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Sixty-Seven
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House of Sighs Sixty-Six
SIXTY-SIXThe kid ran for the trees closest to the house near the Christmas cutouts. Jed followed every foolish movement with the gun. These people had destroyed his sister, and worse, invaded his private property. His home. They must have forced Liz to drive them here. It was unforgivable; he had every right to pull the trigger.
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Sixty-Five
SIXTY-FIVEA tin-can whistle near his ear. Around him, a landmine of dirt blew into the sky. Peter breathed it in and coughed hard. He continued running.To the right.To the left.Straight.Trees.Another sound. It wasn’t him, but in him. Wetness in his ear, sloshing around. Peter touched the place where his ear should have been. Blood ran down his neck, the fibers of his shirt soaking it up.Sarah screamed at the boy. “Run and never stop!”She squinted; saw the blood running down his head in spurting jets. “Oh my God, he’s been shot.” Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, sweet Jesus.”“Do we run? Do we go for it?” Julia asked her sister. “Do we go now?”Michael toppled back into his seat. “Shut up! Shut up!”In the aisle, Jack stepped over the body, his heel covered in brain matter. He watched the stupid kid running in circles dodging bullets. It was like a cartoon. Jack laughed, veins sticking out of his forehead. He’d planned on using the kid as a distraction for his own esc
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Sixty-Four
SIXTY-FOURI’m bleeding! Oh God. Oh God. Mum! It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m running. Just keep running. It’s all I need to do. Every step is bringing me closer to—Impact. It was as though an asteroid fell from the sky and landed in his chest. Peter tumbled through the air. Time slowed to a crawl. His spinal cord severed by the time he hit the ground. He rolled onto his back and could feel nothing from the neck down. Unattainable breaths. Blood drained out of him. It was like being burned alive—a small glimpse of life in Hell. Wetness around him. A baptism. Peter began to drown.It’s not meant to be like this. It shouldn’t hurt.His eyes rolled up into his head; the white grew larger. He caught a glimpse of the upturned Christmas cutouts.Blood-streaked angels.The last thing Peter did was smile.
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Sixty-Three
SIXTY-THREEWes knew a little something about fear. Or at least he thought he knew.Before age forced him off the field, he’d played half-back for a local football team. And he was good, too, real front-page-of-the-Bugle material. Everyone came to watch those games, and he was proud the members of his family were among their number.One winter, six-year-old Jed taught his father a lesson. Wes hadn’t been playing that day, a recurring knee injury having pulled him off the field. He cheered in the stands with the others. If there was something else Wes was learning about, albeit slowly, it was the fine art of being patient. More than anything, he wanted to be out there playing with his mates, to smell the churned grass and sweat.Reggie held his shoulder, her idea of comfort. He knew she pitied him and he loved her for it. Loved her too for her loyalty to the team. Football sparked something in her. When she got angry or excited as someone scored, or a referee made a imbecilic call,
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Sixty-Two
SIXTY-TWOHollow wind.Reggie collapsed onto Liz, pulling at her. “Get up,” she yelled. “Into the house now!” Her fingers around Liz’s sweaty arms. Jed watched them fall over each other and thought of that old show his dad used to make them watch when they were kids, The Three Stooges. In his mind, he heard kazoos and a crackling laugh track. He could still remember laying on his stomach in front of the television watching monochrome images play out through a scrim of dust. Liz next to him on the shag, cross-legged, chin cupped in her hands. This tableau felt like another life from another world, idealized statuettes in a dry snow globe. Now, as Jed watched his mother and sister struggle out the front of their house, his face impassive and cold, he wondered if this memory was even real. Their snow globe was most certainly cracked.Wes picked up the gun and something snapped in him.Something in the dark.The weapon was his.Wes was never one to theorize about fate. He didn’t beli
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Sixty-One
SIXTY-ONESaid animals were on the floor, huddled behind seats like chickens complacent within the confines of their cages. The bus stunk. They breathed into the crooks of their arms. The air twirled with upholstery dust and sheet metal rust from the bullets.Sarah moved.Staying put and dummying up struck her as the smarter option, but the situation had to be assessed. Every second counted. If they waited too long the cleaver would fall and off would come their heads.“Get down,” came a voice. She couldn’t tell from whom. A man. Jack. He ran forward and closed the bus doors. She knew he was scared, his confidence impotent in the face of this chaos. No more heroes or escapees here. And he seemed to sense this as he joined her, clicking his tongue. Together, they searched the driver’s hub for her keys.“Are they there?” she asked.Jack’s face was white. The driver must have put them into her pocket before stepping outside. Sarah watched him scramble with the radio, bang it in frus
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Sixty
SIXTYSarah cried out—the glare from the son like a punch to her throat—and fell back into one of the seats. Nearby, Michael and Julia flinched. “Stay down,” Sarah told them.“What is—” Julia began. Stopped.Footsteps outside. Slow and deliberate.Wind blew across the bullet holes, whistling breath over the mouths of Coke bottles.Michael imagined running out the door and into the trees beyond the shed; and before he knew what he was doing, turned toward the front of the bus. Jack pounced out of nowhere and threw him to the ground.“Stay the fuck down,” Jack said, a fist raised.Michael blinked, confused, and felt a shadow crawl over his face. They both turned their panic-stricken faces to the window on their left.Julia screamed.The son peered in at them, a dark silhouette with burning, murderous eyes. The bus rocked. He must be standing on the wheel, Jack thought, rolling off the faggot beneath him until he could see the man outside. Jack had never seen eyes so crazy.Dian
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Fifty-Nine
FIFTY-NINEI’ve seen you. I’ve seen all your faces, you fucks. I’ve seen your sharp teeth. You’ve all got ants for eyes.Half of his world was red. Jed wiped blood from his brow.Look what you did to me. You cut me.His scarlet fingers were the hands of someone who had shot and murdered. Past the fingers, he saw his sister. He’d never seen somebody so scared. All Jed wanted to do was get wet, to take a drag and dull the reality of the situation, but he knew this shouldn’t be diluted. No. A busload of strangers had turned Liz into a wreck, and he’d never felt more alert. He scanned the lawn to the dead teenager sprawled near last year’s Christmas cut-outs.Who are you? Why would you run if you’d done nothing wrong? I did the right thing. You ran because you were guilty, because you were a ringleader in Liz’s torture. And I’ve got no doubt the others had sat back and laughed as you did your thing. Now look where it got you? Dead. You first, and them next. I’m going to rip out their
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
