Steven Deighan

“Why are they doing this to me?”

The ambulance roared through the street late that night. The driver, tired of his job and age, held the wheel intensely, thinking his thoughts. 

A call had been made from a house involving a knife victim and his wife. Apparently, they had argued over something with their child and things had gotten outta hand. Anyway, it ain’t my mess – I just gotta help clean the damn thing up.

 The screaming white vehicle stopped abruptly outside the house. Shadows filled the insides of the windows. A police car sat idle in the driveway and a black cat raced over the feet of the approaching paramedic, scaring him.

“It’s already done”

She really didn’t want to do it. It just happened. Arguing with her parents had become a habit, a chore, like something she felt she was always forced into. Well, especially since she had turned sixteen.

 Right now, she was on her way to her boyfriend’s house. He was a lot older than her, but not any wiser. She had phoned her best friend but the girl never answered.

A lot of the teenagers that lived on that street had dropped out of High School at an early age. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

 She walked across the school playing field around ten o’clock. She had only ever done this at this time with her friends. Now she was going to know why.

 A group of figures stood huddled against the rugby goalposts. Little flickers of orange light grabbed her attention, and she wrapped her arms around her body. She was cold. Her breath rose into the air from her mouth, and she knew now what it was like to feel afraid.

 The figures erupted small sounds of speech. There were maybe four or five of them, but in the dark it was hard to count. Then they saw her.

 Like a group of sportsmen, they mixed together and muttered things. She thought she heard them laughing, but the worst of it was that she knew they saw her.

 She tried to hurry and thought about her boyfriend, how he’d be waiting for her in his home. She was wishing that she was with him now.

 She neared the lighter hem of the playing field when she felt a hand grab her shoulder. She turned and stared into the eyes of a boy not far off from being a man. His face was unshaven and his eyes looked like the inner depths of space, or farther. There were a few others standing behind him, gawking, as if they had never seen a female before.

 The boy before her mouthed something that more or less drooled from his mouth. She shivered and her eyes began to water. The boy leaned forward towards her face and she screamed. His hand instantly smothered her mouth and she bit him. The boys behind motioned to grab her too, but she ran as fast as she could from them. All that she could remember was the smell of the alcohol and the horrid cigarette taste from his hand.

 She escaped them and ran into a nearby street. There were a few people walking along it, some alone, others coupled. Like zombies they walked, their heads down, ignoring the terrors around them. Their eyes lifeless, drained of curiosity. 

She was exhausted. She turned but could not see the boys anywhere. That was the last time she walked through that playing field.

*

“It went like this . . .”

The tall policeman stood and scribbled onto his notepad as the nurse fed the tubes into the dying man. His wife was asleep in a nearby room. Like her daughter, she was afraid and worried too. 

 She was dreaming about her home and her family. She was remembering when her daughter was born and how angelic she looked. Images flashed into her mind of her daughter’s primary school years. There were times that she wished her daughter could go back to being that age again. But that was impossible. Her daughter was growing up but did not fully understand the facts about life. Her daughter’s face zoomed past her own in many colours, each image blurring into the next. Why had she become like this? Her mother did not know the answer.

 It was, sadly, just another family breakdown. The policeman still scribbled.

“It’s all their fault”

When she reached her boyfriend’s house, she was exhausted. Her hair clung to her forehead due to the sweat. It had been a dangerous night for her. But now she was safe. All she had to do was climb the stairs to his house.

 He lived on the eighth floor and the lift was always broken. They hated climbing the stairs, especially at night. There would always be some drunk lying on the landing, urine dripping over the metal railing from his underpants. The building always smelt of urine or vomit or alcohol. At times she wondered why she even went to this place. It was like Hell in that building. One time she had brought her kid sister to his house and she had found several syringes not far from his door. The place was a dump.

 She reached his door eventually. Now she was tired. She was picturing being in her nice, warm bed and talking to her mother (that cow!), the two of them exchanging stories. Her dad would walk past and make a tut-tut sound. This was when they laughed together. She was missing this right now.

 She knocked upon the door, but there came no reply. She knew he was in. The smell of the building swam in the air around her and she felt sick. She wanted out of the stair and into his house.

 She knocked again and there was still no answer. She heard voices, then laughter. There was more than one person inside and from the sound of it: a female.

 She turned the handle, pushed, and surprisingly the door agreed to move and invited her in. She heard the noises clearer now. But they weren’t noises of speech or laughter any more. No, they had now become groans, and they drifted out from the bedroom.

 She marched to the bedroom door and flung it open. To her horror, her boyfriend was lying in his bed with her best friend whom she tried to call earlier. The curtains were drawn and several candles were lit. For once the room was tidy, except for the scattered clothes everywhere.

 Her friend turned and noticed her first. Immediately, she removed herself from his pelvis and tried to hide under the covers. The man stared on too. Amidst a chorus of broken words, he clambered out of bed, naked, and tried to race his girlfriend out of the door, but she had beaten him. The small house had now erupted into a choir of screaming and shouting that could be heard from outside.

 Lazy drunks in the stair gathered themselves and all trudged down the steps. The shouting echoed throughout.

 With a hard slap she left, crying, and fled down the building. Her boyfriend picked himself up from the hit and told the other girl to stay.

“That’s it now . . .over”

It had been a long walk home. She hadn’t stopped crying and she missed her parents. She passed several police cars but all failed to recognize her.

 Almost midnight; she saw her house from the end of the street. All the lights were off and the place was silent. What have I done? she thought. This can’t be happening! Not to me!

 Half an hour passed before the policeman with the notepad returned to the house. She was sitting in the living room, sobbing again.

 He broke the news to her of her father’s death from his notepad.

“That’s it over . . .now”