Wild Stacks

Wild Stacks / issue 0 / 2010

LOCO MORTIS

By MIKE CHINN

You can do it, you know you can. Just pick up that bread-knife. A little pressure, a deep slice – perhaps a little pain… And then…

No? But you will one day. I know you will. You must.

So – the kitchen makes you restless, does it? Take that chicken sandwich through the breakfast room, then – not much in there for me to work on here: just a table and potted plants – and into the lounge. Yes – sit down and look bleakly at the inactive TV. Enjoy a moment’s respite. I can be generous. I have the time.

I have little else.

After all, you’re a woman alone – alone in this house. Alone in miles of wilderness. Alone, alone.

Except for me, of course.

Ah – but then you’re not aware of me, are you? At times I forget. You’re so real to me, the house so solid; I forget our little differences…

More than you ever could…

But I’m still going to do my best for you. Bring about our reconciliation.

Yes, switch on the TV – maybe you’ll get an electric shock. That could do it. No? You just play with the buttons, fingers fluttering nervously. Perhaps you can sense me after all. I hope so.

Just settle back and relax. I’ll sit here at your side, nuzzle up to you. You’re a very attractive woman, you know. I’ve always been a sucker for long black hair, and – well – I take it where I can get it. Right?

Let me just whisper in your delicate little ear:

Kill yourself.

Hell! I might as well be talking to myself. If I could talk, that is. I have no mouth, but I must tell you something very important:

Kill yourself!

Oh – eat your damned sandwich! Maybe you’ll choke on a chicken bone or something – though I’m not at all sure that’d be right.

What’s your name, by the way? I may have known once – but that’s something else I seem to have forgotten. No brain: no memory.

Ha-ha.

Oh, this is wasting time! I wish you’d go back into the kitchen – this lounge is too safe. Out there are countless beautifully sharp things with polished edges. And there’s the oven. Except it’s electric – and who’s heard of anyone committing suicide in a fan-assisted electric oven?

Yes – that’s it! Get up; go out – No, not upstairs! I know the stairs are open: you could slip easily and plunge back into the hallway. But a broken back or neck won’t necessarily kill you. Besides, I’m certain accidents don’t count.

Ah – the bathroom! Yes! What’s in the cabinet there? Pills! Sleeping pills, paracetamol, valium? Take some – make a cocktail, why don’t you? Just drift away as your kidneys and liver give up the ghost…

Ha-ha-ha!

Give up the ghost! That’s a good one…

Kill yourself!

Damn! I wish you could hear me! An insistent, urgent voice whispering gently in your mind: do it! Do it do it do it!

So, you’re going to use the toilet. Well, don’t mind me – I’ve no pride. I don’t have much of anything, truth to tell.

And it’s all your fault! Your fault!

Just kill yourself, will you! Get on with it! I don’t care how – I don’t know how! Painful or painless as you like. The sight of blood’s not going to upset me; what am I going to do, throw up? But I can’t take much more of this waiting, this hanging around. I know I said I had nothing but time – I lied, okay! You might not care – but I do!

Listen to me. What a temper; nearly as bad as yours. Bad for the blood pressure.

Ha-bloody-ha.

Finished? Don’t forget to wash your hands – hygiene in all things. Let’s go. Unless you’re planning to drown yourself in the bath, there’s no point hanging on here, is there?

Hanging on.

How long have I been hanging on now? I don’t know. I forget – there are many things I forget…

I’ll tell you something: my memory’s not what it was. And I’ll tell you something else: my memory’s not what it was—

Oh, God – stop it! Can I go insane? Is that allowed? Is it even possible? How can you lose a mind you don’t have!

End it please. End

(kill yourself)

it now!

Into the first bedroom, then. Wander aimlessly around the double bed, fingers touching the fitted wardrobe as you pass. Look out the window at a garden that looks colourless in the flat, grey daylight. Perhaps you’d like to go out there, take the shears from the shed and start on the privet…? And when you’ve finished pruning the hedge, you could lop off a few bits of yourself… A possibility, eh? Though I don’t know how easy it would be to stab yourself to death with hedge shears. They always manage in the films – but then that’s Hollywood. This is real life.

Of a sort.

No, you’ll never go outdoors. That much I know.

So, we leave this room, cross the landing to the front bedroom. Nothing of use in here either. You might fall over the piles of stuff dumped here because there’s nowhere else for it to go, and break your neck. But there seems to be no reason to go inside. You should have tidied this place up, you know. There’s no excuse for it.

Okay, I don’t blame you leaving this place. The study, then. Slide open the door, review another room filled with clutter – but this time it looks like deliberate destruction. Pencils are snapped, pens and markers crushed, several bottles of red ink thrown against the walls. What appears to be the contents of a document shredder scattered over anything that can’t be smashed—

What’s this? Tears? Are we getting close after all?

Of course! This would have been the child’s bedroom, if life had been kinder. But you and your husband swallowed the tears. He converted it into a sort of office for his word-processor and failed literary dreams.

And now he’s gone too, hasn’t he? In a manner of speaking, anyway.

Oh yes – I can see it in your face. Behind the fresh tears. They course down your cheeks, drip off your face, but never reach the carpet. We’re beyond reaching anything or anyone, you and I.

Yes! Down to the kitchen again

(mind the stairs!)

and stand there looking at its pristine surfaces. The electric carving knife with neatly coiled flex. The drawer of mirror-polished knives.


Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.

Will it be this time. Will you

(kill yourself)

do it for me this time. Or will it remain forgotten one more time. The great unknown that separates us, has separated us, will separate us. Until you remember. Remember for us both.

As you reach to slice the bread and carve the chicken, I can feel it starting to fade again… My memory becomes as insubstantial as me…

You must kill yourself again. You must remember how…

Remember what you did…

I can’t help you. I’ve forgotten too. But you have my undivided attention at last – just like you always wanted.

Once you remember correctly, I’ll know. We’ll both know.

Then we can leave.

Together again.



© Mike Chinn. Originally published in the Birmingham Evening Mail. Used with permission