That Joyce is a real piece of work. She’s got it in her head that people on jobseekers are happy to stay that way. Stupid cow doesn’t believe me when I say I’ve applied to more than the weekly mandatory number of jobs. Why would I lie? Seriously, why would anyone want to live like this? Scraping by on sod all after rent and bills, watching the bank account get smaller and smaller.
God I’m fed up. Life has become an endless, blurry trudge back and for, back and for, back and bloody for. I know I should make lists or something, notes to keep on task and not let things slip through. Nothing worse than coming back from an hour-long round trip to the shop before remembering you’re out of milk. I wish I could drive. Then an interview in town wouldn’t take up most of the day. Ridiculous bus service.
The sound of my feet pounding pavement is getting driven into my skull. It won’t be long before I’m hearing it in my sleep. Pretty sure it’ll be with me right to the very end.
Thmp-thmp-thmp-thmp.
I can’t hear the birds singing in the distance or dogs barking in defence of their homes or that woman who leaves her window open when she’s loudly getting herself off because it’s just the constant noise.
Thmp-thmp-thmp-thmp.
‘Have a great day my love.’ I know that voice a mile off. Can’t stand it. There’s something so fake about it. ‘I’ll be home in a few hours. Bye for now.’
So loud. So forced. So fake.
Whatever his name is does that long stride jog people do when they’re being waited on that’s not any faster than walking. He makes a show of looking at his watch that shines expensively in the morning sun, shaking it out from underneath perfectly pressed cuffs. He flashes me a smile and I return it though it might be more of a sneer. He takes his time slinking into a meticulously polished car with a sticker for one of those high-end ride hailing apps and off he goes in a whine of electric motor.
The clunk of a lock pulls my attention away but the woman seeing him off is gone back upstairs to their flat. For all his flash that door sure is grubby.
The buildings on this side of the street are all semi-detached, stretched versions of the houses across the road, divided into four flats. They’re nice places with front and back gardens, big windows, pristine roof tiles and well-maintained paint. Unlike my place three streets over where things get a bit dicier. Which is why it’s weird how dark the fake asshole’s place looks. I guess it’s because the sun rises on the other side but still. Weird.
‘Morning Malcolm,’ a jovial voice says.
I start answering before I look away from the gloomy windows. ‘Morning Glynn, you good?’
‘Of course, of course.’ The well put together old man is smiling as always, drying a glass with a white and red chequerboard tea towel as always, and wearing a faded blue mariner’s cap. As always. I wave but don’t break my step. We’re neighbourly, friendly even, but I don’t really know anything about him. He’s just always been nice and I’ve tried to be nice back. ‘Busy day?’
‘Same as ever.’ I slow down but keep shuffling forward. The sun is getting hotter and I forgot my hat. How many times do I have to burn my scalp? Should write myself a note. ‘Going to apply for some more stuff and prep for an interview.’
‘Oh aye, where to?’
Bluff called. Think quick. I stop. Make a play of searching my memories. ‘I honestly don’t know. They’re bleeding into each other.’
The moment hangs. Glynn’s faint smile never falters. Something flickers in the dark flat to my left. I glance at the window to see a huge telly playing a shopping channel, the super crisp image blazing into the room and outside world.
‘Best be off then.’ It’s not so much the words as the tone that brings me back. Glynn never sounds flat. I catch him looking at the same window, his smile turned into cheek chewing thought. ‘Can’t impress anyone if you don’t know them.’ His smile returns as he squints at me. ‘And someone with your condition should cover up better. I don’t mean to be—’
‘No worries.’ I hold up a hand to stop the excusing. ‘I know. I’m feeling it already.’
Alopecia man, it sucks. It sucks in ways you don’t think of until they happen. Then because I’m me, I forget, it happens again and it sucks so much more because it’s bloody avoidable. If I’m not burning in the sun I’m freezing in the wind. If I’m not battling a sinus infection, I’m rubbing dust out of my eyes.
The days continue to bleed. Food shop, job centre, interview, interview, food shop, phone interview, job centre, group interview, food shop. All interspersed with minor conversations with Glynn, minor conversations with friends during a round or ten online, and the cutting noise of whatever his name is loudly proclaiming to the street that he’s leaving for the day.
That poor woman. I keep catching glimpses as she stands half behind the door and holds it open until he’s in a car. She doesn’t even watch him. Just looks at the dusty front step all forlorn then disappears back in. Does she ever leave? I pass by a lot. I have my doubts. That eye-searing telly is always on too. Same crappy channel.
I don’t know why I care. I’m sure there’s plenty of sad stories around here. Maybe it’s the timings lining up so I see it more. Maybe it’s his grating voice. Maybe it’s because nothing makes sense about the place, like why, if they’ve lived there for so long, are there those sheets that painters put over everything in the living room? I can see them from here right now, the outlines of chairs and I don’t know, boxes? Books?
‘You know anything about them?’ I’m standing in front of Glynn’s door as he opens it. A liver-spotted hand covers his heart as he takes a step back, guttural sounds of shock sticking in his throat.
Me and my social graces.
‘By the Saints Mal you very well could have killed me.’ A vein in his neck thunders his heartbeat.
I pinch the bridge of my nose hard. ‘Shit. Sorry. I just knew you’d be coming out and didn’t think.’
Glynn takes a few stabilising breaths, lets out a nervous little laugh, then waggles a finger at me. ‘I’ve survived plenty son. I would rather not have such an ignoble end.’
I can feel the blood flushing my cheeks. I try to apologise again but he won’t have any of it. Water under the bridge and all that. He peers past his doorway to the house across the grassy divider. ‘Why are you asking about the Suttons?’
There it is again. That odd flat tone.
‘I uh.’ I’ve got nothing. I don’t get in other peoples’ business. Couldn’t care less usually. We’ve all got our own crap to get through. But.
Glynn clears his throat which is always a sure sign the incorrigible gossip is going to say more than he should. ‘You leave them alone son.’
Really? That’s all? From him? Not a chance.
‘I see her every day. She looks, well not miserable but. Well. Is she OK? Shut in that dark ass flat can’t be good for anyone.’
He’s studying me. Every now and then people change before your very eyes. Up until now Glynn was a kindly retiree with a bit too much time on his hands who may or may not have been a sailor of some sort. Now he is calculating. Thoughtful. Eyes sharp with mechanical assessment. I wonder if he’s going to threaten me or just tell me to sod off.
Instead, he smiles and he’s the same old Glynn. ‘You’re a good soul Malcolm. I’ve always known. I don’t just chat to anyone you know.’
I find that hard to believe.
‘The Suttons have been through hard times is all.’ He pulls a pair of reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and begins cleaning them with a once-white handkerchief. ‘Both good kids. He runs one of those franchise coffee shops in town and she’s smart as a whip, got a degree in something fancy. Been here, what, two or three years? Happy and neighbourly from the off.’ He puts the cleaned glasses back in his pocket and I try not to ask why. ‘Then the screaming started.’
I know he’s pausing for dramatic effect, so I pay the toll to keep things moving. ‘What screaming Glynn?’
He leans out of the doorway, scanning the flat. ‘Poor Donata. Afflicted by some horrid mental problem. First, it was just screaming, and Eddie would spend as much time explaining to all of us she’s fine as he would calming her down. Soon she was running outside, shouting and shrieking her throat raw as the paced the garden until she ran out of steam and was left kneeling in the grass, all muddy and wet. A pitiable sight it was, oh Mal, my heart broke for them both. Eventually she was running into the road, howling at cars, even clawing at their windows.’
He pauses again but there’s no motive this time. His pale eyes narrow as he shakes his head softly. ‘Such inhuman noises. It was awful.’ He came back to me then, twisting his lips. ‘The police would be called and would help Eddie get her back inside. The next day everything would be fine. Increased dosage he said once. But then we all stopped seeing her.’ He gestured at the surrounding buildings. ‘She did a couple of rounds of apologising door to door after she leapt on a delivery driver’s bonnet then she was gone. Embarrassed I assume. I went over a couple times, you know to be neighbourly, but she hid behind the door and barely spoke. I thought I’d leave her alone in the end. I just didn’t know how to help. Muriel over the road there tried longer but even that saint of a woman stopped eventually. Eddie was always thankful for the kindness. He looked so haggard by then.’
I don’t know how to react to all that. I mean, I got what I wanted but still. ‘That’s awful.’
‘It was.’ Glynn nods and keeps nodding. ‘It was. But time moves ever on. I don’t know what their arrangement is now, but Eddie seems happier. More his old self. Donata has not had an episode in months. The street has relaxed.’ He stops nodding and fixes me with that steel hard glare that comes from nothing. ‘So, leave them alone Mal. Everything’s fine. Everyone’s happy.’
I agreed with him then and there. I meant it too. Whatever thoughts I had going around my head about, I don’t know, playing the hero in some pathetic loser fantasy or something, dissolved away while Glynn spoke. Far too much ugly reality for me to be able to deal with.
I really was going to leave it alone.
I was walking by as usual, a little later in the day, and doing my best to stare forward. So long as I kept going and didn’t look at the sad window, I’d be fine was my thinking. But I didn’t. A quick glance was all it took. A half-second flick of the eyes and I was screwed.
I can see her through the window. A silhouette in the room just staring at the telly that really needs its settings altered. I’ve been lingering in this spot for too long in such an “involved” neighbourhood, but I can’t help it. She hasn’t moved. Not once.
To hell with Glynn and his warnings.
I approach the door and wonder for a second why there’s always so much dried mud on the front step. I knock twice on a clean patch of the grubby white plastic door and listen. I listen for Donata but also Glynn. Not sure how he’ll react if he sees me.
I knock again. Harder. With the side of my fist. I should stop. What can I do to help a mentally ill shut in? Would I care as much if it was a guy? I like to think so. But I’m not so sure.
Is that moaning? I thought I heard something. I try to calm myself as I put my ear close to the door, but I feel like I’m breaking in.
There it is! It’s faint but it’s there. Drawn out moans. Weak and sad. Forlorn.
What do I do what do I do what do I do?
More moans. Maybe she’s hurt herself? Or-or-or having a stroke from the meds? I don’t know. I just don’t know.
I crouch, open the letter slot and ask if she needs help. The moans continue. Strange and deep, the unknowingly vocalised kind not formed by lips or tongue but pushed out from the chest. I can’t take hearing it. Is this new? Has she been making these sounds for weeks?
I do the stupid thing. After a furtive look around to see I’m alone I slowly, carefully snake my arm through the letter box. The angle is bad as I grope around for the lock. I can feel the sinews of my shoulder protesting at being moved in ways they weren’t built for. There’s a twinge that I hope won’t end up a snap as I rotate more. Pain explodes in a starburst radiating through my arm and chest, but I manage to get a couple fingers on the locking nob. Sweat prickles my forehead as I move the nob around bit by bit for an eternity until it won’t move no more.
I try the door handle with my free hand. It opens! I slip into the space behind the front door before crumpling over in a barely upright mess of galloping heartbeat, hyperventilation and trembles. I dig my fingers into my knees. Concentrate. Come on concentrate. I tell myself over and over that no one saw me but that doesn’t stop the blood roaring blood in my ears or the ragged breaths sawing through burning lungs.
Concentrate. Please.
So very slowly the breaths come a little easier. By the time I stop seeing spots the shaking has almost gone, and my heart is starting to get the message too.
I don’t know how long it takes but eventually I’m standing properly and trying to massage the pain out of my shoulder. I’m on a small square of beige linoleum that might have had a pattern once, but it’s been worn indistinct from years of heavy use. In this little entrance area, there’s three coats hanging up that all seem to be Eddie’s, a small rack underneath of his shoes and a hexagonal side table topped with green leather with some mail on it. I’m not going to pry, ironically, but the top one is for Donata in an unmistakeable government brown envelope and has the markings of the Department of Work and Pensions. It’s impossible to hold back the sneer. I hate those envelopes. Whenever I get one it’s a shitty message about what’s expected of me and how I’m not doing as I’m told to get the meagre benefit payout I get.
From the small square the stairs go up into the gloomy flat. There’s small patches of dried mud on most steps and a smell of staleness that’s hard to place. It’s not anything in particular. It’s the general concept of stale. Old, close and stiff.
One step on the carpeted stairs and there’s dust in my eyes. It’s embedded in the bloody fibres, kicking up from the slightest disturbance. God damn it. I’m rubbing and blinking and climbing and wishing for eyelashes until I’m at the top with tear streamed cheeks.
The world refocuses. Blurry at first but sharpening by the second. The hallway is narrower than I thought it’d be. Doors go off to a few rooms in either direction, all closed enhancing the gloom. At one end is a slatted door airing cupboard, at the other an arch, beyond which I can hear scratching sounds, rhythmic and constant, along with the blue-white glare of the telly.
‘Hello?’ I croak, my throat constricting, conspiring to kill me. I squint my way past punishingly bright sunlight coming through the gaps around one door, the glowing rectangle cast against the wall picking out pictures of happy families, a wedding, a holiday. I try again. ‘Are you OK?’
The scratching stops. My breathing stops. Shit.
Uuunhhh.
The moan again. Loud, close, mournful, heartbreaking. The scratching resumes. I take a few more steps, crunching dried pebbles of mud under cheap trainers. If I keep squinting my eyes don’t get too attacked by the dust. I’m almost there, almost at the threshold but I don’t want to be. The scratching is loud, why is it so loud. What am I doing?
Uuunhhh.
More forceful this time. She must know I’m here. Maybe she’s trying to call the police about some hairless weirdo breaking in.
‘I’m really sorry.’ That’ll do it. Well done. That’ll make her feel better. ‘I’m Mal, I live nearby.’ Hardly.
At the entrance to the living room it takes a moment for my eyes readjust to the telly’s glare. There’s blanket covered furniture pushed against the walls, chairs and a sofa I think. Odd shapes I can’t quite figure out stacked on and around them. A bookshelf blocks part of the window; white boxes sit on the sill. Outside the sun is reaching its peak, glaring down on the street but still not at an angle to dispel any shadows in the room.
In the centre, pointed at the awfully tuned telly is a glorious armchair. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s practically a throne. Large and plush, navy blue, a drink holder at the end of both arms, pockets on the sides with TV remotes, magazines and game controllers bulging out. And crouched next to it, scrubbing intently is Donata.
She’s framed in near silhouette against the screen’s glare. The longest hair I’ve ever seen in person falls about her face, part tucked behind her ear, part wafting back and forth with her motions. A textured sponge is gripped in her hand, dripping with some manner of cleaning solution judging by the chemical smell mixing with the stale. She’s scrubbing hard at the side of the throne and it’s taking all her concentration.
I clear my throat. I lean to the side. I wave like an idiot. No matter what I can’t catch her attention, so I do the stupid thing and get closer.
Such a difference a step makes. I can see the stain that’s worrying her. A long narrow streak of yellowish brown only just discernible in the moving light. It’s weak though. She’s nearly got it done. Maybe I should wait? My old man was obsessive about this sort of stuff. Couldn’t get a proper conversation out of him until he had conquered whatever was bothering him.
The side of her scrubbing hand rubs against the fabric and the stain gets deeper. She stops what she’s doing. Pouty, film star lips part.
Uuunhhh!
‘Hey. Hey it’s OK.’ I do the stupid thing and reach out. I just want her to stop. It’s just a mark on a chair. I do what I’ve never done to anyone let alone a woman and grab her wrist but before I can so much as try to pull her away, I know something’s wrong. She’s cold. And dusty. And hard. My brain isn’t fast enough to process this in time to stop me pulling at her wrist. I may as well be trying to pull a car. She doesn’t move.
Then she does.
In a whirl of dark hair she turns to me causing my hand to bend backwards until the shooting pains along my tendons make me let go. I can’t understand what I’m seeing in the moment I have. Full lips, high cheekbones, tapered chin. She’s gorgeous but her eyes are wrong, so wrong. Like painted stone.
Her hand hits my chest with such force I fall backwards, skid across the carpet and connect with something solid. The impact knocks the wind out of me, shoves my head through glass and drops a sheet over me.
It’s hard. To breathe. Shit. My ribs. Shit. She’s killed. Me.
I’m trying to hold my ribcage together. I’m trying to get out of the sheet. The damn thing’s like flypaper. It’s hopeless. I’m helpless. She’s going to get me. Oh God no she’s going to get me. I can’t breathe and I can’t see and there’s a hulk in the flat I broke into.
With a final flapping swing of dusty linen, I’m free and the panic lessens enough that I can force air into my lungs. In the middle of the room Donata is scrubbing again. Her lips part and close but nothing comes out. She scrubs and scrubs, the sponge drips and drips. In her world I no longer exist.
I’m not sure how long I’ve been sat here. Slumped here. I’m scared to move because what if she hits me again? I’m scared to move because every time I try, I hear shattered glass clinking about me.
The sun moves bit by bit, lancing into the drab room. I watch as that poor woman is revealed. Her dress that looks chic and striking from afar is actually scuffed, stained and riddled with short, thin lines of precise stitching like mum did on the knees of my school trouser every time I tore them. Her long thick hair is clumped in a nest of knots at the back of her head. Her feet are bare. Her knees dig into the carpet. Where they bend a spiderweb of cracks forms in the skin and. And. The mud is coming out? The dusty mud crumbles from the breaks in her skin that looks too stiff. There’s more coming from the crook of her elbow as she cleans. The telly goes white as a plate is zoomed in on and I look at my chest to see a dusty ghost of a handprint.
I’ve got to get out of here. Like right now. This is so far beyond me.
With a grinding, glass disturbing slide I get away from what looks like a fancy wardrobe with one less mirror on its doors. Somehow my head isn’t cut to ribbons. It’s sore, there’s a lump that won’t stop growing but no blood. All praise the dust cover.
Digging my hands into the floor I raise, shift and lower myself a little farther to the arch. I do it twice. And again. If I can get out of the room, I should be fine. She’s obsessed with that stain and unless she figures something out it’s not going anywhere.
She’s not going anywhere.
This is it. A whole new circle of hell she’s been condemned to by means I don’t understand by someone who certainly doesn’t act like this is going on in his home. Eddie. That piece of—did he do something? “Fix” her in some way?
Uuunhhh.
She’s on her feet and looking at her hand. Shit. What do I do where do I go I don’t want to die. She turns on a heel, sandy brown dust falling softly from every joint. Cracks around her mouth seal as she stops moaning. I’m in her way. She walks with clomping steps that flatten carpet fibres and in two strides I’m in her way. But she doesn’t know or maybe care. I should have hit the deck, made myself flat, but instead I learned my fight or flight response is freeze.
Donata steps over me, her grubby dress caressing my face, that stale smell stronger than ever. Not earth but similar. Like that pottery class I went to because Stacey Vette said it would be fun and all I did was make one abomination after another and get laughed at by a gaggle of teenage girls.
A door opens, light streams in and then is gone. I can hear heavy feet thumping onto linoleum. Now’s my chance. Now really is my chance. Move Mal, it’s now, right now.
The sponge on the floor takes all my attention. What if I just?
I do the stupid thing and help. Each scrabbling move on all fours stabs my ribs, each breath reminds me there could be serious damage and I need to get checked out. But what’s another minute? I can’t leave with her cleaning until ass-face comes home. And what happens then? Does she keep cleaning? Does he care?
Focus.
I could scream as I start scrubbing. I use as much force and speed as I can because I don’t want to be kneeling here when she comes back. There’s a line parallel to my spine that is pure agony. Each scrub makes its pulse. Keep going. She’s coming back. It’s almost done but she’s coming back. A little more but I can hear the door open. She’s on her way and the stain is gone.
I throw myself away from the chair, rolling against my better judgement and paying the cost for it. I position myself to the side of the fancy wardrobe and wheeze. Donata comes back into view. She’s put on a pair of pink rubber gloves, so I didn’t have to do anything. I could’ve been falling down the stairs by now, racing outside and pretending not to see Glynn’s furious stare.
She stops. Her head turns, sounding like a millstone. Those hideously unnatural eyes roll in their sockets to fix on me. But no sooner has she clocked me crouching pathetically against the wall than she’s going back to the stain. Dust falls as she bends from the hips to inspect. The telly picks out the contours of her body within the dress and oh my god is she beautiful. Her head turns to me, her body remains.
She looks for so long. Each passing second loosens my bladder more. There’s no space left to squeeze into but that doesn’t stop me from pressing myself against the wardrobe harder.
The room fills with grinding stone until Donata is upright. She’s watching the telly or at least facing it. Nothing moves. Nothing except the dust. I watch her watching some woman who keeps reminding viewers she is the Neve Harrison, and she believes in some piece of plasticky junk. I watch until my heart stops trying to break through my compromised ribcage. I watch until I can breathe properly. I watch until I can think clearly.
And I keep watching until I’ve decided to try and help her. After all, that’s why I’m in this mess in the first place right?
‘I’m, uh. I’m gonna look around.’ I sound weak but it’s a wonder I can talk at all. ‘That OK?’
She doesn’t move. Not so much as a twitch.
I can hear myself grunting and groaning as I get to my feet but no matter how much I try I can’t stop the noises. Studying Donata watching telly I want to comfort her, but I don’t dare touch. I move around just enough to see her motionless face. Statuesque, I guess.
Don’t. Right. Look around.
I limp around the flat in the hopes of finding anything to help. Hell, I’ll settle for an explanation right now. The kitchen is just a kitchen. Pristine save for the dust and worn tracks across the linoleum. It looks out onto an overgrown garden I guess the owners of the ground floor flat would use if there was anyone there. Beyond that are the woods that look lovely from afar, but you go in and it’s all fly tipping and junkies.
I study some of the pictures hanging in the hall. There’s Donata and Eddie getting married. There’s Donata and Eddie after a charity fun run, sweaty and shattered. There’s a degree in Avionics from Cardiff University for Donata Moździerz with a picture next to it of her and who I assume is her mum. Between them, with arms around their shoulders is Eddie looking just as proud as Mama Moździerz.
How did it all go wrong? I can’t stand Eddie, but I can’t stand most people. Joyce says I have an “abrasive aura” but that’s rich coming from her. These pictures show two people clearly in love. Happy. In a way I’ve always wanted.
I open another door. It’s the bedroom. This feels really gross. All this snooping does, but wandering around someone’s inner sanctum is so much worse. Perverted.
There’s not a hint of Donata. The bed has been made but there’s a depression on the pillows on one side. The same side that has a unit with a lamp, alarm clock and box of tissues on it. The other side has nothing. A few posters of naked women draped over various cars and pieces of furniture decorate the white walls, each in a gaudy frame in a failed attempt to add a little class. There’s a wardrobe full of expensive suits, designer clothing and an insane amount of shoes and trainers. All Eddie’s.
Next to the wardrobe is a built-in closet. Bit weird having both right? Maybe that’s where all of Donata’s stuff is. My fingertips are on the handle when I start to feel sick. My head’s swimming; gloopy, thumping, a rave in a pool of syrup. I straighten up, take some slow breaths and wait for it to pass. Hope it will pass. Maybe I should be going to the hospital.
I don’t know what I’m looking at. Inside, the closet is bare for the most part. Nothing hanging up, not even empty hangers. But at the bottom is a low thick table of heavy grey stone polished to a gleam. There’s a picture of Donata on it, much more recent than the hall ones. She’s a bit dishevelled, forcing a smile and has her arms wrapped around herself. Either side it are two thick unlit candles the same colour as the mud dust. In front is a large ornate bowl with some strands of hair, nail clippings, a strip of cloth that looks similar to the outfit she’s wearing in the picture and something else. A dusting of white flakes. I lean closer but recoil as soon as I recognise it. Skin. I’ve seen the same thing on my bathroom floor when I’ve used the pumice stone to fight against the hard skin build up on my elbows and heels.
Alopecia, man. It sucks.
There’s a red dried something wiped unevenly around the bowl’s rim. I think there’s lumps of mud in it. But it’s not mud. Neither are the fragments scattered across the table, dusting books with titles like Sefer Yetzirah and A Guide to Merkabah and sheafs of photocopied pages showing names like Samuel of Speyer, Jacob Emden and something Arnold. Throughout the flat, this whole time, none of it was mud, because I don’t think you can make a tablet out of mud. Can you?
On a pedestal above everything else is a tablet a bit bigger than an A4 sheet in the same brown with a hint of yellow that some recess of my mind wants to call taupe? Or is that just another word for tan? Doesn’t matter. It’s there, solid and roughly carved. Donata’s name is chiselled into it over and over and over in markings so small I didn’t think was doable on stone. Clay?
I do the stupid thing and pick it up. I turn it over and the writing continues. Nothing but her name, endlessly wrapping around and around. Every time I touch it some of the dust comes off, so much finer that I thought it would be, almost like flour. I can feel my nose itch, aggravated by my disturbance of all this particulate but I can’t scratch. It’s embedded into the grooves of my fingers so I’m sure if I touch my face, I’ll be sneezing and tearful for the rest of the day.
I freeze. Donata is in the hall. She’s staring at me; her face contorted with hate. Her hands remain at her sides but repeatedly clench and unclench, twisting and pulling at the air. My blood is ice in my veins and the rate my heart’s going it might just kill me. But she doesn’t move any closer. Instead, she stands in the gloom and stares. I lift the tablet up to ask her about it and I see it. Hey painted eyes move, her body twitches, her hands clench hard and dust pours from between her fingers.
Not me. The tablet.
Both our heads snap to the sound of a door opening. ‘Donny baby I’m home!’ Eddie says loud enough for the street to hear. ‘Tennis was great. Scott really put me through the ringer.’
Shit a brick.
Donata is gone. Scurried away somewhere as my brain fritzed out. I take a step out of the room, but where the hell can I go? The only rooms not past the stairs are the bedroom and I assume the bathroom. Useless. Can’t hide. A footfall on the bottom step! Think Mal. Do something. Go somewhere. Barge past him and hope he doesn’t recognise you. Right like that’s going to happen. Shut up and move!
Airing cupboard. Yes. I take the longest, quietest, fastest strides of my life, swing the slatted door open and squeeze myself in besides the water heater with all my might. Ribs complain as they’re forced to bend out of shape, the wooden shelf above scrapes against my head. My left foot catches against a pipe and I know I’m done for. I pull and pull but can’t get free. Eddie’s at the top of the stairs I know it; I can hear it. I wriggle and pull and curse as the thin copper pipe starts burning my skin through the sock but thank whatever god is laughing out there, I get it free and close the door with a pinkie just in time.
‘What are you doing?’ Eddie’s furious. He must’ve seen me. I can’t make out much through the slats, but I think he’s at the other end of the hall. ‘Make my food.’
I feel the sneer. Donata clomps out of the living room and to the kitchen. Her face is blank, her shoulders are slumped, but those eyes. Those painted stones that make me feel wrong to the core flick down the hall and I think she can see me. And I see her. I see the rage, the sorrow, the hurt. Then she’s gone into the kitchen.
Eddies moaning as he goes to his chair. Whining about how she doesn’t follow orders well enough and maybe there’s a way to fix that too. He starts threatening her with things I don’t understand then stops mid-sentence. ‘What the fuck is this?’
I stand as still as a statue as he moves with furious purpose to the kitchen, appearing a second later with Donata in tow, his hand clasped around her wrist hard enough to turn the skin bloodless white. I can sort of see him pointing at the floor under where she had been cleaning. He’s kicking off at her about it, calling her awful names and saying he can replace her. He’s sure of it.
I look away because it’s making me sick. I don’t care I’m trapped anymore; I just want her to not be around him. I’m staring at the tablet in my hand and wondering why I’m holding it. I think of her grimace at the sight of it.
‘You’ve always been more trouble than you’re worth,’ Eddie seethes though never loud enough to alert any neighbours. ‘Part of me wishes the ritual had killed you instead.’ A strange pause full of movement. ‘Worthless!’
There’s the sound of something hard breaking against something harder. I can see fragments of something on the floor of the living room, scattered about bare feet.
What a piece of shit.
I do the smart thing for once and throw the tablet on the floor. There’s really not much room to do it, but I manage. I stamp and dust comes off but the carpet absorbs much of the hit. I stamp again and it splinters. Again, and it fractures. Again, and it’s in so many pieces.
The slatted door swings open. Eddie and I lock eyes. He’s more shocked than angry, for a second. ‘Who the hell are you?’ His thundering tone ends in a wheeze when he sees the mess on the floor. ‘Oh no.’
A hand clamps onto Eddie’s shoulder with such force the fingers break through their pink rubber enclosures. We lock eyes again. I see the fear before the pain. Whatever he knows that I don’t has paralysed him.
Donata spins her husband around to face her but hits him with a thunderous right hook before he’s all the way around. I shrink into what little space is left as I see part of his jaw hit the floor; teeth, bone, tendons, blood, rolling and splattering. Eddie gurgles something. Donata grunts. Fingers erupt through his peach polo shirt at the shoulder, twist with a sickening grind and swipe outwards taking the whole arm with them. He screams but its wet, weak and quickly silenced with a crunching slap to the neck. He drops to his feet and I see Donata; blood covered, stiff brow drawn into a mask of pure hatred. There’s a life to her that wasn’t there before that can be seen in the way she holds herself, in the way her chest rises and falls, in the way her hair moves, curls and frames her features.
The mess at her feet gurgles again and reaches out with its remaining hand. Pleading. She brings her knee up like a trained fighter and what’s left of Eddie’s head afterwards hangs down his back in a dripping bouquet of torn flesh, tubes, hair, and fluids that smell like a forgotten fridge drawer. My hand is clamped around my mouth and nose but now there’s dust in my sinuses. I hold tight but the first sneeze makes my ears pop and I fear the second will deafen me, so I let go.
Donata looks at me as I sneeze again. Her bloody hands are raised just past hip height, reaching out to me as she takes a step forward into the viscera. I don’t want to die, and I really don’t want to die sneezing and crying. I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to explain what I did.
‘Help. Please.’ Her voice is hoarse. Her words come out with difficulty through stiff vocal cords, stony lips, and a heavy tongue, but they’re clear. ‘Please.’
Twenty-six years old and this is the first time I’ve left the country. I don’t know if that’s sad or not. At least I have a passport, even if it expires in a couple of years.
With her free will back Donata has been able to access her and Eddie’s joint account where he had squirreled away every benefit payment and saving made by not caring about her. She’s dressed in baggy but elegant clothes, a big hat and large sunglasses. There’s something old Hollywood about it.
I don’t know how I’m going to help undo whatever’s been done to her but after a few days of going through Eddie’s books, we’ve got some solid pointers on where to start.
Once the ferry docks, we’ve got an itinerary that will get us to Prague soon enough. We’re banking on my appearance to pull any customs agent’s attention just enough that Donata can get by without taking off her sunglasses.
Alopecia man, it has its uses.