Total Write Off - First semi-final (Karma)

pickarooney

The first semi-final of Total Write Off pits WHITE against CYAN on the theme of Karma. For more details on the competition, see here.

Voting is by poll, with invisible results and open for 7 days. As far as possible, please try and give some feedback for the story you vote for and the one you don't vote for.

Best of luck to WHITE and CYAN.

pickarooney

I like to think that I was perfectly normal once. Normally imperfect, but nothing out of the ordinary. I could walk out my front door and nod at the neighbours passing by without going into a cold sweat. Leaving the porch didn’t cause my heart rate to increase or give me palpitations. I could appreciate the Christmas lights twinkling overhead in winter, the warm sun in summer months. In the right company I adored splashing in puddles, running through drifts of leaves, like a child giving way to infantile urges to swarm through the outdoors and wrap my arms around the fun of autumn showers, skating on sneaky black-iced puddles on frosty weekend mornings.

At some point I decided I wasn’t perfectly normal anymore. I can’t put my finger on what triggered the change, but it was swift and unfair, a karmic bite reminding me that I was less than ordinary, that I had some debt to pay. In the mirror I no longer saw the person I was, but rather a summation of all the inconsiderate, evil things I had done in the past. I challenged myself to put my hands in my pockets and walk down the street with my shoulders back and my head held high but you could all see the terrible things I had done, the awful person I had become, written in the lines on my face and that terrified me. I was so frightened that the accumulated bad I had done was so awful, so etched on my skin that people would spontaneously take it upon themselves to definitively rid the world of me. No particular event spurred this on, and for some time I managed to function semi-normally, working and laughing with my colleagues and friends. But gradually I withdrew, I stole longer lunch breaks, hiding in the toilet cubicle on the fourth floor where nobody ever went because of the odd smell from the ventilation system. I jittered at the slightest touch of hand-on-shoulder. If anyone had asked (and I’m sure they did, but I was so self absorbed at the time that I missed it) I would have shrugged their concern off, dismissing their questions as silliness. Now I see that they were far from silly.

I worked in a recruitment agency, one of the largest firms in Dublin. It was my job to meet and vet potential employees for international clients, to organise recruitment fairs and conferences for large and important multi-national corporations. I was very good at my job, I could spin a CV from cheap printing paper to gold with a few slashes of my pen. Suddenly the whole world began to slip through my fingers. My sloppy grip on reality became my greatest ally, but at the time was a distinct issue for my employer. When the economy took a temporary dip, I was one of the few who was kindly offered a lucrative redundancy package, with the understanding that I would take it and run, before I was pushed.

I had been a relatively lucky person up to that point. My parents, distant and preoccupied with a vile obsession for wealth and the wealthy, had bought my apartment for me as a graduation gift. Strained to breaking point by my constant failure to exceed their expectations, my bullish and stubborn determination to succeed without my father’s assistance, my parents had since dismissed me as ungrateful and told me to keep myself to myself until I was able to accept their generosity for the gift that it was. My stubbornness had been the first of my downfalls, and would become more of an issue in the months and years that followed. As I began to take stock of how horrid a person I had become, this fraught relationship with my parents forced me to struggle with other issues in my life, ones I had though were behind me. I was wrong, my life had started an uncontrollable spiral, and I was unable to control how my world mutated.

The first morning the outside world seemed too difficult to deal with, I called in sick to work, a new job that I had no passion for. I thought the immense fear would fade. Outside my front door would eventually become less intimidating. I could open that door, step outside and, placing one foot in front of the other, stroll down the street in a carefree way. That day never came. Instead I dwelled on all the small things I had done in my youth and young adulthood. I apologised in my head to all the classmates and friends I had discarded along the way simply because they no longer suited who I wanted to reinvent myself as. Now I couldn’t invent anyone braver than a dormouse, curling my long tail around myself and waiting in hibernation for a mental realisation that would never come without concerted effort. I had never put serious effort into anything, how was I to start doing that now?

That brings me to where I am at this moment. I am sitting in my porch waiting for the delivery man. They don’t like coming into my house, but I cannot reach the outside world in any physical sense and they know they have to come in. I have made a resolution, I am going to force myself as far as the door today. Just inside the metal lip of my front door is a garland of paper roses pressed from the books I used to play with as a little girl. Metallic and pastel, tissue and card, the petals flutter when my deliveries come. I see myself as a gross spider, weaving a web of money and pretty shiny things to attract the innocent delivery men into my lair. I am not a predator, but I love the smell of real-world from them, muggy and strained. My domain is a construct of painted faces and artificial smells, safe and comfortable. Soft couches, throws, cushions and pillows. There are no hard edges, the realities I live with are ones I can construct and control.

I have done some things I am very ashamed of. I feel I know you well enough now to offer you the truth, in small bites. Please do not hate me for what I have to tell, I am not proud of who I was. I don’t think my actions are as awful as the punishment I have meted out for myself, the sentence I cannot break and cannot define.

I was weak. My parents were not. I obeyed faithfully, that was my job. Outside our home I carried on with the same attitude. My school friends knew I could be relied on to buckle under pressure and comply rather than deal with a sense of disappointment from them. I use the term friends loosely. I carried my spinelessness with me without realising its full extent for many years, during which time I crushed nice people who I had a lot of respect for, simply because I was told to by my clique. To be in our group was an achievement, the announcement of your arrival at the top of the social pile. The living dolls from that group, year after year, have gone on to marry well. Hard and brittle, like shiny plastic, they were utterly flawless. My parents could imagine no alternative than to reach that level of perfection.

I had a brother once. A small weak baby who communicated in feeble and strangled cries and probably died from the weight of the expectations he would never live up to. I was too small to understand fully how he had escaped, but his funeral was an illustration of my Mother’s callous shininess. Her stone heart weighed like a monstrous millstone around my neck. As the small white coffin lowered into crumbled mud, I began to sob, only partially understanding that the box was the last I would see of the little baby I had been so fascinated by. The pastor’s intense shadow hovering over me in the sparkling-wet sunlight forced me backwards into my mother’s skirts. I stumbled a little and splattered mud on her patent pumps. Her intake of breath was so severe I shivered. Nothing was said, but in that moment I knew my mother would not forgive my transgression. As awful as the loss of a baby was, the potential damage to a pair of exclusive shoes was unforgivable.

A sick feeling grew in the pit of my stomach. I blanched and flushed at the same time, generating a temperature that was positively demonic. Leaving the lush, green graveyard, I was carried at a distance from my mourning parents by the chauffeur, who took pains to carry me like a plank of wood, lest my spattered clothes or shoes sully his perfectly polished appearance. My mother’s wrath was well known and her hatred of anything weak or imperfect had often garnered severe punishments for the staff. I knew my punishment would come, but I could not tell the time or place. There are always repercussions.

I snuggled under my duvet, Annie Lennox belting out on my stereo. Mascara stained my pillows and my eyeballs stung with the salt residue from the tears I’d shed the night before. I had never felt anything like this level of shame. Walking down the promenade while drunk the night before I had fallen, abandoning whatever self respect I had. This morning I could not contemplate pulling back the curtain and looking at the world outside. Surely everyone was judging me. I couldn’t face the day in front of me, the night before a jumbled mess of tequila and high heels. Instead I burrowed further into the eiderdown and dwelled on what I potentially had or had not done. There I was swimming at the bottom of a deep ocean. There was no sunlight, I was too far from the surface. I was breathing, but I do not know how. The water was velvet on my skin, with a hint of menace I could smell more than feel, like my mother’s perfume.

There was someone watching me, their vision slicing through the otherwise impenetrable depths with laser precision. I was chilled by their presence. I flipped over on my back, turning circles in the murky depths, looking for somewhere to hide, unable to see. With every passing second I became more agitated until I was a whirlpool, a spinning mass surrounded by a vacuum. Suddenly I burst through the surface, unaware of my ascent from whatever fearful mass was lurking behind me. The air and light assaulted me, I felt myself falling back into the jaws of my attacker. Opening my mouth to scream, I imagined the blood leaking from my veins as I was devoured by the menacing force I had failed to escape. It was then that I woke, tangled in sweat and bedding. I panted, prostrate on the mattress, tears streaming down my cheeks. My heart was pounding.

I had this dream often. It became a key feature in my life, an indicator that the days were ticking by. I scratched the details in my journal, marked the nights on my calendar. I was sure the only way to break the cycle was to go outside, to see the sea and recognise it for what it was, vast, merciless but not waiting to consume me. And yet I hovered inside my front door, terrified of the world outside and the dreadful punishments it held for me.

I am lonely. My heart aches for someone to belong to. I am sure I have a Prince Charming waiting for me somewhere on the outside, in the real world. Maybe some day I will find my way back out there. Maybe today I will reach the door.

pickarooney

The cat on the windowsill licked its paw gently and surveyed the disarrayed room. The place was normally neat and tidy, with a faded, expensive wool carpet, and a clutter of solid furniture. But today, it was a mess. The heavy Dutch sofa had never looked wonderful, with snot green upholstery and vomit colour throw cushions; but both were now also spattered with something darkly unpleasant. More dark splots decorated the walls. The old television in the corner had a classic example of an early cathode ray tube, but said tube was now smashed into tiny shards, which were strewn all over the floor.

It wasn’t just stains and a layer of glass that spoiled the room’s dusty charm. A tea tray lay incongruously in the middle of the floor, it’s cargo of china and silverware scattered across the rug. The spilled earl grey had long since soaked into the pile. The cat leapt softly from its perch on at the window, and padded over to the mess. It nibbled daintily at a fish paste sandwich, before it gave a disgusted twitch of its whiskers, and moved to a new vantage point on the back of an elegant armchair. His cool blue eyes gazed across the room at nothing in particular, and his supine tail flicked in time to the ticking mantel clock.

Sticking out from behind the high-backed armchair, and ignored by the cat, was a foot. This foot was attached to a rather large leg, which was in turn, attached to the prone body of one Mrs Louisa Macintosh. Mrs Macintosh was squished down into the small space behind the chair, and would have been quite uncomfortable in such a confined space, were it not for the fact that her brain had also been squished into a confined space inside her caved in skull. Her last breath, along with an ineffectual squeak of surprise, had escaped her quite some time ago.

The cat’s name was Geoffrey, though he neither knew nor cared this. He had investigated the slowly stiffening body of his mistress while it was still warm, and as it now cooled it held no further interest for him. He didn’t budge when the doorbell buzzed, once, then twice. Further rapping on the door saw him yawn and stretch and curl up on an overstuffed cushion. The house was then quiet. He slept peacefully.

*

Detective Crook rubbed his eyes and sighed. This, on a Friday, of all days. He didn’t need such a puzzle the day before he was supposed to have a weekend off. He surveyed the over-furnished front room of the home of Mrs Macintosh, ex post-mistress, security freak, widow. Though her body had been carted off for autopsy, the smell of her decay lingered, tempered only by the strong odour of cat pee. Crook tried not to breathe.

He mentally reviewed the conundrum. One dead old lady. Found in a bloody mess in the front room of her house, which had been harder to get into than Fort Knox. It had taken the lads half an hour to break in. No other sign of forced entry. There were indicators of a struggle in the smashed furniture and spilled tea tray, yet no defensive wounds apparent on the old dear, not that you could see much, the mess she was in. The only witness who could shed light on the whole thing was her cat, and obviously, he wasn’t talking.

His phone pinged and vibrated in his pocket, and he took it out and glanced at the display. Tabitha. Again. Must be her fifth message in under an hour. Not as many as usual, but the day wasn’t over yet. Since the problem at Easter, she had pestered him like this all day, every day. He shoved the phone back in his pocket, and gazed again at the peculiar, messy crime scene.


Crook could see his planned dirty weekend begin to fade away like a mirage. Unless he could wrap this one up quickly, all those lovely pints would stay on the wrong side of the bar. The sexy Miranda would stay unmolested. He moved around the room quietly, not touching anything, and choosing his steps. He flinched and almost tripped as a brushing pressure swept around his legs. It was just the cat. He hated cats, useless balls of fur and claws.

‘Who the hell let the cat back in here?’

He shuffled his feet and shooed the menace away.

‘Can somebody please get rid of it? Like, now?’

His pant legs were covered in cat hair. He sighed as he wandered outside for a cigarette.

Resting his butt cheeks against the edge of the concrete pillar at the garden gate, he peeled off his itchy latex gloves, flicked his lighter and took a long slow draw of his fag. It did nothing to dissipate his stress levels, nor his impending migraine. He needed a drink. He needed Miranda. He looked at the small semi detached house that had just wrecked his weekend plans. Plain and nondescript, like any slightly neglected house in any ageing estate. Except this one had hidden a dead old lady with a bashed in head for what he estimated was about four days.

‘Terrible, just terrible, isn’t it?’

The voice came from right behind his ear, and Crook looked around in surprise.

‘Just shocking, all this. I knew it wasn’t normal, her not being at choir. Never misses a good session, our Lou.’

The woman seemed about 60. Her grey hair had an odd shade of purple rinsed through it, and she was wearing carpet slippers. Crook hesitated, then decided to take her conversational bait, where was the harm?

‘Knew her well, did you?’

‘Oh, god yes. Years. Since we were both in Woolworth’s. She met her husband there you know. Though of course, she is widowed now. Buried her Alf not 6 weeks ago. Imagine. The two of them gone. Tragic. Just tragic’

The woman paused, whether for breath or impact, Crook couldn’t tell. He sucked on his cigarette, and waited.

‘Course, they didn’t get on’. The woman squinted slightly as she spoke, to emphasise the import of this comment.

‘No?’

‘Chalk and cheese, they were. A blessing really that they never had children. Truth be told, she gave him a hard time, did Lou. Had a sharp tongue on her. He couldn’t really cope when she went off on one. He loved his garden, though. Such a clever man with the roses.’ She gestured to the overgrown garden, where the roses now needed deadheading and the overgrown grass sprouted new weeds.

As she spoke Crook watched a boiler-suited forensics officer carry the cat at arms length from the house.

‘Oh, look, there’s his cat’. The woman was off again. ‘That’s Geoffrey. Alf just loved that cat. Said it almost spoke to him, he did’

Crook stubbed out his cig on the pillar. The cat. Yeah, he had already met the cat.

‘’Course Lou couldn’t stand the thing’. The woman continued to talk, oblivious to the fact that Crook didn’t want to listen. He was sorry he had let her begin.

‘Talked to her only last week, she said she was going to have it put down, she couldn’t stand the cat hairs, you see. Got right up her nose they did. She always said, as soon as Alf was gone, so was that cat’.

A sharp yell from the forensics officer interrupted the woman’s flow. In a fury of snarling fur the previously docile cat had suddenly spun and jerked out of the hands of the unwary man. It streaked across the lawn, and disappeared into the dense foliage of an ash tree.

‘Our Lou could never catch it either’ Mrs Purple hair was smirking.


*

Back inside the fetid house once more, having finally escaped the neighbour from hell, Crook watched as the guys from forensics finished gathering samples. The work clock was still ticking, but there was no point going back to HQ, he would avoid the place while he could. While he waited, he wandered towards the rear of the house, to the kitchen, where the heavy smell was less cloying.

He had ignored his phone while preoccupied with the conundrum of Mrs MacIntosh, but when it jangled once again, he fished it from his pocket, and without looking, hit ‘accept’. He couldn’t avoid Tabitha all day. To his surprise, the familiar voice of Tom, the coroner, met his ear.

‘You want the good news, or the bad news, Mr C?’

‘I’ll take the good, Tom, I need it. Shoot’

‘Well, I’ve only done a cursory exam, but I think I’ve already caught your granny killer.’

Crook straightened, immediately alert. The mirage of Miranda reappeared, things were looking up.

‘You won’t believe it though. I think the cat did it’.

‘The what did it?’ Crook’s mind did a backflip through the bloody, wrecked crime scene. A cat?

‘The old dear had a cat, right? I saw it prowling around when I came to load her up. From the looks of things, Tiddles seems to have gone feral on her. Multiple small lacerations to her face, small animal bite marks. Its all there.’

‘But it doesn’t make sense, Tom. Her head?’

‘Blunt force trauma. I’ll have to review the scene. Probably fell onto something solid trying to fight it off’.

Crook was speechless. Tom continued on, but he was hardly listening to him.

‘Kinda makes you afraid to have pets, doesn’t it?’ Tom laughed as he finished up.

‘Oh, I almost forgot, mate. The bad news. Just thought you should know. Tabitha was at the station looking for you at lunchtime. I told her you were on a case’.

Crook’s neck prickled at the sound of his wife’s name. He had been at the pub, with Miranda, but Tom was a good lad, didn’t drop him in it. Crook owed him one.

As he ended the call, he checked his screen again. The alerts on his phone now numbered 14. Nine text messages, 5 missed calls. Three from home, one from his office, and one number he didn’t recognise. He picked the simplest one first, and dialled in to work.

Pam picked up on the second ring.

‘Hi Boss. I missed you earlier.’ She sounded blustery, like she was in a hurry to tell him something. ‘I was just trying to get you because your hotel from the weekend called. About your booking? Well, I wasn’t thinking and I’m really sorry, but when they said they couldn’t get you I told them to phone Tabs, and I gave them her number. It was only when I hung up I thought maybe you were surprising her, sir. That’s such a romantic hotel, I’ve heard of it. I’m really sorry if I’ve given the game away’.

It had all come out of her mouth in one big rush, but to Crook, her unwitting confession came in slow motion. He wanted to swear. He wanted to roar at her for being a stupid, stupid, bitch, but instead he simply said thanks, and hung up the phone. The remaining alerts glowed ominously on the screen.

The phone rang for so long, Crook thought it was going to ring out. Just as he was about to breathe out his tension, he heard a click as it was answered.

He heard nothing but breathing on the line for what seemed like ten minutes.

‘Tabs? Are you there?’

The deep silence still lingered so long he thought his heart would stop before she spoke. When she did, it was brief.

‘You bastard. You complete and total bastard. You swore never again.’

He still held the phone to his ear after the line went dead. He didn’t know what else to do.

*
From its vantage point high in the ash tree, the cat kept watch. Soon, the fuss would die down. Soon, his house would be quiet, and he would once again ease himself through the back window, and find his comfy niche in the corner of his sofa. A lone figure left the building, walking quickly to his car, while talking rapidly into his phone. A breeze nosed through the branches; the cat could smell smoke, sweat, fear. With predator eyes, he watched the man leave, then made his way down the tree.

Hrududu

Two great stories and very different from each other.

White started out strongly but I felt it got a little muddled. I might need to read it again but I felt the writer struggled a little to get the theme to fit the story. But it was still a very strong piece.

Cyan was clean, clear and very well written. Feckin' cats. I always knew they couldn't be trusted.

For me I went with Cyan, as I enjoyed it more.

azzeretti

I agree with Hrududu. White was brilliantly written but I felt it lost its way a bit. Also, it wouldn't be my favorite style and I find large descriptive text difficult.

Cyan is excellent. It is both the type of story I would write and love to read - well done.

pickarooney

I couldn't get into White at all. Most of it read like a particularly well written Personal Issue and I culdn't really make out whether it was coming or going. It seemed to be setting us up for a big reveal as to what had triggered the character's agoraphobia but all we got was something about dirty shoes... Maybe I just didn't get it but there seems to be a chunk of this missing. I really felt like replying to the OP and asking for more details..

"Over-furnished" is a good description of the first couple of paragraphs of Cyan. It comes into its own though with the grisly details of the scene and the introduction of the detective. I had worked out three possible endings and none of them were exactly right so the suspense was built nicely throughout. Cyan gets my vote.

Six of One

I thought both pieces were very well written.

I made my decision based on plot. I felt Cyan's plot moved along at a nice pace and I just found myself more interested in it as a story, rather than 'a piece of writing'.

I had to re-read White's a couple of times to really understand what the character is telling us, I think I do understand it but the lines

I have done some things I am very ashamed of. I feel I know you well enough now to offer you the truth, in small bites. Please do not hate me for what I have to tell, I am not proud of who I was.

built me up to expect a revelation that did not arrive.

A hard choice, well done to both writers.

kelator

I felt White's suffered from too many adjectives which prevented me really getting into the story. Also, plot wise the ending disappointed.

While I felt Cyan's story should have started with the detective, or at least had the opening with the cat reduced to a paragraph, I think it was the more well balanced story and voted accordingly.

Mr E

Two really different stories, and they were different to read too. I had to read white's poetic prose carefully so I wouldn't miss anything, whereas I flew through cyan's because it was much breezier. Feckin' cats.

After flipflopping a bit, my vote is for Cyan.
Props to White for one of my favourite lines of the competition so far:

I had a brother once. A small weak baby who communicated in feeble and strangled cries and probably died from the weight of the expectations he would never live up to.

Gave me chills.

angelll

Voted for Cyan here too. Well at least i think i did, poll went a bit mad, had to click a few times. Enjoyed white too but didn't really understand what the problem was,like Pickarooney i felt there was a chunk missing.

Carter P Fly

Voted for Cyan, It was a good read though a bit jumbled.

White, Was half way through the second paragraph and It was just this neurotic guy ceaselessly whining and I just stopped. I skimmed a bit but it seemed more of the same. didnt make it past that second paragraph.

Arlecchina

White had some beautiful language and imagery — 'sneaky black-iced puddles'; the narrator as 'a gross spider, weaving a web (…) to attract the innocent delivery men'— but was perhaps a little too much introspective 'tell' and not 'show'. I'd have liked more scenes/dialogue to break up the large blocks of narrative exposition — much like the section at the brother's funeral, which was really compelling. Good work!

I loved Cyan, so that was the piece I went with. It was surprisingly funny ('Her last breath, along with an ineffectual squeak of surprise, had escaped her quite some time ago'), with the perfect balance of description and dialogue. Crook was a really well delineated character — sneaky, cheating, blighter! I'd love to read more!

Mr E

Whitewash for Cyan?

Shame these two had to go against each other. In any other round, white would have done much better.

pickarooney

Congratulations to Cyan who is our first Total Write Off finalist!