Tarvos
helt plötsligt blev det tyst
This is my first attempt at fiction in a while. It's a short story, pretty much...written pretty quickly today actually.
Burn Stains
“Susan, for the last time, I am not having that thing in the house!” His voice was adamant, and quivering, as if his rage, although internally incandescent, was boiling under the skin. There was a tremor of fear in the last note, as if his anger was slightly tinged by the sudden lapse into a reverie. One that stirred fear, in any case. Fear was always such a motive. One that he could never justify, but would always run him over whenever he needed it to leave.
“Oh, John, not that story again.”
“You always argue for that thing! Always, always, always. Why don’t you just go outside? Why don’t you?”
“I don’t see what the problem is. This house is mine as well as yours.”
“Yeah and I forbid you to use that thing! Go outside if you want… one of those things!”
“Why don’t you just call it by its proper name?”
“Not after… not after the last time.” His tone was ascending. The rage and anger was gradually making place. His voice became almost pleading.
“Oh, shut it, John. I won’t destroy the house.”
“You know what happened to my family?”
“Yes, I do, and I don’t want you to tell me the story again.”
“But if only you would listen, if only you’d lay your ear to me, maybe you’d understand my point.”
“I don’t want to hear it, John. I don’t want to. I don’t want any of your adolescent agonising about what happened in your past. Your shrink told you to forget, now forget.”
“I am not forgetting anything. And you would’ve done the same.”
”None of that was your fault.”
“Yes it was. And you’ll hear it again, because this is the last time I’m having this argument in the house.”
“No, no. I’m not leaving you. Remember what we promised. Remember what they said.”
“This is the last time! THE LAST TIME, I TELL YOU!”
---
Twenty years before…
A flame was lit on the end of a cigarette. Slowly burning, as were it a candle of some sort, one that never goes out, an undying tongue of fire. A finger touched the unburnt side, slowly taking it out of a mouth. Smoke rose into the night sky, little rings of wispy nothing vanishing into a cool breeze. Darkness descended on the doorstep of a lonely house in a lonely land. And as the owner of this cigarette stood up from the front door, righted herself, her dyed black hair swishing in the dying light of the lanterns, she stepped onto the grass.
It had been a warm summer’s day. No, not a summer’s day. More like, a summer’s week. It had been hot and dry for hours and days on end. Normally it rained here (who had heard of week-long droughts in July in England?), but not this year. She was even a little sunburnt. Her teeth were slightly yellow-bared from all the smoking. There was nothing left that was green on the lawn. Out here, you’d need sprinklers to cover the whole lawn anyway. This was not anywhere remotely close to London, or Birmingham. It looked rather pretty, even for a dry summer, out somewhere in the countryside (she never looked at the road signs to tell her where she was), but she didn’t care. This wasn’t her house anyway. She’d been out drinking. She’d been brought home by some guy she didn’t even know. Probably she’d made out with him, but she never remembered anything anyway. She liked the glass too much. Feed her beer, make her gulp down wine, she didn’t care. She sat out here because she liked smoking at night. The guy had kicked her out of the house. He didn’t like smokers in his house. She supposed he was right, but she never cared about anything she did. She just did. Maybe it was the overindulgence on the alcohol that made her do it. She didn’t know. It had been so long since she actually knew anything to any extent more than she knew that the sun shone or that trees were green (come to think of it, that one time she did mushrooms in Amsterdam made her unsure trees were even green) that she didn’t care about anything he said, she said, or what anyone else said for that matter.
“Char, you wanna come in for a minute?”
She ignored this comment, not out of spite or anger, but because she was just genuinely focused on the cigarette. One good thing that cigarettes did for her, were that they made her able to shut out the world. She had never enjoyed being in it. Cigarettes were an escape. Alcohol was an escape. So were other drugs, but she’d never bothered to get her hands on anything more than weed or mushrooms, because she didn’t want to die. She liked her ecstasy.
“Char, what are you doing there?”
A voice, tremulous and quavering, came from the opened front door. A young, handsome man stuck out his head. His brown hair fell neatly over his graceful oval head.
“Nothing. I was just thinking.”
“Were you, now?”
“Yes, sometimes I do that. You’ve never experienced that, just sitting out with a cigarette and a beer and looking at nothing in particular?”
“I don’t smoke. I’ve never tried. They say it gives you cancer.”
“Nonsense.”
“Said so in the newspaper.”
“Who gives a damn about the paper? It’s all media hyping stuff up. You know the press. They’re pigs, all of them.”
“Not the broadsheets.”
“The broadsheets have an agenda too. Everyone has an agenda.”
“Not your societal paranoia again.”
“The press just tells you what they want you to hear. They talk about the PM opening churches, they talk about celebrities buying their next hotshot car, they talk about Madonna’s latest album, but they don’t report anything what happens beyond the Iron Curtain. Nothing. Nothing at all. For all you know, half the world is getting abused and they won’t report it, but they’ll report about smoking because of some half-assed health lobby. That’s if they do, because for all you know, the tobacco industry actually owns the newspaper and they don’t mention it just ‘cause they’ll make more money off you if they do.”
“And you still buy cigarettes.”
“Give a woman her comforts. I need ‘em. If I don’t smoke ‘em, I’ll go mad.”
“You’re already mad. I don’t even know why I took you home tonight.”
“You’re a guy. You wanted sex. I wanted sex. I always want sex.”
“Wish you’d be better at it.”
“Yeah well sex sucks when you’re drunk.”
“Well just come in, it’s getting colder out now.”
“Let me finish my cigarette.”
“No, get in now. You’ve smoked enough.”
“Says you. How do you know I’ve smoked enough when you won’t touch a fag for fear of some disease you’re probably not even getting? You’re such a wuss. Don’t know why I sucked your dick tonight.”
“I said get IN. For God’s sake, you’ve still got weed in your pockets, someone will catch you!”
“Out here? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Fine, you can sleep outside tonight.”
“Oh, making threats, are we? Well, have it your way.”
She took the cigarette from her mouth, threw it onto the pavement, and was about to exterminate it, when it lit a small patch of grass right beside the stone. Evidently, her aim was off. The alcohol still flowed through her body. But as soon as she saw the flames spring up, she recoiled, fear of the fire overtaking her. The cool night wind spread the slowly rising flames. They headed straight for the wooden house.
“Get some water, Charlotte!”
“But…” She stood rooted to the spot.
“CHARLOTTE, DON’T JUST STAND THERE!”
“Why don’t YOU do it?”
“Because...”
“Fuck’s sake, go get some water!”
The handsome boy turned around to walk into the house. Charlotte took another few steps back onto the porch, but right as she wanted to open the door, she smelt the venomous hissing and rising of smoke. It had hit the wooden poles on which the overhanging roof was supported.
“JOHN. JOHN! YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE!” Charlotte yelled. But as she opened the door, a tiny spark hit the straw chairs in front. She could hear John frantically scurrying about the house, looking for a bucket, but the water supplies were drying up. John was never at home (he preferred sleeping out, or working out, whatever his job or social life required), but the one time he brought a girl home, she turned out to be a smoking addict, and he had no water at his disposal. What luck. He turned on the tap. Water trickled slowly into the steel bucket he’d found lying in the shed. Too slow. Too slow, as the flames were now roaring over the front porch, tearing his straw chairs apart as they went. Flames roared up the wooden support. Charlotte panicked, and ran inside. As she traversed the little hall and kitchen, she bumped straight into John, who was trying to run the other way. The heavy bucket he was carrying, filled with water now, upended itself over both their heads, drenching them in cold water as they fell to the ground, and knocking Charlotte against the edge of the table, leaving her body slumped against the wall.
The flames burned ever higher now, only to hit the thatched roof. Even the roof was wooden. This was actually John’s parents’ summer cottage, but since they never came here anymore after a village row with the local inhabitants, and since John had had a row of his own with his parents, he’d fled here and stole the place. His parents knew, but they’d died tragically in a car accident a few months later and so the cottage was left to John. He couldn’t have ever paid the upkeep of his parents’ house, nor did he like the big city bustle of London, so he’d stayed. It was convenient. Very convenient, he thought.
But at that point, John looked up at the roof, and saw flames tearing away at every part of the cottage. He scrambled for the telephone, throwing Charlotte off as he did, choking under the heavy smoke. A last ditch call would save them. But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t move. The smoke was becoming thicker and thicker by the minute, and he couldn’t see a thing. He was never going to find the phone in this mess. He had to get out, get out…suddenly he stumbled upon the back door, reached for the handle, and as it clicked, he crawled out onto the grass on all fours. He scrambled to his feet. He had to get out, get out…
---
Susan had had enough. She walked straight into the hall and out of the house. She had had enough of John’s fearful tendencies, and his thoughts that his fear should allow him to dominate her. She threw open the front door, threw her cigarette carelessly on the ground, and trod away over the pavement. She’d come back later. She’d apologise later. John would be in no state to argue. As she turned and swept the corner, she just missed the first wisps of smoke rise from the neatly mowed front lawn.
Burn Stains
“Susan, for the last time, I am not having that thing in the house!” His voice was adamant, and quivering, as if his rage, although internally incandescent, was boiling under the skin. There was a tremor of fear in the last note, as if his anger was slightly tinged by the sudden lapse into a reverie. One that stirred fear, in any case. Fear was always such a motive. One that he could never justify, but would always run him over whenever he needed it to leave.
“Oh, John, not that story again.”
“You always argue for that thing! Always, always, always. Why don’t you just go outside? Why don’t you?”
“I don’t see what the problem is. This house is mine as well as yours.”
“Yeah and I forbid you to use that thing! Go outside if you want… one of those things!”
“Why don’t you just call it by its proper name?”
“Not after… not after the last time.” His tone was ascending. The rage and anger was gradually making place. His voice became almost pleading.
“Oh, shut it, John. I won’t destroy the house.”
“You know what happened to my family?”
“Yes, I do, and I don’t want you to tell me the story again.”
“But if only you would listen, if only you’d lay your ear to me, maybe you’d understand my point.”
“I don’t want to hear it, John. I don’t want to. I don’t want any of your adolescent agonising about what happened in your past. Your shrink told you to forget, now forget.”
“I am not forgetting anything. And you would’ve done the same.”
”None of that was your fault.”
“Yes it was. And you’ll hear it again, because this is the last time I’m having this argument in the house.”
“No, no. I’m not leaving you. Remember what we promised. Remember what they said.”
“This is the last time! THE LAST TIME, I TELL YOU!”
---
Twenty years before…
A flame was lit on the end of a cigarette. Slowly burning, as were it a candle of some sort, one that never goes out, an undying tongue of fire. A finger touched the unburnt side, slowly taking it out of a mouth. Smoke rose into the night sky, little rings of wispy nothing vanishing into a cool breeze. Darkness descended on the doorstep of a lonely house in a lonely land. And as the owner of this cigarette stood up from the front door, righted herself, her dyed black hair swishing in the dying light of the lanterns, she stepped onto the grass.
It had been a warm summer’s day. No, not a summer’s day. More like, a summer’s week. It had been hot and dry for hours and days on end. Normally it rained here (who had heard of week-long droughts in July in England?), but not this year. She was even a little sunburnt. Her teeth were slightly yellow-bared from all the smoking. There was nothing left that was green on the lawn. Out here, you’d need sprinklers to cover the whole lawn anyway. This was not anywhere remotely close to London, or Birmingham. It looked rather pretty, even for a dry summer, out somewhere in the countryside (she never looked at the road signs to tell her where she was), but she didn’t care. This wasn’t her house anyway. She’d been out drinking. She’d been brought home by some guy she didn’t even know. Probably she’d made out with him, but she never remembered anything anyway. She liked the glass too much. Feed her beer, make her gulp down wine, she didn’t care. She sat out here because she liked smoking at night. The guy had kicked her out of the house. He didn’t like smokers in his house. She supposed he was right, but she never cared about anything she did. She just did. Maybe it was the overindulgence on the alcohol that made her do it. She didn’t know. It had been so long since she actually knew anything to any extent more than she knew that the sun shone or that trees were green (come to think of it, that one time she did mushrooms in Amsterdam made her unsure trees were even green) that she didn’t care about anything he said, she said, or what anyone else said for that matter.
“Char, you wanna come in for a minute?”
She ignored this comment, not out of spite or anger, but because she was just genuinely focused on the cigarette. One good thing that cigarettes did for her, were that they made her able to shut out the world. She had never enjoyed being in it. Cigarettes were an escape. Alcohol was an escape. So were other drugs, but she’d never bothered to get her hands on anything more than weed or mushrooms, because she didn’t want to die. She liked her ecstasy.
“Char, what are you doing there?”
A voice, tremulous and quavering, came from the opened front door. A young, handsome man stuck out his head. His brown hair fell neatly over his graceful oval head.
“Nothing. I was just thinking.”
“Were you, now?”
“Yes, sometimes I do that. You’ve never experienced that, just sitting out with a cigarette and a beer and looking at nothing in particular?”
“I don’t smoke. I’ve never tried. They say it gives you cancer.”
“Nonsense.”
“Said so in the newspaper.”
“Who gives a damn about the paper? It’s all media hyping stuff up. You know the press. They’re pigs, all of them.”
“Not the broadsheets.”
“The broadsheets have an agenda too. Everyone has an agenda.”
“Not your societal paranoia again.”
“The press just tells you what they want you to hear. They talk about the PM opening churches, they talk about celebrities buying their next hotshot car, they talk about Madonna’s latest album, but they don’t report anything what happens beyond the Iron Curtain. Nothing. Nothing at all. For all you know, half the world is getting abused and they won’t report it, but they’ll report about smoking because of some half-assed health lobby. That’s if they do, because for all you know, the tobacco industry actually owns the newspaper and they don’t mention it just ‘cause they’ll make more money off you if they do.”
“And you still buy cigarettes.”
“Give a woman her comforts. I need ‘em. If I don’t smoke ‘em, I’ll go mad.”
“You’re already mad. I don’t even know why I took you home tonight.”
“You’re a guy. You wanted sex. I wanted sex. I always want sex.”
“Wish you’d be better at it.”
“Yeah well sex sucks when you’re drunk.”
“Well just come in, it’s getting colder out now.”
“Let me finish my cigarette.”
“No, get in now. You’ve smoked enough.”
“Says you. How do you know I’ve smoked enough when you won’t touch a fag for fear of some disease you’re probably not even getting? You’re such a wuss. Don’t know why I sucked your dick tonight.”
“I said get IN. For God’s sake, you’ve still got weed in your pockets, someone will catch you!”
“Out here? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Fine, you can sleep outside tonight.”
“Oh, making threats, are we? Well, have it your way.”
She took the cigarette from her mouth, threw it onto the pavement, and was about to exterminate it, when it lit a small patch of grass right beside the stone. Evidently, her aim was off. The alcohol still flowed through her body. But as soon as she saw the flames spring up, she recoiled, fear of the fire overtaking her. The cool night wind spread the slowly rising flames. They headed straight for the wooden house.
“Get some water, Charlotte!”
“But…” She stood rooted to the spot.
“CHARLOTTE, DON’T JUST STAND THERE!”
“Why don’t YOU do it?”
“Because...”
“Fuck’s sake, go get some water!”
The handsome boy turned around to walk into the house. Charlotte took another few steps back onto the porch, but right as she wanted to open the door, she smelt the venomous hissing and rising of smoke. It had hit the wooden poles on which the overhanging roof was supported.
“JOHN. JOHN! YOUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE!” Charlotte yelled. But as she opened the door, a tiny spark hit the straw chairs in front. She could hear John frantically scurrying about the house, looking for a bucket, but the water supplies were drying up. John was never at home (he preferred sleeping out, or working out, whatever his job or social life required), but the one time he brought a girl home, she turned out to be a smoking addict, and he had no water at his disposal. What luck. He turned on the tap. Water trickled slowly into the steel bucket he’d found lying in the shed. Too slow. Too slow, as the flames were now roaring over the front porch, tearing his straw chairs apart as they went. Flames roared up the wooden support. Charlotte panicked, and ran inside. As she traversed the little hall and kitchen, she bumped straight into John, who was trying to run the other way. The heavy bucket he was carrying, filled with water now, upended itself over both their heads, drenching them in cold water as they fell to the ground, and knocking Charlotte against the edge of the table, leaving her body slumped against the wall.
The flames burned ever higher now, only to hit the thatched roof. Even the roof was wooden. This was actually John’s parents’ summer cottage, but since they never came here anymore after a village row with the local inhabitants, and since John had had a row of his own with his parents, he’d fled here and stole the place. His parents knew, but they’d died tragically in a car accident a few months later and so the cottage was left to John. He couldn’t have ever paid the upkeep of his parents’ house, nor did he like the big city bustle of London, so he’d stayed. It was convenient. Very convenient, he thought.
But at that point, John looked up at the roof, and saw flames tearing away at every part of the cottage. He scrambled for the telephone, throwing Charlotte off as he did, choking under the heavy smoke. A last ditch call would save them. But he couldn’t move. He couldn’t move. The smoke was becoming thicker and thicker by the minute, and he couldn’t see a thing. He was never going to find the phone in this mess. He had to get out, get out…suddenly he stumbled upon the back door, reached for the handle, and as it clicked, he crawled out onto the grass on all fours. He scrambled to his feet. He had to get out, get out…
---
Susan had had enough. She walked straight into the hall and out of the house. She had had enough of John’s fearful tendencies, and his thoughts that his fear should allow him to dominate her. She threw open the front door, threw her cigarette carelessly on the ground, and trod away over the pavement. She’d come back later. She’d apologise later. John would be in no state to argue. As she turned and swept the corner, she just missed the first wisps of smoke rise from the neatly mowed front lawn.