The Ash Field
Douglas stood, frozen in a slight forward stoop that was at first glance one of supplication, but over time eroded towards a calcified heart of calculated menace. The ranked repetition; twelve in a line, twelve tiers produced the appropriate collective noun. Two gross blue-green eyes surveyed the drizzle, thickening to sleet as it fell on the stuttering development of the semi-designed, fully detached houses which now covered the Ash Field. Beside the trestle table stood an easel supporting a canvass. The painting only half worked in acrylics depicted Kay Macnamara as a troubled dark nymph, emerging from a Celtic knot of eternally damp roots and fungi.
Frank inhaled the studio smells with a deep satisfaction. He remembered blissful days in New York in the 1960s when vengeance was his drug of choice. He had gone too far then of course, and the world was still lacerated by his spite. You save the grandest gestures for love, he reflected, but this time it was his own death that had to be avenged and it would be private but poetic. He placed an antique leather bound box on the window ledge and methodically opened the two buckles. This was his father’s geological kit-box. Frank lifted the steel tube with another within it used for extracting samples. He set it on the ledge where it hungrily reflected the pale grey light after more than a century of blind box-bound lethargy. Now he felt the weight of the hammer, imagined his father cracking open balls of silica in the monochrome Arctic; then using the sharp claws behind the head to scrape rich orange mineral from the million drab whites while he, the infant son, amused himself with probability or the wide vowels of the Sami language.
He dropped the hammer into his pocket and felt the immaculate Italian material drag at his shoulder as it accepted the weight. He moved to his chosen spot behind the door and waited for Kay to return home following her day in the gallery. It had been so easy to find her. He could not let her see him of course, and so had picked his moment to enter the gallery and express admiration of her childish models. The temporary assistant possessed all the enthusiastic naivety of the young and artistic and had readily provided him with her address. Now he was only minutes away from what he had termed his final performance; a swan song of elegant murder with a heady entr’act of torture. She had killed him but she was going to make this margin of his life feel good.
The key scraped against the lock before finding its way in and Frank stopped breathing and felt his penis swell with expectation. He heard her drop her coat in the hall and fill the kettle. She lit a cigarette and opened her mail. The suspense and the erection were painful. He followed the ritual of tea-making, the stubbing out of the cigarette, the opening of the newspaper. His fingers caressed the thin metal tube, letting the inner tube run in and out of the outer sheath. He detested masturbation, but this was different. A hot drop squeezed ecstatically from the urethal opening. At last she, too, was coming.
The hair was darker, longer, wilder than he remembered; but of course she would have changed such aspects of her appearance as she built a new life. She stood sharing the ceramic gaze of the one hundred and forty-four elves. Frank calculated the angles of incidence and reflection, respecting the terrifying memory of her retina. He moved silently, yet she had detected something for there was a brief gasp before the metal tube slipped into the skull where the spinal column began and she slumped, paralysed over the groaning table. Frank allowed the weapon to jut from the back of her head as he pulled her backwards into the bathroom. It was only when he rolled her gently onto the floor that he saw that it was not Kay who stared at him with impotent terror. The sexual tension evaporated leaving a grimy discomfort. He had two choices; let this woman live, albeit with permanent paralysis and some brain damage, or improvise. Ever the showman, Frank decided to improvise.
Douglas stood, frozen in a slight forward stoop that was at first glance one of supplication, but over time eroded towards a calcified heart of calculated menace. The ranked repetition; twelve in a line, twelve tiers produced the appropriate collective noun. Two gross blue-green eyes surveyed the drizzle, thickening to sleet as it fell on the stuttering development of the semi-designed, fully detached houses which now covered the Ash Field. Beside the trestle table stood an easel supporting a canvass. The painting only half worked in acrylics depicted Kay Macnamara as a troubled dark nymph, emerging from a Celtic knot of eternally damp roots and fungi.
Frank inhaled the studio smells with a deep satisfaction. He remembered blissful days in New York in the 1960s when vengeance was his drug of choice. He had gone too far then of course, and the world was still lacerated by his spite. You save the grandest gestures for love, he reflected, but this time it was his own death that had to be avenged and it would be private but poetic. He placed an antique leather bound box on the window ledge and methodically opened the two buckles. This was his father’s geological kit-box. Frank lifted the steel tube with another within it used for extracting samples. He set it on the ledge where it hungrily reflected the pale grey light after more than a century of blind box-bound lethargy. Now he felt the weight of the hammer, imagined his father cracking open balls of silica in the monochrome Arctic; then using the sharp claws behind the head to scrape rich orange mineral from the million drab whites while he, the infant son, amused himself with probability or the wide vowels of the Sami language.
He dropped the hammer into his pocket and felt the immaculate Italian material drag at his shoulder as it accepted the weight. He moved to his chosen spot behind the door and waited for Kay to return home following her day in the gallery. It had been so easy to find her. He could not let her see him of course, and so had picked his moment to enter the gallery and express admiration of her childish models. The temporary assistant possessed all the enthusiastic naivety of the young and artistic and had readily provided him with her address. Now he was only minutes away from what he had termed his final performance; a swan song of elegant murder with a heady entr’act of torture. She had killed him but she was going to make this margin of his life feel good.
The key scraped against the lock before finding its way in and Frank stopped breathing and felt his penis swell with expectation. He heard her drop her coat in the hall and fill the kettle. She lit a cigarette and opened her mail. The suspense and the erection were painful. He followed the ritual of tea-making, the stubbing out of the cigarette, the opening of the newspaper. His fingers caressed the thin metal tube, letting the inner tube run in and out of the outer sheath. He detested masturbation, but this was different. A hot drop squeezed ecstatically from the urethal opening. At last she, too, was coming.
The hair was darker, longer, wilder than he remembered; but of course she would have changed such aspects of her appearance as she built a new life. She stood sharing the ceramic gaze of the one hundred and forty-four elves. Frank calculated the angles of incidence and reflection, respecting the terrifying memory of her retina. He moved silently, yet she had detected something for there was a brief gasp before the metal tube slipped into the skull where the spinal column began and she slumped, paralysed over the groaning table. Frank allowed the weapon to jut from the back of her head as he pulled her backwards into the bathroom. It was only when he rolled her gently onto the floor that he saw that it was not Kay who stared at him with impotent terror. The sexual tension evaporated leaving a grimy discomfort. He had two choices; let this woman live, albeit with permanent paralysis and some brain damage, or improvise. Ever the showman, Frank decided to improvise.
1 comment:
good improv comedy is always the best
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