Crime, Thrillers & Mystery / Blood Inheritance Part 1

  I knocked on the door, a quiet, cowardly knock.  There was no reply.  After five minutes, screwing up what little courage I had, I knocked again.  I heard shuffling inside.  I started to back away, questioning my reason for being here, questioning my resolve, the same way I always question everything,  The same way I prevaricate and procrastinate and waste time until all the choices are taken away from me…
  The door opened.  She stood, silhouetted in the light from the flickering bulb in the hallway.  I had to smile.  It looked like her halo was sputtering.
  My eyes got used to the light.  I looked at her.  I really looked at her for the first time in so long.
  I don’t think I hid the disgust that flickered across my face very well.
  My eyes slid away from her, and took in the apartment behind her.  Faded green wood lined the doorway of her flat.  That sputtering bulb splashed the dull beige walls and grey carpets with harsh light.  I stared at what little there was to stare at, until I couldn’t avoid looking at her again.
  ’Oh,’ She muttered, peeling a cigarette away from her thin lips and exhaling in a blast of narrow smoke.  ’Its you.  What are you doing here?’  The question hung in the air, and I opened my mouth to answer it, but all I could do was gape at the state of her.
  Her head seemed to large for her emaciated body, a heavy weight balancing improbably atop a tapered neck.  I seemed to remember that neck being elegant, and adorned with beautiful jewellery.  That was a million years ago.
  ’Well?’  She barked, the moment having stretched a little too long for her liking.  This was more familiar.  Her impatience, her inability to endure silence or contemplation.  Her perfunctory manner, her…
  ’Oi!  What.  Are.  You.  Doing.  Here?’  She enunciated each word, handling it like a weapon, ready to be hurled.  ’I see.  I get it.  I knew it would happen.’  She sniffed.  ’You’re gone soft in the head, haven’t you?  You a retard now, or what?’
  I grimaced, and finally spoke.
  ’Sorry, I just… I was a little surprised.’
  ’By me?  Yeah, that sounds sensible, doesn’t it.  I would be surprised too if I knocked on somebody’s door and the person who lived answered it,’ she took another drag.  ’Yeah, I can see how you might be surprised.’  She sneered, and her thin nostrils wrinkled in a way that, once, might have been attractive.
  Not anymore.
  I looked at her.  I remembered a time when sarcasm had been a cutting part of her arsenal, guara Now, it simply highlighted the lack that was the essence of her physical being.  An emptiness that yawned from her, sucking the heat from her surroundings and rendering everything a tepid monochrome.
  From her faded, lank peroxide locks, to the fish-belly white of her thighs flashing through the grubby pink bathrobe, to the faint blue veins that crossed the skin across her neck, wrists and those thighs.  Everything about her was faded, jaded, mute and dying.
  The young man standing in the doorway took it all in, and swallowed convulsively.  ‘I don’t really want anything,’ he continued saying.  ‘I just wanted to… to say hello.’
  ‘Well,’ she drew on the cigarette, and drew on the moment, making it last.  He watched her take her time and pleasure, the nicotine infused smoke caressing her lungs, pulling her into a temporary slumber.  His world was on hiatus.  He stood still, waiting, ill at ease, for the moment to end.
  The expulsion of air from her longs released him, and the world moved back up to normal speed.
  ‘You’ve said hello,’ she grunted at last.  ‘Now piss off.’  She moved back and grabbed the door.
  ‘Wait,’ he said, louder than he had intended.  She stopped, wariness warring with curiosity on her strange, washed out face.  Watery blue eyes, red-rimmed, glared at him.  His mind raced for something to say, and all his plans, everything that he had rehearsed before coming here, flashed before his eyes and then vanished, leaving him with this vacuum of space and no words with which to fill it.
  ‘Well?’ She said.  It seemed to be her favourite word.  His mind struggled for something to say, something that would keep her talking for a little while longer, just so that he could understand.  He felt close, not to her, but to an answer.  His eyes narrowed as he caught a whiff of stale perfume and a pungent, particularly feminine odor.
  ‘I… I’m a graduate,’ he started.  ‘Went to university.  Started off with medicine, but it wasn’t for me.  Kind of broke off, went traveling, but I came back.  Did psychotherapy.  I’m qualified and everything.’  He watched her face for some sign of approval.  She twitched into a sneer.
  ‘Well la-di-da.  Who’d’ve guessed my wrinkled arse could produce a swot.  Psychotherapy eh?  Wot, so you tell people why they can’t stop wanking?  Why they cheat on their wives?’
  He didn’t react to her comments.  He simply watched her.  She was curious; angry and spiteful, but definitely curious.  She moved back into the doorway, back to her position leaning heavily on the faded, peeling door-frame.
  ‘So tell me,’ she took another deep drag, and then continued.  ‘Mister big bollocks psychotherapist,’  She looked him in the eye.  ‘Could you explain why a mother would hate her baby from the moment it was born?’
  His heart skipped a beat.  He held his breath and schooled his face to stillness.
  So they were here.  At the place he wanted to be.  Talking about the thing that he wanted – no, needed to talk about.  It happened sooner than he had anticipated, it was unexpected.  He felt a little lost, off course.  But it was what he wanted.  It was why he was here.
  ‘Perhaps,’ he said, slowly. ‘Perhaps if I could explain,’ he hesitated, watching her face carefully for any tell tale signs.  Her sneer hadn’t changed, and her blood shot eyes glittered with cold bile.  He wanted to laugh, but he dared not.  He needed answers, and she needed to believe that she had some power over him, otherwise she would simply shut the door and he would be at another dead end.
  ‘May I come in,’ he asked.  He kept his eyebrows raised, and his mouth slightly down-turned.
  Sad face number five.  The majority of parents would feel some tug of sympathy if the expression were to be worn by their offspring.  This woman would probably feel a grim satisfaction, he surmised.
She would invite him in, thinking that she would cause him more pain than she could by simply shutting the door in his face.
  ‘Fine, get yer swotty arse inside,’ she grumbled, then stalked into the gloomy hallway.
  He stood outside the door for a brief moment, and took a mental snapshot.  The grey skyline, the concrete walkway and the sounds of cars.  Children swearing and running on walkways beneath and above him.  This rundown council estate in the heart of London, in the midst of some of the wealthiest people in the country.  It stood out like a sore, like a blemish hidden gently.  The grime and dirt, the elevators stinking of piss, the shouts of angry spouses and newborn babies.
  Behind and below a concrete arena squatted.  A concrete basketball court, surrounded by a mesh cage.  He heard the familiar sound of a basketball being battered against the loosening gravel of the court.
  He breathed it in, held it close, and then exhaled.  He stepped forward, out of the light, and into the darkness.