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THE SOUND OF HIS BONES BREAKING
Last Updated:
2021-09-09 17:26:38PART ZERO
FORTY-EIGHT
Not all worlds end in a crash of buildings and airplanes, in smoke and ruins and meteor showers. Some worlds come apart one humiliating crack at a time. And no matter how hard you fight, nothing can stop it. So, at the almost-end, you’re left helpless, more exhausted than you’ve ever been, questioning how it came to this. These thoughts tightened the knot in Adrian Bonner’s stomach. Some things he didn’t want answered. He studied his reflection in the blank computer screen instead, and the sigh that followed came with an almost resigned expectancy. This was his new normal.Christ, I look like death.Looking back, the cracks were obvious. The unsealed medication bottle. That pulp of vomit in the toilet bowl the flush missed. Things which looked like they were flying but were falling in secret.The smile that lasted too long. A touch that carried no weight.None of it mattered anymore. Why would it, whenRelated chapters
House of Sighs Forty-seven
FORTY-SEVENScratch-scratch-scratch.Danny Fletcher dragged himself into the shower—not because he wanted to be clean but on account of Aiden’s impending return. He’d soon be exposed, and the shower, as best he knew, was the only place a man could cry without being noticed.Naked. Footfalls against the tiles, a sad clap for one.He came here to be alone. To beat off without his partner knowing. To laugh at jokes nobody else found amusing. To wrestle memories of the prick who bullied him at school thirty years ago, all those painful twinges he couldn’t quite untie; and then, after this, to weep like the pussy everyone made him out to be. The shower was where men of Danny’s breed haunted themselves.Over the thrum of water, he heard skeletal branches clattering at the window trying to get in and toy with his animosity and hurt. He knew what must be done. Oh, the freedom blame brings.Blood pooled pink between his toes.Scratch-scratch-scratch.
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Forty-six
FORTY-SIXThe ferry.Some of the people around Aiden stood, some sat, but all watched the water and the fish snatching low-flying dragonflies from the air. They swam amid the bags, those plastic river ghosts. Next to him a boy wore headphones; the two of them swayed with the ebb and flow of the Chao Phraya’s current. Aiden broke down against this young man’s shoulder, buckling, despite this being his weight to carry. After all, Bangkok hadn’t called to Aiden alone, though it may have seemed that way at first. Aiden came to Thailand for his boyfriend.Even after all he’s done, I still love the bastard.What a crime it is to think Danny’s worth saving. Well, fuck me then. Fuck it all.No stop, mate. Thinking that way will do you in, too.The boy with the headphones was, of course, awkward about Aiden’s tears but relented. He patted the older man’s arm, kind and tender and non-judgmental. In English, the boy lied and said everything would be okay. “Tell me what is wrong.”They drew
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs PART ONE - Forty-five
PART ONEFORTY-FIVEDecember 29, 2017The taxi screeched into a U-turn as today teetered into tomorrow, slowing at the last possible second. It mounted the curb in a scrape of metal against cement. The two men in the pub’s open bar across the street glanced up from the matching pints of ale they were downing.Neither Aiden nor Danny realized how drunk he was until they leapt from their stools. The small Australian city spun around them.“Woah. What’s going on over there, you reckon?” Aiden said.“No idea, babe.”It was unusual for them to have imbibed quite so much—they were lightweights, after all. Hangovers in your early forties were harder to wrestle than those in your early twenties. “But it’s Christmas,” they said, a free-for-all excuse if there ever was one. They didn’t have to show their faces at their respective workplaces until after the New Year shutdown period. As far as they were concerned, whatever hangovers
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Forty-four
FORTY-FOURFebruary 30, 2018“You okay in there?” called Sue, the receptionist, over torrents of pounding rain.Her voice filtered from the door leading to the men’s bathroom. Danny didn’t think she would come any further but she did. He lifted his head from the toilet bowl, listening to her tip-toe approach, reminded then of the billy goats Gruff in the old tale from his childhood, as one by one, they journeyed up the hillside to make themselves fat, disrupting a troll in the process. Clip-clop. Clip-clop. Clip-clop. Who’s that trapping over my bridge?“I’m f-f-f-fine,” he said.Only Danny wasn’t fine. Sue’s shoes emerged under his door; flats, sensible and comfortable looking. Perfume crept into the cubicle with him. Such a foreign smell in this place.“Maybe it was too soon to come back to work, Danny.”He shifted around to sit on the porcelain seat, face in hands that refused to stop shaking. Danny contemplated using one of the mindfulness apps on his phone, breathing prompt
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Forty-three
FORTY-THREEThey were in bed together that afternoon, still wearing their work shirts, trousers intertwined on the carpet. Aiden spooned Danny this time. He exhaled, soft tummy pressing against his partner’s spine. Summer sun on his back from the window as he studied the rear of Danny’s head—heat from behind, chill in front—wondering what it must be like to exist within it.That thought retreated, a little afraid.Squeezed. “Endolphins,” Aiden said, coy and cutesy. Their old joke. A play on endorphins, the rush their touch once evoked. No laugh this time.A thick sludge of hush.“I’ve got something to tell you,” Aiden said. Lips against Danny’s neck now, stubble scratching skin. “Well, something I want to run by you, more like it.”“Y-yeah?”“I’ve been offered a posting. An embassy consulate position.”“O-o-o-okay.”Danny’s stutter was awful today. He hated seeing him trip over words that used to come with ease. It was hard to listen to and even harder to watch, sentences turn
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Forty-two
FORTY-TWOApril 2, 2018A cloudless day. Towns resembled spilled salt on a checkered tablecloth of green and ochre. It was beautiful down there through the Boeing’s window, and it didn’t seem real, and as they flew over the gulf into the great wide blue, it was soon all of it gone.The journey to Thailand began, fates sealed air-tight as their breaths within the plane.Spilled salt, as Aiden’s mother used to say, brought with it bad luck. Later, when their lives came unsewn, he would hate himself for not heeding such warnings sooner.Aiden flicked through the old movies on offer, settling on It’s A Wonderful Life. He’d never seen it before and didn’t realize it was a Christmas story until it began. He sat through the whole thing though, almost in defiance. It was an okay flick, sentimental and very, very white. He did, however, enjoy the scene where Jimmy Stewart offered to lasso the moon for the girl he was crushing on, the ultimate gift. Yeah, that made him smile. Given the chan
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House 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 : 2021-09-09
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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
