Slights (40 page)

Authors: Kaaron Warren

Tags: #Fiction, #Psychological, #Horror, #misery, #Dark, #Fantasy, #disturbed, #Serial Killer, #sick, #slights, #Memoir

BOOK: Slights

5.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

And Jessie wrote this in
God's Little Acre
by Taylor Caldwell:

DS twenty-two fingernail:
Detective Paul said, "Hey, Surly, your girlfriend's here to visit."
  Alex looked up, hearing a joke in his partner's voice, ready to laugh. Work was hard; he was acting chief. He saw a beautiful woman, a soft cinnamon tan, brown curls, bosoms, cleavage.
  "What's she reporting?" he said.
  "Oh, she's not a victim. She's a perp."
  "She's not a pro?"
  "She's not a she."
  Alex stood up to see better. God, she was lovely.
  And none of it was real.
  "Each to their own," he said. Detective Paul laughed. Alex was known for that; acceptance. Each to their own.
  Alex wrote furiously to conceal his excitement. He could not and would not hurt women – but that was not a woman.
  She was released, charges dropped, into
the care of her parents, two silent, embarrassed people. They didn't know she'd been charged with cutting five children, teaching others to cut.
  "Come on, David," his mother whispered.
  "We don't want to see you back here,
mate," said the desk sergeant. Alex tidied files, later, something he did to clear things in his mind. He filed David Sparrow's address and phone number.

Jessie wrote this in
Looking for Mr Goodbar
, Judith Rossner:

JB thirty-one cufflink:
Joel Bennet was a dapper man, cufflink wearer, and seductive, people shouted his name in the streets to be seen with him. He liked the feel of a dead body dragging him down, liked to pretend he was a conjoined twin, with a dead twin.

And this. She wrote this in
Confessions of an
Advertising Man
, by David Ogilvy:

Jessie was not a violent woman, but she was fascinated by violence. She read all the banned books, loved them in private. And she was fascinated to be so close to it. It sickened her as well, and she couldn't eat.
  Jessie didn't read all the books. Sometimes she read the book flap, or looked at the photo of the author, or thought about the title for her inspiration. This great romance writer never married, though she was the subject of gossip for many years, because it was known she had a lover. Was he a married man? Why didn't they marry?
  Jessie and the school teacher, Mr Bell, kept up a friendly relationship. She relied on him to keep her from dying of loneliness.
  Mr Bell did not read her novel in full. Only the first few chapters. It began on the end papers of "In the Wet" by Nevil Shute, which she gave him to read on a train journey.

I knew I had to burn all of the books. I knew it.

The Grannies didn't forget me:

"Stevie, you're the sweetest one
Life with you is so much fun."

It wasn't enough. It didn't come close to being enough.

I still can't picture my father angry. Not furious, anyway, not leap up and down, beat in heads, bury the body. I can't believe I was the only one who saw him as a gentle, kind man, always.

I rang Peter, "Peter, can you come over, please come over, Peter, please let me have a go on your bike. Please come over. I've got something to show you."

There is no one to save me. I stand alone in the kitchen. I string my rope up from the railings. And I let myself go.

This moment is the worst, when I can't breathe. The discomfort is great. I survey my garden; am pleased by how neat and green it is.

I see my twin in the window and I wave. The prophecy Mum read has not come true. I am only thirty-five. Nowhere near middle age. I have beaten fate; I am dying before fate decided I should.

And then I am in the room. Oh God, take me back. They are all around me. There are straws between my toes, suck, suck, and a cock in my mouth, soaking up my saliva. Snip, snip, bandage scissors, rusty with blood, cut my hair off centimetre by centimetre. Someone grabs my hands and pulls me up. It's Granny Searle. I think she's going to lead me away but she ties my hands high in the air and plucks out my arm pit hairs. I laugh and they shrink away. I'm not supposed to be enjoying it. They have paper cut fingernails. They slice and cut until all the lines of my skin are filled with red. Someone has an apple peeler and little bits of my skin are taken away. Peter is there again. He was almost always there. For a brother who appeared unbothered by my actions, he was very slighted. The only time he wasn't in the room was when I was twenty-four, and hadn't seen him for months. I never saw Maria after I was twenty-one. Her hatred was too intense for her to be in my room.

And then a neighbour cuts me down. I have never been so relieved. This time I will stick to my resolutions. I will change. I don't want to go back to the room, nor send anybody else there. I became a believer, in God, Heaven, Hell. I went to church, I donated all I had, I learnt floral arranging and I made the morning tea. I met someone nice. The cop, Laurie, that young cop from Mum's investigation, he tracked me down, I tracked him down. We set a date to be married, put a deposit on a house. We always held hands.

Then I started to smell mothballs in strange places. I didn't tell anyone; didn't want them to think I was going mad.

I saw a doctor, told her all. She had a good look at me. She said, "You're the sanest person I've ever seen."

My clothes seemed tight around my neck, choking me. I was always cold. But at least I was alive.

I sold my car and my house. I called Maria and met her in a restaurant, and I cried and told her how much I cared for her, how good she was for Peter.

And then a neighbour cuts me down. I had a new life. A career, a career woman. I had three children, a lovely husband. We are gathered for our twentieth wedding anniversary. I eat a mothball, mistaking it for a kool-mint.

And then a neighbour cuts me down.

That's what should have happened.

This is what did happen:

I forgot how much the Rat Trap neighbours hated me. How they ignored me.

And it was Ruth who was dead, not Jessie. I had been dreaming all this time. I hadn't heard Ruth tell me never to ask a man for advice. Or to only wear vertical stripes.

It was Jessie alive.

We went for a picnic together, on a cliff facing the sea. The air smelt of jasmine and dirt but the ground was hard, rasping my skin.

The air was thick. I breathed through the pores of my skin, great soakings of air, and I felt like I had bubbles in my blood.

Jessie looked wonderful. She looked forty-five, hadn't aged in years. We were closer, now. I'd caught up. We ate a mother's feast: boiled eggs with little screws of salt, ham sandwiches cut thick and wrapped in flapping greaseproof paper; a thermos of hot chocolate; a piece of chocolate slice. Jessie laughed at the way I ate, gobbling like a turkey.

"You haven't eaten like that since you were sixteen," she said. She held my hand and I shivered. "You know what's going to happen next, Stevie."

"I have no idea. Could be anything."

"Oh, no," she said, "Only this," and she lay down and began to rot.

I thought I wanted to go back. I wasn't sure if they would still be waiting. It had been a long time. But the memory of all those faces focused on mine, all of them waiting for my whim, was exciting. I was addicted to them. There was the kid I saw every time, the little shit from primary school who I pissed on after showers, the teacher was Mrs Sammett, the one I had laughed at because she was fat, the friend I had stopped talking to when I figured he wouldn't get my jokes any longer. They leant over me, faces I knew. Something really hurt; there were faces there of people I had helped in the hospice. People whose lives I had changed; people who listened to my stories of death. They all believed they had been slighted. I began to cry with the hurt of it. And there was Darren, clutching his jumper, staring and waiting. He was no older in the room, though I was sure he danced in anticipation in hundreds of other rooms, just like mine. My counsellor, no counsel there, no help, just confusion and lust. He was a tree, a leaf, landing on earth to stab me with his paper knife. Strangers saying
broom broom.
All there. I heard that clicking noise, and I could raise my head and I saw their mouths flapping, their teeth clicking together, like those wind-up teeth everybody once had. Their hands were raised, their teeth clicking, their fingers beginning to reach for me. I remembered I had kicked the chair away too far; my legs could not reach it. I could see as I raised my head, they waited in circles about me, six or seven circles, I couldn't tell. I lowered my head and closed my eyes to think again.

I could not reach the chair.

I came here to feel the power, to watch their faces. But they are stronger this time. There are so many of them.

I am naked on that bed, and I see they are too. They look at me as I draw my knees up to make a resting place for my elbows. They count my orifices with their fingers. I feel a moist rasping on my back. A stranger lolls her tongue out. She is lapping at my back, taking off the first layer of skin.

Then a neighbour cuts me down.

People couldn't believe my transformation. I was positive about life; loved it.

"See?" they said. "All you needed was something to believe in." I told them what I believed in; when I died I would go to a place where everyone with a slight against me could bite, scratch, fuck, flay, keep me for all eternity. The noise and smell of the place sickened me.

I gave up driving a car, smoking, and drinking. I gave up all drugs and meat. I quit my stressful job and took a low paying one which took nothing from me. All these things made me safe. I would not die.

Then I opened my eyes and knew I did not have another chance. I swung from that rafter and would not be found.

Is this what will happen?

I swing in the kitchen for many days. The smell of frangipani, of jasmine, fills the house. The smell edges its way out of the open window, out of the back door always open, and it pleasures the noses of neighbours long past caring.

"Have you smelt it?" they begin to say, when the smell is no longer gentle, and they sniff up and down the street until they reach the Searle home.

They enter through the back door, and, although I am beyond rescuing, a neighbour cuts me down.

A neighbour cuts me down.

Nobody hears anything, sees anything. When interviewed, most of the neighbours say, "But there were always screams and strange noises coming from there. We're used to it. No one was very interested. Even when her father was alive, screams and shouts. People said the place was haunted and that was ghosts crying in there."

Is that what will happen?

I see them shrinking from me. They have been in my power all along, because they have remembered me forever, I forgot them in an instant. Some of the faces here I know; many more are strangers, people I affected who never registered in my brain. They are nobody to me; and yet they wish me ill.

There are so many of them. So many, hundreds, millions, everyone in the world waited there to gobble me up. Dear old Granny Searle, clicking her teeth like a lunatic. Peter smiling, flicking his teeth with his thumbnail. Forget I said anything.

All the faces, all the people.

All knowing more than me. Because I believed I wanted to live.

I wanted to live.

And they knew they had me at last.

I end alone. One by one, they vanish from the room, leaving me alone in the cold, dark womb.

They are finished, now. All done. Bite and bite and scratch, they took those slices back. And now, I am rising. The bones of my body lie on the table; I leave them to their final survey. And I am on a golden path, the sun warms my back, and I can hear my mother's laugh, my father's voice. My step is light and I am free.

about the author

Kaaron Warren's award-winning short fiction has appeared in Y
ear's Best Horror & Fantasy
,
Fantasy
magazine,
Paper Cities
, and many other places in Australia, Europe and the US. She has stories in Ellen Datlow's recent
Poe
and
Haunted Legends
anthologies. Her short story "A Positive" has been made into a short film called "Patience", and her first published story, "White Bed" has been dramatised for the stage in Australia.

kaaronwarren.wordpress.com

Other books

Out of the Ashes by Kelly Hashway

Bind and Keep Me, Book 2 by Cari Silverwood

5:45 to Suburbia by Packer, Vin

Refresh by S. Moose

La noche de la encrucijada by Georges Simenon

La Suite by M. P. Franck

The Art Dealer by West, Megan

The Mystery of Stolen Diamonds by David A. Adler

The First Hostage: A J. B. Collins Novel by Joel C. Rosenberg

Something True by Kieran Scott