Here’s something I submitted for a competition a little while ago.
I’ve edited it to the point where very little of the original idea or tone remains, and I’m not sure if it makes sense, or if it reads okay, or I even like it any more (or even if I did in the first place).
As with a few of my submissions, this is part of an much larger narrative, so there are some repeated themes and characters.
Any help would be much appreciated. Constructive criticism more than welcome.
Duct tape covers the peephole in the apartment’s door. The tape, matt-silver against the gloss-white, is stuck in the shape of a cross, stopping pinpricks of light from permeating the darkness.
The corridor outside is rarely lit, the other residents spend the majority of their time alone, actively avoiding their neighbours.
The walls are thin enough, and the flat is quiet enough, for the occupant to hear relays clicking whenever someone activates a light’s motion sensor somewhere down the hallway.
Inside, despite the security of the electronic lock, there is a chain linking the door to the frame.
Deep shadows form everywhere except the small bathroom where a red bulb is housed, light blooming low in the darkness. The door is only open to illuminate the flat. The rest of the room is lit only by screens of various sizes showing various streams of information, blinking lights at various frequencies.
He’s not looking at any of it.
He sits wearing only Adidas tracksuit-bottoms and a VR headset. He arches his back and peels the stuck skin from the black leather covering the chair. Wires trail up over the chair’s wheeled frame and, in places, they are stuck with the same silver tape.
The flat is stuffy from all the rebreathed air of man and machine; the windows are shut most of the time.
Electrical cables are bunched and bound into vines, each silver-tape loop about a forearm’s length from the other. The dark mass laid out along almost the entire perimeter of the room.
Where cables cross a thoroughfare, a taut ramp of tape covers them, preventing wayward toes getting stuck and snagged in the darkness. The vines have been there long enough that they are now avoided habitually.
With his eyes closed beneath the lenses he stretches, hands in fists above his head, both his bones and the fabric creaking.
He scratches at his bare flanks.
He has the bony, hairless chest of a malnourished child; the torso of an uncooked chicken carcass.
The phone rings, and he muscle-memory answers with a grunt. Before the caller can finish their sentence, he says, “No,” and hangs up.
There is a pause where the only sounds in the apartment are that of the CPU fans cooling circuitry and heating the air with the constant tinnitus of electricity.
The phone vibrates, skittering across the desk.
He grunts and sighs, removes his headset, and rubs his eyes. He picks up the phone and answers.
There is the soft bleat of a muffled voice.
He sits forward, elbows propped on knees, eyes wide-open watching lights blinking in the darkening sky outside. “Of course,” he says, “I can go now.” His brow furrows, “It’s close. I can be there in about fifteen minutes.”
There is another short bleat.
“No,” he says, “I’ll be able to find her,” and hangs up.
Wires are unplugged and the goggles are placed on the desk. He rests his feet beside them, his toes gripping the desk-top like a gargoyle as he looks out at the surrounding buildings. They’re mostly high rises like his; they crowd small communal spaces, each filled with concrete benches and low maintenance trees with patchy lawns.
His pulse beats hard behind his eyes and he realises he’s been holding his breath.
He wraps his arms around his knees and lets his vision blur and his breath grow shallow.
It takes him two swiping tries before he grabs a thin, plastic bottle from where he sits and, after unscrewing the cap, he taps two white pills into a dry palm and swallows them with a long gulp of lukewarm water from a glass that smells of chlorine and saliva.
Still perching, he reaches and flips through a pile of coloured folders before finding the correct blue one. It bends between his hands like a magician’s trick deck. In the red light, it is bruise-purple.
Standing and stretching, he carries the folder to his backpack where he places it in an elasticated pocket behind an A4 notebook and broken laptop he doesn’t remember ever working.
At the doorway, he stamps on Air Max 110’s and pulls on a once-white vest. He looks to the window to check for rain.
April showers, he almost says aloud and thinks, however briefly, of his grandmother saying the same thing in her own flat.
His fists clench and unclench.
He sighs, patting his pockets. He feels for his key card and leaves without his phone. The lining of his jacket is cold against the sweating skin of his arms.
He takes sunglasses despite the impending darkness and the late hour.
***
He hurries to meet his client not far from the apartment on a street where he can almost see the sea.
His tower block is still visible above the rooftops of the buildings and, as always, he stops to look back and picture his flat is on the side closest to him. Along the road there are mostly shop-fronts and takeaways, some boarded up, some with flats above the kebab shops, and some with second level storerooms full of greetings cards and deflated foil balloons.
He looks at his wrist where his watch should be and hopes he is on time. When he spots her, she is trying, with moderate success, to eat noodles without her elbows being knocked by passers-by. She sits on an upturned beer crate as a makeshift stool. Her dark glasses reflect the brightly lit, striped canopy above. With each chewed mouthful, red and white stripes move across the lenses like a barber’s pole.
Although they haven’t met, he knows her from photographs.
He knows of her by reputation.
Others might know her by the reputation of her mother.
Rain has started to fall but the streets are still hot and busy. The extra humidity intensifies the smells; wet jackets and miso and rubber and beer; old umbrellas damp like bad breath; the constant oil slick of frying food both savoury and sweet.
“Miss Hardy?”
There are scars on her face half-hidden by glasses. In the flesh, she looks more like a junkie than he expected.
“So formal,” she says, “Mae is fine.”
He nods at her and tells her he has been sent to speak with her.
He starts to talk and, giving up, raises his voice above the sound of the rain drumming against the awning. He says, “Would you like to go somewhere quieter? Somewhere with less people?”
Her head tilts to one side as she stops chewing.
She stabs the chopsticks into something meaty in the carton, swallows, and says, “Sure.”
The rain falls in waves, alternating between light and heavy.
She says, “Do you live nearby? You got here pretty fast. Maybe we could go to your place, and you can talk me though what you’ve found?”
They watch themselves in each other’s glasses. Behind her glasses her gaze is unwavering. He sees the reflected dissonance in his own face as he searches for an excuse. He opens and closes his mouth but, eventually, he nods for her to follow.
She stands, brushing her hands over the ripped black denim covering her thighs, and says, “Lead the way, handsome.”
His cheeks flush but she doesn’t seem to notice.
She leaves the uneaten noodles still steaming on the crate.
They set off slowly in the drizzle, increasing their pace as the rain intensifies. They end up jogging to minimise exposure.
“I was expecting somebody older,” she says, not even slightly out of breath.
“Sorry?”
She says, “You look about twelve.”
He looks away, squinting into the dying light.
“I wasn’t expecting someone ancient,” she says, “But someone a little more grizzled. Someone more like an old-time PI. Someone with a hat and a gun and whiskey and dames. Not just a shitty backpack and trackies.”
His head falls forward as he folds into himself, his eyes anywhere but on her. “I’m not officially an Investigator,” he says, “I’m just a Runner. I give out the information.”
In the rain, there is no time to stop and ask questions. They move in near silence until they arrive at his flat.
The rain keeps falling as the sun sets but her dark glasses stay on.
***
After removing his jacket, he kicks off his shoes and sets them on the mat by the door. She doesn’t. If questioned, she could blame the laces running up to her knees, but she wouldn’t.
He takes the folder from his bag.
She stands with her back to the doorway and watches him walk away from her. In the quiet, she can hear his bare feet sticking and peeling from the polished concrete as he walks.
She removes her sunglasses and hangs them from the opening of her t-shirt. Her hands slide into her jacket pockets. She says, “Not much of a talker, are you?”
Her breath bounces back from her upturned collar as she scans the room, “Have you actually got any lights?”
He says, “I do, yes.”
“Are you sure you’ve got enough cables?”
He sighs, and says, “The wires are a necessity; my setup still isn’t right, but the rent’s cheap. I figured the landlord doesn’t want me kicking holes in the walls and rewiring. What you’re looking at is, at best, a temporary solution.”
His eyes follow the gnarled black roots running around the perimeter of the room to a bank of blinking lights behind a perforated steel screen. There are odd branches climbing up the walls where wires spread like ivy leading to nothing.
The room is visually busy, scruffy even, yet is scented by ozone and rice steam and fabric detergent. It looks like a panic attack and smells like a spa.
In what little light there is, her eyes roam and linger on the kitchen area.
She sees his teapot. It is set out on the worktop beside a solo ceramic cup.
In that single object she pictures his entire life. A life of silence and tea leaves and copper-bottomed pans; spatulas burned from gas flames; books made of paper stacked in irregular piles on benches and on tables; a futon only big enough for one.
“Would you like a drink?” he says, and the sudden noise makes the image slip and her fists clench.
“No,” she says and shakes her head, “Thanks.”
He runs a hand over his close-cropped hair, flicking rainwater from his fingers and onto the floor.
Against the glow of the red light, he stands like a shadow.
She stands against the white of the doorway like a void.
He pinches water from the tip of an ear and says, “Would you like to sit down?” He looks to the coffee table, “I don’t usually meet people in person,” he says, “Let alone entertain.”
She sets out towards the futon, more out of curiosity than fatigue. She stops and stands in the centre of the room. “What’s with the red light?”
She cranes her neck but stays put.
“It’s my bathroom-slash-darkroom.”
She can see the lines strung between the walls and little hooks drilled into grouting. Over the sink and over the bath there are temporary shelves made of plywood.
“A darkroom?” she says, “You develop pictures? Real pictures with actual paper?” Her teeth are bright despite the darkness, “You’re more of PI than you let on.”
He shakes his head, chews his bottom lip, and picks up the folder and says, “Would you like to read the file?”
She says: “No.”
She says: “Skip to the end.”
He puts the folder down and pushes it away with splayed fingers. His shoulders drop. “There’s not much to report,” he says tapping the folder, “He’s not who you’re looking for.”
He steps out of the red again, backing further into the low-glow of the screens and the shadows. He sits on his chair, folds his legs beneath him, and watches. With a bent finger, he scrapes water from under his chin.
He says, “It doesn’t seem like he even knew your Ma before you were born.”
They wait three silent breaths before she raises her eyebrows and says, “That’s it?”
He looks at the table. At the folder. At its brevity.
“Pretty much,” he says. “I don’t know anything more. I can’t tell you who your actual father is. You did say: skip to the end.”
Her face hangs slack, her eyes blink-blink-blinking.
She says, “I paid you to find him. I paid you a lot.” She sighs, closing her eyes, “How can buying information be so expensive, and so little fun?”
He says, “Some people don’t want to be found.”
All her pent-up nerves, all her energy, transforms into tensing muscles and grinding teeth. Her nose-skin bunches and the faintest twitch passes though her top lip. She opens her eyes, breathing out long and smooth and slow.
She speaks quietly, her voice soft and measured, “What have I paid you people for?” With her jaw clenched, she says, “Just to tell me one person isn’t the one I’m looking for? Out of how many? Where’re the actual results?”
She looks different, like someone he can’t quite place.
Across the room he looks small and hunched, his fingers clasped around his ankles, already out of his depth and already out of excuses.
Holding up his hands, his voice small, he says, “I just provide the paperwork.”
“Paperwork?” Her voice is barely there, just the sound of teeth parting in the air. She says, “That folder looks pretty thin to me. It doesn’t look like you provide very much paper.”
There is a squeak of wet rubber as she steps forward and he flinches.
“Tell me,” she says, her voice quiet and calm, “You might not know who my father is, but do you know my mother?”
And then he knows; she’s transformed. Just like her mother when she’s angry.
She keeps walking towards him.
He says, “I know who she is,” and can feel the weight of the knowledge shift from his head to his sinking heart and he knows she can see it too.
“The apple didn’t fall very far from the tree, Jakob.”
“Who told you my name?” He feels his heartbeat thudding in his ears and says, “I’m nobody, I’m just another layer. I’m just security.”
“Security?” she says, “It doesn’t look like you can handle yourself.”
“Not like that,” he says, “I’m no bouncer. I’m expendable.”
“You’re paid to be a pawn?”
He says, “Not well.”
“I’m disappointed,” she says, “I actually thought you were going to do a better job.”
He opens his mouth for a second before she swings a ringed fist of knuckles that connects flat against his temple. He drops from the chair with the crack of an eye socket on polished concrete.
She is behind him as he tries to rise.
His legs tangle and her forearm is already pressing against his windpipe. He kicks out against the chair, swinging himself onto his back and pressing his weight onto her as she wriggles beneath him. She holds tight, riding out the thrashing. Rug-burned blood-streaks under his busted heel as he flails, hissing like a cornered cat.
He stops.
Goes limp.
Breathing shallow just beyond her ear.
They embrace in the silence, and she lets out a sigh as they lie in the red glow and the smell of scorched metal.
She waits a beat before rolling him off her chest and onto his belly.
In the silence of the flat, the rain against the windows is hurricane-loud.
He rocks on his chest as she wraps his wrists and his ankles with lengths of duct tape from a roll she finds nearby; layers of matt-silver against white skin like little croissant cuffs.
She pulls the wires from the chair and ties them around his throat like a leash or a noose and lays the excess in a reel where she can reach it.
Sitting cross-legged on the rug she listens to blood bubble over a nostril. In the redness of the light, the trail is almost invisible.
She checks over his eyebrow, gently rubbing the cut with a thumb. She stops and sniffs at its slickness. It is the same colour of her nail varnish. She puts her thumb into her mouth and sucks it until her thumbprint crinkles and the metallic taste has gone.
It is some time before he’s awake enough to be able to look up at her, his eye darkening with a purple-swelling-hematoma, already so big with blood.
The sound of the rain has dimmed to an ignorable white noise.
He lets out a small, pained grunt.
Shuffling in close, head bent down to almost meet his, she says, “I’ve had some time to think.” She straightens, looking out of the window at an angle where she can only see the sky. “I know I have a temper. I was upset. I apologise.”
If there was no rain, she might be able to see stars. No other flats are illuminated.
“In hindsight,” she says, “This may have been a bad way of asking for your assistance, but we’ve started down a path.
“You see, Jakob, I need to find him. I need to find him fast. I’m going to take what I’m owed from that deadbeat.
“I need help getting those files and your employers need to know I’m unhappy. I want what I’m owed.”
Watching his still form lying the length of the futon she says, “Are you going to help me or not?”
He speaks quietly into the carpet, “I don’t get in touch with them, they contact me.”
She huffs out long and slow from her nose, and says, “Then we’ll have to wait till they get worried.”
With his aching jaw pressed to the floor he blinks to clear his vision. He tests the limits of his shoulder’s movements with pinched arm-hairs and a crackle of glue.
The phone buzzes across the desk and the wire against his throat pulls infinitesimally tighter.
Hey mate, finally found the time to read this, been looking forward to it and it didn't disappoint.
The descriptions and the senses are really tight. "a glass that smells of chlorine and saliva" is some powerful shit, I really felt that. There's loads like that that I really really like.
I see Maegan's commented (Hi Maegan), and said a couple of things I was going to say. I think the descriptions and scene setting can be cut down a bit. An example would be: "Standing and stretching, he carries the folder to his backpack where he places it in an elasticated pocket behind an A4 notebook and broken laptop he doesn’t remember ever working." I don't need that level of detail there.
What I like with the long drawn-out slow build is that I got the sense very early that there's going to be a dramatic change of mood ignited by a rash scene of violence, and that got me slowly more and more excited. But there's a fine line between slow build and too-slow build, and you're definitely skirting that line.
One quick way to speed it up would be to go through and delete all the unnecessary "and"s and "is"s. Example: "and the flat is quiet enough" could become "the flat quiet enough".
"a futon only big enough for one" could be "a tiny futon" or "a futon for one" for example.
"The flat is stuffy from all the rebreathed air of man and machine; the windows are shut most of the time." is probably my favourite sentence, I love it, I feel it, I want to open a window. It's great. The picture I have of this guy is so vivid.
But then the image I have of the girl, basically as a weak, skinny junkie, makes it hard for me to believe that she can pack such a punch and also be able to overpower him, manhandle him like she does, so easily. So I either need to see earlier why he is so weak, or why she is so deadly. This might just be me, though. I'll read it all again sometime in the upcoming days and see if I get a different impression.
I found a typo: "you can talk me though what you’ve found?”
And I'm not sure, but I think desk-top doesn't need the hyphen, think it's one word.
All in all, mate, it does what you want a piece of writing to do and that is hold the reader's attention. I definitely wanted to keep reading, and still do.
All of these pieces of advice are just editing things.
Ah I almost forgot, I also made the same observation as Maegan about changing point of view. I'm typing this on my phone so can't see the exact sentence right now, but from memory it was something like "He looked small in the chair" but it came right after a description of her I think, or a thought of hers. Whatever it was, for a moment I remember being a little disoriented by the shift.
Hope this is all helpful, mate. Glad you're writing, glad you're posting, and as always I'm a fan of your work.
Hey Matt! This is cool. It's like cozy meets sci-fi. (I think? I'm no cozy expert). When I reached the line, "He sits wearing only Adidas...", that's where I jumped in, my attention was grabbed. I wonder if you could start closer to there and weave some of the scene setting in a little bit later. I'm not sure how important the scene setting was for me in my understanding of what was taking place. For me, After the Adidas bit, my brain followed the bread crumbs you were dropping like it wanted to solve the puzzle.
At the line, "After removing his jacket, he kicks off his shoes and sets them on the mat by the door. She doesn’t. If questioned, she could blame the laces running up to her knees, but she wouldn’t. " you changed POV to the woman, am I reading that correctly?
I think the ending ends in a good place. You've left an open loop for the reader--will he get away? will he be forced to help her?
All in all, I'd say this was gripping. Could read quicker if some of the descriptions were shortened up. Maybe check the tennis-match in the dialogue, though I think a little bit of tennis-match is kind of part of the typical cozy, maybe? is it?
It's cool though. Sci-fi + Mystery. I'm digging it.