The Spinetinglers Anthology 2009

by Неизвестный

  “I needed this.”

  Her speed increased, catching him by surprise. His mantra went from “I-hate-run-ning” to “Hate-run”. By the time he caught up with her he was down to “hate-hate-hate.”

  “What happened to you?” he gasped, hoping that getting her to talk would slow her down. He hadn’t run since his memory came back and was now regretting it.

  They were nearing the crest of a hill. She took the hint and slowed to a walk. A thin line of sweat showed on the singlet between her breasts and circled the space below her shoulder blades. Her breath came almost normally. “I was on the first year of my doctorate. Mother thought I was run down and wasn’t taking care of myself.”

  “Yeah, mothers,” he said, remembering his own mother and how she had aged during the time he was missing.

  “Yeah, mothers,” said Kate equally softly.

  There was a pause then she went on. “So she took me on a camera safari. One day I was sitting under an umbrella tree, reading, when another party came by. It was lion country so they insisted on me going with them for safety. Then I discovered that I had been missing for almost fourteen months.”

  “Almost?” he queried. “What about days, hours, minutes, seconds?”

  She hit him with her elbow. “I’m not a total time freak,” and took off running again.

  Luckily, the university was in now sight and he had survived.

  ***

  Her rooms were near the back gate of the campus; again with a keypad entrance.

  “Three eight two one,” she told him.

  He liked that, as if she expected him to be a regular visitor.

  They ran the stairs to the second floor. She had a self-contained apartment, with a galley kitchen inserted into the hallway, separate bathroom and a living/sleeping area overlooking the playing fields.

  “I’ll get you a towel,” she said.

  The towel came with a large tee shirt. He held it, thinking of lots of boyfriends or of one at least.

  “My brother’s,” she said, laughing at his uncertainty, and was already stripping as she went out the door.

  Tom decided not to let his imagination follow her into the bathroom. He towelled and changed and checked out her kitchen. He found tins and packets in the cupboards but hardly any fresh food. A tap on the bathroom door brought no response so he sellotaped a notice to the computer screen and went on.

  Going out of the building he had a vague feeling of being watched. Who or why or where from, he couldn’t work out. He laughed at himself as he ran on heavy legs to the campus shop and bought milk, eggs, vegetables and potatoes. On the way back, he detoured by the study block to recover his anorak and satchel.

  When he opened the locker door he got a sense of another person’s presence. He told himself that it was his imagination but checked things out. Nothing appeared to have been touched or moved, the money was still in his wallet, and yet..

  ***

  The potatoes were already boiling when Kate appeared out of the bathroom, dressed in jeans and a Liverpool shirt.

  He ignored her frown of annoyance and said, “I don’t know if you’re a vegetarian so I’m doing a leek-bake.”

  “I don’t want you taking over my life.”

  His finger stabbed at the jeans. “They’re brand new and they’re loose already. What does that tell you?”

  “That it’s none of your business?”

  “That you’re back to not eating properly. No wonder your mother was concerned.”

  “I get enough.”

  “Bollocks! How did you survive the Kalahari on your own?”

  “Serengeti. I was in the Serengeti, not the Kalahari. And I put on weight so I must have eaten well.”

  “You’re lucky the lions didn’t do better.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him.

  He asked. “Do you remember anything?”

  “I have these dreams.”

  Kate shook her head to close off the subject and went on into the living room. When he followed her in with a cup of tea she was working at the computer. His notice was stuck to the wall where she could see it.

  “You’ve put me well behind schedule,” she said by way of thanks.

  There was only the bed or a faintly comfortable armchair for him to sit in. The bed seemed too personal. He sat in the armchair while he drank his tea and thought things over. So far, he’d been operating on instinct and an attraction that surprised him. At least she had stopped giving him those funny looks.

  There was no television, no radio. Not a newspaper. He started to get bored and would have excused himself and gone on except for the promised supper. The potatoes boiled and the leek-bake was quickly made, covered in tinfoil and put in the oven. That left him with at least an hour and a half to kill.

  He gave Kate a fresh cup of tea and was rewarded by her leaning against him for a moment. Then he used the coffee table for his books and put the laptop on his knees. He didn’t so much write up that day’s lecture notes as interrogate them as to what research paths they could lead him down. Somebody had taught him that technique in the past year. He wished he knew whom.

  ***

  To get Kate to come for supper he walked off with the cordless mouse. During the meal he risked kissing her lips; they tasted of butter. She kissed him back. He left it at that because her mind was on her work, not their growing closeness.

  “Food,” he reminded her.

  Again, once started, she ate with relish.

  “What about you,” she asked, and touched her head.

  He smiled. “It’s easy told, harder to explain. Last year I crashed and burned in my end of year exams. All of them.” He threw his arms to the heavens in humorous despair to hide his embarrassment. “Then I went out and got drunk. The next day I sobered up and staggered into the dean’s office and begged to get doing the re-sits. But it wasn’t the next day.”

  She looked at him, her head kinked to the side. “And they let you do them? A year late?”

  “It was “be good to poor Tom” week, and I breezed through them. Breezed.”

  The thought of all that knowledge coming out of nowhere gave him the shivers.

  “And your head?”

  “The hospital did a scan. They think I fell when I was drunk, banged my head and a clot formed causing the amnesia. When it disappeared my memory came back. Except.” He hesitated. Somehow, sitting with Kate it didn’t seem as daft. “One doctor thought it was a more recent injury and that I had been operated on.” He shrugged. “There’s no sign of an invasive procedure, and believe me they looked.”

  His head hurt. It always did when he tried to think of that missing period in his life, though the recurring bouts of pain were beginning to ease. Kate had a frown between her eyes as if her head hurt as well. He knew the only way to ease his headache was to change the subject. He jumped up and cleared away the dishes. Kate went with him, and held him from behind while he washed up.

  “I’ve got five minutes,” she said, as if to explain what she was doing. She put her head against his shoulder and spoke so quietly he had to stop splashing water to hear. “I’m working long hours at the minute. Ideas are just rolling out of me.”

  He turned into her and they held each other tight. She said, “Saturday, if you’re still around.” He smiled at the tease of the ’if and the confident way she said it. She had to know more about their previous time together than he did. We must have jelled, he thought, and felt good about it.

  Her lips were too close not to kiss. She kissed him back then used her fingers to separate their lips. “If you’re still around,” she repeated. “I’ll take the whole day off. We could go somewhere.”

  He knew she was playing with him; there was a glint in her eyes.

  “Where?”

  “The athletic club, it meets Saturday mornings.”

  “Oh God.”

  She laughed. “You can ogle all the girls in their Lycra shorts.”

  They kissed again. This t
ime she let it linger and deepen before pulling away.

  “That,” she said, “Is to make sure you only have eyes for me.”

  She checked her watch and went back to the computer. “Time’s up.”

  ***

  A thought kept spinning in his mind, something the doctor had said about the damage to his brain being a pressure injury, like a sonic boom going off in his head. He finished the washing up and went back to his books. The headache continued to bother him and he gave up studying when he started to feel sick. Too ill to think about returning to his own room, he lay down on the bed.

  It was dark when he woke up, startled out of a dream about walls with eyes. From the residual glow of the computer screen he saw that he was still in Kate’s room, lying on top of the bedclothes.

  Kate’s arm came round his waist and she said, sleepily, “Get into bed properly.”

  The headache had gone, leaving his head full of space and empty of thought. He pulled off his clothes and got in beside her. She was asleep again, whuffling gentle snores.

  His eyes closed. She rolled into him and he jerked awake, convinced that it had been only seconds, but the computer screen was now blank and daylight edged round the heavy curtains. They met lip-to-lip and entwined.

  “Morning,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  Kate lifted her head and peered over him at the bedside clock. “Is that the time? I’ve slept in.”

  She jumped out of bed and ran towards the window, stripping off her nightie as she went.

  She stopped and turned. “It’s not here, the shower. It’s...”

  She held the nightie protectively in front of her, looking vulnerable and frightened. He went to her and soothed her. He knew that they had connected somewhere during their amnesia. It had taken a sonic boom to wipe out his memory. They, whoever “they” were, wouldn’t dare do that to somebody of her intellect in case it caused lasting damage. Eventually she would tell him of her dreams.

  Why us? What did they want of us?

  He asked. “Without contravening the Official Secrets Act – and getting too technical – what is your PhD thesis about?”

  Even thinking about work took away most of her fright.

  She said, “The galaxies in the universe are expanding outwards at ’n’ times the speed of light, where ’n’ is a variable. If we can harness that then we really will have inter-planetary flight.”

  “Bloody hell!”

  She said, “It’s easy, as if I’d written it all before.”

  They clung to each other. Gradually her trembling changed and they kissed. He caressed bare flesh and her hands worked under his borrowed tee shirt.

  Kate looked at her watch, “I’m late already but I could spare fifteen minutes.”

  Tom knew she expected him to slide the nightie from between them. Instead, he eased her onto the bed, making a laugh of tucking the sheet around her neck. Then he checked every wall in the room: tapping and probing to make sure they were made of solid brickwork, even gouged a mark in the plaster with his thumb. Feeling like some psychotic freak he turned the computer screen round until it faced the window and slipped into bed beside her.

  She checked her watch again, and said, “We’ve got eleven minutes, forty-seven seconds.”

  Above them, the light in the smoke alarm blinked.

  Papercut

  by Daniel Llorin Stauffer

  I just wanted to be heard.

  How many days were left now? Thirteen? Seven? No, no more than three, I was sure.

  I stared at the blank page. It shone in the half-darkness. It was like the moon, reflecting light from a sun I couldn’t see. All there was for me was the paper. It was so bright, the only light in the darkness. I cried looking at it, so clean, so perfect.

  So damned empty.

  “Just take your time,” the doctor said, making me jump.

  The doctor was there somewhere, in the darkness outside of the light. Her voice was very clear, soft – demanding. She made me do so many things.

  I took my time. I stared at the paper and cried.

  “What do you see?” the doctor asked, demanded. How many times was it now? I jumped whenever she spoke.

  “Nothing,” I said, sobbing. “Nothing,” I said again, bending over the paper, breaking the light, casting a shadow that splashed like demon blood up from the bottom of the page.

  I screamed and the drawing pad was taken from me. Hands seized me, pushed me down – and I was in that darkness again, hands so huge, unseen, pushing me down to do dark things, ugly things, or else there would be pain. I choked on the memories, couldn’t breathe. I opened my mouth to those memories, tears flowing from my empty eyes in the darkness like demon blood.

  I wasn’t screaming, but the doctor was. What was she saying? I didn’t know, but she wasn’t angry at me, no, she wasn’t furious at me. She raged.

  I could feel her then, a heat, a fire, a boiling inferno in the darkness. And my body sizzled, the hairs reaching for her in painful waves, dancing in the heat of her voice.

  I could see the notepad. A sliver of it was still in the light. There were tears here, splashed like the blood of accidental killing, of premeditated killing. The tears were frozen, already dried. Demon tears.

  “I can see,” I said.

  I think I said it. I wasn’t sure.

  “I can see it,” I said, as loudly as I could, but there wasn’t any air in my collapsed lungs, no strength in my choked throat.

  “What?” the doctor asked, her voice so demanding, as always. Fire licked at the edges of her voice, but it wasn’t fire for me. Not for me.

  A great weight stepped away from me, flew away on dark wings. I could feel them near, hovering, still a terrible weight waiting to crush me, but for now, far away. Hands still held me – but the doctor would help me. If only I knew what she wanted.

  I looked at the paper. Someone had bled there. Someone had cried. I couldn’t think, only remember, and no words came. Nothing. But my right hand was free, my unclean hand was free. I reached for the paper.

  A hand shot from the darkness and grabbed mine, and I froze. It was a huge hand, an ugly hand. Hairy. Knuckles with deep valleys of skin. Veins. Marked with sins more terrible than my memories, but not more terrible than I could imagine.

  I screamed, fought, kicked, desperate. I would not be fouled by those hands, would not be violated. But it was too late, too late, this hand was already on me, others were. Evil is so strong, so terribly strong. It wasn’t fair.

  The sweat of that hand seeped into my skin, and I felt hot breath on my neck.

  I was back in Hell, with only more pain and death to welcome me.

  I moaned.

  “Damn it! Where are your gloves?” the doctor demanded.

  The doctor?

  The doctor.

  She, yes, she.

  She felt so far away, like a mother, like my mother. But the doctor had a voice, and I- I couldn’t remember my mother’s voice. And surely I had a mother?

  Surely? Please?

  I wasn’t a demon. I wasn’t a demon.

  The darkness spun. No, I was spun by terrible hands. I did not fight, did not move, and it was like floating. I was like nothing in the darkness, nothing in those terrible hands. I was seated.

  And then the hands went away. But they were close. I couldn’t get away.

  The notepad filled my world, bigger now, more empty, a desert, a great white desert in an eternal night, and it shone like the moon. I floated above it, and I wondered if angels felt like this, surrounded by so much darkness, with nothing to show them the way, but the great, white, light reflected from us damned sinners.

  “What do you see?” the doctor asked.

  She was still there. She was always there. Like an angel, watching over me, over my damned soul in the darkness, watching over me and the great, glowing paper.

  I tried to speak, to thank her for being there, for always watching over me, but nothing came. My hands twisted, im
ploring, making mangled shapes that tried to express happiness. But how could they?

  A crayon appeared in my hand. And I was still.

  It was so – green. A crayon had been in my hands before. It had been orange, so orange, more orange than oranges, looked so delicious I had eaten it. I’d never eaten oranges before, only shown them, had them set before me to sharpen my punishments. You can’t have this.

  But I want it.

  Do you want this? I’ll have to punish you.

  No, no, I don’t want it.

  But you do. And now you’re lying.

  I have to punish you. Lying is a sin.

  No, no, please? Please? Please?

  But this – this green. It was like the spot on the wall, the spot The Man had never known about. In my room, the walls and ceiling pressing in on me, comforting in their way, in that darkness that was comforting in its way, I could see this one spot of green.

  All those terrible things done to me in the darkness, outside of my little room, all the tears, the pain, the blood -and I could see that green.

  I drew it now.

  But when I pulled my hand away from the paper, there was a knife there. It was so shockingly lifelike, so sharp, it threatened to leap from the paper.

  I dropped the crayon, breathing very fast.

  And the page disappeared, whipped away. Now it was on the bottom of the notepad. I was done with it, it had been decided. The knife was for someone else.

  Just as the first knife had been. How long ago was it? And how many days did I have left? Three? Not more than three.

  “Very good,” the doctor said. She was relieved. The darkness was filled with murmuring voices. The voices in my head, the demons, they began to gibber, to whisper, to damn. But the doctor said something, and the voices stopped. All the voices.

  “What else do you see?” the doctor asked, the doctor demanded. And the crayon, the green crayon appeared in my hand.

  “A spot,” I said, and it was true. I wanted her to see the spot, to see that I was a good girl, that I was telling the truth.

  “Can I see it?” the doctor asked, but there was doubt in her voice. She doubted me.

  “Ok,” Ok, I said, and I drew the dot.