The Informers - English Horror

Horror stories collection. All kind of thriller stories in English and hindi.
romantic_story
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Re: The Informers - English Horror

Unread post by romantic_story » 29 Sep 2015 16:55

“Raymond,” Dirk and I say in unison.

“It’s just that there’s nothing we can do,” I finish.

“Yeah.” Dirk shrugs. “What can we do?”

“They’re right, Raymond,” Graham says. “Things are blurry.”

“In fact I feel like a big smudge,” Dirk says.

I look over at Raymond and then back at Dirk.

“He’s dead and all but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t a jerk,” Dirk says, pushing his plate away.

“He wasn’t a jerk, Dirk,” I tell him, suddenly laughing. “Jerk Dirk, Dirk jerk.”

“What do you mean, Tim?” Dirk asks, looking straight at me. “After that shit he pulled with Carol Banks?”

“Oh Christ,” Graham says.

“What shit did he pull with Carol Banks?” I ask, after a moment of silence. Carol and I had been seeing each other off and on throughout our junior and senior years. She went to Camden a week before Jamie died. I haven’t spoken to her for a year. I don’t think she even came back this summer.

“He was f**king her behind your back,” Dirk says, and he gets pleasure out of telling me this.

“He screwed her ten, twelve times, Dirk,” Graham says. “Don’t make it seem like it was some hot affair or anything.”

I had never really liked Carol Banks anyway. I lost my virginity to her a year before we actually started dating. Cute, blond, cheerleader, good SATS, nothing too great. Carol had always called me nonchalant, a word I never understood the meaning of, a word I looked up in a number of French dictionaries and could never find. I always suspected that Jamie and Carol had done something but since I never really liked Carol that much (only in bed and even there I was unsure) I sit at the table, uncaring, not moved by what everyone but me knew.

“You, like, all knew this?” I ask.

“You always told me you never really liked Carol,” Graham says.

“But you all knew?” I ask again. “Raymond—did you know?”

Raymond squints for a moment, his eyes fixed on a point that he can’t see, and he nods, doesn’t say anything.

“So what, big deal, right?” Graham says more than asks.

“Are we gonna to a movie or what?” Dirk asks, sighing.

“I can’t believe you guys don’t care,” Raymond says loudly, suddenly.

“Do you wanna go to a movie?” Graham asks me.

“I can’t believe you guys don’t care,” Raymond says again, softer.

“I was there, you ass**le,” Dirk says, grabbing Raymond’s arm.

“Oh shit, this is so embarrassing,” Graham says, shifting lower into his chair. “Shut up, Dirk.”

“I was there,” Dirk says, ignoring Graham, his hand still wrapped around Raymond’s wrist. “I am the one who stayed and pulled him out of the f**king car. I’m the one who watched him f**king bleed to death out there. So don’t give me any shit about how I don’t care. Right, Raymond. I don’t care.”

Raymond has already started crying and pulls away from Dirk and gets up from the table, heading toward the back of the restaurant, to the men’s room. What few people are left in the restaurant are now looking over at our table. Dirk’s cool posing cracks a little. Graham looks somewhat anguished. I stare back at a young couple two tables away from us until they look away.

“Someone should go talk to him,” I say.

“And say what?” Dirk asks. “And say f**king what?”

“Just, um, talk to him?” I shrug feebly.

“I’m not going to.” Dirk crosses his arms and looks everywhere but at me or Graham.

I stand up.

Dirk says, “Jamie thought Raymond was an ass**le. Do you understand? He f**king loathed him. He was friends with him just because we were, Tim.”

After a beat, Graham says, “He’s right, dude.”

“I thought Jamie was killed instantly,” I say, standing there.

“He was.” Dirk shrugs. “What? Why?”

“You told Raymond he, um, bled to death.”

“Christ—what’s the difference? I mean, really,” Dirk says. “Jesus, his parents had the f**king wake at Spago for Christ sakes. I mean, come on, guy.”

“No, really, Dirk,” I’m saying. “Why did you tell Raymond that?” Pause. “Is that the truth?”

Dirk looks up. “I hope it made him feel worse.”

“Yeah?” I ask, trying not to grin.

romantic_story
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Re: The Informers - English Horror

Unread post by romantic_story » 29 Sep 2015 16:55

Dirk stares at me hard, then stops, losing interest. “You never grasp anything, Tim. You look okay, but nothing works.”

I leave the table and go to the men’s room. The door is locked and above the sound of the toilet being flushed repeatedly I can hear Raymond’s sobs. I knock. “Raymond—let me in.”

The toilet stops flushing. I can hear him sniffling, then blowing his nose.

“I’ll be okay,” he calls back.

“Let me in.” I’m twisting the knob. “Come on. Open the door.”

The door opens. It’s a small bathroom and Raymond is sitting on the toilet, the lid closed, beginning to cry again, his face and eyes red and wet. I am so surprised by Raymond’s emotion that I lean against the door and just stare, watching him bunch his hands into fists.

“He was my friend,” he says between intakes of breath, not looking up at me.

I’m looking at a yellowed tile on the wall for a long time, wondering how the waiter, who I am positive I had asked not to put garbanzo beans in my salad, actually had. Where was the waiter born, why had he come to Mario’s, hadn’t he looked at the salad, didn’t he understand?

“He liked you … too,” I say finally.

“He was my best friend.” Raymond tries to stop crying by hitting the wall.

I try to lean down, pay attention and say “Uh-huh.”

“Really, he was.” Raymond keeps sobbing.

“Come on, get up,” I say. “It’ll be all right. We’re going to the movies.”

Raymond looks up and asks, “Will it?”

“Jamie really liked you too.” I take Raymond by the arm. “He wouldn’t want you to act like this.”

“He really liked me,” he says to himself or asks.

“Yeah, he really did.” I can’t help but smile when I say this.

Raymond coughs and takes some toilet paper and blows his nose, then he washes his face and says that he needs some pot.

We both go back to the table and try to eat a little but everything’s cold, my salad already gone. Raymond orders a good bottle of wine and the waiter brings it, along with four glasses, and Raymond proposes a toast. And after the g asses are filled he urges us to lift them and Dirk looks at us like we’re insane and refuses to, draining his glass before Raymond says something like “Here’s to you, buddy, miss you a lot.” I lift my glass, feeling stupid, and Raymond looks over at me, his face swollen, puffy, smiling, looking stoned, and at this still point, when Raymond raises his glass and Graham gets up to make a phone call, I remember Jamie so suddenly and with such clarity that it doesn’t seem as if the car had flown off the highway in the desert that night. It almost seems as if the ass**le is right here, with us, and that if I turn around he will be sitting there, his glass raised also, smirking, shaking his head and mouthing the word “fools.”

I take a sip, cautiously at first, afraid the sip is sealing something.

“I’m sorry,” Dirk says. “I just … can’t.”

3

THE UP ESCALATOR

I’m standing on the balcony of Martin’s apartment in Westwood, holding a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and Martin comes toward me, rushes at me, and with both hands pushes me off the balcony. Martin’s apartment in Westwood is only two stories high and so the fall is not that long. As I’m failing I hope I will wake up before hitting the ground. I hit the asphalt, hard, and lying there, on my stomach, my neck twisted completely around, I look up and focus on Martin’s handsome face staring down at me with a benign smile. It’s the serenity in that smile—not the fall really or the imagined image of my cracked, bleeding body—that wakes me up.

I stare at the ceiling, then over at the digital alarm clock on the nightstand next to the bed, which tells me it is almost noon, and I uselessly hope that I have misread the time, shutting my eyes tightly, but when I open them again the clock still reads that it is almost noon. I raise my head slightly and look over at the small, flickering red numbers glowing from the Betamax and they tell me the same thing the hands on the melon-colored alarm clock do: almost noon. I try to fall back asleep but the Librium I took at dawn has worn off and my mouth feels thick and dry and I am thirsty. I get up, slowly, and walk into the bathroom and as I turn on the faucet I look into the mirror for a long time until I am forced to notice the new lines beginning around the eyes. I avert my gaze and concentrate on the cold water rushing out of the faucet and filling the cup my hands have made.

I open a mirrored cabinet and take out a bottle. I take its top off and count only four Libriums left. I pour one green-and-black capsule into my hand, staring at it, then place it carefully next to the sink and close the bottle and put it back into the medicine cabinet and take out another bottle and place two Valiums from it on the counter next to the green-and-black capsule. I put the bottle back and take out another. I open it, looking in cautiously. I notice there is not too much Thorazine left and I make a mental note to refill the prescription of Librium and Valium and I take a Librium and one of the two Valiums and turn the shower on.

romantic_story
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Joined: 17 Aug 2015 17:28

Re: The Informers - English Horror

Unread post by romantic_story » 29 Sep 2015 16:55

I step into the big white-and-black tile shower stall and stand there. The water, cool at first, then warmer, hits me in the face hard and it weakens me and as I slowly drop to my knees, the black-and-green capsule somehow lodged in the back of my throat, I imagine, for an instant, that the water is a deep and cool aquamarine, and I’m parting my lips, tilting my head to get some water down my throat to help swallow the pill. When I open my eyes I start moaning when I see that the water coming down at me is not blue but clear and light and warm and making the skin on my br**sts and stomach red.

After dressing I walk downstairs, and it distresses me to think of how long it takes to get ready for a day. At how many minutes pass as I wander listlessly through a large walk-in closet, at how long it seems to take to find the shoes I want, at the effort it takes to lift myself from the shower. You can forget this if you walk downstairs carefully, methodically, concentrating on each footstep. I reach the bottom landing and I can hear voices coming from the kitchen and I move toward them. From where I stand I can see my son and another boy standing in the kitchen looking for something to eat and the maid sitting at the large, wood-block table staring at photographs in yesterday’s Herald-Examiner, her sandals kicked off, blue nail polish on her toenails. The stereo in the den is on and someone, a woman, is singing “I found a picture of you.” I walk into the kitchen. Graham looks up from the refrigerator and says, unsmiling, “Up early?”

“Why aren’t you at school?” I ask, trying to sound like I care, reaching past him into the refrigerator for a Tab.

“Seniors get out early on Mondays.”

“Oh.” I believe him but don’t know why. I open the Tab and take a swallow. I have a feeling that the pill I took earlier is still lodged in my throat, stuck, melting. I take another swallow of Tab.

Graham reaches past me and pulls an orange out of the refrigerator. The other boy, tall and blond, like Graham, stands by the sink and stares out the window and into the pool. Graham and the other boy have their school uniforms on and they look very much alike: Graham peeling an orange, the other boy staring out into water. I’m having a hard time not finding either one of their stances unnerving, so I turn away, but the sight of the maid sitting at the table, sandals by her feet, the unmistakable smell of marijuana coming from the maid’s purse and sweater, somehow seems worse and I take another swallow of the Tab, then pour the rest of it down the sink. I begin to leave the kitchen.

Graham turns to the boy. “Do you want to watch MTV?”

“I don’t … think so,” the boy says, staring into the pool.

I pick up my purse, which is sitting in an alcove next to the refrigerator, and make sure my wallet is in it because the last time I was in Robinson’s it was not. I am about to walk out the door. The maid folds the paper. Graham takes off his burgundy letterman’s sweater. The other boy wants to know if Graham has Alien on cassette. From the den the woman is singing “circumstance beyond our control.” I find myself staring at my son, blond and tall and tan, with blank green eyes, opening the refrigerator, taking out another orange. He studies it, then lifts his head when he notices me standing by the door.

“Are you going somewhere?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He waits for a moment and when I don’t say anything he shrugs and turns away and begins to peel the orange and somewhere on the way to Le Dôme to meet Martin for lunch I realize that Graham is only one year younger than Martin and I have to pull the Jaguar over to a curb on Sunset and turn the volume down and unroll a window, then the sunroof, and let the heat from today’s sun warm the inside of the car, as I concentrate on a tumbleweed that the wind is pushing slowly across an empty boulevard.

Martin is sitting at the round bar in Le Dôme. He is wearing a suit and a tie and he is tapping his foot impatiently to the music that is playing through the restaurant’s sound system. He watches me as I make my way over to him.

“You’re late,” he says, showing me the time on a gold Rolex.

“Yes. I am,” I say, and then, “Let’s sit down.”

Martin looks at his watch and then at his empty glass and then back at me and I am clutching my purse tightly against my side. Martin sighs, then nods. The maitre d’ shows us to a table and we sit down and Martin starts to talk about his classes at UCLA and then about how his parents are irritating him, about how they came over to his apartment in Westwood unannounced, about how his stepfather wanted him to come to a dinner party he was throwing at Chasen’s, about how Martin did not want to go to a dinner party his stepfather was throwing at Chasen’s, about how tiredly words were exchanged.

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