Tuesdays Are Just As Bad

by Cethan Leahy

  ‘Gosh, aren’t we very smart?’

  She couldn’t continue, as uncontrollable giggles had taken over. Adam joined in with his own giggles, which when combined mutated into out and out laughter. Unimpressed, their table neighbour glared, but they didn’t notice.

  ‘No, it was pretty rubbish,’ said Aoife.

  ‘I hadn’t a clue what was going on. To be honest, I was hoping for dinosaurs.’

  ‘Dinosaurs would have been good. French ones.’

  ‘They could wear stripy jumpers.’

  ‘Ride bicycles!’

  ‘Carry baguettes with their tiny arms!’

  ‘Excuse me,’ said the man sitting next to them, ‘I’m trying to eat my meal in peace!’ They both said sorry, and continued eating their burgers in silence until Adam stopped and took a breath.

  ‘Aoife?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Je suis un grand T-Rex!’

  They both burst out laughing.

  To finish the evening, they took a walk along the river towards the Lee Fields. The sky was dark. Their conversation had begun to become embarrassingly sincere. They discussed many things, like their houses, school and other inane subjects. They started to talk about our writing.

  ‘I liked your new story,’ said Aoife, ‘the one with the trees. It’s a bit creepy. My kind of thing.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m glad you liked it. I’m only starting to properly write things down. But I’m enjoying it.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve written stories for years. I’ve piles of them at home.’

  ‘Why did you start writing?’ Adam said.

  ‘I read a lot so it seemed like the right thing to do. You?’ Aoife said.

  ‘Ah, I don’t read that much. I just kind of like writing. It makes me feel … in control of things.’

  Aoife took a moment, glanced along the water. ‘Actually I do have another reason for writing. Have you ever noticed that books have a default?’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘Sorry. You know if you are reading a book and the lead character’s appearance isn’t described in detail that, you know, they could be anyone from anywhere. Like, no one specifically says that Matilda isn’t Chinese.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But she’s not Chinese. We assume she is not, because we have a default in our head. Unless it’s said otherwise, we assume she is a white English kid because she probably is a white English kid. And it’s the same in loads of books. We can pretend they aren’t necessarily one thing, but we know that they are because there is no reason to think they are not.’

  ‘I guess,’ Adam said.

  ‘So when I write a story, I know it’s me because I wrote it.’

  ‘But you write about spaceships, wizards, vampires and things.’

  ‘That’s because I want to meet vampires and go on spaceships and things.’

  Adam walked along some more without saying anything, considering what Aoife had said. ‘I kinda see what you mean.’

  ‘I’m just saying I don’t want to be hidden in my own books. So even if I don’t say it, I know it’s me! I want to do all the things – romance, adventure, horror, you know … stuff!’

  ‘Well, maybe I can help you with the first one of those,’ said Adam.

  Aoife laughed. ‘Mr Murphy, that was a bold segue.’

  ‘It was,’ he said, surprised by his own charm. He wasn’t the only one.

  Adam and Aoife drew in closer. The light of the street lamp above them illuminated their faces, as he pushed the hair from her cheek. They pressed their faces together. This seemed to last a long time and, once they kissed, it seemed to release a dam of pent-up smooching as they pressed their mouths together repeatedly.

  Eventually they stopped and began walking back towards town, dopily holding hands, refusing to break apart even when it was necessary and interrupting their walk many times to kiss again, expanding a twenty-minute walk to nearly an hour. They laughed and invented jokes and were generally being cute. It was nauseating. If I had a stomach, it would have been turning.

  Their final kiss of the night was when she grabbed her bus home, her standing on the bus reaching down for one last memento. The bus left and they waved goodbye to each other as if it would be the last time they would ever see each other. Adam walked away from the bus stop and a few moments later there was a beep from his pocket. He checked it, smiled and responded immediately.

  ‘Ahem,’ I said, clearing my nonexistent throat.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Heh, I completely forgot you were there.’

  I’d noticed.

  ‘How do you think the date went? Oh wait, I got a message. Give me a second.’

  I said nothing but this didn’t bother him. It bothered me, though.

  Twenty-Five

  A few days later, Aoife was waiting at the school gates for him. I felt this was an early warning sign of clinginess and told Adam as much.

  ‘Stop being weird,’ he said.

  ‘Well, maybe you should stop talking to yourself,’ I said.

  He ignored me. As we approached, she put on a mock impressed expression.

  ‘You, sir, go to a fancy school,’ she said teasingly.

  ‘It’s not that … well, of course, here at St Jude’s we produce a higher class of boy, future leaders some may say,’ Adam said. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here.’

  ‘We finished early today because … actually, I don’t know the reason. Someone was visiting, I think. Anyway, I thought I’d ogle your handsome schoolmates.’

  ‘Oh really? Is the ogling good so far?’

  ‘Not great, but it did improve considerably a moment ago.’

  ‘I’m sure it did.’

  They kissed and I realised this would probably become a regular thing. Yay.

  I noticed that as the other students passed there was a general look of approval. Clearly Adam having a girlfriend was a positive development in their eyes.

  In an effort to enjoy the flouting of their new social arrangement, the couple walked into town, holding hands like two otters in a pond. (Aoife had sent Adam a YouTube video of this earlier in the week. It was, admittedly, adorable.) Their hands were so tightly clasped together that it took a second too long to separate when they entered a favoured café. Linda spotted it and Aoife spotted Linda spotting it.

  ‘Ah … his hand was cold. Very poor circulation,’ said Aoife.

  ‘It’s true. I should buy gloves immediately,’ affirmed Adam.

  Linda shook her head.

  ‘Really? Aoife? Adam? I find that hard to believe. Not because I know for sure whether or not our friend here has a circulation problem, but I do notice flushed cheeks, coy smiles, little glances – all classic signs of hanky panky. Canoodling. Pitching woo.’

  ‘Canoodling!’ shouted Douglas, who was waiting at the counter for his food. ‘What romantic entanglement am I not privy to?’

  ‘Aoife and Adam! They’ve been kissing!’ Linda shouted.

  ‘My word! That is news!’ Douglas shouted.

  ‘AHEM,’ said the man behind the counter, pointing at a sign that read ‘No Shouting’.

  ‘Oh, you’ve got a sign and everything for it now,’ said Douglas. ‘That should really cut down on those loud scallywags.’

  The man sighed loudly and handed him his sandwich.

  They all convened together. ‘I’m not going to lie. I’m not surprised at this news. I’m not happy, but this is entirely due to my rejection of any sentimental romance. So I won’t give you my blessing, but I will also not object to it.’

  ‘That’s as good as it gets,’ said Linda. ‘Hey, did you get me chips?’

  ‘Get your own chips.’

  ‘You know they won’t sell them on their own, only as a side. They even made a sign for it.’

  ‘They have really gotten into making signs recently, and not fun ones like the orange making friends with the ice cream,’ said Aoife.

  ‘Balls. I’ll have to wait till I get home. Oh, that reminds me, I’m having
a birthday party next weekend.’

  ‘Who’s invited?’

  ‘Me, you three, Barry.’

  Douglas gave a very audible sniff. I took it that Douglas and Barry had not mended fences.

  ‘That’s it. Oh, and maybe Sinead,’ said Linda.

  ‘I’m avoiding Sinead,’ said Douglas. ‘Since the addition of the drum machine, she wants to push The Spoken Mystics in more of an electronic direction. I refuse to, naturally, as I don’t have an electro haircut.’

  ‘Oh, and since it’s only a few days before Halloween, it’s a costume party! And as it’s my birthday you can’t not dress up.’

  ‘Did you ever have concerns about the fact you’re born so close to our most pagan of holidays?’ said Douglas.

  ‘I haven’t. Although it would explain my mysterious floating over my bed.’

  Everything was just getting worse and worse. From then on, Adam and Aoife would become ‘Adam & Aoife’. Frankly I found it rather insidious. Two people becoming one unit, this inseparable union of opinions and thoughts. I’m only able to communicate with one person, so I didn’t want to only speak to half of one.

  Ghost Sickness

  by Adam Murphy

  All night, every night I heard that damned whistle. It was a dry, long tune that may have once been merry, but has since been drained entirely of happiness. It haunted me. I couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t escape it. It came from beneath the bed which had served as my prison for so long.

  It was a wintery May. My forehead burned hot and my feet ran cold. I was very ill this time, not the worst spell I had encountered but very bad indeed. I’m habitually sick, almost an unwanted hobby that my body insists on indulging. I spend most of my year under these stiff sheets, only occasionally strong enough to venture outside onto the balcony.

  ‘You’ll be okay, Tom. You have nothing to worry about,’ my wife said. When I am ill, my beloved Harmony was usually my caretaker. Our relationship started like that. She was my nurse and, out of either affection or pity, she fell in love with me. We married and now she makes sure that I eat my food, take my pills.

  Last week, I asked her if she could hear the whistle.

  ‘What whistle?’ she said. I could see she had no idea what I was saying.

  ‘Nothing. It must be a bird,’ I said. I did not feel the need to worry her unnecessarily.

  ‘There are sparrows a lot this time of year. Do they whistle?’

  ‘I don’t know. I guess they must.’ Thus the whistle remained my terrible secret, a ghost noise that eluded all but me.

  As she carried out her tasks, it taunted me, drove me mad. I needed to know what it was. An enemy? My dear beloved gaslighting me? No, I was being paranoid. It was probably something as simple as wind passing through some obscure route from the pipes below the floorboards. It was an old house, perfectly suitable for haunting by malignant spirits.

  When she left and I attempted to sleep, the whistling continued. To distract myself, I grabbed a dusty book of interesting facts and I read them out. ‘This is something interesting,’ I said to the air. ‘Did you know that when members of Native American tribes became ill, some blamed their malady on the presence of a deceased enemy or relative, a spirit trying to ruin them or take them to the afterlife?’

  In response, the whistle persisted, but this time it played an old cowboy tune I recognised from a western I had seen as a child. This was a new development.

  ‘Are you such a dreadful apparition? Are you my deceased aunt who died at sea one Christmas morning?’

  The whistle changed to a sea shanty. ‘What shall we do with a drunken sailor?’ it asked. Clearly it was mocking me now.

  I lay there as it blew jaunty sailor songs over and over. When I heard the grandfather clock in the hall strike 12 midnight, I decided that enough was enough. With a mighty heave, I pushed myself off the bed and onto the floor in a heap of blankets and bones. The whistle made a winding down noise, which finished with a bum note. Once I recovered my breath, I looked underneath my bed but all I could see was a dark chasm, a contained void that was deep and infinite.

  ‘Show yourself!’ I said. Instead it whistled a taunting tune, which I recognised but could not place. With my hand I opened a drawer in my nightstand. Groping, I found what I was looking for, a book of matches. I lit one of the two remaining sticks but it illuminated nothing. I flicked it in but it was swallowed by the sheer darkness.

  The whistling was louder and faster. It was driving me mad. I needed some relief. I needed to see what was making that bloody noise.

  I pulled out a page from a book that was resting on the nightstand. Using my one remaining matchstick, I set it alight. Holding it up like a makeshift torch, I pushed it in underneath. Still nothing.

  I could smell burning fabric. The sheets! I’d set the bed on fire. I attempted to pull out my hand but something grabbed it!

  ‘Let go, you monster!’ I shouted. But it held my arm in place. I couldn’t see it but I could feel its cold hand, its long nails digging into my flesh. The flame was scorching the bed above it. Soon the whole bed was alight and the flames could not be stopped. My blankets, my pillows, my sheets disintegrating before my eyes.

  Before I got burned, the hand finally let go, and with my remaining strength I rolled away out of danger. Finally I could see them, lit by the fire – a pair of familiar eyes.

  Harmony reappeared in shock. Using a heavy blanket from the cupboard, she doused the flames, but it was too late, the whole thing was destroyed. She looked at me with confusion and I had no explanation for her.

  Well, I won. The whistling stopped, but now I have nowhere to sleep.

  Twenty-Six

  ‘Is that true, the bit about Native Americans?’ asked Dr Moore.

  ‘Yip, at least it says so on the Internet.’

  ‘Well, you can always trust the Internet.’

  ‘It’s called ghost sickness.’

  ‘Oh, of course, that’s the name of the story. Well, I liked it, it was very insightful. A little dark.’

  As an exercise, Dr Moore had asked Adam to show him one of his short stories. So, feeling inspired, he decided to write one specially for the session. I enjoyed working on it, although Adam was a bit more in control of our dynamic than usual, often dismissing my contributions with an ‘I’m not sure that works’ or a ‘That’s good, but it might work better if …’

  ‘They generally are,’ said Adam, leaning back in his chair. He had become significantly more relaxed over these visits; in the beginning he’d perched on the edge of the chair, rigid with tension.

  ‘The supernatural figure in it is interesting,’ said Dr Moore.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Is it?’ I echoed.

  ‘My college minor is English lit, so you’ll have to indulge some academic reading.’

  Adam squirmed a little and looked at me for a second. It seemed like a ‘conversation’ was about to happen.

  ‘The villain is a mysterious figure that only your main character can see and hear. It’s pretty clear.’

  ‘Is it?’ repeated Adam.

  Actually, that did sound familiar. I wondered if the good doctor had figured out what was going on with Adam. After all these weeks had he finally worked out that I was here, following Adam’s every step?

  ‘Clearly this monster is a metaphor for the protagonist’s mental illness, the awful nagging thoughts that make him ill, attacking him when he is low.’

  ‘It is?’ said Adam. ‘But it’s clearly a physical thing. He’s ill.’

  ‘Oh yes, as a metaphor. Often people with mental health issues describe them as physical ailments and they often manifest as such. For example, headaches, sleeping problems, lack of appetite. The brain and body are quite interlinked, you know. Why did you mention familiar eyes at the end?’

  ‘I thought it sounded creepy.’

  ‘Are you sure that was all? A man confined to his bed for reasons beyond his control, who sees very few people. It sounds like the
character was seeing himself … and he didn’t like it.’

  This was a surprise. Questions flooded my mind. Had Adam tricked me? Writing a short story about how much he hates me under my nose? I felt a strange anger rise inside me. Is this what I was to him? A strange whistle under a bed? How pathetic. If he is writing me into stories, I should look like him, except a brooding, handsome version, maybe with black eyes, like a dark double in a movie that the hero must defeat. But no, I’m a pair of eyes and a disembodied hand that makes whistling noises.

  ‘I don’t think it’s about anything, it’s just a silly horror story,’ he said.

  Too late, Adam, I already know what you think.

  ‘If you say so. One last thing, though: I think it’s significant how you end it.’

  ‘Uh …’

  ‘Your character burns the bed, symbolically destroying the life he is confined to, although to his possible detriment.’

  The bell rang. Time was up.

  ‘I’ll just finish my thought. It’s possible this story suggests that you are afraid to get better and leave your bed, as it were, for fear that you will destroy everything–’

  ‘But–’

  ‘… or else you are afraid that you are going to make a rash decision that you feel is out of your control. It’s something to think about.’

  ‘See you next week.’

  ‘See you next week, Adam.’

  We stepped out of the office and I noticed that Adam was scrutinising me.

  ‘I can’t believe you wrote a story about me and made me some kind of monster that is ruining your life,’ I said.

  ‘Hang on, that was just his take on it.’

  ‘Who kept you company all those months before you got your new “friends”?’

  ‘You have literally no choice. And anyway, no one else can see you, so if you didn’t talk to me, you’d have no one,’ he replied.

  ‘Which apparently makes me some fictional demon!’

  ‘Well, to be fair, I don’t know if you are real or just a figment of my imagination.’

  ‘Of course I’m real. I saw Chris before he killed himself, and you didn’t see that,’ I said. I was more defensive than I liked here.