Tail

by Julian Duenker

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  The shouts for Mr Black to once more strut on his stage started to rise to a deafening level. Colour and yellow injected vitamin d still stood its ground however, sharpening their axes through the slitted windows, ready for the daily fight with Mr Black. Grey sat in the back hiding among the corners licking her lips excited to see the slow fight unfold. Not only was the spectacle something to enjoy, but she also looked forward to the aftermath, where she could roam the edges of the battlefield, spreading her mundane contempt. It was the evening in other words.

  Mathew sat at his desk in his office, resting his arms on the bed of the dark stained wood. The window was closed behind him, which left the room in a very palpable state of silence. Soft shoves of light from the tired sun squeezed itself through whatever gap it could find. Mathew’s overcoat lay folded and retreated on the edge of the couch arm. It was sickened, pulling its folds into line, afraid that it may fall off of the safety of the dull couch.

  To Mathew’s left he had a cabinet wide open, letting it hang loosely on its metal hinges. His computer was turned on which allowed the natural shine of modern age to coat his face. It gave him a grey/blue sheen over the bridge of his nose. His chin sharpened, now cut, now filled by the lonely colour in the room. His left hand fondled the rim of a whiskey glass.

  The idea of conforming to a cliché somehow comforted him. Perhaps he thought that if he were to follow along the lines of every other man who drank sorrow whiskey than maybe he would come out on the other end of his emotions still intact. He knew it was naive, but the more he drank the whiskey the more his idea seemed as if it were spat from the hairy lips of wisdom.

  His desk was decorated with a line of unorganised printed photos. Rather good quality, roughly smaller than A4. The photos were of Susan dressed in her sweatpants. The grey from her clothes cut against the purple background of the shoot. He picked one of the photos up and fingered the edge of it with his right hand. With one sip of his drink he focused on the picture.

  She was bent over facing the camera, composed by the weak and cushioned roar of a lion. Her head was raised for pride and the folds of her pants dragged behind her heels. Her hair was loose, yet clean from the original shoot. Old purple crawled up her back to the neck, aging and dying along the ridges of her spine. It was the purple that filled the edges of her curves that caught and demanded his wavering eye the most. Her hips were great to contemplate, but somehow the purple emphasised them.

  A folder was placed on the edge of the desk, the rest of the photos were lovingly placed inside. It was his folder, his private folder with worn edges. If the photos stayed in there any longer they would have been turned to mulch with increasing amounts of saliva.

  The edge of the door knocked. It was hinged open with Steff on the outside of the office. His shirt was rolled up to his elbows flaunting the painted tattoo canvas of his arms. The way his branched and floral tattoos broke off and hid behind layers of wrinkles pointed out his age more than usual. He presented himself on the edge of the room and dashed his eyes about the place to scan the situation. He rose them up to his chest level and hooked onto the door frame. Mathew’s eyes remained in their coffin hidden behind the wall of his whiskey glass. He refused to acknowledge Steff’s usual growing and dancing presence.

  With the coming of the first words of the conversation, Steff had to celebrate the occasion with fractured movement and a rhythm stolen straight from a child’s cartoon. He let go of the door frame and tip toed his way into the room hunching his back to whisper to his knees.

  “Am I going to have to comfort you again? Fuchin ell Mathew I can’t emphasise enough how exhaustin ya are when you get emotional. The last time I saw you this sad is when you lost all the photos from your first photo shoot. Remember that? Cryin like an arse.” he said with hushed words trying to both, hold in uncontrollable laughter, and force it outwards. Naturally it ended up looking like he was tripping over his own words, reflecting the very broken way of how he entered the room.

  “Yes, in fact I do remember that, because you were the one who helped me out of the mess. Great, now that your ego has been bolstered up a notch, maybe… Leave? It might prove to be the best decision you make today.” Mathew said without moving an inch. He wouldn’t allow him the satisfaction. Steff neared the desk with a brisk gallop on his heels. He scanned the area slurping in every detail through his pierced eyebrows.

  “Now you know you don’t actually want me to leave. If you actually wanted to be alone, then you wouldn’t be in your office with the door open. I aint no fucking fool though.” Steff’s face tightened into a surprisingly serious expression. “So lay it on me before I get bored.” Steff grabbed a nearby chair with the tips of his fingers and threw it in front of him. He was rough with it, banging its weak knees against the floor. As he sat down and settled his heavy bones Mathew took the opportunity to once more look at the spread out photos on the desk. Steff landed his view on the private gallery as well, combing and curling his eyelashes to the way they were spread out along Mathew’s mahogany desk.

  “Ahh... she ended it with you. I assume she aint gonna be working here anymore. Don’t matter, she wasn’t exactly professional about the whole thing... what like? Late for two shoots in a row, I mean damn that’s as unprofessional as one can get. I’m almost impressed in a way. Soooo… why did she leave ya? Were ya too harsh on her? Was your grip on the whip too tight or did you dirty your fingers too much?” Steff said with cooled hands hanging on the edge of the desk. “Her father” Mathew said loudly making sure that everyone in the room, even Mr Justification would hear the words.

  “Hmm... let me guess. The over protective father who is too scared to let their daughters show a bit of skin. They usually come with the younger models.” The room had stabbed itself into a frenzied silence. Nothing moved or dared to spew noise. “Yeah... sure. Exactly that” Steff tightened his posture on the chair, rubbing his suits pants against the cheap upholstery of the seat. He let his grip of the desk go and rested his arms on his lap. That was as tame as Steff would ever get.

  His view was split between checking up on Mathew behind the desk and the gallery of photos that unwittingly presented themselves half naked. Mathew looked up to reciprocate his older and more frustrating mirror. Neither of them swallowed the bullshit that they fed each other. Undoubtedly it left them starved, since all they ever said was covered in faeces from a bull.

  Steff reached over the desk with one slick move of his arm and grabbed the nearest photo of Susan. In the photo he picked up she was standing, perched on her heels, praising and raising her pants to a higher level.

  The purple was harsh in the photo, yet was left to a faint and hardly recognisable backdrop with Steff’s analysis. The pulsating purple that slashed its own nerves along the spine of Susan, ran down to her rear and ended up as the backdrop to what he thought was the main show: her face. He concentrated on the facade that she stapled between her ears. He sensed a certain discomfort right above her eyebrows, scratched into her smooth forehead. Seeing that he accidently reflected how she looked with his own uncomfortable expression. “So what you going to do about it? Actually… do you care about her enough to do anything about it?” he asked.

  Mathew raised himself in his chair and straightened his back. With the last sip of his drink he got up to get the bottle that rested on top of his cabinet. “For some reason, I can’t get her out of my head. I can still feel… sounds weird but, I can still smell her, even when we aren’t together. I’ve never met anyone like her before. Like the filthy truth that I always wanted, but never had. She is glorious Steff… and all I want is to treat her well.” he said with his back turned to Steff. “I was going to tell you about how I would deal with over protective fathers, but I don’t think that advice applies to you anymore. If she broke it off with you, then she obviously has her reasons, and if you aren’t a fuckin creep, then respect her damn decision! Then again she might be one of those girls that is testin ya. To
be honest I haven’t a fuckin clue like. I have only spoken to her once.”

  “Your just great help, thanks.” Mathew said bringing his whiskey bottle back to the battlefield of the table. “Why… the feck…are you… drinking… Parking’s whiskey? Out of every shitty decision that you have made in your life, this is by far... the worst one. Torturing yourself so much. Your making me worry about ya.” Steff leaned into the table as Mathew poured the drink into his glass. He rested his arms and poured his own drink made from the finest of exaggerated sad expressions.

  “It gets the job done.” Without hesitation; “Shut the fuck up. Is that all you are ever going to say to yourself, huh?” Steff said slapping Mathew from across the table with a cold stare. “It’s all I’ve ever had. The extent of my taste experience ends with this drink.”

  “Well then… Mathew, you are a depraved man. But… I guess, does it matter when it’s the only thing you have ever tasted?” “Maybe it does matter?”

  “Nah I wouldn’t get too pressed on it, cause what if that’s the only whiskey you’ll ever have. Would you want to walk around with the knowledge that you will only ever have the worst scenario?” Steff said dropping his chin to the table. Mathew with confused lips spat out; “but its whiskey?! I can just go down to the shop and buy a new bottle. Just tell me which the best brand is and I’ll get it next time.”

  Paused and arched to his own thoughts, Steff sat still, peeling away the layers of conversation that he stumbled his way through. Mathew frustrated at the lack of response from Steff leaned back into his chair and continued his one sided conversation with his whiskey glass. “Fuck the whiskey, you know what I think?” “What?”

  “I think you are too damn involved with the agency, the models, and this job for the past decade. You got too complacent and when Susan came along, she fucked you up... Fucking hell, look at you obsessing over her like a puppy.”

  Mathew’s face tightened. Eyebrows collapsed as if trying to substitute the lack of hair on his chin. Each end of the table presented different yet equally rough environments for both the men to fling their gathered smooth shit. From all of the abusive language and suicidal grammar that each man shot at each other, one would assume that they flourished in the shared abuse. This was true for Mathew who despite his wishes of solidarity that night, enjoyed and relished the hard bricked reminder that Steff provided, even though in his liquor drowned state of mind he didn’t actually take any of it in.

  Steff stood up brashly and said “If you feel the need to punch or abuse something, just remember to wear gloves… or beat something inanimate to death, that way it won’t cry as much.... tape cushions to your fists if you have to.” Steff said grabbing a throw cushion from the couch. With one light touch he whipped it across the room.

  Mathew caught it and dug his fingers into the corners. He took a few seconds to look at the soft texturing. It was his cushion so he was well aware of how it looked, yet for the first time he actually acknowledged it and accepted its pretentious appearance. Sharp vertical dashes made from ironic ideas of a mundane nature sliced the fabric. In between each line the cushion was plagued by a faint spit of maroon. The colour shifted to red the further it went out to the edges. Mathew didn’t register how long he spent soaking in the cleanly shaven corners of the cushion. When he looked up, Steff had left his office.

  The only person left to talk to Mathew, was the wet rim of his half empty glass and the moist corners of his private photos sprawled across the desk. So far his drink had only provided liquid ideals, so whenever he tried to grab them and turn them into something more solid, they would slip through his fingers. It frustrated him, which made it very difficult for him to hold his glass any longer. Letting the drink go, his hands felt empty. He rubbed his palms against each other, chafing their stomachs in an attempt to create a fire between the skins, twas a need for pain. The only line of coherent thought left was the spread of hushed and whispered photos on the table.

  Mathew picked up the photo with the most amount of purple that ejaculated across Susan’s sweatpants. The edges of the photo were bent as if crying from the fact that it was his favourite. In it Susan was sitting on the floor. Her pants wiped across the bubbling purple surface. It wasn’t her face that resonated with him the most. Her boxed face that appeared to be locked within the confines of her small strong nose, her half closed eyes and heavy breathing lips. Rather it was the strong punch from the purple background that tickled him the most, obviously it meant nothing if Susan wasn’t linked to it. Otherwise he would be jizzing to anything that rocked a purple shade. Accentuated anything attached to the core of what makes one somebody is exactly why he poured out tears of need to that private photo.

  Ssshhhh!! In that quiet moment, if one was really fucking quiet they could have heard a click. A very smooth click, direct from the lubed mechanical joints in Mathew’s head. He had to do something about her, he had to get her back. The void of it all rang his thoughts hollow. Not a very pleasant experience for anyone with a degree of self-respect. With that he set off with a plan firmly noosed around his neck.