The house was on the edge of town, sandwiched between the football field and woodland and facing the edge of the suburb with only three houses behind it and open countryside. The building opposite had been empty for many years and someone had long ago painted a cartoon rabbit on the board covering the living room windows; a word balloon over it read “Welcome to the Warren.”
Why they used to call this part of town The Warren was lost on Nigel, and there was no one left to ask about it, so he knew it would remain a mystery. As mysteries went it didn’t monopolise much of his time, his mind had larger issues to contemplate; but whenever he saw that cartoon rabbit, he always considered this particular enigma.
The sun was creeping towards the horizon and the world around had begun its journey to darkness, and Nigel watched as the dirty yellow car that sat in the overgrown driveway turned orange under the light from the setting sun. Its rust riddled arches looked black and made the machine look as if it were hovering six inches above the thick grass.
“It’s getting late.” Nigel said. He spoke quietly and another person may have noted weariness in it, but his companion was no such person. Nigel was a man who walked with an invisible weight on his shoulders and though he was taller than usual an observer could be forgiven for thinking her was shorter than he was. His personal grooming was meticulous and every morning he would spend enough time maintaining his pin thin beard and impeccably groomed hair that his roommate could not resist a stinging comment.
“The girls will be here soon then.” Terry replied.
Terry was everything Nigel wasn’t and when Nigel glanced at the other man, he could barely resist the urge to grimace. Terry’s hair was too long, and he never shaved; and he seemed to dress in whatever was closest, regardless of whether it was filthy or torn.
“I guess so.” Nigel replied.
He turned back to the window and quietly slipped a small passport sized photograph from his breast pocket. He was careful not to let Terry see it and he held it against the window frame casually as if her was merely leaning there. It fluttered in the breeze from the open window.
The woman in the photograph had long dark hair and pinched smile as if she didn’t like her photograph taken and behind her was the blurred partial curve of a Ferris wheel. The photograph was slightly out of focus and its edges were uneven. It had been clipped from a larger photo of a group, but this was the only face Nigel wanted to remember from it.
Breeze from the open window ruffled its dog-eared edges and behind him Nigel could hear the steady scrape of blade on wood as his companion whittled.
“You should shut the window… Someone might take it as an invitation…”
Nigel dropped the tiny photo onto the broad window ledge then struggled with the window, its swollen frame squeaking as he forced it closed, the catch barely able to reach the steel lip that had been its companion for so many years. His eyes paused on it, it was made of old worn brass and would be easy to force by anyone with a good tool and sufficient strength. He knew that he should at least run a nail through the wood and fasten it closed permanently; but in truth he didn’t care anymore.
“You going out or staying in?” Said Terry and Nigel glanced at the photograph as he replied.
“I don’t know.”
He remembered the day at the fairground, there had been a group of them, but he only remembered her. His heart hurt at the memory of it, if he could, he would turn back time and make someone else take the photograph so that he could stand beside her. Her face would have still been marred by that forced almost-smile, but he could have looked at it and miss-remembered her as loving him.
“Sooner or later, you’ll have to take her out Nigel. “
Nigel almost cried out at the sound of Terry’s voice, and his response was harsher than he meant it to be. “I know.”
“You say that, but this isn’t right you know…”
“I said… I know…” Nigel replied even more harshly.
Terry replied with a grunt, his typical response, and resumed his whittling. Flakes of wood tumbled through the air, landing in a pile on two pieces of yellowed newspaper. Nigel’s stomach lurched at the sight of it, and he snapped his gaze back to the window. The sun was much lower now, peeking over the buildings on the horizon like a child watching a scary movie from behind a pillow.
“You ever think about how it all happened?” Nigel asked, the question wasn’t really meant for Terry, Nigel didn’t really know who he was asking; perhaps he was talking to God. “This man-woman thing, why we’ve become so different?”
But of course, it was Terry who replied. “Not really.”
“Never?”
“No.”
Nigel wasn’t certain there was a tomorrow anymore, he wasn’t sure there was really a yesterday, each day blended into the next and he knew the answers even as he asked the questions. Each day a re-enactment; and suddenly Nigel wondered if this was what Hell was like.
“Well; I have.” He said, and he knew the certain reply.
“And don’t I know it…” Terry said, keeping to the script word for word.
How many times has it been? He couldn’t count them, he wouldn’t try. What was it they said was the definition of madness? Was there a yesterday, would there be a tomorrow?
Was this merely like Hell or was it the real deal?
“Why do you have to be like that?” Nigel heard himself say, but he knew that answer better than Terry could ever explain it. Terry had to be like that because Terry was like that; why would Nigel expect a different response to the same question?
“You sound like my ex-wife.” Terry responded. His words were calm and low and almost absent of concern; but Nigel’s retort was not.
“She’s still your wife…” Nigel said and instantly winced at the venom in his own words, suddenly the sound of blade on wood stopped and if Nigel was looking he would have seen that Terry’s eyes were as sharp as the knife he held in his tense fingers and he would have been afraid, but he didn’t and after a moment Terry began to create those thin curls of wood once more.
“I’ll tell you what Nigel my old mate… You go and have this chat with the girls when they arrive. Pour your heart out to them, I’m sure they’d love it!”
Nigel did turn then, his own hackles raised.
“You’re scum…” His own voice was low and menacing, his mood bolstered by a lack of self-preservation that made him bulletproof.
“Didn’t anyone tell you?” Terry laughed. “That’s the way for a fella to get along in today’s world. Men like you finish last mate…”
A man who still cared may have seen the knife and reconsidered, but Nigel didn’t care and took an angry step towards the armed man anyway. Terry rose and stepped closer. His face was still calm, but Nigel knew that the endless chain of days was wearing as thin on Terry as it was on himself.
Would it be today when that chain broke?
“I miss her…” Nigel said, and then his voice broke, “I miss all of them… I’m lonely!”
Terry’s face softens, and though he does not exactly commiserate with Nigel he at least decides to drop the subject; or seems to when he smiles and opens his mouth to speak. But then his eyes flicker to something in the window behind Nigel and something flows across his face that Nigel is unaccustomed to; something he cannot immediately place. Then it’s gone and Terry’s face resumes it customary visage of self-assured arrogance.
“Never mind…” Terry said. “Our dates are here…”
Nigel didn’t want to turn to look, though he knew that he would. The end of every day was so alike that he no longer believed in today or tomorrow.
He turned.
At the window stood a woman back lit by the remnants of the previous day. Her hair fluttered in the wind that tugged at the tattered edges of her filthy dress. Her face was a mass of black veins that clump at the temples like the roots of a tree and her eyes were stained white with cataracts. The air around her was dusted with tiny specks that swirled around her as though they were moons attracted to a larger body in space. As her face moved more specks fell from her blood encrusted chin below her thin-lipped smile.
Nigel’s heart leapt as it thudded against the inside of his rib cage, perhaps in fear, perhaps in desire. Her hand was raised to the glass of the window, her lips cracking apart in a smile that was more a grimace, a cold and frightening smile. Behind her was more movement, other figures that were barely seen, all unmistakably female.
“You coming out?” Terry said, his voice distant, as if heard through water.
Nigel shook his head and heard Terry collect a couple of items from the unfolded newspaper laid on the floor scattered with wood-shavings on it alongside a sharp knife. He slipped two wooden stakes into the inside pockets of his jacket and Nigel felt a rush of air as Terry walked past him into the kitchen where he could make his way outside.
On the newspaper, partially obscured by wood shavings, was the headline “X-CHROMOSOME VIRUS” KILLS HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS.
Nigel stared at the woman; his face filled with sorrow. It was only a matter of time before a stake drove through that breast and into her heart. He had begged Terry to spare her but in a secret part of his mind, of which even he was only partially aware, he had prayed that Terry would ignore him.
Nigel raised his hand and placed it against the windowpane, feeling the deathly cold of her palm draw away the heat of his blood.
The woman’s lip twitched then rose, shuddering as a machine thirsty for oil might, the smile turned into a snarl and in the feeble rays of the forgotten sun glinted needle-like teeth. On the windowsill between them lay the rough-edged photograph, the young woman in it smiling her uncertain smile.
Nigel’s eyes moved to the brass catch that so feebly fastened the window closed, his face felt as a blank canvas and his mind felt at peace and Nigel knew that the endless chain of days was wearing far too thin. The woman’s eyes move with him as he reached for the catch and then there was a rush of cool air, then colder hands; and for Nigel, at least, the days were forever over.