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He glanced over his shoulder at the house - at the gaping hole in the wall running adjacent to the road. Even as he stared, a line of vehicles thundered past him, making him sway on his feet. A faint trace of laughter found its way into his ears, and his expression fell to fury. His eyes found the hole in the wall again as the sound of the car faded away, and a shiver ran down his back.
It could have all been so different.
***
Ben gritted his teeth in anger at the water-tank concealed above the upstairs airing cupboard. The back of his neck burned as if in a noose from the searing jet of boiling water that had attacked him mercilessly.
“You’ll get yours,” Ben muttered viciously to the glinting steel in the cubicle.
Beads of water rolled down his back and chest, as he walked, hunched across the bathroom floor. His hair - seemingly more greasy than when it had gone under the water - let droplets of steaming water fall off, landing on the carpeted floor. That annoyed Ben something chronic. God alone knew what had possessed his mother to have the room carpeted, especially with the cat and his tendency to enjoy a nice carpet rather than the litter-box.
The bathroom carpet particularly.
Same as always, as he looked behind him at the floor, his feet left large, dark water stains in the green material. Oil patches, he reckoned. Nothing would surprise him with that shower. Rusty nails launching from the small holes in the spotless metal, burrowing themselves deep inside Ben’s flesh.
More than likely, he thought as he sank into the chair in the corner of the room, wrapping a towel with all the subtle comfort of an ironing board around his waist. Sighing, he let the top half of his back fall into the rolling wooden backrest, of which below, a large, deliberate empty space beckoned the carpet beneath. He disliked that chair. As a small boy, he had felt his back tingle with suspense at the thought of that large hole in the chair consuming him. It had seemed a long way down into the shadows. A long way down…
***
Her face was beautiful. Long, flowing golden-brown hair, swaying gently beneath her face. Her deep green eyes, and small rounded chin hung over him. This must be heaven.
“Laura…?”
Her face stood out against a vibrant white background, radiating pure light. His eyes felt intimidated by it. Heaven it is…
It felt timeless, blurred beauty captured in that glorious moment. Seconds were eternities, never seeming to end – Ben not even wanting it to end. Her face though, gradually ebbed into a deeply troubled expression, and a thin, delicate hand rose up and reached out to him. Ben felt his breath stop in anticipation, watching her hand close in on his forehead.
Her touch was magical. He felt his eyes roll.
“Ben…”
***
Ben’s mind was wondering in the steamy confines of the bathroom. Her face was filling his mind’s eye. Not that it was a particularly hard thing to do. Her beauty was like nothing he had ever known. The previous night had been the most wonderful of his life.
Outside, bellowing gusts of wind howled angrily at the house. The winter sky lingered in a brooding dark grey, and spots of rain spat furiously. Ben felt his brow furrow slightly as a slight draft snaked its way through the window that for some reason known only to his mother - whom had been using the bathroom before him - was open a crack. Yet Ben felt at peace, and his mind roamed further onto Laura and the night before.
Ben felt a smile spread across his face as he gazed down at her features, bathed in the candlelight. Her hair spilled magnificently over her bare shoulders, and her eyelids fluttered in her sleep. Ben turned away from her, and started to walk towards the door, her image embossed on his mind. His footsteps were almost silent, as he reached out for the door-handle.
“Ben.”
He stopped short and glanced back. She was sat up, shadows highlighting her face in the flickering light.
“Don’t go yet, stay a little longer.”
He felt his smile spread further. He walked back towards her, her face suddenly wide-awake.
“Laura, you would still be saying those very words if the heavens opened and fire rained down on both of us.
She looked up at him, eyes blazing. “Keep saying things like that, Mister Casanova.”
A deep well of laughter rose up inside him. “I will,” he bent over and brushed his lips against her own, “tomorrow.”
The jarring thunder of a truck on the road outside, which ran parallel to the bathroom, jolted Ben out of his thoughts.
Who in the hell designed this house? Ben grimaced, his hair clinging damply to his head. He suddenly felt short of breath, slumped in that chair. A long, deep sigh escaped him, and he felt curiously light-headed. Laura’s face started to fade from his mind, and he suddenly started to feel frustrated in the stifling humidity of the bathroom. An intense desire for her overwhelmed him and his mouth dropped open slightly. She really is something else…
A familiar yearning started to fill his senses as he pictured her lying on the settee, a broad grin on her face. His eyes drifted shut, his breathing restrained to quick, short breaths.
The draft from the small window opposite him increased as a fresh gust raced up against the house. Ben snapped his eyes open, a little slacker than normal, and looked up at the window. The obscured glass yielded the dark sky outside, and the wisps of wind found their way over to his bare chest. In the back of his mind, Ben thought how blurry everything all of a sudden seemed, like he was looking through the obscured glass of that goddamn window at the bathroom before him.
A shroud of fury seemed to cloud him.
***
Ben grimaced as an agonising headache began to work itself up into a frenzy. Her face held a reservation touched with a form of relief as she looked down at him.
A slow moan came from him.
“Oh dear God, Ben,” her voice gave away the fact that she was holding back a barrage of tears. “Thank God, thank God, thank God.” Her voice steadily dropped to a whisper.
His eyes stung slightly as her face hung silhouetted against the clean whiteness of the ceiling. She bent down and the misty smell of her hair filled his nostrils as he felt himself being held in her arms in the hospital bed.
***
Ben felt his light-headed bewilderment increase as the draft grew more and more prominent from the window. The duel lights suspended from the low ceiling of the bathroom made the entire room seem to glow with an eerie confusion. He tried to clench his hands into fists, but he couldn’t seem to find the strength. A large gust of wind whistled outside, and a malicious sweep of cold air issued from the window. Ben felt himself rise from the chair, the towel dropping from his waist, and a strong surge of frustrated anger thudded in his chest.
“Enough is enough,” he heard himself say in the background as his pulse thudded in his ears.
Behind him, on the other side of the bathroom wall, the thunder of traffic seemed to dull as he staggered over to the window, his vision becoming blearier by the second. His mother’s array of bright pottery stood to attention on the windowsill, attempting to prevent Ben from closing the window. His feet scuffed on the carpet, as his eyes widened, taking in the window. The damnable window, he had always hated it. The rigid obscure glass had always made him feel imprisoned. It hung above the lavatory in the corner opposite the chair that Ben had been sitting in, gradually becoming misted with condensation whilst he was being tortured by the shower. Ben’s eyes started to cross, as his hand reached out for the steel window-handle. He knew that the room was becoming too indistinguishable – the lights, ornaments and walls seeming to merge into each other, yet he still closed his fist around the cold handle, and lifted it off its latch. In the back of his mind, he thought he could hear it screaming out in protest, like the squealing of someone’s brakes. Ben’s lungs started to gulp down larger intakes of breath, as his arm seemed to grow lighter. The light started to intensify suddenly, as stars exploded in front of his eyes.
A head-rush started to grip him.
Ben felt his legs slack dreamily, as his grip on the window-handle loosened, and his head seemed to yell out in protest. It was the window – it was punishing him, he knew it. Awareness of his arm falling from the window was practically non-existent, as Ben’s vision faded in a rush of blinding light. The world seemed to lose its gravity, and he didn’t even feel himself fall backwards. In the outback of his conscious mind, he heard the shattering of pottery, and a dim confusion found its way into him. The blaring of horns filled the room that had seemed to turn into an entire world. And Ben felt himself slipping away as his body plummeted through space. The world started to fall around him as he slipped further and further downwards, and his head crashed into a wall.
Time lost sway, as the light was extinguished.
***
Ben stood on the pavement and looked at the remains of his bathroom.
“Quite a draft there,” he muttered darkly, the faint trace of humour in his voice. In a way he felt ashamed of himself for finding a brighter side to it all, but on the other, he thought himself so goddamn lucky, that he felt entitled to joke about it.
It could have all been so much worse.
The road had always been singing for an accident, right from the first joy rider that had torn down its long, straight strip. And by hell, it had got one. From what he had learnt, a car had lost control on the icy road, trying to avoid an oncoming vehicle in the other direction, whilst foolishly overtaking a bus, before ending up embedded in the bathroom wall. Ben’s bathroom. Just as Ben himself was collapsing from an unbelievably powerful head-rush. He had been knocked unconscious from hitting his head against the wall (although, he suspected that he was out before the impact), and naturally, his mother after rushing into the bathroom following the deafening crash, assumed the car had hit him. Awaking in the hospital, he had needed only an hour to request his discharge, ignoring the dull ache of his head.
Ben grunted as he pictured the panicked look on the driver’s face as the slow moving car approached in the other direction. And he ground his teeth as he imagined the snap-decision that they made – the wrong one as it turned out; the body had been dragged out of the car shortly after the crash.
Ben had never looked at the small window above the lavatory in the same way again since the accident. The chair in the corner opposite the window had been damaged beyond repair, and Ben would have suffered a similar fate, had he not gone over to the window in a state of confused anger. He reckoned that his lust for Laura had played its part in it, and he was altogether grateful for her ravishing beauty thereafter.
Now, as he walked away from the house and the brand new ‘Slow’ sign printed across the road, he chuckled absently. Rescued by a window that he loathed.
He swore to himself that he would never let anything happen to it. Ever.
It could have all been so different.
***
Ben gritted his teeth in anger at the water-tank concealed above the upstairs airing cupboard. The back of his neck burned as if in a noose from the searing jet of boiling water that had attacked him mercilessly.
“You’ll get yours,” Ben muttered viciously to the glinting steel in the cubicle.
Beads of water rolled down his back and chest, as he walked, hunched across the bathroom floor. His hair - seemingly more greasy than when it had gone under the water - let droplets of steaming water fall off, landing on the carpeted floor. That annoyed Ben something chronic. God alone knew what had possessed his mother to have the room carpeted, especially with the cat and his tendency to enjoy a nice carpet rather than the litter-box.
The bathroom carpet particularly.
Same as always, as he looked behind him at the floor, his feet left large, dark water stains in the green material. Oil patches, he reckoned. Nothing would surprise him with that shower. Rusty nails launching from the small holes in the spotless metal, burrowing themselves deep inside Ben’s flesh.
More than likely, he thought as he sank into the chair in the corner of the room, wrapping a towel with all the subtle comfort of an ironing board around his waist. Sighing, he let the top half of his back fall into the rolling wooden backrest, of which below, a large, deliberate empty space beckoned the carpet beneath. He disliked that chair. As a small boy, he had felt his back tingle with suspense at the thought of that large hole in the chair consuming him. It had seemed a long way down into the shadows. A long way down…
***
Her face was beautiful. Long, flowing golden-brown hair, swaying gently beneath her face. Her deep green eyes, and small rounded chin hung over him. This must be heaven.
“Laura…?”
Her face stood out against a vibrant white background, radiating pure light. His eyes felt intimidated by it. Heaven it is…
It felt timeless, blurred beauty captured in that glorious moment. Seconds were eternities, never seeming to end – Ben not even wanting it to end. Her face though, gradually ebbed into a deeply troubled expression, and a thin, delicate hand rose up and reached out to him. Ben felt his breath stop in anticipation, watching her hand close in on his forehead.
Her touch was magical. He felt his eyes roll.
“Ben…”
***
Ben’s mind was wondering in the steamy confines of the bathroom. Her face was filling his mind’s eye. Not that it was a particularly hard thing to do. Her beauty was like nothing he had ever known. The previous night had been the most wonderful of his life.
Outside, bellowing gusts of wind howled angrily at the house. The winter sky lingered in a brooding dark grey, and spots of rain spat furiously. Ben felt his brow furrow slightly as a slight draft snaked its way through the window that for some reason known only to his mother - whom had been using the bathroom before him - was open a crack. Yet Ben felt at peace, and his mind roamed further onto Laura and the night before.
Ben felt a smile spread across his face as he gazed down at her features, bathed in the candlelight. Her hair spilled magnificently over her bare shoulders, and her eyelids fluttered in her sleep. Ben turned away from her, and started to walk towards the door, her image embossed on his mind. His footsteps were almost silent, as he reached out for the door-handle.
“Ben.”
He stopped short and glanced back. She was sat up, shadows highlighting her face in the flickering light.
“Don’t go yet, stay a little longer.”
He felt his smile spread further. He walked back towards her, her face suddenly wide-awake.
“Laura, you would still be saying those very words if the heavens opened and fire rained down on both of us.
She looked up at him, eyes blazing. “Keep saying things like that, Mister Casanova.”
A deep well of laughter rose up inside him. “I will,” he bent over and brushed his lips against her own, “tomorrow.”
The jarring thunder of a truck on the road outside, which ran parallel to the bathroom, jolted Ben out of his thoughts.
Who in the hell designed this house? Ben grimaced, his hair clinging damply to his head. He suddenly felt short of breath, slumped in that chair. A long, deep sigh escaped him, and he felt curiously light-headed. Laura’s face started to fade from his mind, and he suddenly started to feel frustrated in the stifling humidity of the bathroom. An intense desire for her overwhelmed him and his mouth dropped open slightly. She really is something else…
A familiar yearning started to fill his senses as he pictured her lying on the settee, a broad grin on her face. His eyes drifted shut, his breathing restrained to quick, short breaths.
The draft from the small window opposite him increased as a fresh gust raced up against the house. Ben snapped his eyes open, a little slacker than normal, and looked up at the window. The obscured glass yielded the dark sky outside, and the wisps of wind found their way over to his bare chest. In the back of his mind, Ben thought how blurry everything all of a sudden seemed, like he was looking through the obscured glass of that goddamn window at the bathroom before him.
A shroud of fury seemed to cloud him.
***
Ben grimaced as an agonising headache began to work itself up into a frenzy. Her face held a reservation touched with a form of relief as she looked down at him.
A slow moan came from him.
“Oh dear God, Ben,” her voice gave away the fact that she was holding back a barrage of tears. “Thank God, thank God, thank God.” Her voice steadily dropped to a whisper.
His eyes stung slightly as her face hung silhouetted against the clean whiteness of the ceiling. She bent down and the misty smell of her hair filled his nostrils as he felt himself being held in her arms in the hospital bed.
***
Ben felt his light-headed bewilderment increase as the draft grew more and more prominent from the window. The duel lights suspended from the low ceiling of the bathroom made the entire room seem to glow with an eerie confusion. He tried to clench his hands into fists, but he couldn’t seem to find the strength. A large gust of wind whistled outside, and a malicious sweep of cold air issued from the window. Ben felt himself rise from the chair, the towel dropping from his waist, and a strong surge of frustrated anger thudded in his chest.
“Enough is enough,” he heard himself say in the background as his pulse thudded in his ears.
Behind him, on the other side of the bathroom wall, the thunder of traffic seemed to dull as he staggered over to the window, his vision becoming blearier by the second. His mother’s array of bright pottery stood to attention on the windowsill, attempting to prevent Ben from closing the window. His feet scuffed on the carpet, as his eyes widened, taking in the window. The damnable window, he had always hated it. The rigid obscure glass had always made him feel imprisoned. It hung above the lavatory in the corner opposite the chair that Ben had been sitting in, gradually becoming misted with condensation whilst he was being tortured by the shower. Ben’s eyes started to cross, as his hand reached out for the steel window-handle. He knew that the room was becoming too indistinguishable – the lights, ornaments and walls seeming to merge into each other, yet he still closed his fist around the cold handle, and lifted it off its latch. In the back of his mind, he thought he could hear it screaming out in protest, like the squealing of someone’s brakes. Ben’s lungs started to gulp down larger intakes of breath, as his arm seemed to grow lighter. The light started to intensify suddenly, as stars exploded in front of his eyes.
A head-rush started to grip him.
Ben felt his legs slack dreamily, as his grip on the window-handle loosened, and his head seemed to yell out in protest. It was the window – it was punishing him, he knew it. Awareness of his arm falling from the window was practically non-existent, as Ben’s vision faded in a rush of blinding light. The world seemed to lose its gravity, and he didn’t even feel himself fall backwards. In the outback of his conscious mind, he heard the shattering of pottery, and a dim confusion found its way into him. The blaring of horns filled the room that had seemed to turn into an entire world. And Ben felt himself slipping away as his body plummeted through space. The world started to fall around him as he slipped further and further downwards, and his head crashed into a wall.
Time lost sway, as the light was extinguished.
***
Ben stood on the pavement and looked at the remains of his bathroom.
“Quite a draft there,” he muttered darkly, the faint trace of humour in his voice. In a way he felt ashamed of himself for finding a brighter side to it all, but on the other, he thought himself so goddamn lucky, that he felt entitled to joke about it.
It could have all been so much worse.
The road had always been singing for an accident, right from the first joy rider that had torn down its long, straight strip. And by hell, it had got one. From what he had learnt, a car had lost control on the icy road, trying to avoid an oncoming vehicle in the other direction, whilst foolishly overtaking a bus, before ending up embedded in the bathroom wall. Ben’s bathroom. Just as Ben himself was collapsing from an unbelievably powerful head-rush. He had been knocked unconscious from hitting his head against the wall (although, he suspected that he was out before the impact), and naturally, his mother after rushing into the bathroom following the deafening crash, assumed the car had hit him. Awaking in the hospital, he had needed only an hour to request his discharge, ignoring the dull ache of his head.
Ben grunted as he pictured the panicked look on the driver’s face as the slow moving car approached in the other direction. And he ground his teeth as he imagined the snap-decision that they made – the wrong one as it turned out; the body had been dragged out of the car shortly after the crash.
Ben had never looked at the small window above the lavatory in the same way again since the accident. The chair in the corner opposite the window had been damaged beyond repair, and Ben would have suffered a similar fate, had he not gone over to the window in a state of confused anger. He reckoned that his lust for Laura had played its part in it, and he was altogether grateful for her ravishing beauty thereafter.
Now, as he walked away from the house and the brand new ‘Slow’ sign printed across the road, he chuckled absently. Rescued by a window that he loathed.
He swore to himself that he would never let anything happen to it. Ever.
He glanced over his shoulder at the house - at the gaping hole in the wall running adjacent to the road. Even as he stared, a line of vehicles thundered past him, making him sway on his feet. A faint trace of laughter found its way into his ears, and his expression fell to fury. His eyes found the hole in the wall again as the sound of the car faded away, and a shiver ran down his back.
It could have all been so different.
***
Ben gritted his teeth in anger at the water-tank concealed above the upstairs airing cupboard. The back of his neck burned as if in a noose from the searing jet of boiling water that had attacked him mercilessly.
“You’ll get yours,” Ben muttered viciously to the glinting steel in the cubicle.
Beads of water rolled down his back and chest, as he walked, hunched across the bathroom floor. His hair - seemingly more greasy than when it had gone under the water - let droplets of steaming water fall off, landing on the carpeted floor. That annoyed Ben something chronic. God alone knew what had possessed his mother to have the room carpeted, especially with the cat and his tendency to enjoy a nice carpet rather than the litter-box.
The bathroom carpet particularly.
Same as always, as he looked behind him at the floor, his feet left large, dark water stains in the green material. Oil patches, he reckoned. Nothing would surprise him with that shower. Rusty nails launching from the small holes in the spotless metal, burrowing themselves deep inside Ben’s flesh.
More than likely, he thought as he sank into the chair in the corner of the room, wrapping a towel with all the subtle comfort of an ironing board around his waist. Sighing, he let the top half of his back fall into the rolling wooden backrest, of which below, a large, deliberate empty space beckoned the carpet beneath. He disliked that chair. As a small boy, he had felt his back tingle with suspense at the thought of that large hole in the chair consuming him. It had seemed a long way down into the shadows. A long way down…
***
Her face was beautiful. Long, flowing golden-brown hair, swaying gently beneath her face. Her deep green eyes, and small rounded chin hung over him. This must be heaven.
“Laura…?”
Her face stood out against a vibrant white background, radiating pure light. His eyes felt intimidated by it. Heaven it is…
It felt timeless, blurred beauty captured in that glorious moment. Seconds were eternities, never seeming to end – Ben not even wanting it to end. Her face though, gradually ebbed into a deeply troubled expression, and a thin, delicate hand rose up and reached out to him. Ben felt his breath stop in anticipation, watching her hand close in on his forehead.
Her touch was magical. He felt his eyes roll.
“Ben…”
***
Ben’s mind was wondering in the steamy confines of the bathroom. Her face was filling his mind’s eye. Not that it was a particularly hard thing to do. Her beauty was like nothing he had ever known. The previous night had been the most wonderful of his life.
Outside, bellowing gusts of wind howled angrily at the house. The winter sky lingered in a brooding dark grey, and spots of rain spat furiously. Ben felt his brow furrow slightly as a slight draft snaked its way through the window that for some reason known only to his mother - whom had been using the bathroom before him - was open a crack. Yet Ben felt at peace, and his mind roamed further onto Laura and the night before.
Ben felt a smile spread across his face as he gazed down at her features, bathed in the candlelight. Her hair spilled magnificently over her bare shoulders, and her eyelids fluttered in her sleep. Ben turned away from her, and started to walk towards the door, her image embossed on his mind. His footsteps were almost silent, as he reached out for the door-handle.
“Ben.”
He stopped short and glanced back. She was sat up, shadows highlighting her face in the flickering light.
“Don’t go yet, stay a little longer.”
He felt his smile spread further. He walked back towards her, her face suddenly wide-awake.
“Laura, you would still be saying those very words if the heavens opened and fire rained down on both of us.
She looked up at him, eyes blazing. “Keep saying things like that, Mister Casanova.”
A deep well of laughter rose up inside him. “I will,” he bent over and brushed his lips against her own, “tomorrow.”
The jarring thunder of a truck on the road outside, which ran parallel to the bathroom, jolted Ben out of his thoughts.
Who in the hell designed this house? Ben grimaced, his hair clinging damply to his head. He suddenly felt short of breath, slumped in that chair. A long, deep sigh escaped him, and he felt curiously light-headed. Laura’s face started to fade from his mind, and he suddenly started to feel frustrated in the stifling humidity of the bathroom. An intense desire for her overwhelmed him and his mouth dropped open slightly. She really is something else…
A familiar yearning started to fill his senses as he pictured her lying on the settee, a broad grin on her face. His eyes drifted shut, his breathing restrained to quick, short breaths.
The draft from the small window opposite him increased as a fresh gust raced up against the house. Ben snapped his eyes open, a little slacker than normal, and looked up at the window. The obscured glass yielded the dark sky outside, and the wisps of wind found their way over to his bare chest. In the back of his mind, Ben thought how blurry everything all of a sudden seemed, like he was looking through the obscured glass of that goddamn window at the bathroom before him.
A shroud of fury seemed to cloud him.
***
Ben grimaced as an agonising headache began to work itself up into a frenzy. Her face held a reservation touched with a form of relief as she looked down at him.
A slow moan came from him.
“Oh dear God, Ben,” her voice gave away the fact that she was holding back a barrage of tears. “Thank God, thank God, thank God.” Her voice steadily dropped to a whisper.
His eyes stung slightly as her face hung silhouetted against the clean whiteness of the ceiling. She bent down and the misty smell of her hair filled his nostrils as he felt himself being held in her arms in the hospital bed.
***
Ben felt his light-headed bewilderment increase as the draft grew more and more prominent from the window. The duel lights suspended from the low ceiling of the bathroom made the entire room seem to glow with an eerie confusion. He tried to clench his hands into fists, but he couldn’t seem to find the strength. A large gust of wind whistled outside, and a malicious sweep of cold air issued from the window. Ben felt himself rise from the chair, the towel dropping from his waist, and a strong surge of frustrated anger thudded in his chest.
“Enough is enough,” he heard himself say in the background as his pulse thudded in his ears.
Behind him, on the other side of the bathroom wall, the thunder of traffic seemed to dull as he staggered over to the window, his vision becoming blearier by the second. His mother’s array of bright pottery stood to attention on the windowsill, attempting to prevent Ben from closing the window. His feet scuffed on the carpet, as his eyes widened, taking in the window. The damnable window, he had always hated it. The rigid obscure glass had always made him feel imprisoned. It hung above the lavatory in the corner opposite the chair that Ben had been sitting in, gradually becoming misted with condensation whilst he was being tortured by the shower. Ben’s eyes started to cross, as his hand reached out for the steel window-handle. He knew that the room was becoming too indistinguishable – the lights, ornaments and walls seeming to merge into each other, yet he still closed his fist around the cold handle, and lifted it off its latch. In the back of his mind, he thought he could hear it screaming out in protest, like the squealing of someone’s brakes. Ben’s lungs started to gulp down larger intakes of breath, as his arm seemed to grow lighter. The light started to intensify suddenly, as stars exploded in front of his eyes.
A head-rush started to grip him.
Ben felt his legs slack dreamily, as his grip on the window-handle loosened, and his head seemed to yell out in protest. It was the window – it was punishing him, he knew it. Awareness of his arm falling from the window was practically non-existent, as Ben’s vision faded in a rush of blinding light. The world seemed to lose its gravity, and he didn’t even feel himself fall backwards. In the outback of his conscious mind, he heard the shattering of pottery, and a dim confusion found its way into him. The blaring of horns filled the room that had seemed to turn into an entire world. And Ben felt himself slipping away as his body plummeted through space. The world started to fall around him as he slipped further and further downwards, and his head crashed into a wall.
Time lost sway, as the light was extinguished.
***
Ben stood on the pavement and looked at the remains of his bathroom.
“Quite a draft there,” he muttered darkly, the faint trace of humour in his voice. In a way he felt ashamed of himself for finding a brighter side to it all, but on the other, he thought himself so goddamn lucky, that he felt entitled to joke about it.
It could have all been so much worse.
The road had always been singing for an accident, right from the first joy rider that had torn down its long, straight strip. And by hell, it had got one. From what he had learnt, a car had lost control on the icy road, trying to avoid an oncoming vehicle in the other direction, whilst foolishly overtaking a bus, before ending up embedded in the bathroom wall. Ben’s bathroom. Just as Ben himself was collapsing from an unbelievably powerful head-rush. He had been knocked unconscious from hitting his head against the wall (although, he suspected that he was out before the impact), and naturally, his mother after rushing into the bathroom following the deafening crash, assumed the car had hit him. Awaking in the hospital, he had needed only an hour to request his discharge, ignoring the dull ache of his head.
Ben grunted as he pictured the panicked look on the driver’s face as the slow moving car approached in the other direction. And he ground his teeth as he imagined the snap-decision that they made – the wrong one as it turned out; the body had been dragged out of the car shortly after the crash.
Ben had never looked at the small window above the lavatory in the same way again since the accident. The chair in the corner opposite the window had been damaged beyond repair, and Ben would have suffered a similar fate, had he not gone over to the window in a state of confused anger. He reckoned that his lust for Laura had played its part in it, and he was altogether grateful for her ravishing beauty thereafter.
Now, as he walked away from the house and the brand new ‘Slow’ sign printed across the road, he chuckled absently. Rescued by a window that he loathed.
He swore to himself that he would never let anything happen to it. Ever.
It could have all been so different.
***
Ben gritted his teeth in anger at the water-tank concealed above the upstairs airing cupboard. The back of his neck burned as if in a noose from the searing jet of boiling water that had attacked him mercilessly.
“You’ll get yours,” Ben muttered viciously to the glinting steel in the cubicle.
Beads of water rolled down his back and chest, as he walked, hunched across the bathroom floor. His hair - seemingly more greasy than when it had gone under the water - let droplets of steaming water fall off, landing on the carpeted floor. That annoyed Ben something chronic. God alone knew what had possessed his mother to have the room carpeted, especially with the cat and his tendency to enjoy a nice carpet rather than the litter-box.
The bathroom carpet particularly.
Same as always, as he looked behind him at the floor, his feet left large, dark water stains in the green material. Oil patches, he reckoned. Nothing would surprise him with that shower. Rusty nails launching from the small holes in the spotless metal, burrowing themselves deep inside Ben’s flesh.
More than likely, he thought as he sank into the chair in the corner of the room, wrapping a towel with all the subtle comfort of an ironing board around his waist. Sighing, he let the top half of his back fall into the rolling wooden backrest, of which below, a large, deliberate empty space beckoned the carpet beneath. He disliked that chair. As a small boy, he had felt his back tingle with suspense at the thought of that large hole in the chair consuming him. It had seemed a long way down into the shadows. A long way down…
***
Her face was beautiful. Long, flowing golden-brown hair, swaying gently beneath her face. Her deep green eyes, and small rounded chin hung over him. This must be heaven.
“Laura…?”
Her face stood out against a vibrant white background, radiating pure light. His eyes felt intimidated by it. Heaven it is…
It felt timeless, blurred beauty captured in that glorious moment. Seconds were eternities, never seeming to end – Ben not even wanting it to end. Her face though, gradually ebbed into a deeply troubled expression, and a thin, delicate hand rose up and reached out to him. Ben felt his breath stop in anticipation, watching her hand close in on his forehead.
Her touch was magical. He felt his eyes roll.
“Ben…”
***
Ben’s mind was wondering in the steamy confines of the bathroom. Her face was filling his mind’s eye. Not that it was a particularly hard thing to do. Her beauty was like nothing he had ever known. The previous night had been the most wonderful of his life.
Outside, bellowing gusts of wind howled angrily at the house. The winter sky lingered in a brooding dark grey, and spots of rain spat furiously. Ben felt his brow furrow slightly as a slight draft snaked its way through the window that for some reason known only to his mother - whom had been using the bathroom before him - was open a crack. Yet Ben felt at peace, and his mind roamed further onto Laura and the night before.
Ben felt a smile spread across his face as he gazed down at her features, bathed in the candlelight. Her hair spilled magnificently over her bare shoulders, and her eyelids fluttered in her sleep. Ben turned away from her, and started to walk towards the door, her image embossed on his mind. His footsteps were almost silent, as he reached out for the door-handle.
“Ben.”
He stopped short and glanced back. She was sat up, shadows highlighting her face in the flickering light.
“Don’t go yet, stay a little longer.”
He felt his smile spread further. He walked back towards her, her face suddenly wide-awake.
“Laura, you would still be saying those very words if the heavens opened and fire rained down on both of us.
She looked up at him, eyes blazing. “Keep saying things like that, Mister Casanova.”
A deep well of laughter rose up inside him. “I will,” he bent over and brushed his lips against her own, “tomorrow.”
The jarring thunder of a truck on the road outside, which ran parallel to the bathroom, jolted Ben out of his thoughts.
Who in the hell designed this house? Ben grimaced, his hair clinging damply to his head. He suddenly felt short of breath, slumped in that chair. A long, deep sigh escaped him, and he felt curiously light-headed. Laura’s face started to fade from his mind, and he suddenly started to feel frustrated in the stifling humidity of the bathroom. An intense desire for her overwhelmed him and his mouth dropped open slightly. She really is something else…
A familiar yearning started to fill his senses as he pictured her lying on the settee, a broad grin on her face. His eyes drifted shut, his breathing restrained to quick, short breaths.
The draft from the small window opposite him increased as a fresh gust raced up against the house. Ben snapped his eyes open, a little slacker than normal, and looked up at the window. The obscured glass yielded the dark sky outside, and the wisps of wind found their way over to his bare chest. In the back of his mind, Ben thought how blurry everything all of a sudden seemed, like he was looking through the obscured glass of that goddamn window at the bathroom before him.
A shroud of fury seemed to cloud him.
***
Ben grimaced as an agonising headache began to work itself up into a frenzy. Her face held a reservation touched with a form of relief as she looked down at him.
A slow moan came from him.
“Oh dear God, Ben,” her voice gave away the fact that she was holding back a barrage of tears. “Thank God, thank God, thank God.” Her voice steadily dropped to a whisper.
His eyes stung slightly as her face hung silhouetted against the clean whiteness of the ceiling. She bent down and the misty smell of her hair filled his nostrils as he felt himself being held in her arms in the hospital bed.
***
Ben felt his light-headed bewilderment increase as the draft grew more and more prominent from the window. The duel lights suspended from the low ceiling of the bathroom made the entire room seem to glow with an eerie confusion. He tried to clench his hands into fists, but he couldn’t seem to find the strength. A large gust of wind whistled outside, and a malicious sweep of cold air issued from the window. Ben felt himself rise from the chair, the towel dropping from his waist, and a strong surge of frustrated anger thudded in his chest.
“Enough is enough,” he heard himself say in the background as his pulse thudded in his ears.
Behind him, on the other side of the bathroom wall, the thunder of traffic seemed to dull as he staggered over to the window, his vision becoming blearier by the second. His mother’s array of bright pottery stood to attention on the windowsill, attempting to prevent Ben from closing the window. His feet scuffed on the carpet, as his eyes widened, taking in the window. The damnable window, he had always hated it. The rigid obscure glass had always made him feel imprisoned. It hung above the lavatory in the corner opposite the chair that Ben had been sitting in, gradually becoming misted with condensation whilst he was being tortured by the shower. Ben’s eyes started to cross, as his hand reached out for the steel window-handle. He knew that the room was becoming too indistinguishable – the lights, ornaments and walls seeming to merge into each other, yet he still closed his fist around the cold handle, and lifted it off its latch. In the back of his mind, he thought he could hear it screaming out in protest, like the squealing of someone’s brakes. Ben’s lungs started to gulp down larger intakes of breath, as his arm seemed to grow lighter. The light started to intensify suddenly, as stars exploded in front of his eyes.
A head-rush started to grip him.
Ben felt his legs slack dreamily, as his grip on the window-handle loosened, and his head seemed to yell out in protest. It was the window – it was punishing him, he knew it. Awareness of his arm falling from the window was practically non-existent, as Ben’s vision faded in a rush of blinding light. The world seemed to lose its gravity, and he didn’t even feel himself fall backwards. In the outback of his conscious mind, he heard the shattering of pottery, and a dim confusion found its way into him. The blaring of horns filled the room that had seemed to turn into an entire world. And Ben felt himself slipping away as his body plummeted through space. The world started to fall around him as he slipped further and further downwards, and his head crashed into a wall.
Time lost sway, as the light was extinguished.
***
Ben stood on the pavement and looked at the remains of his bathroom.
“Quite a draft there,” he muttered darkly, the faint trace of humour in his voice. In a way he felt ashamed of himself for finding a brighter side to it all, but on the other, he thought himself so goddamn lucky, that he felt entitled to joke about it.
It could have all been so much worse.
The road had always been singing for an accident, right from the first joy rider that had torn down its long, straight strip. And by hell, it had got one. From what he had learnt, a car had lost control on the icy road, trying to avoid an oncoming vehicle in the other direction, whilst foolishly overtaking a bus, before ending up embedded in the bathroom wall. Ben’s bathroom. Just as Ben himself was collapsing from an unbelievably powerful head-rush. He had been knocked unconscious from hitting his head against the wall (although, he suspected that he was out before the impact), and naturally, his mother after rushing into the bathroom following the deafening crash, assumed the car had hit him. Awaking in the hospital, he had needed only an hour to request his discharge, ignoring the dull ache of his head.
Ben grunted as he pictured the panicked look on the driver’s face as the slow moving car approached in the other direction. And he ground his teeth as he imagined the snap-decision that they made – the wrong one as it turned out; the body had been dragged out of the car shortly after the crash.
Ben had never looked at the small window above the lavatory in the same way again since the accident. The chair in the corner opposite the window had been damaged beyond repair, and Ben would have suffered a similar fate, had he not gone over to the window in a state of confused anger. He reckoned that his lust for Laura had played its part in it, and he was altogether grateful for her ravishing beauty thereafter.
Now, as he walked away from the house and the brand new ‘Slow’ sign printed across the road, he chuckled absently. Rescued by a window that he loathed.
He swore to himself that he would never let anything happen to it. Ever.
Wow great Love the ending.
Appreciated.
Although, excuse me if I await some other opinions before jumping with joy...
Although, excuse me if I await some other opinions before jumping with joy...
A nicely flowing, "traditional" kind of story. Kept me interested, read it a few times now. Good to have you writing in these.