Warning: This short novel becomes dangerous now. It does not tell you who is good or who is bad, you will make that decision yourself, and which ever decision you make I have attempted to challenge it. Basically, needle you.
If you want a safe read, then I suggest you do not proceed.
Michael Gray Griffith
Hey Michael
I am on Owen’s side. I would want my son to do the same thing in the same circumstances, believe it or not.
What I found frightening wasn’t Owen’s compassion shown towards the suffering but rather how people are treated in nursing homes - no time for the staff to properly look after them and the indignity they suffer, and basically nothing has changed. It’s more and more about profit by cutting services.
I personally believe Owen was right - released them from all that pain, discomfort and indignity.
xx
PART 1, PART 2, PART 3, PART 4, PART 5
Chapter 15
The coffin was covered in flowers. The church had a healthy number of mourners, and they were chatting softly as they waited for the service to begin. Owen and Vicky were sitting next to an old man who was alone. Dressed in an old suit, he smelled of brilliantine.
“Are you family?” the man whispered.
“No,” said Owen. “We’re from the nursing home.”
“Oh?” the man said, with an upward nod.
“Are you family?” Vicky asked.
“No,” said the man. “I was just,” and then he paused as he looked for the right word, “an admirer.”
“Stan,” he said, offering Owen his hand.
“I went to that home once, when she first moved in,” Stan said. “But she’d forgotten who I was. There didn’t seem any point in going after that.”
“You were an admirer?” Owen whispered.
“I was her lover,” said Stan. “Or one of them. I’d say most of these men here, were.”
With new eyes, Owen and Vicky looked around and found the church was full of mainly single geriatric men.
When they came back to Stan, he was wearing a gentle grin.
“Did her husband know?” Owen asked.
“Oh yes. But he didn’t mind, often he liked to watch.”
Vicky didn’t want to hear, but Owen was hooked.
“She was beautiful, you know. Just beautiful.”
Owen’s mobile phone vibrated. In the pews, the men who still had their hearing looked around. Owen went to shut it off, but then he noticed the number. It wasn’t his agency.
“Hello?”
Chapter 16
Beverly was in the back of the op shop. Standing at a clothes-strewn trestle table, she was helping another old lady to fold and sort the donations. She had a mug of tea beside her, and the hair on the back of her head was matted.
“I found her on my way here,” Gladys said. “She was at the bus stop down the road.”
“What made you think something was wrong?” Vicky asked.
“She wasn’t wearing any shoes.”
Beverly was wearing a pair of pink runners.
“I gave her those,” Gladys said.
“Thank you,” Vicky said as Owen stared at his mother’s new shoes.
“I found your number in her bag,” Gladys said. “If I hadn’t, I guess I would have had to call the police.”
Owen turned to Gladys: “I’ll take her home now.”
“That’s not all. She also stank of wee. I cleaned her up as best as I could, but when was the last time she had a shower?”
Chapter 17
With all the residents but Jack in bed, the evening shift was spending the last hour of their shift either smoking and gossiping or watching TV. In bed, Ivy was being kept company by Clara and Doctor Seagull. Her moist cough was worse, and when she breathed between coughing fits, it sounded like her lungs were bubbling.
To see Doctor Seagull sitting down and taking his time was rare. As a rule, he was like the bird whose name he’d been born with.
“How are you, Ivy?” he said.
Ivy didn’t react.
“She can’t hear you,” Clara said.
Doctor Seagull ignored her; he always ignored RNs.
“Ivy,” he said, and, hand on her hand, asked a little louder. Clara shook her head. She wasn’t even meant to have started yet. But with the evening RN flushing Dot’s blocked feed, she’d been asked, in a no-way-out sort of way, to leave the smokers and come in here.
Every night she turned up, it astounded her that Ivy was still here. The woman was a stayer. But then she hadn’t had kids, and often the old maids went the distance and further.
Doctor Seagull was balding down the centre of his head as he leant forward and slipped his stethoscope in through the generous neck of Ivy’s nightie. Clara saw herself tapping the top of his head and saying:
‘Being short is one thing, but bald and short, that must be difficult.’
She smiled at this, then kept smiling as he looked up and asked:
“Doesn’t she have anything warmer to wear?”
Clara hated him. She simply hated him.
“Ivy!” he said again. “Ivy?!”
“Yes,” said Ivy.
“I’m Doctor Seagull,” he said. “Can you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” she said again, and opening her eyes, which were pale blue and beyond tired, she looked at him.
“You have pneumonia,” he said. “So I’m going to put you on a course of antibiotics and then come back to check up on you. Alright?”
“Thank you,” Ivy said, her voice like a screen door creaking in the distance.
“Okay, good,” he said. “Well, you take care,” he added, and she nodded and then to Clara’s amazement, Ivy smiled.
Chapter 18
On the veranda, before the closed front door, Vicky, kiss-less and hug-less, stood watching the now-closed stained-glass door and felt that, although she couldn’t see him, Owen was standing in the dark hallway beyond it, listening for her to leave. This was why she waited. He would open the door again. He’d realize, soon, that he needed her to be with him, and then he’d open it and come looking.
But as she waited, the house remained quiet.
They’d taken her car to Hilda’s funeral. His was parked at her apartment block. She thought of knocking and informing him of this, but, in the end, she didn’t. Plus, when he finally did realize, he’d be forced to call.
Inside her car, she chastised herself for being so selfish. She’d seen the expression on his face as they brought Beverly home. The expression that slumped even further when they found the mess she’d made in the living room. Naturally, he wanted to be alone.
She looked at the house again. Searched for a light. But the house was not in a giving mood.
She left, and on the way home, wiped away a tear that embarrassed her. It wasn’t all bad. Beverly would have to go into care now. There would be no choice. And once Beverly was in care, Owen would be free to make a life with her.
Or would he?
He and his mum were so close. What if he couldn’t bring himself to do this? What if he chose to look after Beverly instead of being with her? What if he had already made this decision, and this request for her to go home was his way of leading up to the larger request for her to simply and completely leave?
By the time she’d entered her flat, she was locked in the maze of these conflicting possibilities. Sitting on her couch, she hugged a cushion and switched on the TV. In the past, the TV had often saved her from loneliness, but here, as the worried people on the police show stressed, Vicky found her eyes constantly turning and then returning to the phone.
Chapter 19
Ben barked, and Les jumped.
“Get back,” Les said, then heard the water leaking.
“Huh?” he said, then stopped pushing Mary’s wheelchair. Standing back and jerking as Ben barked again, he found the urine running down the wheelchair’s frame.
“Jesus, not on the fucking carpet. MAVIS!!” he shouted, then, after shoving Mary into the laundry, he roared at Ben, who, barking, struggled to stay with Mary. Tail between his legs, Ben tried to jump onto Mary’s legs but couldn’t. With her one working hand, Mary rubbed the dog’s head and wanted to say something but couldn’t because she still couldn’t speak.
“Mavis!” Les hollered as he barged down the hallway. “Your mum’s pissing all over the carpet.”
In the living room, his late-teenage kids were playing video games, and thanks to their entertainment system, that section of the house was exploding with gunfire.
“Turn that bloody game down!” Les shouted, then, looking around again, screamed, “Mavis!!!”
“Well, I know it’s late, you already said that, but surely you must have some idea of how long your waiting list is?” Mavis said, a hand pressed to her other ear. On the office desk before her was a long list of nursing homes. Most of them were crossed out.
As Mavis heard Les holler her name, she lifted to her feet and used her bum to hold the door closed.
“Well, there must be someone there who knows. Can’t you ask? Please,” she said, then, hand over the mouthpiece, she said, “Because if I don’t find her a home soon, I’ll be the one who’ll need a bloody nursing home!”
Chapter 20
Vicky woke, and as she did, she gasped. She’d woken with such a start that she’d overbalanced and rolled off the couch. Groaning, she picked herself up and glanced up at the kitchen clock.
11 p.m.
Busting for a piss, she trundled off to the loo, but as she streamed, she knew it wasn’t her bladder that had woken her. She was still in her clothes and laughed at herself because of this. But her laughter didn’t return with her to the living room.
She looked at the phone, sat down next to it, and watched it as though it were a cooking microwave that lacked a timer. It didn’t ring.
The kettle took its time to boil. She should have just gone to bed, she thought.
The kettle boiled.
Making a cup of tea, she sat at the kitchen table and watched it steam. The steam couldn’t hold her, and her eyes came back to her phone. As it refused to ring, in her mind, she saw Owen closing the door on her, and the view made her shiver.
She came back to the tea, took a sip, and then mentally told herself off. This was not a time to be stupid. If Owen was going to dump her to look after his mother, he wouldn’t have stayed those nights when he knew he should have gone home. And then, even if he did decide to look after his mum, why couldn’t she move in with them? It wouldn’t be perfect, but life rarely was. In fact, that might probably be the best thing for all of them. If he’d asked her to stay tonight, chances where she may never have left.
Her body ached. She wanted to be near him. Other, softer parts hurt too. Unable to shake him off, her eyes turned back to the phone.
If only she’d die, she thought, just die, Beverly. Just go to sleep and die.
And then she was telling herself off. But it did no good. She did wish this, and even as she tried not to, she found herself wishing for it so ardently it could have been called a prayer.
She should go to bed. She should. She would. She did.
Rest of the tea down the sink, clothes off for her pyjamas, she offered the loo another, quick piss, before curling up under her doona, and as the room became too dark, she pulled the doona over her head.
Silence and darkness should have found her alone, but instead, her Ex, Paul was here. She hated it when he turned up, but whenever she was feeling weak, the memories of him returned.
His face would have changed by now; it must have. Ten years does things to a face, it had to hers, but here he was now, looking exactly as he did in the good times, before she’d left him.
Owen was right to think of Vicky as an island. But while he was her current castaway, he wasn’t the one who had found her. Not that Paul had ever been aware she considered him her explorer.
Paul was a manic-depressive courier who, when high, became a light bulb to both the lost women and men that he met. Trouble was, when his moods switched and one of his dark-room depressions took over, he lost anyone and everyone who had taken a shine to him. Everyone but her. Vicky found his depressive side more attractive than the other. It was one of the reasons she’d stayed, that and the fact that, when he was down, she opened up and let him hide in parts of her she hadn’t even known existed.
But Paul needed more than a hiding spot; he needed a fan club, a safety net, and someone to believe in his crazy schemes.
One scheme had seen him buy a yacht. He’d been voraciously reading books about couples that had sailed around the world, and to his eyes this yacht was the craft that would carry them to a life full of adventure and beauty. But with no savings, because he couldn’t keep a job, he begged her to go guarantor on the loan, and because he was so happy and so assured, and for other reasons too, she agreed. But the boat was too small to take on the world. Neither of them could stand in the cabin, and its hull was full of dry rot. Not that it mattered. By the time they’d realised this, Paul had already gone off the idea. Plus, he didn’t like swimming, especially in deep water.
Then, one day, after two weeks that saw him flying so high she needed to shout up at his clouds to be heard, she said something wrong. She wasn’t even sure what, but he took exception to it, then an exception became aggression.
“Oh grow up,” she said as he ripped a picture off the wall and hurled it across the room.
It was the wrong thing to say.
“Grow up?” he said. “Grow up?!”
And then, as she tried to appear unfazed but knew she was failing, he shoved her.
“Don’t hit me!” she said and went to hit him back.
Her slap never reached him, but it did succeed in pushing him completely over the edge. Vicky had never been beaten up, and she had never seen anyone so angry. It was as though she was the face of everything that had constantly tripped him up.
When she finally woke up, her head was pounding and he was standing above her, crying as he wiped her face with a wet tea towel. She could taste blood, and knew it was her own, and one of her eyes wouldn’t open at all.
When he realized she was awake, he began thanking god and then apologizing profusely, but even as she tried to sense how injured she was, she knew it was over. When she opened her mouth wide, her jaw still cracked.
He knew too. That was why, when she told him, he immediately threatened to kill himself. She actually thought there was a good chance he would.
It was two weeks before she was able to go outside again. And in those two weeks, he made her phone, this phone, ring off the hook. Filled her message bank hourly with desperate, frightened pleas and promises to take his medication. Then, just as she was wavering and privately considering the terms to which she would accept due to considering a reconciliation, he stopped ringing.
Alone, she waited for that call. The one that would tell her that, unable to cope with the fact that he had lost her, he’d pulled the plug. That call never came.
A month later, she learned from a friend that Paul had met someone else, a secretary in one of the offices he’d delivered to, and he was talking about getting engaged.
The only call Vicky did receive was from the police. The yacht, that Paul had convinced her to purchase, was moored at a quay, and the yacht had caught fire. Not only that, but before it had sunk, it had damaged the yachts on either side of it. The police suspected it was arson, but they couldn’t prove it. The yacht wasn’t insured, and the bill, in the end, came to a little over ninety thousand dollars. On top of this, there was the cost of having Paul’s sunk boat removed. Finally, on top of all this, were the loan repayments that Paul had decided to leave her with.
But despite it all, there had been some internal benefits. As the years passed, Vicky came to realize that she had never loved Paul. Her attraction to him was his need for a carer, and her need to be wanted. As the years passed, and she found herself attracted to others like Paul (not that she ever approached these men), she’d begun to believe that this was the only way she could love.
But then Owen came along, and Owen didn’t need a carer. He just needed and had her.
Starving to see him, Vicky came out from under the covers.
She dialled the number and couldn’t sit down because she felt so awkward. It was a terrible time to call. Chances were she’d wake them both up. She knew she should hang up, she should, but she found she couldn’t.
“Hello,” a man said.
“Owen?”
“No, I’m Doctor Anderson,” Doctor Anderson said.
Chapter 21
“It’s good of you to come,” Doctor Anderson said as he closed the door behind her. She couldn’t remember the drive here. It had been a surreal journey, like a dream she couldn’t wake up from.
“Where is he?” she whispered as, arms crossed, she entered the living room.
Owen must have cleaned up, for the room was spotless.
“He’s in the kitchen,” the Doctor replied.
Nodding, she left the Doctor, who went back to the armchair where he had some forms spread out on the coffee table and moved to the edge of the kitchen.
Owen was sitting at the table. There was a cup of tea in his hand and weariness in his eyes.
“Owen.”
Turning, Owen held her eyes a moment, then he nodded and returned his attention to the table.
“Are you okay?” she asked, noticing the hand that wasn’t holding the mug’s handle was trembling.
He nodded again, then screwed up his face, as though he had just trodden on a thorn.
“I’ll be out in a minute, okay?” he said, once this discomfort had passed.
“How is he?” the Doctor asked as Vicky sat on the edge of the couch and crossed her legs as tightly as her arms.
“I’m, err, I’m not sure,” she said.
“Well, like I said, it’s good of you to come over. Perhaps once they take her away, you could take him back to your place. If that’s possible, of course?”
“What? Oh, yes, yes, sure. Did, err, did you say she’s still here?”
“Yes, she’s in the bedroom. That’s where he found her.”
“Oh,” Vicky said, and then, glaring back at the hall that led to that bedroom, she asked, “What happened?”
“I’d say it was her heart. With the amount she smoked, I was always of the belief that she would suffer a stroke, but well, you never know, do you... Would you like to see her?”
“Err... err, yes. Yes, maybe I should.”
The Doctor didn’t come with her; he remained at the coffee table with the all-but-filled-out death certificate.
Alone, Vicky entered the room, which was lit by a single lamp. On her back, Beverly was grey. She was also wearing her dentures, so her mouth hadn’t sunk in, and her eyes were open. What she was wearing was hard to know because the doona had been pulled up to her neck, and a rolled-up towel, tucked under her jaw, was there to keep her mouth shut.
She was dead. She was definitely dead, yet even so, Vicky had to touch her and brought the back of her finger to her cheek. Beverly was a fridge.
In the room, there was a chair in front of the dressing table. Vicky sat on this and, hand on her mouth, found she couldn’t look at herself. Inside, great parts of her were already celebrating, and that self-centered part of her heart, prepared to take a ticker-tape parade down the freed streets of her new life. But while this was all going on, and going on beyond her control, another deeper, cautious section was threatening to break. But it wasn’t fair, for how could she have known. Never could she remember anything that she’d wished for coming to pass. And whether this was just coincidental, or worse, she knew that this secret prayer would have to remain secret forever. If she wanted to be with Owen, which she did, and now, was going to be, she could never bring this up. It would be an unspoken barrier between them, forever. But then - and now she did look at herself - there were other secrets she carried successfully. Why would one more, no matter its gravity, succeed in bringing her down?
In the mirror, she found her eyes, and in her lamp-lit eyes, she found a modest wedding, a honeymoon, and at least a chance of trying for a kid. The rush of joy was so overwhelming that it, and not grief, saw her briefly lowering her face into her hands and, once there, crying.
The doorbell rang.
The undertaker was good at his job. He brought with him a lightness that infected them all. Even Owen found a smile. Yet the undertaker didn’t make jokes or treat the moment carelessly. He just wasn’t awkward, and so they weren’t awkward around him.
As the Doctor remained inside, Owen moved to the nature strip and, arms crossed, watched the undertaker place the loaded trolley into the back of his van.
“Why did you call?” Owen asked.
“Excuse me?” Vicky replied, despite hearing the question.
“I just wondered why you called?”
“I don’t know,” she said, rushing the words. “I just had a feeling.”
He turned to her. She was standing a few feet away, her arms crossed as tightly as his.
“What kind of a feeling?”
“A feeling to call,” she said.
Chapter 22
Full of celebrations, Vicky, in shock and wonder at the impossibility of it all, drove even slower than she usually did because concentrating on the road was so difficult. Never had one of her wishes come true. But here she was now, driving home with her prize. And then she saw Beverly’s grey face.
Thankful for reaching a set of lights, Vicky glanced across. Owen was staring ahead, his heavy face, packed full of grief, was also tinged with red.
He’d hardly said a word since the Doctor had left, but then, neither had she.
Locked in this silence, they walked up the stairs to her flat, then he waited as she looked for her keys. He never attempted to look for or use his.
Inside, he placed his bag where he always left it, then sat on the lounge and switched on the TV. A selling show was on. A heavily tanned man and a busty woman, who were both abundantly happy, were trying to flog a stomach cruncher. The models, demonstrating the cruncher, had muscles like gods and faces like dolls. They too were abundantly happy.
“Do you want me to switch this off?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “Leave them. They’re like visual tranquillizers.”
Patting his knee, she left him to fill the kettle and, while rinsing a cup, she found her face in the window’s reflection.
Even now, only a few hours into the beginning of her new life with Owen, the clues to their oncoming troubles were clear. There was no way she could keep this wish to herself. And even though she knew, logically, that Beverly’s death and her wish were a coincidence - they had to be - the possibility that they could be linked, added to the simple truth that she had actually wished for such a vile thing, was already a barrier between her and the man sitting alone on her couch. A barrier that she knew she would never be able to live with, because in her life, if only for once, she wanted there to be one person from whom she withheld no great secrets.
She should tell him. She should... Maybe tomorrow.
When she brought his tea over to him, he was not crying. She searched his eyes for tears, but they weren’t there. He just looked tired.
As the happy people kept pushing, she sat next to him, right up against him, and sliding her hand under his arm, she grabbed his hand.
“You’re trembling,” she said.
“Am I?”
Squeezing his hand, she leaned even closer and said, “I’m so sorry, Owen.”
He nodded, but did not turn from the TV.
A silence passed that these happy Americans couldn’t shift. Within it, he didn’t drink his tea, and he didn’t turn to her and allow her in.
“Do you think you’ll be able to sleep?” she asked, but what she wanted to say was, “I killed her. I wished she was dead, and now she is.”
Regardless, Owen ignored her question about sleep and asked one of his own.
“Have you ever been so lonely that living with it was simply unbearable?”
“Yes,” she said, and knew that this was the time to speak.
She went to begin, but Owen beat her to the punch.
“She didn’t know, you know,” he said.
No matter how Vicky appraised this statement, it didn’t make sense.
“I’d always wanted her to, once I knew what was coming,” he said, “but in the end... In the end, I left it too late, so she didn’t.”
“Didn’t know what?” Vicky asked, and she came close because she knew he was talking about telling Beverly how he really felt. She could even see him with her as she was dying. He was telling her how much he loved her. Bringing up her free hand, Vicky wiped her eyes.
“To be honest,” he said, “I’d taken it for granted that I’d never make it back here. I was sure, even before I did it, that Doctor Anderson would have twigged.”
“Twigged? Twigged to what?” she said.
“But he didn’t,” he said. “They never do.”
Vicky moved a few degrees back.
“What are you going on about?”
Turning to her, he found her puzzled face, and said:
“I’m glad I did make it back though. Once she was gone, all I could think about was you.”
Briefly, this last comment placed a warm coal in her heart, but with so many questions rising out of the dark, the coal went cold.
They were questions she didn’t ask, but he answered anyway, because he knew what they were.
“I know it must sound awful to you, but it’s not. You didn’t know my Mum like I did. There was no way she would ever have wanted to go into a home.”
Inside Vicky, everything fell.
“Did you hurt her?”
“No,” he said and firmly, shook his head. “I couldn’t do that. She was my mother.”
“But you just said...” and she stopped, because she wasn’t sure what he had just said.
“I used Potassium Chloride. It’s what heart surgeons use to stop the heart. It’s painless, but then, you’d know that, being a nurse.”
There was a pause, and in this pause, Vicky’s face was frozen in place with her eyes blank and her mouth open, but then she suddenly laughed and said, “Are you kidding?”
Owen didn’t reply.
“Owen, please tell me you’re lying,” she said, and no longer laughing, she stood up and took a good step back. “Please tell me that you didn’t just admit to killing your own mother?”
“I didn’t kill her,” he said, as Vicky visibly relaxed. “I released her.”
Everything on this planet that was cold passed through Vicky. Unsteady on her feet, she fumbled backward.
“I know it must be a shock, and to be honest, I never intended to tell you, but, well, I thought, by now, I would have been under arrest, therefore you would have found out anyway... But I’m not, and well, now you know... Sorry.”
“Sorry!” she said. “Sorry!” Then, taking a few more steps back, she shook her head before saying, “No, wait. You just can’t get hold of potassium chloride. Its supplies are regulated.”
He smiled, all-knowing, and said, “Come on, Vicky, even you should know that if you have the money, you can get hold of anything.”
By now, Vicky had reached the kitchen, and as her head raced and fell, it also stumbled over realizations: “You planned this?” she said.
“Of course, it would have been irresponsible not to.”
“But you wouldn’t have known what you were doing. What if it hadn’t worked? If you hadn’t given her enough, you could have left her in a coma!”
“I gave her enough.”
“Oh, you say that now, but you couldn’t have been sure! What if you’d got it wrong? What then?”
“Trust me. I wouldn’t have got it wrong.”
Vicky’s realization ran out of bumps and ran into a wall.
“Oh my god!” she said, and this wasn’t a question. “You’ve done this before.”
Owen didn’t reply, but he did turn from her and, grimacing, returned his eyes to the TV.
“Hilda,” she said. “You killed Hilda.”
“No,” he replied, “killing is the wrong word. You saw what her life was like. There was nothing to kill. Her body was her prison. All I did was open the doors of her cell.”
Vicky couldn’t move. Not one single muscle on her body shifted. If she could have turned to the clock on the wall, she was sure the hands would have stopped too.
“Anyone else?” she finally managed to say, but this too came out like a whisper.
He took his time before nodding.
After gasping, Vicky said, “Who?”
“Winfred Richards, Maria Pisano, and Reginald Haxton.”
Vicky’s legs went weak. Whatever shock was oddly missing after she’d learned he had killed his mother arrived now.
In the kitchen, there was a small table with two chairs. Pulling out one, she sat down. She had to. She would have collapsed if she hadn’t.
For a period, Vicky said nothing; did nothing. Then, from within the centre of this place that shouldn’t exist, she looked up because she wasn’t sure whether he was saying anything, or not.
He wasn’t.
TV mute, he was sitting where he had been, and arms crossed, he was looking over in this direction, but not at her.
“What are you going to do?” he asked, with no panic, or anger, or even fear in his voice.
“I’m going to call the police,” she said.
He nodded.
In her head, she could see all the people he had mentioned, but one came out of the four and filled her thoughts.
Maria used to kiss her hand when Vicky gave her her pills. An Italian migrant, she had come over a few years after the war to marry a man she didn’t know. She had had four kids. Each one came in every week. Some of them several times a week. They brought her food so she didn’t have to eat the meals the home provided, though she ate the home’s food anyway. That was probably why, when she’d died, she’d been so overweight. Always easygoing, she changed whenever her family came in. She put on the “hard done by” act because she wanted them to know that she should never have been here. Instead, she should have been cared for by them until she died. She was fine until six weeks before her death, when a massive stroke all but immobilized her. Around her neck, she wore a St Christopher medal, and above her bed, she had a crucifix stuck to the wall and a picture of the Virgin Mary, whose halo lit up when you pressed a button in the frame.
And then Vicky saw her lying there in her bed. Her eyes filled with terror because Owen, syringe in hand, was searching through her hair or her limbs for whatever vein he’d used.
Vicky shoved her way up to her feet, knocking the chair down as she did.
He jolted but didn’t rise.
Everything changed. Owen had left. In his place was this stranger. A man she didn’t know sitting on her couch; the couch that was next to the phone.
“I’m going to call the police,” she said, and in her head, survival instincts she barely used were frantically deciding what, of the things around, would be the best to grab.
Owen did not approach, and he said nothing.
“Even if I don’t call them now, I can just call them later,” she told him.
Again, he neither moved nor spoke. Neither was he showing any great concern. The only expression that was on his face was sadness. He wasn’t even looking this way anymore. His eyes had returned to the happy TV.
On the kitchen bench was her knife holder. She only had two: a cheap bread knife, that, supposedly, would never become blunt, and a small vegetable knife. The latter was a survivor of a set her mother had bought when everyone thought she and Paul would be married. It wasn’t that sharp. But its blade was strong and would pierce flesh if stabbed with enough force. She chose this.
Eyes on Owen, she wondered whether to snatch up the knife or gently grab it. Gently was what she decided, but when he glanced this way, she snatched at it, and although it came out, the wooden block fell over.
Clutching the knife by her side, as though hoping by some miracle he hadn’t seen it, she felt her eyes burn as Owen looked, not at her, but this way.
“What are you going to do with that?” he asked. And his tone! How could he have sounded; so resigned.
“I want you to leave,” she said.
He didn’t reply.
“Did you hear me? I want you to leave. Now get out! Go on!”
Her shouting didn’t seem to rattle him.
“I thought you were going to call the police?” he said.
“I am, just as soon as you’re gone!”
Her hand squeezed the knife.
“It’s okay, Vicky. You can call them now. I won’t stop you.”
“Leave, Owen, I mean it!”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m wrecked, Vik. And if you want to bring down the roof, well, you do what you think you have to do. But I’m sorry, if this place was on fire, I doubt I could move.”
She paused to this. Looked at his hands, but they weren’t tight fists. If he was readying to explode, he was hiding it well.
“You’ve just confessed to murdering five people. I have to call the police.”
“I didn’t murder anyone,” he said. “I told you. I just offered them, release.”
“Offer? How could you offer them anything? Hardly any of them could speak!”
“Couldn’t they, Vik?” he said, coming back to her. “Are you telling me that if you lost your mouth, then that would be it? They communicate all the time. It’s in their eyes. And you know it.”
And so, after a pause, Vicky strode, with purpose, to the phone.
Receiver up, she looked at him before pressing the zero and said, “I’m numb. Do you know that? I can’t feel a thing. Nothing at all.”
He nodded, then, without looking at her, said, “Well, looking past that, I think you should forget your feelings and think before you dial.”
Now she was the one who didn’t move or reply.
“I released all of them while I was basically living with you. And while I will tell the authorities you didn’t know, the stain of my actions will remain with you. Chances are, even the police won’t believe me. You’ll be deregistered, and even if you’re not, you’ll definitely lose your job. And that’s not taking into account all the embarrassment you will have to swallow, because those few that will believe that you honestly didn’t know will just think you were stupid. Whatever you do, whichever way you turn, you’ll just find shit, and then, on top of that, you’ll have lost me... Not that right now you probably think that’s much to lose. But you’ve been lonely a long time, Vicky. And like it or not, you’re in love with me, and I am in love with you.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“No. If I was doing that, I would promise to tell the police you were involved. Instead, I’m just pointing out to you that you’re two presses away from losing everything you cherish for the sake of some old people who are glad they are gone. In fact, even their families are glad, and all you’ll do for these families is make them feel guilty for the rest of their lives. No one will win, Vicky. I know you’re doing what you think is right. But you’re wrong. So you see, I’m not threatening you. I’m caring for you. Meeting you has changed my life, and whatever the decision is that you make now, that will change yours.”
Really enjoying this story!
Choices are to be done every Moment even in our thoughts…