by Stephen King
‘How about some company, Eric?’ she said, placing Gerald’s thick snout next to Eric’s head.
‘Gerald, meet Eric. Eric, meet Gerald.’
Christ, she sounded like Ellie. Fantasy play, the therapist called it. It helped process difficult emotions, apparently. Kathy gazed at the face of each in turn. She dropped the nozzle and picked up Eric by the scruff of his neck, holding him in front of her, next to Gerald.
‘Nice to meet you, Eric,’ she said in a gruff voice. Gerald’s neck drooped to one side.
‘Now look what you’ve done.’ She turned Eric’s face towards her own and scowled.
‘You bastard,’ she said between tight lips. She paused, looking at Eric’s scrunched-up face and lifeless eyes. He really was quite ugly, his pug-like snout giving him a permanently disgruntled expression. She brought him close to her nose, daring herself to smell, and made a face.
‘Here, take that, stinky,’ she said, using one of Gerald’s front legs to hit Eric in his middle.
Good grief, what was she doing? She threw both stuffed toys on the bed and moved backward towards the door, dragging the vacuum cleaner with her. The other soft toys crowded the bed with their benign shaggy aura but Eric was practically pouting. She squared her shoulders and put her hands on her hips. ‘You know what, Eric?’ she said. ‘You’re going in the wash.’
The washing machine whirred in the kitchen downstairs as Chris and Kathy lay in bed. The curtains were closed and only a pale afternoon light filtered through the gaps at the side. Kathy nestled into the curve of Chris’s side and ran a finger over his profile. He smiled and kissed her forehead, and then rattling shook the floorboards beneath them.
‘What’s that noise?’ he said, sniffing a strand of her hair.
‘Just the washing machine.’
‘Sounds like someone’s wrestling with it.’
‘It’s old. I should replace it, I just haven’t got round to it yet.’ She brushed her lips over Chris’s cheek, near his ear. ‘It’s on the to-do list.’
‘The to-do list?’ He chuckled.
‘Yeah, what’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. You’re so organised.’ He squeezed her breast.
‘You don’t like that?’ Kathy said, inclining her head.
His finger ran down her navel to the fuzz below. ‘I love it.’
‘Oh, no!’ Kathy said, sitting up and pushing his hand away.
‘What?’
‘I’ve got to dry the teddy before Ellie gets back!’ She threw her legs over the side of the bed and reached for the shirt Chris had discarded in a hurry earlier.
‘The dryer,’ she said, glancing back at him, still splayed on the bed. ‘I forgot to programme it.’
In the kitchen, the machine was ticking down the last of its cycle. Eric’s face was distorted and angry through the damp of its glass. The black paint on his button eyes had chipped and for a moment she thought he might be blinking at her. No, it had to be a trick of the light. She turned the dials and the machine churned as it started up again, as if gathering strength.
She peered through the glass into the drum. Eric stared back at her.
‘What?’ she said. ‘Got a problem?’ She knocked on the glass, scowling, unaware that a naked Chris had padded in behind her on his bare feet.
‘Who are you talking to?’ he said, circling his arms round her waist from behind, his fingers pressing into her soft middle.
‘Him,’ she said, pointing at the drum where Eric was being thrown round and round.
‘You need to get out more,’ Chris said, laughing and kissing the back of her neck. She shrugged, smoothing down the hair on his arm. He turned her round to face him, pushed her up against the kitchen counter and gave her a long, wet kiss.
His breath was hot on her face as his hands ran down her body. She gripped the counter, glancing up at the kitchen clock. ‘There’s no time,’ she said, pushing him gently back.
Chris leaned his head on her shoulder, breathing out a weary sigh. ‘There’s never enough time,’ he said.
Ellie was not happy, not happy at all.
‘But you promised, Mummy!’ Her face was round and wet.
‘I know, sweetie, but he was really stinky.’ Kathy closed her eyes and shivered, remembering the smell. It still cloyed at her nostrils.
‘He didn’t need a wash.’ Ellie pouted and wrapped her small, pudgy fingers round Eric’s damp body.
She sank her nose into his fur and her frown disappeared. ‘Oh! I can still smell him!’
Kathy yanked Eric from her daughter’s face, sticking him under her own nose. Damn it, her daughter was right. Eau-de-Eric was still in there, musky and burned. But there was something else too.
‘Give him back!’ Ellie said, stamping her foot. Her little arms were raised up in the air, straining to reach him.
Kathy batted her away, sniffing again. There. There it was. A hot summer evening, a barbecue, the smoke from sizzling fat billowing upwards into a deepening blue sky. His fingers were wrapped around the neck of a beer bottle and he’d flicked something at her, a piece of meat or charred vegetable – she couldn’t remember exactly what – and then he’d pressed the scalding skewer on her arm. Yes, she could still feel it. Ellie had been in her arms, crying and sucking her shoulder because she’d missed a feed. She’d almost dropped her as she’d flinched in pain.
‘He needs to go back in,’ Kathy said.
‘No, Mummy, no!’ Ellie’s bottom lip quivered and her hands clenched into fists.
Kathy marched back into the kitchen, shaking off her daughter who was tugging at her clothes. ‘Get off!’ she shouted. It came out a little too sharp, more so than she’d intended.
‘Mummy, no!’ Ellie stumbled as she followed her.
But Kathy could still feel the slabs of stone chafing at her knees as she fell on to the ground that day; the shock of the glowing skewer’s sting against her bare skin. She had cradled Ellie’s head, protecting her from the fall.
‘Please, Mummy, don’t!’ Ellie’s voice was choked and barely more than a whisper.
Then the washing machine’s door wouldn’t close. Eric’s arm kept flopping out and getting in the way. It hung limp, his head half out and turned upwards. Ellie reached to drag him out but Kathy shoved her aside with her body, forgetting that she was bigger, an adult tussling with a mere child. ‘Watch your hands!’ she said. There was a rip, like the sound of paper tearing. Stuffing spilled out of the seam between Eric’s shoulder and arm.
‘Mummy! You’re hurting him!’ Ellie’s face shone with tears and shock as she crept closer.
‘He’s a toy, Ellie! A toy!’ Kathy shouted as she chucked the teddy back into the drum, ripped shoulder and all. She pushed Ellie aside, sending her careening backward over the cold stone kitchen floor. Her foot shot out as she kicked the door shut and hurriedly twisted the dials. The machine started up and Kathy wiped an arm over her face. Her hands were trembling.
Ellie got up from the floor. She paused, her eyes lowered, and when she looked up she’d rearranged her features into an impassive mask. There was nothing there. No flush. No tears. She smoothed her hands down her dress – her favourite lilac pinafore dress, the one with ebony edging – and watched in silence as Eric’s paws clawed at the glass beneath the rising water. Tick, tick, tick, they went.
Ellie turned her gaze from the drum to her mother.
‘I hate you,’ she said and fled up the stairs to her room.
Chris became elusive. There were fewer weekend visits and he made a point of removing himself when Ellie was home. No, it wasn’t that he wasn’t warming to Ellie, he told Kathy, how could he not with her head of honey curls, rosebud mouth and plump, peachy arms? It was just that he couldn’t deal with her quiet, determined hostility. She would cast long, sideways glances at him, sitting still with Eric on her knee, turning the teddy’s face towards him as he ate or watched TV.
He had told her about the time when he’d gone to the
loo and he’d felt strangely self-conscious sitting on the cold plastic seat. When he’d looked round he’d almost jumped out of his skin seeing Eric sitting there in the bath, his chipped black eyes fixed on him. Why would Ellie do that? he asked Kathy. What was the point? Plus, there was the name, Eric. Yes, he understood, of course she missed her father. But still, given what was going on, it was kind of creepy.
And now it had been several days since Chris had last called. Oh, there had been text messages and the odd email but he was always busy, always off somewhere or coming back from somewhere else, always working late or working early or waiting for a delivery.
Give it time, Kathy’s therapist said, but time felt all too malleable, the past dragging the present to itself when all Kathy wanted was a forward trajectory.
And so here they were, Kathy and Ellie and Eric, always Eric, with his bandaged shoulder. Kathy had offered to repair him in a fit of guilt but Ellie had refused. After all, Kathy had ‘attacked’ him – Ellie’s words, not Kathy’s – she couldn’t trust her mother to do the right thing and so she insisted on keeping the bandage in place. It felt like an affront, as if Ellie were pressing a point, and Kathy felt deep shame each time she was confronted by the damaged Eric. So much so, that she eventually relented and agreed for him to have his own plate and cutlery at table.
‘He needs to get better,’ Ellie said. ‘He’s hurt.’
And wasn’t it always Kathy’s way to give in anyway? She was working on it, she had to change but it was one step forward, two steps back. Habits are hard to break, her therapist agreed. Hadn’t she done the same with Eric – the real Eric – right up until the night when he fell under a car and was dragged along the road after a late-night drinking session with the boys? Kathy had seen him laid out, his chest a deep concave where the breastbone had been crushed, piercing his heart. What heart? she’d wanted to shout at the hospital staff standing to the side with their hands in their pockets.
Ellie was kneeling on her bed, her stuffed toys lined up in a row in front of her, her back to the door where Kathy leaned against the doorframe. She hadn’t noticed her mother tip-toeing up the stairs, but then she didn’t seem to notice her mother much these days. Kathy was always creeping around her now, her movements slow and deliberate.
Ellie was whispering, quiet words rustling the air, her elbows working up and down, pausing only to wag her finger at Gerald and Ollie and all the other soft toys, whatever their names were. She was busy with some sort of demonstration. There was something in front of Ellie, something all the other animals were supposed to watch. ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Come back!’ Kathy heard Ellie remonstrate. And then: ‘But I love you really, I love you.’ The words fluttered, gentle as butterfly wings, followed by the burst plops of Ellie’s lips kissing the air.
Kathy felt wet on her cheeks. She wanted to wipe the tears away but hesitated, worried that any movement on her part might break whatever magic Ellie was conjuring up on the bed. A sob welled up big and bold inside her and Kathy clamped her hand over her mouth. Ellie’s head flicked to the side. Nothing moved in her face as she registered her mother.
‘Go away,’ she said.
Kathy shook her head. ‘Sweetie, you need to talk to me. Whatever it is.’
Ellie shifted on the bed, moving her legs round, and Kathy saw she was cradling Eric in her lap.
‘Eric is hurting,’ she said. ‘You hurt him.’
‘Oh sugar.’ Kathy wiped her nose with the back of her hand. ‘It’s not what you think. It wasn’t like that.’
Ellie’s little fingers stroked his bandages, the tips barely touching the material.
‘Eric says you’re mean.’ She turned the teddy’s face sideways, and Kathy straightened up as she felt his black eyes drill into her. At this angle, his stitched snout was a lopsided grin.
‘Teddies don’t speak, sweetie.’
‘Eric does. He talks to me.’ Up and down the little fingers went, caressing the broken shoulder.
‘No, Ellie.’ Kathy choked back another sob. ‘He doesn’t.’
Her daughter shrugged, turning back round to face her stuffed animals.
‘Look at me, Ellie.’
The whispering started up again, small exhalations brushing against each other.
‘Ellie.’ Kathy’s voice was hard and sharp as she drummed her fingers on the doorframe.
‘Eleanor!’
Her daughter’s shoulders bunched tight and her whispering quickened as Ellie leaned forward, as if protecting Eric from her mother’s voice.
‘Enough now, Eleanor!’
Kathy strode forward and grabbed her daughter by the shoulder. She was stiff to her touch and fell backward, rigid and flat on the bed, still clutching Eric. The eyes, Kathy thought, they have the same eyes, distant and inaccessible. She had to separate them.
‘Give him to me!’ Kathy said.
‘No.’ Ellie pressed Eric to her chest, turning away from her mother.
Kathy grabbed him by his bandaged shoulder and started to pull but Ellie tightened her grip and she found herself peeling off one finger at a time. It was no match really, her adult hands were so much bigger, so much stronger. When she’d prised him loose, Kathy held Eric aloft – how heavy he was all of a sudden! – and hurried out of the bedroom, her fingers circling his neck.
Ellie came scrambling after her, tearing at her mother’s clothes, but her mother was too tall, her arm stretched up too high. As Kathy looked down, she saw Ellie’s mouth twist as she clamped down on her leg.
‘Ow!’ Kathy screamed, thrusting her leg sideways. ‘Get off! Get off, you little bitch!’ The honey-dipped hair, the pudgy arms, the milk teeth were all just a blur, something separate to her, morphed into some grotesque animal battling with her leg. The hallway stretched out in front, the mirror of the vanity cupboard in the bathroom at the end reflecting overhead lights. Kathy dragged herself towards it, still clutching Eric, her daughter still clamped to her leg. She bent to push her daughter away but Ellie’s mouth caught her hand instead and she felt the trickle of warm blood.
Blood spattered on the cupboard’s mirror as she flipped the door open, her fingers grasping blindly for the sharp point of the nail scissors. Ellie’s teeth were deep into her leg as she started stabbing Eric, plunging the scissors into his eyes, those beady, dead eyes, and tearing at his middle. Stuffing spilled out, red-tinged fluff billowing on to the floor. Again and again, she stabbed and ripped until all that was left was a flattened, empty rag, a caricature of a teddy.
When it was over, when her ears finally tuned in to her daughter’s muffled sobs, Kathy let the scissors drop into the sink. The metal clattered against the sides and she slumped against the basin, Eric hanging limp and ragged in her hand.
Ellie clambered to her feet. She spat out her mother’s blood and wiped her arms over her cheeks, smearing them in red.
‘Oh God,’ Kathy said, sinking to her knees. ‘What have I done?’
Ellie said nothing, grabbing what remained of Eric and running back into her bedroom.
Fluff floated around her as Kathy placed her hands over her face and sat motionless. She heard the fridge hum downstairs, the distant ticking of the kitchen clock. She breathed in and stretched out her leg, observing the teeth-marks on her skin. Beneath the blood, between the sticky fluff, she could just make out a series of curved, symmetrical bite-marks. And then from the bedroom; again, that insistent, urgent whispering. Kathy hoisted herself up, leaning on the sink, not daring to look at her reflection in the mirror. Could shame burn itself on someone’s face?
She hobbled to the stairs, keeping her eyes trained on the banisters. Out of the corner of her vision, she caught a glimpse of Ellie in her room, back on the bed, elbows working furiously and a large bandage trailing on to the carpet.
Downstairs, Kathy let her hand hover over the phone. She was thinking of Chris but he seemed very far away, just a distant memory, something she could never reach. She tried to recall his face but could only dred
ge up the outline of his features: his square jaw, his brushed-back hair, the gentle slope of his forehead. It was just a sketch really, all the details were missing. And then she heard the footsteps on the floorboards above her. The familiar tread. The dreaded pause at the top of the steps. The thud-thud-thud of big feet, strong feet, coming to rest on each step. And as the footsteps came closer, she didn’t even look up. She knew who it would be.
THE SPOTS
PAUL BASSETT DAVIES
PAUL BASSETT DAVIES
Paul Bassett Davies has written and directed for stage, TV, radio and film. He began in multimedia theatre, and his one-man shows won awards at the Edinburgh Festival. He’s written for many well-known names in British comedy, and had his own BBC radio sitcom, as well as writing radio dramas, short films, and music videos. He’s also been the vocalist in a punk band, a cab driver, and a DJ in a strip club. His first novel, Utter Folly, topped the Amazon humorous fiction chart in 2012, and his new novel, Dead Writers in Rehab, is being published by Unbound.
The idea for ‘The Spots’ came to Paul in the small hours of a sleepless night, when the image of a leopard seemed to prowl mysteriously into his mind. It was only after he’d finished the story that he realised the screensaver on his laptop the previous year was a photograph of a leopard.
PAUL ON STEPHEN KING
‘I like this quote from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: “If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered (anyway).” It’s a very useful reminder about honesty and what a writer really cares about.’
THE SPOTS
The first phase of my assignment was to count the leopard’s spots.
Then, to consider the possibility of change. In the words of the Leader, ‘First quantify. Then evaluate. Finally master.’ This remorselessly methodical approach was a key to the Leader’s greatness, and just one aspect of his genius.