by S. E. Amadis
Calvin ogled at me, his mouth open.
“Get out!” I shrieked.
Whirling around, I grabbed his jacket and threw the door open.
“Get out! Get the hell out of my house right now, Calvin Henri.”
Calvin ogled at me some more. Then, reaching forward, he seized his jacket furiously and strode from the apartment.
Romeo peeked timidly at me from around the corner of the bedroom door.
“Why did you do that, Mimi?” he asked tremulously. “I like Calvin.”
I sighed. “I do too, honey buns.” I sank onto the sofa and buried my face in my hands. “But sometimes Mimi just needs some peace. I just want to be alone for a bit, okay?”
Romeo nodded uncertainly. He stepped one foot out of the bedroom, hesitating. Then he ran to my side, cuddled me in a quick hug and hurried back to the bedroom.
I heaved a deep sigh and leaned back on the sofa. Already I missed Calvin. I picked up my phone, thought of texting a message of remorse to him. An image dropped into my WhatsApp. I opened it. It was the photo of the dead cat inside the green plastic bag.
“Just in case you change your mind and decide to go to the police,” Calvin texted.
I sighed again. Already I could feel the anger draining out of me, my muscles growing lax, tension departing from me as if I were a tightened wire spinning loose from a screw. I smiled to myself. I’d leave him sweating for a short while, then text him back.
I did my usual rounds, which had become so ingrained in me I hardly even thought of it anymore, checking that the door and all the windows were locked, the door securely double bolted. I left the safety chain off, so Calvin could come in if he wanted to.
Then I dragged my laptop over and cracked it open. I knew the whole world had access to my Facebook account. And my full name was on my Facebook account.
That attacker could have been anyone.
I signed in and swiftly changed my profile name to “Annasuya Adler”, omitting the Rose. Although by now it was probably too late. Probably everyone who had the slightest interest in me had already clocked my full name.
I glanced at my phone and thought of something. Quickly, I connected the phone to my computer and downloaded the cat photo onto my desktop. Then I signed out of my account and signed in to Elena Farber’s account. There, I uploaded the image of the dead cat.
“This is what that sick bastard did to me the other night,” I typed in, furious. “He lugged THIS in through my bedroom window.”
I clicked “Publish”. Changed from Elena’s account to my own and shared Elena’s new publication on my Biography.
Then I kissed Romeo and went to bed.
*****
My life’s blood was starting to get all dried up with Lulu. She was sapping me of all my energy and life force, all my vitality was leeching out, and it was all because of her. I seized her naked shoulders and shook her like a rag until her teeth started to chatter inside her mouth. I dragged her around even harder. I pummelled on her cheeks. I slapped my palms across her jaw with all the strength I could muster. She gritted her teeth. But as soon as I let go of her, that simpering, leering smile was back on her lolling face again.
I shoved her into her pestilent chaise longue. She tumbled across the stained upholstery like a lifeless doll, sprawling out face down in an ungainly posture with her legs spread wide, her butt bobbling up in the air with its lumps of unsightly cellulite jiggling about like jello.
“You’re gross,” I said. “I don’t know how I could have ever fallen in love with you.”
I bent down and reached behind the sofa for her putrid satin gown, still loitering about where I had tossed it the other night. I snatched the gown and dumped it over Lulu’s prostrate figure.
“You’re such a lazy bum, Lou-Ange. Don’t even have the will-power or decency to fetch your own clothes.” I sneered at her.
Lulu draped the flimsy garment around her without bothering to get into it, then turned and leaned against her favourite item of furniture, smirking a lopsided grin at me.
“I’m not cold here,” she slurred out. “You keep the house oh so nice and cosy warm, lovey. Why would I ever need clothes while I’m in here?”
All the same, she draped the shapeless rag over herself, sticking her head in carelessly through one of the holes. The robe fell around her inside-out and with the front towards the back, but neither of us gave much of a damn. As she’d mentioned, no one would be coming to see her anyways.
I settled with my scotch on ice on the sofa and stared at Lulu.
“Why don’t you ever go out and make some friends?” I asked. “Everyone I know goes out sometime. Without their partner, I mean.”
Lulu stuck a finger into her cherry-red mouth and sucked on it.
“Mmmhh,” she mumbled. “Mmmhh. Why should I go anywhere? Your home’s nice and cosy. I’ve got all I need here.”
She pranced to the kitchen and grabbed a dollar-store glass from the cupboard, then filled it to the brim with scotch. She traipsed back to her chaise longue, skipping like a child, and humped herself on the sagging seat.
“I’ve got my scotch. I’ve got a place to dump my butt. I’ve got me a nice man to play around with whenever I want. What more could I ask for?”
She groped around for the remote control and switched on something inane as usual. Within a few minutes she’d turned into an idiotic mass, drooling at pre-schoolers thumping about in a sand box while spit dribbled from the corners of her mouth.
I left her alone and stumbled into the kitchen to get a chicken on to roast. As I hummed away by the sink, I heard a tapping on the window. I glanced up. Everything was dark outside.
“Aahh, just the wind,” I murmured. “A tree branch.”
I ignored the insignificant detail jiggling in the back of my mind that there were no trees near the kitchen window. There were trees all around my house. Just not near the window.
I washed out some dishes from lunch, then dragged the chicken out of the fridge. The marvellous thing about roast chicken was that it was a snap to prepare. All I had to do was haul some salt over it and pop it into the oven and that was it. I remembered as a child being forced to slave over the sink for long hours with suds up to my elbows, balancing myself on tiptoes on a stool while washing out all the family’s dirty pots and pans. Now that I had a mega sized dishwasher I could just plop the roasting pan into it afterwards and press the button and that was it.
I was busy humming by the stove, dashing salt over my chicken with the CD player on at full volume pumping out some Pavarotti while I waved my arms about, pretending to be the orchestra director, when I heard it.
A wild and dreadful squeal, like that of a crazed cat in heat.
Just outside my window. So close it sounded as if I could have reached out and touched it with the tips of my fingers, if the windowpane were open.
So strident and powerful, I could hear it even above Pavarotti’s sonorous wails.
So real, so solid, I was almost certain I would see the two creatures in heat just below me, if I dared to peer out the window.
But I didn’t dare.
I laughed at myself nervously.
Come on, Bruno Jarvas, I whispered. Are you a big, muscular man, or what?
Gathering up the nerve, I pressed my forehead against the windowpane and took a peek.
There was nothing but darkness and emptiness outside.
Of course there was. What else did I expect?
I pulled my head back. Heaved a tremendous sigh of relief and then wondered what was wrong with me. Turned towards my pot roast and reached for the salt.
Then I heard it again.
That wild, unearthly screech.
Two primal, bestial felines in heat.
Just beyond the thin pane of glass.
Fascinated, unable to restrain myself, I edged near the window again.
Then it flashed up at me.
It was only one instant, but I could make it out clearly.
A dead cat, its striated eyes glassy and unmoving, plastering itself against the clear pane apparently of its own volition.
Its eviscerated gut, oozing slimy innards obscenely all over my window.
It pawed at me with a squishy, sloshy noise. I could hear it even through the wails of the violins.
Then it disappeared.
I leapt backwards with a howl, banging my hand against the chicken. The roasting pot smashed on the ground and cracked into smithereens.
I stood in the middle of my kitchen, frozen, my chest heaving. For an endless moment I simply stared at the window, my hands trembling uncontrollably. A splash of bloodied intestines, like cream-coloured worms, writhed in agony against the window. Viscous bits of entrails stuck to the glass, clung to it stickily and wavered in the breeze.
Shaking like a frail old man, I picked up one of my legs with my own hands and tried to swing it about somewhere. I felt as if my shoe were weighted down with mighty stones. With effort, I managed to drag first one leg, then the other, across the kitchen. My idea was to start cleaning up the chicken and broken crockery.
I started to whistle, tentative. I knelt on the ground and scooped up the chicken, tossing it gingerly into the sink. Suddenly, all appetite fled me. The blood-covered fowl reminded me too much of that gory thing that had been clinging to my window just a minute ago. Gagging, I grasped it with the tips of my fingers and hurled it into the bin.
Tonight I was going out for lettuce.
A clean, bloodless, juicy lettuce and artichoke salad at my favourite bistro.
Yes, that was it. That was what I needed to take my mind off this terrifying nightmare.
This couldn’t be happening to me. Not to Bruno Jarvas, Regional Vice President of one of the most important and influential companies in its niche.
Not to the Bruno Jarvas who owned a mansion in Bedford Park.
Not to the man with his own penthouse suite for an office all to himself. The irreplaceable employee his boss turned to whenever he needed a brainstorm or inspiration. The highly valued intelligence behind the brand name with a position already promised to him as future associate in the enterprise.
No. This couldn’t be happening to me.
A sudden sharp thud against the window stirred the hackles on my neck up on edge again.
I glanced up just in time to feel, rather than hear, the resounding thwack as something solid crashed in through the glass and landed at my feet, whirling in circles on the floor near me. The shattered windowpane crumbled into shards in my sink.
I almost jumped to the roof.
My heart began pumping like a locomotive, battering painfully against my ribs.
The urge to tear from the room and cower underneath my bedsheets was almost unbearable.
For a long moment, I merely stood there, rocking on my soles in the centre of my kitchen, my nerves frayed, hands shivering like those of a sick man dying from malaria. My feet felt rooted to the ground. All of a sudden I noticed the evasive tick-tock of some dorky clock on the wall. I hadn’t even glanced at that clock in years. When had I acquired that useless gizmo, anyways?
Slowly, as if I were made from plastiline, I began to peel my feet off the ground and lug myself to the gruesome object still spinning in slow circles on the floor. I lifted the khaki-coloured plastic tentatively. Almost couldn’t bring myself to peer inside.
It was nearly a relief to discover the bag contained nothing more than a dead cat.
My breath spewed out of me in a rasping screech. I had had no idea I had even been holding it.
I was just about to head for the window, under the remote possibility that whoever had done this to me might still be hanging around out there, when something shot out of the plastic bag at me.
Something acidic that seared my eye when I turned to see what it was.
Something caustic that burned my vision and plunged me into blackness as I toppled, unconscious, to the floor.
Chapter 18
I was tickled pink when the girls at the office started inviting me on their coffee breaks. We would sit around one of those high, wobbling tables in the canteen and gossip about men, politics, the state of the nation and more men.
“I’ve been married to my sweetheart for over fifteen years,” Sandy Bleckley said, squealing. “But we have what you could call, a loose arrangement. That means we don’t feel like we owe each other any sort of vows of monogamy or anything of that sort. We live together, but I go out with whoever I want. In fact,” she added as she toyed with the row of orange plastic beads around her neck, “he even sleeps with men. He’s bi.”
Ursula stared at her in undisguised astonishment.
“He’s bi? And you put up with that?” she exclaimed primly.
Sandy shrugged.
“Why? Does that bother you, Ursula? It’s not like he’s a paedophile or anything like that, you know. He only goes out with consenting adult males,” she added defensively. “It’s a free world, isn’t it?”
Ursula wrinkled up her nose.
“Sounds gross to me,” she said. “What could they possibly do together? I mean, it’s not like his partner’s got a... you know... a decent hole...”
Gina, the receptionist, snorted.
“You make men sound like a golf green,” she said, giggling.
We all burst out laughing. I laughed along as well, even though I couldn’t see the humour in it, just to be polite. I studied Gina discreetly. I would never have sniffed her out to be such a prude. Dark-haired and petite, of Italian origin, I thought she was rather sexy, and had simply assumed that she was the sort who would go out with several men at the same time without any qualms. She always wore her eyes ringed with black kohl and lush mascara. Her skirts usually stopped halfway down her thighs and her signature perfume was heavy and musky.
“Do you have a boyfriend, Gin?” Ursula asked. I was glad she did. I, myself, was wondering the exact same thing.
Gina shook her head.
“Last guy I went out with, turned out to be practically a scam artist.” She banged her coffee onto the table with indignation. “When we went out, he hardly ever paid for anything. I usually ended up paying for both of us. He’d offer to drive me somewhere, then I’d have to pay the parking fare. Ditto when we went to the cinema. Ugh.”
Ursula grimaced in sympathy.
“Hope you dumped him fast,” she said.
Gina nodded.
“Yeah. I’ve learnt to be more picky.”
They packed up their cardboard cups and tossed them into the bin. I followed suit. We went back into the office. I approached my desk and rummaged through my disaster zone of a handbag in search of some breath freshening mints. I didn’t know about the others, but for me, being presentable included smelling pleasant. My fingers stuck onto something soft and silky, clingy, as if filled with static electricity.
Surprised, I dumped my bag on my desk and pawed through it more suspiciously.
A piece of torn pantyhose drifted out. It clung to my fingers, dripping off me as if made of spider silk. I shrieked, nearly dropped it like a hot potato. All the heads around me popped up, annoyed.
“Sorry,” I said, trying to dissimulate my unfortunate outburst. “There... there was a... an open pin in my purse, and I pricked myself. Sorry,” I repeated, smiling sheepishly.
Everyone turned back to their work, to my relief.
As soon as I was certain no one was paying attention to me, I picked up the piece of ragged pantyhose and studied it carefully. It was sheer, black, plain. Like the hose I’d been wearing on the day I went to Bruno Jarvas’ office.
The hose he’d ripped so violently off me.
But it could have been anything. All pantyhose look the same.
The only thing I couldn’t explain was how it had ended up in my purse.
*
Lately, I felt as if Ursula was keeping tabs on me. Following me about all over the place. Taking note of my every move. When I went to the ladies
’, there she was as well, powdering her perky nose. I tried to vary the hours when I went for a bio break, but it seemed that no matter what the hour was, she was either in there already, or entered shortly after me.
Although we enjoyed a certain flexibility in our schedules, somehow Ursula always managed to make her lunch break coincide with mine as well. And more and more, she would just “happen to” park near the subway entrance and therefore “have to” follow the same route as I took after work.
I felt like confronting her. But it was all too subtle. Perhaps I was just making a mountain out of a molehill or imagining threats where none existed. Maybe it was merely a common side effect of suffering a traumatic experience.
*****
Jim Daniels puttered and clucked at me, pecking around me like a brooding mother hen.
“Ah, tsk tsk. What a pity. What happened to you, Mr. Jarvas?” he said, motioning towards my pathetic, patched-up eye. “I trust it will heal soon? So you can admire my star performer’s plans with your full gaze.” He glanced towards me, feigning concern. “What did happen to you, anyways? Mind sharing?”
I touched my eye lightly.
“Nothing. It was nothing. Just utter clumsiness on my part. I turned on the taps too quickly in the sink and some vinegar splashed into my eye.”
The fact of the matter was, I still had no idea how whoever it was had set it up so that that festering beast would spray me with decaying gunk when I peered into that bag. It was almost as if there’d been some sort of tiny pump positioned in there.
Or maybe it was only the force with which I’d pummelled the bag, squeezing the foul contents of that dead creature out all over my face without meaning to.
At any rate, the point was, my eye had inflamed up and even now was still tender and red around the edges. I, too, trusted it would heal expediently.
“Well,” Jim was saying, “I’m sorry but I don’t seem to have the plans for your new store prepared, after all. I was certain I’d laid them out carefully on my desk. You don’t mind following me to Calvin Henri’s office for a minute, do you?”
