Detective Inspector Gutteridge lay curled up into a semi-fetal ball, his anticipant gaze locked on the two-foot parting in the bedroom curtains he’d leaned out from the duvet to effect, watching for the next crackling flash of the electrical storm that had been raging for the last hour, or at least, the last hour that he was aware of, having been rudely awoken from his sleep by a deep, guttural boom that had rattled the windows in their frames.
He pondered how easy it must have been for his ancestors to believe in the gods they assigned to such awe-invoking events – gods that must have given their simpler lives such direction and meaning. Direction and meaning he often felt was missing from his own life.
The gap in the curtains suddenly ignited to the intermittent stutter of pupil-shocking fury, back lighting the sputtering tracks of rain cascading down the glass.
Gutteridge counted again. ‘One, one thousand. Two, one thousand. Three, one thousand. Four, one thousand. Five, one thou—’ Boom! The whole night shook, punctuated by two more staccato flashes to cement his awe, and for one fleeting moment, it could be believed that it was daytime outside, and not 02:27 in the morning as the blinding numbers of his bedside clock indicated.
He could hear the steady, regular breaths of his wife, Eve, in slumber, lying behind him, oblivious to the ferocious spectacle broiling outside.
Gutteridge allowed himself a smile. ‘That girl could sleep through a war,’ he mumbled into the fizzing silence.
Another flash incinerated the sky, shorter this time, but brighter, looking like the muzzle flash of Kieran O’Leary’s captive bolt gun as the piston fired up through the soft flesh beneath his jaw, punching skull fragments into his corrupted mind.
O’Leary’s last words replayed in his memory. ‘Please… forgive me for what I have done!’ he’d said, his expression so lost, so defeated, so remorseful…
Gutteridge blinked it away, pondering the notion that if someone in a lab coat with a large enough brain came up with a way to drag and drop such memories into a delete file – some Scientology-style ‘auditor’ – would he choose to utilise it, knowing full well that such experiences shaped the people we are, and the people we’re destined to become?
Eve stirred, shifting onto her other side, muttering something unintelligible to Gutteridge’s limited knowledge of Polish, Eve’s mother tongue.
Gutteridge wondered what she’d said, contemplating grabbing the English to Polish dictionary that had now taken up permanent residence in his bedside drawer.
‘Homary sa tutaj?’ he began muttering over and over so as to not forget it, but knowing full well he didn’t have it in him to stir enough to switch on the light, open the drawer, rifle for the book, search out the words, blah, blah, whatever. So the words eventually petered away into silence and, once again, quiet reigned supreme.
Another stuttering flash shocked his eyes. Another vision of O’Leary, a vectoring fan of atomised blood spraying from his gurning mouth as he dropped to the floor, and of Eve – his dearest, lovely Eve – taped into a chair at the side of it all, spattered in O’Leary’s blood, eyes alight with shock, fear and disbelief…
Gutteridge rose, motivated by a desire to break from such repugnant memories and a growing need to pee, ambling his aching limbs towards the en suite.
He’d become somewhat of a gym bunny of late, partly motivated by a desire to stay healthy, and partly by a need to vent the pressure of the despair for his previous life – pounding iron and leather turning out to be an effective way to ‘audit’ his inner demons. But he enjoyed the ache, that day after, the day after soreness that sang of progress.
He wandered into the echoing familiarity of the shower room, fumbling around in the dark, feeling for the cord to the light switch. He pulled it, and with a very different kind of flash, a face that seemed to him to be looking more like his father’s with every passing day appeared in the mirror above the sink. He took a moment to absorb it, studying the few, localised signs of age that it now displayed, but knowing from the compliments of others within his sphere of trusted opinions that he was faring well on the aging front.
Gutteridge sidestepped his reflection to relieve himself, spinning on the hot tap to allow the water time to get to temperature, using the gurgling of the plughole to mask any sounds and keep it dignified. He considered not flushing; both him and Eve having long ago agreed that anything liquid can remain until the morning, so as to not risk waking the other. But he figured if Eve could sleep through a storm as ferocious as the one raging outside, she could certainly sleep through a flush, and he leaned on the handle.
His vertebrae crunched like sand in mechanics as he rolled his neck, hands fidgeting in the hot water. His gaze eventually landed back on his reflection. ‘Hello again, Father,’ he quipped.
As he spun the taps off again and shook his hands dry, Gutteridge’s wandering attention gravitated to a small bottle of talcum powder perched inconspicuously high upon the cabinet, his frowning eyes locking on its undoubtable presence in the room as he quietly dried his hands on the towel.
He stretched up and took it down, careful not to dislodge any of the skyline of product bottles surrounding it, squeezing the periphery of the perforated lid with his fingers until it popped, revealing the contents.
He peered inside at a concoction of ground chalk mixed with grains of rice, sporadically shaking the bottle to irritate the contents until a flat, rectangular packet appeared like a crooked headstone.
He reached a curious finger inside and dragged it up the side of the container until he could pinch it from the lip, and placed the bottle down again.
Gutteridge blew the light dusting of powder off his find like an archeologist, revealing a neatly folded wrap of cocaine that had been expertly encased in clingfilm alongside a packet of silica gel to help regulate the moisture. Two grams – the good stuff, not that stamped-on shit that had been cut to death with speed and caffeine.
Kieran O’Leary’s forlorn face came to Gutteridge again, followed by the face of Cynthia – his ex-wife – slaughtered merely for having the presence of forethought to choose Gutteridge as her life partner. His mood sank once again, along with his insides, contemplating opening his hidden secret, placed there by him years ago to help combat the panic that having none in the house inflicted on a mind that craved its nose burning high. That time he’d been actively trying to kick the habit, and until now, he’d forgotten it was even there.
His fingers began gingerly tugging at the clingfilm, carefully unwrapping the flat, plump little parcel of mischief – a one-way ticket to a hellish night of heightened paranoia and crippling self-awareness, where every creak and pop from the bones of the old house imprisoning his inability to abstain would become the creeping footsteps of something unseen with nefarious intentions, where every lingering look from those around you would become the truth-searching stares of people who know you’re back on it again, the loser that you are, unable to handle life’s torments with the dignity and grace it warrants.
‘Fuck you,’ he whispered, in a moment of strength, and of sanity, dropping his discovery into the toilet and belligerently tipping the contents of the bottle in after it. He thrust hard on the flush to eject it from his life.
He breathed a deep sigh of ultimate relief, and smiled, feeling pride in his strength, in his ardour, pulling images of the woman asleep next door to the fore. His new drug: tall, long-limbed, and beautiful in a way very few could hold a candle to. A drug whose active ingredient was her body, soft-edged and undeniably feminine; but firm to the touch and toned. Mile-high legs that rippled when she strode through the world she commanded. Her stomach, flat and defined, had become almost an obsession to Gutteridge and his inflamed fascination, and his infuriated despair.
‘My Eve,’ he muttered, feeling the craving for coke dissipate into a lake of his very fondest memories of this new life. ‘My lovely, beautiful, Eve…’