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PART FOUR - Fifty-Five
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2021-09-09 17:26:36PART FOUR:
Scissors
“The leaves of memory seemed to make
A mournful rustling in the dark”
—HenryWadsworth Longfellow, The Burning of the Drift-Wood”
FIFTY-FIVE
Flies swarmed Peter’s body.A spider in a tree ran the length of its web to catch its prey; it usually hunted at night but couldn’t pass a prize as sweet as this. The spider wrestled the butterfly until its web broke and both fell to the ground. A martyr to hunger.Beads of sweat clung to Diana’s upper lip. Musk wafted from her armpits. A ping of self-consciousness. As a teenager, she suffered from acne and spent innumerable hours scrubbing at her face with ivory bars, squeezing blackheads. Wherever she went one could smell her perfume, always spring flavors, citrus, and pink sugar. They now mixed with sweat in an odor that almost sickened her. She blinked and watched the house for movement. Prioritize, girl, she thought. Do you think anyone here is worrRelated chapters
House of Sighs Fifty-Four
FIFTY-FOURDiana rubbed the back of her sister’s neck. “That nice?”“Mm-mm.”Sarah dropped her head and slapped her thighs. “I’m tired of that damn house. It’s like staring at the sun.”“Sit with us,” Diana said. “What difference does it make if they are checking on us or not? We’re still stuck.”Jack sparked up as though he’d been waiting for someone to say that very thing just so he could refute it. “But we should try to get out, right? See that?” He pointed at the window closest to the driver’s hub on the left-hand side, a large crack running its length. “That’s the emergency exit window. It’s the only one on this bus and it’s already broken. All we got to do is push on it—”“We can’t do that,” Sarah said, stern. “We push it out and it shatters on the ground and they’ll come running.”“Pfft.” Jack’s eyes turned cold—old bird had a point after all. “Okay, fine. Whatever. So what about that?” He pointed at the escape exit above their heads, the wind whistling through it. “We’re
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Fifty-Three
FIFTY-THREESunday heat intensified as clouds brooded in the sky. The ozone remained heavy, burdened, appropriate. Every time a face peered from the house, it stabbed the passengers’ collective consciousness, a series of small defeats that confirmed where those on route 243 were and what they had been reduced to.Jack was in the backseat with Sarah not too far away. Diana’s need to urinate overwhelming her; she closed her eyes and tried to distract herself with rocking, rocking. Julia fought the urge to suck her thumb, imagining that she was in her bedroom writing in her diary, an entry that read: nothing much happened today. Michael was closest to the dead body with his hands over his mouth to keep the stink at bay, a stink so thick he was sure he could feel it on his skin.Every window had been closed to stop more flies from getting in. They watched them congregate on the other side of the glass in writhing patches.In the steamy silence, Julia whispered, “It’s a girl.”Diana li
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Fifty-Two:
FIFTY-TWO:InsideFluctuations of movement. Her parents, her brother. Their faces sometimes grimacing; other times, still. Liz heard her heartbeat, and it terrified her because it was so slow. I’m fading, shrinking down to nothing.Overhead the ceiling appeared miles away.Her mind separated from her body. No thought or feeling ran its proper course; neurons fired only to have nothing eventuate. Paralyzed. Her mother grabbed Liz’s head and begged her to speak, but the words refused to form. Liz wanted to scream at her parents and tell them that the passengers weren’t the enemy—they’re my new friends! They were put into her life just to show her love and for her to love them back, and for that reason alone, they shouldn’t be corrected. To be honest, Liz was scared for them. She knew her father had a terrible temper, had seen it in action so many times over. Liz longed to forgive him, but that was impossible when he wanted to hurt these new people in her life.She watched her father
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Fifty-One
FIFTY-ONETen-year-old Jack in his backyard. An airplane carved a long, white streak through the orange sky. His senses were alive with the smells of barbecue and the apple tree.He heard a scream. It echoed across the yard.It came from inside his house, which towered above him, its mass a jagged silhouette against the sunset. The back door opened. He remembered the sound of it crashing against the wall. Kimba, the family cat, ran ahead of his father’s feet and scuttled under the stairs. His dad was a hulking, whiskered mammoth lurching and wheezing as he ran.The screams belonged to a boy, although the wails were high-pitched. It made him laugh, despite the fire in his father’s eyes as he approached.Jack felt the heaviness in his hand.He looked down. The sky, the airplane, the house and his dad tilted away until he saw his shaking fingers, and what he held in his grasp.Scissors.
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Fifty:
FIFTY:OutsideThe memory left Jack spent, weak. His hands were covered in blue blotches, and tingled. Fuck me, he thought, where did that come from?Jack felt the eyes of the passengers on him, and in a flash, he was back in the classroom, his teacher towering over him. Spitting questions.“But I don’t know the answer,” he mumbled.“What?” Sarah asked, leaning in close. “You okay there, Jack?” The others huddled behind her. Even Michael turned.He couldn’t handle the silence anymore, or their eyes burning into him.“Don’t,” he said.“What?” Sarah was holding on to a handlebar to keep herself steady.Say something, cunt, Jack told himself. Say something, you dumb shit. Open your mouth and make some fucking noise!He took a breath and focused. “What if we busted out one of the windows on the right-hand side and got out and ran?”A gust of wind shook the bus. Dust pelted the windows and the hub filled with a soft, quiet hiss.Anger crept up on Sarah, and she had to hold herse
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Forty-Nine:
FORTY-NINE:BangkokBangkok was everything the travel agent said it would be. Michael fought through congested traffic, laughed at the total disregard for rules and the polite sensibilities of the Western world. Going to Thailand was the best thing he’d ever done, perhaps an even greater achievement than losing weight.Nobody knew him there. He could swish when he wanted to and nobody called him names. Michael didn’t mind the looks he got from some of the guys in the streets. In fact, it excited him.He saw a live sex show in the red-light district. Watched a woman tug a birdcage from her vagina, then live birds. Another pulled a transistor radio out. Hotel California played through the speakers.Later in the week, he stumbled into the gay district. Effeminate staff beckoned to him as he passed.“Sexy white boy, where you from? Want to see cabaret show?”Flashing lights inside and bland, though not entirely unappealing music. Rows of chairs faced a stage where velvet curtains we
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Forty-Eight
FORTY-EIGHTLiz stood. When did I take my shoes off? I don’t remember doing that.She didn’t remember a lot of things anymore. It was good to be numb—it was like “getting wet”.Her mother rifled through bags in the study.Where am I? Liz glanced around. If that’s the study, then I must be in the living room. I know I’ve seen that sofa before. It’s comfy. I’ve wrapped my legs over the arm of that chair before.Reggie doubled over in the small room, surrounded by torn-open garbage bags bleeding Christmas tinsel. In her hands were two handmade tree ornaments. Little, worn Santas, their faces bent inwards.A memory of the family at Christmastime. It was one of the years that her father hadn’t been there. He came and went. Sometimes he said he needed a holiday from them. In this memory, Liz and Jed put those ornaments on the plastic tree. Everything smelled of mothballs. They weren’t happy, but at least they weren’t crying or bleeding. This was the children’s barometer: the yardstick
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Forty-Seven:
FORTY-SEVEN:Bled WhiteSantorini was white, as though an artist scraped away Fira’s colors to rediscover the canvas underneath. Empty streets and not even the sea made a sound.Diana fell in love with the city on her travels before landing in Australia. It soothed her, made her whole again after her mother’s death. Now, she felt like Dorothy coming back to the Emerald City only to find it home to vandals and all her friends turned to stone. There was no queen with a hundred heads here though. Only silence.She wove through the narrow streets. At the bottom of an incline, she turned and looked up a thin, cobblestone street. Diana saw him then.Him.The brother.The one with the eagle tattoo on his back.He walked towards her, his pace steady. Face contorted. She couldn’t tell if he smiled or screamed. Terror gripped her.The ground underneath their feet shook and the brother stopped.Behind him, there came a gigantic tide of blood, meat, and paint. It rushed towards her. He b
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
