Forever After (a dark and funny fantasy novel) (21 page)

             
“I’m tired, we’re both drunk,” he explained. “I had a great time though,” he jumped in, sensing the swarm of alcoholic depression that cut across her features like a relentless blade. “I’d love to do it again sometime. Maybe we can have a nice quiet drink and dinner together,” he hinted.

             
Something sparked on Jessica’s face; she looked like she had just found the cure for the common cold. “Here!” she declared, throwing her arm around to indicate the house. “We can have dinner here. I have drinks.
And
food.”

             
“OK. It’s a date.”

             
She leant forward to kiss him, her eyes closed. Michael was forced backward as she fell into his arms. He placed a kiss on her lips; a spark seemed to connect him with her. He thought he felt something strange, tasted something obscene. Something flashed in his mind with an angry insistence, something quick; something unpleasant. It was her, but it wasn’t her. He pushed her gently away from him, her bare shoulders felt unnervingly cold in his hands. He held her there, staring into her face.

             
She slowly opened her eyes, a smile at first, then a perplexity, on her drunken face. “What’s wrong?” she asked with a wind of alcohol on her breath.

             
Michael felt his body twitch. He snapped out of a momentary fit and returned her bemusement with a warm smile. She looked OK; she smelled OK. He flexed his fingers, still clasped to her shoulders. She was warm, her skin was soft.

             
“Nothing,” he said unsurely.

             
She shook off the momentary strangeness, too drunk to linger. She fiddled with the lock for an indeterminable moment and stumbled into the house, grinning at Michael before closing the door on him.

             
He looked at his hands when she departed, turning them this way and that whilst cursing a muttering stream under his breath.

             
He heard some commotion on the other side of the door and recognised the obtrusive and quizzical voice of her friend and roommate Julia as she unleashed a barrage of questions. He heard a stumbled, mumbled reply, then listened to a pair of hesitant, cumbersome footsteps ascend the staircase.

             
He turned around to leave, saw the curtains in the main room flicker. Julia’s face popped out and glared at him disapprovingly. He gave her a little wave and then left, a skip in his step as he strolled the darkened streets.

5

              He woke up with a breathless start, a dream fresh on his mind.

             
Jessica was there. They were together, arguing. She wasn’t happy, he didn’t seem to mind. Then she left him, just turned away and walked out of his life.

             
He saw himself at that point, watching his own image as if through the eyes of a camera. He saw the misery and helplessness on his own face. The anguish and agony in his tear drenched eyes.

             
Jessica was gone, she had left him. He didn’t know the details, didn’t know why or how, didn’t know what he had said, what he had done or how he had said or done it. She was just gone.

             
He wondered at his own feelings when he woke. He liked her, but he had only known her for a few weeks. Was his subconscious really that anxious that she was going to get up and leave him? Would he be that traumatised if she did? Clearly she would have her reasons and, as much as he liked her, if those reasons revolved around her not feeling the same way, he wouldn’t, surely
couldn’t
, be that affected by it.

             
He dressed lethargically, his mind heavy with thought.

             
He decided to perk himself up with a hefty breakfast and a few cups of coffee. Joseph was a renowned cook and would put Michael on the breakfast order without a moment’s thought.

             
By the time he made it down the spiralling staircase, bypassing one of the lodgers on the way -- a short woman with a rodent smile and wiry blonde hair -- Michael had already forgotten about the dream and the emotion it invoked. When he made it to the dining room, he also forgot about his hunger.

             
Samson sat alone in the room at the head of an empty table, his eyes pinned on the entrance that Michael strode cautiously though. He looked serious. The carefree demeanour was stripped from his wizened face, his knuckles pressed sternly and thoughtfully under his chin.

             
Michael flopped down opposite and absently picked at a crusted mark on the table top -- the remnants of a previous breakfast.

             
“What is it this time?” he queried.

             
“It’s about Jessica,” Samson said simply.

             
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Michael spat tiredly. “Not this again--” he paused, stared darkly at his superior. “How do you know her name?”

             
Across from him Samson merely shrugged his shoulders, a gesture that indicated there wasn’t much he didn’t know.

             
“What do you have against her?” Michael demanded. “Or is it
us
that you have something against? Is it because she’s alive?”

             
“That’s not--”

             
“I’m going to continue seeing her,” Michael interjected.

             
Samson sighed. He rocked back in his seat. A cup of coffee had grown stale and cold in front of him, a thin spoon lolled about lazily on its scummed surface. He reached out and flicked the spoon, watching it dance its way around the cup.

             
“What is wrong anyway?” Michael said, thrown by the dejected nature of the typically composed man opposite.

             
Samson glanced up soulfully. “I don’t know how to tell you this...” he said deeply.

             
“Try.”

             
He shook his head, rejecting whatever notion his mind had just offered. “You have feelings for this girl right?”

             
“Yes, of course. We get along.” Michael offered little, not wanting to commit himself to her before their relationship progressed.

             
“I think you should call it a day.” Samson deflated as he spoke, as if he knew his words weren’t going to be well received.

             
“You have got to be fucking kidding me!” Michael threw his hands down on the table. “What the fuck is this? First you leave me in the shit, drop me in the middle of fucking nowhere, tell me fuck all about what I’m doing here and what this place even
is
, and then this?” he stood up defiantly, his calves kicking back his chair which skidded with screeching fluidity across the floor before toppling over.

             
“Calm down,” Samson offered up his hands: “Calm down.”

             
“
You
fucking calm down,” Michael said angrily, throwing his hands. “How dare you come here and try to dictate my fucking love life!”

             
“It's not like that,” Samson tried to explain, growing more animated. “If you would just listen--”

             
Michael roared: “Get the fuck out of my sight!”

             
Samson stood slowly. He faced up to Michael, a pleading and sympathetic look in his eyes. Michael’s anger wouldn’t allow him to see it. He stared straight through Samson until the older man backed down, strafing around his former protégé and leaving through the kitchen door.

             
Michael heard Joseph and Mary on the other side, the smell of toast and sizzling bacon broke on a wave of muffled discontent.

****

              He paced around his room with the timer held tightly in his hand. Nothing today; nothing all week, beyond that, who knew. It felt weighty and cold in his hand, an empty digital screen awaiting news of another demise.

             
He was angry, in that moment he hated his job and his responsibilities more than ever. He felt like a retaliatory teenager stuck in the throes of parental oppression. A small part of mature logic niggled at the back of his mind, trying to calm him down and telling him to come to his senses, but he ignored it -- forced it away on a torrent of righteous aggression. Samson had ignored him and then betrayed him, trying to end the one good thing that had happened since the curse of immortality had been bestowed.

             
He threw the timer across the room, revelling in the cathartic anger that surged from his muscle as the device was violently propelled against the wall. The plaster chipped, a bright white dent in the soft blue paint. The timer lumped to the floor without a scratch, its screen still alight and patiently waiting.

             
Michael ignored it. He grabbed his jacket and left.

             
When he returned in the evening he continued to ignore the device, kicking it under the bed where it nestled into an unseen clump of forgotten clothing. The following day he didn’t have breakfast at the B&B, instead he chose to dine on a sandwich and a coffee from a local cafe. On the second and third night he continued to ignore the timer. He also ignored Mary and Joseph -- the couple that had unconditionally sheltered him for a year -- and left the building as early as he could to avoid their attentions.

             
On the fourth night he saw Jessica for dinner. On the sixth he took her bowling. By the eighth day he was seeing Jessica every night, no longer concerned with his job or with the timer, which gathered dust underneath his bed.

****

              After a few weeks Michael had almost forgotten about his argument with Samson. He was happy, ecstatic in his new relationship. He had been with Jessica for a month and had slept with her for the first time, then the second, third, fourth. When they started they couldn’t stop, he felt alive for the first time since his death.

             
He saw her every day. She had taken a break from her studies -- he suspected it was because of him, because of
them
, but he didn’t mind. He wanted what was best for her but the relationship was young and fresh, and seeing her took selfish priority over everything else.

             
They had been together for a month when Michael took her out for a slap-up meal. He spared no expense and blew a fortnight's pay on an expensive dinner. He didn’t have much money but what he did have he spent, and as he had abandoned his chance of finding more work -- if there
was
any, he hadn’t seen the timer for a few weeks -- there was little chance he could recoup that money. Yet when he left the restaurant, broke, penniless and practically destitute, he was happy, because Jessica was happy.

             
“You shouldn’t have gone to all that trouble,” she told him, her head peeking around from the crook of his arm.

             
“It’s our months’ anniversary,” he said proudly.

             
Jessica smiled timidly and slipped back under his embrace.

             
A wobbling hen party, an olfactory concoction of cheap perfume, cheap wine and desperation, waddled by. One of them brushed passed Michael; he felt her heavy breasts clap against his left elbow. He turned to look at her as she passed, preparing to offer or receive an apology. She beamed back with an unashamed lick of her glossy lips.

             
She seemed to be horny; Michael felt a little sick to his stomach. She looked like a morbidly obese siren; her fat folds flopped out of her mini skirt and tank-top like bread dough in an overfilled tin. She walked backwards whilst she tried to entice him, her heels hit a chip in the pavement and she stumbled like a flip-flopping Jabba the Hut before being saved by a heavyset friend.

             
“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath as they gathered themselves and clip-clopped their cheapened heels away from the scene, their scents dissipating and their raucous voices fading.

             
“Except,” she said slowly, ignoring the horny women. “You know that
technically
it isn’t.”