Transmissions

by Dominic Lyne

reflection distorts back at him. Lips peel back into a snarl; eyes melt backwards to reveal empty sockets. Blinded from seeing his reflection he crawls back to his room and lets the static on the television distract him.

  ‘This is nothing new Tomas. We spoke about this drug abuse last time. You need to cover new territory.’ She makes a few notes on her pad. She’s wearing red nail polish. She writes right-handed.

  ‘You asked me to describe the day.’

  ‘I want to know your thoughts, not actions.’ She sighs. ‘I’m here to help. Your usage of chemicals is a reaction to either a thought or a fear, maybe both.’

  He looks. Static burst before his eyes and he sees her true form again. The beast is trying to trap me, he thinks. He wipes his face. No, she’s here to help. Trust. ‘Shit.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘That’s how I felt. Shit. Empty. Lost. Are those the keywords you’re looking for?’

  ‘Only if they are true.’

  ‘Define “truth”.’

  She smiles. ‘Okay, so the drugs were, are your escape. Now tell me, walk me through that day from your perspective.’

  He twitches in his seat. Scratches at the bugs crawling under his skin like ants. Scratch, scratch. He draws blood. She notices; she makes a note. Shit. Deep breath then begin.

  He sits on the bench, surveying the scene. The park is empty enough for peace of mind but busy enough to watch. The six legged dog jumps at the tree branch arm of its owner whilst they run across the grass at the speed of light. Everyone moving like robots, jerky movements. Life frames removed from the movie film. Vision blurs and he escapes into the infinity of it. The world a smudge around his cocoon.

  Once you’ve loved so completely no one else is good enough. Everyone is plain and incomplete. He has no effort left within him to learn somebody so well again. He thinks of the body motionless in its pool of blood. The last time both soul caskets had made love. One punch too many. One act too far and the world shatters. The ecstasy of that final hit, the fall to the floor. That power to end the passion of life. He’d made his choice to stay and that was the conclusion he received. It shouldn’t have ended that way, but that was how it had to be.

  A shadow crosses his vision. He focuses. A heartbeat falls short and in his start his cigarette tumbles dramatically to its death.

  ‘Sorry dude,’ the angel says. ‘But do you have a light?’

  Tomas swallows. How can this be? He raises a lighter to the waiting hand.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t think about it.’ He moves across on the bench and the vision sits next to him. Tomas surveys his face. The spitting image of his love. A ghost. A second chance. He extends a hand. ‘I’m Tomas.’

  ‘Ewan.’ A beautiful smile, it makes Tomas want to weep. He closes his eyes and thinks of his hand touching the stranger’s skin.

  ‘Beauty took his form. All I saw was his face. His essence marked on the universe.’

  ‘So, would it be fair to say you have equated your love to a notion, a type?’

  Tomas frowns. ‘No, not a type. They are the same in their beauty.’

  ‘So why could you not love them?’

  ‘They weren’t him.’

  ‘I know, but why did you not give them a chance? Let them into your life?’

  A fake tear allows him to put his hand into his pocket and slip out a pill with his tissue. He blows his nose, pretends to cough then swallows.

  She continues. ‘Maybe that is where the problem is. You’ve convinced yourself that you can never be happy with someone else.’ She stretches back in her seat. Her body extending, growing in size, doubling. Her head kinks to the left and a mouth opens on her neck. She places a cigarette into its hollow lips and smokes. ‘You need to remember that we choose everything, no one controls us.’

  ‘But we can’t control who we feel for. If you’ve never felt like that how can you understand?’

  ‘That is something we need to help you understand. So, in that moment what happened? What did you feel?’

  ‘I knew.’

  ‘What did you know?’

  ‘They could give me one small moment of happiness. A bubble that would trap that memory for a few seconds longer. They could keep that sensation alive.’

  Her neck mouth swallows the cigarette and her head straightens. With a cough the cigarette reappears at her lips with a frown. ‘Explain so I understand.’

  He didn’t understand at first in that initial moment when their eyes had connected. The date had gone as expected, a stumbled series of awkward silences and snippets of information. Ewan was a student, no family to call his own. A sad existence that he had somehow created happiness from. A forgettable existence.

  Tomas had rolled away from the form next to him. Cold and empty. A husk of what it used to be. A pretty corpse with a severed neck. He’d stood and looked down at his impact. A smile had crossed his lips. He’d liked what he’d seen. Within the hour Ewan’s body was hidden beneath the undergrowth as food for the wildlife. Discarded. Purposeless.

  George had had the same effect. The face of his lover, a sweetness of voice. Tomas had taken him down the alley with the touch of his lips. He has a face to die for, he’d thought as he’d slammed a fist into it and watched him crumple slowly like a broken statue. Tomas had sat with him for the hour it took for him to slowly lose consciousness and bleed his life out into the gutter.

  Gabriel had been too disinterested to receive a full ‘service’. He was dealt with swiftly like all the faceless parasites they’d been surrounded by that night. A bloody toilet seat, a caved cranium and a pure milk white body was that poor boy’s legacy. As Gabriel had breathed his last, Tomas had realised he’d loved them all. All for a split second when they transcended into his final memory of his lover.

  He loved them all. One face, four deaths, more that he doesn’t want to reveal.

  ‘That’s what gave them beauty. Can’t you see?’ He’d become more erratic in his movements. ‘I knew from Ewan what part of my love for him had left its scar. The pain. That moment of disbelief as I delivered that final blow. The split second look deep from his soul.’

  The beast moves uneasily in her chair. One of her heads had closed its eyes during the tale; one had ripped off its mouth, another its ears. The remaining look at him expressionless. The seventh speaks. ‘You level love with a moment of violence. That is what you are saying. You remember loving him in that split second.’

  ‘No, I loved him totally. Now I can only find love in that final look. The disbelief of someone who loved you fully. That final look of love.’

  ‘You murdered them to maintain a memory?’

  ‘I murdered them to feel loved.’

  ‘You murdered them to maintain a memory of feeling loved.’

  ‘If you wish.’

  ‘So why did you then take the pills to forget it all?’

  He shrugs.

  ‘There must be a logic. Or did you want that new “lust” to remain hidden because it distracted from the love you had for him?’

  He shrugs again. Bitch, what would she know?

  ‘That’s the problem with therapy is it not? It brought all their faces and voices back into reality. It has made you remember. So how do you feel about them now?’

  ‘Empty. Cold. Lost.’

  ‘Do you believe you can truly love again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Truth?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tomas, do you not understand? No one can help you unless you help yourself.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for this help.’

  ‘Yes you did. You called me here. You came willingly to this session.’

  Fuck this! His mind screams and the scene before him shatters. Cracks. Disintegrates. Large shards of glass fall to the floor alongside the heavy chair.

  Tomas allows himself to collapse to the ground, his bre
athing deep. He sits alone. Fuck, he thinks as he looks at the broken mirror. That’s seven years bad luck.

  Mary:

  Unclean

  She closes her eyes and breathes. It’s the way she has taught herself to block it out. In her early thirties and this is how she makes her living. Always a demand for sex, always a demand for her. The luck of looking young, she guesses.

  She hears him enter from the bathroom. Her eyes remain closed. She knows he’ll demand she looks at him whilst he forces his maggot dick into her mouth. She holds back the physical shudder and opens. He stands there, bloated like a whale, small pathetic erection propping up his belly. ‘Suck it bitch,’ he says.

  On her knees she looks like she is praying. She tries not to laugh as she holds his dick between her lips. Did Mary the Mother do this to Jesus’ father before guilt lead her cheating form to declare she’d be raped by God and was to carry his child? How about Mary the Whore who sucked that child’s adult dick? She’s just another in a series of whores, maybe she’ll gain some religious support for her role and end up being an idol hung on the wall of millions of homes around the world.

  She is pushed back onto the bed, her legs spread and the stinking piece of meat pushes his way into her. Thrusting erratically. In her mind she pictures Mary the Whore being gangbanged by the army of disciples whilst Jesus watches with his dick in his hand. As she wonders about the size of it, the client blows his load at the same time as Christ and the image is gone. Reality: a big stinking ball of meat pressing down on her, dick throbbing inside. He pulls out; she looks. He didn’t