Better To Be Late

Sitting in the cafe where they'd agreed to meet, she checks her watch and sees the bruise around her wrist. He's late. If he's not here by ten past, she'll leave. She lifts her coffee to her lips and notices her hand is trembling. Relax, she tells herself, glancing around at friendly faces. He can't do anything here.

When he walks in, he's smiling the smile that tricked her all those years ago, and for just a split second she's reminded of the man she married.

As he sits, she sees he's chewing gum. So he's tense; he'd chew gum after the beatings. 'You wind me up,' he'd say as she checked to see if he'd knocked out any teeth. 'You push me to it.'

'I'm sorry,' he says now, not meeting her eye. 'I'm sorry about it all. I was angry and I took it out on you.'

'But it's not the first time.'

'I lost my job,' he spits. 'I've been stressed out. How do you think that made me feel?'

She clenches her jaw. 'I don't care,' she says. 'I can't care.'

'But I love you.'

She wants to lift off her jumper to show him the patches of bruises. 'This isn't love,' she wants to scream. 'How can it be?'

Though she doesn't, of course. Instead she stands, catching sight of the taxi she'd ordered pulling up outside.

He grips her wrist. 'I can change. Let me try.'

'No, you can't,' she says, the control in her hands for once. 'It's too late.'

And with that she leaves. She may not know where she's going, but anywhere is better than where she's been.

It's taken time to get this far, but, as her father always said, 'Better to be late than to be dead on time.'

The Devils Within

The devil is in us all, but we choose to lock him away. Silencing him, we ignore his cruel, whispered words. Day in, day out, he lies dormant, waiting. Biding his time. Just waiting.

It was a night in December that it happened. I was in the front room reading the newspaper, the fire crackling before me, smoke billowing up the chimney. Everything was as it was supposed to be.

Susan was on her way back from her shift at the hospital. I glanced at the time – nine o’clock. She was later than usual, but, on her request, I didn’t call.

‘Sure, I like having a coffee and chat at the end of a shift,’ she said last time I rang, shooing me off the phone. ‘Don’t you worry so much.’

That night though, when it got to half-past nine, I tried her mobile phone. But it went straight to voicemail and so I left a message, a sleepy, ‘Where are you? I love you.’

Now that I know why she was late, the thought of what she was going through at that moment turns and turns my stomach.

Because twenty minutes later, she stumbled into the house, her eyes black, her wrists blue. She fell to her knees, then her side. As she curled into a ball, she let out a low animal groan. The sound of pain.

I knew what had happened. Of course I knew. And so I said nothing as I wrapped my arms around her and felt her tense at my touch.

‘Who was it?’ I asked finally. ‘Who did it? Susan, come on, tell me. Who was it? Who was it?’

I wanted to shake her until the answer fell from her mouth, but she was crying for so long she had no breath for words.

‘Seamus O’Connolly,’ she said at last, after it felt a lifetime had passed between us. ‘He followed me past the church. He dragged me down-,’

And then she jerked from my embrace and was sick on the floor, the crucifix of her necklace swinging in front of her eyes.

It’s a small town, Kiltimagh, and I knew Seamus O’Connolly from church. He's only about nineteen; morose and acts as if the world is against him. His parents, Sheelagh and Michael, have go to mass every week. And he’d come with them until recently.

I walked to their house the next morning and they met me with warm smiles, offers of tea and cake. But I refused, asked if Seamus was home.

‘He is indeed, Andrew,’ they said, unquestioning, and called up the stairs.

He appeared: tired, bloodshot eyes.

‘Will you come for a walk with me, Seamus?’ I asked, and I could see from the way he stared at the ground that he knew that I knew.

The devil was in me that morning. It was through his eyes that I watched Seamus drown.

And now, eight months later, Susan’s stomach is still swelling. Another devil within.

Out of Time

As X sits in the waiting area, other people walk around him, talking into hologram headsets, visions of friends before them. Chat, chat, chat.

'I'm so busy,' says one woman. 'I haven't even had chance to inject my food for the last week. I know, I know. I know!'

When his number is called, X steps onto the conveyor belt and is taken to the chrome counter that's cool to the touch.

‘Yeah?’ the server asks.

Customer service has long since died.

‘I want a new heart,’ he says. ‘And new lungs. I'm getting breathless all the time. Can I book a facelift here too?'

The server sighs. ‘Yeah, but you’ll have to wait till next week for the heart. And the right lung. Limited stock. Anything else?’

‘I need some time. Maybe forty years, or fifty. Let's say fifty.’

The server laughs. ‘Seriously?’

X nods. 'What’s the joke?'

‘Didn’t you hear? We ran out of time six months ago.’

‘You don’t have any more?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Where did it all go?’

‘Some corporate companies took a whole load.' The server tries to repress a smile. ‘And we get staff discount, so-,’

‘But what’s the use in having health if I don’t have any time?’

The server taps into his computer. ‘When did you last top up?’

‘On time?’

‘Yep.’

He thinks for a moment. Was it last year? 2093? Or the year before? ‘Christmas 2092,’ he says. ‘I had a voucher. From an aunt.’

The server whistles. ‘Sorry, can’t get you time. If you’d said Easter 2107, we could have given you two days. Don't know if you remember, but we ran the ‘Bring Back The Dead’ promotion.’ He shrugs. ‘Got to honour any purchases made. The manager's majorly pissed. You still want the facelift?’

X thinks. He’s never thought of this before, has he? He’s never imagined he could run out of time. It’s always been something there’s been plenty of, something, like everything, that he could buy when it ran out.

‘But no one told me,’ he says, hearing a childish whine in his tone. ‘I haven’t done half the things I wanted.’

The server glances at the screen. ‘You’ve still got five years left.’

‘That’s not long.’

‘Well, you know the rules. Standard top-up every three months. Really, I could report you to the G.’ He hands him a receipt and glances over X's shoulder at the hordes of people in the waiting area. ‘Look, you want the face-lift or not? I got a ton of people to see.’

Underground

As the tube doors swoosh open, she steps onto the empty platform and checks the time. One o’clock. It’s later than she thought. An hour ago, it was another day. And she was another person. An hour ago, she’d still been planning for a future which, now, is as shattered as the glass he’d smashed against the wall.

His words echo in her mind as she walks towards the exit, her hands stuffed in her pockets, her head down. She bites the insides of her painted lips, swallows back tears. She won’t cry. No, she won’t cry. She won’t let strangers ask what’s wrong. She can't bear their misplaced kindness.

Taking the stairs two at a time, she emerges on the street. The lively, hustling, bustling street. The air smells of hot dogs and fried onions, a stench that makes her gag. She starts walking to Neon. She needs a drink. More than one. Two drinks, three drinks, four drinks. More. She needs to wake tomorrow and have a moment, just one moment before she opens her eyes in which none of this ever happened. A moment in which it’s nothing more than a dissipating dream.

Only it’s not a dream, is it? It’s real. It’s as real as the towering concrete buildings around her, the broken bottles on the floor, the bitter stench of urine in the doorway, the animal shouts of a fight about to start. It’s as real as the beat, beat, beat of the nightclub she passes, as real as the beggar asleep in the phonebox, the money a drunken girl spills on the pavement.

It is as real as her infidelity.

Rain begins to fall and she feels a tear roll down her cheek, doesn’t even wipe it away. It’s too dark for people to see, to care. No one sees sadness in darkness.

She thinks of him now. His face, his shock. She thinks of him and their love. That was real, too. Once. That was born between them, cherished, nurtured. Alive.

And now? She stands at a crossing, waiting for the speeding traffic to stop, watching the blurs of headlights in the slow drizzle of rain. And now it is dead. Buried. Underground.

Shattered

As the mirror shatters into the bathroom sink, the hand with which she holds the hammer drops to her side.

Staring at the empty space before her, she feels a smile lift her thin, pale lips.

'Done,' she says to the empty room, then walks into the lounge, swinging the hammer like a child with a toy. 'Done, done, done, done, done.'

She slumps into the sofa and catches her reflection in the blank television screen.

In a heartbeat, she's on her feet again, and the smash of the screen makes her cry out for a second before the room drops again to silence.

That’s it now, isn’t it? She looks at the broken window glass on the floorboards, feels the city breeze on her skin. That’s them all gone now. She won’t be seeing her again. Never, never, never.

She laughs, an alien sound, and clasps her hand over her mouth immediately. There's the metal taste of blood on her tongue. She looks down at the cut in her hand, drops the hammer on the floor. How had she not realised she’d cut herself? Still, no matter. She rushes to the kitchen and runs cold water over her hand. It was worth it. It’s all been worth it.

Her heart stops for a moment as she sees her distorted self in the curve of the metal kettle. She looks closer and sees the doppelganger. Her tormentor. She gasps, runs back into the living room and picks up the hammer again.

The kettle makes a noise like a metal drum as she beats it.

And then silence once again. Blissful silence. No more of the voice in her head. All those can’ts, don’ts, won’ts, shouldn’ts, wouldn’ts, couldn’ts. She’d always suspected she could silence her forever. And now she has.

But that night, she wakes to the same mocking voice in the corner of her mind.

‘You shouldn’t have done that,' it says. 'Silly bitch. You shouldn’t have done that.’

And she reaches for the hammer once again.

But this time it is bone she breaks.

Bone after bone after bone.

The Lottery

Her eyebrows raised and her forehead creased into lines of wrinkles when I told her she'd won.

'Are you sure, Janelle?' she asked, reaching for the ticket. 'Check the numbers again. Are you sure?'

'Yes, Mum. I'm sure. You've won!'

Tears rolled from her blind eyes down her cheeks and she took my hand in hers.

'Can you believe it?' she asked. 'A lucky dip, not even my usual numbers. And I've won.'

I smiled, unsure when I'd last seen her so happy. Not for years, not since her eyesight began deteriorating.

'I think this calls for a drink,' I said, switching off the television and walking to the kitchen.

'There's a bottle of Asti in the fridge,' she called after me. 'Let's open that. It's a celebration after all!'

I poured the Asti into the crystal glasses Mum and Dad had as a wedding gift, then walked back into the living room.

'This reminds me of your father,' she said, feeling the engraved lines of his initials. 'I wish he was here now. I wish he was here to celebrate with us.'

'I know, Mum,' I said. 'I know.'

There was a moment's mournful silence, broken when I said, 'But he is only at the pub. He'll be back by nine.'