Mara stopped in front of the house. She knew it was the right house; could feel it was the right house. She could feel him inside, tossing and turning in his bed. And she knew he could feel her stood outside in the wet darkness. She rang the bell on the bicycle twice and just like that, the curtains in one of the upstairs bedrooms parted. He hadn’t heard the bell of course. That wasn’t why he had come to the window. No, that was pure instinct. A mouse frozen stiff from the scent of a snake.
The rain was beginning to lash down harder now. It was almost that time of night. She waited on her bicycle for the door to open. This had to be quick. A light came on upstairs. And then downstairs. Slowly the front door opened. It was difficult to make out the details of his face, with most of the brightness behind him drowning out his features but she knew it was him nevertheless. Not that she knew him personally, nor that he knew her, but his kind were all the same. They all smelled the same. Smelled guilty.
He stepped out into the open, still in slippers, and entirely undressed for the worsening weather. Unmoving again, a mouse caught in the glare of a snake. Unbreathing. Mara nodded. The man stepped back inside then came out again in a jacket and shoes, locking the door behind him.
It was the dead of night and everybody was tucked away in bed, deep in sleep, including all of the man’s own people. His partner and children. His neighbours. Mara looked around her. A little further up the road, right at the end it, was a small community garden. It consisted of a metal fence that ringed off some bushes, one lone tree and a most modest patch of grass. A set of benches and what appeared to be daffodils were about as much thoughtful planning as had gone into the garden. Even then, Mara couldn’t be certain the flowers hadn’t sprouted entirely by accident. It would have to suffice, she decided.
Mara gestured at the man and he walked over to the bicycle wordlessly. He was pathetically wet already now, soaked through head-to-toe but for what his jacket covered of his upper torso. She pointed to the garden and then cycled slowly to its gate, waiting for the man to catch up. She reached into her basket and pulled out a knotted jumble of rope. She fished out the wooden handle and began untying the knots until the skipping rope fully untangled and the other end hit the ground. The man reached her in time to catch the handle before it too hit the ground, and began scooping the rest of the rope off the concrete pavement. Still holding the neatly folded rope length to his chest, he reached into a jacket pocket and took out a bank card. Mara looked at her new trophy with the greatest care, tilting it left and right under the street light to read the embossed name, MR D MANN.
In the small garden, the man, Derek Mann, climbed the solitary tree and hung himself from it with the skipping rope. His body swayed with the increasingly diminishing force of a pendulum. His legs eventually stopped convulsing. Mara didn’t look up from her prized card.
She ran her fingers along the silver writing, feeling his name like braille. It was almost that time again. Mara slipped her newest trophy into her dress pocket and rode off through the worsening downpour, dry as a ghost.
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Art by the superdope Edwin Ushiro
abdulj. 