You tap the door three times with your walking stick before opening. Close the door behind you, wiping the handle with a tissue you drop into a bag you carry – for hygienic disposal later. Your latex gloves follow the tissue; you wear gloves constantly outside the flat. It’s been another tiring day. Enacting constant rituals wears you out, but helps the fear.
Of course your employers have been considerate. What else could they be? You were a good worker, productive, loyal … well, as loyal as any these days. Stress, mental illness – they said ‘it could happen to anyone’ – they meant: can’t we find some excuse to pay off the basket case?
You take off your coat and go to the bedroom door, tapping it three times with your stick before opening – the same performance before sliding the wardrobe open to hang the garment. Back to the lounge – you turn on the television for the news. Supper is a microwave meal for one. Susan left: couldn’t stand it … or you.
You chew; the meal is tasteless and unsatisfying.
Beside your chair are stacked a half dozen, spiral-bound notebooks. You pick one up and write. One page for one day; that’s the way it’s been since all this started. You set down the pointless minutiae of your day, looking for patterns, looking for anything … or nothing.
The phone rings, it’s your father, embarrassed as usual.
‘How are you, in yourself?’ He asks.
‘Fine Dad.’ What else did he think you would say?
‘You okay for – you know –money and stuff?’
‘Of course, Dad.’ You’re twenty years distant from being the penniless student you were. He still lives happily in the past where a cheque could solve anything. You chat, stepping around the issue of your sanity like always. Then say goodbye-for-now’s that leave questions hanging in the air, unsaid. Your meal’s cold, you eat it anyway.
The evening television drones on, as the city beyond your four, safe walls, darkens and steady rain begins to beat against your clear-tape sealed, lounge window.
At eleven you shower. Before running the steaming water you tap the cubicle walls, three times each; then leave your walking stick within easy reach, outside the steamy curtain. Five minutes under the water, then a towel dry. Dressing gown and slippers wait with inch-precision, where they always do. You study the first signs of greying hair dispassionately in the mirror. Like the worry lines, they are recent additions to the face that stares back at you. Collateral damage you think.
You close your hand around the walking stick. It has been your constant companion since the start – dark lacquered rosewood, capped with a silver ram’s head. At work they looked at your stick and were puzzled. Surely it was your mind rather than your legs that needed an aid. You carried it anyway; irrationality has its compensations.
Pajamas are laid out on your bed – a double bed, out of habit rather than need these days – you used to sleep naked … all things change.
Automatically you dress for sleep, your eyes wandering to the bedroom window. There are no curtains, but then there are few neighbours and none that overlook. The yellowed sticky tape around the window is pulled away and there are tiny damp puddles on the sill.
You put your dressing gown over your pyjamas and retrieve a fresh roll of tape and a cloth from the kitchen – as quickly as your tapping, door opening ritual will allow. Mopping up the water on the sill, you carefully dry the cracks around the opening part of the casement and tape the window shut again. You walk back the few feet to the bed, your bare feet feeling wetness on the carpet. You stop.
Silence hangs leaden for a moment; you tap your walking stick twice, firmly, because of the muffling pile of the bedroom carpet…
The wardrobe door explodes off its hinges as you slide the halves of the walking stick apart.
‘Hah! Fooled you,’ you say, as thirty inches of silver inlay and razor edged steel bury into fur, muscle and viscera. There is no whine, no roar, barely a dying breath. It’s the silver – more humane than they deserve. Bloody mess on the carpet … again.
You drag the corpse, now human, to the bathroom; going in search of bleach, hacksaw and cleaver … so much for an early night. Fucking werewolves: however much you try to hide your scent, however much you cross silver in their path … if they’re after you, they’ll find you. Good job- you’re mad and they’re stupid.
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©2010 Ash Scott-Lockyer
Ash Scott-Lockyer is an equestrian photographer, writer, and horse rider. His work ranges from horror to fantasy and include SHADOWKNIGHT, a full length, young adult fantasy novel. He is in his fifties, married, lives in East London but plays in the Essex countryside.
Website http://www.shadowtales.co.uk
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