Paul Cleave - The Killing Hour

They come for me as I sleep. Their pale faces stare at me, their soft voices tell me to wake, to wake. They come dressed in the clothes they were in before they died, though there is no blood on them. I know what they want, because when it comes to people who are ghosts because of you, there really is just the one thing. They cannot touch me because they have no real form. I cannot touch them either, cannot push them aside. I feel the guilt they want me to feel-I feel very little else. When I wake it is with a scream lodged so tight in my throat I start gagging until I can swallow it back down. It is five oclock in the afternoon and I am bathed in sweat. The ghosts disappear, but their Its all your fault message doesnt disappear along with them.

Its Monday. I roll over and see my clothes lying on the floor and wonder if anything good in this world ever came about on a Monday. My shorts are covered in blood. My muscles ache as I sit up. When I touch the bump on my forehead my world sways and the headache grows. The stains on my shorts are made up of red droplets in various shapes and sizes and I wonder what my answer would be if a psychiatrist asked me what I saw in those patterns. I shiver in my hot bedroom. It feels as though a thousand spiders are weaving up and down my spine. Their furry legs and tiny fangs clutch and prod and bite me.

I walk to the bathroom. The house has been closed up since yesterday. The air is tainted. I open the bathroom window, strip off the clothes a dead woman gave me, and climb into the shower. A breeze enters the room. Occasionally it pushes the cold shower curtain against my body. I embrace the water, letting it wash over me but unable to be washed clean by it. I feel nauseated, foul, and a moment later I drop to my knees, vomit burning my throat and splashing on the floor. The water falls around my head and rinses my lips, but the taste of death remains.

I turn off the shower. Climb out. There are lots of little cuts over my body but nothing that needs stitching. In the mirror the dark blue skin on my forehead looks like a golf ball has been stitched beneath it. Seeing it invites the headache deeper into my brain. It builds a residence in there, hangs up a sign, and settles in for a long stay.

I wrap the towel around my waist and trudge through the house. Water rolls off my hair and down my body. I leave wet footprints on the carpet. The stuffy air feels like a damp overcoat. It feels like Im walking through a tomb. Perhaps thats exactly what this is. I close my eyes and the two dead women waiting in my thoughts agree. In the kitchen I knock back two painkillers. How well the two words, pain and killer, go together. Is that what I am?

The answering machine has a light flashing. There are three messages. I press play and I listen to one of the secretaries at school asking me where I am, telling me I have a classroom full of students waiting for me to show up. Then she calls back two hours later and says a similar thing, and an hour after that the headmaster, a guy by the name of Declan Burrows, asks where the hell I am. I dont return the calls.

I settle down in front of the TV in the lounge and use the remote. Theres a show on that involves one women caked in makeup screaming at another woman caked in similar makeup, something important enough to involve the word skank getting used four times in the ten seconds I watch the show for. I change channels. The news has already started and the deaths are the lead story. The reporters and presenters are good-looking people full of smiles and bad news. I wonder if their salaries are on a sliding scale-the bigger the tragedy the more they make. They use phrases like mega-murder because they lack the real vocabulary to sensationalize human tragedy. Theyre talking about a community in shock. Not just one homicide, but two-the God-loving, taxpaying citizens of Christchurch are getting their moneys worth. Senseless crimes, they say. A brutal frenzy, they say. Just how brutal they cant say, but they sure as hell like to guess. No motive, no clues, no leads. Its their favorite kind of story because its equally as full of mystery as it is tragedy. They say ritualistic killings so often its easy to imagine some soap company sponsoring them to do so, because nothing cleans up a satanic massacre like their product will.

Im given the chance to learn what I couldnt last night as photographs from Kathys and Lucianas lives flash across the screen. I didnt know the two women for long. Just hours, really, but sometimes thats all you need. Sometimes its all you get. The photographs seem to be taken a few years ago. In Kathys photo theres an arm around her, probably her husbands. Her teeth are showing, she has an uncontrolled smile, a full genuine smile that comes about when somebody is trying to make you laugh and doing a great job of it. She has the blue eyes and blond hair of a surfer, and the tanned body to go along with it. Or it could just seem that way because the photo has been taken on a beach-you can see sand and water in the background and somebody wrestling a stick out of a dogs mouth.

Lucianas photo is a wedding photo, one snapped of her where shes staring into space. She looks beautiful but also a little lost. She is alone in the photo. Her dark hair is pinned up, her slender body hidden by the heavy white dress.

The reporter lists their personal achievements and ambitions as the photos are on display, the same way a salesman would list the best features of a car. Luciana was thirty-two, married, she was studying creative writing, and she taught piano. I had no idea. Last night was the realest night of my life, but thinking of that piano, thinking of the lesson she will have missed today makes it even more. . whats the word? Realer? Kathys the same age. She was a real estate agent. The two women had known each other since primary school. They grew up together. They hung out together. They died together. Family members and friends come on and share their anecdotes and pain. Its a smorgasbord of details Id know had I kept them alive. But I didnt. Because I fucked up. Soon Ill be on the TV too. Theyll thrust a microphone in my face looking for a sound bite. Theyll ask the same questions the ghosts are asking-Why?

I switch off the TV. I get dressed. I drag a backpack from the bottom of my wardrobe and dump it on my bed and start packing. It takes me five minutes. I grab the bloody shorts from the floor and throw them in the laundry on the way out of the house.

Its nearly seven oclock by the time I climb into my car. The evening is still light, but wont be for much longer. Its that time of the year where summer has disappeared, but its reach still remains. The air is warm and sticky and smells like freshly mowed lawn. A young boy with a baseball cap pulled on backward is biking along the footpath stuffing mailboxes with leaflets that might be advertisements for toasters or pleas for help to find his puppy. A few doors down an elderly woman is on her knees pulling weeds from her garden. She waves at me. I wave back. The boy puts a leaflet in my mailbox. I drive down my street and watch them both get smaller in my mirror.

A few minutes later I drive past the pasture where the early hours of Monday introduced me to this world, the Real World, where old women with green fingers are replaced by madmen with red ones, where no children play, where fresh pies dont sit on the windowsills of happy-go-lucky life. Jesus, I dont even know what lifes about anymore. It certainly isnt about routine; it isnt about paying your mortgage and buying groceries; it isnt about singing Happy Birthday, licking stamps, and changing flat tires. I used to think it was. I used to think there was justice in this world, balance. You want to think its about living, about surviving, but no matter how hard you try it gets to be about dying.