‘I hope you’re not saying that was his fault. He works hard. He’s a good boy.’
He hides a smile behind his hand. He is trembling with fear, but now laughter overwhelms him, and he has to fake a panic attack before someone realizes that the pale young man with the blue eyes is actually laughing fit to split —
Later, he can pinpoint the moment. It is a thunderous sensation, something like orgasm, something like grace. The colours around him brighten, expand; words take on dazzling new shades; scents are enhanced; he shivers and sobs and the world blisters and cracks like paint, revealing the light of eternity —
The female PC (there’s always one) offers him a handkerchief. He takes it and scrubs his face, looking scared and guilty but laughing still, though she, the woman, who is twenty-four and might be pretty out of that uniform, takes his tears as a sign of distress, and puts a hand on his shoulder, feeling strangely maternal —
It’s OK, son. It’s not your fault.
And that ominous taste at the back of his throat, the taste he associates with childhood, with rotten fruit and petrol and the sickly rose-scent of bubblegum, recedes once more like a bank of cloud, leaving only blue skies in its wake, and he thinks —
At last, I’m a murderer.
Post comment:
chrysalisbaby: woot woot! blueeyedboy kicks ass
Captainbunnykiller: ‘Mrs Electric Blue pleasuring herself into the grave . . .’ Dude. There’s a scene I’d give money to read. How about it, huh?
Jesusismycopilot: YOU’RE SICK. I HOPE YOU KNOW THAT.
blueeyedboy: I’m aware of my condition, thanks.
chrysalisbaby: well i don’t care i think ur awesome
Captainbunnykiller: Yeah, man. Ignore the troll. Those fucktards wouldn’t know good fic if it jumped up and bit them in the ass.
Jesusismycopilot: YOU ARE SICK AND YOU WILL BE JUDGED.
JennyTricks: (post deleted).
ClairDeLune: If these stories upset you, then please don’t come here to read them. Thank you, blueeyedboy, for sharing this. I know how hard it must be to express these darker feelings. Well done! I hope to read more of this story as it develops!
9
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.
Posted at: 23.25 on Wednesday, January 30
Status: restricted
Mood: unrepentant
Listening to: Kansas: ‘Carry On Wayward Son’
No, I don’t take it personally. Not everyone appreciates the value of a well-written fic. According to many, I am sick and depraved and deserve to be locked up, or beaten to a pulp, or killed.
So, everyone’s a critic, right? I get a lot of death threats. Most are rants from the God squad: Jesusismycopilot and friends, who always write in capitals, with little punctuation except for a forest of exclamation points that rises above the main text like the upraised spears of a hostile tribe, and who tell me YOUR SICK! (sic) and THE DAY IS AT HAND! and that Yours Truly will BURN IN H*LL (!!!) WITH ALL THE QUEERS AND PEDOPHILES!
Well, thanks. There are headcases everywhere. A newbie, who calls herself JennyTricks, has become a regular visitor, posting comments on all of my fics on a rising scale of outrage. Her style is poor, but she makes up for it in vitriol; leaves no term of abuse unused; promises me a world of hurt if ever she gets her hands on me. I doubt she will, however. The Internet is a safe house, close as the confessional. I never post my details. Besides, their anger gives me a buzz. Sticks and stones, dude; stones and sticks.
But seriously, I love the applause. I even enjoy the occasional hiss. To provoke a reaction with words alone is surely the greatest victory. That’s what my fiction is for. To incite. To see what reactions I can collect. Love and hate; approval and scorn; judgement and anger and despair. If I can make you punch the air, or feel a little sick, or cry, or want to do violence to me — or to others — then isn’t that a privilege? To creep inside another mind, to make you do what I want you to do —
Doesn’t that pay for everything?
Well, the good news is — apart from the fact that my headache is gone — that I now have more time to indulge. One of the advantages of sudden unemployment is the amount of leisure it provides. Time to pursue my interests, both on and offline. Time, as my mother says, to stop and smell the roses.
Unemployment? Well, yes. I’ve had some trouble recently. Not that Ma knows that, of course. As far as my mother is concerned, I still work at Malbry Infirmary, the details unclear, but plausible — at least to Ma, who barely finished school and whose medical knowledge, such as it is, is taken from the Reader’s Digest and from the hospital soaps she likes to watch in the afternoons.
Besides, in a way, it’s almost true. I did work at the infirmary — I worked there for nearly twenty years — though Ma never really knew what I did. Technical operations of some kind — also a partial truth of sorts — in a place in which everyone’s job description contains either the word operator or technician; I was until recently one of a team of hygiene technicians operating two shifts a day and attending to such vital responsibilities as: mopping, sweeping, disinfecting, wheeling out the rubbish bins and general maintenance of toilets, kitchens and public areas.
In layman’s terms, a cleaner.
My secondary, even more dangerous job — again, at least, until recently — was that of day carer for an elderly man, wheelchair-bound, for whom I used to cook and clean; on good days I’d read, or play music on scratchy old vinyl, or listen to stories I already knew, and later I’d go looking for her, for the girl in the bright-red duffel coat —
As of now, I have more time, and much less chance of being caught in the act. My daily routine hasn’t changed. I get up in the mornings as usual, dress for work, care for my orchids, park the car in the infirmary car park, pick up my laptop and briefcase, and spend the day at leisure in a series of Internet cafés, catching up on my f-list, or posting my fiction on badguysrock away from my mother’s suspicious eye. After four I often drop by at the Pink Zebra café, where there is a minimal chance of my running into Ma or her friends, and which offers Internet access for the price of a bottomless pot of tea.
Given my own choice of venue, I think I’d prefer something a little less bohemian. The Pink Zebra is rather too informal for me, with its wide-mouthed American cups, and its Formica-topped tables, and chalked Specials boards and the noise of its many patrons. And the name itself, that word, pink, has a most unfortunate pungency that takes me back to my childhood, and to our family dentist, Mr Pink, and of the smell of his old-fashioned surgery with its sugary, sickly odour of gas. But she likes it. She would. The girl in the bright red duffel coat. She likes her anonymity among the café’s clientele. Of course, that’s an illusion. But it’s one I’m willing to grant her — for now. One last unacknowledged courtesy.
I try to find a table close by. I drink Earl Grey — no lemon, no milk. That’s what my old mentor, Dr Peacock, drank, and I have acquired the taste myself; not entirely usual for a place like the Pink Zebra, that serves organic carrot cake and Mexican spiced hot chocolate, and acts as a refuge for bikers and Goths and people with multiple piercings.