by Adam Millard
Through gritted teeth – the pain was immense, and so unreasonable – the sheriff said, “Who…are…you?” He fell onto his side, his last breath already oozing from him.
Stepping up to Colmwood’s shuddering body, the boy who was once a simpleton dropped the bloody brain to the trail, where it was instantly coated with dust and horse shit. “You can call me,” the boy said, “Sheriff Duke McGinty.”
S uicide Bob
Bob didn't know how long he'd been waiting in the tiny, cramped interview-room, and he didn't care. There was a fly – annoying little thing with a whiny buzz – which kept him entertained. He watched as it darted through the air, landed on the desk, bounced off the two-way mirror, and generally made a nuisance of itself, and it would have become something of an irritation had Bob's mind not been elsewhere.
After what seemed like several hours – but was probably mere minutes, such was the power of solitude in an unfamiliar place – a man entered through the only door. This guy, Bob thought immediately, means business; he had that look about him, an intensity that could only be achieved by years of sleepless nights, caffeine-deficiency, and possibly a messy divorce. His suit was dishevelled and stained here and there with remnants of breakfast. Bob didn't know whether to laugh or offer a dry-cleaning service.
“Robert Simmons,” the man said, glancing down at the clipboard in his hand. “I'm Detective Wilkins. I'll be interviewing you this morning.”
Bob smiled. “And it's an absolute pleasure,” he lied. “Will we be having tea? I do like tea, especially that Chinese stuff.”
Wilkins stopped moving, and when he glowered into Bob's eyes, Bob knew he was messing with the wrong guy. The detective slammed the clipboard down onto the desk and lowered himself, laboriously, into his chair.
“You know why you were arrested,” Wilkins said, not quite a question.
Bob knew exactly why he'd been nicked; three people were dead, and he was the only witness. Of course they were going to arrest him. “I assume it's got something to do with what happened at the supermarket,” he said, nonchalantly. “Can you believe that shit? One minute everyone was going about their business, the next they started offing themselves. I mean, the things that get into people. I've never seen anything like it.”
The fly – which had not irritated Bob to such extremes – landed on the desk in front of the detective, who brought his fist down on it, squishing it flat. Bob was pretty sure the the fly had tried to escape, and was now painted somewhere on Wilkins' sleeve; just another stain on a suit of many.
Without taking his eyes off Bob, Wilkins wiped his fist on the edge of the table. “We've never seen anything like it, either,” he said, grimacing. His teeth were tobacco- and coffee-stained, as Bob expected. Wilkins was so stereotypical that Bob found himself stifling laughter.
“Something funny?” the detective asked.
“Not really,” Bob replied. “I was just wondering if you were married. Since you don't wear a ring, I'm assuming not.”
“Divorced,” Wilkins said, shifting nervously in his seat.
Of course you are, Bob thought.
“Okay, let's cut to the chase, shall we?” the detective said, leaning in towards Bob as if he was about to kiss him. “We both know that you had something to do with what happened this morning. You were the only one there, and as far as I'm aware people don't just start committing suicide in the middle of their shopping.” He leaned back, took a deep breath, then added, “Shit, I even knew Betty Dawkins. The woman was a devout Christian, and people like her don't just do . . . what she did.”
“Maybe she was having a bad day,” Bob offered. “Maybe her church cancelled the annual fayre, and she was left with eight gallons of raspberry jam and no fucker to give them to.” He grinned. “It happens. I once heard of a guy tossing himself off a bridge because his mom got him the wrong colour iPod for Christmas. Pretty sure that guy was thirty, which is fucked up enough—”
“Betty Dawkins had grandchildren that she worshipped and a whole batch of cats that now have to be re-homed. I doubt she had motive to do . . . what she did without provocation.”
Wilkins was getting flustered. The room was stuffy all of a sudden, as if the air had been removed with a vacuum. You could have cut the atmosphere with a plastic spoon.
Bob, who had been leaning on the table with his elbows, relaxed back into his chair, his mind working overtime. He wished the fly was still alive; that little fella was fun compared to the detective.
“Okay,” Bob finally said. “I'll tell you everything, but you won't believe it.”
Wilkins produced a pen from his breast-pocket. “Try me.”
“Well, I always shop there, for starters. It's the only place that does those big lasagnes. You know, the ones that you're supposed to share, but I don't. Anyway, I was by the freezer, when this guy . . . “
Bob was standing next to the freezer, lasagne in hand, when the man appeared beside him. He was a big lad; must have weighed close to three-hundred pound, and the first thing that entered Bob's head was: Fat Camp. The weight, though, wasn't the guy's major malfunction. Sure, he stank of sweat and his tee-shirt was daubed here and there with dark patches, but it was a warm day, so Bob forgave the guy.
“So, anyway, I'm gonna come round and fuck you up, bitch!” the fat man said into his mobile phone, which looked miniature in comparison to his gorilla-fist, as if it was nothing more than a convincing toy. “That's right. You better be ready, motherfucker! Whoa, who you calling fat, bitch? I'll fuck you up . . . “
Bob didn't want anything to do with it, so he moved along the freezers, still holding his lasagne, only now he was really gripping it, as if the Fatman was apt to snatch it from him. He tried to ignore the conversation, but it was so damn hard. The guy was practically yelling into his phone, and people were avoiding the frozen food aisle specifically because of it.
“Man, your cousin's a pussy!” the man bellowed as he rifled through the curly-fries. “I'll fuck him up too!” He snatched up a pack of fries and tossed them into his already-overflowing trolley.
Bob decided that now was a good time to exit stage-left. He made for the end of the aisle at precisely the moment Fatman decided to swing his trolley around in a full U-turn.
Bob heard the clatter first, then felt the stinging sensation as his ankle folded over.
Now, Bob didn't expect an apology – though it would have been nice – but what fell out of the fat man's mouth was so cutting that Bob almost fell back into the onion-rings.
“What the fuck are you doing, you cunt!” Fatman gasped. Spittle flew into Bob's face, and he shut his eyes and waited for it to all be over. “You motherfucker! Almost upended my fucking shopping. No, not you, some faggot in the supermarket. I'll get back to you in a minute.” Bob opened his eyes in time to see the fat man shut his mobile-phone. He then proceeded to check his shopping over, as if the collision with Bob's ankle might have miraculously caused contents to spill or break. When he was satisfied that everything was still intact – no surprise there – he turned his attention back on the perpetrator, his face all contorted up. He looked like one of those jelly-toys you could buy, the ones where the eyes pop out if you squeeze them.
Bob was about to apologize, even though he'd done nothing wrong, when Fatman decided to slap him hard across the face. At first, Bob didn't know what had happened; it was like a blink, and then a burning pain hit him, and shortly after he realised he'd been hit.
“That's what you get!” the fat man said. “Motherfucker picked the wrong guy to mess with.”
Bob didn't speak. He didn't have to. Part of his brain told him to walk away, to accept the slap, take his lasagne to the counter, and head home. In hindsight, that would have been the right thing to do, but in the heat of the moment he did the other thing.
He leaned across and placed his palm on the fat man's arm. Now, Fatman, who was still celebrating his sweet connection with the side of Bob's face, was about to say something, about to
object to the sudden intrusion of his personal-space, though to be honest his personal-space was the whole store, the parking-lot and most of the street. His mouth was open, then shut, then open – he looked remarkably fishlike. He wanted to speak, to slap Bob's hand off and tell him to go fuck himself, but it just wouldn't come. Instead, he had the strangest urge, an almost uncontrollable compulsion to hurt himself.
“I'm sorry,” Bob said, allowing his hand to slip away. Was he, though? The guy deserved it, didn't he?
Fatman stood for a few seconds, his eyes as wide as his mouth; he looked positively catatonic, and then he moved towards the freezer. Bob apologized again, but by then he was certain he didn't give a shit. He watched as Fatman lifted the freezer lid, dropped to his knees, placed his head between the fridge and its door, and proceeded to slam it shut on his face. There was a terrible sound, a little like meat being slapped down onto a butcher's counter, and after roughly eight slams – Bob wasn't counting; that would have been sick – Fatman's right eye popped out and dangled, loosely, on his cheek. After around a minute of pummelling, the man slumped with his head still in the freezer. Bob wondered if he was, even after death, trying to get at the ice-cream.
Just then, a woman screamed. Bob spun around to find a tiny, elderly lady standing motionless in the aisle. She gazed at the bloated figure half-in, half-out of the freezer, then at Bob. It was clear what she was thinking.
“I didn't—” Bob began, but it was fruitless. The woman screamed again; her dentures rattled around in her mouth as she tried to call for help. Bob really didn't need this. He only wanted a lasagne, one of the big ones that you're supposed to share, but he didn't. It was too early in the morning for this nonsense.
“Murderer!” the woman screamed, backing slowly towards the end of the aisle. Even her wrinkles were trembling. “You . . . murderer!”
Bob didn't know what else to do. In a few moments, he would be tackled to the ground by some overzealous security-guard, and his stomach was already rumbling. He decided to hurry towards the counter, make his purchase and hope they let him leave the store without further ado. As he reached the elderly woman, she must have panicked – that was the only excuse Bob could come up with for what she did next.
She grabbed onto his arm.
Bob was not big like Fatman, but he was pretty sturdy, and almost twice the size of the creature hanging off his arm like a capuchin monkey. Bob instantly felt bad for her, because he knew what was going to happen to the poor, old gal.
“Murderer! You killed . . . “ she trailed off, her eyes vacant, her dentures dropping out completely and shattering on the tiled floor. Bob shook her off as quickly as he could, but it was too late. He couldn't even stick around to watch this one, so he headed towards checkout, where he hoped the events of aisle seven had gone unnoticed.
They hadn't.
A security-guard had taken up the position formerly held by the teenage checkout girl. She was running for the door, and when she reached it she began to frantically search for keys on a ring of many. When she found the one she was looking for – the only one with FRONT written on it in black marker-pen, she shoved it nervously into the lock and turned it.
“I didn't do anything!” Bob said, knowing it was useless. “Some guy just slammed his head in the freezer. Check the CCTV if you don't believe me.”
“Oh, we will,” the guard said, standing from the checkout-booth. He took one big step forward. Bob half-expected the floor to shake, or at least the sound of tins rattling off their shelves behind him. “The police are on their way.”
Great, Bob thought. This is why I don't come out the house. He glanced down that the lasagne, which was practically thawing in his hand. Somehow, it was the lasagne's fault.
“I'm leaving,” Bob said. “I didn't do anything, so you can't keep me here.” But he knew he had, and they could. He moved to the side, hoping the guard was as slow as he looked. He was, but something stopped him from chasing, and both he and the young checkout girl gawked at the entry to aisle four as if a dinosaur had suddenly appeared.
It wasn't, of course, a dinosaur. That would be silly. It was the little old lady, and she was scrabbling at some cardboard, whispering incoherently to herself, or God, or anyone who would listen.
“Excuse me, Ma'am,” the guard said. “everything's going to be okay. The police are on their way, and . . . “
And that was as far as he managed to get before she peeled the scissors from their package. She glanced up at the three people watching, her gummy mouth flapping audibly, as if she was sucking an invisible lollipop. Then she raised the scissors high, and plunged them into her neck. The arterial spray was something out of a horror-movie, and the checkout girl screeched as well as any scream-queen as the old woman's blood geysered out.
“Holy shit!” the guard gasped as the woman stabbed herself a few more times, though once – Bob surmised – was plenty, and the rest had just been showing off.
“See, everyone's gone mental,” Bob said, cornering the end checkout. “I just want to get out of here, eat my goddamned lasagne.” He tossed a five-pound note in the direction of the checkout girl, who backed away from it as if it was tainted with anthrax. Bob was almost at the door when the guard tackled him. They hit the ground with a thump, which was exactly the noise Bob made as the wind leapt from him.
“Get Derek down here, now!” the guard yelled at the frightened girl.
There came the sound of heels on tile as the girl raced off to find Derek, whoever the hell he was.
Bob didn't want to stick around to find out.
The weight on top of him was immense, but he managed to get his arm free. He tapped, once, on the back of the guard's head, and after a few seconds the weight was gone.
Bob clambered to his feet, coughing and spluttering as if he'd gone ten rounds with Tyson. The guard backed away slowly; his eyes were glazed over – as expected – and his expression was one of morose resignation.
“You should've let me leave,” Bob said. “I just wanted to get out of here.” He didn't know who he was trying to justify himself to. The guard sure as hell wasn't listening, and the girl had gone off looking for Derek.
The guard grunted before disappearing, at pace, down the baking aisle. Bob decided that enough was enough, and he lunged for the door. It was locked. Of course it was – he'd watched the girl lock it. He picked up the nearest thing, which happened to be a stack of shopping-baskets, and launched them at the glass. The first hit barely made a noise, the second cracked it slightly, and the third went straight through. It was, Bob thought, testament to the anti-robbery glass makers who supplied and fitted all the major stores. He didn't know any armed robbers that carried a stack of shopping-baskets around with them.
As he climbed through the jagged hole, being careful not to snag his best jeans on the protruding shards, a voice called out from inside the store. Derek, no doubt.
“Come back here! The police will catch you! They're on their way!”
Bob didn't know Derek, but he assumed he was the type of person who still lived at home with his mother; a fifty year-old virgin with strange hobbies and even stranger dress-sense.
Bob raced for his car, which was parked in the disabled-spot to the left of the supermarket. He'd convinced himself that what he had was a disability, so why shouldn't he take full advantage of the perks?
He was in the car and pulling out of the parking-lot when the police arrived. Bob wasn't sure how many cops the city had, but he was pretty sure this was all of them.
He knew there was no way out, so he switched off the engine and slowly crawled out. His lasagne was still in his damp hand, and he just hoped the police – as smart as they were – didn't mistake it for a deadly weapon.
He was being read his rights when the checkout girl screamed from the front of the building. Everyone, including Bob, turned to see what all the commotion was about. The girl was pointing up, though not for long.
Her finger followed the security gu
ard all the way to the ground, where he splattered outwards like a water-balloon filled with paint.
Wilkins waited, as if this ending was not enough. As if now was the perfect time to introduce the aforementioned dinosaur.
“And that,” Bob said, “is how it happened.”
For a moment, Wilkins sat smirking. After he'd had time to consider the story, and the fact that he'd seen the CCTV footage first-hand – and it was exactly as this Robert Simmons had recounted it – his smirk dissipated, and a look of utter confusion crept into its place.
“So, you're telling me that they committed suicide,” Wilkins said, “because they touched you?”
Bob gestured with both hands. “Exactly. Though technically I touched them.”
“Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?” Wilkins asked. “That you have some sort of superpower that makes people want to go off and kill themselves?”
“Hey, I'd have been much happier with invisibility, believe me. Do you know how many pets I got through as a kid? Huh? I'll tell you. Thirteen dogs and fifteen cats, that's how many. At first we just thought they were unlucky, that the road we lived on was notoriously dangerous. Turns out they were tossing themselves out into the traffic.”
Wilkins clicked his tongue. “Bullshit,” he said.
“It's true. I once petted a friend's gecko. The next day, they found it hanging in its vivarium.”
“Ahhhhh,” Wilkins said, shrugging of Bob's nonsense as if he found it offensive. “I'm going to get some coffee, and when I come back I want the truth. None of this fucking bullshit about suicide powers and depressed lizards, you hear me?”
Bob watched as Wilkins stood. “I'll be telling you exactly the same thing when you come back, Detective. It's the truth, and I don't know what else to say.”