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CHAPTER TWO

  Her set of keys had a few paraphernalia attached adorably to them. Apart from the usual set of house and car keys, they had a tiny colourful skull with a smile hanging from the keys. Right next to the skull was a very contradicting plush toy of a rabbit with one of its ears ripped off by the various adventures that Susan accompanied the rabbit on. He just looked elated to see her again.

  Susan’s car was essentially a hunk of metal that provided the concept of travel and on an occasion brought that concept to a noisy fruition. It was painted a shade of red that only the female eye would be able to pick up. A man would just see the plain red scratched across the depraved metal, whereas a woman would see it as a berry red shade underneath the vehicles torture. There was even a crudely drawn dinosaur scratched into the hind quarters of the car. It was unknown if it was a sort of punishment towards the piece of metal or merely the repercussions of a particularly average night out.

  She placed herself into the death-trap, but paused for a few moments before driving off. It was a small junction in her day deciding where to go next, the big motivation being money. Considering the fact that she was always too fluid to ever hold a job, money tended to be an elusive character in her life. But the ability to hold something depends more on motivation and desire, which she lacked desperately. The freedom of both chasing down money and her dreams were enough for her to ignore the prospects of honest to god damn work.

  She was also looking out for something that would alleviate her boredom, but she knew that was a lot to ask for. So she forced herself to concentrate on the issue at hand. The easy answer was always there in front of her sitting idly on the dashboard of the car. The writing was written across the rough plastic demanding her to acknowledge it. But every time she indulged in that last resort she was consecutively stabbed in the stomach with a butter knife of guilt. It didn’t leave much of a physical mark, but more often than not the pain is what left the scar.

  At that point survival instincts were getting the better of her, pushing her further and further off the cliff. The act of placing the keys in the ignition was her way of deciding what her next destination was.

  She knew that if she dwelt on a problem for too long it would eventually erode her own confidence to solve that problem. She was told that early on in life and used it quite often as a scape goat for the smaller problems. Even though she swore almost religiously by that she could never tell how long was too long. But eventually concluded that it was all relative and that she should listen to her internal body clock for the answer. It worked occasionally.

  She drove her car towards an old part of the city, where the noise minimally consisted of murmured conversations between the odd wheels that passed. As she drove her arm was on the edge of the car door with the window down, allowing her eleven lined tattoo to exhale all of its conflicted hearts.

  She pulled up outside a seventies styled house that lay a far distance back from the road. In between the house and Susan rested a garden that could easily have created the myths and stories from rotten candy fantasies. The shrubs grew past one another in a straight line as if they were part of their own floral pedestrian system. In the centre of the garden was an oval shaped dig. It started from the gate and died at the front door of the house. The centre of it deepened into the ground towards the middle as if it were some open roofed bunker. The bottom was aligned with sun-kissed sandstone tiles. They were pristine apart from the natural cracks found between them. Anyone that were to walk through found that at about half way their head was at the same level as the road.

  On either side of this, were a collection of homely flowers, Troika, Magnifica and perennials populated the side welcoming the visitor as they resurfaced to the front door. The house itself appeared to be the tamest aspect of the landscape. Its corners had wear and tear and it was half painted a crayon yellow, with buckets and brushes left impatiently at the side walls. There was a large tree that roamed the back garden of the house shifting in its own weight as if it spotted a stranger. Its branches loomed over the roof protecting it like a bird nest.

  Susan loved just being in the presence of the rainbow bodies of floral life. Her oxygen just tasted all that bit sweeter when she was sitting next to them. But these purely joyous feelings were quickly quenched by the thought of why she was there. That thought lay above her and the flowers like a wall blocking and hindering any prying eyes from assessing the situation.

  As she entered the dip, a man, no later than 68 fondled the grass that crawled its way to the front of the house. Facing the sky and throwing his arms out from his chest he was laying in the bed of grass with his head near the edge of the oval entrance. He was head level with Susan yet he compressed grass underneath his back. He had slicked back grey hair shining its way down to his spine. Streams of a brighter era tore through his hair emphasising his physical age. He wore a very loose shirt with plenty of green thumbed stains and dirt infused marks across the translucent cloth. Dahoma coloured shoes with eccentrically designed socks ran up his legs. They threw back to acid filled days designed by the personalities of toxic colours. His name was Kevin Murphy and the moment Susan stepped into his garden he turned his horizontal neck and threw his daughter a smile.

  “Hey Dadioooo!” She said slipping the vowels from under her top lip.

  “Thanks for calling me that. You know how much I adore that.” Kevin said with dry lips cracked from the brick of sarcasm. “And you know how much I love poking you.” “Why”

  “Stop giving me a reaction and I’ll stop.” She said forcing him to get up from his bed of bladed grass. The green cut his back as he raised himself to a towering position above her.

  “I want you to come in and share a drink with me. I got this new fine Scottish whiskey from an old friend, well, saying that he was a friend is a bit of a stretch, all we ever shared were fists…..but he recently died and so he gave it to me in his will as a fella’s goodbye.” He dragged her into his kitchen while laughing the last few words. “I never thought I would be sad to see that old fucker die…. You know what, I think I was the only one at the funeral who felt that way. Felt like I was his wife. Bad enough because he tended to fight with her more often than with me. Fucking fat shit.” The words slipped out of his mouth as if they were part of an ancient joke from the desert.

  “I’m sorry the funeral was a waste of time. I don’t remember any funeral ever being worth going to.” “That’s cause I’ve only ever brought you to one. Can’t remember who it was either… think it was some neighbour… or something.”

  “Teacher.” “Sure ya.” She pulled the kitchen chair out from the table and sat down around his crème cupboards for the whiskey. The table elegantly placed at the centre of the room gave a balmy and palm clenching feeling to whomever entered. It was tough and solid with its corners tactically chipped off to instil that natural tree trunk look. In fact every aspect of the kitchen aided this image. Even though there was no immediate smell to the house, the simple thought of freshly baked brown bread would be convincing enough to actually smell it.

  He banged the earthly brown bottle onto the table as he inched the conversation forward to the edge of his glass. “Meeting old friends is never a waste of time, I’ll tell you that, even if they are laid out stiff on a piece of wood.” Susan confused decided to dig even further. “You never really described them as being pleasant, never mind friends. So why would you see them that way now? Huh? Making no sense.” He paused his attempt to open the bottle and looked directly into her eyes. “It’s a sort of post relationship between me and the deceased.”

  Those spicy words reminded her of the reason she visited. It made the slow cooked guilt burn even slower in her throat. With every little aching aged movement that he took, her motivation gradually converted into that of a concerned daughter. He reached up into another cupboard to take out the enticingly cut crystal glasses. They longed to be drenched in Kevin’s whiskey. As he moved them to the table his tattoo opened up to the a
ir.

  It was human curiosity converted into a scene of ink and old skin. It showed the image of a coffin occupied by a silhouette with broad shoulders. Susan always adored that tattoo as a child.

  The glasses shook slightly as he brought them to the table. Susan noticed this and her goal to get filler money had fully disappeared. She cared for him greatly. This attached feeling was made all the easier due to the fact that they were the only two in the family. The black and white lack of relatives solidified the bond between the two. She knew that they had to protect each other form all the scary swamp monsters of the outside world called reality.

  For the past five years Kevin had been dealing with heart issues, and his aged life style didn’t necessarily help the situation. He was bound by tablets every day, which frustrated his childish nature. Susan always found that difficult to deal with. She hated his unhealthy attitude towards his own health. It was something she simply had to swallow.

  “Did you take your tables yet?” She said as she pulled both of the glasses towards her and away from him. Kevin thick headed by that small gesture replies; “What ya ya. Of course I took em. I have been taking those things for three years straight and you are still reminding me. Now give me the whiskey or else I’m going to chase you out of the house like a mutt.” He looked at her now sitting down with a naked puppy face begging for his glass back. She thought about it for a moment and came to the notion that she could either ask him for the money or lean on his soft side and stop him from drinking the whiskey. She couldn’t have both idyllic options. No that was a scenario that was unobtainable. So with the question for money now out of the equation, her gooey ooey caramel side took precedence.

  “I don’t want to experience what it’s like to be near someone who treats their illness as a joke. Very messy.” Hearing that he placed his hands in front of her, palms down, fingering the slits of impressionable wood. “Look at these hands. They’re good, they are really fucking good at their job. I’ve had them all my life and they have done nothing but pull me out of shit. They are well able to handle anything that comes near me. This whiskey aint gonna kill me.” She disregarded his handful of a plea and continued to press deeper.

  “But that’s it this whiskey actually might kill you. You’re not hiking or exploring anymore. I know this drink might seem like your friend, with its nice label and all that.”

  “You seem to know a lot.” He said hitting the tennis ball of words across the courted table

  “But what about me? Huh? Am I not allowed to enjoy you?... Your life doesn’t belong entirely to you ya know. We are the only two in this family and you are prepared to leave it all up to me? I don’t want to be left here all by myself. Do you know how difficult it is to maintain that garden you’ve grown? Feck that I wanna do other stuff with my time.”

  Taken aback by this, he paused and chewed on his thoughts for a few seconds. “I aint leavin you yet, besides there is far too much work to do with the garden yet.” He presented a smile to her and grabbed the bottle of whiskey with a firm hand. The words gave Susan a sense of comfort, as if the pressure religiously evaporated.

  He walked out of the kitchen and into the backyard with the bottle. She knew he wasn’t going to drink it but she was slightly confused as to why he brought it out in the back. She pulled herself from the table and with curious legs walked out after him. With the cap open and the bottle tilted downwards he poured it into a dead piece of grass. She immediately reached out to him and grabbed his shoulder. “What are you doing!? Stop please stop.” Tilting the bottle to its upright position he looked at her with a playfully confused grin. It was almost as if he was purposefully teasing her. What a comically naughty man.

  “Please, please, you don’t really have to mess with it, might be of more use to somebody else than the dirt.” She said with her praying hands.

  “But it’s of no use to me, out of sight out of mind.”

  “Well it might be of use to somebody else.” She didn’t necessarily want the whiskey, but in her penny clenching state of mind she couldn’t help but see that almost full bottle of whiskey as a valuable commodity.

  “You? Give this to you?” Kevin said with a shmear of clown makeup scratched from one end of his smile to the other. She knew he was joking, but she was still afraid to find out how far he would drag the joke. He lifted the bottle up from the tilt and gave her a smile to signal the end of the joke. He doesn’t get out much. He embraced her, suffocating her with tired muscles. She didn’t hesitate to wrap herself around him.

  As they bonded underneath the bounded tree, Susan’s thoughts darted back to memories of childhood. She stared into the rough and solid bark of the tree as she projected them. She could see her father moving between chairs in the kitchen looking for metallic parts that somehow jammed into his bike. Her memories of the house were always painted by Kevin meeting people, dealing to fix their vehicle and then screaming in frustration if something didn’t start the way he wanted. He was a genius with the guts of any vehicle, but he hated the organised nature of workshops, so he gambled when Susan was a child and opened his own small garage near the house. He was renowned for his ability to punch a piece of metal and it miraculously turning into a working model of an engine. Whenever the business got too hectic however, instead of hiring on new hands or expanding the business he would just recommend the customer to the nearest garage. He loathed the herded nature of the garages, so he always kept his at the right temperature, balancing his business between money and pleasure. She always helped around the place, bringing tools back and forth. But her memories of the garage were always tinted with a dead grey. She grew into the nature of the business, but somehow always saw it as a cage made out of flaccid metal. Growing up she always had a strong sense that she didn’t want anything to do with his business. Quite frankly she didn’t have any sense of what she wanted to do. It crushed him at first, but the idea that his garage would disappear eventually eroded away at him, leaving nothing but happiness and hope that Susan would find what brings her joy.

  The answer to all her financial problems lay within the twisted and aging metal of the garage. She was aware of that, but the tight birthly bond between her and Kevin wrote his every word into the bible of her mind. His main teaching to her as a child was to always do what makes you happy no matter what, which meant ditching the family garage for whatever theoretical happiness lay out there for her.

  Both her boots dug into the earthly floor. Divided by their conflicting material they both attempted to deal with the harsh leather. One boot tried to bury the running guilt from the abandoned garage. While the other rested on the grass knowing comfortably that Kevin understood enough to accept.

  He slipped the bottle into her hands with a hint of reluctance. Her worries had to be prioritised. Having dealt with her father, she was once more reminded of her financial hole. She wasn’t afraid to ask for money. On the contrary she was rather used to the whole process. But in turn it made this particular time all the more difficult. In that pathetic painting of the two loose souls beneath the tree Susan couldn’t force herself to once more exploit her father. If she had asked Kevin, he would have laid himself down ripping his liver out. For Susan however rational decisions were always repressed by emotional impulse.

  They spent the next couple of hours sharing time through a lengthy cup of tea and a delicious discussion. She needed that nostalgic sense of home once and a while. Once her need was quenched she left, leaving him with a strong promise that she would return with more stories of her life. They didn’t live far away from each other so it’s not as if she had to trek across lost deserts and Asian jungles to get to him.

  She drove on the road home with her perked friend placed lovingly in the front seat of the car. She even turned the bottle so that the label faced the front. The street lights erected to prepare for the evening.

  Getting closer and closer to her cave she noticed an assortment of sweets collecting at the front of a very f
ine establishment. So fine indeed it would make any moustache curl with sexual tension. The doors of the party were testosterone high, which provided a truly wealthy way of bursting in. Money drenched cars flocked around the entrance demanding attention with their metal feathers. The people that entered and exited hovered above the pavement refusing to make contact with the well-trodden ground. The assortment of dead reds pierced her eyes bouncing off the inside of her skull. The white lights dispersed like a disease onto the various statuette dresses that plagued the people. The stretched and cling-film dresses carried women around with them. Men shuffled like peacocks across the carpet with their condescending tar suits. The black form their pants didn’t even understand the concept of infused colours.

  The party appeared to be just starting. There was a lack of receptionists at the front. Perhaps anyone with an elegantly bought stature could enter Susan thought to herself. The rose coloured gathering grabbed Susan’s undivided attention, with perhaps ten percent left over for the jealous road. That familiar feeling, that desire that Susan knew very well started to accumulate within her impressionable marrow. She knew she was going to indulge to the highest, perhaps some food first.