Epitaph (7 page)

Paul Crane laughed.

It must be the drink, he told himself. If not for the unfeasible amounts of alcohol he’d consumed he would not have managed such a loud and unfettered explosion to escape him on this particular night. He gazed at the television and he laughed until his sides ached. However, there was no humour in the sound. No release of tension and no joyous exaltation. It was a resigned and weary sound. Almost painful.

And the cause of this alien sound?

‘Isn’t it time you started a new life?’ the voice-over on the advert proclaimed.

Paul had heard that and begun to laugh. That was it.

‘What are you offering?’ he asked, his comment directed towards the TV but there wasn’t anyone to answer if they could.

Except there’s no one else in the flat with you, is there? No one else to answer the question.

That internal voice was becoming a bit of a pain in the arse, Paul decided. It was so logical. Too logical. He dealt with it the same way he had previously.

‘Fuck off,’ he grunted.

He changed channels for the hundredth time that night.

What exactly are you looking for? Something to watch? Something to stimulate you? Something to occupy your mind?

The internal voice refused to leave him alone. It persisted with its grindingly logical and irritating intrusions.

You haven’t thought this through properly. I’ve already told you that. There are options. It’s understandable you feeling aggrieved. That’s fair enough. Even the self-pity is merited, perhaps even the anger. But you should be formulating plans now.

‘Why don’t you just fuck off,’ Paul snapped, even more irritated by the fact that his internal voice seemed to have momentarily taken on the tone of a self-righteous, superior prick. Paul smiled to himself.

Call me what you like. I’m still here.

‘Cunt,’ Paul added to the empty air around him.

Very witty, very charming, I don’t think. You were in advertising. You should be wondering which clients you’re going to take with you, which ones might offer you freelance work and what favours you could call in. Why not return some calls? Snarling at the answering machine the way you did isn’t going to help, is it?

Paul shook his head, so sick of the internal voice by now that he couldn’t even be bothered to answer it. Even so, he forced out a handful of words in reply.

‘You know fuck all,’ he rasped, his words a little slurred.

Why not try to sleep?

Paul knew that he was merely postponing the simple act of having to go to bed because, once he left the sitting room
and was lying in the darkness of his bedroom, the thoughts would come flooding in with even greater force. The thought of failure and fear for the future, such as it was.

What future? You haven’t got a future.

Paul kept pressing the channel up button, finding mostly blank screens as he progressed. He didn’t subscribe to the film channels, the lifestyle channels held little interest for him at the moment and the music channels even less. Then something filled the screen that did catch his eye and hold his attention, however briefly.

The two girls were in their early twenties. One blonde, one brunette. Both were naked on the large bed they occupied, supple bodies intertwined. They were kissing deeply, hands on each other’s breasts, grinding enthusiastically against each other. Paul sat up slightly. Just as he did the screen went blank except for a caption at the bottom that read:

FREEVIEW OVER.

‘Shit,’ he grunted and jabbed the remote control once again.

The channels rose through TEENAGE NYMPHOS, past ASIAN SLUTS and on to C**K-HUNGRY HOUSEWIVES. On each occasion, however, the screens were blank but for the captions at the bottom announcing the delights that could be had for a subscription fee. Paul smiled thinly and worked his way up through more of the adult channels that he had chosen not to subscribe to when his satellite dish had first been installed. He couldn’t even remember seeing these before but, then again, he hadn’t been sitting up pointlessly staring at the television trying to get drunk because he’d lost his job before.

This was a new, albeit not particularly exciting, discovery. He continued on through the array of blank channels, finally coming to one that announced itself as BANGBIRDS.

Now what genius did their advertising?

However, there was a girl on display. There was no sound, despite the fact that she was holding a phone against her badly made-up face, her thick and almost grotesquely red lips close to the mouthpiece. Callers could speak to her, the caption on the screen proclaimed, by subscribing and then calling the offered number.

She was dressed in just a thong and a pair of precipitously high heels and she was licking her lips in such an exaggerated way that it would have been comical at any other time. However, on this occasion, Paul found it quite mesmerising. He watched her face intently, trying on occasion to lip-read what she was saying.

Now you really have lost it.

He managed to make out a couple of words. One of which was fuck.

Not a great stretch to lip-read that one, was it?

He managed to make out pussy as well. This was followed by some more tongue flicking and then, he noticed, the word balls.

How about lip-reading as a new career? You seem to have a flair for it.

He saw her purse those huge lips again and blow a kiss towards the screen. To his surprise he felt the beginnings of an erection.

Must be the booze. She looks bloody awful. I’m sure she’s a lovely girl, just trying to earn a decent living, but she looks horrible. Not your type at all.

The girl on the screen was now on her knees, running her hand up and down her stomach and over her breasts. She slipped her fingers into the top of her thong and leered at the camera once more in a parody of a lustful look that was almost comical. Paul felt his erection grow. If only he could hear her. And yet, there was something about the silence and just the image. With no sound he could imagine her voice. To him it could be soft and husky. He feared that, in life, it might be strident and harsh. Exaggerated and fake, like her make-up. He looked at her full lips once again, now completely enraptured by the image before him.

The girl was tugging off one of her shoes and Paul watched as she put the long, spike heel close to her mouth and flicked her tongue at it.

She mouthed DO YOU WANT TO FUCK ME? into the camera.

‘Yes,’ Paul murmured, opening his robe to expose his hard penis.

What the fuck are you playing at?

He fixed his eyes on her as she lay down on the hideous pink satin sheet, her legs now spread wide and one hand pushed down inside her thong. Even when she almost dropped the phone he didn’t care. Not that it would have mattered to him because he couldn’t hear what she was saying anyway. The room was silent. The girl leered out at him from the television and mouthed OH, YEAH.

Paul Crane began to masturbate.

Laura Hacket was more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.

She had been since the hands had grabbed her and yanked her from the path into the bushes.

She’d screamed for a moment but a hand had been clamped over her mouth as a bag of some sort had been forced over her head so that she couldn’t see what was happening or where she was. Or who had grabbed her.

Laura could remember being lifted into the air and carried by a person who had run for a few yards, then she had vague memori es of a car and the sound of an engine being revved.

And then nothing but the smell of the bag over her head. A damp, dirty smell that she hated.

She had wanted to scream out inside the car. She had wanted to tell whoever had grabbed her that she wanted her mum but she couldn’t find the words. It was as if her throat and chest had tightened up, stopping her from inhaling enough breath with which to form the words. Also, she didn’t like taking deep breaths with her head inside the bag because of the smell.

When the car had finally stopped, Laura had heard footsteps then the sound of the car boot opening and she’d told herself that then would be the time to scream but, before she could, she’d felt a sharp pain in her right arm. Close to the shoulder. A cold sensation that felt as if someone had stuck a needle in her.

Then there had been nothing but darkness.

How long ago that had been Laura had no idea but, now, the smells were different.

She still couldn’t see anything and she still couldn’t speak but the reasons for this incapacity were now different. Whoever had brought her to this place had covered her eyes and mouth with sticky tape, effectively sealing both. Laura knew that she was sitting on a hard chair; she could feel it when she flexed her hands. Her wrists were also secured with thick tape, as were her ankles. She was helpless. Unable to move, see or speak.

She just wanted her mum. Wanted her to come and fetch her. To release her. Take her away from this place. She wanted to be at home playing with her toys with the television in the background while her mum cooked dinner. Laura wanted to be able to smell cooking food. Not the cold, dusty odours she smelled now.

And her arm hurt where she’d been pricked. Her head ached, too, and she was upset because she couldn’t remember anything that had happened since she’d been lifted from the car. Laura began to cry softly but the tears merely welled up behind the tape covering her eyes and made them sting even more. Some of the clear liquid trickled from behind the sticky blindfold and ran down her cheeks. She tasted the salty tears on her lips.

Laura swayed slowly backwards and forwards on her chair
.

How she wanted her mum.

She heard a door open and close somewhere behind her and
she stiffened on her chair. Then she heard footsteps moving towards her and she felt even more frightened than she first had.

Please God, don’t let it be someone who’s going to hurt me, she thought. Please God, don’t let it be the terrible Mr File. Don’t let it be Peter File that’s got me.

She tried to scream in pain as the tape was torn from her eyes, suddenly allowing her to see both her surroundings and her captor but the tape around her mouth stopped her.

In that split second, as the tape was ripped free and she saw what was in front of her, Laura wished that she
had
been taken by Peter File. At least he was only a man. He would have had a mouth and eyes and a nose. Unlike the face that confronted her. There were eyes but they were small and dark, hidden beneath huge overhanging eyebrows and sagging flesh. Where the nose should have been there was just an empty hole and there was only a zip across the part of the face where the mouth would ordinarily have been. Laura was sure that this was no man. It was something from her worst and most terrifying nightmare. And she was certain of one thing and one thing only.

Whatever was standing in front of her definitely wasn’t human.

Paul Crane felt ashamed.

He didn’t know any other word to describe the feelings that filled him as he sat staring at the silent television screen.

What the fuck are you playing at?

The internal voice was jabbing at him again but now it was throwing film dialogue at him, too. He remembered a film called
The Offence
. An old film, early seventies, with Sean Connery and Ian Bannen. Bloody good film, too. But, from that film, a line kept filtering through his mind and it seemed made for him. A description so apt it was almost painful.

‘You sad, sorry little man.’

That was the line. Spoken by Ian Bannen with great derision and sneering contempt to Sean Connery. And now that irritatingly insistent internal voice of his was saying the same line to him over and over again.

You sad, sorry little man.

And that was what Paul Crane felt like. He looked at the girl on the television screen. She was laughing silently.

Laughing at you. Laughing at you and all the other sad wankers watching her. You pathetic bastard. You excuse for a fucking man.

Paul hurriedly changed the channel as if he couldn’t bear to look at the girl any more. Like one of those mornings when you’ve drunk too much the night before and ended up in bed with a friend because she’s been equally pissed and you’ve both ended up doing something you swore you’d never do. And then, in the morning, when you both wake up naked in bed or on the sofa or on the fucking floor you don’t know where to look or what to say, do you? You both know that something happened the night before that shouldn’t have and, at the time, you probably both enjoyed it but it still shouldn’t have happened, should it?

A bit like the girl on the television and masturbating on your own living-room sofa. It really shouldn’t have happened, should it?

He looked to one side of him, at the balled-up tissues he’d retrieved from his bathrobe. The tissues he’d cleaned himself up with when he’d finished masturbating.

The evidence of your sin. The concrete truth of your failure. The failure even to maintain any kind of self-control. It was some girl on the television. A girl you couldn’t even hear. You were lip-reading her dirty talk. That’s how fucking pathetic it was. If you really wanted phone sex that badly you could have called Amy back. She’d have obliged, wouldn’t she? She’s done it before when one or both of you has been away on business. Christ, if you wanted to look at porn you might as well have switched your
fucking laptop on and looked at some porn. Some decent porn, not strained to lip-read that silly bitch on TV
. Dickhead.

Paul shook his head, wishing that the voice inside it would shut up and bother someone else instead. But it couldn’t bother anyone else, could it, because it was
his
internal voice.

Phone sex. Ha, ha. She was holding a phone, nothing else. You weren’t having phone sex with her, were you, you fucking dickhead?

The voice was becoming more vehement. And he wanted it out of his head.

You’re out of your head. You’re out of your fucking mind.

It belonged inside his head, nobody else’s. And it was doing what Paul himself always did. It was speaking as it found.

Speak as you find, son. You can’t rely on other people’s opinions.

Trust your own judgement.

His father’s words.

Yes, your dad’s inside your head, too. All his homespun philo sophy from years gone by. All his sayings and his views.

Paul bowed his head now. Almost like a penitent seeking absolution. He closed his eyes tightly and white stars danced behind the lids.

‘Anybody else want to say anything?’ he murmured aloud, eyes still closed.

But no one did because there was no one else in the flat except him.

And yet, despite the shame and the humiliation and the feelings of worthlessness
(something you’ll get used to in the days and weeks to come, they’ll be with you all the time)
, his brief foray into self-abuse had provided two very welcome
and unexpected bonuses. Primarily, for the first time since he’d been told he’d lost his job, he’d felt something pleasurable. He hadn’t, for the duration of his masturbation, thought about his situation or his lack of hope or anything else that had dogged him so determinedly for the evening and much of the night.

The second good thing was that he suddenly felt very, very tired. Not the kind of tired that he felt after a bout of particularly good sex but a tiredness that so much alcohol had been unable to induce. He slumped a little further back on the sofa and gazed blankly at the television screen, having flicked channels to a programme about Hitler and the SS. He turned the sound up slightly, trying to concentrate on the images before him, attempting to listen to what the narrator was saying.

Paul yawned. Was he, at last, going to be allowed the oblivion he had sought since he got home? He continued staring at the screen. His eyes closed a little more.

Another five minutes and he was asleep.