Storymania - Dead Still by Jamie Reynolds

Dead Still
Jamie Reynolds

How did I ever get myself into that, wonders Dick as he falls into the plump, red armchair that always reminded him of a man on one of those old Guinness ads. Flashbacks of the day they bought it stream through his head. Happier, easier times. Their first joint purchase. They seemed so in love then: Jane’s radiance a lure he was only too willing to chase, his loneliness an ocean he was grateful to escape.

That’s true, I was lonely, she was beautiful. I guess that’s how I got into it. He smiles. A rush of relief sweeps over him as he realizes his freedom has been granted. No longer the knife at the bedside table, threatening to lunge into him lest he fall into slumber. For two years now he has survived on the briefest of naps, too frightened to close his eyes in bed, to not be alert all night.

And he has suffered for it: his once successful dental practice now languishes under the weight of three malpractice suits, direct results of his inability to remain attentive whenever death’s imminence wasn’t threatening. The media reports of how he had transected a nerve during a wisdom tooth extraction and how a patient had lost most of her teeth because he hadn’t noticed her softening gums driving all but his most loyal patients away.

The more his practice suffered, the more he found himself with Jane, Insane Jane, he used to call her in his mind. And the more time he spent with her, the crazier she seemed to get.

The bedside knife was the start of it. A few months after they were married, Dick tried to take things a little too far one night in bed. Jane turned on him and slapped him so hard his ear was still ringing in the morning. “Try that again,” she told him, teeth clenched, “And I’ll cut your fucking balls off.” The knife appeared the following night, sharp and shiny in front of the alarm clock. Every Wednesday before bed – it happened on a Wednesday, something Dick’s regrets would never let him forget – she would spend a good twenty minutes sharpening that knife. “Just in case,” she would tell him with that wide-eyed smile he came to know too well.

With the knife naturally came a plunge in his desire. Some guys get stage fright, I get knife fright. But Insane Jane was insistent. She liked sex, and if Jane liked it, Jane got it. It would take forever sometimes to arouse him, but she would not let up until she got what she wanted. When you’re doing it every night, the consequences are almost inevitable. Their consequence was called Little Nell: a bubbly girl with golden-red locks, a permanent blush and the cutest little smile.

The first few years with Little Nell were a dream for Dick. He loved the girl, but best of all for him, Jane was obsessed with her. Her entire focus homed in on the child, to the point where Dick was banished to the spare room downstairs while Jane and Little Nell shared the king-sized bed.

Dick savored his banishment. He read a lot, played hundreds of games of solitaire on the computer, watched rerun upon rerun. Paradise. He had wanted to help with the baby at first, but it soon became clear that Jane considered Little Nell to be ‘hers’. There was nothing he could do without being berated for it, so slowly he found himself taking less and less of an interest in fatherhood until Nelly became more like a niece than a daughter to him. He was still devoted to her, but rarely got close enough to her to share that affection.

I guess she’s mine now, he thinks. I guess she’s mine now.

Like a volcano between eruptions, the respite turned out only to be a chance for Jane to catch her breath. By the time Little Nell was three she had learned to speak up for herself – easy to do when Mommy grants your every wish – and had decided she wanted her own room, with big pink flowers on the wall, a double bunk (so she could sleep on the top one), a television, and toys from every second ad that appeared on it. Dick had long since learned not to debate matters – any matters – and was glad for the rainy day money he’d been investing.

He wasn’t quite so happy about joining Jane back in bed. She was clearly slighted by Nelly’s decision to ‘leave’ her, as she put it, and as she wouldn’t dream of taking it out on little ‘bubblebops’, that left Dick.

The knife took on much greater significance now.

Jane took to greeting him at the door with that smile, saying, “I might just do it tonight.” She bought a chef’s holster for the knife and carried it everywhere around the house, pulling it out randomly, wide-eyed smiling, admiring it glinting in the light; swishing and stabbing at shadows; sneaking up behind Dick and holding it hard to his throat, blunt-side to skin; and poking at his balls if Little Nell was out of sight.

Dick had no escape at work, either. Jane called religiously on the half-hour and if he couldn’t speak to her he needed a damn good reason why not. If he took any more than twenty minutes getting home he earned a ‘slice’. Jane started a system of punishment for Dick’s misdemeanors: starting just below the collar of his shirt, she would slice a horizontal line in his skin for each one. A quarter-inch or so under one another and about two finger-lengths long, she told him that when she reached his balls he could consider them gone, “And just consider yourself lucky I’m not heading in the other direction.”

Dick’s fingers contemplate the freshly stitched wound artistically splitting his navel as his right hand cracks open a beer. The sigh of the opening can coinciding with his breath as he figures, Three months if I was lucky. Boy, was I lucky.

They didn’t get out much. Dick was never allowed out alone, and Jane and Nelly had most of their outings while he was at work. But when Dick returned home the previous afternoon to be greeted by Jane’s frenzied dashes around the house and Nelly coughing up blood in the middle of the living room, there was little choice but to go to the physician. Together. Dick could not be trusted alone. What if he packed up and left? Where would that leave Jane and Little Nell? Did he ever consider whose lives he was ruining by being so negligent at work? Did he ever stop, just for a moment, to think of anyone but himself? No Dick, you don’t. And that’s why I can’t leave you alone. You can’t be trusted and you’re completely incapable of managing on your own anyway. You need me, Dick. Without me Dick, you’d be lost, probably destitute. Don’t even think about leaving me, Dick. I’ll hunt you down and kill you and the bitch you leave me for. And I’ll do it slowly, Dick: cut out your tongue, slice off your lips, then your ears. Your nose. I’m gonna chop off every finger, one by one. And your toes, littlest to biggest. And then it’ll be your balls, Dick, and I’ll do that with a serrated knife. Don’t leave me, Dick. You’ll regret it.

Dick drove. Jane was so frantic that she couldn’t find her keys. Jane’s keys were for her red Beamer, and nobody but nobody else was allowed in the driver’s seat. She was convinced that it would mess with her personalized settings, and Dick had decided against mentioning that the mechanic probably had to sit there from time to time. She probably realizes that anyway, he’d figured. But my place has been made very clear. And Jane would not be so belittled as to drive Dick’s Corolla. Indeed, if it weren’t for this being an emergency, she would have refused again to be seen in it.

Driving with Jane was difficult at the best of times, but when she was in one of these moods it verged on impossible. “You’re going too fast!” “You’re in the wrong lane!” “Speed up! Don’t you know this is an emergency?” “Turn here! No, wait. Here! Oh shit, you took the wrong one. Listen to me, you useless fuck! You never fucking listen! If Little Nell dies I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you, you hear me? I’ll fucking kill you. I’m gonna cook your cock and feed it to you and then I’m gonna stab and twist where the hole is. Stab and twist, you hear me? You useless fuck. Can’t even drive in an emergency. Now turn here.” She grabbed the steering wheel and yanked it to the left. Dick could do nothing but slam on the brakes. SMASH! The front end crashed into an oncoming jeep. SMASH! Spinning from the impact, the rear end hit a telephone pole.

Blackness.

Jane in the distance, somewhere in a forest. “Time to die, you fuck.” Lying under some bushes, hoping he won’t be found. “You killed my daughter, you almost killed me, now it’s your turn.” Her feet brush by his face. God, please don’t let her find me. “I’ve been looking forward to this for years. You’ve ruined my life, you useless fool. Now let me destroy yours.” Cold sensation on the stomach. Sharp, cold sensation, slowly moving across. Stomach getting wet. The bush fades and is replaced by those eyes, smiling, gleaming. Lights flashing behind them. “Oh honey, so good to see you’re back with us. I wouldn’t want you to miss your own death.” She grabbed his balls and pulled them up. The cool, sharp pain across his stomach replaced by an even sharper hot pain, zapping like electric shocks through his groin. She held them hard, raised the knife so he could see his blood drip from it and suddenly lunged back, slamming her head against the roof as she did.

“Hold her tight, Jim. Fuck, look what she’s done to him. Don’t worry buddy, we’ve got her.” Clink of metal as one cuff wraps around her wrist.

“Get off me you fuck. This piece of shit killed my daughter.”

“Dead girls don’t groan, lady.” Clink. And with this, Dick noticed Nelly’s voice for the first time.

“Nghhnnn. Oooffsh. Grrzz.”

A strange new feeling fell on Dick as the forest came back into view. Again, in the distance Jane’s voice, now fading: “He’s destroyed everything and you’re arresting ME? What is wrong with you people?”

“Read her her rights, Jim.”

“You have the right to…”

“Shut up dumbfuck. You’re arresting the wrong person. Let me finish him off, it’s all he deserves. Just let me finish him off, then you can arrest me…”

Flowers. Birds. Fairies humming, “Nghhnnn. Oooffsh. Grrzz.” A canopy of green, sunlight filtering in. Nothing else in sight but flowers, birds and fairies. A whole forest to himself. Freedom.

Relief, that’s what it was. Relief. That’s what this is and that’s what that was. Relief. Beer has never tasted so good.

Dick and his daughter were each treated for concussion, cuts and bruises. They kept him in for observation overnight, but wanted to watch Nelly a little longer. He spent some time with her after being discharged, reveling in connecting with the distant princess he had barely gotten to know. When her eyelids dropped, he held her tiny hand until his tears stopped, kissed her on both cheeks and the nose, then a long one on the forehead, placed her hand softly on her chest, stood, felt the pain rush through his body, and limped out of the hospital.

His mind focuses on the beer in his hand. He had always enjoyed a bit of a tipple, but that stopped abruptly the moment Jane became pregnant. She stopped drinking then and made it very clear with those black eyes that he wouldn’t be touching another drop until she did, “out of respect.” Once Little Nell was born, the story changed to, “Now, we wouldn’t want to give the girl a bad example, would we darling?”

Bad example! Dick used to think, As if wielding a knife everywhere you go isn’t a bad example. He chose not to bring it up in conversation, though.

Dick asked the taxi driver to stop at a supermarket, where he picked up a six-pack. Walking through the front door, he expected a great rush of relief to wash over him. He opened the door with a smile, but stopped the instant he stepped inside. Something – God knows what – made him wary. Ohmigod! He thought, I’m that conditioned not to bring grog into the house! He chuckled. “I can do what I want now. There’s nobody to stop me,” he said aloud. “You hear that?” He yelled to an empty house. “There’s nobody to stop me!” He wandered into the kitchen, ripped a beer out of the six-pack, and put the rest in the fridge. My fridge. My house. My life.

Plumped in the chair, beer cracked, long draw out of the can, he flicks on the TV. It’s the news. I wonder if I’m in the news again? Something about the Middle East. Oil and war, they seem to go hand in hand. His mind begins to drift off, sleepy.
“More news just to hand on the escape today from the Centerville courthouse. Two escapees have been captured and are currently being questioned in relation to the murder of a prison guard, whose throat was brutally slashed in the incident. One escapee remains at large. No names have been released at this stage. We will continue to broadcast updates on this shocking incident as they come to hand.”
Not a trace of sleepiness remains now. The moment he walked in the door floods back to him: Chanel No. 5. Only Jane would ensure her perfume was fresh after a breakout. After a murder! Christ, if she’s killed one, I’ve got no chance now.
In the wild, prey will either stop dead still or bolt when being hunted. It is instinctive. Being still makes it harder to be seen but easier to kill. And even when a critter standing stock still knows it has been seen, it is rarely able to move. Fear takes over and stops it. Dead still.
There are footsteps treading slowly, deliberately down the stairs. She’s worse when she’s controlled. When she’s in a frenzy, she tires herself out, gets sidetracked. He can hear the focus in her feet. She reaches the bottom of the stairs. Each step an eternity. She is behind him. Cold steel, sharp, slides across the side of his neck; stops just below his chin, to the left.

“This is where I got him. They say I slashed his throat, but they lied, Dick.”

So much control in her voice.

“I cut him right here. You should have seen the blood spurt out, Dick. I could have shot a man at a hundred paces with it. But what am I saying? Shot? Forgive me, you know I prefer to use this.” She presses hard at his artery and he realizes she is using the blunt side again.

“Our wall’s freshly painted, Dick. You don’t think I’d ruin it with your pathetic blood, do you?” She sidles around the armchair, brushing her ass provocatively by his cheek. “Just think what you would have missed out on if they’d kept me in there, Dick. You know how you can’t live without my pussy.”

I did for three years while you slept with Nelly instead, you bitch.

“Oh look Dick, you’re drinking! That’s not very respectful now, is it? Oh Dick, you know what that means don’t you?” she says, pointing the knife in his face while she lifts his shirt. “Oh Dick! How sweet, they stitched that last one up for you. I think I’ll make this one a little deeper. Stitches heal them too fast, so we need to make up for it, don’t you agree?”

There are different elements to pain. There is the physical aspect: if you bang your finger with a hammer or burn yourself on the stove, it hurts. The physical aspect is instantaneous: stimulus rushes through the nerves and tells the brain, “Ow!” But even more painful than the physical aspect can be the mental one. A big element of torture is psychological: if I tell you what I’m going to do and how it’s going to feel, you’re already experiencing it before I’ve so much as touched you. Pain is as much about what’s going to happen as what already has.

A sharp stab pushes into his stomach and he lets out a short, “Hrhff.”

“Don’t worry, I’m going to take this one nice and slow, Dick. All that alcohol in your system is going to numb the pain a bit. We need to compensate for that, don’t you think? Deep and slow. Deep and slow.

“You know, a lot’s happened this past day, and I hold you responsible for all of it. You know what that means, don’t you? Yes Dick, that’s right: if you’re responsible, you need to suffer the consequences. It’s only fair, Dick.”

She doesn’t just slice across like she usually does. Now she stutters across, stopping and starting randomly, jabbing the knife deep each time she stops. There is no way of telling how long until the slice recommences, and for how far it proceeds. All he knows is that there is more pain to come, that each fresh start is excruciating. It feels like she could reach in and rip his intestines out.

The first slice ends and she sticks it back in just below. “This is for getting me in trouble, Dick.” It feels deeper. Dick wonders how deep she has to press to pierce his bladder.

“You know, you’ve got some major arteries down here somewhere. If I knew more about anatomy, I’d try and avoid them. I’d hate to get your blood all over the house. It’d take too long to clean up, and I’m sick of cleaning up after you, Dick. Sick of it! I like the way your blood matches this chair, so let’s just try to keep it here.”

He feels a warm flow down his abdomen, cooling. His whole body cooling. Two chugs on a can and look at me. Everything blurs: sound, sight, feeling meld into a fuzzy buzz. And then another jag across and everything becomes clear again.

“I almost lost you there, sweetheart. We wouldn’t want that now, would we? Maybe I should speed things up so you can be here for the finale.” She pushes the knife in and draws it across quickly. Pulls it out and stabs it back in, saying as she slashes, “This is for crashing the car.” Then out and back again, “This is for the nightmare I had getting here. Can you imagine how hard it is getting around as an escaped criminal? It’s hell, I tell you. I pity the poor bastard who had to drive me here, his car will take forever to clean.” Out and straight back in again, “This is for making me kill that guard. I didn’t want to, you understand, but you gave me no choice.” He can feel his pubic hair tearing as the congealing blood pooling there sticks to the knife. “Ooh, I think this is the last one, sweetheart. What is this one for? Let’s see … hmmm … this one is just for everything you’ve put me through. It’s for making my life hell, for being such a bad example to Little Nell, for your incompetence,” she is yelling now. “This is because I hate you!” It is hard to tell if and where she is cutting now, there is a dull feeling, a burning, but nothing to distinguish one cut from another.

“Oh sweetheart, look where that leaves us. We’re down to your balls. Oh dear, that can only mean one thing: say goodbye to them Dick, you won’t be needing them anymore.”

There is a yanking at his pants, he feels his butt sliding off the chair. The room turns blue, fades in and out, blue, white, red, blue. At least it’s over. I knew freedom. For a minute, I knew freedom. The lights are beckoning, calling me home. Ah, freedom…

Crash!

I thought this would be more peaceful.

Yells. A scream. More crashing. More screaming. Somewhere out in the distance.

Oh no, this must be hell. I didn’t believe in hell. “No-o-o-o-o! Get me out of here!” He is awake again, eyes pointed at that flashing blue and white ceiling.

“He’s conscious!” A voice, not Jane’s, male.

A face appears in front of him: short, straight black hair, serious brow, strong cheeks, dimpled chin.

“Please remain still sir, the medicos will be here soon. She’s messed you up bad, but you should be okay. Please, just don’t move.”

I don’t, thinks Dick. I never do.