Shallow Graves:-Stories

The ‘Nice’ Things in Life

by Steffs

There is a feel of blood slowly gliding over the skin, the sound of blood gathering but the smell is the thing; it’s the clue, the dead-cert give-away that it’s blood. He’d smelt it before, blood. Smelt it when his sister cut her hand open on the nail sticking out from the fence. Smelt it when the next-door’s dog sank its teeth into his best friend’s thigh and ripped; and then again at the age of nine when his father had slammed the car door shut on his fingers slicing the tips. He had known the smell of blood, but he had forgotten, or thought he had. Now following the sensation, following the flow and listening to his own blood, in his veins and in his heart, he remembered.

The sunshine, a superheated, magnified hotness on his arm, burnt through the car’s tinted window. A baked heat, which conquered even the air-conditioned coolness of the interior. Mick swore softly as a pickup swerved around him and squeezed into the space just ahead. He wasn’t a competitive man but it pissed the hell out him when people cut him off just to gain a few feet of road.

Sighing he let it go, this time, too tired to make the effort. He was too tired to make any kind of effort these days; living life on the edge was for younger men. That isn’t to say he hadn’t had his moments but they were in the dim distance of his youth. A shadow memory of someone he used to be.

Somewhere behind him horns blared as patience wore thin in the threading lines of slow-moving, heat-melting vehicles. Mick eased his Chevy to the right, slipping off the highway and into the cooler leafy confines of suburbia.

He hated living here, hated the neat lawns, the nice people, the false façade of middle-class so called decency. Yet here he was in thirty-something land surrounded by couples with two point four children, three cars and mortgages the size of the national debt. Mick included himself in this scathing review; he had no leg to stand on, guilty as charged. He supposed he had wanted all of these things once; wanted the ‘nice’ things in life. It had been his dream, or had it? Thinking back, he couldn’t remember voicing this particular desire he had kinda ‘gone with the flow’ and ended up here despite himself, here in this dead end life.

He coughed, blood bubbled in the throat and he couldn’t understand why. Why was there so much blood? It was like his memory, oozing out. A viscous crimson tide, lost, dispersing across the tiled floor. Pooled edges, crusting, turning dull brown against the scarlet, against the grey. It was a final demarcation, a limit, a bitter end.

Cheyenne wasn’t home and “Good,” was his first thought as he poured himself a Jack Daniels. She wouldn’t approve of drinking so early in the day. Mick checked his watch and downed the shot before pouring another and pushing the bottle back to its place behind the other bottles on the shelf. He couldn’t understand her objection. It wasn’t as if he got shit faced or anything, just nicely mellow, ripened, ready to take her barrage of spewing talk. The odious day to day atrocities of small life that was so important to her yet incomprehensible to him. The whiskey made it bearable. It took him to a place where he could sit back, switch off and let it all slide over him.

He kicked off his shoes and left them in the living room, right out in the middle of the carpet. He was feeling rebellious today. He smirked as he padded into the bedroom and placed his glass on the nightstand next to the ever-present coaster. He’d leave a ring and be damned.

Stripping off to his boxers, he enjoyed the freedom. The cooler airflow on his overheated skin; a sheer indulgent pleasure after the enforced confines of his work suit. Phew, today was a scorcher; maybe he’d take a shower.

The moan came, he’d heard it before but it was the first time he’d associated the noise with himself. He heard it again, heard it echo in the space around him, bouncing of hard surfaces, vibrating metal and glass. It was an alien sound that didn’t belong but it came from him, spilling involuntarily from his mouth. The air came from his lungs and along with it the sound, anguished, pitiful but not sorrow filled. There was no sorrow, just regret.

The shower did nothing. Hell yeah, sure, he had cleaner sweat; but the five minutes of blissfully of cool water on his skin just made the heat more unbearable. He abandoned his towel on the mat in the bathroom, a damp pile of beige on beige. He’d wanted blue but as usual he was overruled. His opinion sidelined in favour of the fashionable concept.

The whole house was arranged, streamlined, minimalised to within an inch of its life. A pristine, glossy magazine designed house and as far as Mick was concern, a disaster, a silk purse in a pig’s ear.

He perched on the couch defiantly nude, in his boxers. Today he just didn’t care, no, that wasn’t true; he did care. He cared about being comfortable, he cared about relaxation, he cared about money, he cared… about lots of things.

“Hey honey.” Cheyenne as designed as the house stood regarding him. Her “Hey honey” wasn’t a friendly greeting. It wasn’t the announcement of a loved one come home. No, in Mick’s experience it meant; get your feet off the couch, switch off the sport channel and dance in attendance.

“Hey honey.” He replied.

*****

His hands trembled and twitched. Blood streaked fingers tried to grip. Fingernails coated, grimy red-brown clasped and clawed in the oppressive heated air. Although he knew they were his hands and in some detached place he could feel the movement; he stared fascinated as if seeing them for the first time. He examined the length, the blemishes, the tiny lines of wrinkles crisscrossing the false healthy tanned skin. Looking closer he saw the redness, ink-blotting the surface, meandering leisurely, finally threading down to the wrist where it dripped onto the floor below.

*******

Cheyanne rejected his offer to cook yet insisted on his presence in the kitchen, ‘to exchange their day’, which meant she talked and he listened. He observed her skilfully slice, dice and dissect the vegetables to death; drumming the sharp knife on the anti-bacterial board. There was no meat in the house. They were vegetarian, well she was vegan; always one to go that extra mile and if he wanted to live in the house so was he.

It rankled that he had been given no choice. So during lunch on Thursdays, in a deliberately subversive act; he would visit the forbidden nirvana of a steak house and revel in a juice bloody slab of meat on his plate. All the while giving a metaphorical finger to all women who plagued their depthless conscience’s on their men.

Mick was allowed, in a guilt inducing magnanimity, dairy products, milk for his coffee, eggs and occasionally cheese. All kept in separated containers, sealed, isolated, excommunicated from the brethren of vegetables in the refrigerator.

Cheyenne polluted his enjoyment of these tasty treats by scowling disapproval and scrutinising his every mouthful. Sometimes this was in condemnatory silence, which Mick happily ignored but often she couldn’t help herself and a thirty-minute lecture of the detrimental affects on his body ensued. The clogged arteries, the fat content, the artificial flavourings, preservatives and that was before his single slice of cheese was responsible for the total ozone depletion and the end of the world. Mick usually bore these tirades with good grace but sometimes, like tonight in the stifling mugginess of the kitchen he lost it.

******

It was weird, funny almost how the event of film, of entertainment coloured the human gambit of expectation. The blood didn’t spurt, spraying the far wall with a decorative lattice of red drops, like in the over imaged frames of a horror movie. No, it kind of spread in a slow unrelenting ooze, soaking, inundating; a lava flow in miniature. An inch by inch crawl, absorbing into the fabric of the clothes until at saturation point it devoured the pristine grey tiled surface of the kitchen floor.

Mick stared, fascinated by one tendril of red, lacing its way, threading, navigating the minefield of cleanliness and then the knife flashed again. The kitchen knife used only to the death cry of crispy, crunchy vegetables, plunged downward in a killing arc. The shape sharpened, long curving, flat-bladed, shiny dull metal of the perfect instrument; fitting flawlessly into the black sexy-smooth handle; fitting comfortably into the curl of fingers and palm.

His mind wandered along the history of that particular knife’s existence. A quiet blood free presence in the drawer. Bought at Target as part of a set, ‘All you would ever need in the Kitchen of Today’ the sign had proudly announced. Cheyenne had hesitated; her sensibilities more used to the Potter’s Barn were offended to buy such a visible item in such a shop. However, after careful examination, it was revealed that no distinguishing label was emblazoned into the material substance of the knives so she finally agreed, still reluctant but swayed by the price, to the purchase.

It was a beautiful knife, practical, streamlined. Its stay-sharp edge was keen and shrewd. A weapon, for that’s how Mick perceived it now, of elegance and allure; designed to slip through flesh, fat, sinew and muscle with no friction. A delightfully smooth action that took no effort or application to complete its deadly work but it was passion, anger, and rage; that drove the knife in and the frenzy that did the damage.

Stabbing down, sinking in to the ribcage; the knife created a dull thud and a crack as the ribs took the force, the pain as sharp as the blade. There was a surprised convulsing cough as blood filled the gullet. An ejection of red-wet air from the mouth, the spray left to drip down the quivering chin but it wasn’t nearly enough. It was scant reward for a married prison sentence; so the knife stabbed again and again. Piercing, ripping, shredding again and again. Satisfying the frustration, again, the fear, again and again, the fury.

Froth gargled as bloody liquid was drawn back into the pierced lungs. A deep drawing rattle in the throat, a sucking, gasping, shuddering breath, showing life still clung to the ravaged body and still the knife did its work. Criss-crossing, slicing, carving, and incising deep thin red lines like multiple patterned paper cuts into trembling parchment skin.

Blood flowed freely from ruptured vessels, from the ripped muscle and tissue and from the cavity of crushed ribs puncturing the heart, still struggling, still pumping in a slowing tortured beat. Blood, a blossoming treacle, sliding over the mangled, butchered form.

*********

Mick fell back leaning on the frosted cupboard door, shock on his features. He couldn’t believe, couldn’t comprehend. He stared at Cheyenne like she was a stranger, like he had never seen her before. The black glossy hair was tangled, her face spattered, perfect clothes crushed and rumpled; the blood, the stench of blood, covering everything.

Slowly he regained some kind of composure; his harsh breathing, his heavily thumping heart, fading away to nothing. He tried to focus on the knife, solidly real, to stop everything from slipping away but gradually all he was left with was an anguished agony, grief and a deep regret.

If only Cheyenne had shown that kind of passion, that kind of intensity in their life together then maybe…he looked at her again. She wouldn’t have felt the need to kill him.

Steffs lives in the cold and rain-swept industrial North of England which means that she has plenty of time to stay indoors staying warm and writing. For many years she has written plays because she hated long descriptions and only recently has she turned her hand to writing stories; with a view one day to writing that novel.

Her main employment, the one which pays the bills, is a Teaching Assistant working with children from three to eleven.

Steffs lives in a Victorian house with a tower along with her husband, two children, two dogs and two hamsters.

As a film loving asthmatic she doesn't get out much but on the occasion she can be pulled screaming from her computer she indulges in short walks which end with a lot of sitting and drawing. Her other love.

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