Be Friendly

Drying my hands on the front of my shirt, I make my way to my front door, where a repeated knocking with intermittent spouts of doorbell-ringing imply a great deal of impatience on the part of my visitor, which tells me they must have been there for some time. I steady myself by grabbing a hall table, mould myself into a posture somewhat resembling that of a dignified human being and swallow hard.

The gilded door handle is cold in my sweaty hand. I turn it.

“Hello. Can I help you?” I make the appropriate noises for the situation of seeing a uniformed stranger at one’s front door. My smile seems to be working; the man before me certainly looks like he believes it.

“Yes, you can.” Confidence. I almost sighed with relief. Whenever you hear confidence in a policeman’s voice, you know you are more or less safe. It’s when they get nervous that you have to worry. “My name is Detective Robert Grant, do you mind if I come inside?”

Inside? Damn it, I hadn’t planned for this contingency. I can’t say no, that won’t look good. Must be polite. Must always be polite. I’ll have to let him, offer him a seat. I might even have to get him a drink.

Keep smiling, for God’s sake, or he’ll see straight through you.

I let the man in and close the door after him. I lead him into the kitchen, where the while tile flooring gleams like a hellish parody of a cleaning product commercial. The walls have stopped moving, which is fortunate, but there’s a window open and a ghastly breeze of fresh air is drifting in. I pull up a wooden chair and the detective sits. I am required by social custom to ask if my guest would like a drink, and he politely accepts my hospitality, inquiring as to what my range of beverages includes. I know that to respond to his query I must examine the contents of my refrigerator.

My heart rate is well above average. Each pump shakes my chest and thunders in my ears, filling my body with blood. Blood races from my heart to my lungs, where it acquires oxygen necessary to fuel my bodily functions. It shoots around my body, delivering its vital packages. Blood runs through my arms, down my legs, around my head, around and about every organ inside my corporeal self.

That’s a lot of blood.

I realize I have paused, though I don’t think the detective noticed. I grasp the door of the refrigerator and swing it open.

“I have orange juice, and some cola. There’s plenty of water in the tap, or I could make up some tea or coffee. Or if you’d prefer I could slit your throat with that knife over there, and you can have your fill of whatever soulless black liquid gushes forth from your inhuman carcass you cold-hearted, moronic son of a bitch.”

“A cup of tea would be nice. Black. Two sugars. Thanks.”

He’s still calm. Still confident. Which means I’m still safe.

The sun shines through the open window and the sky is so blue it’s making me sick.

“Nice weather we’re having, isn’t it?” A lot of people play up the innocence of animals in a lot of ways, and one of those ways is saying that only humans lie. That’s not true. Chameleons lie compulsively, as do cuttlefish and octopi, changing colour to suit their location. Opossums lie about being dead, false coral snakes lie about being coral snakes. The only difference is we humans are better at it. Through generations of evolution we have mastered the art of deception to the point where we do it out of curtsey. Sometimes we even lie out of pure habit.

“Yes, it is, but I’m not really here to talk about the weather, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, yes. Of course. Sorry. What are you here to talk about?”

I take the kettle over to the sink to fill it. As I turn on the tap I catch my reflection in the highly-polished metal basin. It takes me while to recognize it. My smile is still there. I need to make sure I keep it casual. I can’t look like I’m enjoying this.

I really need to step outside and take a few deep breaths to calm myself, but I can’t arouse suspicion. I could pretend to go to the toilet, but then what would he think? What would he do while I was gone? What would he do while I couldn’t see him?

I think he’s talking to me but I’m not listening. I’m filling a kettle up with water. I’m putting that kettle into its electric holster, flipping a switch on the side. I see a red light glow and I already know that the process has begun.

“Mr. Dolphy?” wrenched back into conversation I realized that I had been expected to reply.

“Oh, sorry detective, I was…” damn it! Come on, Eric, you can do this! “…I was somewhere else.”

“If this is a bad time I can-”

Must not show weakness!

“No! No, no, no, no. This is fine. I’m fine. The time is fine, and I’ve already put the kettle on. Now, what was it you wanted to say?” I pulled myself together, my face, voice, posture and mind snapping back into place, leaving no traces of the person behind them.

“I was asking you if you knew John Goldman.” A question. Usually not a good sign but at least he’s not panicking. My nerves are buzzing like a powerline and I need a moment alone to calm myself down and pour me back into myself. I pull two coffee mugs out of a draw because I don’t have real tea cups and there is very little difference anyway. He patiently awaits a response. My chest tightens and the air gets very thick around me, clinging to my skin and squeezing.

“Oh, yes. I knew him from work.” Polite. No, not polite. Friendly. Yes, be friendly. For the love of God be friendly!

The kettle beside me is beginning to bubble. I can hear it, and I think he can too. The air is getting thicker, so I have to breathe deeper, and my heart needs to beat faster to get the oxygen around in a proper fashion. God damn it, how is he not feeling this? Can he taste that air?

“Did you know him well?” The casual cheer and mild curiosity in his voice is toxic to my senses. He’s being friendly. Why can’t I do that? Am I doing that?

Two sugars. He wants two sugars. I reach for the virginal white jar of sugar, filled with pristine granules of sweetness.

I pause before I answer his question, as if to contemplate the answer.

“Not really. He mostly kept to himself.” Incredible. I pause to absolute perfection. You really should have seen it. I left it just long enough to be truly believable, but not long enough to make it look like I was formulating some lie. The pause had a touch of fondness to it, as though I was recalling the personality of this man I liked, though never really spoke to. I titled my head in just the right way and pulled all of the right muscles in my face to replicate just the right nuances of emotion. The performance of a lifetime.

But already I feel it slipping. Could I do such a pause again? Not in my current state. When I’m like this I get one, maybe two good pauses tops. With one that good, I severely doubt my pause reserves have anything left.

“Do you remember when you saw him last?”

He bought the pause. He not only bought it, he took it to a fancy restaurant, had dinner with it, tried to get to know it and began liking it more and more. If he could he would take that pause home with him.

The kettle next to me keeps bubbling.

“It would have been a couple of days ago. Thursday, I think.” I think. Brilliant! “At work, I was leaving. He was the only person left in the building. He said he wanted to finish something off.”

My face is itchy but I can’t scratch it. That’s what people do when they lie, isn’t it? Scratch their face. I can’t do that. Not after I came this far.

The air is getting heavier. It’s getting harder to hold myself upright, but I persevere. Each breath is more of a strain, but as I look at the detective sitting in front of me he looks as calm and confident as ever, and breathes with a natural ease that would suggest that he has no idea how thick the air in here is. He isn’t sweating, he seems perfectly fine. At least he isn’t nervous. You know something bad is going to go down when a cop gets nervous.

“Do you remember what time that was?”

The kettle is bubbling more violently; I can tell it is almost boiled.

Do I remember what time that was? What time? I feign reminiscence, but it lacks the appeal of my previous pause. Hmm… about an hour before I killed him, so that would make it… six o’clock.

“Five-thirty, I think.”

Damn my face is itchy. And the air in here is worse than ever.

Smile, damn you, smile.

The walls are moving again.

“And what did you do then? Did you go straight home?”

No. I waited until no one was around except for me and him. I offered him a lift to his place. Then I came straight home, him with me.

I open a box of tea bags, and see that there is only one left. I try to meet his gaze but the damned sun light from the open window keeps getting in the way. My heart is pumping the blood through my legs so fast that they begin to wobble. I clutch the kitchen bench as subtly as I can.

“Yes. I went straight home. I took John Goldman with me. I knocked him out and cut him into little pieces because that son of a bitch wouldn’t give me the five minutes of peace and quite that I needed!” Dear God, did I say that? “He asked too many question, imposed on my hospitality too much, and would not give me a fucking break! So I took him to my place and I fucking killed him!”

No, I mustn’t have said that. The detective is still smiling, still friendly.

“And can anyone confirm that?” God, he reeks of friendliness. He believes me! The kettle beside me is starting to whistle, I can feel it boiling.

This God damned air, these God damned questions, the kettle boiling beside me the nauseatingly fresh air saturated with blue skies and sunshine bouncing off the squeaky clean tiles from which I scrubbed the blood stains, the blood rushing through my own veins the blood I can clearly see moving through the body of my interrogator who seems hell-bent on abusing my hospitality and not giving me a moment to myself and being fucking friendly about it! The kettle is well and truly boiled.

I pick it up by the handle and walk over to where the detective is sitting. My formal posture shifts to a deranged lank, my polite smile becomes a horrendous grin and I breath deep of the air around me, flushing out the oppressive force with which it strangled me before and feeling the blood run even fast through my body.

“Are you ok?” He asks. He had forgotten what his question was, startled by the transformation he has witnessed. He looks up at me, confused, bewildered. Nervous.

I pause. I tilt my head on a perfect angle: to the right and slightly forwards. My lips tighten in a smile that goes to no effort to mask the sadism they carry. My eyes darken with thought but light up with glee, and he can tell I am considering the question in great detail, and loving it. My apish hunch still towers over his sitting figure, my arms all boxy with the kettle gripped in front of my stomach, slightly to the right. It is a pause that says everything I need to say. It has a mischievous countenance coupled with a sinister glee; eyes revealing an unsuspected honesty and an overall feeling of dominance. A tone of freedom surrounds the pause; emotional freedom and the freedom to be myself. The smile reinforces the sense of glee with enough vigour as to confirm the suspected insanity. The duration suggests a deep and considered analysis of the question, without being so long as to detract from the question itself, or the answer that is to follow.

“Oh, yes.” I replied, my smile widening, “Yes, for the first time today, I feel wonderful.” A deep breath. “You see, I killed John Goldman. I hacked him to pieces in this very room. And now, I’m going to kill you.”

He heard me. I actually said it. I said it all. The look of terror on his face is incredible. The adrenaline pulses through him, and as the terror hits a peak a wave of endorphins flood his body and mind. He begins to sweat, he breathes deeply, his knuckles turn to snow as he clutches the chair beneath him. His eyes widen as the near-orgasmic fear overtakes him and I raise my kettle above his head.

A fast and powerful swing spills blood and boiling water everywhere. He stops breathing so deeply. He stops breathing at all. I let out a deep sigh of relief, basking in the pleasure of my act. My pulse gradually drops to a slow and healthy rate. I pant as though after strenuous exercise, and feel physically exerted. I grab an empty wooden chair and collapse into it, tilt my head back and sigh once more. The kettle drops to the ground and what remains of its contents pours onto the floor.

The walls stop moving.