Posted on by Lydia Ink

Now and Again

Envy is one of the 7 deadly sins.  I’m not dead yet.  It sneaks up on a soul, envy, like the hiss of snake through grass. 

Her hair was long and shiny and her legs shapely.  She wasn’t on my arm or laughing at my jokes.  Sure, I envied the guy but only at a distance.  Maybe I could have shaken the green-eyed monster off, but I had to see her every day walk out with him.  

“Hi, how are you?” Her voice chirpy as she shuffled through her mail.

“Okay, how are you?”  Me the regular guy who wore plaid shirts and worked construction.  The guy she hung out with wore suits that glistened and white shirts so bright they appeared to glow.  One night as they went out arm in arm.  I imagined his conservative tie with a snorting pig on it and a bulbous tie pin.  Fact is he didn’t wear tie pins. 

They were an item for about a month, maybe a month and a half,  then the cops were knocking on my door. 

“Did you know her?”

“We said hello in the mail room.”

“See her often there?”

“She lived on the floor above me.  I saw her around.”

“So, you were near neighbors.”

“Yeah, her and her boyfriend.”

“Anybody you know?”

“No.  Some slick guy in expensive suits.”

“She was a looker.”

“So are lots of women.”

The murder made the papers and of course my fellow tenants were up in arms and worried about their kids and apartment safe dogs.  It was too bad, and I had to squelch my grandmother’s voice in my head, “girls like that deserve what they get?”

I went to work the next day and the next and thought about her nearly constantly.  The next week I was invited out for a beer with the guys and was glad to go.  I walked into my apartment and realized I hadn’t thought of her for several hours.  In a month I thought of her occasionally. 

I woke up one night with a gentle tapping on my bedroom door and she stood there looking at me all worried.

“How did you get in?”

“Through your window.”

“I live on the 8th floor.”

“I came in through your window.”

She stepped toward my bed and I as up and out and pressing myself against the wall. 

“Get out!” I shouted and she stopped.  She was dressed how I remember her the last night I saw her alive; her slinky pink dress looked stained and her hair a mess. 

“I was nice to you, I invited you in,” she whined.

I was careful and I did get away with it in a sense, problem is I see her now and again. 

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Ghosts and Trains and Things She Left Behind

You tried to clean up before we left for the airport, but I wanted to get started. I do not understand why I was so anxious.

The night before we had the train back to the suburbs practically to ourselves. Oh, a few people sat in a jolting, distant, silence.  An older gentleman sat across from where we stood. We stood for fear we would fall asleep and miss our destination.   You had your back to him.  I watched him watching us. 

Your hair pinned, somehow, high upon your head, soft curling strands falling down upon the curve of your neck — small glints of silver gray, unashamed, glistened upon your temples. Your eye makeup, slightly smudged from blinking and rubbing fatigue from your face, only seemed to make your appearance softer. I looked away from you to hide a smile and caught the old man looking at us — his expression mournful.

So I turned back to you, looked down upon your face, pale, sleepy, beautiful.
Letting go of the cold metal, vertical bar that I clung to, I clasp the one you were leaning into.  You blinked, and you looked up at me. A small frown between your eyes and I realized you were questioning me. Was I inviting you to step forward, place your head upon my shoulder, lean in? Gently, I inclined my head toward my shoulder.

Trust me a little.

You did.

You moved forward, and I lost sight of you, but for the first time, beyond the casual handshake or the quick friendship hug, I felt you. Your body against mine, resting. I felt no sexual urges, no dominating triumph, rather I absorbed your sense of weariness.

I lowered my arms along the vertical bars to encase you further against me.  A small child you became, me your protector.

I continued to watch nothing out the window, the flash of lights as the train moved quickly to the old city to where I lived, alone in the new housing community where solitary artist and couples with an abundance of well-mannered children lived. Adobe colored garden pots of all sizes lined the stairs leading to wooden front doors and hung from fences.  No grass covered the small patches of ground, but sapling fruit trees and rows of herbs and potatoes bulged and bubbled the ground.

The train stopped and the rattle of the doors opening and the cold air of late night, early morning, coursed into the car. I glanced back. The old man was watching, but he wasn’t looking at me, he was looking at you. We stepped toward the door and your hand was in mine.

The doors shut behind us and we began moving away from the platform, toward my house, my small world I had let you invade, on my invite, for a few days.

“Do you think he rides just to pass the time?” You asked, expecting no reply from me.

I looked away from your face, but re-gripped your small hand in mine and said nothing. I did not realize you had even noticed the old man.

The street was dark, my house darker. My hand trembled as I inserted my key into the lock and opened the door.  I stepped aside and let you in first.

You walked down the long narrow hall. You placed your hand deep within your hair and pulled out the magic that held it aloft upon your head. I watched your hair cascade down and brush your shoulders. You placed the magic absent-mindedly upon the small narrow table that belonged to my Mother and seemed destined for this narrow tall house, deep within this bohemian, suburban, sprawl.

Your back still to me, your hands rubbed your temples and I could imagine your face, eyes closed and worried about the old man on the train.

Next morning you told me not to stay with you at the airport, that you’d be fine and I honestly felt that you meant it. You seemed relieved to be there, to be boarding a plane back to your beloved Chicago. Dark circles under your eyes and your hair disheveled and sexy. The waiting area for your flight suddenly seemed to lift your spirits.

A call to board the plane. I asked you what the weather was like in Chicago. The weather.

“Cold and gloriously gray and gloomy along that big fresh-water lake.”

And now I’m standing in this house, sunlight streaming into the windows, dust motes floating in the air and the sound of a distant city on a Sunday afternoon.

The dust in the house caught in the sunlight streaming through the windows floated along in bored, mindless circles.  There he stood, the old man from the train the night before standing across the street.  Did he sense my sudden awareness of him?  He moved on down the uneven sidewalk, moving aside for a large family taking a Sunday afternoon stroll.

I grabbed my keys, locked the front door and started walking toward a coffeehouse down the street with deep old wooden chairs and little round tables.  I was on my second cup when I noticed the old man in the back of the place, huddled up in the only small booth the place offered.  He was looking out at nothing, his coffee steaming in front of him.

How did we appear sitting there, me a middle-aged man and he old and cold looking?  Were we some cosmic example to some young man contemplating the ring in his pocket and the girl across the table from him?  I looked about; there was no one just us.   An electric taste of fear coursed through my mouth.  My hand shook, and the coffee was suddenly stone cold.

“Are you afraid of ghosts?” he asked me.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said.

“Neither did I,” and he wheezed and laughed his reply.  “She’s gone son, it’s time to let her go and let her live again, you’ve been haunting her long enough.”

Posted on by Lydia Ink

Summoning Winter

I deal in death, that’s how I earn my bread and butter.  Wallowing in the financial implications of suffering and demise, I shuffle the sheaves of paper, both tactile and electronic, that rustle the real-life certainty of not existing anymore.  Working under a thick armor of mental self-preservation which expands with the continual observation of someone else’s misery, I muddle through and keep an even tone in my voice.  I work in an emotional freezer for survival’s sake.

However, the armor that thickens around my mental processes will crack.  When there is a breakdown in my defenses there is also a will to wallow in whatever brings me momentary happiness; a flirtation that I know I won’t pursue, boxed wine (the entire box),  a German film (earth and water let’s talk mercenary!) or (and most recently) a drive to an advertised haunted hotel.

The haunted hotel reservation resulted from a messy car accident.  While sunk in the sorting out of death benefits for my fellow and now dead human beings, I thought little of consequence.  I am aware and fully cognizant that my endeavours to forget are a willful attempt to separate my natural tendency to sympathize from my analytical attempt to just get the damn job done.  Hell’s bells don’t go too fast on icy roads when your three minor children are in the car – if you want to kill yourself fine, don’t take them with you.   Judgemental yes, but after the sixth such incident one shouts and scream mentally and judges freely.

So I try to separate my sympathizing self from my analytical self because I’m not sure sympathizing over every tragedy I have to deal with isn’t a way to deaden the pain of it all.  That’s what I tell myself in defence of myself.  Why should I feel guilt over a near-pornographic film, a brief encounter that boils down to using someone or testing the realms of the supernatural?   Aren’t I allowed a distraction?  I’m fully human and a fully human person should not have to separate her desires between right and wrong.  The misery in life proves there is no wrong in trying to live a little.

All that sounds justifiable at the moment, but less so when the guy sends flowers, the rank film mentally pops up during a business conversation or the accusatory face wakes you from a deep sleep.  Consequences don’t go away proving that most justifications are self-deception.   I digress.

My room, in the supposed haunted hotel was swept and sterile. The four walls welcomed me into a familiar silence and I shuddered at the thought of staying in a place that would not distract me after the recent exposure to the gruesome automobile accident and subsequent paperwork.  “I hear this every day when I come home from work – nothing.”

My words knocked about the walls and did not reply to me.  I shrugged and stripped down to nothing, bare as the day I started breathing, and pirouetted around the room.  I looked horrible and laughed out loud.  Breathless, I said, “I just want you to know, that if you are here and need any help in unfinished death benefits or unpaid medical claims, I’m your girl.  That’s what I do in the light of day.”

Silence.

“Of course not, because when you’re dead, you’re dead.”

I bathed, feeling raw and wondering if what’s his name would join me in my rented haunted room and make any ghosts jealous of our sexual inhibitions.    I ran the tub water hot and allowed steam to arise and push against the mirror in useless and inept waves.  I didn’t want to see my middle-aged self naked any longer so there was a reason behind my want for a steamy bath.  I thought about turning on some music for atmosphere, but I allowed the silence to continue, that’s what the grave is like I reasoned.  When finished bathing I dried and powdered and contemplated putting my clothes back on and going home, calling what’s his name and asking if he had a free evening but I didn’t want to take that back into the confessional; a priest has only so much patience with fornicating parishioners.    So I crawled in between the sheets and summoned winter.

I summon winter whenever I want to sleep: I need a cold room, fully dark.  The double bed was firm, the room cool to the brink of cold and dark.  I fell asleep almost immediately.  I have no recollection at what time I awoke, but I was fully awake, and aware that there was a weight on the bed beside me.  For a split second I had the cowardly sense to not open my eyes, but the thought became a conscious a moment too late – I opened my eyes.

If her face had remained immobile, if it had remained dead-looking I may have come out of the experience in a less baffled and babbling state of mind.  It was her expression of snarling hate that haunts me.  Her expression didn’t change immediately, no, she waited until I fully knew of her presence and then her dead lips slipped back off her teeth and gums, pushing her eyes into slits of rage and the flaring her nostrils inches away from my arrogant living flesh.

I’m not sure I touched her.  I know I slammed my head hard against the nightstand table because when I awoke, the sun streaming in I wanted to puke on the floor as I tenderly felt the goose egg on the back of my skull.  I was some time driving home.

“So did you think it was some joke?”

“I was just in one of those moods.  I…”

“Certainly, certainly.  All those times you are heartily sorry after a self-consumed tirade that culminates in some guilty pleasure and another’s hurts.  Have you thought about another job, waiting tables I’m told is lucrative.”

I discovered in my Saturday confessional that my usually patient and far-seeing priest had a real impatience with those who dabble in the supernatural.

“Memento Mori; pray your life ends in grace unlike that poor girl’s but until then show some respect.”

My penitence continues.

Photo by Leon Seibert on Unsplash

Posted on by Lydia Ink

The Sale

It would be an easy sell, she felt at first, and she had first dibs on the selling of it. These state properties were usually a pain in the ass, but this was bread pudding as her grandmother used to say.
The first couple was understandable; their dog refused to walk through the front door. They were polite and took a glance around the front room, remarked on the beauty of the fireplace tiles (something she had missed actually) and left with their wimp dog. She glanced again at the cobalt blue and white tiles and saw that they were story tiles. There was a bearded man standing above a crowd as if giving a benediction and another man, old and bearded, standing over a body of water that looked parted in two. She did not understand what the stories were about, but the tiles added to the place and she felt that it gave the room a soft, peaceful feel. Perhaps she should google the photos and learn something about them.
The other three showings were a comedy of errors. Even she had to admit it. The water in the hallway sunk couple number two. She still wasn’t sure what the hell brought that on, and the plumber assured her that everything was fine. She was sure that the upstairs bathroom had flooded, or that someone had left water running up there, but the bathroom was dry. It stumped her.
The third couple fell in love with the property at first sight until they heard something climbing through the walls.
She called the exterminator who assured her that no infestation of rats or squirrels lived in the walls of the house. She was unconvinced. She heard what she heard and wanted a second opinion. The second opinion confirmed that no rodent was present. Finally, in exasperation, the exterminator huffed over the phone, “lady, that house is so whistle-clean no self-respecting rat would bother with the place. I couldn’t even find a roach.”
So she felt that it was her. She was bad karma, and the place needed someone new to show it off, but she didn’t want to let the sale leave her office. She sent her partner, David Combe, in with couple number four. He came back complaining that the house was defective. The showing was going fine; they seemed to consider it and when they went upstairs; they heard a door slam downstairs.
“We all jumped, then laughed, but then the damn door slammed again.” David looked weary, and a little shaken up. “Listen Carol, I’m ready for any old house to have drafts, back drafts, that sort of thing, but the same door slamming repeatedly is a little off.”
“Well, someone must have been in the house.”
“We looked.”
She looked at him askance.
“Listen Carol, it’s like we pissed the house off…”
“Never mind put the file back on my desk.” She was in no mood to listen to him whine.
The place was in perfect shape to sell. On the third floor of the old heap one day she saw a man walking among the trees. He wore a white shirt and overalls. He was tall and had silvery blond hair. She tried to recall what couple number five looked like and couldn’t. She glanced down at her watch, it was still early but she they may be early. They were meticulous (she remembered that) and were probably hoping to wander around the yard.
Sure enough, the couple was waiting at the front of the house when she walked out the front door. He was in a suit and she was in a polka-dotted pink and white dress. She was hideous. Yes, this was the couple she remembered.
The showing was perfect, and they were standing in the kitchen; the man had his arm around his wife’s narrow, polka dotted waist. The back door was wide open and the evening breeze wafted in. She noticed a funny look on his face first and then his wife’s face seemed to grow longer and her nose looked pinched in. Then she, herself smelled it. It was odious and strong she couldn’t determine from where she it was coming. All three rushed out the back door and started gasping for air.
What the hell?
The back door was still open, and she made her way up the back porch and into the kitchen.
No smell.
The evening was settling in, the shadows were long in the yard and inside the house. The kitchen was order free. All the plain cupboards gleamed and the enamel appliances shone. She walked around the ground floor, taking in deep breaths.
She realized the echo of her own footsteps and felt her shoulders ease. She walked into the large sitting room and the three window seats, each supporting three narrow windows. A narrow couch was still in the living room and she fought the desire to sit down and watch the sunset. She didn’t have the time. She did imagined young girls reading or doing some hand sewing in the window seats. Perhaps even she could learn to do some handwork.
Then she realized what was wrong. She was showing the place to the wrong people. The room could never make way for a flat screen TV, the scratch of a dog’s claws on the wooden floors, or the garish, plastic toys of children. The place was too old; it needed peace. It demanded someone to love it.
Was that running water?
She paused outside the upstairs bathroom. Through the door which was slightly ajar, she heard water. She remembered the last couple turning on the water and admiring the white tile and marble vanity. She smiled and nodded during their examination agreeing with their admiration but felt, for herself that the bathroom was a little cold, a little sterile despite its amenities of a shower, deep, claw-foot tub and enclosed toilet.
With her hand upon the door, she listened intensely. Yes, water was running. She sighed in consternation. How did she miss that? They must have left a faucet turned on. She pushed open the door, shocked by the amount of steam in the room. She blinked and walked further in, angrier still. One of them, without her being aware, must have come back in and checked the shower. She didn’t mind but make sure they turn the damn thing off.
She opened the shower door, steam billowed out, heat encompassed her. She groped for the shower handle. She recalled a long silver handled lever that moved in an almost 360 degree motion. She surmised that one of the couple (she blamed the male part of the equation almost subconsciously) turned on the shower and walked away.
She leaned in, fuming and knowing that her hair was going flat and her suit would sag with all the heat, humidity and steam that was rolling out of the shower and she would look like a soggy rat back at the office. She felt for the lever, almost too hot to grasp she started moving it into the off position when she felt a firm grip upon her wrist. An electric, coppery taste of fear shot through her mouth. She let go of the handle and wrenched her hand toward herself, but the grip would not let go. Bright sparks of fear blinded her, and she thought the water was getting hotter and the steam thicker. She opened her mouth to scream but felt her throat only tighten. She pulled again to release her hand but felt the heavyweight of a wet male body slip forward and slump against her.
Everything went dark.
She bought the old house three weeks later; at last, the sale she wanted.
A year later she sold her portion of the business to David Combe, planned a lily garden in the southeast corner of the property. The grape arbor trimmed back to acceptable proportions promised a beautiful crop the first year. She added cobalt blue tiles to the bathroom floor and walls.
Her few friends encouraged a hot tub, but she resisted their suggestion.
She had an old fashion Christmas party but served nothing more potent than a hot rum punch she found in an old cookbook, played traditional Christmas carols and told everyone that she was taking piano lessons.
Her old partner stops by once in a while to admire her latest piece of art work in embroidery or crewel work, but leaves when he hears the upstairs shower turned on. He doesn’t feel her private life is any of his affair.