Eliminating Heat
by Bill Kirton
Genre: Humour
Swearwords: None.
Description: George and Denise's marriage is purgatory for both of them. Each wants out. So each makes elimination plans.
_____________________________________________________________________
Everything about George and Denise proved that opposites attract. She plumbed in sinks and had rewired the entire house. He read Camus and practised transcendental meditation in the garden shed. When they’d first met, it was somehow exotic to have absolutely nothing in common. Even sex had been different. Denise was used to lovers scaling her like commandos. When George uncovered one of her breasts and just looked at it for ages, she found it incredibly exciting. George, for his part, had had a succession of timid, flat-chested girl-friends. Denise’s opulence and the violence she used on him when she was no longer content with just his gaze catapulted him into unimaginable fantasies.
The mistake, of course, was getting married. As a sporadic experience, exoticism is fine; in daily doses, it palls. Within a year of vowing eternal fidelity and the rest, mutual attraction had soured into virulent antagonism. And it wasn’t just physical. They’d also developed a form of telepathy. Or, rather, two forms. George’s meditation exercises had made his mind receptive to the tiniest of external stimuli. In his shed, he’d blissfully unload all his mental baggage. Then suddenly there’d be a hot pulse of energy and he’d know that Denise was on her way. For her part, Denise would be absorbed in something like retiling the shower and, equally suddenly, she’d be invaded by a dull flatness; the signal that George was nearby. For each of them, the experience was intrusive, threatening.
Independently, as the years went by, they sought and planned release, concocting and discarding ways of rediscovering the individuality of which they’d been robbed. Frustrations built and thickened until, eventually, each knew that the problem couldn’t just be solved, it had to be eliminated. At last, at the end of a summer of relentless heat, the simmering reached boiling point. And George made an astonishing discovery.
It was afternoon. The atmosphere in the shed was like a solid weight pressing around him. Beginning his silent mantra, he made a conscious effort to withdraw himself from all physical contacts. Sensation seemed to shrink inside him and become a thin silver column which reached up into his head. He heard a bird outside and he grafted onto his relaxation the idea of flying in the shade of branches, creating a cool air-flow over all his surfaces.
And, unaccountably, he was sitting in the tree. It was as sudden as that. His mind was so clear that it simply left his body and moved into the bird.
But it was too extreme. His binocular vision threw a dizzy criss-crossing of twigs into his brain, the hot air beat around him and he felt a surge of fear which sent him diving back into the shed to reclaim his own form. He was shaking, sweating even more. He spent the evening in quiet shock.
The next day was like a cauldron. The habitual argument and the hot silence which followed it made the air seem to clot even more thickly. Denise was preparing a tomato salad, carving viciously through onions and seeing George’s neck on the board before her. In the darkness of his shed, George’s flesh burned and prickled. He had to get away from it. He closed his eyes and his mantra brought a cool wave of peace. He constricted his sensations into the silver column as before and waited. When he heard birdsong, he focused everything on it and, as easily as the first time, he found himself in the trees.
This time, he was ready. He explored his smallness, feeling the smooth, rounded sweep of the muscle in his chest and the supple folding of wings along his back. Tentatively, he stretched and fluttered to release the warm pockets of air trapped in his feathers. It was magical.
He saw the door of the house open and realised that Denise had been calling. In the instant of recognition, he felt himself falling, but he clutched his thoughts around him and forced himself to stay with the bird. He watched Denise storm across the lawn, fling open the shed door and shout:
“I’ve spent valuable bloody time getting ...”
She stopped and looked around. The shed was empty. And yet she’d seen George go into it not five minutes before. She stepped back outside and looked up at the tree and the blackbird sitting very still on one of its branches. George looked down at her, feeling her eyes locked onto him. He wondered why she’d seen nothing in the shed and felt a rush of panic at the idea that the physical form he’d left had been somehow violated and caused to vanish by her arrival. What if he couldn’t get back? The panic became a familiar pulse of energy. Denise knew where he was. He was sure of it.
Denise, in deep shock, still carrying the sensation of the flatness of George’s presence, turned to go back into the house. George waited for her to close the door before refocusing apprehensively on the interior of the shed. He was relieved to feel the slide back into darkness and to know that he was himself once again.
From the kitchen, Denise saw the shed door open and watched George come out. She was tired from all the work she’d been doing, sick of the solitude in which he imprisoned her and now frightened by whatever was happening out there. She didn’t understand any of it but she knew that a frontier had been crossed. This wasn’t just domestic strife any more; this was real alienation, something monstrous in her practical world.
Neither of them said anything as they picked through that meal. They knew that they were in truly different dimensions and that they could never be reintegrated back into a common space. Each was afraid, too, of the other’s knowledge and of the menace it carried. It was decision time.
In recent months, each had refined the means of elimination. For George, it was easy. Denise had already had thromboses in both her legs and, for nearly two years, she’d had to take 5 milligrams of Warfarin every day to keep her blood thin. There were several things she couldn’t eat and even a simple drug like aspirin would cause internal haemorrhaging. Accidents could always happen in cases like hers. George wouldn’t necessarily be suspected. And even if he was, with this new power, he could just disappear, spirit himself into some other form, even into another body. Why not?
For her part, Denise had been researching pesticides. In the library, she’d consulted the Farm and Garden Chemicals Regulations and had already bought several highly toxic organophosphates which she’d hidden in the shed and hooked up to a slow release vaporiser. Their cumulative effect would be to destroy George’s sympathetic nervous system and, even if foul play was suspected, proving it wouldn’t be easy. Anyway, who’d be surprised to find pesticides in a garden shed?
It was when she was out buying the last of the compounds she needed that George made his move. He knew she’d prepared a pasta sauce for their evening meal. As usual, it was tomato based but strongly enough flavoured with shallots, olives and garlic to provide an effective mask. He took two handfuls of aspirin and Warfarin tablets and began grinding them together on a saucer. It was probably far more than he needed, but he reasoned that Denise would at best only eat half of the sauce. It was simply a question of making sure that the mixture was spread evenly through it. He scraped the powder into the sauce and began to stir. It amazed him that he felt no guilt. It was as if he were simply tidying something away.
When he’d finished, he went calmly out to the shed. By the time Denise came back, he’d flitted back and forth into the shapes of several birds and even a cat which he’d heard in the bushes. The transition had become part of his discipline and he could now control it completely. At last, flying from the telephone wire to the plum tree, he was surprised to see that the church clock showed twenty past seven. Why hadn’t Denise called? Had she already eaten?
In the kitchen, the pasta had been ready for almost ten minutes but Denise wasn’t hungry. She watched the blackbird coming and going, always landing on the same branch, and shivered to think of what was going on.
George was suddenly scared by a screeching close by. A crow had decided to attack. There was no time to wonder whether he had the skills to deal with it. He quickly transferred back into the shed. A fly was crawling along in the light that shone under the door. Almost idly, George focused on it and was instantaneously concentrated into its form. It was much more of a shock than the transfer into birds or the cat. The multiple visual stimuli were very hard to accommodate and the shed was a canyon. Quickly, he moved back into himself. The idea of blundering into a web was appalling. But the fly did offer clear possibilities. It was the perfect way of seeing, unnoticed, what Denise was doing. Maybe if he could get used to the compound eyes and fly across to the house without being eaten by some bat...
He looked around for webs or anything else that might constitute danger. Most of the ceiling and part of the left hand wall seemed clear. He focused once more and felt the same constriction. This time, there was no surprise. He concentrated on filtering out the visual messages that he didn’t need. Once he felt easier, he flew straight to the wall and thrilled at the way he instinctively turned his body to land, with no sense of impact, on the vertical surface. The next stop was the ceiling, and, if he’d been able to, he would have laughed with pleasure at the way he manoeuvred at speed, flipping over at the last moment to land upside down in perfect stillness. It made birds and cats seem very prosaic. He could even have used the fly’s proboscis to transfer toxins to Denise’s food. It was a new world, kaleidoscopic with unfamiliar pleasures; the fluids inside him, the elasticity of wings and legs, the tickling of the air. Then, suddenly, he felt a searing, too familiar pulse. It sent a…
Denise stood in the doorway of the empty shed and inspected the small stain on the rolled up newspaper in her hand. Her heart beat quickly and she threw the paper into a corner. The flatness had fallen from her and been replaced by a euphoria. She closed the door and went back into the house, her appetite completely restored.
Swearwords: None.
Description: George and Denise's marriage is purgatory for both of them. Each wants out. So each makes elimination plans.
_____________________________________________________________________
Everything about George and Denise proved that opposites attract. She plumbed in sinks and had rewired the entire house. He read Camus and practised transcendental meditation in the garden shed. When they’d first met, it was somehow exotic to have absolutely nothing in common. Even sex had been different. Denise was used to lovers scaling her like commandos. When George uncovered one of her breasts and just looked at it for ages, she found it incredibly exciting. George, for his part, had had a succession of timid, flat-chested girl-friends. Denise’s opulence and the violence she used on him when she was no longer content with just his gaze catapulted him into unimaginable fantasies.
The mistake, of course, was getting married. As a sporadic experience, exoticism is fine; in daily doses, it palls. Within a year of vowing eternal fidelity and the rest, mutual attraction had soured into virulent antagonism. And it wasn’t just physical. They’d also developed a form of telepathy. Or, rather, two forms. George’s meditation exercises had made his mind receptive to the tiniest of external stimuli. In his shed, he’d blissfully unload all his mental baggage. Then suddenly there’d be a hot pulse of energy and he’d know that Denise was on her way. For her part, Denise would be absorbed in something like retiling the shower and, equally suddenly, she’d be invaded by a dull flatness; the signal that George was nearby. For each of them, the experience was intrusive, threatening.
Independently, as the years went by, they sought and planned release, concocting and discarding ways of rediscovering the individuality of which they’d been robbed. Frustrations built and thickened until, eventually, each knew that the problem couldn’t just be solved, it had to be eliminated. At last, at the end of a summer of relentless heat, the simmering reached boiling point. And George made an astonishing discovery.
It was afternoon. The atmosphere in the shed was like a solid weight pressing around him. Beginning his silent mantra, he made a conscious effort to withdraw himself from all physical contacts. Sensation seemed to shrink inside him and become a thin silver column which reached up into his head. He heard a bird outside and he grafted onto his relaxation the idea of flying in the shade of branches, creating a cool air-flow over all his surfaces.
And, unaccountably, he was sitting in the tree. It was as sudden as that. His mind was so clear that it simply left his body and moved into the bird.
But it was too extreme. His binocular vision threw a dizzy criss-crossing of twigs into his brain, the hot air beat around him and he felt a surge of fear which sent him diving back into the shed to reclaim his own form. He was shaking, sweating even more. He spent the evening in quiet shock.
The next day was like a cauldron. The habitual argument and the hot silence which followed it made the air seem to clot even more thickly. Denise was preparing a tomato salad, carving viciously through onions and seeing George’s neck on the board before her. In the darkness of his shed, George’s flesh burned and prickled. He had to get away from it. He closed his eyes and his mantra brought a cool wave of peace. He constricted his sensations into the silver column as before and waited. When he heard birdsong, he focused everything on it and, as easily as the first time, he found himself in the trees.
This time, he was ready. He explored his smallness, feeling the smooth, rounded sweep of the muscle in his chest and the supple folding of wings along his back. Tentatively, he stretched and fluttered to release the warm pockets of air trapped in his feathers. It was magical.
He saw the door of the house open and realised that Denise had been calling. In the instant of recognition, he felt himself falling, but he clutched his thoughts around him and forced himself to stay with the bird. He watched Denise storm across the lawn, fling open the shed door and shout:
“I’ve spent valuable bloody time getting ...”
She stopped and looked around. The shed was empty. And yet she’d seen George go into it not five minutes before. She stepped back outside and looked up at the tree and the blackbird sitting very still on one of its branches. George looked down at her, feeling her eyes locked onto him. He wondered why she’d seen nothing in the shed and felt a rush of panic at the idea that the physical form he’d left had been somehow violated and caused to vanish by her arrival. What if he couldn’t get back? The panic became a familiar pulse of energy. Denise knew where he was. He was sure of it.
Denise, in deep shock, still carrying the sensation of the flatness of George’s presence, turned to go back into the house. George waited for her to close the door before refocusing apprehensively on the interior of the shed. He was relieved to feel the slide back into darkness and to know that he was himself once again.
From the kitchen, Denise saw the shed door open and watched George come out. She was tired from all the work she’d been doing, sick of the solitude in which he imprisoned her and now frightened by whatever was happening out there. She didn’t understand any of it but she knew that a frontier had been crossed. This wasn’t just domestic strife any more; this was real alienation, something monstrous in her practical world.
Neither of them said anything as they picked through that meal. They knew that they were in truly different dimensions and that they could never be reintegrated back into a common space. Each was afraid, too, of the other’s knowledge and of the menace it carried. It was decision time.
In recent months, each had refined the means of elimination. For George, it was easy. Denise had already had thromboses in both her legs and, for nearly two years, she’d had to take 5 milligrams of Warfarin every day to keep her blood thin. There were several things she couldn’t eat and even a simple drug like aspirin would cause internal haemorrhaging. Accidents could always happen in cases like hers. George wouldn’t necessarily be suspected. And even if he was, with this new power, he could just disappear, spirit himself into some other form, even into another body. Why not?
For her part, Denise had been researching pesticides. In the library, she’d consulted the Farm and Garden Chemicals Regulations and had already bought several highly toxic organophosphates which she’d hidden in the shed and hooked up to a slow release vaporiser. Their cumulative effect would be to destroy George’s sympathetic nervous system and, even if foul play was suspected, proving it wouldn’t be easy. Anyway, who’d be surprised to find pesticides in a garden shed?
It was when she was out buying the last of the compounds she needed that George made his move. He knew she’d prepared a pasta sauce for their evening meal. As usual, it was tomato based but strongly enough flavoured with shallots, olives and garlic to provide an effective mask. He took two handfuls of aspirin and Warfarin tablets and began grinding them together on a saucer. It was probably far more than he needed, but he reasoned that Denise would at best only eat half of the sauce. It was simply a question of making sure that the mixture was spread evenly through it. He scraped the powder into the sauce and began to stir. It amazed him that he felt no guilt. It was as if he were simply tidying something away.
When he’d finished, he went calmly out to the shed. By the time Denise came back, he’d flitted back and forth into the shapes of several birds and even a cat which he’d heard in the bushes. The transition had become part of his discipline and he could now control it completely. At last, flying from the telephone wire to the plum tree, he was surprised to see that the church clock showed twenty past seven. Why hadn’t Denise called? Had she already eaten?
In the kitchen, the pasta had been ready for almost ten minutes but Denise wasn’t hungry. She watched the blackbird coming and going, always landing on the same branch, and shivered to think of what was going on.
George was suddenly scared by a screeching close by. A crow had decided to attack. There was no time to wonder whether he had the skills to deal with it. He quickly transferred back into the shed. A fly was crawling along in the light that shone under the door. Almost idly, George focused on it and was instantaneously concentrated into its form. It was much more of a shock than the transfer into birds or the cat. The multiple visual stimuli were very hard to accommodate and the shed was a canyon. Quickly, he moved back into himself. The idea of blundering into a web was appalling. But the fly did offer clear possibilities. It was the perfect way of seeing, unnoticed, what Denise was doing. Maybe if he could get used to the compound eyes and fly across to the house without being eaten by some bat...
He looked around for webs or anything else that might constitute danger. Most of the ceiling and part of the left hand wall seemed clear. He focused once more and felt the same constriction. This time, there was no surprise. He concentrated on filtering out the visual messages that he didn’t need. Once he felt easier, he flew straight to the wall and thrilled at the way he instinctively turned his body to land, with no sense of impact, on the vertical surface. The next stop was the ceiling, and, if he’d been able to, he would have laughed with pleasure at the way he manoeuvred at speed, flipping over at the last moment to land upside down in perfect stillness. It made birds and cats seem very prosaic. He could even have used the fly’s proboscis to transfer toxins to Denise’s food. It was a new world, kaleidoscopic with unfamiliar pleasures; the fluids inside him, the elasticity of wings and legs, the tickling of the air. Then, suddenly, he felt a searing, too familiar pulse. It sent a…
Denise stood in the doorway of the empty shed and inspected the small stain on the rolled up newspaper in her hand. Her heart beat quickly and she threw the paper into a corner. The flatness had fallen from her and been replaced by a euphoria. She closed the door and went back into the house, her appetite completely restored.
About the Author
Bill Kirton was born in Plymouth, but has lived in Aberdeen for most of his life. He’s been a university lecturer, presented TV programmes, written and performed songs and sketches at the Edinburgh Festival, and had radio plays broadcast by the BBC. He’s written three books on study and writing skills in Pearson’s ‘Brilliant’ series and his crime novels, Material Evidence, Rough Justice, The Darkness, Shadow Selves and the historical novel The Figurehead, set in Aberdeen in 1840, have been published in the UK and USA. He's recently started writing children's stories and the first, Stanley Moves In, has just been published. His short stories have appeared in several anthologies and Love Hurts was chosen for the Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 2010.
His website is http://www.bill-kirton.co.uk/ and his blog’s at http://livingwritingandotherstuff.blogspot.com/.
His website is http://www.bill-kirton.co.uk/ and his blog’s at http://livingwritingandotherstuff.blogspot.com/.