You had to feel for her, if you didn’t you were most likely a bastard. And it was harder to be a bastard when you got older, at least it was for me, me own family didn’t bring me up like that, not to have empathy, even though a lot of them are bastards as well. That fucking internet she said, it was all that internets fault. Those little tablets and phones they do be on every second, beeping and flashing. He was on it all the time, we didn’t take any notice, it kept him calm, distracted like, after his da left. I’d see cuts on him sometimes, on his arms, then one day down his back coming out of the shower one morning, the towel dotted with blood. She rubbed her eyes and pushed her hair behind her ear.
I had the recorder on, but I wrote it down anyway, because I could look up at her, then back down again towards the paper, it gave me an excuse not to keep eye contact. She cried and I patted her on the shoulder, there seemed to be a gormlessness about the way I patted her arm, like I wasn’t used to patting bereaved parents on the shoulder kind of patting. It wasn’t a confident motion in anyway, it was unsure of itself, like the position I found myself in. He started going into himself she said, he started being quieter, tireder, his friends stopped calling around, he’d never tell you if you asked him. I thought it was bullying at school and I asked his teacher to keep an eye on him.
She said he’d been quieter than usual, but that there wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary, nothing remarkable, not enough to say there was anything wrong yet. It was out of her hands I suppose but it doesn’t help when you’re scraping for answers.
The night before I found him he wasn’t right, there was something off about him, I could hear him laughing to himself in his room. Then making different noises. What kind of noises I asked? Our eyes met and I lowered mine, a tiny grin seemed to turn up involuntarily on my face, she saw it but ignored it. I even thought I saw a feint grin on her lips myself but it quickly disappeared as she got further into the story. He mentioned something about the red squirrel, I overheard him talking to a friend over the phone. It wasn’t a normal conversation, it was like they were talking about something serious, something dangerous, in a tone kids that age didn’t normally use. The next evening I came back from work late and found him hanging from the bannisters. I couldn’t get me head around it at first, I just saw legs dangling. I screamed, when I got up to try and pull his body up on the floor I knew he was already gone. I just held him, cried, held him again and called the ambulance. It felt like the ambulance took hours to come, even though it was only five minutes, some part of me hoped he’d just wake up in me arms and I’d give him a ticking off and that would be that. But he never woke, so I just kept holding him and singing a song from a cartoon he used to like.
And when the ambulance finally came I didn’t want to let him go, and I ended up feeling sorry I called them. There was a silence in the room, she had no tears left, just silent thoughts, she gripped her Kleenex in between perfectly painted nails, one nail on her index finger had a different colour with a design running across it. She tapped on a phone, there was a wore out sticker on it, of what looked like a green Panda. I took my time asking her the next question, was there anything else at all that you overheard, not really she said, maybe a few nights before, I overheard him talking about different levels, something about each level having a colour.
Did he play video consoles I asked, she looked confused for a moment, I mean video games I said. No she said, not for a while anyway, not for a good while she repeated, looking off into space, lost in thought and most likely doubt. I stayed quiet and took a sip of tea, it was gone cold now, can I get you another cup she said, I’m grand I said. The night passed lighter than how it started, and she asked me would I like a beer, I didn’t really want to impose but after the day I had I needed to cut loose somehow. We chatted, laughed, it seemed inappropriate but we were both relieved of the company, of the chat and the dulling of the alcohol. I pulled a hair from a button of my shirt, it was long and blonde, like hers.
She offered me more beer, then wine, and the wine eventually ended in a couple of glasses of gin without the tonic. Her questions seemed to get more and more personal, and mine began to get more flirtatious, I eventually took myself of the sofa and made my excuses, declined more drink and was already beginning to feel an early hangover coming on. I pulled a long blonde hair out from between the ring on my finger. She asked me if I’d like to meet her again under different circumstances. I agreed.
The view up here was different, it gave you a clarity you didn’t have down there. It puts you on the edge, the edge of what you’re not supposed to feel. It’s frightening but it’s somehow invigorating, it’s dark, up here, and as the months have passed my mind has been dark with it. I look at her photo, she looks so young, she must have had him when she was sixteen, but I never asked, it would be like fishing for her real age and women didn’t like that. She seemed to disappear, from calling me, from texting me everyday to suddenly not responding at all, like she just dropped of the radar.
She told me I’d never see the end of this, whatever it was I was looking for, that sometimes things had no ends, that they just kind of carried on in different ways. That’s what she told me that night, that night we got a bit too close, grief could probably do that. Her last messages were odd, she said you never see it, that’s the thing she said, you just never see it. I tried to ask her what she meant but she didn’t reply, she stopped replying completely not long after. Like she fell off the face of the earth. I pulled a hair from the clip on the cover of my phone, it was a long blonde one. I looked out at the night sky, it was cold up here, even dangerous if you didn’t watch what you were doing.
DoubleSpeak 