Authors: Zane Lovitt
Black Teeth (43 page)
Benjamin jumped with a vocal shock: a cyclist had suddenly overtaken him. She gave no indication that she'd heard his exclamation and was soon around the bend. A shudder of blood hollowed out his stomach and he was beset with a nauseous reluctance to continue reading. There was, after all, no point.
I find myself speechless to some extent today. Mr Whaly said for me to write here about the incedient and I know it was about as serius as a crime could be I dont point that out in the sence you probely expected but I was refering to hitting her with the bottle. She died.
Her husband was inprisoned for it and it's obvius I am many things but I am not a lier it was not him. I dont know why he got inprisoned except that I know sometimes inncocent people are inprisoned because our Justice system is not without it's falts and this is something that I think is wrong.
The doctor has told me that I probely going to die of cancer of the lungs and so it's like Pauline Handson because if you are reading this it means that I am dead! I don't want to take this terible burdon to my grave such that I will not mince my words.
Benjamin's feet carried him past the weeds and the grass and the grass that looked like weeds. The undulating path led along a row of conifers and he sniffed in the air the sheer unfamiliarity of this place. Parks and rivers. Wind and all the rest of winter.
My real father died when I was 11 and Henry Blake became my father but he was not he was actualy my step father but I had to be given his name I had no say in stopping it. Before him and Lydia my mother got maried we had to become Roman Catholic and I am glad we did but I was very confussed at the time ha ha!
When I was thirteen I killed my step brothers dog Conan but at that moment in the past he was not my step brother yet but he was almost. Gary was a bully and I think that bullying is wrong I put up with alot may I repeat alot of darision from Gary literaly. Conan (Labrador) would help him and do things for him and it made me very angry.
I killed Conan with a rock while Gary at school and it distrubed me to the stage of peril I knew I should own up I would of told Gary because to see the look on his face but mother Lydia cort me and she simply could not contane her terror and and she had me berry Conan. I had to promisse to not tell anyone and she give me her new bible and made me promisse on it or else everything would go into catastrophy.
After they got maried I got sent to Assumption and I was there then got expeled. I got work as trapper and a pest ex-terminator I didnt see my family.
Each segment took a stutter of re-reads to properly comprehend. Benjamin rose the crest of a hill and found the mouth of a footbridge overstriding the silent water, a shortcut from Kensington to Footscray. In this openness the world felt smaller; perhaps a trick of the light. Again he turned the page, more sorting than reading, took his first step onto the bridge.
In 1999 I was working across from Cheryl Alamein and there was a cat and I told it too rack off it kept being a common newsance and I hit it with the shovell and put then the animal in the backlane.
Cheryl Alamein and a man asked me to find the cat and I thouhgt it was in the lane but it was not. The cat was in the book-shelv and the boy was there with a cockaspaniel. Cockaspaniels are dumb dogs. The boy was who put the cat on the book-shelv his
mum was really angry. You can not control flameable situations and I left.
When I finished the job I saw cockaspaniel going to the toilet on the mans car. He had a BMW and the dog went to the toilet on the tire and I was veryt angry and deeprest I dont like animals especialy that do things for bullys.
The wind caught the paper, tried to drag it from Benjamin's hands and over the handrail. The vase in its translucent sheath swung like a pendulum and poked his groin when he came to a stop at the centre of the bridge. It was stuck to its plastic wrapper, the blood on it had done that, was surprisingly adhesive. Funny how it's glue in your veins, Benjamin thought, whatever else you'd call it.
I went to the house because Cheryl Alamein said she was going to going away it was raining. I went there to kill the dog and I was going to berry it in the backyard but my flyer was on the frigde and I put the dog in the vent so she could call me like the cat and I would be there when the boy saw the dead dog with the knowing fact that it was me because Gary never knew it was me and so I put the dog in the vent.
Benjamin turned the page, harried by the cold gale.
Then Cheryl Alamein came home and I was very angry. I promissed my mother that NO BODY would know what I did and I if Cheryl Alamein knew about me and this dog then they would know about Conan in all rastional probability. I tried to hide but she was looking for some one and she found me I was very angry and deeprest branding the vase and I promissed such that I hit her on the head her life was taken. I know I could of left behind foot prints on the floor because of the rain but I burned my shoes I did not want to burn the vase I dont know why even tho I should of.
The sun was low and setting without splendour, sneaking away, hoping no one would notice. He turned up the collar on his jacket. Another cyclist ticked past. He felt he must look strange: shivering exposed on a bridge and shrinking from the cold, not demonstrating enough sense to go home. His knuckles ached from how tightly he held these items. Rain on his face. No, only water blown off the river, flashing onto the footbridge, onto Benjamin's clothes.
For many days I was upset for what I had done. I am not a murderer. I do not know what I was thinking? I have created a Jeckel and Hide kind of caracter. They should have the death pennalty for people like me. For a deturment and concepts such as this. I have always excepted death but now I long for it. I was very discomforted and angry I went to mother Lydia and told her. It was just like the time I told her about the dog she was very horifide. But she said I had to go to the police I said I couldnt because of Conan and she said that does not matter and I was angry because I had promissed and I had kept it and she said it wasnt inportent this only increesed my instincts. I was very angry and then thats why I'm inprisoned.
I am very sorry I hurt Cheryl Alamein. I love Australia and I realise now it was wrong. I should not of promissed Lydia it was because of her that I did it. I was in eror but GOD knows I tried to do the right thing a clean conshious is the softest pillow. It's funny if you think about it the people we do things for I am just like Conan like that.
I dug up Conan and went to Gary's house and showed him and he was very horifide and the dog bones had black teeth just like the black teeth on my hand I am looking at them while I write this affidavid.
Signed by Desmond Blake and witnessed by Tristan Whaley, Senior Partner at Joad & Clark, stamped with the word
Affidavit
as well as an office address and a phone number.
The river rolled on below him. Anything that fell from this bridge would be gone in an instant, borne away to wherever this water went. Anything dropped from here would be irretrievable.
In a single motion Benjamin tore the document in half, then in half again. After that the pieces became less symmetrical, each one shredded to a geometric oddity. A hundred faded scraps in his leather hands and while they prepared for allahu akbar one lone wolf pre-empted the ceremonial moment and lifted off, not down but up and away and Benjamin clasped the rest of them at his throat to watch it swoop and dive-bomb the water. Despite the rolling of the river it floated atop, held its position, caught in the tractor beam of him, but the current was too strong and it slipped away under the bridge. He lurched to the opposite rail, watched it drift easily toward
the highway overpass, had to blink to hold his gaze until it was indiscernible in the dusk.
With elbows on the rail he looked down through the mess in his hands and past it to the water, watched his fingers slowly splay, release puffs of white that drove, tumbling, hurriedly to the water. None stopped to float in his line of vision. They were instantly merely something he remembered holding in his hands.
The vase dropped directly. Didn't spin or tumble or flutter out of sight. It thunked into the water with all the conspicuousness of a murder weapon. In a moment it too was in the past.
Pulling his jacket tight he turned back across the bridge the way he'd come. It was difficult to see now as the daylight was giving out, even so that basic shapes were not differentiated. He navigated past the conifers and the picnic tables and the trash can, where he disposed of the plastic bags, spotted no one else brave enough to ride or walk through the park this evening. The desolation reminded him of the city on Christmas Day, an emptiness he'd often revelled in. But tonight he rushed home.
At his car he retrieved the bottle of wine he'd taken from the box at the lawyer's house. This he would use to put the moment at the river behind him. To convince himself that that which had happened had not happened. He trudged up the drive but stopped. Light in his window. Not a lamp or an overhead but a cool glow. A phone. Someone had broken in.
She might have left the door ajar again but he dug in his pocket for his key anyway and his hand got stuck because it was gloved. He removed the hand from his pocket and the glove from his hand, tucked the wine beneath an elbow and caught a glimpse of the black drawing on the webbing of his thumb and forefinger. As he climbed the steps he removed his other glove, licked a finger and rubbed at the black teeth, made circles that formed grey stains that he could just make out in the dark. By the time he reached the top of the stairs, the dull bulb that burned there, the symbol was wiped away.
He could taste the ink on his tongue. Free of gloves, free of drawings, his right hand turned the key in the lock and he stepped inside.
