After Ariel: It started as a game (6 page)

She flushed, and forgetting to use her utensils, picked up a piece of fish and held it between her hands. He pushed down the surge of anger, reminding himself that it was not his place to correct her. He looked down at the remaining fish and chips on his plate and flicked the chips around with his fork, panicking.
Odd number! Seven chips left...
Surreptitiously, he cut one in half.
Phew, now eight.
‘Can you bung this in the microwave, love?’

Her dimples flashed as she picked up his plate and flitted across the room. ‘Only be a minute. So tell me about yourself? Like, what about the muso stuff?’

He paused, remembering the screaming, the wooden spoon slapping around his head and shoulders, the whiff of rum and bared teeth.
Practice. You’ll practice eight hours a day or you know what’ll happen!
A locked door, no food or water for as long as she felt like it. School lessons into the night. Anger surged through him. He fisted his hands under the table,
willing
himself to calm down. One, two, three... as he reached ten, something pinged behind him. He came to and realised Ariel was staring at him, eyes wide, as she brought his plate back to the table.

‘Sorry.’ He reached out and rubbed her arm gently. ‘Bad memories.’ He smiled despite his pain, as she put the plate on the table and picked up his fork to spear the last of his chips.

‘She was strict then, your mum?’ Ariel carefully placed her utensils together and rested her chin on her hands, gazing at him sympathetically.

‘Yeah, you could say that. I got a beating if I didn’t practice long enough.’

‘That’s sad. So where do you live?’

‘In Sydney,’ he lied. ‘I’m only up here for a short time, so I’ll stay at the pub for now.’ He dabbed his lips with the serviette, folded it and placed it on his empty plate. Ariel leaped to her feet, swept their plates up and carried them to the sink, where she rinsed them and put them into the dishwasher, before examining the contents of the refrigerator. ‘We’ve got red jelly and ice cream!’

‘No thanks, Ariel. You have it if you want.’

Not wanting to appear greedy, she closed the fridge door. ‘Coffee?’ She flung a saucy glance at him over her shoulder. A delicious thought curled. Perhaps her mum and dad might like a boarder? After all, since the boys left home there were two spare rooms in the house. Remembering how her mum was always telling her not to blurt out the first thought which came into her head, she forced back the impulse to broach the subject.

‘Got any wine?’

‘Yep. White or red?’ Ariel opened the fridge door again. He stood up, moved over to stand behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her back into his powerful body. Her neat, rounded bottom nestled neatly into his thighs, rocketing his penis to attention. She froze; the soft skin on the back of her neck turned rosy.

Slowly now.
They always came quicker when he played hard to get
. He let her go and stepped away. She picked up fresh glasses and an unopened bottle of white wine. ‘Let’s be comfortable!’

In the lounge room, she invited him to sit, carefully poured the wine and then plopped down beside him.

‘Cheers!’ They clinked glasses. ‘You haven’t said a lot about yourself! What’s the matter? Tell me more?’ She grinned and, greatly daring, stroked the side of his face with a gentle finger.

He caught her hand and tucked it into his. ‘What else do you want to know?’

‘Where you were born, have you any brothers and sisters – are you parents still alive? All that sort of thing.’ She snuggled closer, a thrill shooting through her as he angled his body toward her and leaned close.

‘I was born in New South Wales. My parents had a property in the country – sheep and cattle. They’re dead now.’

Ariel looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Who taught you to play music? You
said
you could play anything?’

A flicker of anger played at the edge of his mind at what he perceived as an accusatory tone. He shifted away from her, and picked up his drink. ‘I was about four when I got a drum kit for Christmas and I went on from there. I had to practice every day – clarinet, trumpet – you name it. I had to do hours on the piano too – classical.’ He paused, surprised that he had actually told her all that.

‘What? That stuff? I hate classical. It’s booooring!’ Ariel bounced up and went to the family stereo-system where she rummaged around, before holding up a CD for him to check the title. ‘Mozart!
My mother’s!
’ She rolled her eyes, unaware of his expression hardening.

‘There’s nothing wrong with Mozart. He’s the greatest composer who ever lived.’
Fourthreetwoone...keep your cool.
‘Put that on and come over here and listen to something decent for a change.’

Ariel, pouting, put the CD cover down and came toward him as the glorious notes of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto soared through the room. Ariel’s eyes widened momentarily, before she hastened to adopt an expression of indifference.

Dingo forced a smile and moved to the end of the sofa. ‘Let me give you a foot rub!’
That always got them in.
She hesitated a moment and then came back to the sofa, grabbed a cushion off a nearby chair which she placed at the other end of the sofa and settled herself, half lying. He smiled, picked her legs up and took her bare feet in his lap where he proceeded to massage her toes, her arches, then heels and ankles, working along her legs, his beautiful, powerful hands stroking, soothing.

Ariel purred.

CHAPTER 5

Games

Dingo

Saturday, 4.30AM.

Her arms and legs lashed at him. ‘
No, no! No don’t!’

‘Come on, play with me! You said you would! Remember what we planned...’ His voice came out high-pitched. He forced it lower. ‘Hey baby, come on, you know you liked it back at the house!’

‘
Get off, you’re hurting
...’ She pushed her hands again his chest, as he knelt on her chest, terrified when she realised he was oblivious to the fact that she couldn’t breathe. She was vanishing into the earth under his weight. He felt something give deep inside her body. She tried to scream, but only a stifled grunt came out.

‘Hey, not ‘til you let me –’

Dingo took her face in both of his hands and squeezed until her lips pouted, then angled his head, swooped in and starting kissing her. Ignoring her increasingly feeble struggles, he tightened his hands around her face, pressing into her cheeks, grinding his mouth down, down, uncaring of his own cheek cutting off the air supply to her nose. Strangled sounds emerged from her throat. Oblivious to anything around him, flushed with anger and sexual desire, he tried to pull her jeans down with one hand, sliding one leg back between her thighs. She wriggled her left leg up to flail uselessly at his body. His hands slid, as though by their own volition around her throat. Slowly, Ariel’s struggles weakened, but still he kept his mouth clamped down, her nostrils blocked by his cheek.

She stilled.

In the half-light, her face looked crumpled, as though a vacuum pump had sucked the air out of her.

Something about her lips alerted him to...he pushed his body upright, realising that he had been kneeling on her, hunched over like a gigantic insect, sucking the lifeblood out of her body.

‘Ariel?’ She didn’t move. ‘Ariel? Speak to me!’

He leaned back on his hands, horror slowly seeping through him.

‘Ariel? Are you all right?’

Silence.

 ‘Ariel? Come on, get up. It was only a game.’ He waved his hand in front of her eyes. There was no response. Slowly he got to his feet, tried to pluck the wet denim away from his knees and then stretched a trembling hand to help her up, but Ariel stayed flat on her back, legs crumpled, gazing sightlessly at the rapidly lightening sky.

The trembling took him by surprise, like on the documentaries, when the lions had caught their meal, the survivors shook for awhile before they settled down and returned to grazing. Fear trickled through his limbs, paralysing his thought processes, rendering him helpless to work out what to do next. What to do? Tears pooled in his eyes; he dashed them away with an impatient hand.

Suddenly aware of his surroundings, he looked around, expecting to see a row of accusing witnesses pointing fingers at him. He felt like the last person left in the world, but he had company at his feet. Maybe...his heart turned over as he bent to gather her into his arms. Her limbs flopped. The muscles in his arms trembled uncontrollably under her weight, so that he was forced to set her back down and squat uselessly by her body, gasping for oxygen. Now he knew that grief was a colour, not the purple so beloved of religion, or the demented black of Central Europe but a wild, searing agony of red, digging deep no matter how hard he tried to shut it out. The tiny flame of hope which sprang to life with Ariel, flickered and died and left him alone in the bleak morning light.
They’d been having fun. Just minutes ago, we were laughing and chasing each other. How had it happened?

A flash of a baby’s face, so long ago and far away, limp in his hands, and the screaming broke over his mind. Adults all around, the baby being wrenched from his hands, the hush of shock before the sky fell in.
I didn’t mean to hurt her!
I didn’t meant it – I didn’t mean to hurt her...
the beating from the demented woman, slamming him to the floor, the heel of a shoe cracking against the side of his face...his hand went to his head, involuntarily feeling for the scars under his hair, as it had done so many times.
You don’t know your own strength!
His mother’s voice so clear, the shame branded into his soul that day overwhelmed him with his mother’s constant refrain, so loud that he could swear she was standing nearby.

Dingo wanted to lash out, to wipe the unctuous expression plastered on her face like the cosmetics she applied so lavishly. He knew she was dead because he’d seen her in her coffin – watched the undertaker screw the lid shut. Even
she
couldn’t have escaped her fate.

He snapped back to reality, hunched over Ariel who, like the baby, would never move again. What to do. Branches and tree trunks piled nearby caught his attention. A piece of sacking lay in the grass nearby, half buried in the long grass. He dragged the sacking out, shook it and laid it flat beside Ariel. Trying not look at her face, he rolled her into the middle, shocked by the wetness beneath her.

A bulge in her tight pocket attracted Dingo’s attention. Metal met his probing fingers and something else. Her house keys! He slipped them into his pocket and then eased a piece of thick paper out, opened the front flap and squinted at the print. Ariel’s used airline ticket from the Sydney to Brisbane flight. What was she doing with it in her pocket? It was then he realised she was probably wearing the jeans in which she’d travelled the day before. He quickly stuffed the ticket into his own pocket, grasped the sides of the sack, partially folded them and dragged the burden over to the pile. He pulled enough branches back to accommodate the bundle underneath and hauled it into the centre.

Horrified, he gazed for a moment on the lovely, cheeky face on which he had rained kisses only minutes ago and then folded the edge of the sack over it. He reached down, gently ran his hand over her still-warm ankle and pushed her bare, grass-stained feet out of sight, remembering her laughter as she’d shucked her shoes off and danced in the wet grass.
‘Race you to the boatshed!’

He gathered up her sandals and tucked them underneath the edge of the sacking. Why she wanted to wear such delicate footwear for a dawn walk, he hadn’t bothered to enquire; now they just looked pathetic. Moving quickly, he placed the branches back over her, letting the leafy ends flop down. Finished, he moved back and stared at the pile. There was no sign of anyone underneath, but the furrows scoring the grass clearly indicated that something heavy had been hauled across it. He scuffed his joggers over the tracks, trying to obliterate the signs. If someone came along before the grass dried, they’d see them immediately.  

His hand was shaking so badly that he had to hold his wrist still in order to read the time on his watch. Had only ten minutes passed since – his mind refused to acknowledge what had happened –
how it had happened –
but some vestige of self-preservation niggled at his tumbling thoughts. He had to get out of there! Behind the trees, the sky was growing lighter by the moment. Splashing downriver sent his heart into overdrive.
The rowers!
He peered through the overhanging branches of a tree, thankful for its canopy hiding him from the world.

The calls of the coxswain echoed across the water; the slap of oars sent his heart rate into orbit. The ramshackle boatshed nearby, Ariel had assured him, was no longer in use. ‘No one ever comes down this far – at least not often,’ she’d said with a sly grin.

A movement in the distance drew Dingo’s eye. A group of walkers were charging through the park toward him – no, they’d turned up the street at the bottom of the green belt. Slowly his pulse slowed; safe for now. His backpack – where was it? Terrified, he turned full circle before he saw it lying on the grass near a fallen branch. He lunged and swooped, breathing heavily as he looped a strap over his shoulder.
Safe.

He pulled the hood of his parka over his head, hoisted his canvas pack onto his back and cast a glance around before turning to leave. Something white attracted his attention; a small piece of paper almost hidden in the grass. He picked it up – a note to Ariel from her mum with a phone number to call and a reminder to pick up the milk from the corner shop. It took several tries before he could stuff it into the pocket of his jeans. Then he noticed Ariel’s mobile phone lying in the grass nearby. What else had he forgotten? He picked it up and wiped it dry with the hem of his T-shirt.
Sixty, fifty-eight, fifty-six...
Ariel’s parents would call and there’d be no reply! When they came home and found her missing they would start looking for her and they’d find
him
. All the crime shows on TV showed the cops tracing people through their phones.