This Book Is Full of Bodies

by Rick Wood

  “Mark told her that he doesn’t want to be with her,” Lisa tells me.

  I already knew this.

  “Oh no.” I pretend to care, feigning concern in a way that’s perhaps a little too overdramatic. Still, Lisa believes it. “Why wouldn’t he want to be with you?”

  “Well, it turns out…” Lisa takes a big, deep breath, looks at Flora as if she’s asking for permission, clearly doesn’t get it, then turns and tells me anyway. “It turns out Mark is gay.”

  Mark is what now?

  I…

  What…

  He what…

  “She had a conversation with him today,” Lisa continues. “They were meant to meet at the bike sheds, which is where they normally meet. And Mark told her. He’s gay, and he doesn’t think they should be together.”

  No shit he doesn’t think they should be together if he’s gay you daft bint.

  “Is this true?” I ask Flora, and she nods, and she sobs.

  Fucking Mark.

  This whole time…

  He wasn’t rejecting her…

  He was coming out!

  Shitting fuck sticks.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” I tell her, but I can’t stop my voice from being monotone.

  Hang on.

  If I killed Mark, does that make me homophobic?

  I mean, I don’t think I am. I’m all for gay rights. I always wave at those pride marches when they go past, and I’ve engaged in sodomy many times – albeit, with women, mostly hookers, some with questionable genders but unquestionable vaginas.

  No, it doesn’t.

  Surely not.

  “I was going to go out and get some snacks,” says Lisa. “Get a girly movie. Maybe have a glass of wine. Would you stay with Flora while I do that?”

  “Sure.”

  Lisa stands. Kisses me on the cheek.

  Flora watches it and hates it.

  “Thanks,” Lisa says, grabbing her keys.

  The front door opens and closes.

  Neither me nor Flora say anything until we have heard the car reverse down the driveway and pull away down the street. Even then, we hold each other’s stare, hers full of rage, mine full of… well, confusion, I guess. I don’t know.

  “Is it true?” I ask.

  “Where were you?” she asks.

  That isn’t an answer to my question.

  “Is it true?”

  “What, that Mark is gay?”

  Was gay.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes. It is true. Where were you?”

  Fuck.

  “Huh?”

  “Where were you? You were meant to be here after school. I really needed you.”

  “I, er… I was busy.”

  Fucking Mark. Fucking fucking Mark. Fucking stupid Mark.

  He was gay.

  I killed him because he rejected her, and it turns out he was…

  Dammit shit on a brick mother twisted arse hole!

  Lisa stands. She saunters over to me in this strut she thinks is sexy but only highlights her young age.

  “We have five minutes now.”

  “Huh?”

  Five minutes for what?

  I killed Mark, and I shouldn’t have.

  She grabs my dick in one hand and gets a bit of ball in there too. She curls her lip and stares into my eyes. She thinks this is sexy, but in truth, it’s quite uncomfortable. And, not to mention, concerning that she can fit my whole dick and ball into her one small hand.

  She leans in to kiss me.

  “Well?” she says.

  I’m still stupefied. Dumbfounded. Mortified.

  But I’m still human.

  “Eh, fuck it,” I say.

  Mark is long forgotten.

  Well, he isn’t, because he’s in the boot of my car.

  But any reservations I have I quell. He’s dead now, doesn’t make any difference.

  Her lips come closer, almost touching mine, just almost, but as soon as their tender caress meets mine I turn her around and bend her over the table

  She doesn’t fight it.

  I hike her skirt up and her knickers have ponies on.

  “I don’t want to…” She goes to say something, and I put my hand over her mouth. She bites my finger.

  “Please, I need to feel loved, I want to look at you.”

  Look at me?

  I scoff at the joke, pull her knickers to the side, and fuck her quickly over the sink, done and finished so quickly that the floor is wiped and our underwear replaced and we are sat watching cartoons by the end of Lisa’s fourteen minute twenty-three second absence, when she returns with a bag of cheesy poofs and some cheap quality wine.

  “Miss me?” she says, then looks oddly at Flora. “You look a lot happier!”

  I grin.

  Flora smiles faintly.

  Why wouldn’t she be happy? She got what she wanted.

  “Well,” Flora says, forcing a smile that only I know is forced, “Gerry knows how to cheer me up.”

  I fucking hate it when she calls me that.

  “Well, good on Gerry!” says Lisa as she slides in between us.

  And now Lisa is calling me it.

  I look at Flora.

  There is still something about her that seems dissatisfied, like she didn’t get what she wanted.

  But I gave her exactly what she wanted.

  Lisa starts looking at the films on Netflix and I rest my head on my hand, still able to smell her on my fingers.

  16

  The next day I get up and Flora has already left.

  Lisa quickly gets a coffee to go, asks me when I’ll be back, kisses me on the cheek, and leaves.

  And I’m left alone.

  And this is unusual.

  Flora did not say that she would home after school. No implication that she wished to meet me. No sexy eyes over the breakfast table, no teasing me with that skirt, nothing.

  I try to understand why, try to replay the previous evening, wondering whether there was something I did that upset her.

  But, see, this is the difficult part.

  I’m not so good with the human elements of humans. I can never understand why people don’t just say that they mean. Everything has to be such an enigma. “Well that was long” never means “that was long” – it means something else. Like it was boring, or too much, or I don’t know, I never know, I try to but it’s something I just can’t decipher.

  It’s called subtext.

  I read about it in that book written by that FBI body language expert. He said that everything is subtext. That every word that comes out of a person’s mouth has something attached to it, just as every movement or body stance is influenced by our subconscious.

  But I don’t have anything attached to anything I say.

  I say things as I mean them. I mean things as I say them. I articulate the elephant in the room and I give my observation on it. I never pretend to do anything but.

  I decide I will go to Flora’s school. I won’t go in, and I won’t approach, but I will go and watch and see if I can see her and see what kind of mood she’s in. If she’s crying, maybe it’s because of me. If she’s saying something, maybe I could try to lipread it and figure out what the subtext is.

  She will be in lessons until eleven, however, and I will not be able to see her before break time. So I stop at Carluccio’s for breakfast, only to find the damn thing is closed.

  How is it closed?

  What’s more, it’s closed indefinitely. There is a sign reading Carluccio’s will be closed following a family emergency.

  Well, could my luck get any worse?

  I search for somewhere else that does fine dining within the same region, but all I find is a town centre full of vagabonds and the unemployed. After running out of time, I resort to the nearest coffee shop where I get a bacon roll to go only to find that the fat is still attached to the bacon and the roll hasn’t even been buttered. I would pull the bacon out and eat it on its own, but I
would end up with greasy hands for the rest of the day. That is why we are given knives and forks.

  Annoyed at the inconvenience, I return to the school empty-bellied and irritable.

  I hear the bell go for break time and I wait and I can see nothing from where I am parked. I decide there will be no harm in getting out, in just walking past the school. Many people walk past the school, it will make no difference if I am seen. I’ll just be a passer-by. Another inconspicuous stranger.

  So I do, sticking close to the fence, and I can see them all there, in the yard, walking and talking, some playing football, some sitting around chewing gum with open mouths. It is a playpen of morbid potential. So many unpainted canvasses waiting to be covered in shit.

  And I see her.

  Flora.

  On her own.

  Her arms are folded. Her body hunched. The book said this is negative body language. Like she is either upset or angry or something along those lines – honestly, it wasn’t too specific.

  She goes into her bag and takes out a chocolate bar. She unwraps it.

  Then she sees something.

  Distracted, she walks up to a girl. A girl with pig tails, her body not as developed as Flora’s, perhaps a first or second year, who is also on her own. This girl is crying.

  Flora offers her the chocolate and she turns it away. Flora seems to insist, eventually placing it beside the girl and lifting her arms in the air as if to say well I am not going to have it so you may as well. In the end, this girl takes the chocolate bar and reluctantly eats it, then gives Flora a grateful smile.

  “Oh my God,” comes the brattish voice of a girl with layers of foundations smacked over her face, standing just outside the school with a cigarette in her hand. If the hideous makeup that she must have awoken in the early hours of the morning to apply did not make her ugly enough, the cigarette did.

  “What?” said a girl not quite as ugly, but getting there, wearing almost as much makeup, like a bad imitation of her friend.

  “Why is Flora talking to Mark’s sister?” the girl asks, every syllable another tone of petulance. “I thought Mark dumped her.”

  “Haven’t you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “Mark didn’t come home last night.”

  The uglier girl drops her cigarette hand to her side and her duck lips stick out like she is feigning concern. It quickly fades away.

  “God,” she says, though it was said more like Ggggodddddddddddd.

  “What?”

  “Mark is such an attention seeker!”

  I must move on, otherwise I will have to kill this girl. Not that I imagine the school would be much the worse with her gone – in fact, I imagine there would be a great many students who would no longer be bullied.

  As I leave, I keep my eyes on Flora. She talks to this younger girl, engages with her, sits beside her and even puts an arm around her.

  She’s good, my Flora.

  I return to my car and decide I will come home after lunch at the normal time.

  Flora will be there.

  I’m sure she will.

  But what I find when I walk through the door at 3.28 was not what I expected.

  17

  She’s sat at the kitchen with no lights on. Curtains are drawn. The timer of the oven reflects a small, green glow on the back of her head, but that’s it.

  And she’s eating cereal.

  In the afternoon.

  A massive bowl full of cereal.

  I know she knows I’m here as I shut the front door loud enough to announce my presence.

  I stand and watch her for a minute.

  She doesn’t turn around. Doesn’t react. Just stares straight ahead, eating cereal, contours of shadows outlining the beauty of her face.

  “When is your mother getting back?” I ask her.

  She doesn’t react. I keep staring, awaiting my answer, and eventually she gives the slightest shrug of the shoulders.

  I step toward her, but I don’t touch her, nor do I enter her personal space.

  Again, this is behaviour I don’t understand, and it frustrates me so. Why does she proceed to confuse me?

  It is much better when she looks at me with those fuck-me eyes and freckles on her nose and has already discarded her underwear.

  Eventually, she speaks.

  “Mark’s missing,” she says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Mark. You know, the guy I was dating.”

  “Yes, I am fully aware of who Mark is.”

  “Well done, you.”

  “He is the gay one.”

  “Full marks again.”

  “What of him?”

  The spoon pauses halfway to her mouth as she turns and looks at me and I think I see anger, I think I see hurt.

  “Did you not listen?”

  “To what?”

  “I said he’s missing.”

  I already know this.

  “Oh no. Do they know who did it?”

  “Who did what?”

  “… Killed him.”

  “I didn’t say someone killed him, I said he is missing!”

  She throws the still half-full bowl into the sink and it clatters so loudly it makes my head throb. She charges toward the stairs, perhaps about to storm up to her room, and I wonder if that’s because that’s where she wants us to fuck, but then she stops.

  She turns slowly, and she looks at me.

  I mean, really looks at me.

  Like she’s picking me apart. Like she’s reassembling my pieces and putting the puzzle back together again.

  It’s a look I’ve never seen before.

  It’s a look I do not understand.

  And it makes me angry, but I try not to let it.

  I don’t want to hurt Flora.

  I don’t.

  Not unless I have to.

  “Do you even care?” she asks.

  “About what?”

  “About Mark, for fuck’s sake!”

  She’s shouting now. I’m not sure why, I can hear her fully well, but she’s shouting.

  “What about him?”

  “That he’s missing.”

  “Has it upset you?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.”

  “The guy who dumps me because he’s gay goes missing and you ask me if I’m upset? What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Oh, a great, great many things, Flora my dear.

  “Why is that relevant?” I ask.

  “Don’t you get it? What if he hurt himself? What if he – he – he went and did something because he was upset, because I reacted like a bitch when he told me?”

  Her shouting trails off and she leans against the wall and puts her head in her arms.

  She really cares. I can see that.

  But I’m not entirely sure what about.

  Is it Mark?

  Is it me? Have I done something to upset her?

  “Did you want me to fuck you slow?” I ask. “Would that make you feel better?”

  “Jesus Fucking Christ, is that all you ever think about?”

  I don’t understand why she’s shouting again.

  Please stop shouting, Flora.

  You’re better than that.

  And I don’t want to hurt you.

  “Someone is missing, someone I – I fucking cared about, and it might be because of me, because of how I reacted, and you are just asking how I want to be fucked?”

  I look back at her. I know I’m supposed to say something but I’m not sure what.

  “You’re sick,” she tells me, and even though it is in the young person vernacular to refer to something that is good as sick, I do not believe that is what she’s doing now.

  I step forward and she flinches away, so I step forward again and grab her arms so she can’t. I run my hand down her cheek and she bats my arm away, so I hold her tighter, and I lean in and I kiss her.

  This is what she wants,
isn’t it?

  What she asked for the last few times?

  For something gentler. Something with kissing.

  Well that’s what I’m giving her, yet she doesn’t seem to like it.

  In fact, as soon as she bites my lip and I instinctively pull away, I learn that she does not like it.

  I taste blood.

  She looks up at me, her hair a mess, my hand still on her arms, the rest of her body recoiling away.

  Maybe I was wrong.

  Maybe she does want to be fucked hard.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “What is it you want?”

  “What is it I want?”

  “Yes!”

  She glares at me, looks at me so cruelly.

  “Not you,” she says.

  “Excuse me?”

  I can’t have heard her correctly.

  “Not. You.”

  No, I did.

  I know as she enunciated each of those words with clarity and venom.

  I understand now.

  She’s fucking with me.

  She’s playing hard to get.

  “Fine,” I say, and I grab her hair, and I go to turn her around and I hike up her skirt but she screams, “No!” and she drags herself out of my reach and runs to the other side of the kitchen and I’m stood looking at her, perplexed.

  She’s out of breath, but I don’t know why as I haven’t even done anything to her yet.

  She shakes her head.

  I look around. It’s still so dark.

  “It’s over,” she says.

  “What’s over?”

  She scoffs and looks around as if trying to find an invisible person for affirmation.

  “Us,” she says. “This. Whatever sordid game we are playing. Whatever it is, it is over.”

  Wait… what?

  She’s can’t be in a right mind.

  This whole Mark thing has messed with her head.

  Maybe she just needs to lie down.

  Or maybe she just needs to feel me inside of her again.

  I know she’ll want me if she feels me inside of her.

  I go to move toward her, but she shifts so the kitchen side remains between us.

  “Flora, what are you doing?” I ask.

  “I’m keeping away from you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you are sick and demented, and if you come near me, I will scream, and I swear, I will tell my mum about this.”