Killing Adonis

by J M Donellan

  Freya closes the book and stares around the room at her paintings, all cacophonic messes of light and colour.

  Sorry little one, looks like you’ll have to wait a little while longer.

  She grabs her teddy bear, Mr Christopher Rumples Worthington CXI, from her bedside table and places him in her suitcase.

  Section II

  Initial Symptoms

  ***

  “People lose their health in a dark house,

  and if they get ill they cannot get well again in it. More will be said about this farther on.”

  —Florence Nightingale,

  Notes on Nursing: What it Is and What it Is Not

  5

  Jack

  ***

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Tiny ribbons of soft shimmering gold pulse in front of Freya’s eyes then fade into oblivion as new ones are birthed a heartbeat later. It’s like watching the life cycle of some empyreal firefly. She sits still and silent as she watches them dance and fade, thinking about the first time she saw ribbons like this. She remembers the smell of hospital-grade disinfectant and the placid look on her father’s face as he lay in the bed, its steel frames so cold against her tiny fingers. She remembers asking her dad about the golden ribbons, and listening to him giggle as he mumbled something between a limerick and a lecture in response. At the time she thought she hadn’t been able to understand him because she wasn’t grown up and clever enough. It was only years later that she realised he had been so jacked up on morphine he would have had trouble making sense of a Lego diagram.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  She looks down at Elijah’s calm, immobile frame. Her hand hesitates for a moment before she takes the razor and draws it slowly across his face, felling the tiny forest of fledgling hairs emerging from his skin. She finds something simple and cleansing about the process. Watching the white foam being drawn away, leaving freshly shaven skin in its wake. She wonders if he can hear that sound from beneath the thick blanket of his coma, if he dreams about the machines that are his only constant companion. She draws the razor across his cheek once more.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  “Shit!” she curses as a tiny trickle of blood sullies the snow-white patches. “I must have shaved twenty goddamn testicles last year without a scratch and now this…” she mutters angrily to herself. She grabs a washcloth and presses it against his skin, watching as it, too, is sullied with crimson.

  She wonders if he has felt the cut, if some level of his mind is commanding his body to flinch in response but to no avail, his nervous system little more than a vast web of inoperative telephone lines.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Freya is puzzled by the wave of guilt she feels as she dabs a piece of tissue paper onto the still-bleeding wound. She finishes shaving the rest of his face, then removes the paper and is relieved to see the bleeding has stopped. She strokes his hair affectionately with her left hand, glimpsing the mass of scarred tissue beneath her bracelet as she does so.

  “Sorry,” she whispers.

  “Freya.”

  She jolts and spins to face Harland.

  “Harland! Ah…Mr Vincetti. You scared me.” He neither apologises nor even seems to acknowledge her response. “It’s okay, it’s only a tiny shaving cut. Nothing unusual. I’m just not used to the contours of his face yet.”

  “You aren’t going to go all Sweeney Todd on my boy, are you?”

  Freya’s jaw drops open as she stammers for a response, her brain flicking between vitriol and apology.

  Luckily Harland saves her the trouble. “I was only joking. Humour has never been my forte.”

  I would never have guessed, Freya thinks as she gazes at his handsome yet severe face, which would be well suited to a funeral director or fascist politician.

  Harland stands next to the bed and gently strokes the obscenely perfect hair of his sleeping son. “One day, he’ll inherit the company. Everything my family has worked for since my great-great-great-grandfather, the first Elijah Vincetti, started with a tiny shop selling tonics and groceries to sheep farmers and prison guards over one hundred-sixty years ago, when this city was nothing but dirt roads and shanties.

  “Evelyn and myself will be out until late this evening. Business and such, I won’t bore you with details.”

  Images of Masonic meetings, voodoo rituals, witnesses being buried, and cops being bribed cartwheel and caterwaul through Freya’s imagination.

  “As she explained, you are free to make yourself comfortable. Maria will prepare your meals for you, or you can help yourself to the wine and food in the fridge. Rosaline is at her yoga for mums and babies class but will be back later. Jack is…around. You may see him if he elects to stumble out into the light sometime before the end of the current lunar cycle. One last thing…” Harland crosses the room in a few short strides, leans into her ear and says, “If you touch so much as one drop of my vintage Merlot in the cellar, I will kill you.”

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  “Kidding!” His face shifts into an unnatural leer and Freya slumps with relief. “I really should give up on the humour thing, shouldn’t I? My apologies. Make yourself at home. We’ll see you in the morning.” He turns and walks out the door, slamming it behind him.

  Freya is about to collapse from her emotional yo-yoing when the door springs open and Harland hollers, “And no stealing!” before slamming it again.

  “Mary, mother of moonshine, I think I need a drink.” Freya looks at the LCD clock display illuminated behind the black sheen of the bar fridge. “10:25 a.m. too early? Whaddaya think, Eli? You want something? Tom Jones? White Russian? G&T? No? Nothing? Fine, suit yourself.” She mixes a Moscow Mule with her signature addition of Tabasco sauce and sips contemplatively.

  “That’s a nice blend. Cheers!”

  Elijah remains still and silent. He looks like an unreasonably handsome wax doll.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  ***

  Click. Another red security light, another forbidden room.

  Click.

  “Jesus, are they training a militia in here or something?” Freya grumbles as she moves to the next door.

  It is 11:17 a.m. and so far her explorations of the house have unveiled everything from the mundane—half a dozen dusty rooms filled with old clocks and furniture—to the inexplicable: a room filled to the ceiling with nothing but boxes of Captain Choc’s Chocolatey Chocoflakes, “Now with more chocolate!”

  She has found rooms filled with clothes, shoes, vases, books, and magazines, whitegoods and appliances, linen, and golf clubs. And for every room that announces her permission to enter with a cheerful blip! there are another two that refuse her with a grim and obstinate click. Freya knows herself well enough to recognise that, sooner or later, she will need to find out what’s behind those doors, even if it turns out to be merely an extensive collection of antique soap dispensers.

  Click. Click. Click.

  Three in a row, that’s unusual.

  Blip!

  Freya flicks on the light and finds a hundred pairs of tiny eyes looking directly at her. She nearly yelps as the tiny human figures are illuminated; a small sea of toes, fingers, noses, and faces stares at her. She’s always found dolls to be creepy, but the effect is amplified exponentially when they are in plague proportions. She closes the door quickly and moves on.

  Click. Click.

  Blip!

  Freya eases the door open and is nearly forced to shade her eyes from the panorama of pink that greets her. From the pale pink rug to the rose pink ceilings, the room is covered in the stuf
f. It looks like Barbie’s dream home. The room is crammed with enough oppressively girly toys and iconography to convene an emergency meeting of the local university feminist group. Barbies, babies, teddies, tiaras, dollies, doilies, and child-sized kitchen appliances adorn every available space in the massive bedroom, save for the far left corner, which is occupied by a cot and a mobile. Freya walks carefully over, as though in fear that a frilly landmine might explode at any moment and suffocate her with deathly kitsch.

  A cloud of plastic butterflies suspended from the mobile hovers above the cot. Freya clicks the “on” switch and recoils as the room is filled with a ferocious explosion of sound and colour. “Hush Little Baby” tinkles through the tiny speaker as the mobile spins and throws its multicoloured lights against the wall. Her little Kandinskys collide with the swarm of pinks and blues and yellows projected by the mobile and she reels for a moment, disoriented and confused. She swats clumsily at the switch and doesn’t make contact until the third swing. The lights and sound cease and she leans against the cot to catch her breath.

  “Well, that was twelve kinds of unpleasant. I pity the child subjected to this little shop of horrors on a nightly basis,” she murmurs, standing up straight and exiting the room as quickly as she is able. An almost palpable sense of relief overcomes her as she slams the door behind her, condemning the screaming oceans of pink and fuchsia to silence.

  She takes a few deep breaths before moving on, wondering how much strange she can process within a single morning. The keycard hovers in her hand, willing her to fulfil its purpose. She places it gently against the lock of the next door.

  Blip!

  She slowly eases the door open and peers inside, then recoils with hysterical laughter. “You have got to be kidding me!” It’s the polar opposite to the pink room. The yang to its yin. The sun to its moon. The North to its South Korea. It is swathed in nearly iridescent blue, filled with trucks and bears and plastic shovels and everything a child raised by the Disney Channel could ever want. Freya closes the door quickly, electing to come back and explore further when her synapses aren’t already overloaded on fluorescent pink.

  She returns to her investigations.

  Blip! Deckchairs.

  Blip! Skiing gear.

  Click. Click.

  Blip! Crockery.

  Blip! Freya pushes the door open, preparing herself for another woefully mundane example of nauseating luxury.

  “What the fuck?” she breathes as she steps into the room. She isn’t sure whether to laugh or cry, whether this is a Planet of the Apes or a Crying Game moment of revelation. She picks up the tiny things, her fingers running over them as if to verify the reality her eyes are so irrationally insisting on. Boxes and boxes and boxes of the bizarre little woollen things emblazoned with Halcyon’s logo, a bold H inside a circle with multitudinous lines reaching out in every direction. It’s one of those intentionally ambiguous corporate logos that might be implying the rays of the sun or growth in all directions or business networks or any of a dozen other concepts associated with empire and economy. Freya feels as though she’s wandered headlong into a fairytale. She slips a few of the tiny mysteries into her pocket, despite Harland’s earlier threats. Her conscience squeaks a tremulous warning, but her curiosity slams a fist sharply into its face and reminds it to stay locked up in the dark recesses of her psyche where it bloody well belongs.

  If such curious cargo inhabits an unlocked room such as this, she thinks, then that makes the possibility of untold and illicit wonders hiding behind the multitude of forbidden doorways all the more likely and enticing. She nearly skips into the hallway, the keycard dancing in her fingers.

  Click. Click.

  Blip! More old furniture and statues. She harrumphs in irritation, her appetite now whet for bigger prey.

  Click.

  Blip! “Oh, for Chrissake!” she groans. “Who in the hell needs three billiard rooms?”

  Click. Click.

  Blip! Ooohh! Jet skis! Probably can’t get away with borrowing those until Evelyn warms up to me. Which, given the woman’s cheery temperament, should be about the same time the melting ice caps consume California.

  Click. Click. Aarp.

  Aarp? Freya glances at the handle she has swiped the card across and is greeted by an imposing set of fortifications. The magnetic lock guarding this particular entry has a large full-colour screen that displays the words ACCESS DENIED in furious red letters.

  Freya swipes the card again.

  Aarp. ACCESS DENIED.

  She stabs randomly at the keypad then hits the enter button.

  Aarp. ACCESS DENIED.

  “Well, I would’ve been an idiot to expect that to work.” She raps her knuckles against the door to check if it’s reinforced, then realises she has no idea what a reinforced door would sound like. She stares at it for a moment, willing it to open, near dizzy from imagining the secrets, horrors or treasures that may dwell on the other side. She touches her fingers lightly to the door, marvelling that a mere few millimetres of wood, or possibly reinforced steel, separate her from a cavalcade of wonders.

  From somewhere inside, she hears a heavy clunk. It is the kind of clunk that comic book authors would depict in virile purple letters, typeset with jagged edges and punctuated by a lightning bolt for an exclamation mark, exploding in the air across her horrified cartoon face. Freya presses her ear to the door and waits for the sound to repeat itself.

  Clunk! “Motherfucking son of a bitch, I swear to God I’m going to kill somebody if…” His irate whispers are barely audible through the possibly-but-not-definitely steel-reinforced door.

  Freya knocks loudly and says, “Hello! Is someone in there?”

  The clunking and whispers cease, replaced by a thick, oppressive silence.

  “Hello?” It must be her conscience speaking, because her voice is frail and timid. The silence continues for so long that Freya begins to question if there was ever anything else. Perhaps the cartoon clunks and complaining voice are the products of her overactive imagination. The other option, logically, is that the house is haunted.

  She turns away and begins to move on, when she hears the clunk again, louder this time. She realises it is in fact coming from the next room over. She notices a barely discernible pinkish tinge to the marble outside this door that peeks out from underneath the carpet runner. She is about to bend down and inspect it when she is abruptly interrupted by a typewriter being hurled past her nose before shattering in an alphabet explosion against the opposite wall. She watches the w, x, y, and z shoot through the air, caroming off ceiling and wall and floor. The typewriter lies broken and unapologetic at her feet. She prods it with her shoe.

  “You have b in your hair.” The voice is mumbling and compunctious. It’s the kind of voice that should come with a ragged, bushy beard, so it confuses and perhaps even irritates Freya that the man leaning in the doorway is clean-shaven.

  “I have a bee in my hair?” she responds, her hands flailing at her scalp.

  “No! Relax! I said you have b in your hair. The letter b.” He plucks it out and presses it into her fingers. “What’s your name?”

  She peers through the thick black frames of his glasses and notices the whites of his eyes have a peculiar blue tint. The blues of his eyes?

  “Freya.”

  “Pity. It would have been a far more poetic moment if your name was Beatrice. Or Beatrix.”

  “Or Beyoncé?”

  He nods and rubs his chin where his beard should be, as though he is pondering a Zen koan. “Sorry about nearly hitting you with the typewriter.” Then he slams the door in her face, leaving her awkwardly staring at the clutter of consonants at her feet.

  The door opens again and the regrettably unbearded face re-emerges and says, “I’m Jack.” It appears to be a complete statement, rather than an invitation for further niceties. He looks
at the black silk gloves adorning her hands. “I like your gloves. No one wears gloves anymore.”

  “Thanks. It’s kind of an Audrey Hepburn thing, you know?” The lie feels comfortable in her mouth. She has told it so many times she almost believes it herself.

  Jack nods. He stares down at the shattered remains of his typewriter for a few moments, forgetting she is there. His eyes dart back to meet hers as he says, “I’m not used to company. Do you want to come in?” He motions towards the interior of his apartment-sized room, its contents so chaotic it would allow the population of an Ecuadorian village to play a protracted game of hide and seek.

  “Sure,” says Freya as she steps over a skateboard, several pairs of boots and a pile of Crochet Monthly magazines before she reaches a large three-seater couch, the primary purpose of which appears to be preventing boxes of comic books, novels, and shoes from residing on the floor.

  “Like I said, not used to company. Here, ah, let me…” Jack removes the boxes, places them precipitously on top of various other boxes, and offers Freya a seat in the newly cleared space. He sits opposite her on his grandiose four-poster bed, one half of which is dedicated to the storage of gadgets and electronic paraphernalia.

  Freya sits down and smiles at him. He returns the smile and opens his mouth as if he is about to say something, but then thinks better of it. An uncomfortable silence sidles in between them, wedged between the piles of clothes and boxes.

  “So, you must be the new nurse?”

  “I am, yes. Today’s my first day, actually.”

  He nods firmly, clearly both aware of and pleased by this fact.

  “Yes, that’s good. It’s nice to have you. Well, it’s also a shame that Christine was fired, but I guess if she hadn’t been then we would never have had you come along now, would we?”

  “Can I ask what happened to Christine?” Given cement shoes, thrown in the river, cut into tiny pieces and fed to piranhas, sold as a slave to a Mexican drug lord…