Chapter 53
It happened so fast.
The desk came crashing down, monitors, half-filled mugs of tea, thick business books, the weights and all. The mechanism, a folding crossbeam of thick metal reinforced with springs, snapped shut with a bang.
The crowd fell silent.
And then the director screamed.
Alan and a few of the others rushed to try and lift the standing desk, but the mess of bone and gore had jammed the mechanism shut.
No one could move her or the desk. Too heavy.
Too painful. I knew from memory it would be an hour before the ambulance would arrive.
Then another hour before the firemen came to cut around the mess.
All the while the director had to sit next to her mangled hand, face grey, forehead beaded with sweat, as the poor secretary kept trying to keep her spaniel from licking the blood.
The director lost two fingers and much of the use of the remaining two. I can still see that bloody fingernail, immaculate and hot pink, dangling from the metal.
Back then I’d frozen with shock, unable to do anything afterwards. I’d only meant to scare her, at least, I think I had. I don’t know now. I hadn’t really thought it through. I’d been so angry. I’d just wanted her to stop laughing.
Everyone had seen me next to the desk, but no one had noticed me pull the latch.
And it was so overloaded with Alan’s things there was every reason to believe it had collapsed by itself.
No one could prove I’d done it. But the police took me in, anyway, for questioning.
I was saved by the director deciding not to press charges.
The police let me off, but they also sent me literature on anger management courses and strongly suggested I attend one.
I’d lied and said I must have just knocked it, but I could tell in my leaving interview the director didn’t really believe me. She’d stared at me, hand bandaged under so much gauze and plaster you couldn’t see it, unnervingly sober.
After HR had covered all the basics and the paperwork, a flicker of something passed over her face. Confusion. Anger. Pity. I don’t know. And then she’d asked me:
“Do you think you’re a good person?”
Our HR rep had turned to her nervously, started to rebuff but was cut off by the director who told me to do whatever I needed to “get better”.
I didn’t. I saw one counsellor then bunked off the rest of the sessions, broke the lease on my flat share, and ran away to Carlinsrest. Bought some property for cheap, sight unseen, without looking closely enough at the details.
Now I was here, revisiting my sins in a haunted house full of the ghosts of everyone I’d ever wanted to hurt.
I looked at myself, the me-in-that-moment-back-then, staring silently, open-mouthed, like a lemon.
Like a stupid fucking lemon.
Like a stupid, spiteful, toddler idiot.
Like a fucking moron awful piece of shit needy whiny sour-faced boring twat.
The rage returned to me with a snap.
I charged at myself with the axe and swung with all my might. Harder than I had at the monsters in my house. Harder than I had at the door. I clipped myself right in the face—Oh God, what joy! What release!—and kept on swinging.
“You stupid piece of shit you stupid piece of shit you stupid piece of shit!”
I screamed with the effort, the hate and the anger fuelling my every swing.
How could I have done this? I’d hurt that woman, scared all my colleagues, seared that terrible image in all of our memories forever.
And all over an employee of the month award I didn’t even care about!
Why had I let something so petty get to me so badly?
What was wrong with me? What was wrong with me?
The sound of laughter beneath me broke me out of my swing.
I wiped the sweat from my face and stared down where my bloody face should be.
My neighbour lay there, gripping the axe blade away from her face, blood trickling down from her palms, eyes full of delight and hunger, her smile wide and full of teeth.
Full of victory.
“Got you,” she said.
My colleagues, the director, the secretary’s spaniel, had all disappeared. The office, empty now, shuddered with joy. The lights flickered off one by one.
My neighbour pushed the axe—and me attached to it. I stumbled back as the darkness swallowed up the room and I fell through a doorway. I rolled over concrete, righted myself and came to a stop where I was spat out on the floor.
The floor of her basement.
Then I watched as the door between our houses slammed shut.