Little Slices of Nasty Read online

  Little Slices of Nasty

  By Oliver Clarke

  Copyright 2012 Oliver Clarke

  Contents

  Dear Suzanna

  A Guy Walks Out Of a Bar

  Camera/Phone v1

  Guillotine! Hot Blood, Cold Heart

  Only One Way Out

  I Know Where the Bodies Are Buried

  A Cat Called Hope

  Guillotine! Detroit Double Cross

  The Doorbell

  Camera/Phone v2

  Bonus Flash Fiction: Guillotine! Long Shot

  Sunliner Preview

  Dear Suzanna

  Rabbit Warren Cottage

  Suffolk

  2nd April

  Dear Suzanna,

  This isn't a love letter.

  You know, I don't remember the last time I actually wrote a letter. Sat down and wrote a proper honest to goodness put it in an envelope missive. I don't know for sure but I think the last one probably was a love letter. To you.

  Writing is a lost art I think. A decent pen on good quality paper rather than notes scribbled hastily in biro in a cheap notepad during some pointless meeting or other. I have found it rewarding to actually concentrate on the act of writing. Sit in the solitude of this lovely rural setting and properly think about what I want to say to you. Think about it and then take the time to form the letters carefully and properly on the page.

  But this isn't a love letter. In fact it might be a suicide note.

  After you did what you did I needed to think and that is why I've come away here. You'll have seen where I am from the address at the top of the page. I picked up the phone to Charles as soon as I found your letter. I told him what you'd done, how it made me feel. We spoke for an hour or more, the longest I've spent talking to him in years I suspect.

  At the end of the conversation he offered me this place for as I need it for. To get away from all the distractions of life. To think. To get my head together.

  I've done the first two. You remember this place; you couldn't get much more away from "it" if you went to Timbuktu. It's so peaceful here and that peace is wonderful. It's lonely too, but I suppose loneliness is something I need to get used to.

  I've thought a lot. There’s precious little else to do here as you'll remember; although I seem to recall we found plenty of ways to entertain ourselves on the occasions we stayed here.

  I've brought some books with me of course, but my mind won't let me settle on them for more than a minute before flitting back to you. Always back to you. The lack of a TV or radio here always appealed to me before but now I long for their easy distraction.

  Why did you do it, Suzanna? I still can't understand. I know you tried to explain in your letter but I'm afraid, my dear, that you failed. Why throw away everything we had? Why hurt me so much that I want to die?

  The oven here is electric so that's no good. There are aspirin in the bathroom cupboard but probably not enough. Can you even overdose on aspirin? I have a razor, but I'd have to tear it to bits to get at the blades and I'm sure they'd be tiny, too tiny to hold probably. That leaves the breadknife, which just seems....messy.

  I suppose I should have planned this trip better.

  Oh Christ, I still love you so much.

  Frank

  Rabbit Warren Cottage

  Suffolk

  3rd April

  Dear Suzanna,

  I wrote you a letter yesterday. A long one. And then burned it last night on the fire.

  I'm staying at Charles's cottage. A bit of space and time to think. Yesterday I felt very sad. Today I feel angry. Angry at you, Suzanna, for what you did to me. I suspect that this won't be the last letter I write. That tomorrow I'll do something and I'll write another letter and burn this one just like I did yesterday's. I hope so because right now I really fucking hate you and I don't like feeling like that.

  Frank.

  Rabbit Warren Cottage

  Suffolk

  4th April

  Dear Suzanna,

  This is letter number three. Or rather my third attempt at writing to you as you won't see the other two.

  I'm staying at Charles's cottage in Suffolk. Thinking. About you. About us.

  He called me last night on my mobile but I'm afraid I didn't hear it. I'd been drinking. I'll admit that I've been doing rather a lot of that. Drinking and thinking.

  I've got a glass in front of me right now in fact. Not the hard stuff. Just a rather good Rioja I'm having with lunch. I'm well provisioned; plentiful supplies of both food and booze. You'd be proud of me. I shan't have to drive to the village to restock for a few days. That's good because I don't think I could face anybody. Even strangers. I'm sure my pain is tattooed across my face for anyone to see.

  Last night I had been on the hard stuff and I was dozing when Charles rang. I woke up in the early hours, laying on the sofa with a whisky bottle next to me. My neck was fearfully stiff from the awkward position I'd ended up in. You remember what the sofas are like there: too short to really stretch out on. I think the pain may be what woke me up. I could have done with you here, you and your magic hands.

  The phone was blinking at me, that bright red light it has that annoyed you so much. Charles had left a message. A strange message. He asked me if I knew what had happened. And then if I was alright. There was a terrible noise in the background, growing louder as he spoke. A dreadful banging like someone kicking a metal door. And then there was silence, ten seconds of it at least. And then he hung up. I'll admit I was a bit concerned about him when I heard it. He's been in a few scrapes in the past as I'm sure you'll remember. I rang him back but he didn't answer. The phone just rang and rang and then went to voicemail. I left him a message, told him I was fine, asked him if he was.

  That was last night and he hasn't called back yet, although knowing Charles he's probably sleeping off a hangover. I called Katie as well to see if she knew if he was okay. No answer from her either, but it was after nine so I expect she was at work. I did wonder if she'd seen it was me calling and deliberately ignored it. I haven't spoken to her since I read your letter but Charles will have. I expect the poor girl is very upset by it all. I suppose she may feel awkward talking to me under the circumstances.

  It's a beautiful day here today. Clear and crisp and quiet. I walked in the garden this morning, enjoying the fresh air and the quiet. You know I'm sure when we came here before you could hear a hint of traffic noise in the garden from the B road that runs through the village. Not a hint of it today though. Not so much as a peep. It really is utterly tranquil here. I suppose the wind must just have been blowing in the right direction, carrying the noise away.

  I think I feel a bit better now. Not all the way there by a long chalk but better.

  I still love you though, which is a bit of a kicker.

  Frank

  5th April

  I don't really know why I'm writing these letters as I know I’ll never post them and you'll never read them. Talking to you this way is helpful somehow though. Maybe if I went to see a counsellor (Charles suggested that you know, some fellow he knows), they'd recommend a similar thing. They call psychiatry the "talking cure" don't they? I think these letters, for me, have become the "writing cure".

  Have I got over what you did? Of course not. It's all too fresh still. Too raw. I find myself posing the question many times each day though. Checking my temperature. I picture myself like a short-sighted man putting his hand out of the window to see if it's still raining.

  It is. But not so hard.

  Frank

  6th April

  Dear Suzanna,

  I've decided to go into the village today. Partly because there are a few bits and bobs I need. Mostly because I fee
l, after these few days of solitude, the need for some human contact again. Just a friendly smile and a how do you do with a shopkeeper. Maybe a chat about the weather and the news with the landlord of the Crown. Not that I have any idea what's been going on in the world since I got here. Probably time to catch up!

  Charles never did call me back. If he had I might not need to go out at all. I have tried him again, a couple of time, but no answer.

  I wrote yesterday that this felt like therapy. Today I'm worrying that in fact it's the written equivalent of talking to yourself. Human contact is definitely needed.

  I will report back. To myself!

  Frank

  6th April - later

  Dear Suzanna,

  So much for that idea! The village was deserted, or seemed to be at least, like something from the bloody Twilight Zone.

  I'll admit I've lost track of the days a bit but my watch is telling me it's the sixth and I'm pretty sure that means it's a Wednesday. I know the village isn't exactly a bustling metropolis but I didn't expect it to be completely dead.

  I used the bike in the shed to get there. I've done no exercise since I got here and I thought the ride would do me good. Plus if the couple of pints I was going to have at the Crown turned into more than that I figured I could always leave it locked up somewhere and stagger back to the cottage.

  When I got to the pub the door was shut and there was no sign of life. Living in the city you forget that pubs out here aren't open all day. I carried on into the village proper and everything was closed there too. The newsagents, the greengrocers, the village store. All locked up tight with the closed signs pointing outwards. It may have been half-day closing I suppose.

  The strangest part was that the whole time I didn't see a single living soul.

  Actually that wasn't the strangest part or not the most disturbing anyway.

  I checked the church too. The main door was also locked up tight so I walked round to see if the side entrance was open. It wasn't of course but when I turned back from it I saw that two of the graves were disturbed. Desecrated I suppose you'd say. Judging by the headstones they had only been recently filled, not like most of the dusty tombs there. The earth was strewn all around them along with the remains of the bouquets and wreaths that had lain upon the graves.

  I didn't look any more closely than that, to be honest the whole thing creeped me out a little. I did wonder if perhaps I should report it but the damage didn't look that fresh so I'm sure someone else must have already. Besides, even with my desire for a bit of human contact I have no appetite for talking to the police.

  I'm back at the cottage now, without my provisions. Fortunately, of all of the things I'm running short of whiskey isn't one of them. Consequently I'm now going to get very drunk.

  Frank

  7th April

  Suze,

  Last night...Jesus, what a night. Not in a good way either. Not an "Oh man what a night" like we used to say at University. Not a good night, not at all.

  I drank a lot, too much, and passed out on the sofa with some music playing at full blast. Old school rock and roll of the kind most enjoyed by sad middle aged men and drunks. At the moment I seem to be both. One of the benefits of being out here is there's no-one around to ask you to turn it down so I was able to really act like the rebellious teenager I never was.

  I woke up at about 1 am and crawled up the stairs and then fell fully clothed into bed. At about 3 am a noise woke me. I don't know what it was. A fox or an owl in the garden maybe or my own snoring. You remember how dark it gets here at night away from the light pollution of the city. A wonderful inky black that feels like it could swallow you up. Right then though it didn't feel wonderful at all.

  I lay there in the darkness for a moment trying to firstly to figure out where I damn well was. Then, when I'd managed that, I pondered the question of why it was so dark. I always left at least one light on but my Scotch addled brain couldn't remember if I had that night or not. Maybe I had and the bulb had gone.

  Charles, thank God, has the foresight to keep a torch in the bedside cabinet. I fumbled for it in the darkness, my drunken hand knocking into the half full glass of water that had been sitting there since the night before. I couldn't see it but I heard the glass rock on the hard wood of the cabinet. It chinked against the wall and then fell with a soft thud to the carpet.

  That little disaster over I pulled open the drawer and grabbed the torch within it. A cheap rubber affair but serviceable. My thumb found the button and clicked it on, throwing a dim yellow light around the room. The torch acted like a searchlight in a prison escape movie. Pinpointing things in the room as I moved it about but never casting enough light to illuminate the whole room.

  I picked up the glass and placed it back on the cabinet and then stood and walked to the door. My legs were shaky from a combination of tiredness and alcohol but I made it there. At this point I was still a bit befuddled and disoriented but not scared. That came later.

  I flipped the light switch by the door up and down a couple of times but nothing happened so I stepped out into the hallway and tried the same trick on the one there. Again nothing. I decided a fuse must have blown so I headed carefully down the winding staircase to check the fuse-box in the kitchen. The torch illuminated the way, showing me each stair before I stepped down onto it. A couple of times I flicked the beam forward to show the foot of the stairs and the living room. There was no reason to do this, no reason for me to think that anything was wrong beyond the power having gone but something had set my nerves completely on edge. The fear rose the further I got down the stairs until I found that I had stopped half way, terrified, unable to will myself to go any further.

  You remember what being scared was like when you were a child, Suzanna? I remember being absolutely terrified of going up to the bathroom to use the loo. Not because I had any clear idea of something scary up there, I wasn't imagining some Dr Who monster lurking behind the shower curtain. Instead it was a fear of the unknown, the idea that there might be something so terrifying up there that my mind couldn't imagine it. A fear that even after I'd seen it my brain wouldn't be able to understand it.

  As I stood on the stairs in the pitch black with only the narrow beam of the torch providing any connection to reality I felt that same childish fear again. My mind flitted back to the disturbed graves I'd seen earlier and the eerie emptiness of the village. I began to imagine that the downstairs of the cottage was filled with things so horrific they were unimaginable. I could almost hear them writhing and squirming together in the darkness, moving closer and closer to the bottom of the stairs. I shifted the tiny bright circle of sanity thrown by the torch around the blackness but wherever it moved the creatures weren't.

  And then I heard it. A sudden moaning and shrieking, not from within the cottage but from somewhere out in the night. I thought for a moment I might have imagined it but then it came again, a bestial roar and a scream of pure terror. I realised at once that this was the sound that had awoken me, not a fox or my own snoring but this terrible sound of... of what? It sounded for all the world like some unthinkable beast in pursuit of a victim. It was the sound of something hunting human prey. The utter terror that swept through me broke my paralysis and I turned and fled back up to the bedroom, scrabbling up the steep stairs on all fours with the torch still in my hand, its beam thrown wildly around the darkness.

  Back in the bedroom I ran to the window to look out but of course I could see nothing in the night. I tried to remember from which direction the sound had come, but I'd been halfway turned around on the winding stairs. I thought it must have been from the village, which should mean I was looking the right way. All I could see was blackness. I thought perhaps I should be able to see the faint glow of streetlights in the distance but I couldn't. There was only the night.

  I stood there waiting for the sound to come again but it didn't. I must have been there over an hour because eventually the sun rose and with the warm light it
brought my terror finally started to dissipate. The sunshine revealed there to be nothing mysterious or terrifying out there. The world looked just the same as it had the previous day.

  I sat on the bed and began to doubt my own sanity. Had I heard what I thought I had or was it just the remnant of a nightmare? My drunken sleep was usually mercifully dreamless but had last night been an exception? Had it been a waking dream of the type that alcoholics suffer when they get the DTs? Surely my drinking hadn't reached that level yet...

  I decided to try and think logically and practically. Whether or not the noise had been imagined the absence of power in the cottage was definitely a reality, and a troublesome one at that. The other problem I had was that I was physically and mentally exhausted. I resolved to try and sleep again and then investigate the fuse box at a more acceptable hour. It was 4:30am at that point so even if I slept for 4 hours I'd still have the whole day to sort it.

  I honestly didn't think I'd be able to fall asleep but I did almost instantly.

  I awoke again just after nine. My sleep had been heavy and dreamless and I was groggy at first. Lying there on the bed I questioned again whether what I'd heard last night had been real or just the product of my distressed and intoxicated brain. I could still remember the sheer terror I had felt, could still almost hear the roar and the screams in my ears. I realised I hadn't spoken to or seen another living soul since my arrival here. No wonder I was struggling, I needed human contact. Before anything else though I had to sort the lights out.

  I dressed without showering and walked cautiously down the stairs. As ridiculous as it felt in the daylight I couldn't help remembering the unseen creatures I'd imagined in the middle of the night. The living room of course was just as I'd left it. The sofa cushions creased from where I'd lain, the whisky bottle and glass on the floor. I could still taste the Scotch in my mouth and I resolved that I wouldn't drink any more. Not today at least. I'd come here to escape my memories of you, Suzanna, but I realised at that moment that the isolation and alcohol were doing me no good at all.