Fry Light Zone 2.

The Road to Damascus.

“SMILE”! 

Their small section of the room was momentarily filled with a flashlight which would have made Saul on the road to Damascus question the spelling of his name.  Mike hung onto Amanda whilst looking into the tiny Cyclopean retina positioned on the rear of the mobile phone facing them. The device was attached to the hand of a girl full of cheap vodka purchased in the local off licence/Post Office.  Only one of those esteemed establishments deserved capitals in Mike’s opinion.  Mike was old school.  Not for him the early morning chats around the water cooler regarding the previous night’s X Factor wannabees.  Mike liked his celebs to have earned their chops.  Lately it seemed that a lot of the Celebs Mike worshipped as a kid had all liked children they could worship in a completely different manner.  This did not stop Mike from his opinions.  Fame and celebrity should be earned, as should love.

He and Amanda had argued about this many times.  The picture taken, Mike loosened his grip on her and looking into her eyes realised not for the first time that he didn’t love her anymore.  She was beautiful.  She was clever.  She was everything a man could want.  She had changed in the last couple of months though and looking at her now, her eye’s slightly glazed by what he suspected was one too many Pinot Grigio, he again realised that she wasn’t what he had ever wanted.  She was what, he perceived, all of his mates had ever wanted.  She was everything his family had ever wanted.  Not him. 

His true love was at the bar.  She was deemed by others to be ordinary.  Not in his eyes.  In his eyes, when he had met her and seen that smile with those eyes he had ascended to another plain.  A plain where three dimensions couldn’t begin to contain the love within Mike.  He glanced over at her.  Why had he invited her?  He hadn’t seen her in over ten years or something like that.  What was she doing here?  She looked back and catching his gaze pointed at Amanda.  She smiled as she did so and Mike was terrified to see that smoke was rolling from her mouth and her eyes were missing, replaced by dark sockets drooling weblike matter from them.  She turned her back and Mike forgot his anxiety as a child forgets fear when held in strong arms.

Back at the table Mike looked at his Fiance.  This was what this gathering of folks was celebrating.  This engagement of Mike and Amanda.  She looked stunning.  If she had been with one of his mates he might have really fancied her.  She had been the girl no one could get.  The girl in College all the lads had lusted after but never had the guts to ask out.  A few brave souls had attempted to lure her into their webs at the end of a nightclub dance, but Amanda had been like Teflon to their adolescent sticky nests.  That was until Mike had kissed her.  After that moment, there was only one for her.

Mike looked at Amanda, brushing her hair from her shoulder and kissed her on her forehead.

“I love you”. He said. She smiled.  Behind her, Mike noticed a child crying.   The young boy was looking for his parents, but no guardians were forthcoming.  Mike looked around to see whom this infant belonged to.  When he looked back, the boy was gone.

“What was…Mandy, did you see that?” he said but Amanda was lost in the crowd appreciating the coos and the compliments being paid to her.  Mike realised that he needed to use the Men’s room.  Shrugging away the image of the child Mike stood and walked to the nearest toilets.  He stumbled slightly.  The lager he’d been drinking must have been stronger than he was used to.  For the life of him he couldn’t remember ordering more than his first pint.  He passed a couple of people he did not recognise.  They seemed disturbed, angry almost.  Mike asked them who they were.  “We’re who should have had him.”  With that they turned and walked away.

Mike walked into the toilet.  It was empty.  He stood against the urinal and passed the lager he no longer remembered drinking into the bowl.  Except no urine came out.  He looked into the bowl.  He felt the emission being passed, but no evidence of it was forthcoming.  At this point he began to smell the burnt hair and heard the toilet door being opened.   He turned hoping not to see what had come out, but to wake from this nightmare. 

He did not wake.  The man walking out of the cubicle was missing most of his peripheral appendages as they had already been burnt away.  His nose, ears, eyelids and hair were gone replaced by an acrid melted plot disguised as a face.  He was wearing the remnants of an old raincoat which like his face was mostly melted into oblivion.  Mike tried to scream but the pungent smoke would not allow him to make more than a choking utterance.  Dropping low he crawled out of the Gentleman’s Room and made it onto the corridor.

Mike’s true love was stood there.  She was as beautiful as he had ever remembered.  She was holding her arms out to embrace him.  He walked towards her.  She smiled and Mike remembered that she was dead.  She had died ten years earlier.  He had wanted her, but she had not wanted him.  He had hit her head.  She had not put up a fight merely dying in his arms.  He had stolen a car and placed her in the back seat.   Mike had driven to a common ground and set fire to the car.  He remembered now that a man had seen him in the rain.  Mike had hit him.  The old fool had deserved it.  As he felt his true loves crusted flaking lips lock onto his mouth and tasted her petrol soaked tongue Mike finally understood what was happening.  His last thought was where had the young boy come from?

EXCERPT FROM THE EVENING ECHO: 

“Following an accident on the A142 it has been announced that the two fatalities have been named locally as Amanda Byers (25) and Michael Yentz (30).  They had been driving home from their engagement party when for no known reason their vehicle left the road hitting a tree resulting in the newly engaged couple sustaining fatal injuries.”

The above excerpt was accompanied by a photograph of the couple taken at their engagement party.

SMILE!!!!

The room was momentarily filled with a flashlight, which would have made Saul on the road to Damascus question the spelling of his name.  Amanda smiled at the mobile phone.  She was so happy, she hadn’t told Mike this yet, but she was pregnant.......

Fry Light Zone.

From a story My 12 year old daughter told me in February 2015.

Snip Snip Snip.

I awake far too soon, visions from a dream long forgotten still playing in my mind like the stench of burnt toast hours after the offending charred items have been discarded.   Something has woken me, and I know that it’s not right.  As I struggle to gather my bearings as to who I am, what I am, and where I am, I hear the sound which has dragged me into the here and now as opposed to the there and then.  It’s a scream, but more importantly than that it’s a scream I recognise.  It’s my daughter’s scream.  She’s called Elsie.   She is 13.  She is supposed to be sleeping in the bedroom above mine.  She is screaming.

I immediately fling myself out of the bed and grab blindly but successfully for the baseball bat I call “Silencer” and find myself running up the curving, newly carpeted staircase onto the top floor of our house.  There in front of me, I see Elsie’s bedroom door.  It’s the same door that was there when we moved in, but she has posted photographs and posters all over it.  The most recognisable and common face on the door is that of her Mothers, but that’s all we have of her now since she went.  Just because she left us doesn't mean she's gone.

I run into her bedroom, and the first things I see are ripped pieces of blanket.  The next thing I see is Elsie.  She’s lying on the bed with a torn duvet barely covering her.  I now realise that the ripped pieces of duvet covering the bedroom floor are not actually badly ripped, but slit.  They look like a blade has sliced them. I look at Elsie and am amazed to see that she is smiling.  “What the hell…” I say before realising that she isn’t smiling.  She is manic.  “What the hell?”  I say.

She looks at me and without losing her terrifying gaze says “How can I know you're Dad?”  I look at her and walk towards her with arms out wanting a hug, but she screams again.  “You’re it, I know you are……just tell me who you are?” This she bellows with that manic look upon her face.  “I’m your Dad, I’m Jim, your Mum was called Becca, and she had to go away because she did not know what she wanted, but I know what I want, and I’m begging you, tell me what has happened?” I reply and this seems to do the job.

She relaxes and explains what has happened.  “I woke up this morning Dad, and there was a man in my bedroom.  He had a pair of scissors and told me that bad things were going to happen.  He said that I had to hide under the duvet and he was going to cut around the outside of it.  Anything that was sticking out from underneath would be cut off along with the eiderdown.  Gristle, bone or flesh would all meet with the same ending.  I hid underneath the duvet and could hear the snip,  snip, snip, of the scissors as the blades slid thorough the fabric.

I made myself as small as I could, but he just kept on slicing until eventually he started to hit my flesh.”  I gaze at my daughter as she raises a hand showing fingers covered in freshly gathered nips garnering welts about to be scabbed.  “Dad, that’s when I screamed, and he ran into the wardrobe.  He’s still there now.  Dad, please take me downstairs.  He’s scared of you.  Please get me out of here!”

I find my fingers tightening on the “Silencer”.  I walk towards the wardrobe.  I am not going to let this monster free to terrorise another family.  I progress with the realisation that he is in there.  I am out here.   I am not a child.  He is not going to put another family through this.  Breathing heavily and raising the “Silencer” into the air I open the wardrobe door.

The wardrobe is empty, except for Elsie.  Her finger and toes are bleeding and she is crying.  She looks at me and says “Dad, there’s something in my bed.”

I turn and realise that I was mistaken.  It is smiling.

23/09/2015