

  ‘When they find my body in the wreckage of that boat, do you think it’ll be all over?’ I ask and look in the fridge for something to cool me down.

  ‘Why would your body be in the wreckage?’ Maggie looks a little confused. ‘Aren’t you going to jump ship?’

  I pull a bottle of beer from the fridge and put it on my face. The ice burns as I laugh at her. ‘Nice one, Maggie. Right now Billy is probably murdering Kevin. Knowing how much Billy loves you, he’ll forgive you and you’ll go off into the sunset together with all the money you’ve made. You’ll be famous. You’ll be the old movie star that survived a stalker’s attempt on your life and introduced a whole new school of art into the world. You’ve used me like you have Kevin, Billy and Janet. With Kevin and Janet dead, where does that leave me? Do I go off skipping into the distance with a load of money in my bank account? I don’t think so.’

  ‘You have me all wrong, young man,’ Maggie says and watches me through the wisps of smoke, smiling.

  I walk past her, heading for the front door, my superhero cloak scraping along the floor.

  ‘Now where are you going?’ Maggie asks.

  Maybe I can stop another murder, I shout back at her.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Billy Wallis is lying on my kitchen floor, his head cracked open and his body surrounded by a glistening blackness spreading out to my feet. My hand moves across the wall and flicks the light switch. I liked Billy Wallis. He was like a father to me. A father who sometimes acted like he cared.

  I cannot stay in the house and find myself walking along the harbour. The water looks dark green and the moon swirls across it.

  Someone murdered Billy ‘The Bomb’ Wallis in my home.

  Then I stop. I look across the harbour and through the grey night to Margaret Parks’ home. The balcony lights elongate the front windows and shimmer up the cliff face.

  I start running, my vision bouncing along as I keep my eyes focused on my objective. The cobblestones under my feet turn to gravel and my chest begins to shrink, my ribcage beginning to bend inwards, crushing my lungs.

  Kevin. My friend Kevin, who can now touch filth, can now hold his own penis without a pair of surgical gloves. He could now crack someone’s head open, can risk getting their blood on his hands. Picture him slamming Billy’s head into my nice new kitchen floor. Perhaps he laughed, rubbing the blood over his body, gloating in his new found freedom from his mental restraints.

  Kevin loved Janet. Love at first sight, he called it, but he’d do anything for Maggie. He’d kill for her. Kill her daughter and then her father.

  That first night at Margaret Parks’ keeps haunting me. Or should I say the morning, waking up with a hole for a brain? An old woman for a lover. It was all planned out.

  I see Billy Wallis lying on my kitchen floor his blood reaching out to me. Blood leaving a body means the heart is still pumping. What could I do though?

  Maggie’s house will be locked up tight, but I know a way in. I stand at the corner of the house and look at the gap between the balcony and the stone wall. The sea below is black gravy with spit foaming in it. The sea tries to hush me, but my ears are deaf to its cries for me not to leap. I go back a few steps and burst forward, my shoes scratching at the sandy drive. I pounce forward, flying through the empty air.

  My hands burn against the railing, my body hanging over the swirling water. I feel a cracking in my shoulders as I swing my legs.

  With my face pressed into my arm, my beard digs into my icy skin. My teeth grinding together, I close my eyes, while the wind pulls at my hair and clothes. I breathe deeply, pull myself up, and manage to get myself bent over the railings as a breath bursts from my open mouth.

  Janet made a stick of rock. It read: I want to kill you.

  Once over the railings, I stand and look at the stretch of glass that reflects the floating horizon and the metallic silver spot in the sky hovering above it.

  I pick up one of the wrought iron chairs, swing it and let go. I cover my face as the glass crackles to the ground, and then I enter the bedroom.

  ‘Hello darling, nice of you to come and see me,’ I hear through the darkness, bu
t I know her voice.

  The lamp by the side of her large bed, comes on and she’s smiling, lying back with her hands behind her head. Next to her is the young white skinned man and he seems unusually flustered.

  From under the sheets appears Kevin, his eyes blinking against the newly found light. Kevin, you’ve become a mole. His hate of the dirt has become love. Love at first sight and now he buries himself in the filth.

  ‘Why?’ I ask Kevin and move closer, trying to see straight into his eyes.

  ‘Why? Mate, because I can. I was afraid to get dirty and now the fear is gone. I just wanted to be perfect like you. You cured me. You and Maggie.’

  Janet made me a stick of rock, it read: If you want something that bad, kill for it.

  Billy Wallis is lying on my kitchen floor, his head broken open like a dropped Easter egg.

  ‘You murdered Billy. You murdered Janet.’ I nearly sit down on the bed because my hearts ricocheting round my chest.

  ‘Mate, you know too much,’ Kevin says and looks for his glasses.

  Maggie yawns. ‘It’s the middle of the night. It’s too late to be killing anyone.’

  ‘I don’t know why,’ I say and my chest rises up and tries to cover my chin every couple of seconds.

  Maggie smiles and lights a cigarette. She slips past Kevin and pats him on the knee. Then she glides across the floor and moves round to me. Her eyes bulge and flutter for a moment. She’s back in that London street, ready for her close up. Those hands that touched her that evening, the sweaty hands of the director, are still imprinted on her body. Her brain, if you could see it, would have big holes in it, great big teeth marks where that night of angry passion had eaten away at her mind.

  It wasn’t enough that he was dead. It is never enough that the guilty are dead, and revenged is served.

  I want to kill you.

  ‘Can you make rock?’ I ask Margaret and she laughs for a few moments.

  ‘Of course I can,’ she says and takes a great big lungful of her cigarette. ‘I taught my daughter how to make rock. It’s a gift that should be handed down.’