This was his homestead, and he’d almost died to create it. His withered skin and cracked bones were testament to that.
He looked out across the plain, at a low sun, and thought it was almost worth it. They said it was progress and he’d be a fool not to sell, but he’d done so much just to stand here, that he was not willing walk away now.
They’d come out on horse back one sunny afternoon to deliver the message. Two selfish, ruthless looking bastards, with new clothes he knew they couldn’t have paid for honestly. And he’d seen the way his Anne-Marie had looked at one of them, and that had made it all the worse. His daughter blushing for the men who would destroy his life.
He’d given them his answer, not aggressive, but firm. He’d known even as the words fell from his mouth that they would be rendered mute.
Then the steady rhythm of prairie life returned for a few days, and he was glad of the hard work. He mucked out the pigs, tilled the soil and mended a fence that had been blown down in a recent storm...
* * *
One of the men returned in the rain, the one Anne-Marie was sweet for, and handed over a document. The document was lawful, neat and concise. The only thing in the situation that was.
He looked over the paper that night by the candlelight, he read every word and it made him feel sick. He thought about tossing it into the fire.
But he didn’t.
Instead he placed it between some books. He was never one for reading.
* * *
It was a dank morning when he found the dog hanging from the porch.
That dog had made the trip from Boston. And although he never would have admitted it to his wife or daughters, he loved that dog...
Now it hung by a thin piece of frayed rope, it’s dark eyes glazed over. Somehow its fur seemed different.
He thought about going into town to confront the men, but there was too much to do on the homestead, and he knew that ultimately the long journey wouldn’t be worth the effort.
* * *
He was surprised that his daughters’ tiny hands were holding her body. He thought the rusty nails would have torn straight through them, causing her body to slump onto the muddy ground. But there she hung.
They’d torn part of her dress off and her small, still forming tits glistened with rain.
They’d nailed her to the water tower.
* * *
She looked so peaceful it wasn’t right. Her favourite book laid on her lap stained with blood. A hole in her head. He didn’t have the heart to move her, so there she stayed, her glazed eyes peering out over the infinite grass. His wife, the meekest person he had ever met.
He broke down that night. Knowing he could never have won. He found himself on his hands and knees clutching at the dirt he had sacrificed so much for.
If the dog had still been alive it would have been able to smell his tears through the rain.
Dolls
She’d collected dolls for as long as she had been able to comprehend collections. Now she had thousands. They lined every shelf, sat in every corner and peered down from every wardrobe and cupboard.
She often wondered if they were aware of one another’s presence.
Occasionally she rearranged them. One day, when she was particularly bored, she decided to arrange them into eye and hair colour. What had begun as something to do when she had nothing else to occupy her time, turned, firstly into immense fun, and then into a quiet obsession. Which took up her entire day and half the following night.
Her grandmother had started her off down this track, and her mother often tried to stray her from it. Tried to point her towards boys and more adult, ‘normal’ pursuits instead. Certain dolls always reminded her of her grandmother and this made her sad, but she couldn’t bear to hide them away.
Then, through one of her few friends, she met Jim. Jim wasn’t like other men, and she loved the way he looked at her.
So she and Jim did things. Couple’s things. Special things.
But she didn’t like Jim touching her dolls…she didn’t even like him looking at them, the truth be told.
So imagine the sickness she felt, one September night, to come home and find a group of her dolls huddled around Jim on their bed. Jim was naked and some of the dolls’ clothes were missing. His mouth whimpering somewhere between pleasure and bewilderment. Emerald coloured glass eyes rolled back in plastic skulls, porcelain lips quivering as they dripped with saliva. And whilst cotton and plastic rubbed up against his bare skin, he had a look on his face, a look she had never seen there before.
It turned out he wasn’t any different after all.
The Seconds of the Witching Hour
There was a tapping at the window, and there she was again. As always. He’d come to expect her now, hell, he’d even come to accept her.
The Witch. The Witch At The Window.
The one who hovered behind the glass, suspended in night, eyes whiter than white, an obscene erection sprouting from between her legs, its tip the colour of puss. Thick brown spittle around her mouth, teeth uprooted.
He could only watch with fear and dread, as she floated behind the glass, surrounded by a swirl of green some.
She always came at midnight, and he always listened to the seconds accumulating, listened to his clock ticking cruelly away. (Even when he tried ridding himself of clocks)
Then one day he met Julianne.
He met Julianne when he wasn’t looking. When he finally stopped looking. Isn’t that the way they always said it worked. But then they’d said many things about the mysteries of romance and relationships and he hadn't believed much of it. Harsh experience had taught him other wise.
But nonetheless there was Julianne. In the library – perusing the shelves of his favourite genre.
They went for coffee there and then. He never worked that fast, was proud of himself.
A date followed ad the more time he spent with the woman the less he saw the witch. The dark eyed witch who was like the personification of a vacuum – a limbly deathtrap..
The witch didn’t vanish instantly, of course, but he thought of her less and less and as a result she seemed to appear less and less. And when her malignant teeth did breath condensation onto the glass of his bedroom window, it seemed to be less real. Flesh turned to phantasmagoria turned to dream turned to mere flight of fancy.
It was after he made love to Julianne for the first time that the witch left his life completely. Naturally he’d been worried that she might make an appearance during the act. Had tried his best to consummate the marriage in a different location for this reason. But Julianne still lived (or rather, had moved back in with) her mother, and he simply couldn’t justify a hotel. Felt embarrassed by the notion. For him hotels were for Johns and adulterous lovers. Not mousy people like he and Julianne.
So the possibility (inevitability) of the witch’s appearance made him even more nervous and threatened to stop his performance dead in the water.
But once he was inside Julianne’s warmth he knew that everything was going to be okay.
The next day was a simple joy, probably the purest day he had ever lived, or at least remembered. Certainly the apex of his so called adulthood. And for the several months which followed, things continued in a similarly wonderful mode.
But then for a few weeks their contact elongated and began to gradually break off. It was nothing he could really pinpoint, by date or by incident, but he knew for certain that there had been some form of sea change.
One cold, Saturday night he sat in his study, in a state of sharp despair. He’d not been able to get her on the phone for days and she never came by the library anymore. He tried to distract himself with internet trivia and endless cups of tea, but it was utterly hopeless.
He drifted off at 10:30 and awoke two hours later. The first thing he noticed was that the power was out, and that he was submerged in silent darkness. The second was the strange smell which filled the air.
He struck a match and was surrounded by halo of gold, which enabled him to see what was surely the source of the smell; an orange, brown congealed fluid with a rancid, brackish odour.
He first spotted it on the wall near his monitor, but the movements of his hand unmasked more and more stains. It was everywhere, including his trousers and shoes.
He got up and left the study. As soon as he opened the door he heard sounds, muted murmurs, muffled screams of orgasm.
A chill ran through him and his skin began to ache.
He followed the sounds into an upstairs bedroom, where an impossible spotlight presented the witch and his love. Julianne was bent over a chest of drawers as the old hag impaled her with her necrosised manhood. Julianne was covered in the foul stench. It dripped from her tits and mouth. And now he knew without doubt or consideration that this was the witch’s seed, shot from the abomination between her legs.
His mouth filled with saliva and he felt the contents of his stomach crawl, yet when Julianne’s eyes turned to him and glowed, there was something else...
A photo of a wasteland taken through a misty lens, a happy accident, a fleeting truth.
There was a dog which teetered there, probably still does. It’s broken eyes and fur seeming to sum up the whole duality of the supposedly forsaken city, for it’s sad eyes still glowed, if you looked deeply enough into them.
One night a man and woman quarrelled in the centre of that fenced off quadrant of the city, and he wondered how they had reached that point, gotten all the way out there.
Amongst the rubble, trash and detritus – broken concrete and forgotten traces of blood.
Back in his four star hotel he sat on the edge of the bed and reflected upon the days before. Five or six in total, he was no longer sure exactly.
Never before had he seen a place so simultaneously dead and alive.
He thought of his illicit liaison with the maid the previous afternoon, and then of the opaque sun rise this morning. And it was virtually impossible to say whether or not there had been any events in between.
Then he caught sight of the troubled look on his face, suspended in the mirror, like a dead fish in a frozen lake.
Letters
He had been arranging his letters for over thirty years. Longer than his daughter had lived. The Sunday morning routine always began in precisely the same way. Boil the kettle, make the tea, open the windows, go to the toilet, a small breakfast, another cup of tea in front of the television.
Open the post.
Archive the letters.
His system for doing this had become increasingly elaborate over the dwindling years. Sometimes he thought of simplifying it by a few degrees, but invariably concluded that it was the way it was for a reason.
Certain troublesome letters bucked the system. For instance bills, that were also advertising. Or promotions, from companies who he already had a business relationship with.
Some told him that he had lost site of what was truly important in life, claimed that he had once done so much more with his time. But he didn’t recall this, felt that he had always been this way.
One day his daughter went blind and turned bitter. All at once, just like that. Words he had never heard (from anybody - let alone his dear Slyvia) lurched from her mouth liked riled insects without notice or warning.
And as a result he lost track of his archives, of his systems and cross-references and hitherto important sounding updates.
Yet, he still couldn’t quite bring himself to throw the paper away so he dumped the letters in the office, and when that became too much he used the little prefab shed at the bottom of the garden.
Then August brought with it an uncharacteristic storm of tropical intensity, that toppled trees, felled power lines, and spiced up the local news.
His daughter screamed into the wind and rain and he began to masturbate compulsively and joylessly, as a mere distraction. And then, in the middle of the night, the gale tore the roof from its foundations and the water poured in from the heavens to bless the domestic.
And the rain devoured the paper, and the wind lifted the pulp, while the sky enveloped it all.
A life in the Day (Three Options)
The day starts – same as always. Usual stains, usual marks. Usual remarks. He’s been working with these people for two years now, and he doesn’t know any of them.
Graham tells him to do the toilets when he’s finished the counter. Then Sally argues with Graham about the pay roll figures.
The stains he’s cleaning up now are the same stains he cleans up everyday. Same colours, same shapes. He’s been here too long, but doesn’t plan to leave anytime soon.
Kate arrives, a little late. Sally and Graham argue about this as well, sometimes. Kate is pretty pretty, for this place. But he doesn’t get to speak to Kate much. Kate being out front, and him being mainly out back. He sometimes gets a good glance of Kate’s tits when she leans over to serve a customer, but that’s about it. He’s looking at Kate’s tits, and they’re looking at their Hamburgers. Funny world.
By 2 O’clock the dishes are piling up quicker than he can load. Some days he hates the dishes, others he doesn’t even see them.
At 5 O’clock a fat guy eats a surprisingly small meal and leaves. This is about as interesting as it gets. This is pathetic.
At 6 O’clock Kate leaves. Kate always finishes before him. And he always wonders what she does after she leaves. Eat, fuck, play with herself? There are a million possibilities, but it’s probably one of the three.
At 6:27 a woman with a huge nose orders an equally large meal – the fat man’s meal. She eats quick. Then she leaves. Sooner or later everyone leaves. A few come back, but they all leave.
At 10:00 he’s left alone to lock up. They’ve only trusted him to do this for a few months.
As he walks home alone he wonders what he will do when he gets there. He doesn’t even have three options.
He'd been cutting hair now for 45 years, and he was convinced that his hands were beginning to distort. They had taken on an odd shape, what he called 'the cutting position'. They were no longer a part of him, but a symbol of his profession.
God, how he hated his hands. Wrinkles he could accept, thick blue veins also, but it was the cracks that bothered him; His hands were starting to resemble overcooked clay.
His customers talked and talked and talked...the news fell on the hour...he just looked at his hands as they cut. Studied their motions as if they were not his own, as though some alien force had taken him over and started cutting hair in his place. His fingers an abstract object, no more a part of his body than his trimmer or comb.
It was when he tried to do other things with his hands that the deformity truly struck him. It just didn’t look right. It was almost as if he was betraying his hands by using them for simple tasks such as lifting and carrying. At times he’d find himself hiding them in public places, feel them retreat into his sleeves like a tortoise into its shell. And as for laying them upon his wife’s naked form…
One day Phillip (who was his most regular regular) was discussing the recent amputation of his brother’s leg. For just one fleeting moment the barber’s hands stopped cutting. Too brief for Phillip to even notice, but for the barber it was as though the entire world had skipped a beat.
Every Man’s Sin His Own
Her body perfect as she lies upon her stage of stone, and remembering, just remembering her makes me hard, so hard it could burst. Meaning in this meaningless act. Not even knowing one another names enhancing. As this is more pure, sex as an act of communication, raw and stripped down and animal, a physical act. A psychic phenomena.
And the statues line the wet roads of that forgotten tax metropolis. Drawing only the shocked stares of the occasional stranger. Secrets buried beneath secrets here, nestling between the bones, which they lied about, and said were not bones.
I thought about you, everyday, for weeks. Like a bastard love, a warped formation of something already good and warped. Expanding reality smoothly within my fantasy. And the reality fuelling my fantasy in turn. Your thighs so perfect, the rest of your body too. That I wanted it wrapped tightly around me at moments inappropriate.
And everybody forgot and the cameras looked away. But the old and the poor still talk in hushed voices in private rooms. Of the things their false kings did. Of time and memorial. With impunity, with protection. Of The redacted scriptures of false prophets.
Stains cleaned away
Shackles turned to rust
Statues in the window
A devil in the pond
A crimson light in a dusty window
Every man’s sin his own
Lightless
The light scan ran across McGregor’s body like blue water. His paper pale skin tinted into something heavenly (for just a moment). The doctor looked at the patient with a sense of loss. He thought of his daughter, but was not sure why.
The heart monitor bleeped in sharp monotone (as it had before, as it would again).
And for a split second he thought he saw the light spill out of the pod. Saw water surrounding his feet, seeping through his soft leather shoes, onto his skin.
The Doctor left the room to get a coffee that he didn’t even want. In the break room he took the pot from the peculator and filled his cup. A few moments later he tossed the muddy brown liquid into the sink. Sighed.
He knew the man was going to die and wanted desperately to save him. He hadn’t cared this much about a patient since he days as a Junior doctor. But that was so far in the past he could barely see it.
He saw a thin film of liquid on the counter near the sink. Then realised that it was just the reflection of the bulb above his head. He needed to sleep.
* * *
Macgregor was unchanged. The situation was unchanged. Again the light on the edge of the pod looked like it was flowing. This time the light went further, fell halfway between the pod and the floor, and then hung there like an angelic moth. Macgregor rubbed his eyes and the light/liquid stayed.
He turned around and looked into the corridor, and there, light bled from the ceiling tubes, like yellow curtains blowing in a breeze.
Tentatively Macgregor approached the pod light and touched it with a single finger.
The finger came away damp.
He sniffed it and it smelt as plain as normal water. He licked his finger and found that it tasted like normal water.
He jumped as the water dropped onto the floor with a loud splash. More followed. Outside in the corridor the tube lights did the same.
Water gushed down rapidly. Macgregor’s feet were soon soaked and before long he was submerged. He floated through the hospital’s corridors, giving himself up to the movement of the water.
The staff in the upmarket fashion store always gave him dirty looks. What was their problem? They should be used to him by now. He came in every Saturday between one and half past. After he’d finished his tea and snack in the cheap Caf around the corner.
The first time he could of understood it, but every time he goes in it’s like it’s happening for the first time. Yes, he must look out of place with his old grey trousers and his dirty cream cardigan. And yes, obviously he can’t afford a single item in the shop, not even in sale time.
But still he likes to look and they should be used to it by now. An “hello” wouldn’t kill them (would it?).
He wonders if they think they’re too good to talk to him. He knows what people who work in shops like that are like.
Designer Labelled - Joanne
He reminds me of someone, who I’m not quite sure. I told my boyfriend, but he was dismissive. But I can’t shake that feeling.
He always comes in about the same time. Melanie thinks he’s dangerous, but I just think he’s weird.
I did wonder if he was one of those eccentric millionaires you read about who dress like tramps, and horde all their money. Recycle tea bags and refuse to run a car, even an economic one. But no, he probably is as poor as he looks. I feel sorry for him really.
I often wonder what happened to him. You know, did he have a family once, stuff like that. I don’t know for a fact that he sleeps rough, but he probably does. I mean look at him.
Designer Labelled - Melanie
I hate people like him. No marks. Losers. And I don’t buy all this abused child shit either. All this hard luck story bollocks. Some of my friends have had it pretty tough and they’ve all turned out okay.
Joanne thinks I’m harsh but I think she’s just a little soft. If he comes in one day and gropes her she won’t think I’m harsh. It’s alright being sympathetic and all that, but there was someone like him used to hang around my school. He was being watched all the time, and he still tried it on with one of the girls.
He smells funny too. Not just in the usual way either. Strange. Hard to explain.
Ian should do something about him, he is the manager after all.
Designer Labelled - Ian
I’ve heard a lot about him, but never actually met the man. He’s been in so many times and not done anything. Melanie wants to ban him but I think that could just cause problems.
Besides, he doesn’t usually stay long. Sometimes he’s in and out in a few minutes. He’s never tried to steal anything. Melanie watches him like a hawk. It’s funny, I think she’d actually like to catch him at it, just so she’d have an excuse to have a go at him. I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes. When Melanie loses it she really loses it. She had a go at one of the Saturday girls once, reduced the poor girl to tears. She was kind of lazy, but she didn’t deserve that.
Joanne doesn’t seem to mind him, but then I think she’d led a bit of a sheltered life to be honest.
God gave us free will and ammo
I was only eight years old when I first realised that I’d killed my father. This explained why my mother had always been so cold towards me and favoured my brother. After all Tommy had never killed anyone, not even a fly.
It was on my thirteenth birthday that Uncle Raymond gave me the gun.
It wasn’t Raymond’s fault, he didn’t know what I was capable of.
On the day after my twenty-first birthday I went to the park.
I can still hear the birds singing, I can still smell the blood.
There are seventeen scars on Paul’s hands. One for each night spent with his uncle Jimmy. One for every night of his life wasted.
He’s here again tonight, same pub, same table, same pint...but he’s running out of unmarked skin. Jimmy’s yammering on about something, someone who wants to kill him. Who the fuck would even try and square up to Jimmy?
The pool table is all the way on the other side of the pub, but Paul can hear the ball’s colliding in his ear. They’re far too loud. He’s finding it hard enough to concentrate on what his uncle is saying (due to a not so small amount of speed ingested a couple of hours previous) without that added distraction.
Jimmy’s saying something about Tom Cardinal, he hasn’t mentioned “The Cardinal” in years. This talk is starting to make him feel nervous. He wished he had finished his pint, so he’d have an excuse to leave the table, get another one. But it’s nearly full, he doesn’t feel much like drinking tonight.
Now Jimmy’s mentioning some bloke he’s never even heard of. But Jimmy’s saying the name as though he should have done. As though it’s a given that he has.
Jimmy goes somewhere. Where? The toilet he supposes. No the bar. Jimmy’s finished his pint. Without Jimmy’s voice the crashing balls are even louder. The noise fills him with dread. Maybe a drink will help. He takes a few large gulps, looks at the clock. It’s only ten past nine, he wishes it was later.
He tries to look upon the bright side. What would he be doing if he wasn’t here? Jimmy’s not all bad is he? But he struggles to convince himself.
Then Jimmy returns, with another pint he has already half drunk. He sits down and settles instantly back into his speech. He’s on about the Cardinal and that bloke again. Suddenly Paul realises just how wound up Jimmy is.
Someone enters, a short stocky skin head in a black jacket. He look towards Paul. He looks familiar. Is he a friend of Jimmy’s? He is walking towards their table, the table they always sit at. He pulls out a knife. A weird thin twisted knife, that looks like it would struggle to cut foam. He plunges the knife into Jimmy, and it seems to enter his chest as smoothly as red hot wire into butter. Blood is on Paul’s face now, blood has landed in his glass and is making it’s way towards the bottom.
Daniels had been raking the dead apples back and forth for hours, whilst the grey witch watched him from the upstairs window across the street. Every so often she lifted a healthy green specimen to her lips and took a bite.
The man in his mid-fifties had no sense that those occult eyes were upon him, as he was pre-occupied by the children, specifically Dorothy, who had recently taken to doing very odd things with her dolls.
He was momentarily distracted, from the task at hand, by a car that sped by, and disappeared into the twilight at the dark end of the street. A pale blue mustang, perhaps, though he could not be certain.
This switch in focus led him momentarily to glance at the window across the street, but by now the old lady was gone.
Bar Waiting
The Budweiser sign flickered behind the bar.
He’d seen so many people come and go while he’d been waiting, perched here on an old stool.
He wondered where she’d got to. She wasn’t usually this late.
The enigmatic girl he had met four months ago had never ceased to fascinate him.
It had been her idea to meet in this bar, and it really wasn’t what he’d expected. It was nothing like any of the other places she liked to visit.
He couldn’t imagine her fitting in at a place like this, but this was definitely the right place. Maybe he was wrong, perhaps she was a regular, she certainly seems to have a lot of friends, and appeared very adaptable. He found it hard to imagine her not getting on with a person, and for that reason (amongst others) he found it strange that she wanted to spend so much time with him.
He expected this relationship to end at any given moment, to come crashing down to earth and crack into a thousand desperate pieces.
He was also scared of self fulfilling prophecy.
The bar keep ran a grey cloth across the surface of the bar, soaking up spilt drink and ash. Around him people sucked beer and filled their chests with smoke.
The Budweiser sign flickered behind the bar.
Innocent until guilty
The blue lights strobed against the side of the house. Two policemen were stood on the front garden, making notes. Inside the youngest daughter was being questioned.
When they took her through the house they would have to shield her eyes from the blood. The inspector knew all to well what the sight of blood could do to a child. He didn’t want the world to be filtered through red for the rest of her life.
She wasn’t crying, she was strangely calm and the Inspector figured that she must be in shock. The events would hit home later, and he didn’t want to be around when they did.
She answered his questions in a monotone. He tried to be gentle. Felt guilty about questioning her at all. But this was routine now, automatic.
Across the street two neighbours (an unhappy couple) looked through their window at the scene of the crime. They would be up all night talking about what could have happened. And this unusual topic would avert an argument for a few hours.
Back in the house the Inspector put his arm around the girl, and instructing her to look straight ahead, led her towards the front door.
If anyone had cared to look, as the girl was led up the garden path towards the police car, they would have seen deep red in the moonlight; A small speck of blood on a soft and tiny hand. That notorious black.
A bible and a gun laid on her grandfather’s antique oak table.
She loved the old man but there was something about him that unsettled her.
His eyes were grey like his gun, and his hands used to shake like the ice in his whisky.
Sometimes he looked at her grandmother as though he hated her. And she, in turn, seemed to avoid him where ever possible.
Sometimes when he read to her at night, he’d stop mid way throug