He barely registered the sound of people behind him screaming and rushing for the deck.
Carol looked up, pleading with him to haul her back up. She looked at him with shadowed eyes and said, “Paul?” Her face was a distorted mask of panic and need. And then wide-eyed fear. “Paul!”
He reached down with his other hand and firmly grasped her gauzy sleeve before letting go of her wrist. The cheap peasant frock tore, leaving him holding a length of rent cloth. He watched she disappeared into the darkness below. The sound of her landing with a whump and snap of breaking bones against denting steel, more shattering glass, and then a hollow crack against the pavement like a gunshot carried up and over the screams of the other guests as they arrived behind him on the deck. He turned, holding up the sleeve by way of explanation.
“I had her. I had her!” he said.
The rest of the evening was a blur. Shrieks and shouts, threats and recriminations, the police and paramedics... the ambulance ride.
And then the hospital.
Paul informed the staff that he was Carol's husband—a lawyer at Tinder, Gibson and Parry LLC. They led him right past the velvet rope. All access. Glenn arrived directly behind, but since he was only a “friend,” the responsibility to make decisions fell to Paul. He still held her power of attorney. Glenn was exiled.
She moved from emergency into surgery and then recovery. Once she stabilized, Paul was allowed into the room to see her. And from that moment on, he never left her side. Watching. Waiting for the movements of her eyes beneath the lids to develop into a flutter. And then wakefulness. And he'd be the first person she saw. Not Glenn. Him.
And then what? She'd realize that he still loved her and have a change of heart? She'd feel let down and betrayed that her artist wildman wasn't waiting to immortalize her in yet another half-formed series of haphazard paint streaks?
No.
She'd ask where Glenn was. Paul would explain about hospital policy and the power of attorney and that she needed someone to care for her and that it had been him. It had always been him. He'd pour his heart out and still she'd be unmoved. Because that was Carol. She couldn't remember the good times.
He stood up from the chair beside the bed and stretched his back. It was stiff from that damned new-father's chair. He grabbed his wallet from the radiator sill below the window and looked out again at his beloved city. The city across the river. The home she'd not returned to since betraying him and moving across the Charles like it was some clear line demarking one life traded for another. An impassible barrier between the past and her future.
But he'd crossed it. For her.
It was all for her.
Paul pulled the sheer curtains closed and walked out of the room into the hall to buy a bottle of water from the vending machine in the lobby. "Mr. Goddard," a nurse called out to him. "Mr. Goddard, stop!" He turned to face her, hands on hips. She stared at him with a look of mild annoyance. "Mr. Goddard, you have to put your shoes on. We’re allowing you to sleep here, but this is still a hospital." He looked down at his stocking feet. Thin black work socks that he hadn't changed since Carol had been admitted forty-eight hours ago stood in stark contrast to the white tile beneath them.
"Oh my god, I didn't even realize."
The nurse huffed and grabbed his elbow to lead him back to the room like he was the patient who needed her healing touch. "It's okay, Mr. Goddard." She patted his hand. "She'll come through it. But when she does wake up, you need to be strong enough for the both of you.” She spoke as if his shoelessness was physical a symptom of the psychological trauma that a good husband must be feeling in such circumstances. Of course, he’d forgotten to slip into his shoes due to worry over his wife. The woman turned him toward her and looked soulfully into his eyes as if stage positioning enhanced the sincerity of her delivery. “She's lucky to be alive. Carol is going to need a lot of help after the surgeons are through adjusting to her new life. She's lucky to have a husband as devoted as you."
"And I'm lucky to still have her."
"Yes you are." She smiled at him. The nurse wasn't ugly. Just not quite pretty either. Nothing that would inspire anyone to paint.
Not like his wife.
His wife, who when she awoke would tell what had really happened out in the cold night on the deck.
He walked into the room and shut the door behind him. Running the tap in the sink at the far end of the suite, he let the water fall over his finger until it felt lukewarm. He filled the pink plastic pitcher another friendly nurse had brought in the night before. Returning to his side of the bed he sat and stripped off his socks and dunked them in the water. After a minute or two of swirling them around, he pulled them out and squeezed and wrung the cloudy water back into the cup. He repeated the process. When he was satisfied with his tea, he stood and peeled back the dressing covering the wounds she’d received in the fall and then in the operating theater. He tilted the pitcher, drizzling warm water along the length her wounds, soaking the points of penetration of the pins and screws and wires holding Carol's legs together. When the wounds were glistening wet, and dried blood in between folds of cut flesh looked newly tacky and soft, he replaced the gauze as well as he could so the stains of pus and blood lined up with her wounds. He daubed the scrapes on her face and wiped around her ventilation tube before taking the damp socks into the bathroom to wring out thoroughly in the sink. Wrapping them up in a ball, he dropped them into a plastic grocery bag, tied it off, and dropped it into the gym bag full of clean clothes he'd made his secretary drop off. Sitting down on the lid of the toilet, he pulled a fresh, dry pair of clean white socks out of the bag. He pulled them on and slipped his feet into his tasseled loafers.
Slinging the bag over his shoulder, Paul walked out of the room to go get breakfast and a cup of coffee. And to throw out his trash. He made sure to cleanse his hands at the sanitizer station right outside the room before he went. MRSA. It's all over places like nursing homes and hospitals. Staph infections are usually nothing to worry about. Unless they invade deeper into your body getting into your lungs or bloodstream or bones. He chose not to think about it, instead reflecting on the good times as he stepped out into the sun.
Those thoughts lasted until he found the boyfriend in the parking lot leaning against his car.
Paul’s step stuttered and he hesitated a second before resuming his stride. Wildman appearance or not, Paul had taken Krav Maga classes. He wasn’t going to let this hipster shithead intimidate him.
Glenn took a deep drag, the red ember of the cigarette burning hot in the shade of the covered lot before fading again. His face darkened as the ember cooled and he blew the smoke out, waiting a moment, steadying himself. The man looked like his muscles were made of inch thick coiled spring. He took a breath before speaking. “I brought you something. A little piece of art I thought you might like to see before it goes on public display.”
“I don’t want any more of your paintings in my house.”
Glenn reached into his messenger bag. Paul’s stomach tensed as he waited for the artist to pull a gun. He tensed up, ready to dive at the man’s midsection. He wasn’t going to just stand there and let the asshole shoot him. When the wildman pulled a silver disk in a white paper sleeve out of the bag, he half-relaxed.
“What’s that?”
“It’s for you, Goddard. A video installation piece.”
“I don’t get it.”
Glenn’s mouth turned up on one side in a kind of humorless smile. “You ever go to a museum and walk into a room where they’re playing a looped video of a rotting peach or a man in drag changing a truck tire? That’s a video installation. I have a friend who does them.”
Paul stepped up to Glenn, held up his key and said, “Not interested. Now get off my car so I can go change my clothes before Carol wakes up.” His head was beginning to ache and he wanted nothing more than to be back in his apartment taking a hot shower while his socks turned to ash in the building incinerator.
> The wildman persisted. “You’re going to be interested in this. Believe me. My friend, the video artist, he has this thing about ‘outsider perspective.’”
Paul wanted to throw a punch through the air-quotes Glenn fingered on either side of his face. He stood still and waited the man out. No sense getting arrested for fighting with the contents of the bag on him.
“He likes to film intimate situations at a distance. You know, dinners, quiet nights cuddling on the couch... parties. He climbs up telephone poles and ties these little tiny cameras to them so he can film through windows from across the street. If he didn’t show the videos in museums, he’d just be a peeping Tom. But it’s art when he does it. Oh, and he gets permission. If you’d shown up to the party with everyone else, you’d have gotten a copy of the likeness rights waiver. Still, we didn’t want you to be unaware what you’d gotten into. I thought you should have a looksee before the big premiere.”
“I told you, I’m not interested.”
“On the news.”
Paul’s stomach tightened and he found himself taking a step back from the man and his unmarked DVD.
“Finally piqued your curiosity, huh?” He dropped the disk on the ground and lit a fresh cigarette. “Watch it or don’t. It’ll be on at six and probably again at eleven. I’d try to catch it on your player though. You might not get another opportunity.”
“Fuck you.”
Glenn the wildman laughed a single explosive syllable before pushing off the side of Paul’s BMW. “Our girl told me about your dark side, but I didn’t let it sink in all the way. You know how people talk about their exes. That’s on me. This,” he said, spitting on the paper envelope. “This is all on you.” He walked into the shadows of the parking garage, smoke drifting lazily in his wake. Paul thought about leaving the disc on the ground, but at the last minute snatched it and jumped into his car. He drove through the city in a daze, glancing from time to time at the DVD glinting on the passenger seat.
In his condo, he stood with the Blu-ray remote in hand, afraid to press PLAY. His phone started ringing not long after he arrived home. He didn’t answer. Instead, he stared at the blank screen as if it was a black hole that might suck him in if he woke it.
Eventually, he started the disc and watched the image of the deck outside Glenn’s studio appear crisp and clear and large as life on his plasma television. People filed in to the apartment appearing and disappearing into the space beyond the glass doors separating them from the outdoor landing. They laughed and poured drinks and talked. The only sound on the video was that of an occasional car passing by out of frame or an airplane overhead.
Paul fast-forward through the next hour of video. Eventually, he saw himself appear at the door and he let the film resume normal speed. He watched himself make a drink, talk to Carol and Glenn... and then the deck.
All those things he remembered about that night appeared differently on camera than in his recollection. His hand slipping off the handle of the door looked like what it was: a rear elbow strike. His lunge to catch her, a braced forearm shove. And the deliberate shift of hands, from a firm life-saving grip to a tenuous grasp on soft fabric. Most damning, however, was his face as she fell.
All those memories from a different perspective took on new life and his stomach tumbled at the thought of a single moment gone too far. An impulse that he didn’t fight and a choice, once made, irrevocable. Made doubly so by his “tending” to Carol in the hospital.
The video ran on. The sounds of screaming and shouting and a siren growing louder until it filled his apartment, filled his head.
The phone rang again. And then the knock at the door.
He thought of the gym bag with his socks tied up in a shopping bag sitting in the foyer. In his haste to see the video he hadn’t rushed first to the garbage chute at the end of the hall. Instead it sat by the door, harboring whatever he’d put into his wife’s body to keep her from ever telling anyone what was so clear on the video. What anyone with eyes could see. What everyone would see when the evening news ran it alongside video of him being led into a courtroom in handcuffs. When they recounted the details of his trial and sentencing. When some expanded cable crime channel recounted his story as murder porn for shiftless people watching television in the middle of the day.
He walked to the glass door in his condo and slid it silently, easily open. Walking to the low wall at the end of his balcony, he peered at the street twelve floors below and imagined the last moment of quiet, pure panic right before hard ruin. Before he broke his bones on the concrete and city landfill beneath.
Instead, he chose to focus on the good times. At least for eleven floors until there was nothing left of him to remember.
Contemplating Corners
By Rose Blackthorn
Rose Blackthorn writes speculative fiction from the high mountain desert of eastern Utah.
She has published online and in print, including "Stupefying Stories", "Necon E-books", "Cast of Wonders" podcast, "The Wicked Library" horror podcast, "Interstellar Fiction", "BuzzyMag", "Books of the Dead" and "Jamais Vu". She is also included in the anthologies "A Quick Bite of Flesh", "Horrific History" and "Shifters" by Hazardous Press; "New Dawn Fades", "The Ghost IS the Machine" and "Fear the Abyss" by Post Mortem Press, "Eulogies II: Tales from the Cellar" by HorrorWorld, and "Equilibrium Overturned" by Grey Matter Press. She has stories scheduled for release from Sirens Call Publications, Sekhmet Press and Eldritch Press. She is a member of the Horror Writer's Association.
Visit Rose at: http://www.facebook.com/RoseBlackthorn.Author
Or: http://roseblackthorn.wordpress.com
Or: on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/rose_blackthorn
it’s the quiet that unnerves
soft soughing of the wind through whispering leaves
and pine needles
but no birds sing, trilling tunes
or orchestras of crickets
break the drawn and tightly held breath
that is the world
waiting
the sunlight is a weight
broken by the swaying branches
but only long enough
to make returning warmth more ponderous
the sky, in wedges
slices
is the shade of cerulean blue
seen in museum offerings
patina cracked, yet rich
lying here, alone
contemplating nothingness
and the incredible density of layered memory
over years of simply living
wondering how—
how did it come to this?
a crisis of being
existential absentia
dreams never brought to the waking world
and dogma embraced and embracing
me
there are moments, like corners
‘round which there is no seeing
where the path might lead
or fork
or end
and choices must be made without
the benefit of study
this is that moment
what grand views might be just ahead?
and with that simple thought
the world’s no longer waiting
birds sing, and insects buzz
and white clouds, soft as huddled sheep
stroke the sky with shadows
and I get back to my feet.
Ever Green
By Pete Kahle
Pete Kahle has been dreaming about writing novels since his teens, but after flirting with the idea in college, he spent 25 years working in a variety of careers before he finally stopped talking about it and started writing.
He has lived in New York, Arizona and Spain, but now he resides in Massachusetts with his beautiful wife Noemi, his two amazing children Zoe and Eli, one dog, two hamsters, two guinea pigs and two frogs.
Pete is a voracious reader of horror, thrillers and science fiction novels and he wri
tes in the same vein. He is also an insane fan of the New York Jets, despite living deep in the heart of enemy territory near Gillette Stadium.
His first novel, THE SPECIMEN, is an epic novel of unrelenting alien terror. His next book, BLOOD MOTHER, is due out in the spring of 2015, followed by THE ABOMINATION, the 2nd novel in the Specimen Saga… and that’s just the beginning. There are many other twisted tales percolating inside his head, and now that the dark closet in his subconscious has been opened, the monsters are clamoring to come out for a visit.
Oh yeah… He organized and edited this monstrosity you now hold in your hands.
“Green, how I want you green. Green wind. Green branches”.
- Federico Garcia Lorca
Caitlyn was certain that today was the day Trevor would propose to her.
She’d had one of her premoanitions, as her grandmother would say, stretching out the first two syllables in an exaggerated drawl. Like the time when Caitlyn was able to tell her that her reading glasses had fallen behind the couch, or when she knew that the new colt would arrive by sunrise the next morning, even though it wasn’t expected for over a week. Caitlyn had always known things ahead of time. Ever since she had her first period just after her thirteenth birthday, though, the premonitions had grown stronger and more frequent. She only wished she was as good at interpreting them as her grandmother had been before she passed on five years ago. Caitlyn always knew when something eventful was heading her way, but she never had her grandmother’s talent when it came to figuring out what the cascade of mental images actually meant. Whether it was a good sign or an omen approaching, she never knew until it was up close and about to roll right over her.
Widowmakers: A Benefit Anthology of Dark Fiction Page 8