On with the show: these tools must go.
The instant they were thrown to the floor: the walls are better covered in wallpaper, and the settee and the carpet are an improvement on the cold marble tables and wrought iron chairs. The double doors have been covered with patterned curtains. My wife is filling my glass again with red wine. I’m painfully dry mouthed, doctor. I can barely keep away sleep. The glass must go back to a coffee table before the liquid is spilt. This task is more than I’m capable of. Thankfully I can feel it taken from my burning hand.
A moment of true silence.
Every ounce of me will be still until the tranquillity is broken.
‘Time we were off to bed.’ Have I dribbled this? If given a choice I would have remained silent.
‘You know what that means don’t you?’ A crude laugh.
My breathing is sounding shallow. This terrible veil between me and all else. A unique experience, this final debilitation.
I’m still yearning for you, Bernadette. I need to hold you close, let your perfume overpower the filth, have your bewitching form become a blockade against the ugliness and dirtiness I feel. I know you’re there, though I’ve no means of contact. I’m aware of being crushed.
Definitely someone else’s voice. At least, it’s coming from outside.
‘Drunken slob, look at him. Hope he doesn’t spew on your settee. Do you think we put too much powder in his drink? Give me a hand will you, Aaron? Get him upstairs out of the way. You’re going as well aren’t you, Lucy.’
I sense these last words are a demanding statement more than a question although I’ll expect a reply.
Spin, spin, spin…
There’s a click, a suspiration, then a rustling, then a chink and a rattle, then another voice speaking. The words are undefined yet can still be understood when I’m pulled up from the settee, my head lolling uselessly. I’m not sure how many times these same words are spoken as an answer. Already I’ve listened to them innumerable times. So full of intent do these three words possess, they’re able to replicate and multiply; so filled with insinuation and potential they can feed me a spoonful of energy for my eyelids to open as I’m helped with rough, uncaring hands upstairs; a banister rail spinning one way with Lucy holding on tight, her fists white as she spins the other way, uttering her triplet of words just once more.
‘I suppose so.’
39
As the final piece of plaster was cleaved from the base of the fourth wall, a distant police siren warbled into the night. Then, but for the monotonous ticking of the clock and its occasional whirring as if taking a breath, it could have been as though everyone but Clement had ceased to exist. A fine suspension of dust hung in a ghostly fashion within a glow produced from the foyer lamps, this light diluted and modified by the sheets of newspaper taped across the pane of the reception office. A pencil beam of brightness – as relatively bright as a laser – came from a horizontal slit which had escaped from being covered. For an instant, Clement believed he hadn’t left the interior of his wardrobe and that if he were to push firmly onto the top of the string of light, a door would swing outward and once more would he fall – this time defying gravity and falling upwards – out onto his rug. But of course, he told himself firmly, this would be preposterous. Wherever I am, it’s certainly not in my wardrobe cocoon.
He lay still, exhausted and dazed on piles of plaster, as limp as any dead man. Dust plugged his nostrils and coated his parched throat, and he wheezed with every irregular breath. The wig had turned white. His vivacious makeup was smeared and had become pastel shades. Blood had dried brown and streaked his knuckles.
As the timer in the cupboard switched the lights off in the foyer, the yellow-painted door appeared phosphorescent in the twilight of the reception office. It stood starkly against the rough, ruby wine-coloured bricks. Clement’s sight rested upon the door and immediately it appeared to take a step back – even lean away – intimating it would never open again.
40
Going blind I’m almost certain. There’s a leaden dusk within this strange room. But how much of the obscurity is due to negative lighting or my eyeballs boiling I really don’t know. Other senses are deserting though I can’t blame them as I’ve renounced the outside world of pretence. It’s as though all has been cloaked, washed with black. No longer can I smell or taste. Mouth and nose must surely be stuffed with wadding. Help, I can’t breathe properly. Wheezing like an old buffalo. Unable to hear well. Hands are useless. Is it you who’s pushed needles under the skin and nails, Dr Leibkov? I’m losing control. If only the padding would come out – here, with my fingers down my throat – I’m gagging but all that’s ejected is bursts of noxious gas. I can’t sense and it’s a handicap as I fight against an insubstantial enemy, as though locked in massive combat, grappling a thick medium, heaving, sweating.
Who is this enemy? If it has a grip on me then it also has hold over somebody else. There’s weeping.
The outside has finally become one with my inside. No visible or definable areas to say where one ends and the other begins.
Time to turn, and turn, and turn again.
I have absorbed everything.
Animal and vegetable life are mine sheltered within; this domain I’ve become teems with trillions of insects; microbes and viruses have found their haven here, and spaces between filled with every atom stocked with quarks and larks and farks and all else.
To encompass so much I must have taken in the planet and its orbit. It can’t be long before I harbour the known universe of galaxies until I am one.
After that I’ll have to wrap myself in cotton wool. I need to be protected with glass fibre or metals, be tough, impenetrable, opaque. Cocooned by red thoughts, become as isolated and untouched as a deserted island in a vast ocean.
Then I wouldn’t have to listen – I recognize the sounds of a woman’s tormented voice.
Doctor, doctor, this is all of your doing. You are banished. I’ll never see or hear of your complicated falsehoods again.
Life is but a dream.
There are gasps of pain interspersed with racking whines. What’s happening? I must stop this torture.
Again I’m disoriented. Struggling to release myself from sheets which have bound me within a sarcophagus of a bed.
Not enough light to see. I’ve kicked a wall — aah, the pain jolting up my leg. As I cried out though, my utterance drowned by agonizing sobs coming from somewhere in this house. A noise of something tipped over.
I have to stop this. Difficult to locate the door handle. A long groan emitted, low in pitch.
The door’s open and I’m on a landing.
What manner of cruel instruments are being used on this woman? The tormentor shouting in guttural barks and her voice raised higher in coughing bursts. My shadow, made by an electric lamp from down there, has decided to trail to my side while I pad down these stairs. I wish I knew where I was. Can’t be my house because my staircase has no carpet.
The walls are of brick only, there’s no plaster on them. I’m going to float downwards. My legs have no feeling while I curl up in this manner. I’ve become as a migrating chrysalis. I must await renewal which surely will be mine once I’m ready. It’s growth, change, maturation to fruition until decay begins. For then debris of death incorporates the components of a new life to develop from.
I must admit suffering to reach my goal of rebirth.
First though, the matter in hand. I have to solve one last puzzle of the dream, the riddle of the sensibilities, before I can let go to my inevitable destiny. The woman’s cries of agony. I’ve no more idea of her identity than a meaning of life until, in wrought pulses, she’s panting, ‘Yes…’
No, it has come to me, this is my wife crying out; she’s crying, crying out — and I hurry down the stairs, like an encumbered wraith, like I was not really there, like my bound body existed somewhere else.
And I float on the ceiling and stare down.
And what is
and what should never be: the narwhal bone has hit me full between the eyebrows to split open my head. And with a ripping, my skull has parted into two, as wide as those woman’s legs straddled over the man on his back, belonging to yet another girl who’s stolen my wife’s face. And who is this laying beneath her, panting and grumbling obscenities, the lower torso pumping up and down in that manner, stinking of slippery seaweed and covered with barnacles, though I suspect it could be Dr. Leibkov.
And in their energetic motion they’re both vocalizing filth in ambition of climactic moment, unaware of my presence in some form or other.
And I must quickly become blind again as my soul is torn apart and bleeding, cover writhing nakedness with barricades and barriers, build a fortress over them.
And this beginning is the end, the end to be the beginning. Jagged gothic horizon.
Capturing visions of future, I know how I’ll be reborn: in a form as venerated as any king might deserve who rules his land, who’s majesty is in command; to be an honourable and graceful existence blessed with serenity and balance, and oneness of twoness, and perfect infinity and stillness.
Not a chrysalis — I’m a seed. Return to nought of the web of time.
I’m becoming a tree, newly risen. It makes sense if world is within. It’s a turning inside out again. Bury roots into lush earth. And here I’ll stay, stable and unchanging, never moving or being moved – no visions of angels – unsullied by emotion or event. Able to do nothing except exist so that the passage of time will pass unchallenged and without interaction. And if one human sensibility is allowed, it should be patience in silence, in preparation for the other side of my soul; to wait for my real, beautiful Bernadette who’ll come to me with the happiest of laughs and pure love in her heart, and who will gladly throw her arms about me to set me free.
DAVID JOHN GRIFFIN is a writer, graphic designer and app designer, and lives in a small town by the Thames in Kent, UK with his wife Susan and two dogs called Bullseye and Jimbo. He is currently working on the first draft of a third novel as well as writing short stories for a forthcoming collection.
His first novel, The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb, was published by Urbane in November 2015. Urbane will also publish David’s magical realism/paranormal novella, Two Dogs At The One Dog Inn, in the spring of 2017. One of his short stories was shortlisted for The HG Wells Short Story competition 2012 and published in an anthology.
You can find out more about David at
www.davidjohngriffin.com
“Dark and at times shocking the book contains some lovely writing and has a great gothic feel to it. I can recommend this to you and it’s well worth a read if unusual is what you require.”
DAVID REVIEWS (Amazon Top 500 Reviewer)
“Here’s a virtual round of applause for the author, who has created an amazingly surreal world where devilry thrives – it’s a hauntingly good read.”
LITTLE BOOKNESS LANE
The turn of the last century and Theodore Stubb’s manor house resides in the quirky village of Muchmarsh. A renowned entomologist, he is often within the attic adding another exotic specimen to his extensive collection of insects. But Theodore is also a master hypnotist, holding the household in thrall to his every whim.
Theodore’s daughter-in-law Eleanor – returned from the sanatorium two months before – is a haunted figure, believing that her stillborn child Alastair lives and hides in the shadows. Then she falls pregnant again, but this time by the hypnotic coercion and wicked ravishment of Theodore. A dreadful act begets terrible secrets, and thirteen years later the boy Alastair Stubb begins to lose his identity….it is not long before mystery, intrigue and murder follow gleefully in his wake.
The Unusual Possession of Alastair Stubb is a gothic terror of the highest order, delivering a dream-like and hallucinatory reading experience that promises to reveal secrets both disturbing and astonishing. Do you dare meet the Stubbs?
£8.99, ISBN 978-1-910692-45-5
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“This novella is uniquely written, the mysterious plot is revealed through a series of email conversations between two characters. The story line keeps you intrigued throughout, Highly recommended.”
PETER DRAPER
“I read this novella in one day, as I was intrigued with the story. It was at times unnerving, a tale of fantasy and love, and very entertaining. The author has a very vivid and wild imagination. He described the scenes so well, I could picture, taste, and feel everything before me. It's written via a series of emails between Stella and Audrey, plus diary entries. It was a most enjoyable read!”
H.M. MARTIN
The novella: Dogs are reported for their constant barking … and so begins one of the strangest stories you will ever read.
Audrey Ackerman, sent to visit the dogs at a 17th century coach house, is unsettled by paranormal sightings.
Stella Bridgeport – manager at The Animal Welfare Union – communicates with Audrey via emails. And those Stella receives are as startling as they are incredible: descriptions of extraordinary events concerning a science fiction writer’s journal; giant swans; bizarre android receptionist; a ghost dog.
Insanity or fantasy? Fact or fiction? The only given is, it all starts and ends with two dogs at The One Dog Inn.
...and other stories: 12 short stories with aspects of the macabre, the surreal, science fiction or the strangeness of magical realism to entertain and delight you.
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Infinite Rooms: a gripping psychological thriller that follows one man's descent into madness Page 19
