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Forty-two
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2021-09-09 17:26:39Related chapters
House of Sighs PART TWO - Forty-one
FORTY-ONEJune 1, 2018Baskets of fruit and meat in the hulls of canoes, manned by proprietors tapping wares with fresh Baht notes, shouted, ‘First sale of the day!’ They did this because tried-and-maybe-true tradition implied it brought good luck. In places like these, where the skillful prospered and the lazy went hungry, good luck was a currency that mattered.Men and women, buyers and sellers both, contorted themselves to reach for that perfect durian, to shoo away flies. Tourists laid down their earnings after a volley of intense and often inappropriate bartering. Back, forth, back, forth, relent, feast.This was Damnoen Saduak, the famous floating market west of Bangkok, a spattering of colors spanning the river’s girth from bank to bank.Or to be more precise, this was a photograph of those markets, one clipped and mounted within a nice bamboo frame, purchased by the Australian government with taxpayer coin. The remnants of the price tag could
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Forty
FORTYDanny marched through Bangkok’s crooked street-veins like a bubble of oxygen seeking out a heart to stop, listening to a playlist on his phone as he went. He wasn’t moved by what he saw and gained pleasure only in those moments when the world tripped into rhythm with one of his songs. These little synchronicities turned everything Technicolor. Streets came to life, clouds parted. Now there were smiles on the faces passing him by, food smells that cut through the humid sewer fog.These moments didn’t last.Either the world shrugged off the song or the song shrugged off the world, and then all that Technicolor bled to black and white again, leaving Danny to settle into his strides and walk those uneven streets alone, dodging cars and tuk-tuks, sky spitting. He didn’t know where he was going or why he’d left the apartment in the first place. He never did.Dogs scurried between buildings, each minute of their lives spent fearful of beatings. Food scraps everywhere. Meat-stripped
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Thirty-nine
THIRTY-NINEAiden came home to find their apartment empty. This would happen many times over in the months to come.“Babe?”A faint echo off the walls.The dial tone as he called, and called, and called.Aiden sat on the edge of the bed he shared with a man he’d dragged across the world because he thought ‘getting away’ might be healing. Sure, healing may very well be a part of what was happening here, but he couldn’t help questioning why it had to hurt so damn much along the way.Danny’s suit was laid out on the mattress, a shadow freed of its master.
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Thirty-eight
THIRTY-EIGHTJuly 3, 2018“You’ve lost weight,” Aiden said.“Yeah.”“Must be all those long walks.”“M-maybe,” Danny replied, staring at his food. He scooped Pad Thai into his mouth with chopsticks, their wooden ends clicking. This sound—crab claws, carrion-feeders—made Aiden’s skin crawl.Silence again within the apartment, while outside Bangkok exploded with evening activity. There was always a festival of some sort happening, or night markets with a multitude of foods to try, temples to explore.Yet here they sat at their table for two.Aiden held his fork a little harder than he needed to; he’d never mastered chopsticks. Knuckles rolled white, bones rising through the skin.I want to throttle some sense into him.Look where we are, Aiden longed to scream.There are people all over the world who would kill to be here.He did no such thing, of course. Danny would only withdraw if confronted. This was their emotional tango now: one step forward, two steps back, and if the
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Thirty-seven
THIRTY-SEVENAiden bolted upright, shock slamming him awake. It was still dark in their bedroom, the ceiling fan whipping the air. Danny screamed in his sleep.“Wake up, babe,” Aiden said, rolling over to touch his partner’s back. He stilled his hand instead. Heat beamed off Danny’s pale flesh through the weave of his cotton shirt. Feverish. Sickly. The sheets were wet with perspiration.“Stop!” Aiden cried, not sure what to do. He couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d woken in the night to find himself spooning a crocodile. Danny thrashed the mattress, beating at it in blind swipes. Jaws clenched so tight the grinding of teeth could be heard above the shrieks.“Jesus fucking Christ.”This couldn’t go on.Aiden ignored the thoughts ricocheting through his mind as to whether night terrors were like a sleepwalker’s trek—and if they were, was premature waking a bad idea?—and shook his partner as hard as he could. Danny flipped over, scream cut short, and snatched Aiden by the ne
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Thirty-six
THIRTY-SIXJuly 11, 2018“What in the buggery is going on over there?” asked Danny’s mother. She leaned close enough to the camera for her face to fill the entire Skype screen, which sometimes froze and kaleidoscoped into squares. “You’ve lost so much weight!”“It’s t-t-the he-heat, Mum.”“Humidity’s a killer over here, Bev,” Aiden added. “All you do is sweat day in, day out.”“Don’t go getting heatstroke, boys,” Danny’s father said, fighting for airtime. “It happened to me once on Chinaman’s Beach. Thought my head was going to explode. I came over all shivery, too. It knocks you about, for sure.”“I’m b-b-be-being s-safe,” Danny said, the last annunciation coming out pained. His words were more barbed than usual today, not that Aiden blamed him. There was something about these two old people that churned their anxieties. It was odd, too, Aiden thought, that he considered them as being more advanced in years than they were. Something about the way they fussed and contorted their
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Thirty-five
THIRTY-FIVEAiden didn’t tell Danny about that stabbing sensation.Not then.He kept this information to himself and crawled into bed fifteen minutes later, shame-faced, clutching the novel he’d been attempting to get through since arriving in Thailand. Not that he was reading it, mind you. His thoughts were a jumble of diagnoses and rationalizations.If it’s a urinary tract infection, I’ll bloody scream.Wait ’til tomorrow. It could be a one-off kind of thing. That happens.What if it’s a kidney stone?Mate, just stop.Aiden placed the book down on the bedside table and rolled over to spoon Danny, who was still playing on his phone with his back to him. “Tell me how much I should be worrying about you,” Aiden whispered. “Please, just tell me.”The phone clicked off.“I’m j-just guh-going through a r-rough patch is all.” Danny’s stutter, as was always the case post-beer, was less pronounced.“I want to keep you safe.”“I know. I ap-preciate it.” A gecko sounded from somewhe
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Thirty-four
THIRTY-FOURJuly 19, 2018“Sir, you have tested positive to chlamydia,” said the nurse on the phone.Aiden imagined her face glancing up from her clipboard, the curve of her cheek catching the afternoon light seeping through the windows of the sexual health clinic he’d been sitting in eight days earlier, a place the doctor at the hospital referred him to, ‘just in case it’s not a UTI’. Aiden couldn’t tell if the woman on the phone was the same person who had run the procedure, although she sounded familiar.Green eyes. A deadpan tone.He sat back in his office chair, the imitation leather creaking. Aiden blinked, leaned forward again, volume dropping. “I don’t really know how that could be.”“Excuse me, sir? I don’t—”“I mean, are you sure?”Aiden laughed.“Sure? Yes, sir.”“Right then.”“Treatment is easy. I’ll prescribe you a course of antibiotics. Take two pills a day for three weeks. It’s a bigger course because you have tested positive in your penis and in your throat.
Last Updated : 2021-09-09
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House of Sighs Two & One
TWOEat the part that hurts, said the voice of the flies.Eat the part that hurts.ONEOutside, fog yielded to the winter wind and moonlight beamed through. That same rush of air swept over the James Bridge Motor Motel to rattle its eaves, blowing dirt against its windows. The night’s breath, so very much like a sigh, eased the door on the second floor shut. Ungreased hinges creaked, creaked, and trapped the new fathers within.Somewhere out there, time moved on. But not here. Not inside room eleven.
House of Sighs Three
THREEAiden came around to face his partner head on, Danny’s silhouette outlined in blue and pink. He could see every hair on his head, the fine peach fuzz along his arms, all of it highlighted in vibrant detail. Seeing him, Aiden thought, was to observe a painting, an oil on canvas titled ‘Man on Bed Holding Baby’.The itsy-bitsy-spider within Aiden’s throat bit down. Muscles tensed. Terror filled him and froze, painful cracks appearing in the ice as he brought his hands to his face. Things like this didn’t happen to people like him. This was something from a horror movie, or maybe, tomorrow’s headlines.I’m a good person, Aiden wanted to scream. I—we—don’t deserve this. It’s gone too far. Take it back.Take it back!Too late for that now. Aiden Bonner was in room eleven of the James Bridge Motor Motel, with the carpet beneath his feet and the stink of copper tainting the air. He was in room eleven with Danny as he brought the child to his face to plant a kiss on its cheek. Reali
House of Sighs Four
FOURThe woman who’d made the emergency call had collapsed at the entrance to another room on Kaaron Brennan’s right. Long, red hand streaks also palmed the door there. Blood lathered the handle, grew fat at the bottom of the knob, dropped to the puddle by the woman’s severed ear.Ploink.Ploink.Ploink.Brennan wanted to cry. She didn’t, and kept her pain inside.Stenciled across the ajar door were two words. It must have taken a caring, steady hand to inscribe that lavender printing so well, even going to the effort to put a little heart above the ‘I’. A mother’s touch, if there ever was one.“Timmy’s room,” Kaaron, who had two kids of her own, read aloud.Later, there would be time for weeping. That time was not now.
House of Sighs Five
FIVESneakers wisped over carpet. Aiden was tempted to reach into the dark, but he held off for the time being, letting his eyes adjust instead. The room sketched into form one shade of blue and pink at a time.Aiden found his partner sitting on the bed with his back to him, lit in neon glow.The quiet hotel room. Quiet, except for a curious suckling sound.“Danny?” Aiden said and took another step. His chest seized when he saw a shape on the far wall near the kitchenette, where the drawers had been opened.Just his shadow.You bloody fool, he could almost hear his mother say, leaning over to scold him as she did when he was a kid, bringing with her a wave of scented lady sweat and bush smoke. Pull your shit together.Aiden longed to have her here with him now, even if only to condemn him. That, at least, would be something. He felt so disconnected from his people, from his land. He couldn’t wait, one way or another, for this Hell to be over. Besides, he did need to pull his shi
House of Sighs Six
SIXNull relented and nodded, stepping up to his partner’s side as they inched to that doorway. Brennan smelled blood in there, in the pit of nothingness.They forced themselves through the arch, the quaking beam of Null’s flashlight revealing an upended phone on the floor, and farther ahead, the soles of two pale bare feet.Brennan didn’t want to see. Yet it was her job to see.It wasn’t that the woman’s clothes had been torn away. The comfy looking Sunday garments had bloomed off the slippery corpse, shed like the scrim of a cocoon. There was no beautiful butterfly here, not here in this dark house on Queen Street. Only cuts on top of cuts.For all Brennan knew, she stared at eighty stab wounds. Or more.“Good God in Heaven,” whispered Null. These were the quivering tones of that boy in the third grade, the one who feared his teacher’s yells because he hadn’t done his homework again.If only there was a way to wind back the clock and erase this sight from her mind, to go back
House of Sighs Seven
SEVENBlue and pink neon light illuminated Aiden’s way.He listened to the buzz of electricity from the MOTEL sign at the carpark’s entrance; it sounded like a hive, bee stingers rasping together. Another gust of wind blew through town to rustle his fringe, to stir the foggy cauldron obscuring the sky, stretching it thin in places to reveal the quarter moon beneath. He sweated. And he was scared.Aiden stopped.He thought of his flight from Brisbane to Bangkok and the black-and-white movie he’d watched on the way. It’s A Wonderful Life, it had been called, and while it featured numerous set-pieces, one particular scene returned to him now. In it, Jimmy Stewart’s character said he would lasso the moon and gift it to his gal to win her affection.And earn her love.The fog rolled in. Everything turned blue and pink once more.To think that he—or any man—had ever set their sights on the moon and thought it a three-dimensional thing worth dragging to Earth for the sake of someone sp
House of Sighs Eight
EIGHTAn ambulance pulled up as Kaaron Brennan entered the house. Never once in her six years on the force had she ever drawn her gun with the intent to shoot; she was more terrified now than she’d ever been. Null was by her side, covering blind corners. Every door she kicked open revealed empty rooms, rooms of unfinished business. The paperback on the bedside table with the bookmark tucked within, the mobile phone blinking messages received, a scented candle that had never been lit.Death in the details.Blood caked thick where the hallway branched into a T intersection, kitchen on her left and living room on her right. There was no mistaking which way the action had progressed; gore led to weeping MasterChef contestants.The door hung off its hinges on the other side of the room. Darkness beyond. Null shone his flashlight to reveal handprints on the architraves, swipes of blood resembling red, drooling smiles.Footsteps and flashing beams outside the window, past the television.
House of Sighs Nine
NINEAiden thought he’d dreamed the coming and going of sirens. He lifted his head from the pillow, muscles giving a kick. The musty motel air made his eyes itch.The television was on, evening soap operas playing out their inevitable dramas.Those sirens sounded so real.He fumbled for the remote and switched the old unit off. Beautiful faces shrunk down to a dot, bleeping into oblivion.Aiden propped himself up with one arm and looked to the window across from him, brow furrowed with concerned tension lines. He strained his ears, blinked his quiet shock away, and registered the fading screech of police cars. Or maybe an ambulance.Legs swung around to touch the carpet.He licked his lips. Dry.Aiden was at the point of crawling off the mattress and taking himself over to the kitchenette to drink water straight from the tap like he used to when he was a kid, but he stopped in his tracks. And he stopped because of a fresh sound, one that couldn’t be confused with another.The
House of Sighs Ten
TENIt took sixteen minutes for the police to arrive, and considering how long it took for the authorities to respond the day of the James Bridge massacre, this wasn’t too bad a turnaround. Some things had improved in this part of the world after all.Units dispatched from Maitland, further up the valley, their journey quickened by the expressway killing the town, skidding off the exit, kicking dust, their red and blue blinders like fireworks in the fog. They sped down the main drag and took a sharp turn, not bothering to stop at the traffic lights. Cockatoos feasting in the tree above the bus bench were startled into flight, feathers twirling and the branches tumbling into the gutter as they took to the air, screeching as though they were the chased ones.Units mounted the curb out the front of 15 Queen Street. One by one, lights bloomed within the surrounding houses. Rubberneckers took to their windows, clutching nightgowns, cupping faces to the glass.Officer Kaaron Brennan hit
