The cupboard

The front door key felt heavy in my hand, as I pulled it from my pocket and slowly inserted it. There was a near silent click, as the well oiled lock turned. Then, from along the narrow open passage, a heavy breeze came from behind. It allowed the front door to open inward slowly with a croaking wail. I recall that I paused before I entered... I paused... and I inhaled...
The flat stank... But it had more than that fetid odour of boiled cabbage, or that sweet and sour onion stench, which came from aged bodies, long neglected. I dismissed some images that came to mind, as a cold shudder went along my spine. Behind me, I heard the increased volume of a drum and bass track. It distracted me. Nervously I turned and looked down over the balcony, to see three youths; one in a white, shell-suit and a baseball cap; the other two in navy jackets and baggies. They were laughing and pushing against each other, as they made their way across the open square of the estates’ Greenfield.
I felt myself relax, as the music began to fade into the distance. Then, feeling a little distant and dizzy, I turned back to the flat entrance once more. I paused again, hiding from myself...hiding from those thoughts I wished I never had, before I decided to come here. But, here I was, at nine in the morning, on a very damp day in August; standing at the entrance of my late parents flat, with an ice cold heart. The bravest I could manage. And, like many an errant knight; I came armed... but only with some fresh paint, a roller set, a mop, a bucket, some flash detergent and a roll of black bags... all within a collection of pale brown, crusty, cardboard boxes. For I was determined to have this ruin turned into something a little more liveable.
I shook my head. This wasn’t the first time I had been here, but it was the first since the flat came into my possession; so perhaps that affected the way I looked at it. I was saddened by the fact that the flat hadn’t changed much in twenty years. Its’ pale blue walls had a little more grime. The carpet, I recall, was once rich ochre...now it seemed similar to a dirty brown sea; interspersed with islands of mouldy food scraps, age cracked, hand rolled, cigarette butts, next to spindle like ash or tiny dots of black melted carpet, which had the appearance of star constellations amongst the clouds of long neglected, brown beer stains.
I avoided turning right to go into the larger bedroom, I wasn’t ready for that yet. Instead I turned left and entered the front room.
I found myself looking in the grimy full length mirror upon the opposite wall and noticed a sour faced, overweight man in his late forties; with close cropped hair, a baggy ill, fitting t-shirt and combat trousers stare back at me. Instantly I looked away...back across the room, towards the black velvet, three-seated sofa. It had a caved in look from apathetic overuse and rested opposite grey, green lump of a television.
I recall that Mum and Dad had bought that bloody thing the day we moved here. I even remember watching the Nelson Mandela concert on it. We moved here in nineteen eighty seven. Back then, it had been part of a new housing development project. I know...If she had lived...she would have hated what it had turned into. But three years after we moved here, she died... From then on, it was just him and me...him and me...
I came back here, partly to take on my inheritance. But mostly to dig out with a heavy chisel, some of my most painful memories of my childhood. They seemed to hang about both me and these shadow aged walls, like black rotten, teeth, in a pair of red swollen gums. They needed to be dealt with, and if I had to do it, so much the better.
I chose to start with the lime green coloured galley kitchen. For, next to the bathroom, it was the most disgusting room in the flat. With a bitter sigh, I began by emptying out the occasionally age dusted, but, mostly greasy utensils from the long neglected, cabinets. However, two hours later, the room started to look and to feel a little better. I was almost done when, out of the corner of my eye and saw a cupboard.
I hadn’t meant to forget the cupboard. To start with I thought I supposed it had been a Freudian slip. But that didn’t ring quite right inside me. I looked around the kitchen... the cabinets, walls and floor between both that cupboard and I were clean. There was simply no reason for me to forget it. I looked again and became of the opinion that the cupboard itself was wrong... What I mean is there was something about it that didn’t look... or feel... right.
To start with, I put it down to the fact that it came out of the wall at a peculiar angle; it was high resting in the top left hand corner, at an angle of about 45 degrees from the wall...but even that didn’t quite ring true inside me. Eventually, I had to face a truly terrible truth that rested deep within me... I knew... I simply knew... without a shadow of doubt in my heart... that this corner box cupboard hadn’t existed prior to the moment that I had rested my eyes upon it less than five minutes previously.
Slowly I walked across the room, feeling somehow, a little out of myself; separate and off kilter to the world. I could feel my heart thump, thump, clud-thump within me. And as it began to beat faster, all about me the room began to get colder and colder and colder still...until, as my hand reached out towards the cupboard door. I could see the whispers of my breath curl away from me.
I recall that had no idea what I’d find. So, with anxiety building within me, I nervously and very slowly opened the door. There rested a mug sitting there all alone. On a black, damp stained, wooden shelf. As I stared at it, agonising memories come flooding back, with the intensity of a thousand needles pushing deep into each and every pore of my skin.
The mug…his mug…. He always drank out of that bloody thing... that, aged grey white, cracked mug with that awful multi shaded green leaf pattern…the stain of black tea around the inner rim, that never came off no matter how many times I put the thing in the sink...
‘But I had thrown this away...’ I found myself saying aloud as I felt I felt the walls tighten. ‘...I had thrown this way the day he died...’ I told myself again and again and again.
The mug...the handle cracked and loose fitting…like a dead and half rotten bones desperately needing to be ripped out… dead and rotten...even now I can see it… just resting there, in the middle of the bottom shelf of that cupboard… and in the pattern staring at me…dead and rotten...his face leered...
The official report into my fathers’ death is thus...He died –peacefully- in his sleep seven weeks ago…the gas of his grimy duel hob stove having been left on. He was found, with his mug by his bedside, by the carer who looked after him on alternative days…an old man, white haired, toothless, unshaven and unkempt...there was a lengthy investigation, but after two weeks, the county coroner recorded a death by misadventure. So that was that. A week later his body was cremated; no one came to pay their respects, and at the end of what was a cold winters’ day, I put the ashes in the bin.
But then I started to have dreams...he kept coming in the night...looking at me...pointing at me...calling me a murderer...scraping his long nails against the walls of my bedroom...tapping his hands upon my wardrobe...whispering foul things in my ear... it took me seven months to face it... seven months of foul disordered dreams, seven months of private agony, before I decided to return here and finally get the job done.
That’s what led me back to the flat... But As I opened the cupboard door and saw the mug it all came back with a savage scream...how I had put enough of his sleeping draft in that mug to knock him out in almost half an hour...how I had waited until he was asleep, then after pulling the cooker away from the wall, I attached a large hose to the gas pipe, ran the hose under the door, into his bedroom and then blocked up the air holes around the hose as best I could; before walking back to the kitchen to put the gas on...I recall I paused...then I slowly opened the valve... how I had left till six in the morning, then, upon my return, how I turned the gas off, removed the rags from beneath the doorway, re-fixed the gas-pipe to the cooker, wound up the extension Hose I brought with me; before opening the door, going back to the cooker and turning it on. Then I left once more. I was home in less than fifteen minutes. I had killed him but he had killed me first... and it was all around that mug...
That mug...that mug...that man...he hurt me...he...did things...but I waited...I waited...oh how I waited...it’s a sin to kill but is it a sin to seek justice? I tried to forget what he did to me... but it wouldn’t go away...no tears, no amount of scrubbing can clean my mind, nothing rids me of those memories of him...touching me... and that cup...as it shone its’ reflection brightly in the afternoon light though the glass frame of the garden shed... as he and I were together on the allotment...
there...there...there...there...his ghost strokes my hand so gently...so very gently...