The Story Collection: Volume Two

by Matt Shaw

  I hate it when you call in sick and your boss immediately asks whether you’ll be in the following day as he’ll need to arrange cover if not. How do you know whether you’re going to be feeling any better? You might think you’ve got a bad stomach ache and, therefore, agree to go to work the next morning only to find out you’re actually suffering from appendicitis and won’t be returning for at least a fortnight. Part of me thinks they’re waiting for you to say ‘yes, you’ll be in‘ just to test whether you’re just bunking the day off. Could just be my paranoid mind, though.

  I walked through to the dining room where Ben was still dead, face down on the table, “Good news, honey, you have the day off. Don’t you worry about your boss either. I know how you worry about letting the team down...” he always used to worry about letting them down but, when it came to letting me down...Never really bothered him as much. “Your boss actually wished you better.”

  Ben’s probably looking up at me, from the Hell where he’s hopefully burning, cursing me for making him let his boss down. I never did understand his loyalty to that company. He didn’t like letting them down but they were only too happy to let him down from time to time. They’d promote others in Ben’s place. They’d cut his hours and, worse still, cut his pay when the company was in dire straits. Take a pay cut or face redundancy. I remember being angry when he told me he had taken the cut. With his experience, he could have walked into another job but he simply argued the fact the country was in a recession and there were no other jobs.

  Fuck ‘em.

  A few more days of calling in sick, on his behalf, and then I’ll tell them the truth. I don’t know where he is. He’s run out on me. Left me for another woman. They’ll probably ask why I didn’t just tell them this in the first place but I’ll reply by saying I was hoping he was going to come home again and give me another chance. If they ask further questions - I’ll just cry. Especially if it’s a man asking the questions. Men can’t handle it when women cry. They panic.

  I stopped in my tracks when I noticed how peaceful Ben looked. It was the first time I saw it, since his death. Previously, when I looked at him, he was ‘just’ dead but now I’ve really stopped to look at him...He looks to be at peace. Considering the violent end and the look of shock on his face, the first time I hit him, I have to say I’m fairly surprised. So surprised, in fact, I spotted the peacefulness before I even noticed how his eyes appeared a little sunken into his head and his lips - once a pale pink colour - were now white. Mind you, is it his lips which have changed colour? His skin...His skin even looked to be a purplish colour. Weird. Purple with a waxy look to it. With my hand shaking, I reached over and touched his skin to see if it felt as waxy as it looked...Cold. Very cold. The way his appearance was changing...The sooner I get him into the ground the better!

  “You can wait here,” I told Ben as I stepped away from his body. Just standing here, looking at his body, is wasting time. I have a lot of digging to get down. It’s a pity I didn’t think this through before I went through with it. Had I known this was going to happen - I would have got him to help with the digging before I took his life. No sense thinking like that. Can’t turn back time.

  I walked out of the dining room and closed the door behind me. I’m not sure why I shut the door. It’s not as though Ben’s going to suddenly get up and run out of the house in search of anyone who could help him and it’s not as though there’s anyone else in the house who might venture past the room and accidentally catch a glimpse of what I’d done. Force of habit, I guess. He often moaned at me for leaving doors open - a strange little quirk he had; all doors must be closed.

  Another quirk he had involved his garage; one of the cleanest areas of the house - which he had anything to do with anyway. As a rule, most of my own personal spaces in the house were kept nice and tidy compared to rooms where he kept his bits and pieces - such as the study. Unlike the study, which was a mess with paperwork strewn all over the place, the garage was in perfect order. Every tool had it’s place and Ben always knew if someone had been moving things around. On more than one occasion I had tested this strange little quirk of his by moving something ever so slightly. The result was always the same;

  “You been in my garage?” he’d ask.

  “Me? No. Why?” I’d protest.

  “My saw has been moved. I left it on the second shelf but now it’s on the third...”

  He always caught me out, not that I ever admitted it as it wasn’t worth the argument and the lecture on how I don’t respect ‘his space’. Sometimes I question whether it was a marriage or a dictatorship.

  Still, thanks to his strange habit of keeping the garage spotless and giving everything it’s own rightful place - it made finding the shovel and garden fork so much easier. There they were, hanging on the wall next to other gardening tools.

  I took both the shovel, and the fork, from their ‘rightful place’ and stepped back out of the garage, into the kitchen, and out into the garden via the back door.

  It hasn’t rained for ages unfortunately. Had it rained, the ground might have been easier to dig up. As it was, digging into the soil was like digging into concrete. I’d always been rubbish at things like this. Normally, if I had any major digging to do - I’d have got him to do it for me. Weeks later, he’d have got around to helping me. After I had asked him several times.

  “I said ‘yes’, didn’t I?” he’d bark at me.

  “Yes! Last week!” I’d answer back - always guaranteed to rub him up the wrong way.

  “One fucking day off! That’s what I get! One. You think you’d let me put my feet up for a minute or two on my one fucking day off...” would be how his lecture started. Thinking back - did we ever have any real happy moments after the wedding?

  “Having fun?” my neighbour’s voice startled me back to the present. I turned around and spotted him, a middle-aged man named Liam, standing in his own garden with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in another.

  “Not really,” I said as I made another feeble attempt to break the surface of the dirt with the fork. No danger of him coming over and helping me, sadly. Stood there, dressed in a sharp-looking grey suit with a red pin-striped tie - he clearly won’t be doing any manual labour today. “Trying to dig out a pond!”

  “A pond?” he laughed, “You should get Ben to get out here on his day off and dig it for you!” He took a long drag of his cigarette and exhaled the smoke through his nostrils.

  “Ben? I think I’d be waiting forever if I asked him to do it!”

  Liam laughed. Of course he did. He’s been out on many a weekend, enjoying his own garden, listening - unintentionally - to Ben giving me one of his lectures about only having one day off. I used to be jealous of Liam and his wife, Kelly - they never argued like Ben and I. Not that I heard anyway. “Well have fun!” He took another drag from his cigarette and tossed it to the ground before he turned back into his house - ready, no doubt, to head off to the office.

  ‘Fun’. Somehow I can’t see this digging lark being much fun. It’s a shame I can’t hire someone to come and dig it out for me. They’d probably think it a little weird if I asked them to dig a hole and then leave it open for me. I’m ninety-nine percent sure they wouldn’t be willing to help me drop Ben down into it as pond foundation. More’s the pity. Perhaps I should have had an affair with a younger guy - some college kid in their late teens who’d be willing to help me dispose of Ben on the promise of some extracurricular kind of fun. No point even thinking like that. What’s done is done. Just need to finish the job now...

  Maybe some coffee would help?

  I stuck the fork in the ground and left it there.

  I’ll pick it up again after some caffeine.

  * * * * *

  I’m not sure why I had made two hot drinks - let alone walked it through to where he was sat in the dining room. Force of habit, I guess. Either that or I’m losing my mind. It’s not even as though I can drink the coffee I made him, when I’ve
finished my own. He has sugar in his and I prefer sweeteners. Ever since going over to sweeteners, I’ve never been able to drink coffee, or tea for that matter, with real sugar. Far too sweet. And fattening. I’m a healthy size ten but he used to make me feel self-conscious about my weight. Not sure if he was ever joking or not but, sometimes, his words hurt. Like the time he told me my ass was so fat there was a town in France which had a sign stating it was linked to it. Sometimes I told him his words hurt but he just told me not to be so stupid. I slurped from my coffee, noisily - for no other reason than I could now. Normally he’d be on my case about drinking loudly. Or chewing. Especially if I were chewing gum. He hated that the most; often told me I looked like a mental retard the way I chewed it with my mouth opening the same way a cow’s mouth opened when it chewed upon cud. I wonder if he ever realised I did it just to provoke a reaction from him.

  “Were we always this bad?” I asked him. I knew he wouldn’t answer. I probably would have died if he had. I took another sip from my drink - quieter this time - and carried on looking at him. Despite the change in his appearance, I can still see the man I once loved. It’s strange, I can see it easier now he’s quiet. Now he isn’t being sexist. Now he isn’t telling me what to do. Now he isn’t moaning about the state of the house...I can definitely see the man I once loved.

  For the first time since I hit him, I felt a pang of regret.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The car was quick through the gears. Certainly quicker than I’m used to with my little one litre town car. No wonder he never used to let me drive his ‘pride and joy’ - a Honda Civic Type R. I never did understand what the ‘R’ stood for. Were there other letters of the alphabet in the Civic range too or did they randomly choose a ‘R’ as some clever marketing scheme. Well, can’t ask Ben.

  I pulled over in a country-lane lay-by and applied the handbrake. Fuel is low and I have no idea where I am going. I just had to get out of the house. Get away from him. It’s funny - I never thought I’d still be storming out of the house to get away from him after he was dead! Mind you, I never really thought of him dead. Not properly anyway.

  My heart skipped and another pang of guilt shot through me when I realised where I had pulled over. Haven’t been down this road for years - our first date, in fact. I don’t normally have any reason to drive down here. Don’t even know why I drove down here today.

  “Very funny,” I had said to him.

  “I’m not joking!” he had insisted. He tried the key in the ignition again and still the car wouldn’t start. “I wish I was.”

  It had happened at the end of our first date; his car breaking down. Not the Honda Civic. He didn’t have that when we first met. Instead, he had a rubbish little Fiesta. I remember that car vividly. The interior had been battered and beaten by the previous owners, thick blue smoke used to billow from the exhaust and it was always breaking down on us. On the way back from the restaurant, Ben had chosen to go the country roads as they were quieter and he thought it would have been a nicer drive for us. He pulled into the lay-by complaining the car didn’t ‘feel right’. Obviously not really knowing him, at this stage, I thought he was just hoping for a little car fun. I remember feeling offended because I’m not that sort of girl. Maybe on the second date but definitely not the first.

  “It does this from time to time...Fucking heap of shit!...I’m so sorry about this.” I recall him hitting the steering wheel out of frustration - this show of annoyance was enough to make me realise we had actually broken down in the middle of nowhere.

  “You’re not joking?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He told me the car would start after a little while. Something about the engine being flooded and it would be okay once he left it alone for a while longer. Who was I to argue? It’s not as though I had a clue about anything car related. At that stage of our relationship I didn’t even know how to drive. Looking back, I wonder whether we would have ended up together had it not been for the car breaking down. I mean, the date was okay as far as dates go but it was nothing special. I wasn’t sure as to whether it would have been something I’d have wanted to repeat with him. But, that evening, stuck in the car together - in the middle of nowhere - he really opened up and we got to know each other well. More impressive was the fact he didn’t once make a move on me, like I thought he would. By the end of the evening, I remember being a little disappointed.

  Thinking back to how kind and sweet he was, in the car, I started to well up. Maybe I should have just tried talking to him about how he made me feel, towards the end of our marriage. Maybe a chat would have been enough to set things right again - put things back to how they once were. My stupid over-reaction...I’ll never know.

  Jesus Christ, why did I come here?! I left the house to get away from what I’d done not re-live past memories. Especially happy memories which do nothing but make me feel more guilty about what I’ve done. I released the handbrake and sped from the lay-by - unsure of where I was headed.

  I should just go to the police and tell them what I’ve done. I’ll never get away with it. The mere thought of going to the police, though, makes me feel sick to my stomach. Maybe I could just tell them it was temporary insanity? Would I get away with it? No, of course I wouldn’t. If it were that easy - you’d hear of more people doing it. Okay then, I could just run away. Go home, pack a bag, get into the car and just drive. The very thought of simply disappearing upsets me some more and, once again, my eyes begin to well up. I’m happy to run from my crime but I’m not so happy never to see my family again. My mum and dad. I’d miss them too much. If I stay, though, and they discover what I’ve done - would they still acknowledge me as their daughter? I’m in a real mess. I can’t believe what I’ve done. So stupid. Stupid. Should stick to the original plan. Dig a hole for him and bury him. It’s the most sensible thing to do, given my limited choices.

  I slowed the car to a halt and did a three-point turn in the middle of the road. Normally I’d drive to the next turning and spin the car around there but - on this country road - it could be miles until the next appropriate turn off and I don’t have the time. If I’m to stick to the original plan I need him in the ground. Need him gone for good. Especially given the way his looks are changing. He’s already giving off an odour and I’m sure that is only going to get worse.

  * * * * *

  I stood in the back garden with the hose on full - aiming it where I wanted to dig. I figured it would be easier to dig out a hole if the ground was softened first. It certainly couldn’t make it any harder, that’s for sure.

  I’ll dig for a few hours and see how much I can get done. No stopping for an energy boosting drink this time. I need to be dedicated to the task at hand if I want to get away with what I’ve done. Can’t keep putting it off. The longer he is in the dining room, the more chance someone will stop by and see him there. And he’s really starting to smell quite unpleasant now...I’m not entirely sure why but I poked my head in on him, when I got home. It was almost as though I was making sure nothing had changed. So stupid. At least, this time, I didn’t take a cup of coffee through to him. I still can’t believe I did that. Anyway, the smell hit me before I even walked into the dining room.

  The ground, where I thought the pond would look good, is nothing more than a mud bath now. Surely this has to make it easier to dig? I hope so - I feel shattered already and just want it done. Probably tired because of all the different emotions I have buzzing through me and my levels of stress being so high.

  I dropped the hose to the floor, letting go of the trigger to kill the flow of water, and picked up the garden fork. When I used to help my dad dig his garden, all those years ago, he always taught me to dig with a fork and not the spade. He’d tell me the spade was for shifting the dirt only. All those times helping dad, on the weekends, when I was growing up - I wonder if he’d like to return the favour. Shame I can’t call him. Not with Ben in the living room. Ben never really got on with my mum and dad...Well
, to be more precise - my mum and dad never saw eye to eye with Ben. They didn’t like how he spoke to me. As the years went on and he got worse and worse with me, they disliked him even more. Even with that in mind, I’m sure they wouldn’t have wanted me to kill him though!

  I thrust downward into the soil and was pleasantly surprised how easily the fork went deep into it. A funny ‘squelchy’ noise as I levered the fork downwards causing the earth to split and a new hole to fill with some of the surface water. Hmmm. Perhaps there’s too much water now. Don’t think - just keep forking the earth. Obviously looking for any excuse to stop already! Need to stop thinking about what I’m doing. Think about something else.