by William Cook
Here Comes the Bride
Jack hesitated, his fist poised in front of Mary’s front door, raised mid-air . . . He lowered his hand and straightened his tie, swallowing hard before raising his fist again to knock on her door. She had told him not to – ever again. She had told him that she never wanted to see him again; that ‘they were over’ and there ‘was nothing left to save.’ Jack looked down at the sand on his shoes and felt there was something left to save. Ten years of marriage was something to save. He’d never get those years back again and they were the best ten years of his life. He’d tried to talk to Mary but she refused to talk to him, she just pushed him away every time, until she got sick of telling him to leave. And then the courts told Jack to stay away – at least five-hundred yards from Mary and the house they’d bought together just before they married. But he couldn’t stay away. The white timber door felt hard and cold beneath his knuckles. He knocked again. No answer. He turned to go and the harsh squawk of a large gull sitting on the veranda roof made his heart skip a beat. The door behind him opened.
“Can I help you?”
Jack looked between the houses at the surf bubbling on the shore beyond the sand dunes.
“Jack? What the fuck, Jack? What are you doing? Mary’s told me you’re not allowed to be here.”
He quickly turned and threw his elbows up, ramming Mary’s boyfriend back into the hallway of the small beach house.
Peter bounced off the hall wall and came back swinging. His left fist clipped the side of Jack’s head, numbing his ear, but Jack was bigger and forced the smaller man back as he kicked the front door closed behind him.
Jack shook his head and stepped back from Peter who was dabbing at a bloody nose. He pulled the knuckledusters from his suit pocket, which up until that moment had served as a novelty paper-weight, and slipped them over his fingers.
“What the . . ?”
The blow shattered Peter’s jaw – teeth and blood spraying the clean white walls in the hallway. The second blow bust his eyeball from its fractured socket. The third blow embedded a shard of Peter’s cranium into his brain.
Jack bounced on the toes of his business shoes and pounced, landing the killing blow with extreme prejudice. For Jack, that single moment froze in time. Every confused thought he had; thousands of obsessive fragments of emotion with Mary’s name tagged on every one of them. Every fragment of insecurity and co-dependency boiled down into that snapshot of a moment. Jack breathed hard, the rise and fall of his chest matched the drops of Peter’s blood dripping from his suit jacket.
The blood-spattered knuckle-dusters clattered on the polished concrete floor. Jack lurched into the living room and sat down hard in a leather chair facing the bay window. He loosened his tie and relished the sense of power coursing through his mind. For that brief moment, Jack Mulholland felt like a king. Like anything was possible. Mary was possible with Peter now out of the way. Jack turned and looked at the inanimate leg lying prone in the doorway to the hall. He quickly turned his head in the direction of the Pacific Ocean view. Closing his eyes, he slowed his breathing in time with the gentle noise of the ebb and flow of the surf coming from the open lounge window. His pre-prepared speech now scattered in fragments through his memory, his mind instead encompassed with graphic blood splashed images. He retrieved a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and fumbled a smoke from the pack, lighting it with a trembling hand. He exhaled and watched a gull pirouette mid-air and then dive head-first into the flat green ocean, disappearing momentarily until emerging with a small fish twisting in its bill.
Jack heard car tires crunching on the gravel driveway.
He quickly rose from the chair and flicked his cigarette out the open lounge window. His mind raced and his heart threatened to burst as it pounded in his chest. He tried to steady himself and then looked at Peter’s broken body spread out like a bloody swastika on the hall floor. He grabbed a throw rug off the back of the couch and threw it over Peter’s prone corpse. He couldn’t remember locking the door or even closing it but he could now hear the key being inserted in the lock and could only watch numbly as the handle turned.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Mary said harshly, one hand gripped around the door handle, the other hand supporting a cardboard tray with two coffees. She backed slowly out onto the porch as Jack came towards her.
“I’ve been waiting for you, my love,” he said, carefully trying to say the right words – to make the right sounds.
“I-I-I-I-I . . . I love you, Mary. We can be together now. There’s nothing stopping us from being a couple again . . .”
“You are crazy, Jack. You are fucking insane! You are not even supposed to be here. Why would I want to . . .” She stopped mid-sentence, dropping the coffees.
Jack watched her look past him into the hallway.
“What the . . ?” She pointed, her mouth open as she moved forward past Jack who stood to one side.
“Peter? Peter . . .”
Jack stepped inside the hallway and pulled the door closed behind him, locking it.
“What have you done, Jack?” Mary whispered in the shadows of the hallway as she pulled the throw-rug from Peter’s lifeless body.
“What the hell have you done?” She screamed at him.
Jack put his hands over his ears and backed down the hallway.
“No, no, no, no, no, no . . .” He banged his fists on his temples repeatedly, his eyes closed as Mary launched herself at him. Her fists flailing yet striking Jack’s cowering form.
“You son-of-a-bitch! I hate you. I hate you. I hate you!” She shouted at him until her energy waned and she collapsed in a sobbing heap on the floor of the living room. Her own small fists covered in blood from Jack’s bleeding nose.
Jack stood leaning against the wall, his nose leaking blood like water from a faucet from where she’d landed blows. He watched Mary sobbing and then looked back down the hallway at the lump on the floor. He loathed Peter even more now for making Mary hate him. Jack spied the bloody knuckledusters next to the body and decided that he needed to feel their weight on his fist once again. He chuckled to himself, a bubble of blood bursting from his left nostril, at the irony of it all. It was Mary who had given him the knuckledusters as a present to celebrate his new role as business manager at the local bank. She had said that he could use them as a paperweight and if any of his customers got out of hand he could ‘beat them into submission.’ She had laughed hard as she used to do back then. And so he had done as she instructed and they had proved extremely useful as a paperweight, especially in the summer months when the temperatures dictated the use of desk fans around the office. But he’d never had to beat into submission any of his clients, until now.
Peter had been a loyal customer of the bank. A successful property developer who had made millions off the back of the local property boom that had made their small coastal town an exclusive haven for middle-class well-to-dos like Jack and Mary. Jack had brought Peter home one night to ‘wine and dine’ him, as the bank encouraged its employees to do, especially with the more affluent clientele. And it was this fateful meeting where Peter had caught Mary’s attention. Jack had witnessed the attraction first-hand but thought better of it, as Mary blushed and laughed at Peter’s jokes and conversation. She’d been so intent on conversation with Peter that the pork-belly in the oven had burnt to a crisp, instead of dinner they just drank and as the night wore on Jack had retired to the bedroom leaving them both sitting on the deck drinking and watching the moonlight play across the ocean vista. It was that night that Peter and Mary consummated their mutual attraction with each other, in the sand dunes down on the beach while Jack lay fast asleep, snoring loudly – blissfully ignorant as to what his wife was doing with his new business client.
Their marriage seemed to improve after that night and Mary became more attentive towards Jack, but it didn’t last long. The arguments started and Mary began to frequently mention ‘separation’ as an alternativ
e to their sleeping at opposite rooms of the house. Eventually she landed a new job managing the local real-estate office, coincidentally where Peter did most of his business from, and purchased the small beach house down the coast as an ‘investment.’ After pretending to be unable to find tenants for the property, Jack had come home from work one day to find all of Mary’s belongings gone. He’d travelled the short distance south and knocked on the beach-house door and Mary had, in no uncertain terms, told him that she wanted a divorce and that she didn’t love him anymore. He’d cried and howled and promised to change his ways but it seemed as though with every plea and action, Mary just became more resolved that they would never be together again.
Jack tried to woo her back – he sent her flowers and candies, he even tried to pay her utility bills for her new property, but with each attempt he was rebuked and threatened with legal proceedings until finally he was served divorce papers and a restraining order. Mary publically announced her new-found emancipation by canoodling with Peter at the local restaurants and bars. Jack’s friends fed the information back to him and that was when things really took a turn for the worse in his mind. He could live with her leaving him, even abandoning him for another guy, but to serve him a restraining order at work no less, and to publically flout themselves before the divorce had even been finalized was too much impropriety for Jack’s logic-driven brain to manage. And so he had decided to pay them a visit that Saturday morning.
He’d figured Peter would be at the golf-course as he usually was any chance he could get on the weekend, but of course, he’d been home. He thought Mary would be home alone and that they could talk things out – he had hoped for one last possible chance at redemption and reconciliation but then Peter had opened the door. And now here Jack stood, cradling the bloodied knuckledusters in his hand as he listened to his ex-wife in the kitchen sobbing and talking to the emergency services operator on the phone.
“. . . yes please, Police, quickly. He’s still here in the house . . .”
Jack stepped over Peter, careful not to slip in the congealing pool of dark blood that haloed the inanimate body on the floor, unlocked the front door and closed it quietly behind him. He walked down the driveway and instead of turning right to where his late-model BMW sedan sat waiting, he turned left and walked the remaining short distance to the sand-dunes and the beach at the end of the road. Jack thought of his life up ‘til that point as he walked across the soft sand. He thought of all the happy times he’d had as a child, the secure upbringing and the fairy-tale high-school romance between himself and Mary. He thought of his job and how he’d succeeded in working his way up the chain of command to a senior well-paid position within the bank. He thought of their wedding day – Mary’s beautiful smiling face as she laughed and celebrated with their friends. All these things flashed through his mind but all he could feel was an unbearable emptiness, like he was hollow – stuffed with bad air. In the distance, he could hear the sirens approaching.
He stopped at the surf-line frothing on the shore. Thick grey clouds rolled across the sky as a storm brewed out to sea on the horizon. Jack stopped and scooped up a handful of wet sand, hefting the weight of it as he stared out to sea. He could hear Mary’s voice behind him in the distance, cussing him. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder and saw her standing on the deck of the small beach house, her mouth opening and closing as she cursed and screamed at him. The wind picked up and the sound of her voice broke and wavered as the noise of the sirens drowned her out as they advanced.
Jack turned and looked back out to sea, watching the gulls play in the air currents above – buffeted by the building winds they twisted and turned against the backdrop of a charcoal washed sky. Jack slipped the wet sand into his pocket and felt the weight of the knuckleduster in his other pocket before buttoning his blood-stained jacket. He bent and scooped more handfuls of wet sand until his trouser and jacket pockets bulged. He glanced back towards the beach house, he could see the ambulance lights now next to the small cottage. Mary still stood on the deck screaming at him. More sirens approached, this time the unmistakable wail of police sirens could be heard.
Jack turned and entered the surf, the cold Pacific Ocean lapped at his ankles and then at his knees. His business shoes floated to the surface and bobbed away with the tide as they were sucked from his feet by the cloying sands underwater. The frigid water numbed him as it climbed further up his body with each measured step. A gull brayed overhead as it circled him, stalking his progress deeper out from the shoreline. Jack shivered involuntarily, completely numb now as the cold water seemed to seep into his pores, him as it splashed against his neck. He stopped for a moment, breathing deeply, swaying slightly in the water but feet still planted firmly on the sea-bed. He took a step forward and then another while humming the bars from Wagner’s ‘Bridal Chorus,’ remembering the way Mary had looked as she swept down the aisle on their wedding day. He took a deep breath as the cold water lapped at his face and then he was consumed, finally. As the flickering light above eddied and mutated with the swollen darkness of the ocean depths, Jack let his hands float out from his sides in cruciform fashion as the last bubbles of air escaped from his blue lips and the strong currant tugged him down, deeper and deeper.
Dolly Did It
I had a dream last night that dolly was alive. Her name is Samantha, or Sam for short. She was a bit old, her curly hair was straggly and her white night-gown was torn in the arm and the hem was ragged. She hadn’t slept with me for two years now. Mum put her in the attic the day after my tenth birthday and there she stayed. Until now. The dreams are happening every night now. Most times the dream begins the same way: I roll over and there she is sitting at the end of my bed, propped up against the wooden frame, head cocked slightly to one side.
‘Hello Cynthia’ she whispers. ‘Wanna come play with me?’
And then I wake up, usually. But lately the dreams seem more real. Sometimes I don’t know if I’m awake or still dreaming. Last night I dreamed that Sam stood up and shimmied down the bed-spread onto the floor and walked across the floor of my bedroom. In my dream, I lay there pretending to be asleep, as I watched her little body shuffle across the floor. Her rubber feet making tiny squeaks as she put one foot in front of the other. She stopped at the doorway and turned her raggedy head towards me. Her thin eyebrows touched and her eyes seemed to glow. She looked really angry. She stood there for a second and then whispered, a strange hissing whisper that made the fine hairs on my arm stand up.
‘Don’t look at me, bitch! You keep your sticky-beak under the blankets or you’ll never wake up!’
The dreams have become worse. Sam keeps saying horrible things to me. She keeps telling me that she hates me and that she hates my family. My baby brother, Henry, sleeps in the next room and I sometimes wonder what would happen if my old Dolly was really alive. It is worse when my brother cries. Sam says she really hates him because he makes so much noise. In my dreams I tell her it is because he is only a baby. That’s what babies do. She swears at me and uses bad words to tell me what she wants to do to him when he cries. Last night she sat on my chest and poked me in the forehead with her porcelain finger, although in my dream she had sharp little fingernails. When I woke up this morning and looked in the mirror I had a bloody mark on my head. I’m really scared. I haven’t told anyone about this – not my friends, not my older sister Marcy, not my Mum and Dad. What would they say? They wouldn’t believe me. They’d send me off to the ‘funny farm’ where Aunty Nola went last winter when she had her ‘break-down.’ I wish Henry would stop crying.
Something terrible has happened. Last night I dreamed that Sam killed Henry. In my dream she woke me up to tell me what she’d done. She sat on my chest and clutched two tiny fistfuls of my hair as she stared into my eyes.
‘I killed your baby brother, bitch!’ Her voice sounded like a snake hissing
‘I took a pillow and put it over his head while he slept.’
I started to so
b. I pleaded with God for it not to be true. ‘No, no, no, no . . .’ was all I could say, over and over again.
‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Cynthia. I killed your baby brother. Come with me.’
She leapt off the bed like a small monkey and scampered across the floorboards to the open door.
‘Come quick, before your parents find him.’
She motioned me to come and I climbed out of bed, feeling like a zombie, still not sure if I were awake or dreaming. I followed her into Henry’s bedroom. Moonlight streamed through the cracks in the blind and cast an eerie blue glow throughout the small room. I approached the cot, my heart beating wildly in my chest as I tip-toed and looked over the edge. Henry lay there in the shadows, still and quiet as a rock. A tiny dark dribble of blood peeked out from his left nostril. I watched his chest for signs of breathing and finally reached out with a trembling hand to touch his dear, sweet, little face. I pulled my hand back in horror as my fingers touched his cold flesh. I knew he was dead. And that’s when I woke up to the terrible sound of my mother’s screams.
We buried Henry today. It was so sad. My heart is broken. The dreams have stopped, for now. Dad is a mess, he can’t stop crying. I’ve never seen him cry before. Mum looks angry all the time, she won’t talk to me or my sister and scratches her arms nervously. It was raining as they put Henry’s tiny wooden coffin in the hole in the ground. I’ve never seen so many of my family in one place at the same time, everyone looked terribly sad. I am writing this sitting on my bed, I can’t stop thinking of my dream. Somehow I feel guilty as if I could’ve stopped Henry from dying. I heard Mum and Dad talking after the police and the ambulance had come and taken Henry away.
Something called ‘SIDS’ killed Henry, the doctor had told them. I googled it and was shocked that there was a name for something that couldn’t really be explained. Apparently, babies and infants die all the time from SIDS but the doctor and police couldn’t explain to my parents why, or how, poor Henry had blood coming from his nose when they found him.