Release . . . Part 2. A Novel in Parts

Michael Gray Griffith

Why Not Start at The Start?

Part One here

Owen, a nursing home worker is murdering residents that have profound Alzhimers’s Disease. But he has a significant problem.

2
The block of units, three stories tall, was tucked into the unit-busy street, hidden behind an established gum the council had forced the developers to leave.

Parking in the street, Owen made his way up to the top floor: flat twenty-one. After quietly opening the door, he crept into the bedroom and, after finding her, watched her.

As always, she had cocooned herself in the doona, and from above, her face looked like it had been dropped from a height into the pillow. Mouth open, she was snoring.

Owen wasn’t dumb. He knew she had no features that a magazine cover would want—unless, of course, she’d done something bad. But while he knew this, he also couldn’t see it. To him, her face had become the island that a man adrift was swimming to. He could feel the current now. Despite being together for a year, it was still gathering strength.

Kneeling before her, he brushed the short strands of mousy hair from her face. Her lashes fluttered, her forty-year-old wrinkles creasing as they did.

‘Morning,’ he said.

Vicky opened her eyes, and love flew out.

‘Morning,’ she slurred.

He smiled, then kissed her, and she let him. Her breath stank—morning breath. He stopped breathing until he kissed it away.

‘You’re late,’ he whispered.

‘What?’

She swung round to the radio clock.

‘Oh my god!’

Erupting from the bed, she was in the bathroom before Owen had time to regret.

Up, he moved into the kitchen and switched on the kettle. He liked making coffee. Milk first, then stir the coffee into it before adding the water. It was a simple readjustment that made a distinct difference.

Vicky blustered out of the bathroom wearing her knickers and bra. They were old knickers that covered everything and more. Her bra was also old, and two sizes too big. She’d meant to change it—she often said she had to—but to date, she hadn’t. And she wasn’t pale—she was white. The only blemishes on her skinny body were a few large brown moles Owen’s eyes couldn’t help but travel to.

‘This is your fault,’ she said. ‘Before I met you, I was never late. Now look at me,’ she said, and pulled on her slacks.

‘Coffee?’

‘They’ll kill me. They’ll really kill me.’

Owen smiled and switched off the kettle as she raced into her blouse.

‘Is it cold outside?’

‘Yep.’

‘Raining?’

He shook his head.

‘Well that’s something at least,’ she went, and grabbing her cardigan, bag and keys, she headed for the door, opened it—and was gone.

This threw him, but as quickly as Hilda’s face popped back into his head, she left again, as he heard keys being put back in the door.

Vicky ran in and up to him before throwing her arms around his neck.

‘How horrible,’ she went. ‘I almost forgot my morning hug.’

He gave it to her.

‘And look,’ she said, dragging him into the bedroom.

‘I’ve made a space for you,’ she said. She had. In the room’s built-in wardrobe, room had been made.

‘It’s ridiculous,’ she said. ‘Having you living out of your bag—well, at least I think it is.’

His bag was a sports bag, placed in the corner of her bedroom.

He replied with a little nod and a touched smile. For her, this was enough. Kissing his cheek, she was gone.

3

As Ben reached the veranda’s air, he barked with that bark he was famous for—sending charity collectors and the odd Jehovah’s Witness on their way. And those plucky ones that did stay stood well back and prepared to meet, once the door had been opened, a pissed-off Great Dane.

Ben was a basset hound.

Seven years old, he had a bit of arthritis in his joints, so took longer to walk to the IGA—which was fine, because Mary, who was eighty, took longer too.

For this brief period in time, Ben had become a minor celebrity. To the suburb, he was known as Fred, from Fred Basset. To the dogs they passed, he was known by whatever dogs refer to themselves as. And to that Greek man—who in the summer wore a tea towel on his head and was often pushing a wheelbarrow full of wood, or bricks, or pieces of computers—he was a reason to stop. No one rubbed Ben’s head and ears like the firm, hardened hands of this man; not even Mary.

At the IGA, where he was tied up to the ‘No Parking’ pole, he hung his tongue out and drooled a smile at all the checkout guys and chicks, who, coming outside to smoke, were getting fatter as their dreams to escape moved further away.

Quiet now, since they were inside the house, he followed her down the hall, his ears flopping as he strode past the phone and the photo of Ian—Mary’s late husband.

Ben hadn’t always been Mary’s dog. Mary’s daughter, Mavis, was the one who had originally purchased him when he was a puppy. Unfortunately, her husband, Les, was allergic to Ben’s hair, and so Mary and Ian—who had a few years left then—agreed to look after Ben until Mavis found him a new home.

She never found one.

Fortunately, too, Les had not been allergic to the Rottweiler pup he’d bought a week after Ben’s re-housing.

Mary placed the two green bags of shopping onto the table, then rubbed her throbbing left hand before crossing the kitchen to grab her scissors. She didn’t have enough shopping for two bags, but she never bought much, and spreading what little she did buy into two bags made the walk home possible.

‘Here you go,’ she said, after reaching into one of the bags and extracting the packet of jerky.

As Ben watched her cut the packet open, he barked. He loved jerky. Taking it from her hands with a politeness she hadn’t taught him, he carried it into the living room, lay on the rug, and using his front paws to hold it in place, began chewing.

With Ben content, Mary began putting the other shopping away.

The house was the last un-renovated California bungalow on the street, and the quarter-acre block was one of three left. Having real estate agents knocking on her door and enquiring as to whether she’d like a valuation done was a weekly occurrence. They would have come daily if it wasn’t for Ben.

But Mary was in no mood to sell. As the townhouses went up around her block, and peered onto her backyard with all their contemptuous, symmetrical windows, she kept herself amused by secretly threatening to begin sunbaking nude.

Mary and Ian had lived in this house for over thirty-three years. Ian departed four years ago. Unable to sleep one night, he got up to go to the living room to read a book. Three hours later, Mary had found him slumped in his chair—head forward, he’d had the dawn’s light in his hair and his dentures in his lap.

Shopping away and green bags on their hooks, Mary came back to the table and opened her beaten-up purse.

She had three gold coins inside and some silver. Leaving the silver, she took out the gold and opened the cupboard above the microwave. Sliding aside an anodised container marked Flour, she reached for a large glass jar that had once held pickled onions—Ian’s favourite treat. Lidless, it was now half full of gold.

If the cupboards could see, they would have found an irremovable kindness to Mary’s face. Born with an abundance of this softer quality, she had spent the majority of her life trying to hide it away. This desire to conceal it had grown exponentially since Ian had left. The only people she saw now, and saw openly, were those few friends who were still going. She saw Mavis the most, but she had long since hidden what she could from her.

But despite living in a harbour, Mary wasn’t lonely. How could she be? She had Ben. Ben was always with her. He slept on her bed. He licked up the water that spilt onto the bathroom floor as she showered. He sat next to her on the lounge and glanced now and then at the cryptic crosswords she’d always been fond of doing. After her grandkids, and before everyone else, Ben was the one.

Another of her loves were the plants that populated her garden. For a while, after Ian had gone, Mary had tried to wrought the same control Ian had over these plants. But their evolving beauty had swayed her, and, in thanks for being allowed to find their own way, they repaid her with more flowers than Ian had seen and, of course, their ever-changing smorgasbord of fragrance.

Presently, she was waiting on two Halloween fuchsias to pop their lanterns. Perhaps the first bulbs had opened this morning and were now dangling from their hanging baskets, waiting for her.

Ben chewed the jerky. Tough as shoes used to be, its stubborn strands twisted and turned in his laughing teeth.

To the unusual sound of the heavy thud—and the sound of breaking glass—he stopped laughing.

Back in the kitchen, he found Mary lying on her back and gold coins spinning around her head.

As a dog, Ben had seen a limited amount of things. Those sights did not include this.

She looked just as if she was asleep—but he was bright enough to know that Mary never slept on the floor.

As he wondered whether it was right to bark, he failed to notice that his damp slice of jerky had dropped from his mouth.

Part 3 Soon.

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