Wheatlocks lay motionless and let the wine take effect, its warmth like a lullaby humming quietly inside her. The lamp crackled as it cooled and the floor seemed alive; the boards creaked a few times as though the Sandman had come to send her to sleep.
The stairwell was dark, as though the night’s soul had stepped inside. Only the light switches glowed red.
But on the fifth floor shone a barely perceptible light, and oddly this one was on the floor: a strip of light twenty or so centimetres long,
gleaming
like a worm that had swallowed a ray of sunshine.
The worm came from Sparkle Eye. It was a narrow penlight, its bulb covered almost entirely in duct tape and with small indentations in its tin covering at the other end, the kind of marks left by someone nervously chewing a pencil. They were teeth marks: Tweety often held the torch in his mouth, especially when he was just getting to know a lock. But now he was already hard at work and the torch lay on the floor. From this point onwards he needed no light whatsoever.
He was on his knees in front of a dark wooden door and working away, his hands raised up. More than anything he was listening, following the lock’s melody: a soft, three-voice humming accompanied every now and then by a tambourine. And he wasn’t only listening with his ears, he was listening with his hands too. His fingers moved like feelers, holding a piece of brass barely the size of a matchbox and turning a tiny screw at one end first to the left, then to the right, then back again. A small pipe stuck out at the other end and from inside that a steel pin thinner than a crochet needle moved inside the lock.
More such needles lay on the floor in Sparkle Eye’s light, each with a different hook on the end or a carefully cut iron tooth. The needles weren’t envious of each other as they all had their own function that no
other needle could perform. The pouch lay there too, empty this time, and a collection of tiny pieces of steel; a layman would only have guessed that they were part of some machine or other.
Tweety had already gone through the pins a few times and would have been able to open the door if number five hadn’t been giving him trouble. It was caught somehow, almost like a maggot that didn’t want to be pronged on a fishing hook, but Tweety remained unfazed. He didn’t force it; you had to be gentle with locks, otherwise they could turn difficult and could easily seize up with something resembling angina. Talking to them often helped – you didn’t even have to speak out loud.
You’re a beautiful, wonderful lock,
he thought and let the words flow through his fingers, along the needle and into the keyhole.
And you know me well. It’s Tweety, and you’ve always opened up for me before…
Then everything was in place. Tweety could feel it somehow, or else the lock quietly whispered it to him. He unscrewed the steel needle, gently pressed the stump of piping with the flattened end into the keyhole, and turned. The lock creaked, the catch moved, and then the door was ajar.
Tweety froze and sniffed the air. From inside the apartment came the smell of night and woman, like a sensuous, gaseous ointment, and nothing indicated that anyone had reacted to the creak. Not even the Ghost had moved. He listened to the stairwell, but nothing spoke of impending danger; a car hummed past the front door. He picked a plug-like key from the collection on the floor and straightened out the inside of the lock, packed his things into the pouch, checked that the button and safety pin fastening his back pocket were still in place and finally switched off Sparkle Eye.
The world slowly began to appear before him; a gram or two of light always seeped in from somewhere. At first it consisted mostly of darkness in all its various densities. You had to listen to them with your face and understand them with your soul. Where a shoe had stood during the daytime, there was now a stone covered in moss or an angel’s feather, and a hinge wasn’t necessarily always a hinge, it might be a laughing skeleton. The edge of the door stood out, a slightly lighter strip in the middle of the darkness. Tweety took hold of it and pulled. The door moved an inch, then there came a dull clink and the movement stopped. The security chain was on.
Tweety’s lips rose in a faint smile. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a small tube and a piece of twisted steel wire, then rolled up his jacket sleeve. His cuff was loose, as if it had been stretched before, and rose up to his armpit with ease. He squeezed odourless white Vaseline from the tube on to his forearm, rubbed it into his skin, then untwisted the steel wire. At one end of the wire was a small loop, as small as a doll’s ring, and he pressed it against the tip of his index finger. He pulled the rest of the wire until it was straight, letting it run across the palm of his hand and along the inside of his forearm down towards the elbow.
He pressed his chest flat against the wall and began wiggling his arm in through the chink in the door. In it went with surprising ease, swimming inside the apartment, as slippery as a snake, his fingers groping all the while first for the groove, the chain, and finally the nub. The next stage was delicate – his tongue came out of his mouth to sneak a look at what was happening. With his left hand he slowly moved the wire, then he removed the hoop from the tip of his finger and successfully slipped it around the nub of the chain at the first attempt. He then brought his hand back out, pushed the door almost shut, pulled sharply on the wire and lowered the chain, leaving it dangling limply towards the floor. He knew how to close the chain again too; this was slightly more complicated but it was worth doing in places he visited often.
He remained on his haunches and slipped inside, held the lock and closed the door silently behind him, then crouched down on the doormat and listened. First he made out the hum of the fridge, then the ticking of a clock – probably one of those old-fashioned ones that you had to wind up with a key, he’d thought on previous visits – then finally he heard the sound of breathing, a slow, low-pitched rumble that betrayed her deep sleep and considerable drunkenness. There was only one snorer in the apartment though, he knew that already.
But one thing was missing; Tweety crouched there waiting. Then he heard it, a comforting pat, no louder than if a pillow had fallen to the floor. A few seconds passed, then the Ghost was there in front of him: Soot Rose’s cat. On his first visit the cat had almost scared him to death. It had started playing with his hand while he was trying to undo the chain, but now it was used to him and only came to say hello once he was inside. He reached out his fingers; the Ghost nuzzled them, then went into the kitchen and waited.
Tweety began to undress, his clothes still damp from the rain, and listened to himself, but he wasn’t happy with what he heard. It was something murky, like a blood-red fog, but it didn’t seem to be warning him of any immediate danger. Perhaps it was a kind of apathy, the same apathy he had felt earlier that evening. The feeling had been so powerful that he’d sat caressing the pouch for a full three hours, listening to
Carmina Burana
over and over before he’d been able to sense the Power surge within him. There was something else inside him too, almost a desire to do something bad, smash things, tear things up, but he suppressed it immediately – there was something so frightening about it, like a
bad-tempered
black dog that had almost gnawed through its leash.
Tweety was already naked, he’d only been wearing trousers, shoes and his jacket. He turned Pessi and Moses to face the door, placed his trousers in one pile and his jacket in another. That was good, it would be easy to get dressed again as he left, and if necessary he would be able to scoop everything up in a single swipe of the hand. The previous night he’d had to get dressed in the stairwell. Only once had he been forced to run out into the street with nothing on; it had been earlier in the spring, the nights were turning dangerously light and the Pig in question had chased him round the block brandishing a bread knife.
He moved but hesitated at the last moment and took the Flame, his knife, from his jacket pocket. Just in case, he thought and moved inside without thinking what ‘just in case’ meant. Soot Rose was a harmless woman; he knew that.
Every Sunday she drank herself into oblivion and it wasn’t uncommon to find her asleep on the sofa with only half her clothes on. Once he’d found her lying fully clothed on the floor in the hallway. She rarely brought men home with her – perhaps she was so drunk that no one would have her. The most amusing thing about Soot Rose was that she always let Tweety into the building – she must have thought he was a neighbour – then all he had to do was go down to the basement and wait for her to get home.
Soot Rose hadn’t pulled the curtains, and the darkness in the living room was a deep-blue dusk; it was like being in an aquarium filled with ink. Tweety stopped amidst the ink and made sure that Soot Rose was in bed, then he continued towards the kitchen. He walked strangely, though he moved with ease: he remained in a crouching position, his hands
resting on top of his thighs, and it seemed as though his legs only moved from the ankles, rolling like wheels beneath him. But by walking like this he was always hidden behind the furniture and he wouldn’t be given away by anyone turning in bed and glancing around the room, and when he stopped still, in the darkness he blended in with the furniture so well that a drunken sleepwalker going to fetch a glass of water could walk right past him without noticing a thing.
Tweety closed the kitchen door behind him, he couldn’t open the fridge and allow the light to shine into the bedroom. The Ghost was waiting for him next to his bowl; he was a chunky, grey-striped cat, and now he was so happy that he came up to Tweety and nudged against his bare shins. There was a tin of Kitekat in the fridge. It was the
fish-flavoured
one. The Ghost preferred the chicken-flavoured one, but continued to gobble it up, purring contentedly. Tweety flattened the surface of the remaining food in the tin, replaced it and walked out of the kitchen. He didn’t feed the Ghost out of a deep affection for animals, but for the simple reason that, if he didn’t do it, the cat would start rubbing himself up against him, and the evening would all come to nothing.
Just before the bed he stepped on Soot Rose’s clothes that lay strewn across the floor. The first item he found was her bra. He fingered it for a moment, but to his surprise it didn’t awaken the same feelings in him as before. He found himself thinking how strange it was that certain parts of the body are trussed into cups that are then fastened over the shoulders. But next he found her nylon tights.
He slipped his hand in through the top and spread his fingers so that the fabric stretched, then ran it along his cheek. But this didn’t arouse him either. His hand slumped down. He didn’t know what had got into him – perhaps it was the black dog growling again. Regardless, he hastily pressed the Flame’s blade against the tights at the point where the fabric was at its most taut. The nylon gave way, but he pressed harder still. There came a quiet hiss and the tights tore.
Tweety remained perfectly still, breathing with his lips slightly apart. Finally he shook his head as if to wake himself up, let go of the tights, clambered towards the bed and knelt down beside it. Soot Rose was asleep on her back. She had shoved the duvet to one side – it must have felt too hot before the storm – and now she was lying there naked, her breasts rising heavily, and her hair gave off the sharp smell of the bar and
of tobacco. There she lay and didn’t know anything about him. There she lay entirely at his mercy.
He breathed in Soot Rose’s different scents and tried to imagine what her life was like, and decided that she probably did a boring job that she secretly hated; and when the weekend came she would take a bath and start to put on her make-up, she’d say something to the cat, because there was nobody else to talk to and her telephone probably didn’t ring all that often, then she’d pull on her tights and her nicest clothes, take a bottle of perfume from the bathroom cupboard and spray some of it behind her ears, then finally she’d sit in a nightclub all by herself and nobody would try to pick her up, she’d become more depressed and order more to drink, then stagger home drunk and collapse, her body heavy with inebriation. It was a miserable life and she’d have been happier dead.
Tweety felt almost sorry for her, and he sat up and kissed her gently on the forehead. She didn’t react in the slightest. He sat back down, the taste of Soot Rose’s make-up and sweat in his mouth, and he didn’t know what had come over him, but somehow he didn’t want to touch her anymore.
Perhaps he did know what it was after all: he missed Wheatlocks. It was her that he had wanted to visit, but he couldn’t visit her too often as she might start to sense something and he didn’t want to lose her. For he loved her. Of all women, she was the sweetest. All the others, Soot Rose, Silkybum, Little Faun, they were all substitutes. It was true and he knew it.
Sometimes they almost disgusted him, as Soot Rose had done, her snoring or her breath. Tweety’s nostrils began to twitch. Soot Rose was nothing more than a lump of meat, and if she’d been his wife she’d
probably
have nagged him constantly and cooked horrible food, and she’d never want to sleep with him because she’d always have a headache.
‘Vile slut,’ his lips moved. He knelt up, and he almost wished that she would wake up. He wanted to see the look of fright, how the terror would twist her face and make it even uglier, how spit would fly from her mouth as she screamed – this he truly wanted to see. She would have screamed and screamed and there would have been nothing left of the lady she had been as she’d swaggered into the nightclub, her tits packed into her lace bra and her pussy smirking to itself inside her silk panties.
He raised the Flame and turned it slowly in the air. There was just enough light shining in from outside: an electric blue flash ran the length of its blade. He lowered the knife so that it was almost touching Soot
Rose’s chest, at the spot where he thought the heart must lie, and held it there, barely a millimetre away from her white skin.
Wake up
, he thought,
sit bolt upright!
He wondered what it would feel like as the knife sank into a person: would you be able to feel their heartbeat? Would it feel
different
once they were dead? And if so, what would that feel like – like holding your bare foot on a frog thrashing in the grass?