Western Blot

Ounces of scrawny light segued through cracks in the basement window at the Hopkins Library, stressing a visual taint of her tired eyes, her full cracked lips and the ever increasing flow of spittle from her mouth to her breast.
The camera focused and continued to confirm her broken face had become this photogenic blemish.
At least she knew where she was in that fragmented physical moment.
She commanded flashes of memory to the surface of the foggy haze. Bubbles burst with the image of being dragged here from the unmarked white transit and bound at the wrists with wet rope.
The Visual was soon followed by the aural…the ringer on her mobile had rung twice, unanswered.
One from the office regarding a meeting, she had missed it due to this abduction, and the company habitually phone ten minutes after a missed appointment to reschedule another or to reprimand the employee for dismissing policy.
The second was from her husband and most likely what he wants for the evening meal now that he had returned from his business trip.
He would often dance between the idea of spaghetti or lasagne on a weeknight, always criticising the use of salt in the preparation.
But that was why she loved him so, his need for perfection; she knew he found that in her. There were never any complaints in any departments.
Tonight he would get nothing, and every other night following this one, she assumed from miseries window.
Dust stained leather bound books were strewn everywhere, along with ticket stubs for late renewals and torn microfiche sheets peppering the floor.
Every bulb was smashed by default, through the feat of another’s actions or simply never replaced.
Footsteps behind the door revealed the captor or captors were heading this way. Their shadows were casting many shapes from the gap between the door and floor.
Many bustling bodies queuing for the show in that room, all quiet and unrevealing.
One voice above all the others had a slight recognisable tone.
“Peck her eyes out…”
And with that the cheers followed, giving the impression that the ocean waves were crashing against the door.
___________________________________________________

Spread across the walls of Doctor Lemarches shoebox size surgery, were certificates of framed excellence. Seven in all, explaining to the amateur how qualified the Doctor was and that his opinion was the highest order of the day.
Infallible and just.
Always served best at an informative temperature.
Gina Bedin just wrenched her stare from those wall mounted qualifications and stared blankly out of the open window.
The city never changed, you could never knock down those registered buildings or build anew. But you could perfect on the object, making it appear new even though beneath the surface was a lot of damp and rot.
Lemarches ran his thick black fingers through his tightly curled hair, black skin shining from the radiating desktop lamp. He had applied gel this morning…Gina caught this out of the corner of the her eye and had wondered why…there was no change, or any hope of change to the arrangement of that scalp.
Pigeons had gathered to hear the results. Cooing and pecking at old shit engrained on the ledge.
Doctor Lemarches leant Gina’s folder against his chest and flicked through the watermarks until the pages seemed familar.
“There is no consequence of filing in the medical industry anymore.” He muttered in that deep hollow of a tone.
Gina broke contact with the pigeons.
“Don’t you have a secretary?”
“The cleaner comes in once a week, sorts out the filing, changes the towels in the bathroom…” he continued to flick through the notes.
“Ahhh here they are…” He then exclaimed.
Gina felt the confidence drain from her eyes.
She winced.
“Beyond our initial diagnosis I must first apologise.”
“Apologise for…?”
“My first diagnosis, I was a little out.”
“Well you did base it on just looking at me fully clothed.”
“Well exactly, never judge a book by its cover…that’s why I insisted on an Elisa test being carried out.”
The Elisa test was your bog standard test for H.I.V. The Dr would take a serum, saliva or urine sample and test the sensitivity/specificity of the sample. The sample is diluted 400 fold and spliced with HIV antigens. If contact between the two is forthcoming and the two bind, a second antigen is introduced and from that a fluorescent numerical result within sensitivity/specificity is attained.
“Judge a book by its window period.” He added.
“And the result..?”
“For you…Positive.”
Gina sank down losing minutes in the process.
H.I.V Positive. She couldn’t believe it.
“How do I word it?” he asked “How do you possibly word the result process?”
“I suppose there is no way…” she murmured.
“Exactly, both of us discussing it this way should really lessen the blow, I find.”
“It’s always good to talk about it.”
“Clears the air. Making it fresh.”
“I suppose.”
Not in the obviously donated plastic chair she had perched, but in herself. The penetrating tinnitus sound reached an amicable level. Blocking all external stimuli and allowing her to focus on herself.
“How could this have happened?” she said blankly.
“I shouldn’t have to explain to be honest with you. It takes two.” And with that he turned in his swivel chair and placed the folder on the cabinet for the cleaner to file away.
___________________________________________________
Passion leaves a crisp and chewable arena of sensations on the tongue.
Albeit a faltering flavour, we have to exist under its strict scrutiny and at all cost reveal ourselves slight enjoyment through facial recognition.
Gina sat at her husbands oak study and took in the compilation of papers, blueprints and plans sprawled across the desk.
“Where can I begin with this mess?” she muttered.
She had not slept with another partner outside of Richards range in their thirty two years of marriage.
They had met at the Cement Factory Summer BBQ and between the edible nature of the spiced steak and chicken wings, a relationship had formed. She had begun seeing him around the factory office space daily and conversation ensued like the steady flow of the hearts wet nature.
One date became four and there was definite chemistry in the bind between them. The meeting of the parents and the rings on fingers were just passé to them, an acknowledgment to the future. This was a history written in black and blue, or lack of. There were no argument between them and the relationship had stayed platonic for years. Gina had given Richard two wonderful children named Daryl and Meredith, who were all grown up.
With their leaving came a slight change. Gina had started to suffer a weight discrepancy brought on by the passage of raising children. She had become a non entity or a meaningless figure. The children had moved away and not bared any further children due to their hectic careers and neither of them were seen for months to years at a pop.
Richard and Gina stopped talking as the years went on but there was still that bind between them…still something to hold onto…still something there…
As she recollected these feelings, and tried to pack them into something salvageable for the thirty two year haul, she flicked her fingers down Richard’s phone number rolodex.
It bore empty letters, omitted phone numbers and entries scribbled out with ballpoint pen.
Gina squinted and examined the rolodex further, she had reached the letter ‘S’.
Under the letter were five women’s names.
Neither of which started or finished with the letter ‘S’.
“What could ‘S’ mean?” she whispered. “Sales? Ummmm?” she wandered around the room.
And then it hit her.
Sex.
“Sex, it must be sex!” but she calmed herself down with her eyes closed and the hemispheres reeling…it could mean anything.
“He must be to blame though!” she cried “No blood transfusions and no sexual relations outside of this marriage!”
And with that she slammed the rolodex into the paper mess on the desk and stormed out of the room.
___________________________________________________
The kitchen is the hub of any families home; it holds the basic essence that binds the family unit together in the long run.
The importance of the food source in regards to communication. The dining table, that enables conversations, anecdotes and the weekend plan to spring forth to fruition.
Gina poured cheap wine into a disposable plastic cup and drew long languid sips from its curled rim. With every sip a sincere slurp could be heard in the vast emptiness of the house.
Not even the mice would complain.
Richard would not be back for a week yet. He was away probably playing the field whilst doing the minimal amount of work regarding the factory. Gina imagined him in bars at rest, crooning unimaginable chat up lines of fancy, to women her age or younger. Knowing all the tricks of the trade, boasting his accomplishments up to egotistical heights and watching those women fall deep into his eyes, entranced by the power.
Gina beat the wine against her throat with a hard swallow and moved back into the study.
Digging through the messed papers in there she secured the rolodex and removed the letter ‘S’ parchment.
“We will have to see what these ladies are up to in their lives.”
Gina acknowledged that it may be a pipe dream, that this may all be in her head, that there is some really deep logical explanation for all this…
…but it wasn’t showing itself.
This was the option at hand.
___________________________________________________
Bony fingers fingered the rim of the telephone buttons.
The complex ‘should she, shouldn’t she’ question banged about the cerebrum.
“You have nothing to lose.”
She was right, she had nothing to lose.
She typed the first number from the rolodex into the phone.
A Ms Durum.
The phone rang twice and a voice answered with eager intent.
“Richard?”
“Ms Durum?” Gina enquired.
The phone then went dead.
“Her phone must show the number…” Gina muttered.
Why did she hang up?
Guilt?
There was no other explanation.
___________________________________________________
After coming to a number of dead ends with the rolodex phone numbers Gina bit the bullet and hired a private detective to collect the data. The detectives were much more experienced and understood the value of detail.
Many calls were plied to the phone, it left warm and sweaty from the use….but she found what she was looking for.
He took three months to gather information on the five women and it cost over ten thousand pounds in hotel fees, three course luncheons and various stationary needs.
The day he handed to dossier over to Gina made her day and the dent in her savings seemed to have smoothed out and showed no real concern.
The information inside was gold dust, currency for the mind.
The five women’s lives were mapped out on a day to day basis. Their movements, whereabouts, meetings and various happenings in their lives. It mapped out their children’s lives, their husband’s lives and the lives of their friends and business associates. All down on paper like some insipid fantasy novel you were eager to begin.
Gina concentrated on the one woman in particular.
Ms Durum.
___________________________________________________
Gina reamed the pages with eager fingers and took in all the information at hand.
Ms Durum’s life was spread across the dossier and it was a sad little existence.
Ms Durum’s day began with the washing; she had no children to prepare for school as they also had left home for the development of adult life. This washing experience took around an hour followed by the peeling of vegetables. Steaming and boiling of said vegetables. Then table preparation. Eating, clearing up, washing dishes, preparing herself for going out, then she had entered town, taken a phone call, rushed to Starbucks for a coffee then sat down to meet a man.
Gina scrambled to the next page.
The private detective had described the man to be Richard. Even down to his bombastic dress sense.
Gina grabbed the phone and rang Richard.
No answer.
Since Gina had found out the new Richard had not called. As far as she was aware he was preparing for a job in Kuwait.
Was he even there at all?
Gina read on, the private detective had followed the man on one of the days. This man had parked right outside Gina’s home for around an hour then drove off. The private detective had lost him after that in rush hour traffic.
He continued to follow Ms Durum for a whole month but she did not change her routine.
No one visited her and she never left the house other than to visit Starbucks for that illustrious coffee. She continued to meet the man every day at Starbucks but all they did was talk for an hour then part.
There was one discrepancy in the data though; Ms Durum’s son had visited at one point.
The private dick had followed him back to the Bank where he worked and on further digging had discovered his name was Barrett.
Barrett Durum.
___________________________________________________
Gina was drenched in make-up, had been working out and along with taking Abacavir had many weight fluctuations. She waited outside the bank for Barrett Durum.
“Confidence, confidence, confidence…” she muttered to herself.
She had planned it all out.
Infect Barrett Durum.
This would send a knockout blow to Ms Durum, innocent or not, she had met her husband behind her back and this would be her punishment.
The town street soon filled with party revellers awaiting a Friday night extreme and the bank was soon lost in a crowd of insects demanding liquor.
Barrett appeared with colleagues, laughing and joking, bumping into much younger women for a conversation starter and looking jolly forward to the night ahead.
Gina removed the keys from the car and radio collapsed. She slithered from the car and crossed the street, following closely to Barrett.
The group from the bank soon hit a club, all smart in shirts and ties, imitating the city scene, laughing and joking and groping women for conversation starters.
___________________________________________________

Barrett had split from the group inside the club to visit the gents and Gina was not too far behind.
He stopped in front of a bathroom mirror to smarten up his dishevelled blonde hair.
“I’ve still got it.” He muttered, thinking about his current weight loss and new burst of confidence extremes.
“You have still got it I agree…” Gina added.
He stared at her in the mirror and smiled.
“It’s a little late for geriatrics…isn’t it?”
“It’s never too late for a geriatrics…haha!!” she laughed and dragged him into a stall, slamming the door behind them.
Barrett could feel the booze hitting him further and laughed.
“Oh what’s the harm…” and with that he pulled out his piece with a dry flop. She based herself to her knees and ran her fingers to push her hair behind her ears. Taking his male weapon deep into her throat. He laughed and she choked.
Choked further when a strong smelling, dark yellow liquid began flowing from her mouth.
But she just didn’t care and continued to work on his aromatic length.
“You’re stinking! Absolutely stinking!” Barrett couldn’t believe his luck in finding this dirty old tart on a night out.
She turned her head and vomited out a flagon of piss into the lavatory; Barrett dragged his trousers to his ankles, loosened one foot from the trouser leg and cocked it up onto the bowl.
“Lick it.” He demanded and with that she rammed her tongue up his arse.
Gina could taste the days work on his anus, the froth of sweat and the crust of old clinging pieces of scat.
She couldn’t take anymore.
“Let’s go somewhere more private.”
“Yours or mine?” he salivated.
“Mine.”
And with that they left the club, Barrett shouting to his friend about his conquest, they in turn shouting back an encore of cheers and raised fists.
___________________________________________________
Barrett left the Bedin household at approximately ten ‘o’ clock a drained and sluggish form. He left Gina on the bed sleeping off the night’s energetic requiem.
Her make-up matted eyes opened very slowly with a web like stature and she proceeded to the bathroom, opened the mirror cabinet and took the vial of liquid from its holder. Poured some into her hands, rubbed them together and applied to her face in small circular movements. The make-up soon wore off and all she saw in the mirror was this white figure, almost aping David Bowie during his thin white duke period in the seventies.
Naked and old, without the aid of cocaine.
“Naked and old.” She uttered as the last of the make-up rolled off her chin and into the sink.
Her naked figure returned to the bedroom and sprawled over the bed. She removed the dossier she had stashed under the pillow and removed the information very carefully.
There was work to do.
People to infect.
___________________________________________________
Catherine Stanza had two children, both male and aged late twenties.
Gina secured a job where they worked in separate parts of the town and made sure their Friday nights were something to remember.
She even cut the inner wall of her vagina to make sure the infection carried across.
Bethan Gammon had a daughter around thirty or so.
Gina was very lucky the daughter was a lesbian aching for random fucks between a career driven existence in marketing.
Aimee Wheaton was easy. Her son sat within a coma after a tragic car accident.
Gina sliced her own gums, visited the hospital, bit the son and drew clots of blood and hair.
Katrina Samson was the final scene worth completing.
But what then?
___________________________________________________
Katrina Samson did not suffer the loss of her children to the adult theme. Her two children were babies. By the information in the dossier her babies of one and two were bed bound from milking stress.
Gina pondered this one.
Could those children be Richards?
She flirted further with the dossier pages, scraping them back for an image of the baby’s faces, something to calm her fearful mind.
There was nothing.
Gina draped a coat over her back and propelled herself into Richards’s car that was sitting on the driveway.
She packed the mileage in as she sped passed the speed cameras and sleeping policemen. The flashes of those machines that peddle evidence for the court could not see her within this coil of fury.
Katrina’s address was soon upon her and she took no careful nature in approaching quietly. The gravel was thrown off her wheels as she furiously pounded the clutch, denting a nearby greenhouse window in the process.
The escape of the car was soon followed by the pounding of the door.
It opened with no warning.
Gina stepped inside.
The house was deserted but the sound of crying babies soon filled the air. The noise was like a cooking scent that allowed Gina to map out her ascension of the stairs. The corridors of the house were empty bar this screeching noise that rose to astonishing levels the closer she got.
She stopped at what, she assumed, was the babies room. A floral and pink display shone from the crack in the doorway. Gina ran her fingers along the door handle and pushed the door open.
The hinges gave away nothing.
Two cots alone in the centre of the room bore the noise of feeding time. All soft toys were piled in the corner and the only other effect of the room was another door leading to what Gina though was a closet.
Gina stood above the cot and gazed at the faces of the babes within.
Two black faces stared back, the eyes white and glaring.
“Not Richards!!” she shouted and laughed.
The door creaked behind her.
“Who are you?!!” the mother screamed in a white pallor.
“Where is Richard?!!” Gina screamed back.
“Who is Richard? What are you doing here?”
And with that Gina jammed her index fingers from both hands into her mouth and bit down hard, wrenching the cuticle from its holding.
As the fingers bled she slammed them into the babe’s mouths, intending the spread of infection.
The mother pounced with the intention of a wildcat.
Gina fell between the two cots, but the babes had latched on to her fingers, believing them to be nipples.
So there was the action.
The mother clawing at Gina’s face and eyes with nails from a horror movie, Gina trying to swing back but finding it hard with the babes on her fingers.
Too much to take in.
And blackout would seem a good option.
___________________________________________________
The Hopkins Library looked very dirty from Gina’s angle and the ocean behind the door soon gave way.
The audience entered.
Richard amongst them.
“Richard!” she cried.
“You silly, silly girl.” He replied rubbing a hand down his face, the skin wrinkling under the movement.
“You left me with this thing in me…I’m infected and dead! Walking dead!”
“And that’s my fault.”
“You admit it?”
“I admit it. You know what age can do to you. The lack of…certain things…”
The crowd around him laughed, Gina squinted between the sheets of darkness and saw Katrina, Bethan, Aimee, Catherine and Ms Durum.
All standing there with fury.
“They all know what you have done Gina.” Richard stated “And I have nothing but sorry feelings to pass on.”
“I did what any wife would do.”
“They aren’t what you think they are.”
“The what are they?!!?”
“Receivers.”
“Receivers in what sense?”
The camera buzzed as the first fist smashed into Gina’s face splitting her nose is half.
The process of a ring jarring the flesh.
The further beatings occurred to the face with the smashing motions of many fists, feet and anything that came to hand.
___________________________________________________
Beyond the beating the lump that Gina had become face down in a pile of open books. The books were now saturated with the blood of the lump.
Every bubble of breath that Gina mustered carried the infection and all the memories of the event were soon committed to the swansong of denial.
One blackened hard eye strained to open.
Richard stood there.
“Richard?”
“Yes?”
“Why?”
He smiled and with that raised his leg and slammed his foot directly onto the back of her neck. The snap held no echo against the blunting of the books Gina lay on.
But the force of the blow blew bubbles from the hole in her face.

© Leigh Cole

www.RedVenice.co.uk