The Seven Days of Peter Crumb

by Jonny Glynn

  ‘You’re German,’ I immediately blurted.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and we paused and took stock.

  ‘Well I never,’ I said. ‘I know a German–he’s called Dieter. He sells drugs. Do you know him?’

  They looked at each other and then back at me. Their disturbed expressions jellied into clotted consternation. There was another pause. It made me nervous and suddenly I felt I had to say something, so I said the only thing I know how to say in German: ‘Arbeit macht frei!’ And then raised my eyebrows and smiled. It was idiotic, and insensitive. I felt foolish and looked away.

  The television was flickering in the corner–an Asian homosexual was solemnly regurgitating the day’s events…I thought for a moment and then remembered that there’s an order in which things are done, and that asking people their names is one of the first things to do when getting to know.

  ‘What are your names?’ I politely enquired. They again looked at each other. And then back at me.

  ‘My name’s Beth, and this is Adrian.’ She sounded embarrassed. Her voice was wavering. He said nothing. The wimp. It was obvious who wore the trousers in this relationship. There was another pause–unbearably long, yawning between us. Not a lively pair of conversationalists, these two, I thought–no, they’re the sort that suck, that’s what they are–drains, not radiators. It made me angry and I felt my blood thickening. Everything was awkward and tangibly at odds. It’s funny what uncomfortable creatures human beings are, how sticky and anile we feel with each other.

  ‘I see you’ve got the floorboard effect,’ I randomly continued, clutching at conversational straws, crossing my legs and noticing my toenails. They’re a fearsome sight, I haven’t cut them in ages. Dirty cracked yellow talons curling beneath me. I felt dirty and neglected like an Archway schnorrer.

  ‘It’s a popular look these days, isn’t it?’ I went on. ‘The floor effect…That’ll be why I’m always hearing you pacing…Yes, and bashing about, dropping things…Fucking great clattering noises you two make, don’t you? Scares the fucking wits out of me sometimes. All of a sudden a great fucking smashing noise and then the pacing up and down and it all echoes with a floor like that, doesn’t it?…It’s like a bloody echo chamber in here, isn’t it?…And I can hear you piss!’ I chuckled, pointing at Adrian and winking at Beth. ‘He goes like a bloody horse, doesn’t he?’

  She wasn’t amused.

  ‘I prefer a carpet myself,’ I went on. ‘But there you are, it takes all sorts…’

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say after that and so stopped, uncrossed my legs, leant forward, tucked my palms beneath my knees and stared at my cock through a fold in my overcoat. I used to sit like this when I was a little boy, I thought, and I remembered myself aged ten. I suddenly felt very weak and yielding…What am I doing? I thought. Why on earth had I intruded on these people? The edges of my mouth peeled south. Here they were quietly enjoying their evening, watching the news, about to go to bed and perhaps have a bunk-up, and then I barge in, scaring them and disgracing myself. I felt a heated pang of intense conscience hit me. It surged from deep inside me and scoured through me. There it is, I thought–you see, you do have a conscience, you’re a good man, Crumb. And then for a moment, a very brief moment, I felt happy. Happy in a sad way. Conscious of myself in an innocent way, guileless and free, ten years old and unafraid. Yes, I thought, you’re all right, Crumb–you’re a good man at heart…And then my testicles heaved, my scrotum contracted, my skin horripilated and a mad rash of goose pimples ran villainously over my thighs and up my spine, tingling me with a devilish cold. I felt ridiculous and emotional, and started scratching myself and crossing and uncrossing my ankles. I felt exposed and guilty. I pulled my coat close around me, and thought of him downstairs, the canker, hiding in the wardrobe and blushed.

  Beth, being a woman, immediately sensed this change in me and then, being a woman, immediately went on the offensive. Wielding gentleness and calm she softly said, ‘Well, it’s nice to have met you, Peter…But it’s late now and we were just about to go to bed…So if you don’t mind…Perhaps we’ll see you again soon.’ And then she smiled. But it wasn’t like Milka’s smile. There was something wrong with it. Something not quite right about it. And she knew it. I held her gaze, remained seated, and said nothing. The atmosphere soured. I took a deep breath, sighed with obvious disappointment and then started wriggling my toes on the plastic floorboards, making a scratching noise with my toenails that sounded like insects scuttling. They were watching me, intently–uncertain of how to proceed, how to get rid of me. Adrian was still holding the plate with the scone. He looked like such a twat.

  ‘You are going to eat that scone, aren’t you?’ I enquired with a nonchalant but caustic aggression.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he nervously replied, smiling falsely.

  ‘Go on then.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know that I’m going to eat it this instant. I thought I might perhaps have it a little later.’

  ‘You said you were about to go to bed.’

  ‘Well yes, I mean–I thought I might have it in the morning and then pop the plate round.’

  I paused in the clichéd dramatic fashion and then said, very deliberately said: ‘I think you should eat it now.’

  He looked at me and sort of laughed as though I were joking. I remained silent, deadly serious, staring at him. ‘Eat it now,’ I demanded, raising my voice. He looked alarmed. ‘I’m sorry to be so suspicious but you know what people are like. You can’t trust anybody these days,’ I indignantly asserted, raising my eyebrows. ‘For all I know, the moment I’ve gone, you’re going to throw it in the bin. So if you don’t mind–I think it’s the least you can do, after all the trouble I’ve been to digging it up. If you don’t mind–I don’t think I’m being unreasonable–I’d like to see you eat it.’ I stopped and waited to see what the gutless little bed-wetter would do.

  ‘I don’t really feel like it at the moment,’ he replied, trying to assert himself.

  ‘Well, perhaps Beth wants it,’ I said, upping the ante.

  ‘Look,’ he said with a certain swagger, intervening, determined not to make a complete coward of himself. ‘I’m sorry to have to say this, but could you please just leave.’

  I gave him the long pause, and the look that goes with it. I could hear them both breathing–it was funny, their breathing was backward, like mine in the morning. I saw his right hand tremble and the scone wobble. Beth was more together. She calmly lifted her palm and said, placating, ‘We’re very tired, Peter.’ Cunning use of my name, I thought, making it personal–I bet she’s been on a course and had training. ‘We’ve had a long hard day, it’s very nice to meet you, and thank you for the scone, but we’d like to go to bed now, Peter.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Beth, but in England we simply don’t behave in this way. I’m not going until I’ve seen you eat that scone. And then I’ll take my plate and go.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ Adrian suddenly burst out, pushing the plate and scone back towards me. ‘Take your bloody plate and go!’

  I looked at him and started laughing in a very demeaning, sneering and spiteful way, which really seemed to ignite him.

  ‘Look,’ he said huffing and puffing, ‘if you don’t go I’m going to have to call the police.’

  ‘And what are they going to do, Adrian? Arrest me for being neighbourly?’

  ‘Look, we’ve tried to be polite. I’m asking you one last time–please will you leave.’

  ‘Not until you’ve eaten that scone.’

  ‘Take your plate and go.’

  ‘It’s not about the fucking plate!’ I barked, angrily jumping to my feet and wildly swinging my arm, violently cracking Adrian across his face, knocking the plate out of his hands and sending the scone flying across the room. It hit the wall, stuck for a moment, and then fell to the floor. The plate smashed, shattering to pieces, and clattering everywhere with great effect.

  ‘All right, all right,’ Adria
n protested–panicking, his voice faltering with tearful mobility. ‘Please–calm down, everything’s all right. I’ll eat the bloody scone.’ And then they both fell to their knees and hurriedly picked the damp soggy soiled lumps of crumbling scone up off the floor and tossed them into their frightened mouths.

  There was a pause…Quite a long pause…All three of us were wondering what was going to happen next. I stood over them, staring down at them, cowering at my feet. They were utterly terrified–their faces were twitching and blinking. Adrian’s leg was shaking uncontrollably like a frightened dog. It was truly pathetic. They had sublimated their will entirely to mine. And all it took was one cuff across his chops. What cosseted lives they must have led. Beth was making whimpering noises and crying, shaking and moaning. Her tears, her fear, her confusion, her helplessness were all undoing her, drawing her backwards into herself, a terrified foetal hysteria gestating into desperation. She wanted Adrian–‘her man’–to do something. But she knew he wouldn’t, she knew there was nothing within his impotent resources that he could do. I stared at them and felt my face break into that slow malevolent sneer. I know I was being a bully, but the fuckers deserved it. He was such a little twerp. He was so wet and pathetic and weak. He could have said no–he could have protested, stood up for himself and fought me–he could have risked something–the spineless, gutless coward. It’s not like I was bigger than him, if anything he was bigger than me. It enraged me–such yellow timidity. What kind of a sex life must these two have–I bet she’s always on top, it’s the fashion these days.

  I was about to turn and leave when I noticed that Adrian’s attention had been drawn towards the television. I turned and looked. At first I was confused–I didn’t quite understand what I was seeing, or rather I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. For there in front of me on their television screen was a scratchy tinted picture taken from a CCTV camera of me. Quite unmistakably me. That handsome but melancholy devil that I wake up to every day was there before me–live on regional television. The Sudder Street scandal in all its lurid gruesome glory was being broadcast to the region–and there I was, ‘wanted’ for questioning by a troubled-looking Detective Inspector John Marsden. He used the words ‘ferocious’ and ‘vicious’ and ‘wild’ and ‘savage’. He might have used the word ‘evil’, I thought, but he didn’t, they’re so secular, the police. He said someone must know this man, and warned, ‘If you see him do not approach him.’ Well well well, I thought–I’m a celebrity!

  I calmly picked up the remote control and turned the television off. Beth and Adrian were now silent and staring at me–their eyes wide, Beth’s mouth again open. In spite of the ash and bruises they knew it was me, there was no mistaking it. I turned and walked quickly out of the sitting room, down the corridor and into their kitchen. I knew what I had to do. I had to kill them both. Not to do so was not an option, there was no doubt in my mind–it was a matter of conscience. I had to do it. I pulled a large murderous-looking carving knife from the magnetic strip next to the oven and returned to the sitting room.

  Adrian was reaching for the telephone, his fingers panicking, fumbling, trying to dial, but he didn’t have enough time. I swung my arm fast and stabbed him in the side of his neck. The blade entered his throat behind his Adam’s apple, passed swiftly through his neck and then emerged, bloodily, out the other side. I twisted the blade and then sliced the knife forward, out through the front of his throat, severing his neck in two. A torrent of blood spurted in all directions, cascading down the front of him and all over me. He fell to his knees and then slumped forward into the large white armchair. I turned to face Beth. She was standing stock still, frozen, with her hands to her mouth. Without hesitation I stabbed her in the stomach. It was strange. Stabbing someone is not as easy as you may think. The blade entered her belly and then, after about two inches’ penetration, stopped. Her stomach muscles were gripping the blade. I had to really force the remaining six inches into her, and turning the blade inside her, to make sure the wound was fatal, proved almost impossible–and pulling the blade back out of her required maximum strength and both hands. But I got it done. She fell to the floor and rolled onto her back, holding her belly and bleeding profusely. It was shocking to see just how much blood there was. In the moments that it took to dispatch them–and it was only moments–a massive amount of blood had been spilt, and neither of them were yet dead. Adrian was holding his throat, opening and closing his mouth, coughing up great mouthfuls of blood. Beth lay perfectly still, pressing her palms against her wound, hopelessly trying to staunch the flow. Thankfully neither of them was making too much noise, so I sat down on the sofa and waited for them both to die. It was at this point that I noticed I had an enormous erection–but I paid it no mind.

  Adrian died quite quickly, overacting all the way. His jugular had been cut and he was losing massive amounts of blood. It took only minutes, but he played every moment to the hilt–coughing and spluttering and…honestly, I thought, he’s going for the fucking Oscar! But then, quite comically, he just stopped and was dead, and that was that. Beth on the other hand gave a much more understated performance. She simply lay there holding her stomach, taking slow shallow breaths. She must have been in extraordinary pain but you wouldn’t have known it to look at her. She looked like she had a bit of a headache or a mild period pain, nothing more serious than that. She didn’t cry, she didn’t call out, she didn’t even moan–Germans, I thought, there’s restraint for you. She would occasionally close her eyes and then open them again–a sort of extended blinking–but other than that, nothing–no histrionics, no carry-on at all. Bravo, I thought. Good for you, Beth. Dignified even in death. She rolled her head to face me, her spectacles fell and she put her eyes on me–her pretty hazel eyes, watching me…And then it struck me–she was really quite attractive. I hadn’t noticed before, but looking at her now, laid out on the floor before me–so quiet and still–she was really very attractive. Not beautiful, but handsome. Her features were strong, carved with a wanton brooding intensity. Her hair was dark and scattered wildly about her. She was wearing a simple green springtime dress–a halter neck, I think they call it. The ones without a back where the front ties behind the neck, the kind of dress you can’t wear a bra with, the kind of dress you can peel a girl out of with ease. Her skin was a faded olive grey, her lips a matching blue, full and round and endlessly kissable. Her thighs were fuller than the fashion of today allows and her legs proportionally shorter than her body, but her bosom was ample and her lines curvaceous. Yes, I thought–you’re really very handsome, aren’t you, Beth? Comely, womanly and sensual. Yes, I thought–a sensualist. Her feet were bare and only inches from mine, and such pretty little feet they were too–cute, pudgy little feet with tiny toes and painted nails, a bright slut red, very racy. I extended my foot towards hers and gently started to tickle the wrinkled folded undersides of her arches with my toenails–scratching and teasing. Her toes twitched and then twitched again, she was still alive. Our eyes met–her pretty hazel eyes and mine, held, as the morbid pull of sex and death prickled between us and a perverted hankering stirred in my loins. My erection remembered and its purple end throbbed…I got up, grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her down the corridor towards the bedroom. Polished imitation laminate wood flooring is ideal for dragging bodies hither and thither.

  THURSDAY

  We woke with our ankles tangled, spooning. The forbidding intimacy of skin on skin, her nakedness and ruin cold in my arms, and the sour stink of blood and death and murder pungent in the stale air. A nightmare of thoughts and feelings was seething in my soul. What had I done?

  He was standing in the corner of the room, watching me, his rotten allies–memory, conscience and evil–crowding in behind. I waited for him to speak, to drool his mean good morning, but he didn’t, he just stared at me and said nothing. It was strange, but I didn’t panic, quite the reverse, I felt a profound calm–an obliging, relaxed quiescence, easy in my bones. Ahh–I thought�
�the effects of an expensive mattress, and duck-down pillows. Normally I wake in excruciating pain, but not today, today I am calm and relaxed. I know this will sound odd, but I felt like a pregnant woman. That is to say, I felt superior in my human qualities.

  I got up and wandered through into the sitting room, following the blood trail and taking in the sights. A veritable bloodbath of butchery, carnage and slaughter. I’ve never seen so much blood and viscera–ripped, torn, gutted, splattered and smeared. All over the walls, all over the floor, all over the furniture, and all over me. Blood upon blood upon blood. A scene of brutal cruelty, of unimaginable suffering. Abominable, wicked and evil, and the slow dawning realization that it was all mine…I did this. I did it. I slit his throat. I gutted his wife. I took her and used her. I put my evil into her, as she lay dying…I did this.

  But as I said, I didn’t panic. I calmly ran a bath and had a good soak, availed myself of Beth and Adrian’s extensive range of lotions, oils and unguents, scrubbed myself clean, shaved, washed my hair and cut my toenails…I got out of the bath a new man–a coconut-and-apple-scented man, exfoliated, cleansed and conditioned. I sat on the edge of the bath and stared at myself in the mirror. There was something different, something had changed, there was an otherness about me that puzzled and held me in vain regard for some time. My peeled-clean nakedness an admirable delight to behold…And the scab on my ankle is healing.

  He seemed different too. He was sitting on the toilet, musing…He seemed sombre, and still hadn’t spoken, which, as I’ve said, I did think was strange. He’s a chatterer by nature, not the taciturn type at all. Neurotic in his need to be thinking, and even more so in his urge for it all to be out loud. But not this morning. It was as if he was trying to remember something but couldn’t, and was stuck on the same thought–locked in a moment’s recollection that he couldn’t escape. He also seemed to fear me, and know, instinctively, that I was not the sort of man that one should anger. It pleased me, and I had a good dump, Grade 1 on the Bristol–‘hard lumps like nuts’. Painfully slow movers, and a sure sign of dehydration. I had to really push, forcing them out one by one–which was a mistake, one should never push. In consequence my haemorrhoids were raging. Fortunately, Beth and Adrian were also sufferers of the itch that knows no shame, and a well-thumbed tube of Anusol was close at hand and quick to find. He applied it liberally and internally using the special applicator, which was a shrewd move–it brought its blessed relief on pronto. It also broke the silence. He joked that it was like the Napa Valley between my cheeks and that he’d never seen my grapes so swollen. It made me chuckle and the atmosphere between us lightened. I think we’ve turned a corner, me and him, we’re getting on with each other much better now, and it’s nice. I think we’re friends again.