Critique Page 9

  The hunger remained, and Sandy’s flight of fancy grounded prematurely. He licked his lips, desperate for an instant plunge back into his delirium. Only the memory of the taste remained.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “There’ll be more. There’s always more…”

  The door to apartment 587 opened a few inches.

  Sandy swallowed and turned his head to peer through the gap. It appeared to be a living room similar to his own, something straight from a catalogue. From inside came the sound of running water.

  He thought back to the note, hearing the words spoken from Enfer’s lips:

  Consider this a gift. You’re about to reclaim some quality time.

  Sandy had no idea what the chef meant, but his next instruction was clear:

  Like all good chefs, I advise a visit to the kitchen to start you on your way.

  He took a deep breath. Enfer intended to test him, and the thought he’d simply be here to pick something up seemed foolish. Something more lay before him.

  Checking the corridor was empty in both directions, Sandy pressed a hand against the door and eased it open further.

  A black leather sofa and two armchairs, all facing a widescreen LCD television, were empty. The living room, ironic to call it such a thing, was minimalist, and apart from the seating, television and an obsidian vase, contained nothing else. The only sign of life was a leather jacket hanging by the door. The owner appeared to be a fan of dead cow skin.

  Sandy crept inside, listening to the sounds of splashing water. Someone was having a shower towards the rear of the apartment.

  He crossed the room on polished wooden flooring and, spying a counter with loaded wine racks beneath, headed for the kitchen.

  This is stealing, he thought, yet he still intended to sneak into the kitchen, find the liver that Enfer required and make a sharp exit before he was discovered. Another line to be crossed, yet the hunger—his damn relentless hunger—drove him on.

  The kitchen proved small and neat, rarely used. A faint trace of onions and garlic lingered in the air. The bland, uninspired smell did little for Sandy’s hunger but brought on a wave of nausea as he thought about food…normal food.

  Come on, Sandy. Find it and get out of here.

  He scanned the work surfaces, sink and draining board. All were spotlessly clean and empty.

  The refrigerator for meat!

  He opened up the Smeg model and riffled through the contents, recoiling from their scents and textures. The boxes of microwave meals were the easiest to deal with, but the cheese, vegetables and packs of meat in cellophane felt like alien growths and rotting, dead flesh. Sandy gagged and shut the refrigerator.

  “Where are you?” he hissed.

  The cupboards had been filled with spices, pasta and sugar-packed treats. Sandy held his breath and searched through them, finding nothing. He nearly slammed the last cupboard closed. He took a long breath and counted to ten.

  His hands quivered and he scratched his arms manically. The hunger. The damn hunger.

  Running out of places to look, he opened the microwave out of desperation. The door swung open.

  A butcher knife and a cupcake sat inside.

  Sandy stared at them, wondering why the owner of the apartment would do something so foolish. Metal in a microwave?

  He reached inside and picked up the knife by the handle. It had a reassuring weight. Studying his washed-out reflection in the shiny blade, he thought he looked vampiric. His skin had paled, but his eyes… His eyes were starved, almost predatory.

  He sniffed. Something sweet had distinguished itself from the hideous collage of lacklustre scents.

  He reached inside the microwave and removed the cupcake. It smelled as pure as sugar crystals. Spit poured from Sandy’s mouth and dribbled over his chin. Only Enfer could command such a reaction.

  On the top in red icing, expertly piped in the chef’s now familiar writing, were the words ABRAHAM and ISAAC.

  Sandy tore into the cake, barely chewing. He swallowed the bites of the sweet morsel, nearly choking on the moist sponge. It barely dented the hunger. He licked his fingers clean and glanced around the apartment. He remained alone.

  The two names ran around his head. Abraham and Isaac. Isaac and Abraham. What was Enfer trying to tell him? Sandy wished he’d remembered more of his Bible studies as a child, but just like trigonometry, knowledge is lost when not regularly used. He strained to think back.

  Clutching the knife, he returned to the living room. The sounds of the shower continued, but unless the occupant enjoyed particularly long sessions under the jets, Sandy knew his time was running out.

  He held up the butcher knife, again studying the blade. It bothered him. Enfer meant him to have it…but why?

  At the back of the living room, a short corridor ran away from the kitchen with a few closed doors along its short length. Sandy tiptoed closer. A door at the far end stood ajar with wisps of steam curling around its edge. Obviously the bathroom. That left Sandy three others to try.

  Slowly, with regular glances towards the bathroom, Sandy reached out for the handle to the first door. He turned it. The mechanism emitted a click, which sounded deafening, even against the sound of running water. Sandy winced and snatched his breath.

  The shower continued.

  Sandy gradually blew out and pulled the door handle. The light from the corridor drove back the darkness trapped within. Shadows retreated, revealing a vacuum, mop and rolled-up rug.

  Sandy clenched his teeth and closed the closet. He turned and approached the next door. A butterfly-shaped pink sticker was stuck to the white paint.

  Abraham.

  Isaac…

  The handle turned without complaint.

  Like most homes in the city, a lamp burned early in the afternoon to drive away the murk of the day. With My Little Pony splashed over the light shade, the lamp sat on a tidy desk in the corner of the pink bedroom. A double wardrobe stood against the wall, and from the bed, a blonde girl looked up from her reading.

  She sat crosslegged on the colourful sheets, a thick book spread open before her.

  Sandy froze, his gaze locked with that of the girl. Her mouth was a tight line. If he’d scared her, she didn’t show it.

  Sandy opened his mouth to whisper reassurances, but his lips felt sewn together. The girl. Something about the girl.

  Suzie.

  It had been over six months since he’d seen his daughter. They grew up so fast, and even at five years old—six now, he reminded himself—she looked older. Nicola had cut the girl’s hair shorter than Sandy remembered, which seemed to add on years. How long had it been? He struggled to recall. Seven…eight months since he’d last seen her in person.

  “Suzie?” he muttered, the hunger distorting his thoughts. He talked to her through a hazy cloud. “Suzie, it’s me. It’s Dad.”

  She ignored him, studying the pages of the book.

  “Suzie?”

  Sandy walked closer, his mouth dry, stomach growling. The blade of the knife gleamed in the lamplight.

  “Suzie…what’s the matter with you?”

  She reached down and turned the page.

  “Did your mother and Jeremy tell you not to speak to me?” he demanded, his voice hushed but sharp. “I pay for the right to be your dad, you know. You can’t just ignore me!” He sighed. “I’m sorry I missed your birthday, okay? I’ll…I’ll buy you something nice to make up for it.”

  Her gaze never wavered from the tiny and compacted words in the book. The text lay in two thick columns down each page, stacked as snug as bricks.

  “What the hell is this?” Frustrated, he jabbed the knife at the book. “This more interesting than your own father?”

  Suzie’s bottom lip trembled, and Sandy thought her about to cry.

  “…babahmm…” she mumbled, swaying slightly.

  Sandy leaned closer.

  “What was that, Suzie?”

  His daughter’s pupils darted back and fo
rth, the lines of the book reflected in her glistening eyes.

  “A…” she struggled. “…A…”

  “A what, hon?” Sandy drew even closer, reaching out his free hand. He stroked her hair.

  She snapped her head up, locking him in her vacant gaze.

  Sandy gasped and jerked back.

  “Abraham…” she wailed. “Abraham!”

  The sounds of the shower abruptly stopped.

  Sandy held out his hands, waving them.

  “Suzie! Shush…please!”

  Words rambled off her tongue while she stared at Sandy.

  “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

  “Please!” Sandy begged, returning to the bedside, barely aware of the blade in his hand.

  Suzie flopped back on the bed, her body straight and stiff. She pulled up her nightgown, revealing her naked torso beneath.

  Sandy stared at the display in horror. On her pale and flawless skin, a dotted line in thick, black marker outlined the location of her liver.

  She closed her eyes.

  “No,” said Sandy, holding up the butcher knife. “I…I can’t!”

  The lamp flickered, and he turned towards it.

  Suzie dropped her nightgown around her neck and lay motionless…willing…

  “I won’t!” Sandy growled. “You hear that, Enfer? I won’t do this!”

  FLICK

  FLICK

  He looked back to his daughter, seeking out the source of the odd noise.

  The pages of the book, a weighty, leather-bound Bible, turned in the still room. The dry sound of a thumb leafing the pages increased.

  FLICK-FLICK-FLICK

  Sandy wailed, falling to one knee. His hunger bore through him like a labour pain. Pressing his teeth together, he sucked in a fast breath. Pinpricks swept over his scalp.

  “No!”

  Suzie lay straight and rigid, arms at her side. Her legs were open, forming a Y shape. Between her ankles, the Bible continued to turn its pages.

  Sandy nearly gutted himself with the knife as he clutched his stomach with both hands. The need for food ate at him with an acidic bite.

  “I can’t…just can’t…” He glanced up.

  He staggered to his feet, the blade heavy in his slick grip.

  His daughter, barely recognizable with her new haircut and empty eyes, muttered the same Bible passage over and over. The words streamed into a long, burbled noise.

  Sandy stared longingly at the lines drawn on her. All marked out for him: a slab of meat. He considered it, and shook his head.

  Pain blasted through his midsection, and his knees seemed to unhinge. With the carpet rising up to meet him, Sandy leaned on the bed to stay upright. The shiny blade pressed into the mattress close to Suzie.

  Can I…?

  A phantasm of taste danced across his tongue, previewing the sensations to come. Sweet promises of Enfer’s magic.

  He stared at his daughter…only, she didn’t look like his daughter. A stranger lay before him, and a stranger barely mattered. The end justified the means.

  “Just a little,” he whispered through the pain. “Just enough…”

  The hunger was everything.

  Sandy picked out his point of incision, just under the right side of her flat chest. His tongue poked from the side of his mouth in concentration as he leaned over her, the tip of the butcher knife poised over her skin.

  “Suzie?” called a man’s voice from outside.

  Sandy sneered. “Shit!”

  He pulled back the blade and panicked, looked about the room. Only the wardrobe offered sanctuary, and he flung it open and stepped inside. Closing the doors, he held his breath in the darkness. His racing heart seemed to make the wardrobe pulse. Sandy closed his eyes.

  He heard a door opening.

  “Suzie? Everything okay in here?”

  Sandy’s eyes snapped open in the shadows, and he bared his teeth. That voice. He knew that voice.

  A thin line of light shone through the minute gap between the doors. Sandy pressed an eye to it and slowly released the air trapped in his lungs.

  In the bedroom, a figure in a blue flannel dressing gown blocked his view. Jeremy. His too-long hair, shiny and wet from the shower, clung to his head and neck. He stood next to the bed, his hands on his hips.

  “I know you’re awake,” he said softly. “You can never sleep when your mother’s at work. Besides, it’s the afternoon. Little girls should be playing, not sleeping!” He chuckled. “You want to play a game with me? I know lots of special games. What’s this?”

  Sandy watched him bend over. A second later, Jeremy held up the Bible.

  “Where’d you get this, sweetie? Not the thing little princesses like to read.”

  Jeremy moved to the side, towards the desk and lamp, and with him out the way, Sandy could once again see Suzie. His Suzie. The hair might be shorter, but the face… She’d always had his eyes, even as a baby. The blonde hair, sure to attract the wrong kind of boy in a few years, was all Sandy, not her chestnut mother.

  He swallowed, yet the lump of guilt in his throat refused to shift. Blinking away his sudden tears, he squeezed the knife handle until his knuckle bones throbbed. What the hell had he almost done?

  Jeremy reappeared, smiling.

  “You’re very quiet again,” he said. “Are you still upset about your dad? I’ll go and see him again if you like…” He stroked her hair, seemingly unfazed by the way she stared at the ceiling, her body still as a corpse. “Do you want a shower? You’ve drawn on yourself.”

  Leave my daughter alone, Sandy shouted in his head.

  His stomach rumbled.

  Jeremy bent down and gave Suzie a peck on the forehead.

  “Never mind, eh? You have a proper family now. You, me and your mother. She’ll be back in a few hours.” He turned his head to glance at the bedroom door, his prominent nose standing out from his profile. “We can have some fun while she’s away.”

  Suzie blinked.

  Adrenaline soared through Sandy, tripping his heart into overdrive once more. A strange metallic taste flooded his mouth, and he swallowed the increasing flow of saliva. His muscles shuddered, threatening to give him away. He squeezed the knife tighter.

  Jeremy casually untied the belt to his dressing gown and let it dangle.

  “You remember what we agreed last time?” said the accountant. “It’s nice to spend time together, just you and me, isn’t it?”

  Suzie released a barely audible whimper. Still she stared at the ceiling.

  “I asked you a question, Suzie.”

  She chanced a glance at him and nodded.

  “Yeah,’ he continued. “It’s fun to be silly together.”

  Sandy clenched his free hand into a fist. Already the wardrobe had grown hot and stuffy. His breathing croaked in the stifling air.

  “Come here,” said Jeremy. “Give Daddy a hug.”

  He opened the dressing gown.

  Sandy thrust the door open and pounced. The knife was plunged into Jeremy’s neck before he had the chance to turn around. Sandy roared, driving the blade down. Halfway in, the handle jolted in his hand, the point striking bone.

  Jeremy jerked to the side, the dressing gown flapping around his clammy body.

  The knife popped free.

  On the bed, Suzie erupted into life and scooted into the corner. Her back pressed against the pink wallpaper, she hugged her legs to her chest.

  Sandy, grinning with anger, ran at Jeremy and shoulder-barged him into the wall.

  His daughter screamed.

  Grabbing a handful of thick, black hair, Sandy dragged his prey to the floor.

  Jeremy gibbered, a hand pushed against the pouring wound at the right side of his neck, nestled against the collar bone. He weakly fought off the critic who clambered onto his stomach, keeping him down.

  “Shu
sh, honey,” said Sandy and struck Jeremy across the face. He held the knife in front of his face as a warning, knowing the accountant would be staring at his own terrified reflection. “Please, Suzie. Be quiet.”

  His daughter continued to shriek like she’d just awoken from a nightmare, night terrors reaching from the shadows.

  “Close your eyes,” said Sandy. “Please. Close your eyes.”

  He looked back down to Jeremy and lowered the tip of the knife to his chest.

  “Close your eyes or turn away,” he said, gasping. “Don’t watch. Please, don’t watch.”

  JUST DESSERTS

  Sandy dropped a soiled Tupperware box on the table in Enfer’s kitchen. He’d taken it from Jeremy’s cupboards.

  “Where is he?” he asked and collapsed onto a stool. After fleeing from the apartments, he barely had the strength to lift his head. He sat and shivered, the chill of the rain finding its way into his marrow.

  Benoit, who had let him into the restaurant, also sat down on a stool at the other end of the room. Watching Sandy, he removed a flat, silver box from his breast pocket and took out a thin cigarette. He poked it between his lips.

  “Monsieur,” he said. “You did it?”

  Sandy looked up with sore eyes.

  Between them sat the plastic container. The meat, dark and glistening, lay inside. The inner walls had received a generous spattering during the trip.

  “What the fuck do you think?” spat Sandy. He rubbed his arms and his stomach, his movements jerky and stiff. “Where’s Enfer?”

  Benoit sniggered and leaned closer to his cigarette to light it. He blew out a short puff of smoke.

  “Are you always going to do as he tells you?” he said.

  Sandy grinned sickly. “What choice do I have?”

  Benoit considered this for a second and shrugged his shoulder.

  “Oui. I guess…”

  They sat for a moment, listening to the rain on the single window. The smell of the kitchen had changed since Sandy’s last visit. The comforting, simple scents of cookery had been replaced with something cleaner and more surgical. The kitchen showed no signs of having a thorough chemical clean; if anything, the surfaces looked a little grimier, and the ledges had a fine layer of dust.