Slow Poison - Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

Cheltenham, December 25th

Trim woke cold under the deep blue of the bedroom ceiling. His quilt lay crumpled on the carpeted floor. The steady tick of the Meyrowitz filtered through from the next room. The blue tones that dominated the bedroom gave his skin a death-like tan. He reached for the quilt and a Quaalude. Americans had such interesting pockets. The capsule brought him near to sleep, but the diary brought him back. He searched out another scribbled section, a faint pencilled scrawl, tiny words that held nightmares.

B. May 9, 1941. It is difficult to become unconscious at will. Sometimes I feign the twilight that reels just out of my grasp. Blue flame from low blue flame gas hiss singeing knuckle hair black acrid, odours familiar, premonitious, cold-hot horror. Paganini whistled in murmurs in shit-filled stench holes in piss pools, yellowing festers of scar-scab light, snatches through rough-hewn torn rough pine from black forests where once such as we tasted dark kirsch wonders sliced through with silver, coffee new ground in shining urns at corner tables, the blue, too blue mountain lake, the strong November sunlight, the cleansing cutting air, where our automobile stood proud, tethered like a deep crimson stallion, transporting us to lonely zöll posts and beyond.

Hard schoolroom learnings buried into surreal life, scraping flesh from the bones, stealing art and youth and genius, fingering moments of dirge octaves, barré, plié, one and two and one and two, your unformed breasts ogled and mauled, your frail balletic body broken and limp, the hard flesh tearing, tearing, filling your pure soul with disease and vile fluids, devil semen, harsh oaths tearing at you, sounds, words never heard, taken by the triad, laughing, spitting, echoes from hell itself, flesh weapons beating hard and harder, dead more dead more dead more dead than dead. This they make me see. Make me hear. Now each bright morning mocks me, hung there for these countless counted brilliant days. Hung there on my miserable talent, my pen strokes etching falsehood and artifice and parody. Dead more dead than dead.

He held the book close to his face, inhaling deeply. Forty years or more of life had circulated around and through the pages of the little diary. He could detect none of the horror or love within the fibres; the atmosphere was captured in the words alone. All there was to smell were the peppery scents of old paper and the dry saintly fragrance of old leather. He could still taste the residue of the Quaalude, ground waterless between his teeth. His eyes burned from lack of sleep and he slipped the habitual earplug into his ear and hoped that words would soothe him. On this day, at this time, so late in the year, wild sweeping violins and accordions and temple bells streamed forth. Walrus wailings. Too early to phone, too early to strike at the heart. A day should mature, should ripen before the fruits could be plucked. Now, at break of this Christmas Day, the fruits would be bitter. He knew how to be patient. And besides, Lenny would need him.

Stonehouse

Becky had opened the parcel. Wished she hadn’t. Inside the box, on a bed of blood red tissue paper, lay a small metallic animal head. A donkey. A mule. Something. Before Sarah could see, Becky took the box and its contents through into the kitchen. She pressed it deep into the well of the pedal bin and shut the lid with a defiant snap.

Cheltenham

Was it true what the man had said? Was it? Had he really said it? He had not struck him then, so maybe, maybe it had been true. Trim had pulled him up from the bed by his hair, yes, had shaken him, yes and then he had told him. Quite plainly, yes. He had been sick, yes, would have to clean it up, yes, one of the man’s favourite games. Or maybe he would kneel close, yes, until he shouted as he came, yes, but then, when the man had finished, then, yes, then he might give his special stuff away, oh yes, want that, yes.

The man liked to help him find a new place, squeezing Lenny’s thin arms to find a virgin vein. Sometimes the needle would slip. Once, when the inner thigh had seemed to be the only place, then the man had pierced Lenny’s scrotum. By accident, of course. It had hurt a little, it had hurt a lot. Lenny thought that he remembered the pain, yes, but the man had only twisted the needle a tiny bit when he removed it, had only hit him once or twice for his stupidity and there were only a few spots of blood on the sheets. But when the man had found the right spot, oh, it had been like the kiss of god making him all better. Thank you god. Thank you man. Thank you. But, was it true what the man had said?

“Can you hear me, animal?”

Such a kind voice. Lenny looked up at Trim like an obedient puppy.

“Do you want to know what I’ve done?”

Close in Lenny’s ear. A warm whisper.

“Yes.”

Trim had heard the seven o’clock news. He was safe.

“Do you ever think about dying, animal?”

Yes. Lenny thought about dying a lot. Sometimes he even thought about living.

“It would be so easy to kill you, animal. No one would know. Or care.”

Lenny listened quietly, waiting for the stuff.

“I could cut you, animal.”

Lenny prayed a silent prayer.

“Please god let the man give me the stuff now please god please.”

“I could make you hurt. I could make you really hurt so bad.”

Another silent prayer.

“Hurt me give me the stuff kill me give me the stuff dear lord for Crissakes give the stuff please please god.”

All that emerged was a whimper. Trim struck the slavering mouth, drew blood, stopped the whine.

“It would be so easy to finish you off, animal.”

A whimper. Eyes cast down. Trim stood up and walked over to peer through one of the boarded up windows. He took a cigarette from a pack and lit it, blowing smoke through the spaces between the boards. Lenny remained on the bed, curled up in a protective ball, like a hedgehog caught in the bright halogen flare of a killer.

“Shall I tell you about Fred, animal?”

Lenny thought he might remember a Fred. Once, he had a brother called Fred, but that was such a long time ago.

“Shall I tell you how I stopped his heart from beating?”

A whimper.

“I cut it, animal. So deep. And he bled when I cut it. So much blood, animal. Shall I show you?”

Lenny cowered away. He did not like this new game. Another prayer.

“…stop stop please the stuff I need the stuff I need it please god the stuff please please.”

Trim moved over to the bed. He aimed the Gucci well. A snap. A rib fracturing. Pain shot through the skeleton frame, blood bubbling from its lips.

“No, not yet, animal. You still have time, don’t you? Lots of lovely time to suffer.”

Lenny couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Fred, but he could remember far off days when the sun still shone, when nights were clear and star filled, crisp with frost, or the bright mornings alive with the first awakenings of spring. Now, those feelings only appeared when the man came. After the pain.

Trim prepared the syringe and filled the room with sunshine and the scent of dandelions. Lenny looked down over the clover fields and watched a small dog dart among the sheep, sending them to the edge of the field in panic. Some small children were squatted by the bank of a stream, worrying at the water with withies. He could hear their whoops of laughter. Across the fields, behind steel walls, he could see the squirming mass of skinned snakes that unfurled their venomous tongues toward him. He turned again to where the children squatted and blew them a trembling funnel of song and the water sparkled like cats-eyes in the light of a passing articulated lorry. But behind his eyes, the darkness began. So soon this time. The darkness pressed down on him like strong hands, crushing his skull, squeezing out all the light, all the sunshine, until there was nothing but the cold lonely waking and the long vigil until Trim came again. Bright seconds poured into hellish hours of emptiness.

Trim was not yet bored with Lenny, but one day he might just forget to come, might just leave him to wither away. Not yet, though. Not just yet. He removed a selection of cash cards from his pocket, choosing a NatWest. The bank was the closest. He drew three hundred pounds from the wall, from someone’s account. He slipped the card into a post box outside the Post Office on The Promenade. He crossed the road and made his way toward Cavendish House. Almost all trace of Christmas had been swept away. He found himself in the toy department, surrounded by the debris of Santa’s Wonderland, workmen prising nails from the painted chipboard. None of them caught his imagination. He walked the line of dolls and bears and bunnies, all half-price. He chose and paid for a small Steiff' bear and waited for the sales assistant to wrap it. He could not resist the ceramic Beatrix Potter Mrs Tiggywinkle among the others on display. He curled his fingers around the cold glaze. It lay sweetly in his palm as he accepted the gift-wrapped bear from the girl.

Coffee in the sandwich bar was next. He looked across at the facade of The Everyman. Their adaptation of Peter Pan was advertised in red letters across the entire facade. Two women were discussing wool at a corner table. He finished his coffee and returned the cup to the girl behind the counter. He smiled at the wool women as he brushed past them. He abandoned their leather purses in the glass lift of the arcade behind The Everyman; nothing in them to speak of; snippets of wool, passport photos, heavy coins and crumpled notes.

He passed a phone booth and looked at his watch. Almost time. Coins in the slot, area code, beep beep, beep beep, the coins forced in, leaving grooves in his thumb.

“Hello? Stonehouse, 8117.”

Something about the silence alerted her.

“Who is this, please?”

More silence.

“I’m going to hang up now. If you ring again, I’ll hang up right away.”

“Rebecca.”

No one called her that.

“Rebecca, did you like the present?”