Malcolm McDowall

The sun was like a laser beam, coming through the window, landing on his face, brought the headache to life. Malcolm McDowall rolled over and looked around at the room, then got a shock to discover the body of a woman lying next to him. A stinging sensation bit his bladder, and he rolled out of bed and made a beeline for the toilet and emptied himself, turned back and did a double take, for he couldn’t believe it, that there was a naked woman, lying, facing the wall.

Even from here, he could see that she was attractive. But he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember who she was. He wracked his brain, and yet, try as he might, nothing came. And then, the headache came back with full force, crippling him where he stood. He looked around, and suddenly felt self-conscious about getting back into bed with a woman that he had no recollection of, but there was nothing else for it, for his body was seizing up, and he suddenly felt exhausted. And so, he crept up to it and lay next to her and closed his eyes, and fell back into a deep sleep, aware that the fact of her was probably going to devastate his life, somehow. Then gave up worrying and held her and she didn’t move, and the body was warm and soft and supple and amazing.

When next he woke, it was dark. The sound of the outside traffic and a gentle hiss of rain falling. He looked around for his phone, but couldn’t see anything, then heard his lamp snap on, and in a moment, saw the woman’s figure, in the dark, bending down, reaching for something. A voice that was soft and sweet, said: ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.’   

He looked for her, but it was too dark to see anything. Mercifully, his headache had subsided. And yet, try as he might, he still couldn’t remember who she was. Someone, he must have met at the club. He groped around for the lamp, then finally found it, switched it on and looked up and saw that she was incredible, like something out of Playboy magazine, then heard himself say: ‘It’s no problem, I mean I should be getting up, anyway, I mean, what time is it?’

‘I’d say it’s past morning,’ she said, leaning in. He looked up and she pulled away.

‘Can you leave your number? I’d really like to see you again.’

She said nothing, then left the room without making a sound, and he looked around and wanted to call out her name, but didn’t know it, and so, was left in the dark.

Night closing in. Dreams entering his head. A woman’s scream, somewhere in the night. A dog howling. The smell of blood. The woman’s face, imprinted on his consciousness.

He woke the next day, his head subsided, and there was room to move around without doubling over in pain. He threw the sheet off and sat on the edge of the bed. A bright sunny day and he had the day off. And the rest of the summer.

It was his fifteenth year of casual relief teaching, and his holidays stretched out to the horizon, like a vast blue ocean. Not enough money to travel overseas with, but enough to pay the rent with, and to play, at least, for a few weeks. He showered and dressed and stepped out into the sunlight, suddenly determined to forget the blonde who had made it into his bed, but it was all but impossible. He walked down to the beach and looked out at the glistening water, like he had one thousand times before, then walked the long pier and couldn’t help but notice the topless bathers, then sat and looked out at the water, trying not to obsess her but it was impossible. How was it even possible that he could have met someone and been successful in bringing her back to his room and not even be able to remember? Was it possible that she had drugged him somehow without him noticing? Surely, not. But it was the only conceivable answer. But why would anyone do that, let alone a woman?

With no answers, he gave it up to God and made his way back to his apartment and put some sausages onto a pan, then turned on the tv set and sat on the lazy-boy. Images of people being bombed. Death and destruction and mayhem. Nothing that he wanted to see. When he got up to check on the sausages, the phone rang, and he picked it up and a voice came over the line, booming, immediately recognisable:

‘You might to turn your Tv on and take a look at this.’

‘I’ve already got it on.’

‘Well, take a look.’

The usual attractive female newsreader was reading her lines to the camera: ‘A sad day in Sydney. A lone gunman has taken to the streets and has killed five people in what police describe as a brutal massacre…’

He looked at the television, stunned.

‘I can’t believe what I’m seeing.’

‘Get used to it, they haven’t caught him, yet.’

‘How in the hell do you get away with gunning down five people in broad daylight, under cameras.’

‘This guy’s just shown us…Well, anyway, I thought you should know.’

‘Me, why?’

‘Give you something to do, over the long hot summer.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘Meet me tomorrow.’

‘Why?’

‘Because you’ve got nothing else to do.’

With that, the phone hung up, and he was left to his thoughts. How long was it since he had slept with a woman? The answer was decades. He then wrenched his mind away from her, whoever she was, and brought his attention back to gunmen. The question was why, what was the motive?

He went to bed with no answers. Shadows in the room from the lights of the cars, outside the apartment. But all he could think about was the anonymous woman that had been in his bed. Talk about ships in the night. Over and over again, he retraced his steps. Indeed, he had gone to the club to get a drink and look at the talent, and that was the last thing that he remembered. So, he must have met her at the bar. At least it was a lead. He supposed that he should be grateful, if only he could remember the experience. And what the hell was a lone gun man doing, blowing people away in broad daylight on the streets of Sydney?

Probably, he should give up his sleuthing and simply work a summer job, but that was far too much work, and he was middle-aged; too old to work in an ice-cream store. Or was he? He had seen garbage collectors that might have been sixty, just the other day, and couldn’t figure out what it meant. Some ominous sign of lack in modern day Australia. But anyway, he had his painting and his writing and that was what mattered, even if it failed to resonate at all. But what about the woman, damn it, who the hell was she?

The next morning, he woke without a hangover. Poverty never agreed with him, but nights without alcohol were doing him good. A philanderer. Was that what he was? First sex in twenty years, so, not likely. No, he was definitely not a philanderer. For one thing, he was too poor to attract the interest of most women, anyway.

He got himself ready and made it out of the house. Cicadas hissing, the heat roaring down. He walked, enjoying, as ever, the time off, then made it to the café without even having to time it, for he knew that his mate would already be there.

A bald head and a chambre shirt, well overweight, sitting, in the window, with his back turned to the street. Malcolm stepped inside and pulled a chair up and the man didn’t even bother looking up, but finished off the crossword that he was working on, and only spoke after several minutes.

‘Well, someone’s missed his morning coffee,’ said the man.

‘What’s happening, Dean?’

‘You tell me.’

He picked up the paper then put it down again, said: ‘you know, the usual. Wars in the Gaza strip, the Ukraine, tension in China and India.’

‘Right.’

‘And the little matter of a lone gunman on the foreshore.’

‘Right again.’

‘What can you tell me?

‘Nothing.’

‘Then, why are we having this meeting?’

‘Because you’ve got nothing else to do, remember?’

‘Right.’

Dean looked away, then back at him again, a pained expression coming over his face.

‘Look, the guy’s a quack, they’ll get him soon enough.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Not really, no. But there’s nothing else for it, at this stage.’

‘Motive?’

‘None that can be discernible.’

‘So, what’s the big deal?’

‘It’s the brashness of it. Almost lude. It suggests something more.’

‘Like he’s showing off?’

They ate their breakfast in silence and agreed to monitor the situation. But how does one do that, Malcolm wondered. He left the old man to his newspaper, feeling vaguely disappointed, then started making his way, as always, down to the beach, back to the glistening waters, and the tanned bodies lying on the sand. Malcolm sat on a bench and looked out at the water and wondered what possessed a man to buy a shotgun and murder five seemingly random people in broad daylight.

‘I’ll tell you what possesses them.’

It was a woman’s voice, deep and husky.

‘Rage.’ Said the woman. ‘Sheer, unadulterated rage.’

Malcolm looked over to where the voice was coming from and saw that it was less than a woman that he was looking at, and more of a mutilated body. The head was half blown away and frozen in a grotesque wax work, a hole right through the head. Black and red congealed blood surrounding it. The arms were covered in bullet holes; in one, the white bones visible underneath the skin. It seemed impossible that she was moving, but she was.

‘What in the hell?’

‘It is hell, that I’m in, but not quite. I’ll let you in on more details, when I find them out, myself.’

With that, she stood and simply walked away, and he watched her, until she disappeared into the distance. Some strange mirage that had come into his mind, and yet he wasn’t so sure. For a second there, he thought that he could actually smell her, then wondered, all of a sudden, whether or not he was actually going mad.

The sea kept rolling in and the bodies kept lazing in the sunshine, and it was as though none of it had happened at all. But had he actually just witnessed a ghost? He stood and continued walking the promenade.

Most people, he mused, would consider seeing a psychiatrist at this point. He remembered his dealings with them: how utterly useless they were, even toxic. Atheist psychiatrists, the ultimate in chic, yet secretly seeking to eat a person’s soul, and crush the hope right out of them. But hadn’t he just had a waking hallucination? And, after all, wasn’t that ground for insanity? It was, unless the damn thing was real.

The sun kept blazing away, and he wondered whether or not, if he could block it all out of his mind, that it would all just go away. But that was called suppression, and he knew well enough that that always did more harm than good. Memories of a nightmare childhood would often come back and haunt him, and he thanked God for his analytical mind that he had developed in adulthood. Truly, the ability to fully comprehend a situation was a good way to solving it. But how does one comprehend a ghost hallucination? And then, as always, in times of crisis, he remembered his faith, and, as always, it threw it all back into perspective. Truly there were entities that travelled around plaguing humankind. After all, they were reported as existing in Christ’s time, so, why not now?

He kept walking and with the gold afternoon light coming down, decided to step into his local and sit for a while, order a beer and watch the afternoon slip away. Malcolm McDowall sat and watched the cars drive past and the girls sit, talking with each other in the booths, and, after the second beer, it was though none of it existed; just a series of ridiculous events that had happened to him. That was, until he looked up at the tv that hung from above the bar.

A tall man with a brown beard and brown hair. Built like a matinee idol, was holding a shotgun, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world to do. The Tv network then cut back to the newsreader talking but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. How was it possible that he was able to get away with all of this, in broad daylight, he wondered, again. And, where the hell were the police?

He finished his beer and paid and stepped outside. A man sitting on the sidewalk, dressed in a navy tracksuit that had holes in it. A woman sitting next to him, pregnant, both with a piece of cardboard sitting at their feet, with the words ‘help, need money’ written in red Texta. Another man, sitting next to them.

The lone gunman was something, but this was the real story: the huge percentage of the population that was homeless. Without a fixed address, how were they surviving? For, he knew that you needed to have a fixed address to get benefits. That was, unless they had one and were out on the street, begging, anyway. But the fact was - and he knew that the media was keeping it hidden - that almost half the population were now, effectively homeless, and there didn’t look to be an end in sight. So much for climate change. It was the government’s dirty secret, and every day, it was getting worse. He gave the couple the change out of his wallet and started walking the pavement in search of answers but there were none to be found.