Frederick Hamilton - Spare Key

As he started the engine, Sam tried hard to convince himself he’d done the right thing but didn’t quite succeed. Shit, what could he have done, huh? He needed the money and the landlords would have just freaked out. Besides, he didn’t really know what had happened to the last tenant. The man was a fucking nutcase and with that friggin’ ridiculous get-up he used to go around in… There could have been any number of explanations for the stains. Guy was probably holding some sort of satanic rituals in there or some shit.

Despite his justifications, as he shifted into gear and pulled away from the curb, Sam still couldn’t help feeling guilty. Maybe he should have said something. Given the new guy a heads-up. The guy had seemed nice enough, a little spacey maybe, didn’t say much, but still…

…Fuck it. What could he do? He needed the money.

Nothing will go wrong, he assured himself as he pulled away into the night.

* * * * *

It took two trips to his beat-up Magna for Ben to move in. After pulling into the car park out the front, Ben made one trip to retrieve the inflatable lilo from the boot and a second to remove the two duffel bags from the back seat.

Even though he knew he shouldn’t, he couldn’t resist a peek on the last trip as he passed the chink in his neighbour’s curtain. He didn’t dare linger though and his glimpse revealed nothing more than a tantalising swath of colour. He needed to check things out first. Make sure she didn’t have a boyfriend like the last one. No one to disturb him. He needed to…

… He needed to take his pills, he thought as the door slammed shut behind him, shocked at how easily he’d dropped back into the old thoughts and trying to suppress the doubts as they bubbled up. Of course the pills would work. He was just being stupid. What the fuck would Mandy know about medicine anyway? She was a fucking PA for fuck’s sake.

Ben dumped the bags next to the lilo on the floor and crouched beside them. Carefully, he pushed the khaki one off to the side, wedging it against the wall. He still wasn’t certain why he’d retrieved it from where he’d stashed it. It wasn’t something that he’d need in his new life. When Slavia had finally signed off on his release from the clinic and he’d stepped up to the bus stop, he certainly hadn’t intended to get it. No, he’d headed straight for his brother’s house to begin getting his life back on track.

It wasn’t until he’d overheard the argument, until he’d heard Mandy say the word placebo, that he’d found himself heading over toward the footbridge that crossed the freeway at the end of Hope St. He hadn’t known that at the time though. It wasn’t until he was clambering down the scrubby embankment and levering himself up the concrete pylon into the underside of the bridge that Ben had realised where he was going.

What seemed a lifetime ago, he used to live in a small group of flats one block across in Cumming St. The spot where it had all gone wrong for him last time, and after the boyfriend had walked in to find him looming over her , he’d sprinted away desperately searching for a place to stash his tools before the cops caught up with him.

And almost instinctively his feet had taken him to the footbridge.

It was his special place from his childhood. Back when he lived in the commission house on Albion. An almost sacred place for him. The place where he’d hole up from all the unpleasantness; hide away from the horrible rasp of her voice. The place where he could just escape it all for awhile, daydreaming as he stared at the underside of the bridge. The place where revenge had first crossed his mind. Where the Red Room had first come to him, slowly coalescing as he’d stared in frustration at the lines of cigarette scars littering the lengths of his arms like sucker marks from a tentacle.

His special, secret place that he had told no one about…

And when he’d clambered up onto the concrete ledge, just over a year from the day he’d stashed his tools, he’d just known that they would still be there. I don’t have to use them again, he clearly remembered thinking as his hand had probed around the girder and found the crack in the cement underside. It would just be… nice… to have them. And he had felt a sort of completeness when his fingers had finally found the strap and he’d dragged the bag clear. A sort of completeness that now, as he stood peering at it against the wall, seemed totally unfathomable to him.

He deliberately forced his eyes away from the bag even though his fingers were twitching to open it. To rummage through and pull out his playthings. Instead he yanked open the blue bag and removed a bottle of Southern Joy Bourbon and, after a bit of further pawing through the change of clothes inside, a small, orange, plastic vial of pills.

Ben popped the top and looked at the little pastel pink spheres inside. He only hesitated briefly before shaking two out into his hand and washing them down with a swig of bourbon. He sat back for a moment and treated himself to a cigarette from the crumpled pack in his pocket as he waited for them to take effect. Each drag, however, only seemed to lead to more doubts.

Would they work?

Of course they fucking would.

It wasn’t long before the doubts forced him to his feet, dragging back deeper and deeper on his smoke until the last half disappeared in one suck. Frustrated, he dropped the butt to the floor and ground it into the carpet with his heel. He really felt like another but forced himself to sit back down and take a swig of bourbon instead. He was down to half a pack of smokes as it was and he had to make them last. He only had the hundred bucks his brother had snuck him while Mandy wasn’t looking to tide him over – the rest of his savings had been sucked dry by the bond – and twenty of that had gone on the bottle of bourbon. Who knew how long it would take to find work? It wasn’t something he’d had to worry about before.

The alcohol helped a little and he sighed as his eyes drifted to the brittle and tattered cloth blind over the window. He saw the faint glow of the outside fluorescents around its rim and without a thought he was rummaging through his duffel bag again and removing a thick, silver roll of duct tape. The rip as he tore a strip free evoked earlier memories but the pills had made them blurry and indistinct: just the odd glimpse of flesh and the merest whisper of a strangled scream.

Had they really though?

When the curtains were all sealed shut, Ben sat back down and sighed in relief as he took a swig of his bourbon. The pills were making him feel a bit listless - see nothing to worry about - and it was a struggle to summon the effort necessary to blow up the lilo that his brother had given him, along with the cash, as a little gift to help him cope with the guilt of having kicked him out. Ben didn’t blame him though. He knew it wasn’t his fault. He could still hear her voice even through the fuzz of the pills: but he’s fucking creepy. How long is he going to stay? I don’t feel safe sleeping in my own bed…

Wil was a good guy and despite the fact Ben couldn’t understand why he’d hooked up with such a bitch, he hadn’t wanted to ruin the life his brother had built for himself. Sometimes, looking at him, Ben couldn’t help wondering about how different his own life could have been.

With another sigh, Ben leant his head against the wall and wondered once more whether he should have ever agreed to Slavia’s experimental treatment. It had led to his early release but maybe it would have been better for him to stay locked up in the psych ward. Maybe he hadn’t been ready? He’d already retrieved his tools. There had been flickers of the Red Room. Even just thinking about Mandy seemed to have lessened the effect of his medication. Things just didn’t seem quite so hazy and that scared Ben a lot because he did want this to work… Didn’t he? And then there were the thoughts he’d been having about Mandy herself… and she didn’t even really look like her.