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Thirty-three
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2021-09-09 17:26:39Related chapters
House of Sighs Thirty-two
THIRTY-TWODanny explored the temple grounds. He hadn’t eaten in the end.The old woman’s licorice-scented words followed him down every avenue, into every gold-gilded tabernacle.Eat the part that hurts.His nausea returned as he looped around to stand before the reclining Buddha, surrounded by twenty tourists taking photographs, a tangle of selfie-sticks and shawls given to them at the front gate to cover the parts of their bodies considered undignified to reveal in such a place. Languages volleyed back and forth.Snapping camera lenses.Wailing children.They’re like seagulls, Danny thought with a dash of contemptuousness. Their feathers bristled against him as he tried to wiggle free, beaks stabbing. Not around him. At him. He couldn’t tell if it was the gin or the heat or the fact that he was a wreck of his former self, but something was wrong.The temple began to revolve. Colors greased together. Earbuds slipped free and squawks and bell chimes slipped through. The air tu
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Thirty-one
THIRTY-ONE“No! No! No! No!” screamed the stranger.Danny’s unfocussed eyes bounced from face to face. They were crowded over him. A woman fanned him with a map. Another person offered water from a plastic drink bottle. He noticed his reflection distorted and pale in the curve of their sunglasses as they bent to help. Anxiety twisted, chest tightening.“No,” shouted the stranger again, this time slapping Danny’s hand away.“G-get o-ooooff m-me,” he said. “DON’T.”Danny glanced at his fingers almost by accident, still reeling from having been touched in such a way by someone he didn’t know, and saw the bloody gum of torn skin under his nails. He stopped, still as the city that no longer was. In that part of him where the light flickered to reveal smiles before, there now issued a second spark, only the light was blue this time. Cold, and burning.The light was pain.Danny had been scratching at his scars.
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Thirty
THIRTYAiden stood when keys turned in the door, as ready as he imagined he ever could be for the confrontation to come. He’d played the scene in his head of course, knew how it might go down, maybe even mustering a bit of self-pride along the way as his under-the-breath rehearsals hatched into realities. A man could hope, after all—even if Aiden didn’t recognize said man in the end.Bloody hell, here we go.The door unhinged from the lock, painted wood catching the light. Opening slow, the quiet entry of someone who didn’t want to be seen. Well, too bad, mate. I’m here. Waiting.Always fucking waiting.Danny stumbled into the room.Aiden’s anger derailed at the sight of bandages protruding from beneath the collar of his partner’s loose-fitting shirt. Red splotches on the fabric between his breasts.“What happened?” Aiden asked.He was desperate to hug the man—he was hurt, damn it—but knew he had to stand his ground. For a bit longer, at least. Long enough for Danny to know tha
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Twenty-nine
TWENTY-NINEDanny listened to Aiden’s breathing change some hours later.Asleep at last.He was certain, if given a choice, Aiden would have remained awake to spite him, as though to say, ‘Look at the toll this is taking on me—I’ve got to work tomorrow!’ This was one of his partner’s most passive-aggressive traits. Still, Danny couldn’t blame him. Not now. Not on this particular night.Not after what he’d done.The snores came just the same.Danny contemplated slipping out of the apartment altogether. Running. It would be so easy. As to where he would end up, there was no way to know. Or maybe he didn’t care. Were Bangkok’s jaws to part and swallow him alive, who would notice?I’m not worth it.He thought back to the vision of the empty city. It had been good to be alone. Invisible. Assimilate with that nothingness. This was his challenge. Where there was nothingness there was no aching.I can’t go on this way. It’s not—Danny deliberated. It was important he get the next wor
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Twenty-eight
TWENTY-EIGHTTie knotted. Or strangled. Shirt tucked in. Or forced. Suit blazer slipped on, and this Aiden did with a sigh.Morning had finally come and he strode out of the bedroom to find Danny at the kitchen table, sitting on one of the chairs that came with the apartment, staring into nowhere. He stole a breath and found the air clammy with the richness of unwashed, sweaty skin. The smell of yesterday.“Enough is enough,” Aiden said and walked to the living room window. “I’m sick and tired of this place being in complete bloody lock-down.”He yanked the shutters open and slid the window into its recess. The fly screen mesh gasped as humid, but at least fresher, oxygen rushed into the space. Light cast their shadows over the opposite wall; Aiden’s stretched from floor to ceiling, whilst Danny’s doubled over.No response from the breeze, from the sun, or from his words. This didn’t surprise Aiden much. That wouldn’t stop him—it couldn’t. After waking to find the bed empty, he’d
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Twenty-seven
TWENTY-SEVEN“Michael?”They sat on kitchen chairs, only there was no table. No kitchen, either. No apartment. The clearing was surrounded by trees, a mesh of branches curving up and sideways like the miss-matched teeth of wolves; and as a wolf howls, so too did the wind. It blew and the trees applauded, perhaps amused by this tableau, their bone-dry clapping making Michael chill all over. It was an awful, dead sound, both there and not there, here, in this place of unease and hush. Rain petered, cool against Michael’s skin. The clouds bloated, almost infected looking swirls of grey and green that admitted little in the way of light.He lifted his head.It wasn’t Aiden sitting across from him. It was her.This failed to shock him. Of course, it was going to end like this. All those days and months and years of mending. Even the toughest threads fray, given time.It’s. Not. Your. Fault.Yes, he’d heard Aiden, but it didn’t make sense until he saw the woman. She was propped up in
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Twenty-six
TWENTY-SIXAiden jolted. Danny screamed at his touch.He felt his partner quivering. Fear through and through. Primal. All Aiden could think to do was hold him tighter than ever before.Wrong move.Danny snapped around and drove his fist into Aiden’s throat. Winded, he stumbled backwards, ass thudding the couch a few yards from the table. He couldn’t tell if it was shock or anger or a hurricane of both but Aiden charged. It was like he was on the football field in the Lismore Under 22s again. Earth churning beneath his boots. Ball in hand.He tackled Danny to the ground, chair clapping the floorboards.
Last Updated : 2021-09-09House of Sighs Twenty-five
TWENTY-FIVEIt wasn’t Liz on top of him anymore.Lightning recollection struck and burned: Jack, the man who tried to kill him, the man who wielded scissors, a feral opportunist with short-cropped hair and hatred in his heart. Crests of dead trees grew out of his back like angel wings. That hateful face perched at its center, eyes weeping blood.Lips parted to spit a severed centipede at Michael’s face.“Ever wondered what it’s like to be cut?” asked The Beast inside his attacker. No, not inside. This was Jack. Its voice undulated, hummed, the brushing of fly wings over rotting road kill.
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
