Richard
“Hi, Richard. I heard about you and Amanda. If you need to talk, well, I’ll be upstairs between your sheets,” a stunning, long-legged blond whispered in Richard Hamilton’s ear, running her finger along the contour of his jaw as she walked away.
He barely heard her above the music or through his alcohol-fueled high. He watched her walk away, nevertheless, seeing her make her way sultrily through the crowd, a short skirt barely clinging to the curve of her rear and revealing well-tanned flesh above the waistband until the thin material of her shirt began. She stopped and turned to look at him once more before the crowd swallowed her, enveloping her like the silk sheets in his bedroom. She smiled at him. Was there a wink there? Richard wasn’t sure, but he knew he would follow her in any case. He had dumped his long-term girlfriend of six weeks that morning, and since then he had been on the prowl. He was nineteen years old and richer than all the rest of the people at the party put together. There was no way that Richard would ever turn down a long legged twenty-two-year-old who was hornier than a nymphomaniac at a Sexaholics Anonymous session.
She wasn’t perfect, he would admit that. Compared to most of the women he had been with, she wasn’t much more than average, but she would do for the night. Besides, he knew damn well that there were others more attractive than him within his line of sight. Sure, he was a good looking guy, but he wasn’t buff. Toned maybe, but lingering scars from a bad case of acne in his early teens were still visible in the light of day. Thankfully he had found that money and intelligence was an effective combination when it came to getting laid.
He smiled to himself as his own arousal began to take control of him. He could feel it change him, like a beast. He could hear his heart pumping, the background noise dull, and soon all he could think about was the ways he would ravage her. Exploring every cleft of her naked body, massaging her breasts as his tongue lapped between her legs. He could feel the delicate sheets running over their naked flesh and it made him shiver.
“Who was that, man?” Damien Wilders asked him. Richard and Damien had been friends for years. They both came from rich families through unrelated endeavors and they had had the misfortune to be thrown into the same hellhole of a boarding school together. They had been the only two who, by the time they left school at seventeen, hadn’t been raped at one end or the other by the prefects who had governed their dorm rooms each night.
“I’ve got no idea, but I’ll tell you in the morning.” Richard smiled at his friend, the only real one he had, nudging him in the ribs with his elbow before downing his beer and heading towards the stairs. It was his party, his house—but then again, there was always a party at his house.
Nobody even noticed he was gone.
***
“Wake up... Hey, wake up,” Richard commanded, shaking the sleeping naked beauty that lay next to him.
She was a picture of perfection, her hair still immaculate even after the wild night of lovemaking they had shared; her face just as flawless without the make-up as it had been with it. Richard grabbed her bare shoulder. The warmth of her creamy skin felt silky against his hand. He let it linger; and then, after a slight pause, as if contemplating his impending action, he squeezed and shook her harder until her eyes fluttered open. They were light aquamarine and sparkled with or without the sunlight. She looked at him, her brain at first not registering where she was. She looked around without moving her head and realized immediately that she was not home: the bed covers were lighter and crisper than her own, plus the walls here were a deep blue and dotted with various posters, while her own room was a mix of cream and red. Also the window was on the wrong side of the room, which was twice the size of hers. Realising whose place it was always seemed important to her as it allowed her to decide whose responsibility it was to make the first move.
Turning her gaze back towards her Romeo, she smiled as her memories of the previous night came flooding back in the same way the pleasure had surged through her body, curling her toes in the most literal of ways.
“Good morning,” she said as if she had been with the man forever.
“Hi, listen, it’s getting late...you’ve gotta go.” Richard’s words were blunt and cold. He jumped out of the bed as he spoke, and she realized then that something was wrong; Richard had been laying on top of the bedcovers and was fully clothed.
“What?” she asked, sleep still fogging her mind.
“You gotta go. I’ve got things to do, and you can’t stay.”
Richard didn’t even look at her, but rather grabbed her discarded clothes and stuffed them into an expensive looking sports bag that he had found in his cupboard. He bent down, gathered the underwear, a silky red bra and delicate thong that he feigned to place in the bag but instead slipped into one of the knee level side pockets on his trousers. Another memento of a good night he couldn’t quite remember the finer points of, although he may well refresh his memory a little later on—if the camera had worked. He had been trying to get the angle right for months now but had not been able to find that perfect spot.
“You’re kicking me out? What about last night? What about the things we said?” she asked, completely shocked; not by the rejection from this rich playboy whose reputation she knew about, but simply from the blunt force of it and the suddenness with which is arose.
“Yeah, like I said, I’ve got stuff to do, places to go, people to see. You know how it is. So please, get out of my bed. I’ve laid out some clothes for you to get you home; something fresh that I had picked out for you.” Without saying another word he turned and left the room, leaving the door open as he went, walking down the long, rather gothic looking hallway without looking back or even slowing his gait to wait for her.
She threw the lavish sheets from the bed, not even feeling the cool morning air brush against her skin, ignoring the tingles of arousal as her nipples hardened in the cold light of day. Her thighs were still sticky with their lovemaking, but she pulled on the designer brand jeans and tailored shirt without even thinking about her underwear. Rage assumed control of her emotions. Shoes pulled onto bare feet she burst from the room onto the landing, which seemed neverending. The thick carpet was a burgundy color and caught her footsteps before her full body weight was even applied. She ran down the hallway without even pausing to look or even consider what was behind the many doors that she saw, nor did she stop to glance at the artwork that adorned the walls of this once regal home that was now, after an unfortunate accident, completely at the mercy of the orphaned heir of an oil fortune built up through generations of hard work.
All of Richard’s ancestors had worked to make their mark on the company. His great-grandfather had started it all, before handing it down to his eldest son. The following two generations produced only one child each, and so the company was passed down through the generations, but Richard had broken the mold.
He chose not to work for the company, not to begin at the bottom of the ladder and learn his craft and the science that was the oil business. Nor did he choose to go through life sitting in the boardroom. Instead he had been drawn by the silver screen: acting, directing, he wanted to do it all, and if some circles were to be believed, he had a talent that would have been near impossible to hold back had he been committed enough.
He had sold the company off not long after he received his inheritance and ensured that the Hamilton name would be taken care of long after he was dead and buried. Like most young children who come into great riches, the idea of Hollywood was put on the back burner, replaced by partying, celebrating, and witlessly throwing his money around without thought of the future—his own or that of his guests. “Tomorrow was a lifetime away.” That was one of his favorite lines with the ladies. At least with the ones who weren’t too drunk to forget it in the morning.
She found the stairs and ran down them in as controlled a manner as she could while all along rage bubbled away under her skin. It felt as if the speckling of necessary fat that covered her body was boiling, ready to split her skin open and spew forth, engulfing everything it touched with a hot, fiery anger that would destroy the entire household if it wasn’t gotten under control.
“Just who do you think you are?” she screamed across the large hallway. Her voice echoed around the now empty space. Richard stood by the door, holding her coat draped over on extended arm, bent at the elbow like a butler awaiting further instruction.
“I think I’m a busy man, I told you that. Here is your coat. You’ve got your things. It was fun, but now, please...run along.” Richard swept his arm through the open door as if showing her the way, his words void of feeling
“You PIG!” she spat at him, the fire rising from her belly. “How dare you, just because you’ve got money—” she started.
“Hey, love, you wanted the goods last night and you got them. Believe me, I gave you the good stuff. Now be a good girl and don’t cause a scene or embarrass yourself any further. What did you think would happen?” Richard choked back a laugh but couldn’t stop a small cough-like sound from escaping.
The noise was small, but it was enough to push the girl over the edge. She may have only been seventeen and in high school herself, and yes, she had lied to him, but she was no joke, and he had no right to laugh at her. Her anger boiled over, and she lashed out. With fingers curled at the tips, she slapped him hard across his face. Her nails dug through the soft surface of his well-cared-for skin, gouging deep tracts from his ear diagonally across his face to his mouth. She screamed at him, but all that came out was a random jumble of all the hateful words she knew.
“You bitch!” Richard screamed, striking out with one hand, his intention not to hit, but rather to keep a distance between them while the other clamped against the burning, stinging flesh of his face. His strike caught her in the face, striking her square on as she lunged for him again. He felt her nose move, the cartilage cracking under the forceful impact of their opposing momentums. She cried out, blood immediately spurting from both nostrils. Her lips also absorbed some of the blow, but they remained unblemished. She fell backwards and tripped over the threshold. She wheeled her arms as she tumbled into the early morning air, trying to stay on her feet before tripping down the steps. She managed to keep her balance until the last moment, whereupon she fell into the graveled earth. Sobs sent tears streaming down her face to mix with the free flowing blood. They stung her face and burned in her nose. A few moments later, her bag landed in the gravel behind her, hurled from the doorway, not with anger, but with frustration. Richard stood staring down at her, his eyes wide with shock while his lips were thin and pulled back over his teeth in a snarl.
The door slammed shut behind her as she dragged herself back to her feet, and when she turned to look back up the steps, the house was once again quiet. It looked much colder in the light of day, without the noise of mingling guests, dance beats and free flowing liquor. Even in her pain, her instant resentment and hated of the rich man that had given her so much pleasure only to take it away with so much pain was put to one side, and she considered how lonely Richard must be.
Once the door was closed, Richard stormed away, stomping up the stairs like a toddler having a tantrum, kicking anything that came within range, acting out of pure frustration. His face didn’t hurt anymore, but he could feel it pounding away in rhythm with his heart and felt the skin tightening as it began to swell. He threw the door to the main bathroom open, denting the wall with the force of it.
“Fucking bitch!” he screamed at that room, hearing his rage echo around, bouncing off the pristine fixtures and fittings as he fumbled through one of the many fully stocked medicine cabinets in the house in desperate search for some iodine.
He found the bottle and grabbed a large wad of gauze, not bothering to separate the sheets from each other, choosing to tape whatever he had in his hand to his face. He placed the gauze on the sink and closed the cabinet doors. He jumped when he saw his reflection: the four gouges that ran down his face were deep, the groove in each one clearly visible. Blood began to bubble to the surface again, and wiping it away didn’t serve much of a purpose. The rage was there, and it rattled the door of the cage in which Richard had it locked. Every day, it grew a bit harder to control, to keep hidden.
Richard fumbled with the cap of the iodine bottle, his face beginning to sting more and more with each ineffective rotation the cap made in his hands, before finally, in another fit of rage, he launched the bottle across the room. Throwing it full force like a baseball pitcher in the bottom of the ninth with two out and the bases loaded. It passed through the frosted glass door of the power shower, leaving a cartoon-style hole the exact shape of the bottle before the rest of the glass crumbled away in a motion that was so slow it only added to the rage Richard felt. It seemed that time itself had started to mock him.
He taped nearly an inch-thick pad of gauze to his face and went back downstairs. It was only 10:45, but he went straight to the liquor cabinet and grabbed the first bottle he saw: vodka. Removing the cap, Richard drank directly from the bottle; he coughed and choked as his lungs burnt with a warming fire. He took a glass and filled it to the brim before he walked through to the kitchen. He had a cleaning lady and a cook who looked after him and the house; Lisa Atkins. She had been his nanny (for lack of a better word) since he was a young boy. She had become part of the family long before his parents died; but it was Sunday, and so Richard was left to fend for himself.
Despite knowing his way around the kitchen with a good degree of competency, Richard’s breakfast consisted of vodka and little else. The left side of his face throbbed and burnt, keeping the rage he felt at the forefront of his mind with common sense and self-control locked away somewhere in the basement.
“Fucking cunt!” he snapped aloud, swallowing the last third of the glass in one cavernous gulp.
After leaving the kitchen, Richard wandered through the house holding the vodka bottle in one hand and the glass in another, taking alternate swigs from both. He moved across the large hallway. Now void of all furniture, it was used as the main party hall; it provided easy entrance and exit for the guests while also keeping them away from the areas of the house he preferred to keep private.
Richard stumbled across the hallway; already well on the way to lunchtime inebriation. There were two doors ahead of him, and although both gave access to individual sitting rooms, Richard always chose the one on the right, closest to the front door. It was well decorated with two plush lounge chairs that took center stage and faced a modest sized plasma TV against the left hand wall. The walls were a rich cream color while the floor was both heated and tiled. A large rug separated the TV from the chairs, and in days gone by (when there had been a sofa in the room) there had been a coffee table pinning the rug in place. There was a window on the wall opposite the door, although Richard had covered it with heavy drapes as he tried to eliminate the light in what he liked to think of as his movie room. Beside the window and spanning both the wall opposite the door and the one immediately to the right as you entered was a custom made L-shaped bookcase, only it was filled with DVDs rather than books.
Richard would sit for hours in this room. There was always a movie playing. Most of the time he didn’t watch what he played, but he found it comforting. He enjoyed the classics, sci-fi, horror, comedy, and action. And while thrillers were his genre of choice, he had certainly been known (when he was certain that the house was empty) to watch the occasional romantic comedy.
Pacing the room like a fighter in the locker room, just waiting for his turn to be called through into the ring, Richard finally felt his rage begin to subside as alcohol took over his body. Richard soon grew bored. Even the idea of a movie didn’t appeal to him that morning. He left the room and just stood in the entrance hall for a few minutes before heading up the main staircase to his right.
The second storey of the building was governed by a long hallway that spread out in both directions. At the top of the stairs was the library/study area where he had always been forced to sit and complete his homework. The room to the left was the family room, and was followed by one of the three bathrooms on the floor, and then Richard’s room. His was the largest bedroom in the house, although originally it had been two separate rooms.
The hallway bent at ninety degrees at either end, and at the end of each ‘wing’ (Richard would often refer to his home in terms that were much grander than the reality suggested) was a guest bedroom, and a small bathroom where the broken shower door still hung and the shards of shattered glass glistened in the early morning sun like small diamonds.
A fresh wave of anger rolled through him; not at the girl, no, fuck her, the worthless whore that she was, she had cum before him on each occasion, and he didn’t like that: she had been lazy. The rage was his own; it was deep seated and locked away with a key he could no longer find, and nor did he wish to, because the idea of letting it out scared him.
The alcohol surged through his system. The world had started to spin and his movements had the unmistakable clumsy flow to them that could only come from a drunk. He finished the vodka and let the bottle fall to the plush carpeted floor.
Richard turned and walked back in the direction of the stairs, towards the other side of the house. It was a side that he left alone. His parents’ bedroom was at the end of the hall, opposite to his own, but theirs had an en-suite bathroom; and so, while being smaller than his by some considerable amount, it was still considered to be the master bedroom of the property. Further down the hall was the other spare bedroom, which his mother had claimed for herself, turning it into a painting studio. For all Richard knew, it was still filled with her half-finished canvases. His mother had been quite the amateur artist and had shown several of her pieces in galleries across the country. The only difference on that side of the house was that the corridor was a few meters longer; it had been extended to make space for the room Richard’s father had used to conduct his business meetings it. It wasn’t accessible through the house and so was invisible to anybody inside. They had had an extension built not long after moving in to accommodate Richard’s father’s business meetings and conference calls. It was a giant room by all accounts, but Richard had never been inside it while they were alive, and since their death, he had not even been able to bring himself to set foot in their side of the house.
His parents had died two years previously in a car accident as they drove home from a business meeting in Canada. They had taken the car and enjoyed a mini-vacation as they travelled home. Richard had still been in school and had been (despite his rather inflated ego), for the most part, just one of the kids in his class. His parents had decided before he was born that Richard was to attend public school as his father – a self-made man – had done. They did this under the belief that it built not only character, but a determination to succeed on merit rather than inheritance; a common issue prevalent in upper class preparatory schools.
The news of their death had been given to Richard by Lisa Atkins; she had sat him down in the kitchen and broken the news as gently as she knew how. After which, she held him for hours as he sobbed, working his way through things as best as any teenager can do.
The funeral was a busy affair – the church and the graveyard packed full with mourners, ‘mourners’ and television cameras to the point that it looked like a film set rather than a real funeral. Yet, once the coffins had been lowered and the somber nature of the occasion concluded by the man in charge, Richard soon found himself standing alone. He looked around and saw that not one single person had remained any longer than was deemed appropriate, not even the many men who had worked with his father since he first started the company, men who were considered not just business associated...but friends. Men who had given Richard birthday and Christmas gifts through the years, men who had offered him advice when his father was unavailable, men he considered to be the uncles he never had.
Richard remained by the graves, oblivious to both the passage of time and the heavy, stormy atmosphere that had grown in the air. It was only when Lisa put her arm around him that he came back to himself and snapped out of the trance he had entered. Together they stood in silence until the cemetery employees – Richard couldn’t bear to use the term ‘grave diggers’ – returned armed with shovels to complete the burial. Lisa Atkins took him home and sat with him the rest of the day, but as the sun disappeared, set no doubt, and the evening came, even she had to make her way home to her own family.
Now, stumbling along upper landing, needing to hold on to the banister to keep from falling over, with his vision double (triple in areas of poor light), Richard finally made his way over into the ‘dark side’ of the house. It felt colder, and he shuddered as he walked past the top of the stairs which for so long had been the marker for the divide he had created.
He stood and looked down at the entrance area from the upper right-hand side of the landing and it felt strange to him. He was sure it was just the drink, but it felt... creepy, as if his skin had been shrunk while his skeleton remained the same size. He itched all over, and his forehead was covered with sweat.
The house looked different from up here. He no longer saw the party arena, but the entrance foyer his parents had made so welcoming, the large antique table was back in the center of the room. A large fern-like flower in a giant, Oriental pot stood proudly on top of it. There was a writing bureau to the left, between the door to the sitting (movie) room and entrance to the parlour that his mother had used to entertain her lady friends when they came over for drinks in the summer.
He saw the large hat stand which housed his father’s many long overcoats, hats, and umbrellas, not to mention his own Power Rangers rucksack. He hadn’t seen it since he was a kid, but now it hung there right before his eyes.
He saw the doors to the main dining room, a large, permanently prepared room with a table that could host more than fifteen people; twenty if you were friendly and didn’t mind a few elbows in your plate from time to time. Richard knew the door had been there, but he hadn’t really seen it since the first day he came home to an empty house. Beside the dining room was the side hallway that led into the kitchen; a large busy room even now, despite its more infrequent usage. Coming off from the kitchen was the family dining room; a jovial, colorful place decorated with happy, smiling pictures of holidays past and events celebrated over the years.
For all Richard knew, the stereo was still running, playing his mother’s Boyzone album on one continual repeat. He closed his eyes and he could hear their words drifting through the dead air. He closed his mind, wanting desperately to block out the scene, to hold back the tears, but they always managed to find an escape route. When Richard opened his eyes again they were red and burning, not from the vodka, but from the salty tears he had never cried all of those years ago which had begun to leak through the dam he had built to hide them.
Richard let go of the banister and pushed himself backwards. His world seemed to darken, as if an early and unexpected dusk had fallen.
Richard groaned, his head thumped and his thirst re-surfaced. All he heard was the same static sound that lived in the radio waves between stations, or late at night once the pay-per-view channels he watched so often finished their broadcast. The house darkened with every step. The sound of thunder rumbled in the distance, and to Richard, it felt as though the house itself was scared, shaking down to its foundations.
Richard was transfixed on the front entrance. He felt along the wall behind him and when his hands found a door handle, he knew which room it would lead him into, but didn’t care: it would get him away from the vision he was having, and he knew for a fact that there would be something to drink in one of the Edwardian bookcases that ringed the entire circumference of the room save for the door and large windows that were opposite the entrance.
The door opened and a rush of stale air spilled out. Richard cried out in shock: it burned his skin. Like traps within an Egyptian tomb, rigged to keep thieves – it wasn’t stealing when it was your alcohol – at bay.
Richard walked into his father’s study and reached the light switch. The walls felt rough to his touch, made his fingers burn as if being grated open by the abrasive surface. It was only when he found the switch and filled the room with a dull light, emitted from a dust-encrusted bulb, a single glowing sentry in a chandelier filled with dead colleagues, that Richard saw the tips of his fingers were bleeding, cut open as a result of his altercation with the bathroom mirror.
Now that he was away from the landing, the visions he had were gone, the house was empty again, and that room of all of them confirmed this. It was dusty and, well, empty. As it dawned on him that he had entered this room, out of all of the rooms in the house, he had broken his boundaries and chosen that one. Putting it out of his mind, Richard walked to the locked liquor cabinet, and without pausing to think, grabbed a thick book from the shelf and smashed the door’s glass front. He put the book down, not even bothering to look at the cover – Dante’s Inferno – he grabbed the first bottle he saw, his vision too blurred to read the label. With the bottle open, Richard took a long drink. The fine brandy hit the back of his throat like liquid gold and ran down into his stomach where it sat floating on a sea of nausea.
“That’s just the kind of irresponsible bullshit I would expect from you,” a voice boomed out of the darkness.
Richard jumped, screaming, half choking on a mouthful of brandy. He let the bottle fall from his grip as he spun around, searching the room for his unexpected guest. He saw nobody; the room was empty save for him.
He stood on the right-hand side of the office, facing the other wall; the door was to his left, and to his right was the desk and behind it the window. The decor was dark; the wood red in color and hard. Nothing could put a dent in his father’s desk, and the Lord knew how hard Richard had tried when he was younger. He knew he had been drinking a while, but it couldn’t have been much past noon, yet outside it looked like heavy dusk, the sky a vivid swirling orange. A strong wind had whipped up out of nowhere, and the solid house seemed to creak and groan at every joint.
Behind him, the door to the office slammed shut. Richard spun around but saw nothing.
“You always were a loser, mooching from my fortune like you earned the right. Bet you’re happy now we’re gone, hey!” a voice said. It was alien...yet familiar. It spoke from over by the window. Richard turned back but once again he saw nothing.
When the large leather desk chair that had been facing the window spun around, Richard screamed, or tried to, at least – but his throat had swollen shut.
“W-wh-what?” Richard stammered. The advanced state of inebriation he had been in was gone, slapped out of him with the effectiveness of a cold shower.
“Get out of my study, get out of my house! I worked my fingers to the bone to support you. To give you the best chance at life, a head start, and all you do is sit in here and waste it. You disappoint me once again, Richard...well done,” the corpse of Richard’s father scolded him, the final words filled with sarcastic praise.
“No, you can’t be here. You di-died,” Richard said the words, and then, as if they opened up the old wounds he had kept sealed, he burst into tears.
His arms outstretched towards his father, who remained motionless, stoic. Completely unlike he had been in life, for Roger Hamilton had been a patient man, a loving, generous man. A man who had loved his son more than anything else in his life, a man who had cancelled numerous business meetings over the years should they run a risk of interfering with his son’s soccer games or other activities.
“You disgust me,” the corpse said again as Richard sank to his knees. “Look at me,” it demanded of him.