Spooky Shorts: The Big Book of Totally Untrue Tales, #1

Blue Circle

one

The torment is just beginning.

Mark clearly remembered thinking that. He watched the first clod of dirt sail down to the coffin's lid. The patter of the soil striking teak was faint, but the echo of it rumbled through his head like a peal of thunder. The wind tousled his hair. The sniffles of his fellow mourners ran down his spine like ice. Small sounds, but they were tipping his mental scale towards reality. He would have preferred the numb comfort of pretending nothing was happening. That he would feel a warm hand sliding across the back of his neck. That he would feel warm breath caressing his skin and the weight of her body as she pressed against him. He'd spent hours imagining those sensations. Imagining rolling over in bed and opening his eyes to see her green ones staring back at him. Green like jade. He'd open his mouth to say something and her warm, rose-scented finger would press against his lips. He'd lie back and watch her inch closer, ready for all the passion and pleasure that would boil up from the touch of skin against skin. It was a beautiful dream.

The torment is just beginning, he repeated to himself. It had been his first thought after he hung up the phone. Interrupted at work by the hospital. Hearing the details, knowing his life was over. There had been a single moment before sorrow claimed him. His last rational thought. The realization this would never be over.

Friends and relations mumbled condolences as they began to trickle from the gravesite. The bravest touched his back or arm. A hand light and still against his shirt or softly squeezing. There were few who dared. He'd spent the last fortnight in such a stormy, destructive mood that he'd managed to anger, insult, or offend every person in his immediate circle as well as a few beyond it. It was a testament to his wife's personality and charm that anyone still cared enough to show up. He stood there, staring into the hole. His eyes watered in the cold breeze. He was forgetting to blink. He wasn't sure if there was a point anymore. Finally, it was the priest at his elbow whispering empty words. A shorter version of the sermon on grief and comfort he'd just performed. A repeated call to remember the beautiful hope of salvation and restoration of loved ones that we all - apparently - aspired to.

He collected himself enough to thank the priest. He watched the man's robes flutter as the priest retreated down the hill. The caretaker was nowhere to be seen. It could be assumed that with his familiarity of all types of grief he'd deduced Mark was going nowhere soon. It suited the caretaker just fine. He'd spent an hour standing at attention giving 'respect' to someone he didn't know. He would sit at the lodge and wait for closing before filling the hole and bringing an end to the burial.

Mark stood with his hands in his pockets. He'd left his jacket in the car. The wind bit him, raising bumps on his flesh. He stood there tracing the contours of the coffin with his eyes. It was hard to process the shift his life had taken during the last few weeks. He'd had hopes die and lived long enough to witness the death of childhood dreams - no one with any sense would ever let him fly a rocket - but the essentials of his situation had coasted securely along. Until now, anyway.

The grass was short. It had been cut recently. The scent of it lingered. It was a crisp newness that got into your senses and belied the violence of its creation. Many would list it as a fond smell of summer. Like lemons curing into Ade or meat searing into greasy gobs of heaven. Mark smelled it. He drank it in. This was the last time it would be safe. The last time it would trigger thoughts of life or growth. He knew from the next 'lawn day' onward cut grass would reek of this grave. This day. The final death of his good self.

It was a long walk back to the car, but Mark put it off until the sky was purple and the light dim. Being alone in a graveyard didn't creep him out. So much of his self felt dead that it was better than being home. Home was empty. Here the neighbors never left or said repeated platitudes. There was comfort in that. Cold, but true.

He went home. He knew he'd never come back.

two

His cup was dirty. Mark looked at it. He thought it might be a bit of egg. How egg got into his teacup was something he didn't understand. It was the kind of thing that bothered him. The truth about JFK; the actual, current price of tea in China; the intricacies of foreign politics; the reason God allowed children to die from starvation and cruelty... and how egg got in his cup. These questions would appear in his mind, pushing out more important information. He'd obsess about how many licks it did take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop and forget to put on his pants before leaving the house.

He wasn't good at cups and glasses. Never had been. He used to joke that the reason he'd married Sharon was that she was good with the glassware. Mark didn't know why he was deficient in this area. He'd been taught to do the dishes by hand from a master dish doer. His Mother could get weeks-old grease out of bake ware with a tissue. It was baffling that such a basic skill could have failed to gel in his formative mind. All he could figure is that it had something to do with the Society of Women. That mystic body which had existed since the Dawn of Time and was the source and repository of all knowledge inherently female. All those things they all just 'knew' without any need for training. Things like how to fold underwear, whether a shirt was required for going outside, and of course, the cleaning of glasses.

He touched the gunk. It was dried solid. Mark wasn't a fan of eggs. He probably hadn't had them in over a month. That made him tear up. He sat down and held the cup in two hands, gazing down into the semi-shaded depths. Looking at a dried fragment of egg, but thinking of Sharon. She would have wandered out of the bedroom tousling her hair and grimacing at the cracks her elbows made. Mark would have been up for hours already. Up and working hard at his easel by the picture window. Up before the sun trying to cram in just one more sketch before he was forced to abandon it for the nine to five slog.

Sharon would have stumbled to the coffee maker, usually doing her Night of the Living Dead impression. She'd pour herself a mug, add a copious amount of sugar and then check to see if Mark's tea needed topping off. She used to climb over the back of the couch, knocking pillows helter skelter, and tuck her feet underneath herself.

You make great coffee, she'd once said.

It's just coffee, Mark had replied, head not lifting from the page. Water to grounds. Nothing scientific about it.

Oh, but it's so much more. It's magic.

Hardly.

You don't drink the stuff, yet you daily create dark roasted liquid orgasms for my taste buds without fail.

I just follow directions.

Your talents are wasted at Fricker's. You should make coffee for the United Nations.

Huh? His head had come up.

If they had coffee like this, I promise you they'd spend all their time drinking it and have none left for wars, fracking, and oil mongering.

While Mark had spent the next fifteen minutes explaining the tasks and mission of the U.N., Sharon had drunk her coffee and stared out the window at what they referred to as 'the wilderness'. One deformed beech tree and an unidentifiable shrub all the local cats used as a litter-box. Once Mark was done lecturing - sometimes she didn't wait and just bowled over him - she'd announce that she was hungry and that they should remedy that as soon as possible. Normally this would produce one of their fiercer debates - excepting the use of the remote control.

Sharon was, to put it generously, an experimental eater. She thought nothing of combining foods nature never intended for consumption. Mark had always been more conventional. Not quite 'meat and potato' only, but certainly not sushi and orange juice at four in the morning. Sharon would have suggested eggs. Mark would have made a face. She'd have offered to cook them. Maybe upping the ante to omelet form. Probably sealing the deal with bacon. Mark smiled into his tears. He was a sucker for bacon and Sharon had never been shy at playing that card.

By the time breakfast would have been over, the apartment would have reeked of eggs, bacon, coffee, tea, and the other delights of domesticity. Mark would have piled his dishes in the sink, bundled himself off to work, and not given the eggs another thought. Sharon would have done the dishes, cleaned up a bit, and gone about the mysterious tasks with which she filled up her time. It would have been just another day.

Mark stared down at the evidence of that lie. It had obviously not been 'just another day'. His chest tightened. Had she been a little distracted? Had her mind been wandering enough to miss the egg? Had the swirls of the dishcloth been in the land of bottles and teddy bears? They'd been trying hard. Had she been working out another sure-fire method of success? Mark's breathing developed a hitch. The back of his throat went dry. His eyes were burning. His stomach churned. His hands tightened on his cup until it shook with pressure.

He closed his eyes and begged. Begged God, life, the universe, or anything else that might have been listening. He wanted her. He wanted her back with such force and need that it scared him. Just another day. An hour. He would have settled for thirty seconds to say what he felt. Eyes tight against acid tears, Mark pleaded and prayed and wanted with desperation he'd never known. He wished for a touch. To feel her hand on his shoulder. To hear her apology for the egg and then have the time to watch her correct it. Anything would be worth it. He'd give anything.

He sat there for an hour. He sat there until sweat dripped down his forehead and pooled in his crotch. Until his limbs shook with the weakness of exertion. Until he had spots floating behind his eyelids and was unsure of his relation to the walls or floor. He opened his eyes. He could almost smell her perfume and hear the soft swish of her slipper-shod feet.

But he didn't. No one provided her. Not a vision, a respite, or even a tease. Mark swore. He knew he was foolish to hope. Foolish to believe that what had happened hadn't. But it hurt.

Where the hell were you? he screamed. The silence stepped back, startled by the outburst. It wasn't her time.

Nothing.

You hear me, you pompous fuck?

He threw the cup across the room. It shattered against the wall. Pieces of porcelain skittered directionless. Mark watched the pieces. They looked like he felt.

It wasn't her time.

His voice was quiet. A whisper in church. He sat there. There was no answer. There never was.

He went to work.

three

Mark slammed the door behind himself, happy to leave the crowds behind. The more he was around people the more he didn't like them. He dropped his coat and shoes and collapsed on the couch. He could feel the tension draining out. He hadn't been out of his apartment for over a week. He just couldn't bring himself to be where other people were. He had taken a leave of absence from work, locked his door, and stopped living. At least the way everyone else wanted him to.

He considered putting the apartment up on the market. Again. He knew it was part of his problem. Every square inch had Sharon in it. He hadn't realized how much of her was there. On the few occasions she'd had a girl's night out, gone shopping alone, or visited her mother, he'd been glad of the respite. He'd had a break from distraction, or nagging, or her music, or one of the dozens of things that got on people's nerves as half of a