Short Story

SHORT STORY:

I walked into a large, live television hanging on the opposite wall.

When the liquid takes you, you want to go outside with it, somewhere where peace is, so you can watch the trees shimmer as the liquid tells you to watch it, there are clashing silver lights breaking up the trees into queues of shivering but straight lines, like birches should be silver, but they were different kinds of trees to silver birches, and so were the pathways I took on my day out, taking sips of liquid as I passed trees, waiting for an absolute change, but it just came back through my eyes to make the trees shiver silver. Not a precise hallucination.

Without being pleased with the effect of the liquid, I sipped more and more at a few minutes’ intervals

The sun would break through, not from above, or as there in the clearing, or beyond the trees, but in all the ways the air could carry its hotness. If I got dizzy, I stared at breaking trees. I said to the one tree that it was like a mirror, where it’s tiny pieces of smashed glass, tried to reform themselves as the tree, and found they could not, but were fit in the way they could now dance away, or dance back as the tree, so that they never quite got close to each other, ever again.

Rough ways pass through the trees. I hold the hand of everyone passing through. I am sipping liquid at intervals that seem strange to me. It seems this illegal drink, is readily available to someone who can see through trees. I don’t’ know if anyone walking by, wants to know, what is illegal, what I’ve found. That, drinking is easy, buying it is easy, it just forms in my hand. There must be someone who will see the problem. I am not allowed to drink, but no one can see me drinking.

The companions shuffle along beside me. They want to eat.

Even If I could I wouldn’t

I want to go now.

The tale of the murder, was disconnected, because it came from the mouth of a fellow drinker, a man who wasn’t quite aware of where everything could be. So…we hummed.

We sat around the crumbly, rusting table and bench…

She was found with a broken wrist, the right hand, bruises on body, and death by asphyxiation.

They hummed again, and the leader of the group took up an envelope and passed over to the café entrance, to order for us.

I didn’t want anything. I couldn’t eat.

I got off the bench, catching my legs under the table, tottered and took of for the edge of the trees, to drink.

The storm: that makes one in the countryside, one here, one somewhere else....

I tripped over, when I was alone in the house, and hurt my face badly, on the side of the coffee table. Then I went door knocking, I wanted truth to find them, I wanted to know which one of them had committed this murder. It had brought the h=whole town down, like the whole town had instigated the murder of the woman.

 There was the obvious sign of evil at the doors, of the two houses living side by side, the investigation had brought me to them, one had a walnut door, representing white, behind it was the witness, and the next one, frightening, this neighbour was an oak, door, like black, my first suspect.

It was black out here, and the neighbour cried and hid away at the back of the house, as I knocked and knocked.

The owner of the black one was right behind his door, hissing at me, threatening me with his huge bulk, I knocked once, and worried, then I left the street to go home.

The next day was carried away by meetings, but I didn’t forget. The liquid ran out, but I didn’t notice any closing down side affects or trees turning into angels.

I want to go now.

This has gone more over the end than ever.

The evidence was, that each of them knew something, so each I suspected, rather than the anonymous running round the bar of the situation, skirting round the border of my theories. Someone I knew, and the mysterious dead girl knew.

The other men argue yet they all talk with each other as they can separately, not listening, and loudly getting their own evidential words out in competition to annoy me and whoever they believe would be investigating them. In the house, they didn’t look for alibies, being always together, they told me a bicycle was found on the scene.

I went to bed and hummed, over half a mug of the blue liquid. It gave me a way of flying as I slept, catching me up and lowering me down gently. 

The plan was moving on, but the evidence was stuck, as my suspects, five of them, loved to change the subject, because that was the way of their thinking, they weren’t deliberately trying to throw me off the investigation, but just had minds that wandered, unless there was new news, or something excited them.

There was Judy, though, the one girl in the group, so much a part of the loud male gathering that I often forgot she was a woman. She was the one with the most obvious clues, she spoke of the murder, as though she got all the rumours from a hidden source, but she was my biggest suspect, she had more freedom of movement than the rest of us.

I didn’t like her, and she hated me. It was that hate, that made me most suspicious.

I asked her, if she enjoyed sharing the news. She frowned at me, and said:

“It’s no way, that there isn’t any news. They don’t know who the girl is, or how she got killed. They think it was a relative, I think it was a serial killer.”

There is someone outside my circle, in those woods. But everything points to here. They are strange types, here. Certain, that they led me to the black door, perhaps that is where the gang meets. A criminal gang hides in that house, that leads all sorts of bad things in this area, has all types of criminal connections, and the woods would be the best place to dump the body. Someone has upset someone. I am sure of my instincts, I’m also so sure that someone close to me is involved.

I hated that it was me, and not me, but them and now

The day passed slowly, as I spent it all thinking…Judy goes out walking alone, she always wears a frown, she is nasty, she is nasty. Maybe it was the whole lot of the group, not one of them can be called innocent, at all...

They want to spook me, it has been about a week, now and the investigation has a lack. No one has heard any more news, and of course, no wants to go on with talking about it, in case they give something away. I’m beginning to get upset and worried. I got more blue liquid, but I feel always, that I am now so old. I’m too young to be old, it’s not the liquid, just, the effects don’t work on me, because I feel like all my energy has gone. I don’t even see the silver light now.

She does look like she could strangle me, she is avoiding all my questions with a horrible face full of wrinkly frowns. I sigh, sip my tea (a few shots of the blue in it) and decide to risk hanging about in the area of the streets, with the distinctive, light and black doors. If I catch him, there could be good things happening for me.

I chose for it to be in that time, between light and darkness, around dinnertime I suppose, which makes me look a little more normal, cause I’m sitting on a garden wall, some doors away, from the witnesses door, actually, because there is less danger, and perhaps the witness will crack, see me outside and tell me more.

That was an uneventful evening.

I am going to the scene of the crime.

I will wander quietly through the woods, to the scene.

Just one thing, they don’t relax in front of me. I just realized, they look unhappy when I speak, then they get loud again, and talk among each other, leaving me alone.

It was just one murderer, I know now, the red door was a clue, someone lonely in that house, someone keeping a very deadly secret. The idea of it being a gang now is not so likely. This red door hums with the amount of secrets it holds. One killer.

I stumbled my way through bushes and nettles, I began crying. The scene had been cleaned away.

One long scream. I am pushing at myself to think, screams are coming out.

“Why have you got here as it has just ended?”

I must have realized how I had got here. I must have seen no more of myself could live, I was a classless little hen in a band of strange people, that all wanted to kill, never wanted to be my companions.

I had asked for a companion. But it was weird, it was the smile first, and then an even bigger smile, when I got stopped on the path, asking for directions. Then I broke out and ran forward crashing.

It was a strange fight; I kept trying to smother her with my eyes, by brushing at her face with my mouth, while we wrestled. I was crying, as she was crying.  When the bike caught her up, she shrieked, her leg was caught up in the brakes, and I grabbed the bike, and forced it down, and crushed her.

There were no more clues, the policemen had even taken down the tape.

There wasn’t any blood on the floor, there couldn’t have been.

I crushed down the long grass with my foot, and sat down.

THE END