by Paul Kane
He blinked in disbelief, and then opened the second book, and the third. The inner pages of Beyond the Veil of Night: A Warning to the Unwary were seething with blue-black mildew, rendering much of its contents illegible. Elliott could still ascertain, however, that the return dates on all three books were identical.
“You do realize these items were due for return almost forty years ago?” he muttered.
The woman glared at him. Her slack mouth quivered.
“We’re paying no fines. We’ve got no money,” she repeated.
Elliott sighed. He felt greasy, itchy sweat gathering in the folds of his fleshy body. He could make an issue out of this—call in his supervisor, threaten the couple with consequences—but what would be the point? In truth, he just wanted these people gone. They disquieted him in a way he found hard to rationalize. He felt there was something fundamentally wrong with them, that they brought with them a hint of . . . what? Danger? Foreboding? It sounded absurd, but he couldn’t deny the unaccountable sense of dread in his belly. With a supreme effort, he forced his doughy features into a smile.
“Let’s forget it, shall we?” he said. “Let’s say no more about it.”
The woman stared at him, and now there was a hint of longing in her eyes, or perhaps regret.
Elliott’s smile became fixed. He felt a bulb of sweat swell and burst on his forehead.
“It’ll be our secret,” he said desperately. “Is there anything else I can help you with before you go?”
The little man gibbered. The woman’s face sagged like melting wax. In her odd, mushy voice, she said, “We’ve done our duty. It’s up to you now.”
“That’s right,” said Elliott, nodding in encouragement. “It’s up to me now.”
The woman hovered a moment longer, and then to Elliott’s horror, her hand wavered upward, as though to caress his sweating face. Then she hissed, as if in sudden pain, and snatched her hand away. Abruptly she gripped the handles of the wheelchair and propelled her charge out of there, the wheels squeaking, squeaking; leaving Elliott with an image of her gray, loose-fleshed hand, tipped with bruise-blackened fingernails, stretching toward him.
He remained motionless until the squeak of the wheels was no longer audible, and then he released a juddering sigh. With the tip of one stubby forefinger he flipped each of the books closed, wondering what to do with them. Strictly speaking, they were still the property of the library, but after four decades, they would almost certainly have been replaced or declared permanently lost. If Elliott wished, he could add them to the catalog, but they were in such a state of decay that he really couldn’t see the point.
Better, then, just to recycle them, get them gone, like the couple who had brought them here. What had prompted them to return the books after half a lifetime’s absence Elliott couldn’t even begin to fathom. People were a mystery to him—their motivations, their emotional connections, their petty drives and desires. He had never understood the rules of interaction, the urge to pursue friendships, to exchange information for pleasurable purposes, to seek out laughter. The company of others did nothing but confuse him, annoy him, disgust and discomfort him. As far as he was concerned, there were only two things that made human existence worthwhile, only two experiences that elevated life above the numbing mire of the everyday:
Sex and pain.
Pain and sex.
The exquisite agony.
The unendurable rapture.
Closing his eyes, he let out another long, bubbling sigh. As an antidote to the grotesque couple, he began to think of Chloë, of what he liked her to do to him, and he felt his stubby cock stirring in its humid nest of fat. Leaning forward, he mashed his growing erection against the inner surface of the counter.
“Everything all right, Mr. James?”
Elliott only just managed to stop himself crying out in shock as his eyes snapped open. His supervisor, Miss Sheridan, was standing on the other side of the counter, copper hair shining glossily, a tantalizing V of lightly freckled chest displayed beneath her throat. She was slim and young and smart, and in the fetid warmth of Elliott’s room at night, he imagined her trampling on his naked body in her high heels, piercing his skin with her razor-sharp stilettos.
His tumescence throbbed. Though his lower body was out of sight, he felt certain she could sense it, and that her indulgent smile was nothing but mocking.
“Just got a . . . bit of a headache,” he mumbled.
“It’s these fluorescents,” she said, nodding at the strip lights. “They get me the same way. Take a break, Elliott. Have a cup of tea and a paracetamol. I’ll get Ann to cover.”
“I will,” he muttered, but by the time he had thought to add, “thanks,” she had swept away on a swirling wake of sweetly scented air.
The prospect of Ann’s arrival was enough to goad Elliott into action. Ann was a nosey, gossipy old bullfrog who lived alone and had worked at the library since the dawn of time. Elliott knew that if she spied the returned books, she would ask him a million questions about them. To avoid being drawn into conversation, he snatched up all three books, grimacing at the blackly furred mildew which foamed from between the covers like the filling of an overstuffed sandwich, and carried them over to the big recycling bin.
Lifting the lid, he saw that the bin was half full of shredded documents and yesterday’s newspapers. He leaned over, scooped out a hollow, and dropped the books into it. It was only when he had rearranged the tangle of paper to conceal the books that he noticed a small card, shiny and rectangular, had slipped from between the covers of one of them and landed on the carpet. Stooping with a grunt, Elliott picked up the card and flipped it over. When he saw what was printed on it, he paused, blinking with surprise.
“My word, there’s a sight for sore eyes,” a voice trilled behind him.
At first Elliott thought that Ann was referring to the image on the card, and then he realized that her words were a comment on his mountainous backside. He straightened with an even louder grunt than before, stuffing the card into his pocket. Ann was standing where Miss Sheridan had stood minutes earlier, eyes like currants behind her red-framed spectacles, froggy lips stretched into a grin that to Elliott looked nothing but spiteful.
“Trying the old head-between-the-knees tactic, eh?” she said. “Any success?”
He was saved from having to reply by the appearance of a mother and her two bleating children, who wanted to exchange not books but video games. As Ann turned her grin on them, Elliott sloped away.
The image on the card stayed with him for the rest of the day, and the first thing Elliott did when he arrived home was to punch in the number of the only person he ever willingly spoke to.
Instead of the bright greeting he was expecting, however, a clogged and weary voice said, “Hullo?”
Elliott switched off the phone without a word; he had clearly gotten the wrong number. He tried again, pressing the tips of his bulbous fingers more carefully against the upraised digits on the display panel of the cordless. His breath was thick, a little raspy, as he waited for a response.
After four rings the same voice said, “Hullo?”
Elliott gritted his teeth in frustration. “I want to speak to Chloë,” he muttered.
“Speaking.”
Elliott was taken aback. This wasn’t Chloë. The Chloë he knew was cheerful and always accommodating. She had the ability to put even Elliott at ease—as long as they didn’t talk for too long. He paused, wondering whether he should just put the phone down and try again.
“Who is this?” asked the clogged voice.
“It’s Elliott.”
“Oh, Elliott,” said the voice, and all at once he realized that this was Chloë, after all. There was something about the way she seductively emphasized the l’s in his name. “How are you?”
“I need to see you,” Elliott said.
There was a gravelly rumble, which it took him a moment to realize was a chuckle. The rumble splintered into a series of
hacking coughs.
“Sorry, Elliott,” she said eventually. “I’m ill. Gastric flu. I’m not seeing anyone this week.”
“But I need you,” Elliott said. “I need you now.”
“Down, boy,” she rasped. “Save it till next week. It’ll be all the sweeter then.”
“But it’s my birthday,” Elliott wheedled. “I’m forty.”
“Today?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Aww,” she cooed. “Happy birthday. When I see you next week, I’ll bring you a cake.”
“I can’t wait till next week,” he said stubbornly.
This time there was a hint of steel in her croaky voice. “ ‘Fraid you’re gunner have to, lover boy.”
Elliott squeezed the receiver so hard that it creaked against his ear. He could smell the rankness of his own sweat trickling between his flabby man-breasts.
“I’ll pay you extra,” he blurted. “Double.”
Her sigh was like the sea dragging back over sharp stones. “Money’s not the issue,” she said. “I’ve told you, Elliott, I’m ill.”
“I don’t care,” he said.
“But I do,” she retorted. “To put it bluntly, Elliott, I’ve got it coming out of both ends. It’s not a pretty sight.”
“I don’t care,” he repeated sulkily.
“Oh, fuck off, Elliott,” she snapped, and put the phone down.
He rang her back twice, but she didn’t pick up. The third time she didn’t even have the answering machine on.
“Bitch!” he snarled and threw the cordless across the room. He sat and simmered, breathing hoarsely through his nose like a bull. He wondered whether Chloë was really ill, or whether she was just making it up as an excuse not to see him. She didn’t like coming here, he knew that. She thought his flat was squalid and dirty; she thought that it smelled bad. She was forever urging him to “brighten the place up a bit,” forever bringing along scented candles or throwing open windows for “a bit of fresh air.” Sometimes she even brought clean sheets for the bed, claiming that she didn’t want his to get messed up. “It’s all part of the service,” she would tell him cheerfully.
Elliott stayed where he was until the light had almost completely drained from the featureless sky outside the window, and shadows had settled and thickened around him. He wondered, as he sometimes did, whether his life would have turned out differently if he had not been abandoned by his parents. He had only survived beyond his first few weeks because an elderly neighbor, concerned by his increasingly weakening cries in the flat below hers, had called in the authorities. The police had broken down the door to find Elliott alone in a stinking cot, so severely malnourished that he had been given less than a 50 percent chance of survival. His parents had disappeared, leaving behind their clothes and belongings, their passports, their money, their credit cards. Foul play had been suspected at first, but no sign of his parents, or any indication that they had been involved in anything unlawful, had ever come to light. Elliott had spent his childhood drifting from care home to care home, and from foster parent to foster parent, never settling anywhere, never making friends. He had been a problem child, sullen and withdrawn, given to bouts of rage and depression. As a teenager he had become, for a time, uncontrollable. His counselor had told him that his contempt and mistrust was directed not at society per se, but at his absent parents, and that if he could only accept that the majority of people wanted to help him, he would soon learn to form friendships, enjoy life, put the past behind him.
Elliott had hated having to talk about his feelings, to explain and analyze his actions. To avoid doing so, he had pretended to listen, to take on board his counselor’s words. He had been intelligent enough to realize that the more compliant he appeared, the more he would be passed over, ignored, left to his own devices.
And so he had started to do as he was told, and in time he had dropped off the radar, become invisible. His contempt for society and his dissatisfaction with life he kept to himself. Eventually he managed to all but detach himself from people, quickly narrowing his reason for existing down to his twin pleasures. He found his job in the library purely as a means to procure the funds to finance his specific desires. His life became as simple and as basic as he could make it. He ate, he slept, he went to work, and whenever he could, he indulged himself. The greater part of his life was a silent howl of misery, or at best a nothingness, a wasteland. But the fleeting moments of ecstasy, of delectable torment, kept him going, prevented him from putting an end to it all.
Darkness had clotted the room, blotting out the shape of the world, by the time Elliott stirred. With a groan, he leaned back on his sagging sofa and stuffed his fat fingers into his trousers pocket. He pried out the card that had fallen from the book and padded over to his desk. He turned on the dusty lamp beside the computer and stared once again at the image printed on the card’s laminated surface.
Was it a piece of artwork or a photograph? It looked like a photograph, but perhaps it was computer enhanced, or a special effect? Elliott found himself hoping it was real. He shuddered in delight as he gazed at the needles sticking out of the girl’s pink tongue like porcupine spines. The erect penis which rose up in front of her face was scored with hundreds of tiny scratches, slick with blood. The girl’s green eyes were wide with adoration or longing, gazing up at the unseen face above her. Behind her head was a black background, printed on which was a website address in small white letters: www.scar-tissue.co.uk. Elliott licked his lips. His heart throbbed like a fresh wound. Forty tomorrow. He reached down between his legs with a meaty fist and squeezed until it hurt. But hurting himself gave him nothing. He needed someone else to do it. Someone naked. Female. He looked at the girl’s tongue again. The needles. Sex and pain. He jabbed at the start button of his computer. The blue light came on. The throaty whirr of the fans matching the throaty rasp of his breath. In and out. His heart racing. Blood engorging his cock. Flowing beneath the thin, rubbery coating of stretched skin. Seeking release.
Fingers trembling. Skin oozing. He could smell himself, hot and musty. Blood beneath the skin. The couple in the library. The smell of chemicals. Like . . .
Like laboratory rats, splayed out for dissection. Preserving fluid. Hiding something underneath. The rank rawness of dead meat left for too long in the hot sun. Spoiling. Going rotten.
The squeak of wheels behind him.
Elliott swiveled as quickly as his bulk would allow. Beyond the lamp the room was black, packed with shadows. Was there something there? Something silent? Watching him? He grabbed the lamp with a sweat-greased palm, tilted it. Items of mismatched furniture sprang forward, bleached with light. But there was no one. No living presence. He had been mistaken. Imagination, that was all.
When he turned back the screen was steel gray. The words www.scar-tissue.co.uk pulsed red in the center. Beneath this, in capitals, the word ENTER. Elliott couldn’t remember typing in the website address, but that didn’t matter. His trembling fingers squeaked on the plastic mouse. The cursor edged warily toward the inviting word.
Double-click. Done.
The doors parted and a world of wonders opened up to him. Naked flesh, sliced and scratched and bruised. Faces contorted in orgasmic pain. Blood and leather, metal and sweat. Stark light and pitch-black darkness. An escalating series of images, each more extreme than the last.
Elliott wanted to linger over each one, but was simultaneously eager to move on to the next, and the next. His finger clicked feverishly on the mouse. Sweat dripped from his chin onto the keypad as he craned forward over his vast stomach. He licked his lips, the sound preternaturally loud in the fusty room, like the sound of wet things moving stealthily in the darkness. His erection ached. He ground his fist against it.
The last shot showed a man chained to a wall, spread-eagled, head thrown back, scarred and bloody. Imprinted over the top of this was an address. Before Elliott had even finished reading it, the picture began to corrode, like rusting metal, spots of gray leaki
ng through the image, then joining up, forming larger patches. In a panic, Elliott reached for the blue plastic beaker full of pens to the right of his keyboard. Knocked it over, pens scattering everywhere. He scooped one up, a green CD marker, wrenched off the lid. He tried to write on the back of his hand, but it was too sweaty; the ink spread out along the tiny creases in his skin, like green blood rising from a wound. “Fuck,” he muttered, “fuck, fuck.” The corrosion was moving inward to the center, blotting out the picture of the spread-eagled man, speckling the edges of the address itself. In desperation Elliott wrote on the screen, the pen squeaking on the glass, the address appearing in green scrawled capitals even as the original disappeared in a froth of gray.
Finally he sat back, breathing hoarsely, drenched in sweat, a pulse throbbing behind his eyes. The screen blurred; suddenly he couldn’t breathe; he thought he was going to faint. Then the feeling passed and his vision cleared. The screen was steel gray, nothing else there. No words, no pictures. Over the top of it, in green marker pen, was the scrawled address.
Elliott released a long, shuddering breath. Then he gave a snort, the closest he ever came to a laugh, realizing what he could have done. He stabbed his fat fingers at the keyboard, typing in the address again. A search page appeared. Address not found. Suggestions for websites with similar addresses. Cosmetic surgery clinics; Wikipedia; song and book titles.
Scowling, Elliott tried the address again. Same result. He sat for a moment, staring at the screen. Then he thumped across to where the cordless had landed when he’d thrown it, and picked it up. He pressed the green telephone symbol and held the phone to his ear; it was still working. He thumbed in the number of the taxi firm he always used, and half an hour later was pushing open the car door, struggling from the vehicle.
His driver, a young Asian man who had been nodding his head to Bhangra music throughout the journey, hunched his shoulders to peer dubiously at the black walls rising around them.
