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Dark magic realism short story about a muse.
There is 53p in change on the bedside table, which is all we have left. The yellowed wallpaper curls at the corner above my head and threatens to peel off. The damp patch has spread across the sloping section of the attic roof, creating an intricate pattern of greenish flowers. It’s doing a better job of creating than Paul, who has given up staring at a blank canvas for the day and is now slumped in our one chair — a tubular steel thing we pulled from a skip — smoking out of the propped-open window.
The sheets I lie on are sticky, musty. They adhere to my bare skin. I unstick them, pull myself up off the bed, swaying a little, empty bottle still in one hand. The drink dulls the insistent hunger chewing at my insides.
“I suppose I’d better go and see one of my gentlemen,” I say… slur. I’ll sober up soon enough.
He doesn’t even have the decency to protest. We’d agreed I wouldn’t have to do this again, but that was weeks ago. Such promises are no longer our currency.
“You’re a fucking washout,” I say louder, hoping for a reaction. I stagger and he flinches, as if I might throw the bottle at him. I make a point of setting it down carefully on the side.
I pull on trousers, a thick jumper, a long coat. My clothes swamp me, but I can’t stand to go out in the cold in any less. I’ve no fat left on my bones and the wind whips right through me.
Paul’s eyes are on me, watching me move around the flat. I know that. I take a little extra time, waiting for him to ask.
He doesn’t.
Well, fuck his pride. Others will.
Out on the street, I dial Jimmy Bergsen’s number and he picks right up.
“You working on a case, Jimmy?” I ask.
“Always. I thought you retired.”
“I thought so, too. Seems I was wrong.”
“You know I can always use a little inspiration. Usual rates?”
“I’ll be over in five.”
Jimmy’s office is in an old block that should have been torn down years ago. Half of it is vacant. Place must have some powerfully eccentric landlord to still be standing. Its age doesn’t lend it any character, or if it does, it’s the kind you don’t want to meet on a dark night. His building is built of dark brown brick, giving it a grubby, depressed air that’s only compounded by the dirt which sticks to it. Many of the windows are boarded up and the boards papered over with old gig posters forming a papier maché layer. Inside is no better. The walls are inlaid with a sort of worn down grey-brown wood that’s so ingrained with dirt, you can smell it. Goes right up my nose when I step inside. In the centre, running up the middle, is one of those old cage lifts. The central hall needs light, and that compounds the general grubbiness, the dimness of it all.
Jimmy Bergsen is waiting for me in his office when I climb from the metal death trap that somehow sees me to his floor in one piece. He’s a big square guy — broad shoulders, wide jaw, nose that’s been pounded into his face one too many times and decided to stay there. Looks a little too much like his Viking ancestors, save the shabby grey suit, which doesn’t fit, in every sense.
“You okay, kid? You’re looking thin.” He rubs his hands together, rubs the back of his neck. He’s not looking too well himself these days, vivid pink skin hinting at a blood pressure problem. But Jimmy always did work too hard.
“I’m just fine, Jimmy,” I say, slipping my coat off onto one of his chairs. “Times have been a little lean of late, is all.”
He hurries to lock his office door, so I lose my jumper and shirt, as well. Pile them all up on the chair and stand naked in the middle of his office. He comes up behind me, curls one large hand around my ribcage.
“Why don’t you tell me about your case,” I say, while his hands relearn the shapes of my body. It’s been a while.
“I don’t like seeing you like this.”
I shrug. I’m not here for a personal connection. I know he’d take me in, just like Paul took me in. They all make promises, but in the end, it’s the same old same old. I burn a little too bright for them and they pull their fingers away, disgusted by our transactions in the final analysis.
His hands rest on my hips, or what’s left of my hips. The bone juts out painfully and I know he’ll be thinking that.
“Can I at least take you out for a meal afterwards?” he asks.
“All right.”
“All right. Good. Jesus. I thought you said he was going to take care of you.”
“Jimmy,” I say with a sigh. “Are we doing this or not?”
He steps round in front of me, runs a hand across my shoulder. He closes his eyes, breathes. His fingers leave a trace of gold across my skin. A little of the old magic.
“My client lost her daughter. An addict, but that didn’t kill her. My client thinks there was a cover up, but that’s just a hunch. The police were investigating and then: nothing, silence.”
“And what do you think?”
His hands follow the lines of my body, down to my thighs. Linger there, unsure whether to continue. “I think she has a point.” His voice is low, barely above a whisper, as if he’s saying something deeply erotic to me. Sweet nothings, instead of a murder case. “I’m getting nowhere with my usual contacts. Something isn’t right.”
It’s been a while since Jimmy has used my services and he seems to need a little help getting up the nerve. I find his hand with mine, move it across to the blank space between my legs and leave it there.
His hand is shaking as his fingers trace a line up my pelvis, leaving a seam of warmth behind which splits. White light spills from the crack as it widens, as it grows up my abdomen, following his fingers, spreading in a jagged line up the centre of my chest.
I hold my arms out, palms up, in invitation. The light from within me illuminates Jimmy’s dim office in a brilliant burst, coaxing vibrant colours from the faded decor. “Do it!” I urge.
Jimmy forces his thumbs inside my chest cavity, cracks me open with his big meaty hands and climbs inside. His bulk fills me to bursting, forcing up inside my throat like choking, stretching me to fingertips and toes. My skin and flesh stretch thin to surround him, cover him over, seal him in. He gibbers within me — details of his case, name and numbers, the minutiae whirring round his brain, absorbing my light and energy. Traces of his impressions mix with my thoughts: the mother’s face, the daughter’s, Jimmy’s police contacts, their blank eyes, dead ends. I feel the whir of his mind, the click as of a machine starting up.
Yes. Yes. He has it.
He strains against the edges of my body, until he finds purchase on my skin, breaks a hole in me with one nail, tears.
I crouch on the floor, spilling all over the grey lino, Jimmy beside me shaking. “There’s some personal connection between the police and the killer,” he pants. “Someone trying to protect their relation. I know it.”
I pull my skin together, seal up the door he left in me until I’m whole again. Feel the flesh of my body, firmer now, some padding on my bones. I stand, pull on clothes and catch my reflection in the glass of his office door — the hollows of my eyes, my cheeks, a little less desperate, a little more fashionable. Not enough, but it’s a start.
Jimmy’s eyes are on me. I see the calculation in them as he takes on the results of our transaction. He looks away. It’s always in this moment they feel it. The drop. Not what I’ve given, but what I’ve taken. They wonder if they can spare it. They wonder what sort of creature I am.
I have no answer.
I take the envelope of cash he’s left on the desk and leave silently. He won’t want to take me to dinner. They never do.
I take a taxi across town, stop for a drink in the bar at the end of the street — a quick whisky I knock back to take the edge off before I return to the attic, to Paul. As an afterthought, I buy a bottle from the off-licence. The hunger will be back soon enough.
This scene is getting old. I climb the three flights of stairs to the attic, and they ghost beneath me, all the stairs I have climbed, all the garrets I’ve lived in, the mouldy hovels, the remote cottages. All the scenes of desperation, the grasping of every man whose wanted my gift and resented me after. Always the same story. They want me scooped out, emptied. They want a one way street.
Paul is slumped on the floor when I enter, his once white t-shirt greyish with dirt, his face smeared with something that isn’t paint. Cigarette ash? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve walked in on a dead lover, but no, Paul is only wishing for it.
My phone rings. It’s Jimmy.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” he says.
I make an unspecific noise in response.
“I called one of my contacts, pressed him a little harder. Turns out the Chief Inspector has a half brother with some unfortunate habits. My contact asked me to hush it up, said they’re dealing with it internally. I told him to go fuck himself. The mother deserves some answers, don’t you think?”
“That’s great, Jimmy.” I don’t bother to put much enthusiasm into it. They always seem to need their pat on the head from me. I’ll never understand why.
“Thanks, kid. I owe you one.”
Jimmy’s a practical man. They always bounce back the quickest. Not like Paul. Paul can wallow for days, blending his doubt with self-loathing into something toxic and redirecting it at me. He’s a real artist in that regard.
I slip my phone into my pocket and watch Paul wake and rise, shuffle over to the bed and sit on the edge, staring at a canvas of me silhouetted in an archway. One of the first he painted, when he still appreciated my gift. He’d stayed up all night in ecstasy, forming my naked image across the canvas as though I’d burned it into him. As though it still burned and only painting it could give him relief. The drop hadn’t come until the next day when he’d stood staring at his work, our work, eyes wide like a lost child and I saw the end had begun.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” I say. I can’t survive like this. He knows and doesn’t care. “One more time, for old time’s sake?” I add, as an afterthought. I’d like to go out of here with a little more flesh on my bones.
After a few moments he turns, nods. After weeks of resisting, he finally gives up his qualms. Abandons some last claim to whatever passes for dignity in his little world.
He hauls himself up from the bed, comes over to me as I shed my clothes in a puddle at my feet.
“Tell me about your work,” I say.
His fingers rest on my ribcage and he studies them there, the dirt beneath his nails where paint used to be, the yellow pads of nicotine stains between his index and middle finger. He closes his eyes and traces a line across my stomach, leaving a trail of gold in his wake.
