Dead in the Trunk: A Short Story Collection Read online

  The elevator hummed into life, the lights coming on.

  I pressed the button for the seventh level, and we both rode in silence. It was a short trip. It didn’t give you too much time to get antsy.

  The door swished back and I found myself tensing. I noticed Dave was holding his flashlight like a weapon, too.

  We stepped out together, and the first thing I saw was the door to the labs, hanging from its hinges. It looked like the Hulk had torn it loose.

  ‘Fuck this, Dave. Get back in the elevator.’

  ‘You see me arguing?’ he said, and stepped smartly back inside. I pressed the button for five, and waited, shaking, sweating, for the doors to shut.

  It seemed like forever.

  ‘What the fuck have they been feeding those monkeys?’

  ‘I don’t know, whatever it is…’

  A shriek interrupted me, and as the doors finally moved at their own geriatric pace, a snarling monkey flew at the door. Dave smashed it in the face with his flashlight, and it fell back. The doors closed, and the elevator rose.

  ‘Jesus! Did you see that!’ he was suddenly pumped up with fear.

  ‘Of course I saw it. Let’s get back to the control room and just wait for Hazard. I don’t like this at-fucking-all,’ I said, and for some reason I was shouting. I could still seem the foam around its sharp teeth, its spittle flying.

  A tearing sound came from under the lift, and I jumped in my skin. I shifted my feet warily.

  ‘What the fuck was that?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Dave said, looking down at the floor of the lift with wide eyes.

  ‘Come on, come on,’ I whispered to the elevator, trying to coax it.

  Movement stopped, but the sound from underneath our feet continued. The door opened.

  We ran. I just prayed I could take it. My arm tingled, and somewhere in the recesses of my brain signals from my screaming knee got set aside for later, if I should be so lucky.

  ‘What about the stairs?’ I huffed. ‘Can they get up the stairs?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Dave. ‘Lock the bloody doors.’

  We were slowed down by the door. There were more to come. I’d have to stop at each one, find the right key, and lock it. But I’d be buggered if I’d leave any unlocked.

  I’d locked the elevator doors, dropped the keys three times. At this rate we’d never get back. I was under no illusions. I didn’t think the monkeys would let us. I don’t know why, but I thought those teeth were too sharp to be satisfied with a mere banana and a handful of nuts.

  ‘Come on, Jesus, hurry up.’

  I didn’t have time to get pissed off. I just swore at the keys. I couldn’t find the right one.

  An insistent thumping came from down the corridor. I couldn’t see it, not yet, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. If only I could get the bloody door shut.

  ‘You run ahead,’ I said. ‘I’ll catch up.’

  ‘I ain’t leaving you.’ To his credit, he didn’t sound too wobbly. I don’t know if he really wanted to be away, or if he was scared to be on his own, or if he was sticking by me like a mate should. There was no sense in us both staying, though.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, with more bravado than I felt. ‘I’ll catch up.’

  Dave looked unsure, but I didn’t care what he was thinking. My hands were shaking and I just wanted to close the door. I still couldn’t find the right key.

  ‘Just get back and call in Hazard, now.’

  ‘Don’t fuck about,’ he said finally. ‘Just come right back.’

  ‘I’m coming,’ I said, fumbling the keys with hands that had grown stupid on me. As I picked them up I saw a monkey tumbling through the elevator doors.

  Dave ran, and suddenly I wished I’d kept him there. I felt very lonely, and above all scared witless.

  It must have torn through the floor, I thought. I nearly shit myself then. I slammed the right key in the door as it slammed into the other side. It left a dent.

  I ran to the next door, with the sound of the monkey throwing itself against the door on the other side.

  The keys seemed slippery in my hands, like they had a mind of their own. I tried each one in turn…how many times had I told myself to label the keys? Why couldn’t they have a key card system like you saw in the movies? I cursed the big-brains, management and monkeys.

  As I finally engaged the lock, the monkey battered down the first door. I took a moment to marvel at how thirty pounds of monkey had managed the knock a steel door down, and then I was running for my life.

  My heart pounded in my chest as I ran. I had visions of my heart giving out, being eaten in small easily manageable chunks by some pipsqueak monkey…I ran faster. If I was dead of a heart attack, I guessed I wouldn’t mind being eaten by a monkey.

  I had two doors closed between me and it, now. I locked the last, and ran into our office.

  ‘Fucking hell, we’ve got to get out!’ I shouted, panic making me crazy…but Dave was silent.

  Only the second monkey took any notice of me. It looked up from its snack. I was rooted to the spot, for a moment, just a moment.

  Just long enough to take in Dave’s torn and bloody throat, his body lying on the floor in a grimace of death, and a gaping hole where his ear had once been.

  The monkey sat on his face, two biscuits together in one hand. I was transfixed, for too long, it turned out.

  Before I screamed and ran, I had just enough time to see what was in the monkey’s sandwich.

  *

  See? It don’t take long when I tell it, but in my mind it lasts forever.

  I lay awake some nights, waiting for my heart to give out. It’s the monkey’s curse, though. They put it down, but its laughter floats in my head. I swear monkeys laugh, just like they eat sandwiches.

  I’m a thinner man now. Dr Bains says my cholesterol’s right down. I’m practically fit. I’ll never be a model in Men’s Health, but I can see my cock for the first time since my thirties.

  Apparently, I’m not going to have a heart attack any time soon.

  Some nights, when the nightmares are at their worst, I wish I was fat again. When it’s too bad to sleep for the giggles that escape, I go downstairs to the kitchen. I try an’ bring a biscuit to my lips.

  I wish I could do it. I really do.

  *

  A ghoul, a cadaver, a group of university students...what could possibly go wrong?

  Hehe.

  The Body in the Bed

  Mr Carson was a cadaverous man. The boys of 32 Princes Avenue all thought so – and they knew better than most. Fifth year medical students had seen their fair share of the dead.

  The landlord of their five bedroom house was also peculiar. Strange shudders passed through his skeletal frame as he walked, as though only just finding out how to work his lanky body. His speech was also marked by verbal stuttering and odd ticks, his inflection and pronunciation almost retarded, although the man’s vocabulary was that of a university professor.

  In a friend, these traits could have been passed off as endearing (with great charity, perhaps), but in a landlord they were creepy. They spoke about it often, the way Mr Carson’s breath smelled bad, like a mortician’s, or the way his eyes seemed to roam independently of the movement of his head. He was not a particularly cruel, or worse, an impolite man.

  He was just embarrassing.

  He was due shortly. The four boys (they would like to think themselves men, but at twenty-three and still students, there was a lot of growing up left for them to do) lounged in the living room waiting for the doorbell to signal his arrival. John, the eldest of the flatmates and by association friends, had one foot tapping out a rhythm to a song that played on MTV, idly watching the tuppeny-ha’penny dancers gyrating to the rap tune that seemed so ubiquitous these days. He was more of a classical man, but his friend Mark liked to watch the girls, still being shy enough not to be able to enter a newsagents and buy his own porn. His friend had to make do with these
little titillations.

  There were worse things John could be watching on a Saturday morning, John thought. He could have a girlfriend, or children. He might be watching QVC or, god forbid, children’s television.

  There was no place for children’s television. Not even on acid. Especially not on acid. Nobody needs to be condescended to while tripping.

  But John didn’t have a girlfriend. His last date had been two months ago, and sex had been…no, he didn’t need to think about that.

  Him and Mark, the only two housemates who hadn’t been laid this month.

  Iain had, of course. Iain was always getting laid. At the moment he wasn’t thrusting between some poor deluded halfwit nurse’s legs. Instead, he wore the bored expression of a man who had better places to be. He was athletic, unlike the other three, and was itching to get to the gym. He would join them for a drink, but rarely. He treated his body like some work of art, defining biceps and cutting quadriceps on various machines that some would think were designed for modern day tortures. How clever, John had once remarked, that instead of the local despot torturing his subjects, the government just convinced us to do it to ourselves. John abhorred exercise, unless it involved flexing his elbow in the local. Not the local anything in particular – just anything local.

  Then there was Gwen. Gwen was French. It was a shame to label someone, but he was, and that was all there was to it. Some people are intrinsically English, and that is not necessarily a bad thing either. Some people were archetypes, and could not help but perpetuate stereotypes. Gwen spoke with a thick accent, despite speaking English perfectly, had a tendency to wear his hair long over his ears in a way that some women seemed to find attractive, and smoked Camels until his fingertips turned a sort of tarry yellow. His teeth were brilliant white, but John knew that this was just one more vanity – the Frenchman had them bleached.

  John admitted to himself that Gwen was the only Frenchman he knew, apart from at a great remove, like Jacque Chirac, or Inspector Clouseau, but that didn’t stop him making assumptions. As far as he knew, all Frenchmen were chain-smoking serial lovers with unruly hair and proud bodily odours.

  He didn’t know what Gwen smelled of. He tried not to get too close, just in case his nostrils were assailed with the recent odour of spent sex and lingering lady odours. He didn’t need to be reminded of his own failings.

  Between them, the four flat mates took up four rooms of the five bedroom house. Today, they had a new lodger. Mr Carson was coming to meet him.

  Only he didn’t know it yet.

  John marvelled at a dancer’s buttocks which seemed to shake and shimmy in an entirely independent way from both the music and her own body. It might have been a fine arse, but surely it would put a dampener on any coital relations should her arse wander off to see what was in the fridge during the act.

  The doorbell rang, and as one the friends didn’t get up. John looked at Mark pointedly.

  ‘It’s your turn.’

  ‘It’s not my turn. I let him in last time.’

  ‘That was three months ago.’

  ‘It’s Iain’s turn.’

  ‘Nope, I took out the rubbish last night,’ said Iain with a smile. ‘That counts as two weeks’ chores.’

  All three nodded knowledgably. Taking out the rubbish was a big job, worthy of a few chores, mainly because they only did it when the sideway was impassable and bikes could no longer get out for the short trip to the University hospital.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said John. ‘But we all pulled our weight this week. I did all the washing up. Even the can opener. I washed the can opener. I mean, come on...’

  ‘Well, I hoovered,’ said Gwen.

  ‘Gwen, you hoovered your room. I had to do the rest of the house.’

  The doorbell rang again. It wasn’t insistent. It sounded like it could wait all day. A persistent doorbell ringer could be more irritating in the long run.

  Some people would lean on the doorbell, angrily. This ringer had the patience of the dead.

  ‘OK,’ Mark said with a sigh. He always seemed to end up the whipping boy. ‘But I’m not cooking tonight.’

  He rose from the couch, the arm creaking with age, and walked across the threadbare carpet into the tiled hall. He could see the tall shape of what could only be Mr Carson through the frosted glass of the front door. He mentally pulled his gut in, steeling himself for the inspection. He wasn’t sure of the wisdom of their little prank, but the others had insisted, and he always went along with their schemes, sometimes foolishly, as it seemed he was the only one who ever got in trouble.

  ‘Coming!’ he called as the doorbell trilled again. He took the chain from the door and pulled it open. It opened under strong persuasion, the bottom of the door sticking on the thick welcome mat. A welcome mat usually went outside, but in this town anything outside would be nicked by students before a week had passed, even if it was nailed down. The Mad Moose pub sign that adorned their dining room wall was a testament to the fact.

  ‘Good morning,’ said the gaunt figure of Mr Carson before Mark could invite him in.

  ‘Morning. All spick and span for you, Mr Carson. Please, come in.’

  Mark felt somewhat tense, but he was a good actor. He acted every day when he was in class, surrounded by the confident and the aloof that would one day be the nation’s doctors, lives theirs for the taking and the saving. He never felt confident, but to let that show in medical school…well, he might as well just drop his trousers in Market Square come kicking out time and put his manhood between his legs and declare himself a lady.

  Sometimes he thought even the women would-be doctors had bigger balls than him.

  He didn’t let it ruin the day though. Instead, he stepped aside with a smile and Mr Carson passed him carefully, no contact being made in the narrow hallway. He noticed Mr Carson looking at the red tiles of the hallway, no doubt checking for specks of dirt and mud.

  It was spotless.

  ‘Shit,’ said Mark, so softly it might have been a sigh. Iain’s sweaty shorts were airing on the hallway radiator. Mr. Carson gave no sign of having seen them, but he wiped them off and held them behind his back, cringing as he imagined accidently slipping his fingers over Iain’s skid marks.

  For some reason, all four flatmates worked on the unspoken agreement that no matter how slovenly they might act during the intervening months, whenever Mr Carson visited for his sporadic inspections they would make an effort. They spent days cleaning the house from top to bottom, scrubbing the scum from the toilet bowl, removing unwanted plugs of pubic hair from the sinkholes, hoovering, sweeping the hall, dusting, doing the washing up, making sure there was no washing hanging from the radiators…it seemed necessary to make a good impression.

  It wasn’t that Mr Carson was a bad landlord. Whenever anything went wrong with the house – one time a radiator had burst, and another, the boiler had packed up – he sent round workmen the same day. The problem was always fixed. He was prompt.

  And there was a pair of sweaty shorts on the radiator.

  Mr Carson placed his umbrella very particularly in a corner of the hall.

  He should be bloody prompt, thought Mark, motioning for the landlord to go into the front room. They paid enough rent. For a five bedroom house, Mr Carson was making enough money to pay a mortgage on a small mansion.

  No sense in complaining, though.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Carson.’ John smiled. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee?’

  ‘No thank you, Mr Treat. I shan’t keep you long.’

  John rose. ‘I’ll show you around then, shall I?’

  By agreement, it was John that showed the landlord around on his visits.

  Mr Carson took his bowler hat from his head and held it under one arm. His fingers were, John noted, long and slender. Piano player’s hands. Or a surgeon’s.

  He wore all black. His coat was long. Wool, John presumed. It was raining outside, but there was no rain on the man’s polished shoes.
<
br />   Underneath the hat the landlord’s hair was plastered down. Probably Brylcreem, thought John. Nobody used Brylcreem unless they lived through the war. There was a knife-sharp parting, like a scar, running down the right side of his head. Nobody had a parting since the war, either, and especially not on the right. It probably signified something, thought John, like when children called people gay if they had their right ear pierced.

  John didn’t think for one minute that Mr Carson was gay. He didn’t think the man had any sexuality at all. He wore no wedding ring. He was probably one of those rare people for whom a sex drive had never emerged during puberty.

  John found himself wondering if he had any pubic hair, and shook the thought vehemently from his head.

  ‘By all means,’ said Mr Carson, his voice quiet, his lips barely moving as he spoke.

  John raised his eyebrows conspiratorially to his flatmates. Gwen showed him a thumbs up behind the landlord’s back. Iain smiled in expectation. They rose, turning off the television, and followed.

  Mr Carson didn’t think it odd.

  His hard soled shoes echoed down the hall as he turned into the dining room. He gave it a perfunctory glance. ‘Hmm. Very tidy.’

  ‘Would you like to see the kitchen?’

  ‘Certain…ly.’

  That strange non-stutter was emerging. John caught Gwen with a warning glance, staving off a giggle.

  ‘It’s clean,’ said Iain. ‘I think you’ll find it to your satisfaction.’

  Mr Carson strode across the carpet, his eyes taking in everything from the curtains to the chipped and stained dining table. It wasn’t his dining table though, so he couldn’t say anything about it.

  He poked his head into the kitchen, his long neck cracking loudly. The sound made Mark jump, but he didn’t show it. He wouldn’t be the weak link. Not today. He couldn’t let them down.

  There was an errant question mark of spaghetti on the wall. A left over from a spaghetti throwing competition a few weeks ago.