by Darren Wills
I think this show of warmth from the uniformed officer who, surprisingly to me, had a heart had an effect open the whole room. I sensed that my voice had become a weak pitiful whine and I also sensed that the hardness George had tried to display had faded. “OK. Let’s say I try to believe you. Let’s say she’s just gone away for a break, however absurd that sounds. You know what will happen if I learn that you’ve done something. Even prison won’t protect you from me.”
Again, Lillian grabbed hold of his arm, this time with firmness but, judging by the way her eyes switched between her husband and me, I don’t think she was totally convinced that this had been Laura’s decision not mine.
“George, Lillian, if you think I have done anything here, you are so wide of the mark, it’s unreal. The sad fact here is that I am stuck here still loving your daughter. I have to accept that she’s left me and so do you. Go to the police, chat to a detective or two. Feel free, if you don’t like my attitude. I would love it if they found her for you. The fact is, they don’t even bother investigating.” I waited for a response, but none was forthcoming. “You spoke to Max, then?”
“Yes. He knew nothing. I just don’t get it.” He had mellowed. “We are lying awake all night trying to work it out. I mean, there was that note you saw.”
“Might have been nothing, that. Truth is, all we can do is get on with stuff and hope that she gets in touch with one of us soon.”
As they left, Kate hung back. “Listen, if you need anything, my work and personal numbers are on this card, just ring me. I’m sorry, Dom.”
“Me too, Kate.” I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.
“Perhaps we need a fresh start.”
“Perhaps. I’ll be in touch, Kate.”
Always Time For A Green Day
These were strange days. I had rarely known a period of time like this one, when every hue and shade seemed to be unfamiliar. I was feeling like somebody who had taken off his Ray-Bans to deal with the harsh glare of the sun. I remembered going through the same process when my mother and father had passed away. Then, like now, I had known that life had to and would go on, that both my late parents would want that. I now had that same feeling, but this time I was more in control of things and it was obviously about what I wanted. I had to get myself going again. I went to work and did my job, just as I had always done. As a consequence of my change in circumstances, teaching had suddenly become central again, just like studying had when I had resumed university after each parental funeral. I was now working with a renewed passion and motivation, wanting to take whatever satisfaction I could from my work.
The actuality was that I became philosophical about it, imaginatively beginning to believe that this process was a challenge, sent to test me. A survivor by nature, I wasn’t going to become suicidal at any point, and I had always seen myself as resilient, somebody who somehow gets through. I always believed and had proved on numerous occasions that I could cope with adversity and that is exactly what I was doing. Metaphorically, it might have become a landscape of rugged gloomy mountains and deep depressing rivers, but it was my rugged and depressing landscape and I was going to master it. I was not going to be about suffering and endurance, forever reaching into the past. At the end of the day, my life still had plenty going on. No selfish inconsiderate let-down of a woman was going to stop me smiling.
As a bonus, my Year Eights were enjoying the book we were studying. “Anyway, Lennie has gone. George Milton knows he’s gone but won’t say anything because he cares so much about his friend.”
Joey Poole, a bright spark who always sat at the front said, “But why does he care so much about him, sir. He left without telling him. Why doesn’t George think that this is a chance for him to look after himself? He’d be better off.”
I sighed inwardly. If only I had possessed this boy’s wisdom. “Well, think about this, class. If you really care about somebody, does that care end when somebody goes away? Should George really get on with his own stuff and not worry about what happens to Lennie?”
I could almost hear the cogs in their young minds whilst I fought off the subconscious workings in mine. ‘Of Mice and Men’ always provoked emotion.
Life post-marriage was about staving off dullness. To remove the intrusive quietness of the house, I played the ‘American Idiot’ album by Green Day and got as far as ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’ before I had to press the eject button. Too much realization.. It just made me become like I had never been, a man who was forced to keep realizing, however much I strived to move forward, that a part of me was still rooted in the past, especially my ‘shallow heart’.
The battle would go on, however. I would win.
Malevolence
She has started talking. Well, she would. She’s hungry, and she probably tires of the squalid stench she’s creating. She has to think, maybe my life will get better if I play ball. She sees humanity in me. She senses that I’m not a total monster. Bless.
As she speaks in response to my prompts, I write down her answers, or at least any parts of her answers I feel might be helpful. I’m really keen on details these days, and the details she gives me tick boxes and ring bells. From her point of view, those details keep her alive, because I have made it clear to her that she is under the threat of a coming death that will be sudden and instant. There is something about holding a blade against someone’s throat and saying evil words that is a real turn-on. Always has been.
She looks very pale. She keeps asking me why I’m doing this but I don’t do much answering. I like her being anxious. She thinks, perhaps knows, that I am going to finish her off at some point. She just doesn’t know how and when, so her speculation must be a prolonged agony. I don’t want her to die too soon. Her demise is inevitable, necessary and obviously it’s part of my plan. It just has to happen at the right time.
It is pretty weird having her here in front of me. I guess I could even take advantage of her if I wanted to, but that is too creepy, even for me. She does look pretty vulnerable. I will do anything, some pretty depraved things, but doing stuff with this one while she’s tied up is beyond me, especially when she’s so messy. I would probably become angry. Uncontrollable. Then she would die. If I was to become particularly wild, her death would be very bloody, I’m sure.
She can breathe for a little longer.
Staff Matters
I found myself listening to some well-spoken man talking about cloud formations. He was going on about cirrus, towering cumulus and other stuff that might affect or represent the meteorological condition of the local area. I switched over to Radio Five Live. That was a live commentary of a golf event taking place at Saint Andrews. I switched to a concerto from Mozart. Was there nothing on the radio for somebody like me?
I had to go out. I had spent too many hours looking at four walls, trying to watch the TV and here I was listening to all kinds of meaningless radio outpourings. I was going to go insane.
My colleagues had arranged a night out on Friday, and I was reluctantly considering it. I didn’t go on staff nights out. They were usually dull affairs overpopulated with young enthusiastic kids trying to be teachers who hadn’t taught long enough to know what the job (or life, for that matter) was really about, yet were obsessed with work, like their whole lives depended on them thinking about teaching twenty-four seven. I always spent part of the night avoiding the boring ones, even if that meant going and playing on a quiz machine. I suppose they all thought I was a misery, but hey-ho.
It was less than a fortnight since Laura had left so I kept switching between weakness and strength, but the periods of strength were lasting for longer periods as time went on, yet I still didn’t know exactly where I was and precisely who I was. Perhaps it was in a moment where I wanted to show some steel that I said that yes, I would meet my colleagues in The Forum.
Friday evening came, and I decided that I was definitely going. For all
I knew, Laura would be out wherever she was, so why should I be a monk? I shuddered at the thought of what her lifestyle might actually be like these days so I had to do things and focus my mind on alternatives. I even bought a new shirt for the occasion, a red checked affair that I thought looked really cool. Others might have thought differently, but so what?
As I stood at the bus stop (which seemed strange, as I hadn’t caught a bus for about two years), I couldn’t help thinking that I was a single man again, and it wasn’t exactly the shiny free feeling I used to know. Six years ago, I had enjoyed my single life, with all the laughs, drinking and women, but tonight just felt like a bargain basement version of what I had done to death as a younger man.
The Forum was at the top of Division Street in the centre of the city. A big noisy place, in truth, one of the reasons I had turned up at all was the location. I liked this part of town, always had, and liked the beer on sale here. For some reason, my arrival was a popular part of the night, maybe because they all knew what had happened the previous week, and people were all smiles. All the young ones were there so I moved towards Jim and Simon, two PE teachers who were always a laugh. They would take the piss out of me and I could cope with that.
“How you doing, Walker? I hear you had a stroke of luck.”
I laughed, taking a serious swig of my beer.
I think I had been there an hour when my line manager, Samantha, a cheerful blonde woman who had always been supportive, especially so in recent weeks, pulled me aside with all the subtlety a woman now on the outside of several large gin and tonics could manage. She gestured for me to sit next to her. “Great that you could make it. Are you OK?”
“I think so. I just need a few of these.” I held up my glass like it was a trophy.
Three hours later, much worse for wear, that same Samantha and I were sitting in a wine bar whilst, under the influence of too many drinks for me even to know which wine bar it was, I poured out my woes. We had left the others and I presumed she was feeling sorry for me as I must have given off the aura of a person not at ease with socializing. “Anyway, I’m getting on with my life. Nobody has the right to ruin another person’s life. Nobody is going to ruin my life. I’m okay without her anyway. Everything is going okay.”
Her hand was holding mine, and I felt quiet weakened by the booze. Consequently, when she reached across to kiss me on the lips, I didn’t resist.
We had kissed for some seconds when I broke away. “I can’t do this.” It wasn’t that she wasn’t attractive. It wasn’t even that I wouldn’t enjoy the intimacy. This was all about what was happening inside of my head and what should really have been happening in hers too. It was about how I would feel that following day and at work. It had only been ten days since Laura had left. It even went through my mind how disastrous this would be if she returned and I’d had a play with the first woman who made herself available.
“I’m sorry. I thought you deserved it. I’ve always liked you, Dom. Just wanted you to feel better.”
“Sex won’t make me feel better.”
“I wasn’t offering sex, just a bit of female comfort.”
“I’m sorry, Sam. If it wasn’t now, I would have welcomed it. Don’t feel single just yet.”
She seemed to shrink a little. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“We were both probably not thinking. Both over-served at the bar.”
She laughed, probably the same kind of deceptive laugh as I had done several times this evening.
Malevolence
Got to keep thinking. Got to keep concentrating and imagining now for a while. If I spend some quality time here, facing her, questioning and thinking, that will help everything to go the way it must.
I sit and look at her. She is not a pretty sight and won’t ever be a pretty sight again. The only exit for her from this is the final one and our newly-established relationship is tragically terminal. On the positive side, she might be bleary-eyed, but at least she still has her eyes. Well, for now.
Since I cleaned her up, and gave her the needed toilet times, she has begun to tell me more stuff, so much that I need. She is becoming so co-operative that things are really developing. I’m not pretending that she really understands me – that would be too much to ask. No – she just has an acute sense of the danger she is in and thinks she knows what she needs to do to survive. Poor fool. This pet of mine should accept the inevitable. Good luck with the hope, though.
I need her to keep talking. I don’t want one-word answers. I show her kindness when she talks. I pass her a biscuit or give her a drink and show her how serious I am when she thinks it’s ok to just give me bits and pieces in response. The blows leave red marks on her face.
The fake kindness fuels her hope. Aren’t women like this hilarious.
Birthday – July 26Th
I had been born exactly thirty-eight years ago. Weighing just over ten pounds, it could be said that I put my mother, bless her, under immense pressure from the moment of my birth (as all my early photographs testified) and my excitable and mischievious personality meant there was to be no let up for her in her time on this planet. Throughout my childhood, however, birthdays had always been special, involving parties, trips to the seaside and presents. My birthdays as an adult were also great, involving parties, trips to the seaside and presents.
Last year, the celebration had started with first-thing-in-the-morning sex, followed by a breakfast that was loaded with cholesterol, with Laura making the same effort on my behalf that I had grown up with. We had a wonderful early evening stroll in the grounds of Hardwick Hall and a proper birthday meal in town.
Today was the day of the ‘Blood Moon’, the day when our only satellite became coloured red by the sun’s rays, when in my mind it was suddenly given the connotations of danger, death and change. This was no day on which to have a birthday, I sensed.
I woke up hung over, but forced myself to shower and put on clean clothes. I was determined to have a positive day today. There was no school for six weeks, so I had to get myself into a holiday frame of mind.
I checked my phone. There was a text from Lillian wishing me a happy birthday and an email from Jamie. I opened up the email to read Happy Birthday you old sod. Let’s have another drink soon. Have a read at my attachment. I opened up the attachment, which turned out to be nothing to do with my birthday at all, but was some writing about some bloke meeting a woman and shagging her. Fancy sending to a bloke who was now getting no sex at all a piece of writing about sex. Bit insensitive if you asked me, but that was Jamie all over. Great mate, but no sensitivity.
It was only after I was into the fourth paragraph, with a reference to an Audi R8, that I realized that this writing was by Jamie and it was about himself. He had been saying for ages that he wanted to take up writing and here it was. I read it almost to the end, apart from two pages in all. It wasn’t bad, apart from some dodgy punctuation. He and I were going to have to talk about this at the next meet.
As I put the phone down, there was a further beep to indicate another email. This was from Laura. With a clumsy finger, I pressed the button to read it, with my heart in transition. Happy birthday babe. Sorry I’m not with you today but I hope you have a lovely day. L xxxxx
I re-read this message several times, but resisted replying. On the one hand, she might have been thinking about me, having second thoughts, but on the other, she might have been doing that cat and mouse thing that women sometimes do. The ‘I don’t want you, but I don’t want anyone else to have you’ attitude. ‘I really care about you, but I just can’t be with you.’ Both were utterly worthless. I refused to be emotionally affected by a mere email, understanding the intricacies of manipulation.
I pressed to close it. I wanted it removed from my sight. There would be plenty of time for me to read it again anyway, and this would probably happen the next time I had a substantial interaction
with Mr. Daniels or Mr. Beam.
Malevolence
Her co-operation has become total. She knows how things are panning out and accepts what is going on. She has now realized she is to have her part in it although she doesn’t know what that part is. From all of the sounds this bitch makes, they are the co-operative responses that display a greater willingness, and the nods and utterances signal acceptance of her fate. I think she even enjoys my cooking. Well, she’s on one meal a day so I’m not surprised when she wolfs it down like it is everything. She looks pretty weak, has lost a few pounds, but that’s understandable, restricted the way she is. Nobody thrives in chains.
I do not consider her feelings. When would she have considered mine, after all? Her future was mapped out a long time ago and I have reshaped the coming time period for her and me. I know that deep down she thinks I am evil, that I have done incredible harm to her, but so what? She has been tamed. That is all that matters.
For no real reason, sometimes I slap her, as I have from the beginning, if only to hear the sound. At times this is a single slap, a blow that makes her yelp, one that thankfully nobody else can hear. At other times, on those moments where she makes a mistake or becomes negative, I punch her repeatedly in the middle of her body and enjoy her yelps of pain. She knows I am in command.
Occasionally, and what is most effective of all, I drop the bomb of sensitivity in there. I give a sentence that offers hope, something dream-like, beyond possibility. That makes her tearful and hopeful, as if there is some way out of this. She’s given plenty. She doesn’t even know how much she has given and how helpful she is being. Her condition and the conditions I have placed her in mean she is constantly confused and afraid, I am sure, so that her permanent desperation makes her tongue looser each day.