Forever After (a dark and funny fantasy novel) (22 page)

             
Michael gave her a questionable frown.

             
“Anni, or Annus rather, is Latin,” she elaborated. “It means year.”

             
“Oh. So a month...”

             
“Isn’t an anniversary.”

             
“Oh.”

             
“Is there a word for it then?”

             
“I don’t think so. I mean, probably, but not one we commonly use.”

             
Michael looked a little dejected. Jessica reached around and pinched the back of his jeans as if to spark some life into him.

             
“And
versary
?” he wondered.

             
She shrugged passively. “Turn, pass, something like that.”

             
A light rain began to patter the skies, dotting the pavement with specks of black. The night was mild but the day had been unbearably warm, the sun-stroked streets, still warm from the heat of the day, sizzled under the dripping drizzle. A dozen drinkers patted nosily up and down, leaving the clubs and heading for the nightclubs. A line of taxi’s, official and unofficial -- husbands, wives, mothers and fathers hired as drivers for the night -- stopped, started and cruised by on the street.

             
Michael swerved around a group of teenage drinkers exiting a grotty pub, spilling out in the midst of a heated, but amicable debate. He held Jessica tighter in his arm, keeping her away from the concoction of cheap body spray, excessive hair gel and obscene conversation as they continued down the path.

             
“We haven’t been to a nightclub,” Jessica noted. Her dazzling eyes caught the glint of a neon spectacle above a building on the other side of the road, where a stubby bouncer with a Popeye build prepared for a night of intimidation.

             
Michael sneered distastefully, Jessica caught the look.

             
“Not a fan?” she wondered. “I thought a nightclub would be ideal for charmers like you. Rows and rows of drunken girls, all up for a bit of fun?” she said with a cheeky grin. “By the end of the night they’ll all be drunk, high, desperate or lonely. They’ll practically fall into your arms.”

             
“Nah,” Michael said calmly. “I never leave it till the end of the night.”

             
“Never?”

             
A beaten-up up car, with teenagers slotted into the seats like sardines, sped by, spilling an assortment of jeers, obscenities and bone-crushing music out of the opened windows. Michael grimaced and watched it race down the street, it halted with a clattering
thunk
as it slowly turned the corner, before struggling to pick up its pace again as the driver floored the pedal to speed down the opposing street.

             
“Never,” Michael said when the noise of the mobile tin-can had faded.

             
Jessica did a little two-step and lowered her right hand in a ceremonial bow, “Explain
master
,” she mocked.

             
Michael laughed at her theatrics. “You can’t kiss them at the end of the night.”

             
“Me? I wouldn’t kiss them at all,” she joked.

             
“You, me. People in general,” he explained. “You don’t know where they’ve been. You certainly don’t know where their lips have been. You don’t know on who or what they’ve been suckling.”

             
“
Suckling?
” Jessica recoiled at the choice of word.

             
Matthew grinned at her sardonically. “Well, you know, when the drink is flowing and the night is young, most girls are on the prowl. If
you, me, whoever,
decides to pick them up at the end of the night, that’s a good four hours they’ve had to
circulate
. Is that the salt from a margarita I’m tasting? Or the residual spunk from the bouncer?”

             
Jessica feigned a gagging noise and looked at him in disgust, shifting out from his grasp slightly.

             
Michael beamed proudly and threw an arm around her. She ducked out from under him, spun around and stopped in the middle of the street, her hands thrust on her hips, a mock look of quizzical shock on her delicate face.

             
“Is this why you never kissed me at the beginning of the night Michael?” she asked sternly. A sly smile tried to force its way twitchily onto her lips.

             
Michael held up his hands. “I didn’t need to with you,” he said softly.

             
Jessica threw her hand in an understanding nod and moved forward.

             
Michael continued, “I was with you all night. Plus, if I’m honest, it was your friend I was after.”

             
Jessica stopped. Her face exploded with feigned indignation that she hid behind a barely repressed smile. Michael took an instinctive step back, avoiding the inevitable slap.             

             
“How dare you!” she roared, unable to suppress a laugh that twitched epileptically at her mouth. She pushed her hands stubbornly to her hips and moved towards the middle of the road, her head turned away in snobbish refusal. She took a few strides out into the road, watching Michael through squinted eyes. “If that’s the way you feel then I’ll just leave--”

             
Her words were shocked short by the screech of car tyres and a dull thud that reverberated around the street as her body clattered into the bonnet of a passing car. Her frail figure was propelled into the air where it slammed with disgusting force against the car’s windshield, splintering a spider web fracture in the glass.

             
The driver slammed on the brakes instantly, but the car didn’t screech to a halt until it was a good twenty feet from the impact; Jessica’s body clattered to a halt a further ten feet away.

             
Michael felt his knees wobble. He sunk to the floor, the pavement crunched painfully against his kneecaps. His ears buzzed and whined. The lights from the pubs, clubs and streetlights danced dizzily in front of his eyes.

             
There was a lot of noise. The driver and the passenger screamed aggressively at each other from inside the car, unsure who should react first or how they should react. A woman on the other side of the road had witnessed the collision and stood rooted to the spot, squealing like a new-born child. Up and down the street revellers diverted their attentions away from their prospective clubs to concentrate on the scene of carnage on the road. Conversations were already flowing, the split-second shock had died away and those who had witnessed the bloodthirsty moment bragged about their presence whilst those who didn’t pretended otherwise.

             
Michael heard another noise. A low strung moan which increased in volume with each painful octave. It took him a few minutes to realise the sound was coming from his own throat, a few more before he had the power to suppress it.

             
He dragged himself to his feet, forced his eyes to tune into the impact over his shoulder. He looked at Jessica and prayed for some sign of life, but what he saw vanquished any glimmer of hope that his heart had held.

             
Jessica was a mangled wreck on the floor, a dozen rivulets of blood branched away from her torn body and seeped a path into the gutters. Above the body, with a content stance and a warm smile, was Jessica's spirit. She looked at Michael, smiled happily and then calmly walked over to him.

****

              He deposited Jessica's soul like he had done with a dozen souls before her and would do with many souls after her. He didn’t allow himself any emotion, didn’t let a single thought of what might have been, what could have been and what
should
have been, cross his drained mind.

             
Jessica said she was sorry they couldn’t go on seeing each other. She said it was unfortunate that nothing could become of their relationship and that maybe they would meet on the other side and could try again. Michael gave a few nods and strained smiles in reply, he held her hand gently and he kissed her on the cheek, but it was all for show. When she was dead to the world she was dead to him, he was never going where she was going.

             
He felt cheap and dirty when he collected the money for her. He felt angry when Seers interrupted and patronised him about his position, felt like ripping the smug head of his spindly shoulders and shoving it up his pompous arse. He felt like telling the gravelly voiced, arse-faced receptionist what he thought of her when she sneered down at him under the rim of her spectacles. But throughout it all he maintained an expression of nothingness, a feeling of complete dissociation.

             
His first love in his new world, his first semblance of hope in a place he despised and didn’t understand, had died, and with it a small part of him had also died.

             
A trio of sympathetic ears and open shoulders were waiting for him when he returned to the bed and breakfast. Samson, Joseph and Mary all eyed him as he strode inside, cutting a melancholic figure as he exited the darkness of the garden and broke the cosy glow of the living room.

             
He stood in the doorway, didn’t look at them, didn’t meet their pitying glances. “You knew this was going to happen,” he said distantly.

             
“We didn’t know,” Joseph said defensively. “It’s just--”

             
“Relationships with the living can be complicated,” Mary helped. “These things happen. I’m sorry sweetheart.”

             
“
I
knew,” Samson said plainly.

             
Michael lifted his eyes and stared straight at his supposed mentor.

             
“I tried to tell you,” Samson noted, staring into Michael’s tired, blackened eyes.

             
“You did,” Michael said softly with a nod of his head.

             
“I thought you might have known something,” Samson added. “Even without the timer.”

             
The images, the dreams and the strange feelings all rushed back to Michael. He nodded methodically. “It doesn’t matter now,” he said, turning away from their condolences. “It’s over.”

Part Four

1

             
Michael loved Christmas growing up. He loved the festive joy on the faces of even the sourest of citizens. He adored the wonder and joy in the eyes and antics of every school-free child. He amused at the zealously religious who patrolled the church, the streets and the fetes with an expression that said: ‘
I’ve
loved God all year, where have
you
been.’ He liked the Christmas music, the repetitious monotony of the annual playlists that were typically terrible but sound fantastic during the holidays.

             
Every town in every Christian country geared up for the festivities. Every smile on every face was festooned with the joys of the season. Carefree adults threw joyful snowballs at the mischievous children frolicking in their driveways or on the streets. The tone deaf took to the streets in numbers to blast out high pitched anthems for receipt of a handful of coins. Sly flirts seized a year’s worth of missed opportunities to pinch a kiss under the mistletoe; lovers took to the comfort of their homes, with their warm fires and their candlelit memories; families gathered around a feast on the dinner table, with Christmas crackers and talk of presents, whilst uncles and grandparents fell into drunken comas on the sofa.