“Park here, will you.” The chief detective ordered, flicking ash out the window.
“Sir.” Hugh nodded his acknowledgement and parked up neatly.
The man that answered the door to them had puffy eyes hidden behind his glasses, peering out from behind his door, “Hello, what do you want?” He said in a shaky voice.
The chief detective held up his badge, his foot already on the man’s doorstep, “care to let us in?” It wasn’t a question it was an order. The man stepped aside and opened the door further for the two men to come in
“Care to tell me your names?” He asked, hobbling to his armchair.
“This here is Hugh.” The detective pointed towards Hugh.
“And you are?”
The detective loosened the buttons on his coat, “people call me Grim.” He tried a friendly smile, but his scarred face and piercing eyes gave off a sinister air whatever he did with himself.
“That’s a nice name.” The old man said, not convincingly.
“It’s pretty grim.” Grim grinned, showing white teeth with just a little yellowing.
“Are you here about the…” the man dared utter the word.
“The?” Grim asked, determined the man should ask for himself.
The man’s eyes shifted behind his puffed up skin and bit his bottom lip nervously, “you know,” he looked embarrassed, “the marijuana.”
Hugh looked towards Grim, and Grim returned a glance, both their lips quivering into faint smiles, “no, but now that you mention it,” Hugh smiled at the man, “where is this marijuana you speak of?”
The man slumped down in his seat, and shook his head in a fast shaky motion, “no! No! No!” He slammed his walking stick on the carpet, “please,” he began to plead, “don’t take it from me.” He looked up at Hugh, who was still stood, “please, it’s all I have to take the damn pain away.” He held out his hand before Hugh and spread his arthritic fingers out, “see,” his hand tremored, “so much pain.” He cried.
Hugh smiled sympathetically at the man, “don’t worry, I was only asking in case you had enough for us to have some.” Hugh winked.
The old man startled into silence for a moment started a throaty laugh, “don’t trick an old man like that!” He wiped his mouth and continued laughing.
“So you haven’t heard?” Grim asked, sceptically.
“Heard what?” The old man asked, appearing genuine.
“We’re here because there was a gruesome murder last night.”
The old man slumped back in his chair, closed his eyes tight behind his glasses, his shaking hand on his lips, “murder?” He asked, his tremor had since worsened. “Murder?” He repeated in disbelief, “round here?”
“Right in this neighbourhood,” Grim confirmed.
“What, right here?” The old man pointed outside his window, “so close to my house?”
“I’m afraid so,” Grim crossed one leg over the other, “I’d be right in assuming you didn’t hear anything last night?”
“You’d be right; I go to bed at nine sharp!”
“And so it’s safe to assume you didn’t witness anything?” Hugh asked, running his finger across a dusty shelf and inspecting his finger.
“Yes, you’d be right to assume that! What happened? Who was killed?”
“We’re still figuring out the first question,” Grim answered.
“It was a Frederick Archer.” Hugh finished.
The old man was visibly shaken by the name, tears pooling at his puffy eyes, “not Frederick.” He slouched forwards in his chair and sobbed loudly. “Not Frederick.” He wailed.
Grim and Hugh shared a glance, “you knew Frederick then?” Grim asked.
“He brought me my shopping, he..” the old man gulped, took off his glasses and wiped at his face, “he did everything for me.” He looked out the window, something about looking outside only set him off more, “no,” he shook his head, “it can’t be!” He turned to look at both detectives pleadingly, “it can’t be!”
“We’re sorry for your loss,” Hugh said softly.
Fiction
A street
The ice cream truck plays it’s happily haunted tune as it passes, and when the dust has settled from its disturbance the street exhales a solemn sigh.
Fossil lumberjack
I want to go excavating For dinosaur bones Got my checkered shirt Camera too Though I might need to get some Better outdoor shoes They call me the fossil lumberjack Always was the nerd With dinosaur biscuits in his backpack Playing dinosaur trumps Till we lost or won Or maybe that was Just yesterday Don’t mistake me For a hipster Though I’m Still a kid at heart The cigarettes between my fingers The only sign of adulthood © 2016 April
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White noise
Her face is a blur as I focus on the ash at the end of the cigarette; she’s sat in front of me just staring at me through a haze of smoke. She’s got her ice cold demeanour on, the room is pale blue with cold and rain is pattering on the windows. I look up to the ceiling and I stare at the green light on the smoke alarm and I hold my hand up with the cigarette in between my fingers
“It won’t go off”
Her voice seems to just flow in the background without any significance to me as i just sit and watch the green light and smoke and hope for escape. She pinches my toes and I sit up interrupted from my nothingness “I’m bored” she’s like a petulant kid, always a tantrum to be had. I look at her and wonder if I shake her if her eyes would fall out like she’s just a doll. Just a doll, wake up, she’s not real. In a puff of smoke you’ll see. I take the cigarette to my lips, inhale deeply feeling that tar imbed itself in my lungs and then I exhale and when the shroud of smoke has gone she’s there, she’s still real. I feel at a bruise on my cheek and run my tongue over the side of my mouth where i bit with the shock. It shouldn’t be a shock anymore, my body always reacts the same. I got the wrong fucking shampoo, the wrong fucking shampoo! For Christ sake! “It’s (brand name here) like you asked for” I said “No!” she said with that ice cold stare of hers, I saw her fist clench “NO!” she screamed “It’s not the right one. It’s in a pink bottle” “Maybe they’ve changed it” I intoned. Why did i say anything? I should have just stayed still like a mannequin. She does this all the time, she makes me go out to get stuff, then she claims I got the wrong stuff when I get back. Sometimes i think she makes this shit up, just to create a fight, she needs a fight. “You saying I’m lying?” she says, getting close to my face, i can feel her spit on my face I’m angry too by this point, at the world, at her but mostly at me. “Okay, okay I’ll go back out and get the right one” I said, she folded her arms looked at me, squinted her eyes at me as if to figure me out “You do it on purpose” she hissed “You buy the wrong things on purpose” i could see her body tensing up at this point, unable to stay still, fidgeting on her feet then she lurched forwards with a kiss on my lips, passionate as ever then she looked me square in the eyes straight after and the next thing I feel is her fist up against my cheek “Don’t you! huh! you do this shit on purpose!” her eyes should have been spinning with crazy, instead they just remained blue as always “Trying to antagonise me all the time” a tear rolled down her cheek and she wiped it. I held my hands up as if surrendering to the police, blocking her from my body as she started to lurch forwards again, and arms out trying to grab at me. She does this, I do that and then I get tired of it all and I decide actually I want her to hit me again then she hits me again and again. Leaves her marks on me. The worst of it is all the rollercoaster emotions, the loving me one moment, hating me the next, the wanting to fuck then the wanting me to roll off her “You sick fuck!” even though she initiated it. She hits me and then we fuck against the wall, as if fucking will make it better, glue back together the foundation we, I though the relationship could be built on in the beginning. I’m inside her and then she randomly slaps me across the face then she kisses me again and I’m so confused and I go limp. She laughs at me “You can’t last” she laughs so loud the neighbours will have heard “You can’t even stay hard enough to come!” I turned around so my butt was to her and I kept myself contained. But inside the beast had been woken so I turned to her, I imagine my eyes were red with anger and steam blew out of my nose and like a bull I kicked up the sand and charged, I dragged her by her arm into the bathroom, I stood her in front of the mirror, her and I looking in the mirror looking at two monsters “Look what you’re doing to me!” I hissed “Just look at that mark on my face! That’s you!” her nostrils flared and her eyes glazed over with yet more ice “Do NOT talk to me in this tone” she said through clenched teeth “Really? You think I care anymore? You think I’m scared of you?” I buried my head in her neck, let her feel my breath on her neck “You think after all this time I’m scared? No. Not anymore, hit me! Hit me again!”
She just stared into the mirror without flinching, didn’t say a thing “Go on!” I shouted right in her ear “Hit me!” I stepped back from her “it doesn’t matter anymore. You know why? You’ve numbed me, I don’t care. Hit me over and over it doesn’t matter!” Her eyes glazed over once more with more ice and her nostrils flared, she spun round, her fingers curled like claws, she lunged after me, pulling onto my hair, her spit landing on my face, the back of my head hit the toilet. Now we’re sat on the floor listening to the rain and the white noise from the aftermath of violence.
Venom
For each smile I manage to build the structure of on my face, I feel the cracks. There are crevices in every smile. I know the bridge is going to break, one foot wrong and it’s all gone. My version of feeling ‘good’ is to walk on egg shells, I can hear the creak of the mechanisms that string my smile up and they’re breaking at the seams and soon they’ll loosen their grip till I’m lost screaming. I take the blade across my skin and it feels like I’ve popped a balloon, the pressure is released through the blood and for a moment I can breathe without sadness, without happiness, I can just breathe in and watch the blood. It’s not like meditation, it’s not peaceful, it’s not nice, and it’s nothing. She knocks on the bathroom door, I can hear the TV blaring in the living room and some people arguing on one of her soaps “What are you doing?” she asks in THAT tone. That tone means she’s pissed. Eager at the chance for her to beat me, I open the bathroom door, hiding the cut on my thigh “Yes?” I beam an unnatural smile her way “What are you taking so long in there for?”
I shrug my shoulders and just look at her blankly before lurching towards her with a kiss
“woah! What you doing! My tv shows are still on”
“I want to eat out” I wink
She smiles coyly at me “Oh yea?”
“Yea” I wink again
I wonder if she can see the desperation in my eyes. I want her to bruise my loneliness, I want her to beat it out of me like she likes to, I want her to love me the way a woman like her does, teach me the error of my ways for all my impossible dreams. I was always a fucking dreamer, such a fucking loser. Have her beat the loser out of me, I look better in cuts and bruises otherwise I’m just a blank a canvas. I am her canvas to paint her rage upon!
In-between all this I still search for escape on the internet, but at this point I don’t know why. In the glow of the screen my loneliness is reflected on my face as I sit a click away from all the resources for women suffering domestic violence. It makes me ponder the idea of hitting her myself, so that she’ll leave me go to a shelter and I’ll have escaped her and she’ll have escaped me. A good few punches for a good cause? Could I really do it? To a woman? Then again I feel worthy of the destruction that comes with it, the aftermath and all its guilt is such an alluring idea. The thought has occurred to me I could just leave, but she’d follow me, I know she would. She’s done it before.
“What are you thinking about?” she looks at me, head tilted
“Nothing”
She puts her feet on my lap “I’ve had a hard day” she says
I know that’s a way of asking for a foot massage. I hate feet.
The tv is still blaring in the living room, glowing up the room with its falsehoods and we’re in the bedroom, I’m unfastening her bra and her breasts fall out in front of me, nipples erect. I feel the venom rush to my groin in all its sexual glory and I taste the poison on her lips, she smiles at the kiss and it feels like it did at the beginning of the relationship, when the smiles were so enticing to me they made me just want to pounce on her, and here she is now smiling as my lips press against her lips, it’s familiar, it’s comforting but it’s cold. It’s like ice is pressed between my lips and the eyes I will look into when we open our eyes, they’re blue like frozen lakes, danger lurks beneath them. One wrong move and you crack those lakes, you fall in, surrender your soul and you drown in the ice cold pit beneath. ‘mmm’ she moans as she feels my breath on her neck, I think about her like she’s a stranger, my breath on her neck and the hairs standing to attention as adrenalin kicks in. I plant kisses down her body, little seeds that were always meant to sow my love for her body, her form in all its splendour, but now each kiss is laced in secrecy and lies from one beating to the next and one reason I couldn’t but wanted to cry to the next and it goes on. I kiss a map on her body, down her legs, even her feet. I hate feet. I kiss her just where she wants me to, where she’s been waiting for me to and I’ve been building it up to this moment. I look up to her face to see the frozen lakes in her eyes become liquid and ripples sending shockwaves through her body. Never have I been so turned on, never have I felt so lost and alone.
Cherophobia
What do you fear most? Heights? Spiders? Snakes? All the usual fears.
Me? I have something called Cherophobia, do you know what that means? It means I fear happiness. Oh you better believe it, I properly fucking fear those smiles stitched on your faces. The pivotal word there being stitch! You’re not happy to just stitch yourselves up, no you try to stitch me up too. You’re all walking around in a masquerade ball I evidently wasn’t invited to. I want to rip your masks off and reveal the true darkness within, the raging sadness that treads on your soul. Because deep down you know you’re just like me, a syringe of air and bubbles and when you sigh, like me, it’s simply the bubbles and air releasing from the pressure and then you breathe in and more bubbles and air consume your organs. I consumed my own lungs, I’m almost dead. The air isn’t weightless, it’s got a heavy mass to it, people describe depression sometimes as being empty, this is what that emptiness is, it’s empty but it’s heavy. Its air and bubbles, it’s dinosaur piss.
It’s the food we consume; it’s the air we breathe. I’ve felt this since I can remember, how could I not fear happiness? It is the unknown to me.
Like with most fears, I probably fear something that is nothing. As in happiness doesn’t exist in the first place, a manifestation of a prolonged childhood nightmare
In masquerade ball terms I stand bare before you, naked in all my splendour as you gaze upon the darkness. And I believe that you see your own reflection in my darkness, that you gaze upon him or her and then you look away. I fear you. You fear me. I remember as kid tiny glimpses, a butterflies wing worth of a glimpse into something that could be labelled happiness, joy, but I found it to be only veils and walls of lies. It lasted for a moment, with the click of the fingers it’s GONE! The wall tumbles under the weight of its own pressure and the veils are flung open by the wind and you see the darkness, the tears, the blood, the dirt, the consuming of one another.
And I’m lost in a sea of dancing bodies, each move they make is lit up in a different colour as the lights flash manically and I feel like I’m stood in the middle of a mass exorcism. I begin to wonder if I’m stood in the middle of a cult, disguised as individuality. My knuckles are sore and my eyes are bloodshot. The hood still shrouding my head and my eyes are puffed up from tears I couldn’t cry. A woman smiles at me with a green face and then winks with a purple face and then she’s wriggling her way around me, I brush past her and she looks genuinely disgusted that I didn’t pay her any attention. I stand outside the club, the music blaring even outside and I stand under the pink neon sign and light a cigarette. A bouncer looks over to me, in that way they always do where they suspect everyone, especially men like me. I blow smoke out through my mouth and imagine myself as a bull stood in the middle of a ring exhaling morning air through my nostrils and my front leg kicking up a sand storm underneath me, shrouding me for a moment from the crowd before a red flag waves before me and I charge. “What you lookin at?” I jut my chin forwards at him
“A mess” the bouncer replies with a sly smile
“Don’t look in mirrors for too long” I reply
He has his big tattooed arms folded over his chest and he laughs but doesn’t say anything else.
The night is through; no one wants a fight no one wants to fuck. I don’t want to fuck either. I think I might just go home, switch all the lights off and look at the walls, if I stare long enough I can spook myself out and for an hour or two I’ll be running on adrenalin and I’ll have a reason to thrive again.
The Beast, revised version.
*Explicit content to follow
I spread my fingers closing my left eye and looking at my grazed knuckles, flexing my fingers back and forth before planting my hand on his head and thrusting myself deep into his mouth. I take the cigarette from between my lips with my left hand and look up to the ceiling, watching the smoke mingle with dust in the air.
The warmth of his breath on my cock doesn’t make me feel any less alone, to the contrary, i want to cry while also confess to the deepest of my sins.
Really, I just want to punch his face in.
earlier tonight, before I got this geezer guzzling me down like a first prize I was like a bull let loose for the first time. I stood at the bar watching dust particles float in the rays of strobe lights, drinking whiskey and smoking possibly smoking my millionth cigarette of the day. The world was red and like a bull I kicked up my hooves and I charged. I saw him, my doppleganger and h was dressed in a black hoodie, the hood over his head and bloodshot eyes from all the sleepless nights trying to tame the savage inside. I see him, he’s walking through trails of lights, he’s laughing at everything I’ve ever done and seen just by walking on this earth bearing my name and my face. He’s a mockery of everything I’ve ever wanted to be. He doesn’t know I’ve locked onto him yet. I’m following him through the haze of smoke and lights and the music is loud as loud can be, the music is so loud that my skull is fractured from the sound waves and I’m fairly certain it damaged some of my brain. I drop the cigarette on the ground and someone else treads on it in their high heels, I brush past her, her silky dress touches the skin on my hand and the hair on my neck stands up. But my eyes are honing in on him, my doppleganger and I’m following him and I’m letting the beast run. I had already spun the web, I knew the beast in me would devour him, mouth gaping open wide, jaws snapping, crunching at the very core of him, the bad apple, and my twin. For all the memories, all the fucked up seeds he planted in my head, only to find they couldn’t germinate because the visions were wrong, the grief, the yearnings and he kept on planting those seeds and I grieve what I never lost, but the ideas they were strong enough and all along I was following a lost cause!
The toilet lights flickered, the dingy tiles yellowing from years of piss and cigarettes. Names and insults scribbled in black marker pens. The room was the colour of sick, the sound of water dripping from a leaking pipe echoed, ricocheting from stall to stall and straight into my skull. And I see him, the man who tried to birth seeds he knew nothing about, his hoodie up as if to shroud him from any potential witnesses to his sickening face. His eyes are bloodshot and he’s looking at me and I’m looking at him and we both know what’s about to go down .I step back and let the beast finally go for what he’s been so eager to taste, and lurching forwards I grab at my doppelganger and my arms, the veins showing under my skin as my fist clenches tight and with all the power the beast can muster my fist smacks my doppelganger in the face, again, again, AGAIN! AGAIN! The bathroom goes red, everything is red. “YOU!” I scream at the top of my lungs, lunging forwards again, PHUMP, PHUMP, PHUMP. Spittle falls from my lips and the punches keep on coming and my fist is aching but I continue anyway. “I HATE YOU”
“I love you” she whispers in my ear “I love the bare bones of you” I whisper. The sun spangles through the blind slats and we lay in bed, her legs wrapped around me and her head on my chest. And the sun spangles through the blind slats and the shadows on the wall watch on and we lay in bed and we’re at harmony with the world. She kisses my chest.
PHUMP! PHUMP! PHUMP!
it’s been 6 months. We’re laying in bed and the sun spangles through the, the wall is glittered in shadow and our bare feet stick out from under the covers. It’s just like in the beginning and she says “I love you” and I whisper “I love the bare bones of you” and the sun continues to shine rays through the slats and I watch dust particles float in the rays and I feel sick and the room is spinning and the ash tray is smashed on the carpet, a photograph is torn, a spot of blood on the carpet. I get out of the bed and I in all my naked splendour I stand at the blinds, hand on the wand ready to close them fully, for a glimpse the sun shines on my face and the bruise and gash around my eye are clear to see along with the bust lip.
PHUMP! PHUMP! PHUMP
I go online in secret, “Escaping violence” I enter into the search engine plenty of results, one has a title that implies they know exactly how to help, my mouse hovers over it then I realise the link, it says ‘justiceforwomen.com.’ Another site ‘ Women escaping violence’ another site ‘help for abused and battered women’ ‘steps to ending domestic violence leaflet for women and children’
Blood trickles down my hand, my knuckles barely seeming to exist anymore.
I try to imagine this geezer is a woman, flicking her hair back as she looks up at me with a sweet glistening sparkle in her eyes, her lips puckered as she kisses the head of my penis. I try with all my might to not notice the masculinity in his body, the clear male features of his face, closing my eyes, opening them looking down, looking up at the ceiling, pushing his head down and thrusting as deep as I can till I finally ejaculate. “Fuck off” I hiss as I zip my trousers back up “before I beat you the fuck up!”
he looks at me, still on his knees
“What the fuck are you doing? Praying?” I lift him
“You have issues!” He says, his eyes filled with the sadness of someone who feels used.
I’m sorry “LEAVE” I turn my back to him and listen carefully for the door closing behind him.
An unedited version of the “the best” was posted on a previous blog. So if the theme of the story and character are familiar to you, thats why.
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