Did I imagine it?
The next thought came immediately.
Does it matter?
He sat in the chair all night. In the morning he took a charred portion of the log from the cooling grate. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and put it away in the dresser. He felt refreshed. As he closed the drawer he sang the words that would see him through another year.
Ae fond kiss.
And then we sever.
LIVING THE DREAM
In the dream the house looks older, more dilapidated. A crack runs from the lintel of the front door all the way to the guttering, and the climbing rose—the one outstanding feature—has withered and died, its dry stems crawling like wrinkles across the walls.
The Watcher stands on the doorstep, listening, waiting for the noise that always comes. Autumn leaves flutter around in the sudden breeze, but still the Watcher cannot move.
The front door rattles, as if someone is vainly trying to get out. The Watcher’s eyes are drawn to the gap underneath it—remembering how the wind whistles through, bringing its chill to the whole house. The door rattles again, but that still isn’t it.
And then it comes, the soft thud, as of a chopper on bone.
A red flood gushes from under the door—a roaring wave of blood that washes the Watcher away and down into a blackness from which there is no return.
* * *
John Thorne sat upright in bed, breath coming in hot gasps.
What the hell was that all about?
The shadows in his room had no answers for him. He lay awake for almost an hour as the moonlight crawled across the ceiling, but sleep stayed away. In the end he got out of bed and went to the kitchen. While he was making a sandwich the dream stayed fresh in his mind. He felt strange, almost guilty, as if he’d been caught masturbating.
And where did all that blood come from?
Thorne wasn’t a deep thinker, and his imagination did not stretch as far as positing any supernatural agency, but it had felt almost as if someone else had been inside his head.
Too much cheese before bed makes for a restless night.
He could almost hear his old mum say it—she would always be inside his head.
The acts of domesticity involved in putting together the bread, butter and sardines rooted him back in reality and finally the dream faded, leaving just a memory... of wind and blood.
He munched on the sandwich as he headed back upstairs and dropped back into bed. By twenty past three he was fast asleep. In the morning the dream had faded to little more than a memory of a disturbed night. When he left the house after breakfast he felt a breeze at his heels and something stirred in his mind, but that too was forgotten as work blew everything else away in a flurry of crates to be stacked and floors to be swept.
That all changed late afternoon. He had just the main loading bay of the factory left to sweep. Mary Carruthers, the administrator, came out of her office, red-faced and puffing. It was a hot day and she carried at least a hundred pounds more than she aught to. On days like this, every one of those pounds showed. Normally Thorne wouldn’t have given her another look but she chose that moment to drop a pen and, with her back to him, bent to pick it up.
Her skirt rode up the back of her legs above the knee and Thorne got a clear look all the way up to where the thick white maggots of her thighs tried to squeeze themselves into a crevasse protected by a pair of pink panties. He was suddenly embarrassed by an erection, and he pretended to sweep the floor harder while hunching over to avoid it being spotted.
“Are you OK?” the Carruthers woman asked. She had come across the factory floor and was only feet away. Thorne mumbled something in reply, desperately hoping she would not look down. But she kept her gaze on his face, and she even looked concerned. Thorne’s embarrassment grew and he felt heat at his cheeks.
“Mr Thorne?” She reached out a hand towards him. Instinctively he shuffled away. He saw the hurt look that passed across the administrator’s face.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, looking at his feet, but when he looked up she was walking away towards the car park beyond the loading bay doors.
The erection stayed for a while longer.
He kept sweeping for a while, hoping that the tumescence would recede, but the image kept returning, the expanse of thighs, and the merest hint of pink between them.
If this keeps up I’m going to have to tape it down.
But it did keep up, and Thorne cut a peculiar shuffling figure as he made his way home.
Later, once he was settled in front of the TV, he found the image of those thighs overlaying everything he watched until he had to switch off the TV and sit, in the dark, staring at the small patch of pink. He felt hot, prickly, ants crawling just under his skin. A shower only made things worse, leaving him all too aware of his pink nakedness. Disgusted with himself he left the house.
A cool breeze blew around his ankles as he closed the door behind him.
* * *
At first he was content to walk aimlessly, letting his mind wander. It only wanted to wander in one direction. Without consciously thinking, he arrived outside the Carruthers woman’s house. It was near dark, but she hadn’t yet drawn the curtains. Thorne crept closer, using the mature shrubbery in her garden as cover. As soon as he saw the woman sitting on a couch in front of the TV his erection swelled. He caressed it gently as he watched. The woman crossed her legs, and a sudden burst of heat washed through Thorne, as if a firecracker had gone off inside his head.
Someone shouted.
“Hey! What are you doing there?”
Thorne ran, feet banging hard on the sidewalk. More shouts echoed behind him but he scarcely heard. It was only when he got home he realized that his cheeks hurt.
He had smiled all the way back.
The next day he made a point of sweeping outside her office more often than usual. She never looked up from the pile of papers on her desk but that was OK with Thorne—it allowed him to watch... watch and dream. From where he stood he could see the side of her thigh as it pressed up tight against the material of her thin business skirt. He felt the erection swell and moved away to the far end of the factory before it could embarrass him again.
He had to limit himself. There were people around on the factory floor who might notice that he was spending too much time in one place. He contented himself with small glimpses of her, but each one brought the need closer to the fore.
The dreams got more intense after that.
* * *
The Watcher is in the bedroom, standing in the corner. A woman cowers on the bed, the quilt tucked tight under her chin. The Watcher wants to tell the woman that everything will be all right.
But that would be a lie.
A half eaten sandwich sits on the bedside table, but the woman does not even look at it—her eyes are focused on the door, waiting. The television is still on downstairs, but the Watcher knows that the woman is not safe, that she will never be safe.
The Watcher sees the woman’s eyes open wider as the sound of footsteps echo in the stairwell. The man comes in. He is naked. His eyes are black pools of shadow as he moves to the side of the bed and pulls aside the quilt.
The woman’s body is thin, painfully so, each of her ribs showing a proud ridge in her flesh. She used to be heftier, a hundred pounds that were a hundred too many on hot Summer’s days. Her skin is china white, almost translucent and that only serves to accentuate the bruises.
He hits her, twice, once on each cheek and her head jerks like a marionette, first right then left. She falls back in the bed, her legs pushed tightly together, and even tighter still when he tries to prise them apart. He hits her in the stomach, just one punch, but it causes her to curl up in a ball. Her buttocks point at him, and that is all the excuse he needs. He moves forward, lips wet with anticipation.
* * *
Thorne came awake with a start, eyes wild and chest heaving. His hand went to his groin and came away damp.
You sick b
astard.
He stayed there playing with his limp penis and reliving the dream until he was hard. Then he made it nice again. With his come still drying on his belly he wandered through the house, singing to himself—nonsense mouth music. As he moved through the rooms he masturbated, leaving spatters on the carpets—marking his territory.
That was just the start of many wet nights, every dream involving him inflicting atrocities on the body of an increasingly weak office administrator.
He spent his evenings in the bushes outside her house. At first he was nervous, waiting for another shout, another discovery. But as nights went by and he was not challenged, he got bolder. Eventually he was able to press up so close that he had a nose against the window. After dark, when she closed the curtains, they hung slightly apart, giving him a half-inch window into her life. He had an uninterrupted view of her couch as she watched TV and he watched her. She had a way of hitching up her skirt to get comfortable that kept him there for hours.
At work he found it hard to keep away from her. He made excuses to be outside her office, just to catch a glimpse of ankle, the flash of a bra through a gape in her blouse. That sustained him until the next evening.
He kept notes on her activities, looking for patterns so he might be more able to predict when the good nights would be—the ones where she sat on the sofa in her nightgown, legs slightly open, as if inviting him to step through the glass and join her.
He thought he was being discreet, especially at work. But one day, as he was approaching her office door, he found her standing there, watching him.
“Can I have a word, Mr. Thorne?” she said, and motioned him into the office, closing the door behind them. She directed him to the chair opposite hers and sat down at her desk. He couldn’t see her legs, but he imagined the skirt riding up at her thighs, and had to cross his own legs quickly to hide his ardour.
“Mr. Thorne?” she said. He looked up. She was staring straight at him, a small smile on her lips. He looked away quickly. He had no interest in her face. Instead he stared at a point over her left shoulder, not trusting himself to look anywhere else.
Her next words sent a jolt through him that almost knocked him off his chair.
“I’ve been watching you, Mr. Thorne.”
She knows!
“It’s OK,” she said softly, and with more than a hint of sorrow. “I know all about crushes. I just wanted to nip this one in the bud before it goes any further. We can’t have you hanging around my office. People will talk.”
He wanted to say something, but words wouldn’t come. He looked at her, but the sad smile on her face wasn’t anything he wanted to see and he went back to staring over her shoulder.
“We all have our dreams, Mr. Thorne,” she said. “But that’s all it can be—a dream. You do see that don’t you?”
He nodded, grunted, and suddenly the chat was over and he was shown the door.
But I have learned something.
She’s a dreamer.
She’s just like me.
* * *
Thorne spent his evenings at her window, and his nights in feverish dreams that came out of nowhere and sent him into paroxysms of wanking frenzy.
He came to know her patterns, how he had to get to the window early on Tuesday and Friday as she settled down to watch a soap opera on the TV. And on Saturdays she treated herself—wine and chocolate and a movie with swelling chords that always made her cry.
That didn’t bother him.
It’s not her face I’m interested in.
And that might have been that, each of them living their dreams.
Until the day she pissed him off.
He arrived outside her window just as night was falling. Summer was almost over, and the nights were getting longer. He looked forward to Fall and Winter with mounting anticipation, imagining all the extra hours of fun. But there was no fun to be had. When he pressed his nose to the glass all he could see was the TV and one corner of the sofa.
She’s rearranged the furniture!
He almost screamed. He watched as she came into the room... then walked out of view.
He banged a fist against the window. Before he could move she pulled the curtains open... and looked straight at him. He ran—surprised as he left her garden that there were no screams following him. Once at home he lay awake for hours, waiting for a knock on the door, for the police to begin his humiliation. But no one came.
He dragged himself out of bed when the alarm went off and ran a hot bath. He relived one moment over and over, trying to picture her face as she threw open the curtains. Was that surprise he saw there? Or was it something else?
Something like acceptance?
She didn’t scream. Maybe she has always known I was there? Has she been performing all this time? Performing just for me?
The dreams also kept replaying in his mind, each as vivid as the other, and as he lay in the steaming bath he wasn’t surprised to find his erection growing again. He lay back and closed his eyes—waiting.
There was more to see.
* * *
The Watcher is standing at the bathroom door as the woman is bathed.
The man has her held under the cold tap, but she does not struggle. Her limbs barely move and he has to lift her arms to get at the fine down of hair in the armpits. He scrubs her, hard, with a coarse brush—its tough bristles turning her skin to a tracery of red, sores and welts blossoming among the yellow-black bruises as the soap suds run pinkly down the white porcelain.
He lays her down in the bath and stands for long seconds looking down at her. He takes in the thin bruised body and his lips purse in disappointment. But it is the look in her eyes that sends him over the edge—there is no spark left—no fight.
This one is all used up.
He lifts an open razor from the sink and climbs into the bath with her, his folds of fat rippling in anticipation.
As his weight settles on top of the woman she lets out a sigh—more an exhaled breath than an intimation of pain, but it is enough to get him started.
He makes the first cut just above the navel.
* * *
Thorne woke still sitting in a tub of rapidly cooling water, knowing what had to be done.
He made it across town just in time. The woman came out of her front door and looked carefully around before venturing from the porch. It didn’t help her any. Thorne had a hand at her throat and a knife at her neck before she had gone two steps.
“One word, and I’ll cut you,” he whispered.
She nodded, eyes already red and puffy with fresh tears as he led her to his car.
He made her lie behind the driver’s seat all the way.
“Please, Mr. Thorne,” she said softly. “This isn’t necessary you know. We could be friends.”
He showed her the knife. She went quiet. Her eyes continued to plead with him, but the dreams had shown him what was coming. He couldn’t deny them.
He was hard again as he dragged her into his house. This early in the morning there was no one around to see him, but he wasn’t even sure he cared. All he wanted to do was get her inside to where he could get started.
She didn’t protest as he pushed her up the stairs, but more tears rolled down her cheeks. Her make-up ran, and she smudged it all across her face, giving her the look of a manic clown.
That’s not right. That’s just not right.
He threw her into the bath and held her under the cold tap as he undressed her. She did not struggle. Her limbs barely moved and he had to lift her arms to get at the fine down of hair in the armpits. He scrubbed her, hard, with a coarse brush, its tough bristles turning her skin to a tracery of red, welts blossoming as the soap suds ran pinkly down the white porcelain.
He laid her down in the bath and stood for long seconds looking down at her.
What’s wrong with this picture?
It took him several seconds to come to the realization. This wasn’t like the dream. Something was wrong... som
ething vital.
She’s too fat.
His erection went limp as quickly as it had come. He dragged her roughly from the bath and threw her on the bed in the spare room, tying her down with an old clothes line, tightly enough to raise fresh welts at her ankles and wrists. That brought fresh stirring at his groin, but nothing that needed any fixing.
Not yet.
“Please,” she whispered.
He wasn’t about to allow any more of that. He taped her mouth with duct-tape and went downstairs. He sat in his armchair and listened. There was no sound from above.
It’s as if she’s not even really here.
He went to work and managed to act concerned when Mrs Carruthers failed to show up at her office. People came and went during the day, and at one point the police arrived, but Thorne kept his head down. No one paid him any attention at all.
When he got home the house felt different, somehow fuller. As he walked through the front door a cool breeze played at his ankles, a portent of winter to come.
And long dark nights of fun.
He was almost surprised to find her there on the bed in the spare room. She’d been crying again, and moaned quietly at him through the duct tape. Goose-pimples sowed along the full length of her body so he laid an old quilt on her.
I’m not a cruel man.
During that first evening he checked on her often, but over the coming days—days that stretched into weeks—his visits to the upstairs room grew less frequent.
He lived for the dreams.
* * *
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