1811: Untitled, Chapter 3

[Back to the start.]


 

Over the course of the next couple of days, strange things continued to happen around Magnus. There was nothing so outrageous that the happening itself frightened him — indeed, in many cases, much like when the door had seemingly unlocked itself without him using the key a few days earlier, he failed to notice that anything unusual had gone on until after the fact — but the strange, scrawled and apparently hallucinatory messages that had continued appearing troubled him.

They hadn’t added up to anything coherent as yet. So far there had been a “WELCOME”, a “GOOD”, a “KEEP GOING” and a simple “YES”. The messages seemed to approve of what was happening, though Magnus still didn’t understand what it all meant. He had become concerned for his mental health; he already knew that his emotions were in a somewhat fragile state following the collapse of his personal life, but had this crossed some sort of line into his brain actually not working properly, interpreting things that weren’t really there?

The messages most certainly weren’t really there. Sometimes they lingered longer than others, but usually they vanished as if they had never been there at all after just a single blink of his eyes. They were vivid enough that they certainly looked real, but if that were the case why weren’t his walls, by now, covered in graffiti?

He flopped into bed, exhausted. He hadn’t done much that day, but he had at least left the house and spent some time in a coffee shop in an attempt to feel like a normal human being. It wasn’t the most productive use of his time, of course, but it beat sitting by himself and letting the darkness of his depression close in on him.

Now, of course, it was night, and as he flipped the bedside light off he was surrounded by literal darkness; for once he had remembered to close the curtains, so the usual glare of the street lamps from outside was just a faint glow through the material. The only real light in the room now was the glowing red numbers of the clock-radio, ever-present by his bed, a relic of a forgotten age when he had a reason to wake up early in the morning.

“Hi.”

His heart immediately started racing. There had been no-one in the room when he had got into bed and turned the light off, but that was unmistakably the sound of someone’s voice. It seemed to be a woman’s voice; strong, but feminine, and not one he recognised.

“How’s the darkness treating you?”

Panicked, he fumbled for the bedside lamp and ended up knocking it — and a coffee cup from a couple of days ago — to the floor. Eventually he managed to pick it up and, wielding it like a lantern, he flicked the switch.

Instantly his room was bathed in light, and there was no sign of anyone. He looked around and gave a momentary start at the sight of his own enlarged shadow on the wall as he pointed the lamp around like a torch, but it was clear to him that he was the only occupant of the room. The voice — if indeed there ever was one — was silent.

He replaced the lamp on the bedside table and switched it off again. He lay down, his heart still thumping in his chest, took a deep breath and tried to relax, eyes closed.

“Don’t try to find me,” the voice came again, this time feeling like it was whispering in his ear. “You won’t be able to. Not yet, at least.”

He kept his eyes closed — tightly, now — as fear gripped his body and his pulse quickened once more. He swore he felt a chill wind move across his body, and then the voice was in his other ear.

“You’re making a good start, though,” it said. “Really good. But I can see you’re not quite ready for this yet, so for now I’ll bid you farewell.”

The breeze blew once again, but Magnus dared not open his eyes, even though he knew all he would see — even if there really was someone in his room — was darkness. It was several minutes that felt like hours before he felt his body starting to relax again, the adrenaline slowly draining and his muscles gradually switching out of “fight or flight” mode.

Still keeping his eyes closed, he rolled onto his front and buried his head in his pillow. It didn’t take him long to succumb to sleep.

 

*       *       *       *       *

The following day was uneventful. Nothing strange happened around him, and none of the peculiar messages appeared. It was the same the day after, and the day after that, too. He began to think that whatever strange illness had been clouding his mind had somehow passed, and that he was over the worst, so he gradually let the weird incidents of the last few days slide from the front of his mind.

He had been grateful for the distraction, if nothing else; having the odd happenings to concentrate on had taken his mind off the other things that had been going on in his life. He was brought back into the cold light of reality by a simple text message, though: she was coming by to pick up her things, and recommended that he wasn’t there while he did so.

The rational part of his brain knew that she was right, that it would be healthiest and safest for both of them if he were elsewhere while she went about her grim business of sorting out the things that belonged to her, packing them away and taking them with her, never to be seen again. That very act was definitively final; up until that point, he’d always carried the hope that she might reconsider and come back, even though she’d already taken a lot of her possessions — daily life things like clothes and toiletries — with her quite some time ago now.

He responded with a simple, blunt “OK” to her proposed time, which was later that day, and knew that he needed to make himself scarce as quickly as possible. But he could not bring himself to leave just yet; he could feel the emotions bubbling up inside him. A corrosive cocktail of intense sadness and burning rage, the toxic feelings quickly overcame him, and he found himself stamping around the empty flat, looking for something to release the anger on.

He settled on a pair of glasses that she’d left behind and had, until now, been avoiding. He knew she didn’t wear them often — she’d have taken them with her, otherwise — but they were still hers. And, right now, they made as good a target as any for his ire.

He took them from the shelf where they had sat, untouched, since she had walked out of the door. He threw them to the ground petulantly, then stamped on them one, two, three times. He picked them up and squeezed them tightly between his hands, bending the frames and making them useless as a facial adornment. To his intense dissatisfaction, though, nothing broke; the lenses didn’t crack, the frames didn’t snap. All he was left with was a mangled, twisted mass of wire and glass that was still recognisable as having been a pair of glasses once, but which wouldn’t be fitting atop anyone’s nose any time soon.

He fell to his knees and started to cry. The tears came quickly and flowed down his cheeks, plopping quietly onto the carpet as they fell from his face. He collapsed forward, his forehead hitting the floor with enough force to make him slightly dizzy, but the physical pain didn’t matter compared to the mental anguish he was currently in.

He didn’t even really know why he was crying or what he was upset about. It was just everything about the situation coming to a head. He scrunched up his face as he sobbed and gasped: he’d done this before, and would probably do it again; he just had to ride it out. That rational part of the brain speaking again, even amid the most chaotic outbursts of emotion like this one.

Eventually, the tears subsided and the sobbing stopped. He felt exhausted, and it was all he could do to pull his head up off the floor and get back to a kneeling position.

He wiped the last few tears from the corners of his eyes and his cheeks, sniffed and opened his eyes.

He wasn’t prepared for what he saw.

He was in his flat, but it was not as he knew it. The strange words that had occasionally been appearing on his walls were now everywhere, and the room seemed shrouded in a black mist, lighter than smoke but heavier than fog. Everything about this was wrong, but he still recognised it. Why? What was going on.

A patch of the black mist ahead of him coalesced into a humanoid figure, though it was nothing more than a silhouette; he couldn’t make any features out, save for the fact that the figure was probably female.

“Oh, hi,” said a voice he recognised immediately as that which he’d heard in his bedroom a few days earlier. “Wasn’t expecting you quite so soon.”

He didn’t hear the last sentence, because he’d toppled backwards, the shock too much for his consciousness to take right now. He had passed out.

*       *       *       *       *

“There you are.”

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been unconscious, but he knew that he didn’t want to open his eyes. The voice — the strange figure — was still there, and that presumably meant that he was in that terribly wrong version of his living room.

“Look, I’m not going to hurt you,” said the voice, sounding a little put out by his lack of response. “I just need to talk. And you need to listen, otherwise you’re going to be stuck here, and I don’t think you want that. Sit up.”

Eyes still closed, he uneasily raised himself up onto his elbows, then pushed his back up off the floor. His body felt stiff, heavy and uncooperative, but he complied with the voice’s request nonetheless, even though his body was shaking with every movement. Then, he grit his teeth and let his eyes open.

The shadowy figure appeared to be crouched on the floor near him, and he could have sworn that if it had a face it would be looking concerned. Something about the way it carried itself and the attitude it was displaying towards him made him feel a little more at ease than he had been: maybe the voice really had meant what it had said, and that it didn’t want to hurt him?

“There we go,” came the female voice, somewhat softer in tone than it had been before. “That wasn’t so difficult, now, was it?”

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice cracking as he did so. He felt like he hadn’t drunk any water for weeks.

The voice chuckled. “Well, aren’t you straight to the point. I like that. But before we talk about me, we should probably talk about…” — here the figure gestured flamboyantly about the distorted version of his living room — “…this place, and what you’re doing here.”

He blinked. The nightmarish vision before him didn’t go away. He was really here. For some reason, though, he could feel his fear dissipating and being replaced with curiosity.

The crouching figure seemed to rock back onto where its knees would be if it was a normal human body. It looked like it was relaxing.

“Good,” it said. “Welcome.”

1810: Untitled, Chapter 2

[Back to the start]


 

Magnus wasn’t sure when it was he finally got back to sleep, but it must have happened at some point, because before he knew it he was opening his eyes and immediately squinting at the bright sunlight coming in through the bedroom window.

He groaned, rolled over, wiped his mouth — apparently he had drooled in his sleep, which he added to his increasingly long mental checklist of things that disgusted him about himself — and blinked a few times, trying to get used to the light.

As the room came back into focus, he glanced at the clock-radio. It was just before 9 in the morning. He’d woken up at a normal time for once.

He groaned again, sat up, stretched and unsteadily got out of bed. As he turned to look at the wall that had been emblazoned with the strange, dark letters last night — or had that been a dream, too? — he paused, looking it over as if willing the letters to appear again. Unsurprisingly, nothing happened. The fear he had felt last night was all but gone: now, the strange happenings were nothing more than the fading memories of a confused subconscious, and he attributed them to the fact that he quite literally wasn’t feeling in his right mind at the moment.

He retrieved his phone from on top of the chest of drawers, where it had been charging all night, and pressed the power button. The screen sprang to life, the large numbers of the clock informing him once again that yes, he really had managed to get up at a normal person’s time today. Not only that, but it was Saturday; a day where he always felt significantly less guilty about not working or, he felt, contributing to society in any meaningful way.

He tapped the “Messages” icon, then on the recent conversation he’d had with his friend Dora. He hadn’t spoken with her in a few days, and he felt like he needed to talk. He knew that she worked, though, and didn’t like disturbing her in the week, even though he couldn’t remember the last time she had turned him down for an invitation to do something together, even if it was just hanging out watching a movie.

“Hey,” he typed clumsily, fumbling for a moment over the auto-correct function. “Are you up to anything today?”

The message sent, and his phone informed him that it had been delivered, but not read. It was entirely possible, he figured, that Dora was still asleep; it was quite early in the morning on a Saturday, after all, and he certainly didn’t begrudge her a lie-in after a week of juggling working and taking care of her family.

He’d thought off and on that he might be in love with Dora. He’d even considered confessing it to her at some point, before the rational part of his brain took over and told the irrational part — which held an increasingly large dominion over his overall consciousness these days — that he was being silly, that he didn’t really love her, that all he was trying to do was replace that which he had lost, and that, given she was happily married with children, she almost certainly didn’t feel the same way. The rational brain won that particular argument, but the irrational side often felt to him like it was biding its time to flare up again at the most inconvenient moment.

His phone buzzed, interrupting his wandering thoughts.

“Nothing much,” came the reply. “Want to come over?”

“Actually,” he wrote back quickly. “Would you mind coming over here? I need to ask you…” he paused, and deleted the last sentence. “I need your help with something.”

He waited. Dora always took several minutes to reply, whereas he was inclined to treat text messages like online instant messaging conversations, feeling guilty if he didn’t respond immediately. It frustrated him at times, but he was also conscious that not everyone out there had quite as much time on their hands as he did. He sighed dejectedly as he once again found himself contemplating his life situation; today was an upbeat day by his own standards, but there was still that background noise of hopelessness, that feeling that things were never going to just neatly work out like he hoped they might.

“All right,” came the reply eventually. “I’ll be over in an hour or so. That ok?”

 

*       *       *       *       *

Dora Miller was a pretty woman, blessed with a youthful face and shapely figure that had not yet begun to succumb to the ravages of time despite the fact that she was just the wrong side of thirty years old. She always made an effort with her appearance; her straight, golden-blonde hair falling around her face and down her back without a single strand out of place, her light touch of makeup complementing her natural attractiveness without seeming artificial.

Magnus always felt inferior when he was next to her, like they were polar opposites in almost every way. He was the scruffy, unkempt, no-hope male loser that, he feared, no-one would ever find attractive ever again; she was, he felt, radiant. He didn’t know why she hung out with him or why she allowed him to call her “friend”, but he appreciated it nonetheless.

He handed her a cup of coffee and sat down next to her on the sofa. He didn’t look her in the eye; he’d always found eye contact difficult, but even more so since the events of the last couple of months.

“So,” she said taking a sip of the coffee. “Ow, that’s as hot as the sun, let me put that down a minute.” She put it down and smacked her lips before speaking again. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

He thought for a moment. He wasn’t quite sure how to put it.

“I, uh,” he began, trying to think how he could express the things he was thinking about. “I’ve been feeling a bit weird.”

Her eyes softened. “Well, we both know that,” she said. “Is this something different? What do you mean?”

Her questions weren’t helping. He still wasn’t sure how to put it across.

He stood up, and looked down at his hands. While he was waiting for her to arrive, he’d noticed that his hands looked a little different to how he was used to them looking — at least he believed so, anyway. He couldn’t quite pin down what it was that was wrong, but they certainly didn’t quite seem right.

“I need you to have a look at something,” he said seriously.

“Oh, God,” she said, chuckling, obviously trying to lighten the somewhat heavy mood that appeared to be falling over the room. “You’re not going to make me look at your balls, are you? I mean, if you’re really, genuinely worried, I will, but,”

He laughed despite himself; a weak laugh that even he found unconvincing. “No,” he said softly. He held out his hand to her. “Does anything look… strange about my hand to you?”

She gave him a quizzical look, complete with exaggerated raised eyebrow as if to emphasise how strange his question was, but she looked down at his outstretched hand nonetheless.

“No,” she said after a moment. “Looks like… well, a hand. Your hand.”

He blinked and looked down. They looked, as she said, like his own hands, just as they always did. Had he been imagining what he saw earlier? A trick of the dim light inside the flat, perhaps?

He sat down again, and began to tell her the tale of his strange experiences the previous night. Once he started, he found that he could not stop. Dora’s eyes widened as he explained in great detail — the specificity of which surprised even Magnus — the sensations he had felt, the things he had seen, what he had been thinking. For a dream, he thought, it felt decidedly real; eerily so.

The feeling of dread he’d experienced the previous night started to creep up his spine again, but he tried his best to banish it from his thoughts. He finished his story.

“Wow,” said Dora. “That’s… quite a dream. What did that word on the wall say? ‘Welcome’? Welcome to what?”

“I don’t know,” Magnus said with a shrug. “Probably nothing.”

There was a momentary silence between the two of them. Then Magnus spoke again.

“I’m sorry to bring you out here for some bullshit dream,” he said. “I feel a bit stupid now.”

“It’s all right,” said Dora, smiling that warm smile she smiled when he knew she was being genuine rather than jokey. “I’m guessing you were feeling a bit lonely and could do with someone to talk to anyway, huh.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I’m sorry to keep bugging you like this.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “What are friends for?”

*       *       *       *       *

Magnus and Dora spent a couple of hours together, heading to a local coffee shop for a change of scenery, before Dora had to head home and back to her family. As Magnus walked back in the direction of his flat, the grey clouds that had been gathering overhead as the morning had progressed finally started to spill their load of rainwater: gently at first, but quickly progressing to a strong shower that didn’t take long to soak right through his clothes.

“Shit.” It didn’t help his mood, and much of the good that Dora’s visit had done him was undone by the weather; it wasn’t long before he was feeling bleak again, and by the time he reached his front door he wasn’t sure he actually wanted to go inside. Although this place was still home, it also housed all manner of memories, many of which he didn’t feel like he could particularly deal with.

As he reached out for the door, he noticed his hands again and paused. Something seemed “off” once again; was it really a trick of the light, or had they actually changed colour? Perhaps it was the cold of the rain; his soaking clothes were making him feel somewhat chilly, after all, so it’s possible that it was just his body responding to the low temperatures.

Banishing thoughts of the memories floating around inside the flat, he decided that he wanted nothing more than to get inside and into the warm, perhaps even back into bed. As he reached out for the door, there was a soft “click” as it unlocked, and he pushed it open, reaching around the frame to find the hallway light switch as he did so and clicking the lights on so he didn’t have to walk in to thick darkness.

It wasn’t until the door slammed shut behind him that the fact he had never taken his keys out of his pocket registered to him. And yet here he was.

He glanced around the hallway, confused. Everything looked normal. Nothing seemed out of place.

That is, until he turned around to face the other end of the hallway, and there it was. Another word, scrawled in large, dark letters on the wall, plain to see.

“GOOD.” it said.

1809: Untitled, Chapter 1

[A note of explanation before we begin: for the past few Novembers, alongside the more organised campaign NaNoWriMo, I’ve been indulging in creative writing projects, aiming to write somewhere in the region of 2,000 words per day for a whole month in order to end up with something that is vaguely novel-length. This November, I didn’t get started in a timely manner, so I decided to wait until January to pick things up. And so, for the duration of this month, this blog will be entirely creative writing-based rather than, you know, a regular boring ol’ blog.

As usual, the creative writing for this project will be unedited and unplanned, since “improvising” is the means through which I enjoy writing the most. Expect unstructured, nonsensical occasionally inconsistent stuff to happen, though I’ll try to keep it to a minimum. Normal business will resume on February 1, assuming everything is neatly wrapped up by then! Let’s begin.]


The night was dark and almost silent, but Magnus Thompson could not for the life of him get to sleep.

He’d tried everything. He’d tried exhausting himself to the point where he felt he could barely keep his eyes open. He’d tried lighting candles with relaxing smells. He’d tried reading. He’d even tried an app on his phone that featured a selection of sounds designed to soothe the listener off to sleep — rain on canvas, muted traffic noise, wind in the mountains, even pure white noise.

None of it worked, however. Tonight, as with every other night, he found himself, eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. Moments ago, he had glanced over to his bedside table to look at the aggressively glowing red digits of his distinctly retro clock-radio, and was unsurprised to discover that it was after three o’ clock in the morning.

He knew that his body would eventually succumb to total exhaustion, but he could never predict when. And consequently, he could never predict at what time he’d be able to rise the following day. His worst ever day had seen him dropping off to sleep just as the dawn was starting to break around five in the morning, and him waking up just as everyone else’s working day was coming to a close at five in the afternoon. That day, he’d felt particularly bad as he’d dragged his unkempt form into the convenience store across the road and had had to respond to the clerk’s cheerful enquiry as to whether he’d had a “good day”. He couldn’t bring himself to admit that his day had only begun five minutes earlier and consequently hadn’t been all that bad as yet, nor did he particularly feel like sharing his recent life story with the cashier, who was still pretty much a stranger despite how often Magnus saw him.

He’d lost track of the time since she’d gone. Days blurred into weeks and possibly even months; nothing felt like it mattered any more. He was alone, miserable and gradually sliding towards a situation where he would be unable to support himself any longer, and he did not want that to happen. He did not know what would happen should things get that far, so he tried his best to push it out of his mind whenever these dark thoughts started sneaking up on him.

But still they came, and at night they were the worst. The darkness felt oppressive, like it was a physical manifestation surrounding him, suffocating him and pulling him ever deeper into despair, making hope seem perpetually out of reach, and slipping further and further away with each passing day. He didn’t know how to deal with it, so he just lay there.

At least, that’s what he usually did. Tonight was different. He felt more awake, more alert than usual. His eyelids didn’t feel like they had weights attached to them; his body didn’t resist his brain’s messages to move.

He sat up on the side of his bed and looked out of the window into the deserted street outside. There was no-one around — not even the drunken louts that occasionally staggered past at ungodly hours in the morning on the way back from an evening of drinking and clubbing — and all the lights in the other flats and houses that lined the road were extinguished. The only light came from the orange-tinted street lamps, bathing everything in a monochromatic glow and giving the vista from his window a curious, otherworldly, stylised feel.

He stood, pulled on the clothes he’d discarded before he got into bed — crumpled and worn, as he hadn’t changed them for days by this point — and walked out into the hallway.

Something definitely didn’t feel quite right. But what was it?

He picked up his keys from the small table by the door, stuffed them in his pocket and opened the front door of his flat. Before long, he was outside the building and on the street. The air was still, but cold. He couldn’t hear a sound. But the feeling of “wrongness” was getting stronger and stronger. It almost felt like he could pinpoint the source of the disturbance, like a homing beacon in his head.

Before he knew what he was doing, he found himself following the invisible trail, walking down his street, down the middle of the narrow road. Although he’d lived here a while, he’d never really gone further than his own building, which just happened to be the first on the road. The residential buildings rose on either side of him; blocks of flats on the left, terraces of houses on the right. They made a wall against the sounds of the city around him and ensured that the street was, most of the time, pretty quiet and secluded-feeling, despite its rather central location. Tonight, of course, there was no sound at all; he could tell that even here. No cars were passing; no-one was walking down the street; not even a dog was barking. Nothing.

The curious sensation started to grow stronger as he continued to walk. He felt his skin crawling, though he didn’t know what it was that he feared. There was just… something out there, and even though he suspected that it wished him ill, still he continued on his way towards it, following the beacon that was starting to throb inside his mind.

He reached the end of the road. Before him was a ramp leading down into a car park that occupied the space beneath one of the blocks of flats. There was one much like it underneath his own building, but he’d never seen this particular one before. He’d had no reason to, of course, but he felt like the dark signal was drawing him inside, willing him to come closer — perhaps even daring him to venture within.

He silently accepted the challenge and walked down the ramp. The car park smelled somewhat musty, and the electric lighting inside appeared to be broken. Just beyond the entrance, a faulty fluorescent light flickered a frustratingly inconsistent rhythm, making it clear to Magnus that the car park was, at least, occupied by a few cars. On the right of the entrance, a wall. On the left, the car park continued into darkness so thick that he could barely see beyond the small, flickering pool of light created by the faulty light fitting.

Undeterred, he turned left and walked in that direction. It wasn’t long before the darkness surrounded him. It was a familiar sensation; the same he felt as he tried to get to sleep. The air felt thick, and the further he went, the more effort it was to breathe. It didn’t feel like there was pressure on his body, but he felt like he was starting to suffocate nonetheless. But still he proceeded onwards, ever deeper into the blackness.

After several minutes of walking in silence, during which his echoing footsteps on the concrete floor of the car park felt like they’d faded out to almost nothing, he paused. He stopped walking, and he turned around to glance behind him.

He suddenly became aware of how long he’d been walking, and of the fact that the car park couldn’t possibly be that big; it was a physical impossibility, surely. By now, he should have reached the far wall, or a row of cars, or something. But he couldn’t see anything in front of him, and now, it transpired, he couldn’t see anything behind him, either. All trace of the flickering fluorescent light appeared to have vanished, and he was totally surrounded by black on all sides.

He felt disoriented. He couldn’t tell which way he was facing any longer. He span around desperately, the calm he’d been feeling a moment ago rapidly fading and being replaced by panic as his pulse quickened and his palms became sweaty. He became dizzy, his disorientation now extending to not being sure which way was up and which way was down, too. He felt like he was falling, but at the moment he thought he should have hit the ground, he felt nothing; he just stopped. There was no pain, no sensation, nothing.

He became aware of his quickening pulse and his ragged breathing, but he didn’t know how to stand up any more, if indeed he was, as he thought, lying on the ground. His body no longer appeared to be obeying his commands; he wasn’t even sure he had a body any more, because he couldn’t see it to make sure. The darkness was everywhere, all around him. And now it felt like it was starting to bind him, as well: holding him down, preventing him from moving, making it harder and harder to breathe. He wanted to call out, to cry for help, to scream, but no sound came out. It was hopeless. This was the end. This was how he was going to die: in a way he didn’t understand.

And as he started to feel like the life was fading from him, his soul departing where he thought his body was, the strange calm returned once again. This wasn’t so bad, he thought. There would be worse ways to go. And at least this would mark an end to the pain. He wouldn’t have to worry any more. And, he thought grimly, no-one would have to worry about him, either.

His eyes snapped open, and he found himself gazing at the ceiling. Orange light was coming in through the window, the curtains for which he’d forgotten to close as usual.

How long had he been asleep? He didn’t remember passing out, but then he never did. He always awoke the next day, not exactly feeling refreshed but at least in a state where he could get up and do things again.

He glanced over at the clock-radio once again. The first digit still read “3”, but he couldn’t remember what the minutes had said the last time he’d looked. Regardless, it had apparently been less than an hour that he had been asleep, but after the strange dream he felt surprisingly awake, and certainly in no hurry to close his eyes again.

He sat up in bed and shuffled over to the side, dropping his legs to the carpeted floor softly. The air had something of a chill to it: he had been trying to avoid running the expensive electric heating as much as possible, and had, by now, reached a stage where he didn’t really feel the cold any more.

Clad only in his boxer shorts, he stood and stretched, then looked out of the window. The street was as deserted as it had been in his dream, but he wasn’t surprised at this, given the hour. Then he turned to face the door, intending to head to his kitchen to fix himself a warm drink. Before he could start walking, though, he froze.

Emblazoned in dark letters across the wall of his bedroom was a single word: “WELCOME.” It looked like it had been hastily scrawled across the wall in black or dark blue paint, completely disregarding the furniture and decorations, and the word itself, though normally a friendly utterance, seemed to radiate malice and menace. It made him more scared than he thought he’d ever been in his life, and the fear froze him to the spot, simply staring at the dark letters, for what felt like several minutes.

Then he blinked. And the word was gone.

1760: The Storyteller will be Late

Page_1Those of you who have been following this blog for a while will know that for the last few Novembers, I’ve done my own private NaNoWriMostyle project: to write a novel (or, at least, something of roughly novel-length) in the space of a month. You can read previous attempts starting here, here and here.

Previous installments have varied somewhat in quality. This is at least partly due to the fact that I tend not to plan out pieces of creative writing in advance, and in all these cases made a deliberate attempt to “improvise” the plot as I went along. The philosophy of “just write” in other words; pretty much the guiding principle of this blog in general, only with rather more of a focus than usual. And that’s pretty much the guiding principle of NaNoWriMo, too; to get some creativity flowing, and to do the initial hard work of getting something out of your brain and onto the page in a structurally complete form. You’re a lucky person indeed to come out of something like that with something you’re 100% happy with, but it provides a good starting point to then go on and edit, polish and refine if you want to — or simply move on secure in the knowledge that if nothing else you’ve practiced and refined your craft a little.

Those of you who have been following this blog for a while will have likely noticed that we’re well into November and no new work of fiction is forthcoming. I’d like to apologise for that. It wasn’t entirely intentional; in fact, I was actually quite looking forward to firing up the fiction-writing engine in my brain — it’s been a while; about a year, in fact — and seeing what on Earth I could possibly come up with this time around. I’d even had a few concepts I’d been kicking around inside my head, but hadn’t decided on which one I really wanted to pursue.

So what happened? Well, largely a lack of awareness on my own part, to be honest; the first of November came during that period when Andie and I were doing a whole bunch of things — firstly, we went up to Scotland for Cat’s wedding, then came back again; then Andie had a delightful day in hospital (nothing life-threatening, I might add); then we went to London for the Final Fantasy concert Distant Worlds. At some point during that week, I completely lost track of what day it was — November 1 was the night of Distant Worlds, and much of our day was spent travelling, so starting a brand-new creative project was unfortunately top of my list of priorities.

But never fear! (At least, not about this! Sometimes fear is justified, like when you lift your toilet seat and find a man-eating spider.) I’m still going to do “this year’s” writing; it’ll just be a bit late. Quite a bit late, in fact; so late, in fact, that referring to it as “this year’s” might be a bit of a stretch: I’m intending to start it on January 1, 2015.

Why? Well, largely because I have “one of those things” in my brain — somewhat exacerbated by Andie, who is much the same — where I like dealing with nice round numbers (we both turn the volume up and down in increments of 5, and God help you if you set the temperature in your car to something ridiculous like 23.5°C) and starting things at natural starting points. Consequently, starting a month-long project on November 12 is absolutely unthinkable to me, and thus I can’t possibly start until the beginning of a new month.

So why January and not December? Well, December is that irritating month with Christmas in it, and such festivities have a habit of proving somewhat distracting to the creative process in my experience, so I figured probably safest to leave it for now and kick off the new year in style with a month-long creative writing project. New year, new beginning and all that; what better month than January to start something like this, really, when you think about it?

Anyway. That’s the situation, if you were wondering. If you weren’t wondering, well, now you know, and if you’re particularly curious about what I’ve done in the past, you may well now have three novel-length pieces of unedited prose queued up and ready to read from previous years’ projects. I hope you enjoy them as much as it is possible to enjoy something so rough around the edges.

1663: Freewriting

Buggered if I can think of anything to write today, so I’m going to fall back on my old “emergency stopgap” measure, which is to indulge in a spot of “freewriting”. For the uninitiated, this creative writing exercise, which I learned at university, involves setting a timer for a short period of time of your choice — I’ve gone for ten minutes — and then you just start writing and don’t stop until the time is up. In this case, I’m hoping that continuously writing for ten minutes will cause something vaguely interesting to pop out of my head. If not, then you’ll get a glimpse of how my thought processes work, because one of the key things about freewriting is that you don’t stop to edit or tweak your writing as you go along. This means you can sometimes end up with very long paragraphs like this one, so let’s nip that in the bud before it becomes too much of a problem, shall we?

Freewriting has, for me, led to a number of interesting compositions over the years. I don’t know if I still have the pieces I composed as part of my Creative Writing module at university, but they were intriguing. Some were purely fantastic. Some were reflective. Some were very literal. All of them came out of my head relatively unprompted, just by sitting down in front of a page — handwritten in this case — and writing. What I’m doing with today’s entry — and have done a couple of times in the past — is exactly the same. (Six minutes and fifty seconds to go.)

Tomorrow, I’m picking up my new car. I haven’t owned a car for a while, so it will be nice to have one again, albeit a “nice thing” that comes with a lot of expenses attached. It was pleasant to be able to go through life without worrying about the cost of car insurance and the like, so I’m not relishing the prospect of a return to that world, but I am particularly looking forward to the ability to get out and about a bit more easily when Andie isn’t here (and, by extension, has the car that we currently share between us.) I’m hoping that having easy transport — and by “easy” I mean “not the bus” — I will be more inclined to do things that involve getting out of the house, like going to the gym, going for a swim or, hell, just going to town for a wander around or something. As I’ve mentioned in previous entries, spending all day every day at home can cause you to go a bit “stir crazy” after a while — I’m sure anyone who has spent any length of time either un- or self-employed will be able to empathise with this.

Four minutes thirty seconds to go and my brain is telling me I need something new to talk about. So what should it be? Umm… maybe the music I downloaded and printed recently? Regular readers will know that I’m a big fan of Square Enix’s MMO Final Fantasy XIV, and I was delighted to discover that a nice chap on YouTube had done some piano arrangements of selected pieces from the soundtrack. I have a good collection of other Final Fantasy piano collection albums that I very much enjoy playing, but as far as I’m aware there’s no “official” one for XIV, so I was interested to come across this chap’s work. Turns out it’s very high quality, so I was more than happy to fling him $40 (about £25) for his hard work in arranging and transcribing 36 tracks over 140 pages of music. I shall look forward to getting stuck into learning and playing some of those in the next few days and weeks — perhaps I’ll even record some for the enjoyment of you, readers. Yes, you. That’d be nice, wouldn’t it? (That wasn’t meant to sound sarcastic, but as I was typing it I realised that it probably does. Oh well. No turning back now.)

I’ve also set up the keyboard amp that my parents dumped on me last time they came. This hulking piece of extremely heavy audio equipment is something I’ve been trying to avoid coming back into possession of for a while, mostly because I didn’t really need it, but also because audio equipment scares me a bit when it makes loud popping and buzzing noises, which this amp has something of a tendency to do. However, now I’ve let it “warm up” and used it a little over the last couple of days, it seems to have calmed down a little bit, and it actually produces a somewhat more satisfying sound than my previous keyboard solution, which involved a MIDI connection to my Mac and using Logic Studio to produce the instrument sounds. Logic’s instrument sounds are high-quality, for sure, but the Mac’s speakers are a bit weedy and subsequently it wasn’t quite as impressive as it could be. (In our new house, there’s also the minor issue that the MIDI cable doesn’t reach from the keyboard to the Mac, but that doesn’t really matter now.)

Anyway. My ten minutes are up, so that’s that. Sorry for the abrupt ending. Apparently I tried to cram too much into such a short space of time, but them’s the breaks. Technically I’m breaking the rules here by going past the time limit, but whatever. Anyway. Now I’m finishing. Good night.

1414: Epilogue

Things weren’t perfect, but she was happier.

Christmas had come and gone, and she’d gone back to the doctor in the new year to review her situation, but found herself in tears before she’d even started speaking. Taking this as a sign that she wasn’t ready to go back to the classroom, Dr. James had no qualms about signing her off for a longer period. When she got home, she’d immediately drafted her resignation, and gone back and forth between a simple, to the point letter and a lengthy one explaining in great detail why she was leaving.

Eventually she settled on the latter, and when she received an email from Thompson on the same day explaining that he completely understood how she felt and certainly didn’t begrudge her wanting to get out and do something that didn’t have such a negative impact on her mental health, she felt like she’d done the right thing.

Time passed. Her sick note had signed her off until the end of her notice period, so she took some time to rest, recuperate and recover, and gradually began the process of looking for work. It was hard going; her specialist qualifications made her overqualified for a lot of entry-level positions, but the only job they would really help her jump into would be another teaching job, which was the last thing she wanted to do.

The business with Mark resolved, Kristina had been using her new-found freedom to hang out with Maxine much more than she had been able to in the past. Maxine, meanwhile, was doing her best to find Kristina a position in her office; it took some time, but she eventually managed to convince her bosses to bring her on for a probationary period.

Kristina took to the work quickly, and began picking up new skills easily. The work was deathly dull, but it paid reasonably well and, most importantly, she could just leave it behind at the end of the day and not have to think about it again until she got into the office. In comparison to the nights of anxiety and nightmares, it was heaven.

Winter changed to spring, and the days got longer and hotter as summer arrived.

Kristina hadn’t seen much of Sian for about a month, since her young friend had been busily preparing for her exams. An occasional text message revealed that she was getting on well, though, and had even managed to repair the rift between herself and her friends. She didn’t mention Edward though; Kristina found herself wondering how he was doing.

 

*  *  *  *

“Hi, you made it!” Sian exclaimed, running up to Kristina and throwing her arms around her. “Sorry I haven’t been around much. Busy, you know!”

“It’s okay,” said Kristina. “Thanks for inviting me. Are you ready?”

Sian glanced down at the envelope in her hands.

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I think so. But hold on a minute. Wait there. I’ll be right back.”

She disappeared inside the school for a moment. Kristina looked around at the other Year 11 students milling around, talking to one another. Some looked ecstatic; others less so. One girl over there was in tears; another was comforting her and clearly trying not to grin too broadly.

School’s a boiling, simmering pot of emotions and hormones, thought Kristina. It’s no wonder it was difficult to deal with. Everything’s so intense; everyone’s forced together to work on things they might not want to do; emotions run high. For these kids, it must feel like they’ve got their whole lives ahead of them. They have, I guess.

She sighed at the thought. Oh, to be young again.

Sian came back out pulling a familiar figure with her.

“Hello,” said Edward, smiling. There was no trace of the anger and resentment Kristina had seen in his eyes the last time she’d seen him. “How are you, Miss?”

“You don’t have to call me that any more, Edward,” said Kristina with a laugh. “Just Kristina or Kris is fine.”

Edward looked her in the eye and his smile broadened, then he looked over at Sian.

“You ready?” Sian asked, holding up her envelope.

“Ready,” he said, holding up his own, identical envelope.

“Then… go!” she cried, tearing into it before she’d finished speaking. She withdrew several sheets of paper and made an exaggerated show of reading them. Edward, meanwhile, tore the envelope open more methodically, withdrew the papers and glanced them over.

“Well?” said Kristina. “Don’t keep me in suspense any more. How did you do?”

“Take a look,” said both Edward and Sian together, offering their respective pieces of paper to Kristina. She looked down at the sheets.

A moment later, a spot of water plopped onto the top page on Edward’s stack. Kristina handed them back and turned away from her former students.

“Congratulations,” she said. “I’m really happy for you both.”

She felt an arm around her waist from her right, then another from her left. As she blinked away the tears that had sprung suddenly to her eyes, she looked down either side of herself and realised that both Edward and Sian were hugging her.

“We couldn’t have done it without you,” Sian said.

“Thank you,” said Edward. “Thank you.”

1413: Part 27

The smell of antiseptic filled Kristina’s nostrils. It wasn’t a pleasant smell, but it was a familiar, immediately identifiable one. The smell of medicine.

Kristina had never been a sickly person, but she had oddly fond memories of going to the doctors as a young child. It was a simpler time, when she felt she got along better with her parents, and felt like she could trust “adults” to do the right thing to help her.

Now she was an adult herself, and she knew all too well that adults’ motivations weren’t always particularly simple, nor did everyone just want to help each other and make a better world. But neither was it so simple that some people were just outright evil, either; Mark was clear and living proof of that. She’d grown to think of him as a monster, but it had become apparent that he was a broken man responding poorly to an unfortunate hand that life had dealt him more than anything else. She still wanted nothing to do with him, mind, but she at least pitied him rather than hated him now.

Kristina looked around the waiting room. No-one was talking to one another. The atmosphere felt awkward.

Behind the reception desk, the receptionist was chatting to a nurse who was rifling through some files. Kristina couldn’t make out the details of the conversation, but the pair of them seemed to be getting along well with each other, laughing and joking as they went about their workday. She felt suddenly envious that she had never really felt that way about her own job; she’d always felt isolated, even though she was supposedly part of a team.

Still, it wouldn’t matter much longer. Today, she hoped, would be the first steps towards a new beginning. She knew it was probably going to be a tough road ahead, but it was for the best. The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.

“Miss… Kristina Charles?” called the receptionist. Kristina raised her hand politely and stood up, then walked over to the desk. “Dr. James is ready for you. Room 3. Do you know the way?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Kristina. She hadn’t spent much time in this surgery, but she had seen Dr. James several times in the past, and knew the way to his room. She passed through the double doors next to the reception desk, followed the corridor around the corner to the left, and came to the door of room number 3.

This is it, she thought. Are you ready?

She rapped three times on the door, heard a cheerful-sounding voice call “Come in!” from within, then pushed it open.

Dr. James was sitting in his large leather chair at his computer. He motioned for Kristina to sit down in the chair across the room from him.

“Hello, Kristina,” he said with a familiar tone. “What can I do for you today?”

“Um,” said Kristina. “I’m not quite sure how to bring this up, really.”

She’d been running over and over in her mind how she was going to explain her situation to the doctor, but now she was here, she felt embarrassed; like she was committing some sort of fraud. Did she have any right to do what she was about to do? Wasn’t she just letting everyone down, giving up?

“It’s okay,” said Dr. James with a sympathetic smile. “I can see that you’re distressed. In your own time.”

Kristina closed her eyes and took a deep, unsteady breath. She suddenly felt like she was about to start crying, but held back the tears, because she knew if she started, it would be very difficult to stop.

“I am… having some trouble,” she said. “A lot of trouble, in fact.”

The floodgates opened. She explained how she had been feeling; how it was difficult to motivate herself to get up in the morning, how it was hard to summon up the enthusiasm to do her job, how she felt guilty that she didn’t feel better about what she did for a living.

She talked about how she suffered nightmares; how she was kept awake most nights by images of things that had happened in the day.

She talked about the times she’d suffered nosebleeds when she felt she couldn’t take any more pressure; how she felt constantly overwhelmed and unable to cope with everything that was going on around her, even the most mundane things.

She started to explain her breakdown in front of the science class, but the doctor stopped her.

“I get the picture,” he said gently. “And it’s okay. I understand how this sort of thing can be embarrassing to admit. It’s not easy to contemplate the fact that the course you thought your life was on might not be the right one, and it’s even harder to admit that something you once clearly felt passionately about is now causing you real problems. Because these are real problems; it’s not all in your head, if that’s what you’re worried about.

“What you’re describing to me, Kristina, is stress. Serious stress, likely coupled with depression. Now, I could prescribe you some medication and send you on your way, but I’m hesitant to do that right now. Instead, what I’m going to do — and what I suspect you were hoping I might do — is get you some time off to collect your thoughts and determine what it is you might want to do, because I feel it’s something you’re struggling with right now. The year is getting on, and Christmas is coming up; I’ll sign you off until the end of the year, and when the New Year is coming up I’d like you to make another appointment, come and see me and determine what you’re going to do. Does that sound good?”

“Yes,” said Kristina meekly. “Thank you.”

“All right, then,” said Dr. James. He turned to his desk, pulled out a pad of paper with red lines on it from his desk drawer, then began to write. A moment later, he was done.

“Give this to your employer,” he said. “And then get some rest. Lots of rest.”

 

*  *  *  *

She’d done it. She’d admitted that she’d had a problem, and she’d bought herself some time to deal with it. But now she had to determine how she was going to handle it.

She didn’t feel like she could really face going in to school right now — not while all the children were still there — but she felt it was probably better to give the note in sooner rather than later.

For the rest of the day she sat watching the clock, wondering if now would be a good time to go, but she still worried that there would be people hanging about. She wanted to be sure the school would still be open, but minimise the risk of actually running into someone, because now she had gone through with this, she was starting to feel scared and ashamed again.

She watched some television to take her mind off clockwatching, but her thoughts were too preoccupied to take anything in. She was grateful for the noise if nothing else, though; it proved to be distraction from her anxiety.

Nearly there, she thought, as the time approached six o’ clock in the evening. And then I can be free.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, sighed, then stood up. She opened her eyes and felt resolved. This was for her own good. This was the right thing to do.

She threw on her coat and left her home before she could convince herself to do otherwise.

*  *  *  *

She was happy to see that the school was still open when she arrived there, but the number of cars in the car park had thinned out somewhat. A few lights were still on, and she could see a couple of her colleagues in their rooms, probably getting things ready for the following week. Friday afternoon was a good time to tidy up and get things ready, but it was also the time when a lot of people — Kristina included — just wanted to get out and leave the work behind for a couple of days.

Kristina grimaced as she thought that it was more than a couple of days she’d be leaving the work behind for; it was, in all likelihood, forever.

She pushed open the front door of the school and looked around. The corridor was quiet — no children, no staff, and no-one on the reception desk. Kristina tried the door to the reception booth and found it unlocked; she fished the doctor’s note out of her pocket, left it prominently in the middle of the desk, and then made to leave.

As she put her hand on the handle, though, she had a sudden crisis of confidence; she reached for the receptionist’s pad of sticky notes, scribbled a quick note that read “Sorry — Kristina” on it, then stuck it to the doctor’s note. Then she removed it and stuck it to the desk next to the doctor’s note. She wanted to ensure that it was seen, and that she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone about it, even though she felt sure that would probably be unavoidable in the long term.

Then she departed the reception booth, trotted out to the school’s front door and broke into a run as soon as she was outside again.

She didn’t look back.

1412: Part 26

Sian was nervous.

She didn’t bring friends home often, and she hadn’t brought many different people home. Jasmine and Nicola had both been over a few times, of course, but with them still not talking to her, it looked unlikely that they would be coming over again any time soon.

She had certainly never brought a boy home. And while she knew that there was nothing going on between her and Edward beyond simple friendship, she also knew how her mother liked to take things out of context and blow them out of proportion. But Sian was putting her own distaste at being interrogated by her mother aside for now, because her friend needed her.

The day after Parents Evening at school had been a peculiar one. Sian knew that Kristina wouldn’t be there, because she had received a text to that effect, though Kristina hadn’t gone into detail as to what had happened. When she met up with Edward at breaktime, however, things started to become a little more clear.

Edward explained the awkward situation that had occurred, but managed to remain calm while he was doing so. He sounded frustrated, but for once he didn’t seem to be outright angry. Sian wondered if she had had anything to do with that, but doubted it; she wasn’t so confident in herself as to believe she could “fix” emotional scars as deep as those Edward had in such a short space of time.

She wanted to help, though, so that’s where the invitation had come from. It had come out of her mouth before she could stop herself; she’d invited Edward over at the weekend. As soon as she said it, she realised she had absolutely no idea what she was going to do with him once he was there, but she felt it was important for him to get out of his house for a while. She couldn’t even begin to imagine what his situation at home must have been like after the confrontation at Parents Evening; she didn’t even know if he was staying at home, given the revelations that had come out.

“What time’s he coming?” asked her mother with a wry grin. Sian could tell she had already misunderstood the situation.

“Mum, listen,” she said. “I need to explain some things.” She could feel her hands shaking as she spoke up. She normally tried to avoid difficult conversations like this, but she felt it wouldn’t be a good idea to bring Edward into her house without warning her mother about what the stakes were.

She took a deep breath and explained everything: who Edward was, what his background was, why he needed to be treated with a certain degree of care, particularly after last night. By the time she had finished, her mother’s face didn’t look anywhere near as cheerful as it was before.

“Oh,” she said. “Um, is he going to be… all right?”

“I think so,” said Sian. “Just… don’t provoke him, okay?”

“I wasn’t planning on it!” said her mother. Then she smiled. “But I’ll be careful.”

 

*  *  *  *

A couple of hours later, the doorbell went. Sian, who had been sitting in the living room, raced to the door to be the first to answer it, though she could hear her mother heading to the hallway.

“I got it,” called Sian.

She opened the door. There was Edward, standing on her doorstep. He’d brushed his hair, making him look a little tidier than usual, though he appeared to be wearing his white school shirt and trousers beneath his usual coat. He’d left the tie off, at least. Sian looked him up and down.

“Hello,” said Sian, who now felt rather underdressed in her jeans and t-shirt. “You look very smart.”

“I, uh, don’t have that many smart clothes,” said Edward. “This is the best I could do.”

“You didn’t have to dress up!” said Sian with a gentle laugh. Edward looked a little embarrassed. “It’s okay though. I’m happy you made an effort.”

He looked up at her, and smiled. It was still such a rare sight, it made Sian’s heart flutter to see it. She was glad that she was someone who could make him smile, but it made her a little sad to think that she was probably one of the few people in the world who was able to do so.

They paused like that for a moment, neither moving. Then Sian caught herself, stood aside and motioned for him to come through the door.

“Come in,” she said. “Please. Oh, would you mind taking your shoes off?”

“Sure,” he said, stepping into the house. He removed his shoes, and Sian noticed that his socks were threadbare, with a couple of prominent holes.

“Sorry,” he said, looking sheepish. “Like I said, I don’t have many smart clothes.”

“It’s fine,” said Sian. “Here, let me take your coat.” He removed it and Sian took it from him, hanging it up in the cupboard beneath the stairs. “Come on through.”

She led him to the living room, where the television was still on. Her mother was nowhere to be seen, and her father was sitting upstairs browsing the Internet, as usual. She was grateful to them both for knowing to stay out of the way; perhaps they had a bit more sensitivity and consideration than she gave them credit for, she thought.

Edward sat down on the couch; Sian sat in one of the armchairs. They both stared at the television for a few minutes.

“Is there anything you want to watch?” said Sian, indicating the TV.

“Not really,” said Edward. Then he sat forward. “We could watch a movie or something?”

“Okay,” said Sian. “What do you want to watch?”

“What have you got?” he asked.

Sian smiled, and switched the channel on the TV, then pulled up her favourite video-on-demand service. “Pretty much anything you want,” she said. Her smile widened at Edward’s open-mouthed expression of wonderment. Apparently he had never encountered this sort of service before.

“That one,” he said, indicating a movie starring a popular action her. It looked like a distinctly testosterone-fuelled movie to Sian, which wasn’t normally her sort of thing, but she was willing to give it a shot. Today was about Edward, after all, so if sitting through some blood-splattered action movie would make him happy, that’s what they’d do.

She set the movie playing and moved onto the couch next to him so she could see the screen better. Edward looked like he didn’t quite know where to put his hands, or whether he could relax. Sian just sank back into the soft cushions of the couch with a sigh.

Five minutes into the movie, there was a tap at the living room door, and Sian’s mother poked her head around.

“Would you two like a drink?” she asked quietly.

“Please,” said Sian. “Edward, do you want anything?”

“Yes,” he said. “Please,” he added, correcting himself. “Whatever you have.”

Sian’s mother disappeared, then returned a moment later with two large glasses of Coke. She passed one to Sian and one to Edward, then quietly left the room, closing the door behind her. Sian was grateful for her keeping out of the way, but felt slightly embarrassed at the assumptions her mother was probably making about her right now. She was probably going to go upstairs and have a good laugh about this with Sian’s father right now.

Sian shook her head and took a sip of the Coke. It was cold and still super-fizzy, so it tasted good. It had obviously come from a new bottle. Edward followed suit and took a big gulp, then belched thunderously.

“Sorry,” he said, looking faintly embarrassed. Sian just laughed.

“It’s fine,” she said. Impulsively, she took a big gulp, felt the bubbles rise up inside her, then burped and giggled.

“Heh,” said Edward, not quite laughing, but that smile coming to his face again. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard a girl burp.”

“We’re full of surprises,” said Sian. “Hey, do you want anything to eat? I can make some popcorn if you want.”

“Sure,” said Edward. He turned his attention back to the movie. Sian wasn’t really following it, but Edward seemed to be enjoying himself, and she was glad about that.

She went into the kitchen, reached into the cupboard and drew out one of the bags of microwave popcorn. She placed it into the microwave, set the timer and waited. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then pop… pop… pop pop pop. She listened carefully until the popping slowed down again, then took the bag out and emptied its hot, popped contents into a bowl and took it back into the living room.

Edward was right where she’d left him. She sat down next to him and laid the bowl of popcorn between them, then reached in and grabbed a handful. Then she turned back to the movie.

This isn’t so bad, she thought. This almost feels like a normal life. I wonder what Edward’s thinking right now?

1411: Part 25

Kristina didn’t quite remember how she got here; it had all been a bit of a blur ever since Mark had walked in. Stormed in might have been more accurate; regardless, she felt dazed, confused, and not really up to whatever was about to happen in this small room.

She was sitting in a small chair next to the Head’s large, comfortable-looking swivel chair. Across the room from her was Edward, Mark and Edward’s mother, whose name Kristina didn’t know. The Head had stepped out for a moment, leaving the four in uncomfortable silence. Mark still looked as if he might snap at any moment, though he was leaning more towards “emotional breakdown” than “jealous rage” right now, and Edward’s mother’s face was unreadable. Edward, meanwhile, stared at the floor, his cheeks flushed.

Eventually, the Head walked back in, relieving some of Kristina’s tension. She was just starting to think she ought to say something to break the silence, but had come to the conclusion that she really had nothing to say right now.

“Hello,” said the Head. “I’m Mr Thompson, the headteacher here.”

Thompson was only a year older than Rhodes, but he looked about twenty years older. While Rhodes looked like a kindly uncle coming gracefully into middle age, Thompson’s worn face and greying hair made him look more like a world-weary grandfather. Right now, he looked particularly tired. Kristina found herself wondering what he spent his days doing, since his door was usually closed and it was pretty rare the staff would see him at all; most matters of school business, be they discipline or dealing with parents, went through Rhodes rather than Thompson.

This must be serious to involve the Head, thought Kristina. She shook her head. Of course it’s serious. A man burst in to Parents Evening yelling and screaming, and collapsed on the floor in tears. What a silly thing to think, Kristina.

She felt oddly detached from this whole situation now she wasn’t the centre of attention. She almost felt like she could float right out of her body and watch the meeting unfold from outside; she wasn’t even sure what she was doing here. Although the incident in the main hall had involved her, she didn’t quite know how she could contribute to this meeting, whatever it was.

“We have a problem,” said Thompson. “There is obviously some sort of… history here.” He gesticulated in the general direction of Mark and Kristina, then continued. “I take care not to involve myself in the private lives of my staff, but when something spills over into the professional space, I cannot help but pay attention. Would anyone care to explain the situation, please?”

Silence. Kristina felt like she was a naughty child being admonished for a major misdemeanour, even though she knew she hadn’t really done anything wrong. She glanced over at Mark, who didn’t look in any fit state to talk right now.

Eventually Edward’s mother spoke up.

“There’s a bit of background we need to talk about,” she said. She looked from Edward, to Mark, to Kristina. “And then we need to figure out how we’re going to resolve this.”

Thompson nodded. No-one else said anything.

“As I’m sure you know, Mark and I are no longer together,” she began. “We tried to stay together for the sake of Edward, but it simply wasn’t working.” She sighed. “I knew that Mark wouldn’t be capable of taking care of Edward by himself, but he insisted. He insisted so much he spent more money and time than he had fighting me for legal custody of Edward. There was nothing I could do; even though I knew the situation wouldn’t be good for anyone, Mark was too stubborn to give up.”

Kristina looked over at Mark as Edward’s mother said these things. He was tapping his feet and wringing his hands, but still he said nothing.

“Edward occasionally contacted me in secret,” she continued. “He told me how Mark was neglecting him; how he was angry and frustrated; how Mark would hit him in anger; how Mark would lock him in his room when he didn’t want to deal with him. I wanted to help him, but the first legal battle against Mark had cost me almost all the money I had; I couldn’t afford to fight him again.

“But Edward kept contacting me. He wouldn’t give up. He wanted to escape so badly, and I felt so bad for not being able to help him. But I was living in a one-bedroom flat and struggling to get by, so my situation would have barely been better than what Mark could offer, though I would have at least treated him better.”

“I’m confused,” said Thompson. “If the situation at home was so bad, why didn’t this get reported to Child Protection?”

“It was an irrational fear on my part,” continued Edward’s mother. “I worried that if they took Edward away from Mark, they’d look at my living situation and deem me unfit to take care of him, either. I didn’t want him to end up with some foster family he didn’t know; that would just make his emotional problems even worse than they already are. At least in my mind. I know now that I should have done something sooner, and I regret that I didn’t.” She turned to her son. “I’m sorry, Edward.”

Thompson turned to Kristina, who was shifting uncomfortably in her chair.

“And I’m not clear how you’re involved, Miss Charles. Would you care to explain?”

“I—” Kristina began, but before she could start mumbling her way through an explanation, she was interrupted.

“It’s my fault,” said Mark with a cracked voice, sounding utterly defeated. “I… used to work with her friend. We had been flirting at work for a long time, and eventually we agreed to go out. But I had been such a mess ever since she left…” – here he gestured to his ex-partner – “…that I was having trouble dealing with… being normal.” He took a deep breath and continued. “I thought things were going well. I craved intimacy, both emotional and physical, and I thought I had found it in Maxine. But I went too far, and when she resisted, I became angry and… did some things I regret.”

Kristina was surprised he was being so open about what had happened. She had expected him to lie, cheat and become aggressive, but seemingly the simple presence of the woman he had once loved had reduced him to little more than a shell of a man. His voice was cold and emotionless; there was no sadness, no anger, no bitterness; nothing.

“Very well,” said Thompson. “Can I please ask you to wait outside for a moment? I need to speak with Miss Charles privately for a moment.”

Edward’s mother nodded, and was first to stand. She ushered Mark out of the room ahead of her. Edward trailed along, still staring at his shoes, his feet kicking the floor as he walked.

Thompson closed the door after them.

“Anything else you can tell me?” he said, standing in front of the door with his arms folded.

Kristina felt a little uncomfortable.

“Not about this situation,” she said. “I can tell you that Edward seems to have been responding well to music lessons, and has actually been doing quite well.” She hesitated a moment before continuing. “He has also been getting on well with Sian Beaumont in the music class. She’s been helping him out a lot, and they seem to have made quite a friendship out of it. Unfortunately that seems to have had a negative impact on Sian’s own friendships, as we’ve seen recently.”

“Hm,” said Thompson, stroking his chin. “Anything else?”

“No, I don’t think so,” she said. She paused. “Err,” she began. She considered whether or not now would be the right time to reveal her plan.

“Yes?” he said.

“N-no, nothing,” she said. “Would you mind if I… if I just went home now, please? It’s been a difficult day.”

“Of course,” he said. He stepped aside from the door and opened it. She passed through, not stopping to speak to Edward and his parents on the way past. She just wanted out, right now.

 

*  *  *  *

The following morning, Kristina woke up late. She could have probably made it in to school if she threw on her clothes and ran, but all motivation had left her.

She fumbled around on her bedside table for her phone, but when she pressed the button to wake it from sleep, it became apparent its battery had gone flat. Groaning, she reached down beside the bed to grab the charger cable — why did they make them so damn short? — and plug it into the phone. Then she lay back and closed her eyes for a moment, hoping she wouldn’t fall asleep.

A few minutes later, after successfully remaining awake, she grabbed her phone, which now had enough charge in it to wake up. She dialled the school’s number; she knew that, given how late it was, she’d have to actually speak to someone rather than leave an answerphone message, but it was better than leaving them high and dry.

“Hello,” she said with a cracked voice. She didn’t clear her throat to fix it; the more ill she sounded, the better. “It’s Kristina, I’m afraid I’m not very well today so I won’t be coming in.”

It was technically a lie, but she really didn’t feel like she had the energy to face school today. She tried to avoid pulling a sickie if she could possibly avoid it, but today she felt like she had earned it.

The inevitable question came. Did she have any cover work for her classes?

“I’ll email some through to Martin,” she said. She had no intention of doing so, but it was easier to say that she was going to send something. Then she hung up before there could be any more questions.

She lay back, closed her eyes and this time allowed sleep to claim her once again.

*  *  *  *

She wasn’t sure how long she’d slept when she awoke again; her mind had been bounced around by some truly peculiar dreams. She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling for a while, not wanting to move. All her joints ached, and she just wanted to lie still for hours.

She stared at the ceiling for a while, closed her eyes and felt herself falling asleep again. But she forced herself awake again, rolled over and pulled one leg out of bed, then the other, sitting up groggily as her feet hit the floor.

She grabbed her phone. There was a missed call from school on it, and another from a mobile number she didn’t recognise. Probably Martin asking where the cover work she promised was.

She dismissed the notifications and opened up her contact list. She scrolled through until she found the number for her local doctor’s surgery.

“Hello,” she said as the receptionist answered on the other end. “I was wondering if you had any appointments today.”

There was a pause as the receptionist checked.

“There is?” Kristina said. “Okay, I’d like to make an appointment, please. Thank you.”

This was it. There was no turning back from here, but she no longer felt any regrets or hesitation; this was the right thing to do.

1410: Part 24

The week rolled around, day by day. Sian felt demotivated and indifferent towards her studies for the first time in years, and her teachers had noticed, with several of them pulling her aside after class to ask whether everything was all right. Most of them were aware of the altercation between her, Jasmine and Nicola the previous week, but they also tended to assume that spats between teenage girls were usually patched up almost as quickly as they happened.

This one hadn’t, though. Jasmine and Nicola had barely said a word to Sian since the incident, and had pointedly moved away from her in the classes they had together, leaving her to sit by herself. It made her feel bad.

The only person she felt gave her any meaningful interaction any more was Edward, and despite her good intentions to be positive towards him, she was wary of being seen with him for fear of either or both of them being harassed — and worse, it causing Edward to fly into one of his rages. She didn’t want that, and she knew Edward didn’t either; it just happened. It was part of who he was, and Sian felt like she was one of the only people in the school — staff of the Unit aside, whom she’d got to know quite well over the last few days — who could look past the angry exterior to the person within.

Sian had discovered through her conversations with him that Edward was actually quite an intelligent person, with a particularly natural flair for the creative. The fact that his difficulties had caused him to miss a lot of lessons meant that he was lacking in certain basic skills, particularly when it came to literacy and numeracy, but when he could communicate his feelings and articulate his thoughts coherently, it was clear to her that there was quite a clever young man struggling to get out from beneath all the resentment, bitterness and anger.

Sian had paid Kristina a few visits over the course of the week, but had found her friend increasingly distant, distracted and unwilling to talk. She often had a far-off look in her eyes, like she was seeing something Sian couldn’t, and she rarely had time to spend more than five minutes talking.

Sian knew the reason, of course; it was abundantly clear. Kristina had given up. She had had good intentions to try her best for one last shot when they had met in the coffee shop, but her attempts had obviously been unsuccessful, because now she looked utterly defeated. Sian recognised the feelings, and felt for her teacher, but didn’t know what else she could do.

She thought back to the story Sian had told her about her friend at university, the one who had suffered from depression and had regularly shut herself away from anyone who wanted to help or comfort her. She couldn’t help but draw comparisons to Kristina; she was starting to show much the same symptoms, and Sian recognised her own feelings of helplessness as what Kristina must have gone through several years previously.

Thursday morning came around; the day of Year 11’s Parents Evening. Sian tried her best to maintain her focus over the course of the day, but knew that most of her teachers had already noticed how distracted she had been for the rest of the week and would almost certainly tell her parents about it. She really wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable conversation in the car on the way home; her mother in particular would ask probing questions that she wouldn’t want to answer, and her father would get increasingly frustrated as she refused to answer them. She predicted the evening would more than likely end in a huge argument between her and them.

When lunchtime came, Sian decided to go and see Kristina again. When she arrived at the classroom, Edward was already there waiting outside the door, peering through the small window.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hey,” he said quietly, not turning to look at her.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I wanted to see Miss,” he said. “But she looks… well, take a look.”

He moved away from the door and gestured for Sian to take a look through the small window. She did so.

Inside, she could see Kristina sitting at the piano, but she wasn’t playing. No, she was crying. Her head was in her hands, and she was crying; judging by the heaving of her shoulders, it was a particularly intense bout.

“Should we go talk to her?” Edward asked. “I, uh, don’t really know how to deal with this.”

Sian didn’t either.

“I…” she began, turning to him, then turned back to look through the window again. Kristina was right where they had left her. “Yeah. Yeah, we should.”

She pushed the door open assertively without knocking. Kristina looked up, startled, tears sparkling on her cheeks and makeup running down her face.

“Oh God,” she said. “I’m sorry, was I supposed to…”

“No,” said Sian as calmly as she could manage. “No, there’s nothing to worry about. We just wanted to…”

She wanted to say “see if you were all right,” but that seemed like a silly thing to say right now. Of course she wasn’t all right.

“We just wanted to come and see you,” said Edward. “We’re worried about you.”

Sian looked at Edward in surprise. It wasn’t like him to show such open empathy.

“Yeah,” said Sian. She fumbled around in her pocket to find the packet of tissues her mother pushed onto her every few days. She drew one out and handed it to Kristina, who took it with a weak smile.

“Yeah, you should be,” said Kristina. “I know I’m being completely unprofessional by being like this, but, you know, fuck it. I can’t take this any more.”

Both Sian and Edward bristled as they heard Kristina hiss the profanity bitterly, but they didn’t say anything.

“I’m sorry,” she continued. “I’m sorry to you both. But…” she hesitated and took a deep breath, which was interrupted by the remnants of a sob. “I don’t think I’m going to be your teacher for much longer.”

Sian nodded.

“I understand,” she said. Edward said nothing; he just looked at the floor.

The room was silent for a moment.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” said Edward quietly, still looking at his shoes.

“No,” said Kristina. “No, Edward, why would you say that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I feel like everything’s my fault. I fuck everything up.”

Sian placed a hand on his shoulder, and heard him take a sharp intake of breath as she made contact with him.

“You don’t,” she said quietly. “You can’t blame yourself for everything. There are things you could do better, sure, but that’s true for all of us. But this; this isn’t your fault.”

“No,” said Kristina. “It’s not. It’s not you. It’s me. I’m not cut out for this job. I thought I was, but I’m not. It’s taken me quite some time to admit that to myself, but this really isn’t me. This isn’t the person I used to be. I don’t like the person that this job is turning me into, and if I carry on I’m not only going to be letting myself down, I’m going to be letting the rest of you down, too.”

Sian took her hand off Edward’s shoulder and walked towards Kristina. She put her arms around her teacher’s shoulders and hugged her.

Kristina started crying again, but the tears didn’t have quite so much sadness in them this time.

 

*  *  *  *

Finally, the end of the day came around. Kristina somehow managed to survive her afternoon lessons without having an emotional breakdown, and knew that she only had to make it through Parents Evening, and then she would be free.

Between the end of school and her first appointment, she took a moment to wash her face, reapply her makeup and make sure she looked presentable and professional.

Might as well go out on a high note, she thought.

She walked back to her classroom, picked up her mark book and headed to the table assigned to her in the hall; tucked away in the back corner, much like the music department as a whole.

She only had a few appointments; a number of her students’ parents had apparently decided that music wasn’t important enough to check their progress in, and so she spent much of the evening drinking the staffroom’s horrible instant coffee and eating cheap biscuits.

As the light faded outside, she couldn’t help but look at the last entry on her list: Edward’s parents. She wasn’t sure how she was going to deal with Edward’s father, and Edward hadn’t said whether or not his estranged mother would be coming along, either. But time was ticking down, and she knew that there was no escape.

She went and sat back at her desk, feeling her heart rate gradually increasing as she watched the clock gradually work its way ever-closer to seven o’ clock.

As she saw Edward’s father approaching, she felt like her heart had stopped and time was standing still.

“Holy shit,” she said to herself. “Mark.”

There was no mistake; it wasn’t the clean-cut, well-dressed Mark she’d seen before, however; he had shaggy, unkempt hair and he obviously hadn’t shaved for a while. But it was still him.

She made eye contact, and she knew it was too late to get away; he was storming towards her, striding with furious purpose down the aisles between the tables.

The rest of the world became a blur, darkening at the edges; all she could see right now was him, with Edward following closely behind him, looking more scared than she had ever seen him.

“Bitch!” hissed Mark as she reached Kristina’s table. He slammed his fist down on her desk and said it again, louder. “Bitch!”

The noise of the other meetings going on in the room subsided, and Kristina could feel all eyes turning to her. She wanted out, now.

“Uh-uh-uh-uh,” she stammered, unable to get any words out. Her heart was pounding in her chest.

“You and your little friend ruined my life!” he yelled, pushing her table aside as if it were nothing more than a light curtain. Kristina stood up and moved behind her chair, though she knew it would offer little protection if he did decide to become violent.

“You ruined my life!” he said again, but this time he wasn’t screaming with anger; it was said with agonising frustration and sadness. He sank to his knees and clutched at his temples; tears formed in his eyes and he started to sob.

He let out a bloodcurdling howl and sank to the ground. Kristina looked at him in astonishment, and could tell the rest of the room was doing the same.

The room fell silent for a moment, then the noiselessness was broken by the sound of high-heeled footsteps on the wooden floor, echoing through the high-ceilinged hall.

They came closer and closer; Kristina didn’t recognise the woman, but as soon as Edward turned around, looked at her and smiled, she understood.

“Have I come at a bad time?” said Edward’s mother.