My short story from the recent competition is re-pasted below. Any comments or suggestions are gratefully received.
Zippy.
Darker Than
It’s the strangest thing, but I never meant to talk. When they brought me in, handcuffed and bleeding from my nose where the constable “accidentally” banged my face against the police car door, I swore I’d tell them nothing. What was the point? I’ve been around long enough to know they’d never believe me. One word about what really happened, why I killed them, and I’d be sectioned; placed in a white-washed room with nothing to do all day but eat pureed food.
But as I sat in the interview room I realised that it didn’t matter. I’d killed my neighbours – a woman and her twelve year old son. The white washed room beckoned and I’d gain nothing from keeping silent.
‘Billy…you don’t mind if I call you Billy?’ asked Detective Constable Davies. ‘I guess I don’t have to tell you this is a serious business, but believe me, it’s worth saying again – very serious. Have you ever been to prison, Billy?’
I shook my head even though I knew that Davies knew I hadn’t. He’d almost certainly have checked by now and knew what little there was to know about me. William Grant, forty-two, born and brought up in the city. I’d never lived anywhere else but the apartment I lived now, the one I’d shared with mother before she passed away three months, seventeen days and six and a half hours ago. I’d been her carer until she went and didn’t have much time for anything else. Some people would have found it an uninspiring life, but I’d been happy.
‘They swallow people whole in prison. A man like you…who killed a woman and a child…’
He trailed off and shook his head, sitting back down to shuffle the paperwork in front of him.
Davies popped a stick of gum into his mouth. ‘Let’s get down to it. Tell me everything, Billy. Start with why you did it. Why you killed them.’
I cleared my throat and leaned on the table. ‘I thought that would be obvious. I killed them because they were vampires. It was my duty.’
Davies stopped chewing. I almost expected to hear the tiny whir and tick of gears as his mind failed to grasp what was a simple fact.
‘…Vampires? Like, like Dracula, or something?’
‘Yes, that’s correct. Vampires. It’s a fairly well known legend.’
Davies glanced to his left at the mirrored glass that ran the length of the wall. He searched his reflection, at a loss as to how to proceed. I’d seen enough police dramas to know that it was two-way glass.
I reached over and placed my hand on top of his. He pulled away suddenly, as though he’d accidentally touched something caustic.
‘I realise it’s hard to believe,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to believe at first. But after a while you can’t kid yourself anymore. After a while there was simply too much evidence. I had to stop lying to myself and get busy doing something about it…’
***
I’d be the first to admit that I’ve never been a sociable person.
Mother and I were happy in one another’s company and there was no call during the forty years I lived in the apartment to acquaint myself with my neighbours beyond the brief nod one gives when passing in the stairwell or on meeting on bin day.
Once, around ten years ago, Mrs. Peterson, who used to live in 14B, locked herself out and rang our door for assistance. I reluctantly invited her in and mother sat with her while I made tea and waited for her husband to return from work with his key. But she was the most coarse creature you can imagine, who took four sugars with her tea and ate the filling from her custard cream before tackling the biscuit. She was not our sort of people at all, and as mother said at the time, it wouldn’t surprise me if she hadn’t lost her key at all, but simply wanted a nosy into our apartment.
Anyway, the point is I liked to keep myself to myself. But after a few weeks of the cardiac blast of base-beat through my walls I was at the end of my tether. I decided I would go next door and ask them to turn it down.
The plaque on the door read “O’Brien”. I felt nervous; Mother had always warned me against the Irish. A disagreeable race, she’d said, one that was never happy unless at someone’s throats. But as I looked at that door, something unexpected happened. I lost my temper. It began with a slight fluttering in my right temple, like the trembling of a butterfly’s wings. Standing there, listening to the O’Brien’s stereo reverberate down the corridor I could feel the blood rushing to my head. Before I knew what was happening I was pounding on the doort. At the time it was exhilarating, although I don’t mind telling you I needed a cup of tea afterwards to sooth my nerves.
The music stopped, and I heard someone approach the door. A chain rattled on the other side of the flimsy wooden barrier and suddenly the door was open and I was staring at a young boy.
For a moment I was dumbfounded. The boy could not have been more than eleven or twelve, but his hair was sculpted into a monstrous Mohawk, the ends died red. Gold hoops dangled from each ear and another pierced his bottom lip. A chain ran from a studded belt to the back pocket of his jeans. But the worst part, what really shook me, was the boy’s tee-shirt. Emblazoned across his chest, below a picture of a skull, were the words: “I FCUK DEAD PEOPLE”.
‘Help you?’ the boy mumbled. He did not look me in the eye, but gazed down at his feet.
‘I-I certainly hope so,’ I said. ‘Is your mother in?’
He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand and turned back and shouted. ‘Movverr!’ – he said it just like that, mother with a ‘V’! – ‘Some old bloke for you!’
He turned back and nodded. ‘I like your cardigan, looks nice and cosy.’
‘Thank you, it’s one of my –’
I stopped short, realising he was teasing -- “taking the Mickey” as I believe the young people say.
‘Larry, what have I told you about answering that bloody door without putting on the chain!’ The voice was shrill, coming from the hallway behind the boy. ‘They’re going to find us murdered in our beds ‘cause you let some psycho into the house!’
At first glance there was nothing unusual about the woman. She was heavy about the bosom and thighs, her dress clinging closely to her flesh. Her hair was very black, too black to be anything other than dyed, and her eyes were framed with dark mascara. She seemed normal – not our type of people – but the kind of person you could encounter on any street in the land.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ I said, ‘but I live next door and was wondering if you wouldn’t mind turning your stereo down. I-I don’t mean to be a nuisance, but, well, it’s rather loud and…and the walls are terribly thin…’
The woman wasn’t saying anything, just standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, her mascara daubed eyes blazing.
‘…like paper you might say. Tissue paper or s-something. Anyway, if it’s not too much trouble then I’d be most grateful if you could. Turn the stereo down, that is.’
Well, this isn’t the time to tell you what she said. Suffice to say it was the choicest language I’d ever heard or ever care to hear for that matter. The whole encounter left me standing in stunned silence.
It was then, with the sound of filth ringing in my ears, that I noticed what changed everything for ever. As she screamed her abuse I caught sight of her teeth. A pair of sharp, curved incisors protruded over her bottom lip.
My skin went cold as the world contracted. All at once I felt the life go out of me. I don’t know how to describe it better than that. It was as though reality blinked for a moment and when I came back to myself I knew that something was altered forever.
I was still standing in the hallway. The door was closed and I was alone. It took an effort to turn and make my way back to my apartment.
I tried to tell myself that it was shock. After all I wasn’t used to confrontation. I made myself a fortifying cup of tea and decided to go to bed. At least the music had stopped, although I found myself wishing for it back.
Sleep was very far away that night. I lay looking upwards, seeing nothing in the absolute dark of my bedroom. From time to time I would hear something next door; some sly and slithering bump that took shape and substance in the darkness. It was the sound of a body being dragged over floorboards; the noise of a coffin lid closing; the scuttle of claws over linoleum, the insectile clicking of incisors – I saw it all in the darkness that night and every night since. That night was darker than anything I’d known. Darker than heart’s blood. Darker than midnight. Darker than…
***
‘Darker than…’
I suddenly realised that I had been talking for forty minutes and that Davies hadn’t uttered a word.
I swallowed and felt my throat click painfully. ‘There’s not much else to tell, I’m afraid. The pressure got too much. I was growing weaker each night. I tried so hard to stay awake, but it was impossible. Each time I woke I knew that they’d been in my apartment, feeding. I had to do something before it was too late. Before I was too weak to continue.’
‘So you killed them?’
‘Yes. I drove a sharpened broom handle through each of their chests. The boy made quite a racket. The police arrived before I could finish. You really have to cut off the heads to be sure.’ I looked at my hands, folded on the table top. ‘We just have to hope I’ve done enough.’
‘…Yes…’
***
Davies splashed water onto his face and looked at his reflection in the mirror.
‘Christ! I’ve seen some head-cases in my time, but this one takes the biscuit. If you ask me he should be dropped down a very deep well and forgotten.’ The gruff voice of Detective Inspector Reeves echoed off the tiles in the bathroom. Davies could see the man’s back in the mirror, shoulders slightly hunched as he used the urinal.
‘The man needs help,’ said Davies. ‘Poor bugger’s delusional.’
Reeves zipped up and wiped his hands on the legs of his trousers. ‘In my day they’d have plugged him into the mains and gave his brain a good zap. No more delusions, no more anything. Just gaga until it was time for potty.’
Davies rolled his eyes.
They stepped outside and into the hallway. In front of them was the window of the interview room. Davies could see the man sitting at the table, his head in his hands. He looks perfectly normal, he thought.
Somehow that was the most disturbing thing of all.
Reeves lit a cigarette and coughed. ‘What’s our man had to say about his accomplice? Any names yet?’
Davies glanced at Reeves. ‘Accomplices? I’m pretty sure he acted alone, boss. He admitted as much when I interviewed him.’
Reeves turned and regarded Davies with quiet contempt. ‘Then who took the victims’ bodies from the morgue then?’ He snorted a laugh. ‘Or perhaps they got up and left by themselves?’
Davies swallowed and looking back into the interview room.
He found he had nothing to say.
The End.
