Eye of the Beholder continued
Death Number Eight: Charlie Hobbs.
He is tired of the countless hours spent in unemployment lines. He is tired of seeing the empty faces of all the others who stand in line, defeat etched deep into their flesh. He is tired of going hungry so his children can eat junk food and wear second-hand clothes. He is tired of lying awake at night and listening to his wife cry in the next bed, so very tired.
He cannot go home to face the endless recriminations. Another word and he will erupt in mindless violence. The mood is sombre and it carries him where it will. All afternoon he wanders aimlessly, with murder stirring in the depths of his heart. If he had the money he would buy a gun and ammunition and run amok. Late at night he takes a rope and breaks into the park. He climbs a tall tree and lets his body drop, one end of the rope tied round a branch and the other looped over his head. The fall and the sudden jerk does not snap his neck as it should. He dangles helplessly, the rope cutting into his flesh and slowly bleeding the life from him.
Death Number Ten: Angela Smith.
She is pregnant; thrown out by her parents and deserted by the man who swore he would stand by her. She is only sixteen. She has no friends and nowhere to go. She climbs to the top floor of a multi-storey car park and hesitates, only briefly, before stepping off the edge and falling to the ground below.
Death Number Eleven: Steven Crane.
His wife walks out on him, finally pushed too far by the constant bullying and the continual humiliation. Over the years he has blamed her for everything that has gone wrong with his life, the failure of all his hopes and expectations. But in that moment he realises that without her he is nothing; a stupid little man whom no-one will ever love or respect again. He realises also that she will not return to him. Not this time. It is more than he can endure.
Suicide suggests itself as a means of striking back at her; the final act of revenge to which there can be no answer. He will die by his own hand, and in the eyes of the world the guilt will be hers to bear. She will never be rid of him.
He writes a note that is full of loving endearments. Reading it through he feels, strangely, that many of the words are sincere. Then he electrocutes himself in the bath.
Death Number Twelve: Richard Wolfe.
He is a writer. His whole life has been spent in stringing words together and searching for new ways to express what has already been said a thousand times before. He has nothing to show for it except a pile of manuscripts that no-one wants to publish, stories that nobody wants to read. He has sacrificed everything in the pursuit of a single goal, one burning ambition. It is too late to accept that he may have taken a wrong turn. He cannot push back the hands of the clock and live his life over again, even if he wanted to. He cannot have a family and a home and a job just like everybody else. It is much too late for any of that. He knows that he has talent, but the old stories of misunderstood genius that used to reassure him now seem like the hollow lies they always were. He cannot face the thought of another rejection slip in the early morning mail, full of kind words and encouragement.
One by one he feeds his precious typescripts to the open fire and calmly watches a life's work dissolve in flame. There is no Max Brod to save the day. He feels a great sense of relief, as if some terrible burden has been lifted from him. Let others fight all the battles that still need to be won and reshape the world with the force and clarity of their visions. The struggle is no longer his concern. He is tired now and needs the dreamless sleep that only the drugs clutched so tightly in his trembling hand will grant.
Death Number Thirteen: Wendy Miller.
She is a lesbian and her lover has left her for another, more attractive woman. She is at her wit's end, abandoned in the big city and truly alone for the first time in her short life. She feels the other's absence as an anguish deep in her soul, anguish that is inextricably mingled with anger at the sudden and unexpected betrayal. She wants to forget, and so she loads a syringe and injects herself with drugs.
The hours crawl by. Evening comes and her drug supply runs out. She doesn't know where or how to get more. The reaction sets in. She vomits and knots form in her stomach. She shivers with the cold. In desperation she telephones her parents. Her father answers, but hangs up when he hears the voice of the daughter he has disowned. She sits still, the receiver pressed to her ear. Listening. She can hear voices in among the static of a dead line, and they tell her what to do.
She puts the phone down and goes to the bathroom. In her neatest hand she writes FUCK YOU on the mirror with red lipstick. Then she injects her arm with a syringe full of bleach.
Thirteen:- Joanna Burden, Wayne Carlyle, Steven Crane, Julie Field, Charlie Hobbs, Douglas Howard, Wendy Miller, John Otley, Sally Pride, Angela Smith, Unknown, Carla Williams and Richard Wolfe.
Gaston learns of their deaths and is moved. He is a man and the death of another lessens him.
But, because he is a Puppet Master, Gaston sees a stage and thirteen marionettes, controlled by invisible strings. Their movements are clumsy and awkward. They offend his sense of the aesthetic. He sees a giant hand moving in the darkness above the stage and light reflecting off a steel cutting edge. He sees thirteen puppets, one after another, drop lifeless to the stage floor. He sees all this and it pleases him.
-----------------------------------------------
Bio: Peter Tennant is the book reviewer for International Horror Guild Award winning magazine The Third Alternative, soon to be relaunched as Black Static (www.ttapress.com), and non-fiction editor for the Whispers of Wickedness print-zine and website (www.ookami.co.uk). His chapbook "The Cold Blue Collection" and novella "A Halloween Story" are available through the Whispers online store. Peter has had more than 150 stories and over 400 reviews published in the UK Small Press, plus poetry, articles, opinion columns etc. An almost complete bibliography can be found at Midnight Street and Peter was the featured writer in #2 of that magazine. In the past he has been part of the editorial team at British Fantasy Society Award winning horror magazine Peeping Tom and Hugo nominated Interzone, and he still proofreads for the latter. He can be contacted via message boards at Whispers and TTA.