Twelve days had passed and he hadn't heard anything, at all. He reconnected the house phone in his bedroom, beside the bed on the floor, and it sat there like a plastic red urn among memories of Pris, and the dark stains on the carpet, and gluey dried tissues.
He spent the days wasting away in his lust, something cold and stale like death creeping towards him slowly, and settling on his chest, waiting, weighing on his heart. This was what told him that he might have loved her. He could not continue to do nothing, because it was exhausting him. He had to move, get out, maybe go and find her.
The world seemed to be so much more beautiful now he was blind in one eye. The nurses had cooed over him, which had been nice – Dad had called an ambulance after finding him screaming on the kitchen floor, clutching his eyes weeping water and blood and something thick and gooey and yellowish. He could still remember the taste as it dribbled between the gap in his lips, like a liquefied old penny. They had offered him surgery, but he had forgotten to care at that point, the world had ended.
He stood up. Outside the evening was waning to night, softly, romantically, lilac to a tender navy blue. It felt like a film. The world seemed to be blushing and singing and simpering all to hurt him, how cruel it seemed, to be the perfect setting for a kiss after dark or secret sex in the park. He stared for a moment and remembered her one day, walking to the house down that very road in view of his window all dressed in black, her whitish hair glowing, the cigarette leaving a trail of smoke behind her like a hot gun – a cowboy wielding his madness, waiting, ready for a brawl.
"Pris," he said to the room. He put on his jacket, the new leather one he'd bought to impress her. He went out of the house. If she would speak to anyone surely it would be her Mother? Surely. Her Mother would have heard something, a letter, a phone call, something. He had to know, he had to know. He was sure she was hurt, something bad had happened. He couldn't go on without at least knowing he had tried. He was imagining her face through the car window, crying, Hannibal's hand grasping the back of her neck, stuck there with his clammy evil. The world rolled passed him as he walked like a psychedelic nightmare as he walked. Her house wasn't far.
When he arrived the door wasn't locked; he checked the handle and almost walked straight inside, but he waited. The day was cooling around him, and a draft curled its cold fingers up his shirt, the back of his spine. Then a light flipped on, and he saw the small silhouette of Billy.
The latch was clicked on, he heard.
Billy did not show his bonny bony face. He spoke to the door.
"I know it's you, Murdoc," he said in his quiet, seductive voice. "I can't talk to you. Pris said –"
"I don't care about that now, I just – is she alright? Has she written to y'Mum? Or called, or anythin'?"
"Mum asked her to call her to let us know she was fine, but she hasn't called. She wrote a letter but it was very short. She – she's in London, you know. She's getting married to your brother."
His eye seemed to jump in its socket. "Married?"
"Yeah, she wants to get married to your brother, she said."
Murdoc stood paralysed, his mouth popped open, his hands shaking in his pockets. "And – and did – didn't she mention – well, I'd have thought she might've mentioned me."
"She didn't."
"Can I have the address? I need her address. Please, Billy, I'll do anything," he insisted, jamming his foot between the door. "I won't leave. Just – find the letter. Find it and tell me the address."
"I'm not supposed to talk with you."
"Then don't – just get the letter!" Murdoc snarled.
How strangely easy it was to love someone so obedient. Billy went and returned with the envelope, passed it though the letter box to him, and locked the door.
The letter he wrote went:
Dear Pris,
I know you might not get this, but I had to try. I know you're gone and that's all my fault, and I know you probably can't call or talk to me. If you can, do. I've got our phone in my room and I'll make sure I pick it up. I want to know you're OK.
I want you to know that I think that I love you, and I didn't mean to fuck it all up, I really didn't, but I love you and you had to know. And now you do. I promise that, and I know it sounds really stupid, completely stupid, but I am going to wait. I don't know how long it'll take. I don't think I care much more. I don't care about anything other than you. We haven't even got any food in because he took all of the money, but it doesn't even bother me.
Please just don't get married. I'm not saying we'll get married, but I am saying, I know that isn't what you want.
Murdoc
Pris' stomach was gorged full, and sick. The baby surveyed her and ate her with it's little black eyes, hard and undeveloped like a prawn's. It ate her with it's toothless, gumless mouth, sapped her, drank her, gormless and greedy, mad, unthinking, neither dead or alive, like a ghost, a demon, developing nails and skin and claws and a little heart, dark and solid and mottled like a tooth cavity.
The letter from Murdoc made her weep like nothing before in her life – more than the last time Hannibal had fucked her, and his orgasm jutted through him and choked him and folded him and he told her, licking her face like a dog gone insane with a wet pink boner, "Now we'll have a little baby. A little little baby, yours and mine. I'll always be in you now."
I'll always be in you. She could feel him inside, like a virus changing and growing in it's intelligence. She beat her stomach once with her fist, folded the letter, and kissed the air.
She could not go home. But she could hope and dream for Murdoc, and pray to God and the Devil that he would be saved from this, and have a dream.
She slept that night while her small internal vampire sucked her dry, while Hannibal's thing sucked her dry. The night did not seem to end, but she knew somewhere another day began.
A/N: For Sara – I love you!
If this kills or betters Hopscotch, I don't know, but inspiration struck, Pris never leaves me! I hope everyone enjoyed this, I've missed all of my Hopscotch readers. Please let me know what you think.
