Ok, i’m starting a new thread for short stories.
With a bit of luck we can get some disscusion going and any aspiring writters can get some feed back.
I’ll get the ball rolling with a story i wrote a while back called STITCH, enjoy.
STITCH
I sat at the grimy bar, my sleeves fused to the dried, syrupy beer that glittered on the faded wood surface.
I could smell the overflowing ashtray like a mound of charred nicotine under my nose, a pungent blend of burnt paper and mashed tobacco.
I sipped my third double Jack Daniels and concentrated all my mind on the anger, frustration, and resentment teeming through my mind like ravenous cockroaches.
Why’d she leave me? What did he have that I didn’t? He wasn’t better looking than me, wasn’t richer or smarter, so why’d she dump me for him?
I lifted the glass to my lips, sighed, and then downed the rest of the sweet and sour liquor in one go; the burning that spread from my throat into my gut a cold comfort.
The fat, balding barman nodded at my glass, ‘Want another one?’
I nodded, yes; I wanted another, and another, and another, until I couldn’t remember who I was and what I was feeling. I wanted to drink her away, to obliterate her pretty, lying, cheating face in a haze of sweet alcoholic relief.
The barman collected my glass, giving me the chance to look around the dingy dive.
The professor of my Creative Writing course had told me about a game he’d played, something that we prospective writers should try whenever surrounded by strangers.
‘Look around’, he’d said, ‘and try to match fictional lives to the faces you see.’
The old man sitting in the dark corner of the bar, staring glumly at his flat, murky pint: An escaped convict, on the run for the murder of his brother, the guy he’d caught banging his wife. He’s desperate, alone, on the run, and so comes into a dank, murky bar where he can have a drink and decide his next move.
The middle aged bloke sitting with his back to the jukebox: Coming to terms with his latent homosexuality in an unforgiving world.
He was staring glumly into his flat, murky pint.
My heart sank. I’d wandered into one of those bars where males gather, sitting alone, exuding an aura of near suicidal depression, pooling their collective misery until a kind of numbness sets in.
I wasn’t like those zombies. They sat alone at tables, whereas I sat alone at the bar. They stared glumly into their rancid pints; I stared glumly into my Jack Daniels. At least I had a little class.
The barman placed the drink down in front of me with the air of someone bestowing a grand gift; his bad breathe beating against me in sickening waves.
‘You look like a man who’ll be doing a lot of drinking’, he said, his voice even oilier than his appearance, ‘How about I start a tab and you pay me at the end of the night?’
I nodded, too tired to bother answering. I just wanted to drink the night away, wallowing in self-pity like a pig in its own filth. How I got the booze to achieve this task was of no consequence. Lack of money wasn’t going to stop me from getting drunk. I needed it like a drowning man needs a lifejacket – plus, I’ve never been one to worry about consequences.
‘Is this seat taken?’
I glanced up into the face of an attractive, mature woman with delicate, milky white teeth, bright sapphire eyes, and a mass of raven black hair.
She wore a black cocktail dress that defined and enhanced her delectable curves, a single strap hanging, slutishly, provocatively, from one milk white shoulder, exposing the side of an apple sized breast that begged to be bitten.
On any other day I’d have drooled over her, used and abused my A-list chat-up lines, the ones I only used on the very best women. I’d have let my eyes wander, free and easy, over her subtle curves, drinking in her intense sexuality…But right then I simply couldn’t find the energy.
‘No’, I said with a sigh, ‘help yourself.’
I didn’t want her sitting next to me, the smell of her perfume – a strange mix of roses and something I couldn’t place – was beginning to distract me from my pain and all I wanted to do was stew. But what could I do, tell her to piss off? No way, the last thing I needed was a scene.
She smiled at me and sat down, her dark hair brushing my neck like the caress of a raven’s wing.
‘What can I get for you love?’ the barman asked her, his voice oozing lasciviously, dim, clueless eyes lingering on her succulent breasts.
‘I’ll have a Bloody Mary’, she said, her voice as sweet as sugar, tinkling like the laugher of an angle, ‘and whatever the young man’s drinking.’
‘Thanks, but you don’t have to…Look, I’m just a poor student with very little money. You might want to look someplace else, I probably couldn’t afford you.’
Okay, it was a shot in the dark, but what kind of woman walks into a dive like this, on her own, and dressed to kill? She had to be a hooker, right?
She laughed at that, a sultry, throaty laugh that sounded slightly mocking, her deep sea eyes flashing as if charged and ready to blow. ‘I’m not a prostitute, I just want to by you a drink, no strings attached.’
I felt a crimson blush burn my face, followed by a faint, embarrassed smile. ‘I’m really sorry, I…’
She held up her long fingered hand, ‘No apologies necessary, it’s an understandable mistake…Do I look like a prostitute’, she added with a smile.
‘Only the high class kind that prefer to call themselves “escorts.â€â€™
Again the sexy, throaty laugh that made the hairs on my arms stand on end. She had a dirty laugh, the kind you get from the classy kind of porn star, that know how to turn men on, what buttons to press and when to press them.
I found myself laughing right along with her…but I didn’t want this, I wanted to sit and drink and brood, hating the bitch that brought me to this sorry state.
Having said all that, I found myself wondering what she’d be like in bed, somehow I just knew she’d be a demon, taking charge and happily leading the dirty way. Maybe some comfort sex was just what the doctor ordered?
‘Thanks’, she said, ‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
‘As it was intended.’
She smiled softly, hitting me like a hammer in my teenage libido, ‘So, what tragic event could make a handsome, charming young man like you come wallowing in a dive like this?’
Without really knowing why, I told her everything:
‘My girlfriend dumped me two days ago.’
‘Why on earth would anyone let you go?’ she asked, her cool hand stroking my arm.
‘I’ve been asking myself that same question. The guy she left me for is an idiot, he isn’t richer than me, isn’t smarter or better looking. He’s an arsehole with a big mouth and even bigger ego.
‘And the worse thing is’, I continued, spilling the bile inside, ‘as she walked away from me, she told me that she never loved me, that I’d been nothing more than a fling, and that this prick was the real thing. Can you believe that?’
She shook her head, ‘No, I can’t. You must hate them both pretty bad?’
‘You’re not wrong.’
It felt great, spilling all the anger and hatred, regurgitating all that acidic bile, but it couldn’t alleviate my feelings, they were deep within me like tattoos for the soul.
She took a sip from her Bloody Mary, her blue eyes sparkling, her hand resting softly on my arm, sending a thrill shooting through my sensitive skin.
‘What is it you want?’ she asked as she placed the drink back on the sticky bar top, ‘Do you want to get back with her, make her fall head over heels in love with you? Do you want them dead, broken, dumped in the bottom of ditch?’
She’d asked me in all seriousness, like a bank manager asking how much money I’d like to borrow.
There was something strange in her voice as she asked, a hint of a promise.
Maybe it was the booze, maybe my nagging sorrow, it could even have been the simple desire to get laid, but whatever the reason, I didn’t pay too much attention to the strangeness of her voice, or even the way her blue eyes seemed to glow softly.
‘I don’t know’, I said, pinching the bridge of my nose between thumb and index finger; suddenly I felt beyond tired, drained of will and energy. ‘Maybe…never mind.’
She moved her hand to my leg and rubbed, softly, back and forth, sending small thrills racing over my flesh. ‘Come on Tom, you can tell me, what revenge would you take if you knew you could get away with it?’
Funny, I couldn’t remember telling her my name.
‘I don’t know’, I said at last, ‘I wouldn’t want them dead, that’d be too good for them. I’d want them to be together, but miserable, suffering, wishing they’d never met each other.’
As I spoke I felt all the hate and bile come bubbling, like slime in a stinking bog, to the seething surface of my mind. ‘I’d want them both to suffer, together, locked, until their dying day!’
‘How much would you be willing to pay to see it happen, what would you be willing to sacrifice to see the two of them suffer?’
Her voice had taken on an oddly deep, dark, oily quality that crawled into my mind like a festering maggot, oozing through my thoughts and churning deep inside.
I didn’t want to answer, but it was there, in my head, swarming toward my throat and tongue before I had a chance to bite it back. I opened my cringing, straining mouth and said, ‘I’d give my fucking heart to see it!’
‘You’re heart?’ she asked, an ugly grin tugging at the corners of her mouth, ‘Really? Well, in that case you have yourself a deal.’
She stood, leant down, kissed me on the cheek, and then walked out of the bar.
I felt sick to the stomach, her breathe, Jesus, her breath had stank like an open grave, and the feel of her lips on my face, like a crushed slug against the skin, made me want to hurl my seething, churning stomach all over the tacky floor.
All I wanted was to get the hell out of there, to head back to college, into my dorm, then my room, and pass out on the bed.
I pulled a twenty pound note from my pocket – more than owed and more than I could afford – slapped it down on the bar, and then staggered home.
The next day, the mother of all hangovers banging at my naked brain, I met Vicki, my ex, and Simon, the new ‘man’ in her life, outside my room as I was staggering my way to the communal bathroom.
‘Tom’, she said, ‘I’ve left some things in your room, could I get them back please?’
‘What’, I said, looking Simon up and down, ‘and you’ve brought Superman here to protect you?’
He took a step toward me, a vein bulging in his head. I could have taken him, I was already pissed off, it wouldn’t have taken much for me to snap. But Vicky placed her hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Please Tom, don’t make this any harder than it already is. I never meant to hurt you…’
‘But you did’, I yelled, drawing a few curious glances from passers-by. ‘Just take what you want and then leave me the fuck alone!’
The next day the two of them had vanished without a trace, all their belongings gone from their rooms. No-one’d seen them since we talked outside my dorm.
There was a police investigation; I suppose it was only natural that I’d be the prime suspect. It was common knowledge around the campus that I’d just split up with Vicky, and I’d been seen arguing with both of them the day before they vanished.
I didn’t blame the police for suspecting me, like I said; it was only to be expected.
I never told them about the bar or the woman, what would be the point? I didn’t know her name, didn’t know where she lived, nothing, so I simply put her out of my mind.
Eventually the police lost interest in me, there was no evidence to say that I’d done anything to either of them, and then they lost interest in the case. As far as they were concerned it was a simple matter of two kids running off together, they called it the Romeo and Juliet syndrome, they’d seen it a million times or more.
So they filed the case, it was open but forgotten, tucked away and left untouched.
I dropped out of college, couldn’t stand the snide glances, the whispers. Okay, there may not have been any evidence against me, but that wouldn’t stop the gossips from having their pennies’ worth.
Which is how, two years after the whole sorry business, I found myself sitting alone, in a bar down south, drinking a double Jack Daniels and wondering where my life had gone.
I’d been expecting her, so it came as no surprise when, from behind me, I heard her voice say, ‘Hi Tom, you owe me something.’
I turned on my stool and looked up at her. She looked exactly the same – same hair, same red lips, even the same black cocktail dress with the single strap hanging down her arm, exposing that delicious, apple sized breast.
Her eyes, however, were different. Gone now the subtle seduction, here instead a cold hard light that drilled though my skull and stabbed, brutally, into my cringing brain.
‘You owe me something’, she repeated.
‘I know, but only when I’ve seen them.’
She led me out of the bar, down narrow alleyways, through dank, abandoned buildings that echoed with our footsteps. Until, at last, she led me down a flight of concrete steps into a clammy sub-basement.
‘In there’, she said as she opened a large, rusted iron door.
And there they were.
They were still alive, just, I could see their chests moving up and down, but there suffering must have been unbearable.
To list the atrocities committed on the two bodies would take far too long and, to be quite honest, I haven’t got the stomach for it.
However, she’d certainly delivered on her promise; they would suffer together until death freed them from their pain. In a final act of horror, their arms and legs had been amputated, leaving only seeping stumps that stank like rotten meat, and they had been sown together, turning them into bleeding, gasping, suffering, conjoined twins.
My mind went blank, fear, loathing, and, shamefully, a small sense of grim satisfaction, bubbling like lava in my gut. Two years, it seemed, hadn’t cooled the passion of my hate.
‘Time to pay Tom’, the woman said, edging toward me, a wicked blade held in her delicate hand.
‘How did you do this’, I asked, edging backwards, away from the inevitable.
‘Does it matter? All that matters is that I’ve delivered on our bargain, now it’s time for you to do the same.’
Slowly, carefully, I moved my arm around my back, feeling along the band of my jeans.
As I’ve said, I’d been expecting her. I pulled out the Beretta I’d bought six months ago and aimed it at her head.
She stopped, the knife held out in front of her, her face going pale and a soft smile of confusion appearing on her thin lips. ‘This wasn’t the deal…’
I didn’t let her finish the sentence. The large weapon jerked in my hands as I pulled the trigger; the thunderous boom echoing through the dank, dripping room.
The bullet, moving at over three hundred meters per second, slammed into her forehead, punching through the skull with a savage crunch and blowing her brains out, painting the wall behind her with vivid splashes of crimson and dim white chunks of brain-matter.
She dropped to the ground, her leg twitching, and smoke curling from the neat hole in her head. Dead.
Taking a deep, shaky breath, I turned to Vicky and Simon, the gauge raising in my stomach as I gazed at the sutures that bound their sides together. They couldn’t move, couldn’t change position, could do nothing but lay there and suffer.
I lifted the large pistol and aimed at Vicky’s malformed head, thinking, thinking, thinking it through. It wouldn’t be murder, I’d be doing them a favour, putting them out of their misery…and then, slowly, I lowered the gun back to my side.
Let the bitch suffer!
THE END