February 15, 2009 – 19:16
Someone was breathing in my room.
Somewhere, in the darkness, someone
was watching me. I felt my own breath halt in my throat as I
tried to filter the background from that one, simple sound I’d heard,
waiting for it to happen again. If it was regular, I knew, it was
alive, real.
There. Again. A faint exhale of air over a lips.
Now I could sense a presence. It filled the room, surrounded me in a
rising wave of fear. I still hadn’t taken a breath and now I felt
myself gag with terror as I tried to open my mouth to let more air in,
but couldn’t. Something tight and adhesive was across my mouth,
gagging me, a sickly taste of glue across my tongue. A red a hot rush of adrenaline hit every extremity at the same time as I exploded in a frenzy, writhing against the straps that
bound my legs and arms to the bed. Dear god, what was this horror that wrapped me to the bed, my back, sticky with sweat. Tight broad straps of inflexible bounds held me fast to my prone position, as if I’d woken fro ma nightmare, into a nightmare. They bit into my skin as the
realisation came upon me, that I was trapped.
The room glowed suddenly, and I froze. There, to my right, sitting on
the floor with his back against the wall, I briefly caught sight
of a mans figure in the red ember of the cigarette, burned into my retina. He sat,
still, pulsating in my minds eye.It was O’leary. I was sure. Terrified, and sure. The acrid-sweet pungent fug of his Sweet Aftons filled my heaving senses.
“You been watchin’ me boy”
The words dragged heavily across my consciousness like a thick bloody tear across my chest, wrenching the breath from my lungs.
I heard a small whimper of fear emit from my throat. His voice
gravelled it’s way out of his throat, rolling slowly like a growling
avalanche of hatered. The red ember rose in an arc, then seemed to blaze
violently for a second as he pulled another toke from it. His face in
it’s light. Those hard, slitted eyes. Those murky frog spawn globes of
eyes. The tips of his fingers like fat stubbed cigarettes, nicotined
and filthy. I stared from the corner of my eyes, unable to move my head in his direction, into his horrible dark eyes, afraid to look away, as if holding
him at bay with my wide open terror.
He blew the sickly warm sweet hot air into my face, causing my eyes to clamp shut
involuntarily, instantly birthing a fresh surge of adrenaline as I
lost sight of him again.
When I opened my eyes the darkness pressed
against my face again, a smoothering blanket of unknown horror.
“Made me wonder what you were playin’ at, you know, spyin’ on yer
neighbour like?”
I glared into the darkness, unable to focus on anything as sprites
darted about my vision, tricked by the absolute blackness of the room.
I could hear him smile. Actually hear the bristles on his face rub
against each other as the corners of his mouth pulled back. The sound
of my own heart bellowed in my ears, billowed against my breast bone.
I heard him shift position, a shoe being dragged across the tight
weave of carpet. Suddenly I felt the heat of his face next to mine and recoiled
just as far as the strap around my forehead would allow. His hot
breath on my eyelids. His words sank like pistons pumping into my skin.
“So why the fuck was he follyin me to work then, eh? Follyin me when
I’m takin the wee fella for a walk?
He spat every second word. I felt his spittle on my skin. I revulsed
as it speckled cold fingertips on my forehead.
His voice lowered into a ferocious growl.
” I even seen ya looking in me back winda at me and the missus, ye
fuckin’ pervy bastard, aye.”
His words ended in an imagined, malichous grin, baring his teeth so that the words
spat out in clipped staccato daggers.
“Enjoy…
That…
Didja…
Boy?”
The air clears, I hear him push his back into the wall again.
He grunts as he seems to search his pockets for something. I hear the
rustle of a cigarette box. I hear my heart, pound as if it wants to escape this moment and disown me, flop away down the bed an fuck of out the door without me. And then A bright sudden sprite of white light burns a flash into my vision. A second, followed by an orange flame, and
O’leary’s face, bent in concentration over a new cigarette. His widows
peaks’ like dirty lanes back into his scalp, cheeks sunken as he
pulls on the cigarette. The flame dies, and just the burned outline of
him on my mind remains, lines slowly bleeding into each other,
mutating into a horned silhouette of a demon. I tried to open my mouth
and call out.
His voce is leveled when he speaks again, no longer spiting, but drawling, as if he wants me to take in every horrible word.
“So, I had to think to meself, whats this fella playin’ at? Up at all these hours of the night, bangin’ round de house, wakin’ me and the missus up. Then I sees ye. Last year it was. Somethin’. Somethin’ that bothered me, but meant feck all to me at the time. All That feckin’ about the garden ye did. We just feckin’ thought yez were bored, and just feckin’ about in the garden; sure we passed no heed. But I did pass comment at the time that she wasn’t present for most of it, ye know, her, yer missus. Then she dissapeared. Ye know, yer missus, whats her name, jessie?”
Something rang cold, a steel winter bell, in my chest.
A scene flashes in my memory, like someone threw a light over a darkened room for a breif, flashing second. That day when the Gardai came. That big sergent in his padded vest and distant eyes. He didn’t want to be here. Not at this time. Not for yet another domestic.
“So i had to think to meself: ‘What this fella playin’ at?”
Dark buttons on the sergents vest. Metalic rims against a herringbone blue.
“All that feckin’ around in the garden..”
Hard, probing eyes narrowed to slits, until they burrow. Delve. Dig. Dig…….
My mouth works .Shapes, fashions words, and fails. Jessie. Jessie. I’m so sorry…
*********************************
Scott was questioned, over and over again. His broad shoulders must have shook as he sat unfathomably lost in a sea of questions from the Gardai as they took me away. His grey temples must have been buried in his hands as the Garda forensics dug away at the rockery at the bottom of the garden where he used to sit and smoke those tiny little cigars of his, puffing thoughtful grey circles into the night air while Jessie slept below. Right where he sat and thought. Right where he and I sat and drank, and set the world to rights after Jessies disappearance. They must have asked about the times I put breakfast on the table for her and I even after she was gone, and how…How was he to know? Why should he have known? that was our, little, place. Our little secret. Just Jessie and I.
She turns now, and smiles at me. Her hair hasn’t lost that shine, that glow that I love. She’s sitting right there, right across form me in our small, but comfortable little room. there is a chess set placed between us, as the door closes and locks behind us, like it does ever night. I turn and nod, smilingly at the man with the peaked cap that looks in at us through the narrow porthole in the door, before he move away. He doesn’t acknowledge Jessie, even though she shines like a million lights in my eyes. Just to me, it seems. Just to me.
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