Organ - Chapter 22
ORGAN
Chapter Twenty Two
Katie paced around the room with delicate steps to avoid the scratchy irritating carpet against her bare soles, Oscar disappeared that morning and had been gone all day, darkness was taking him from her once again and just at a crucial moment that she believed was the hill they needed to climb together, he had agreed to go with her to find a hospital and now once again he was missing in action. When she woke up that morning he was already gone, the room was empty and the covers had been pulled back from her leaving the cold air to wake her up rudely, she thought to herself on the possibility that sleeping in the same bed as this young hurt man might have been a terrible idea but as she had a restful night it seemed improbable that sharing the bed was a trigger for him.
“Here I go thinking I could send a man spiralling with a glimpse of my tatty pyjamas” she mumbled to herself as she chewed on her thumbnail and glanced out the window, it illuminated nothing but the need for the glass to be cleaned and the need for a street lamp on the street below.
Katie called the front desk but oddly enough it rang out twice, irritatingly it was as if the staff had given up for the day when she needed assistance the most. Her phone had been ringing for the day, Katie needed to come up with an excuse suitable enough for work that would not attract attention or arouse any suspicion of an involvement with the disappeared boy, time had come for her to face the inquisition from the nursing coordinator, some faceless body she had never met in person who orchestrated the schedules for the staff at various hospitals and clinics across the county.
“Hello” Katie said using the roughest voice she could to summon up any sympathy that could be handed out, “Yes, I am calling to confirm I won’t be attending my shifts today or tomorrow. Department head? Doctor Boothe” she confirmed the information as the handler tapped away at a loud keyboard that came through the phone, “Reason? Well, I am unwell. Period pains” she made up on the spot knowing it would be enough to keep Boothe from calling, the lecherous old man fancied himself with the ladies but mention anything period or otherwise related to monthlies and the man shrank.
It was a perfect excuse, and the call ended without hiccups.
“Now where the fuck are you Oscar?” she asked into the stale air of their shared room.
Katie thought to herself how it had now become almost instinctual for Oscar to disappear when he was getting close to a resolution, the frustration she felt bubbling in her stomach towards him this time was hard to digest, it chewed away at her stomach lining every second he was unaccounted. How many times could she keep trusting him to stay put was the question that circled the roundabout in her mind, he voluntarily came with her to the hotel and even asked for another two nights of semi-normality before they ventured off to find a new less hostile hospital for him to finally receive the treatment he so desperately needed, but yet again she sat waiting for news of his condition as he had faded into the mist of his own creation. Some commotion on the street outside left her distracted, people seemed to be gathering around the entrance to the hotel and gesturing down the road, in the distance she could hear a siren but that was nothing unusual for this area, it had not even crossed her mind that Oscar was the reason as the search for him professionally seemed to have been abandoned after the fourth night without success. Then she thought of Mary, dropping the blinds back against the glass, Oscars mother knew even less than she did and the guilt of befriending her before seeking him out and actually finding him, but not informing her, left her with even more vicious bubbles of awfulness adding to the stew in her empty stomach.
Although Mary was only a phone call away, Katie lingered and thought it best to give him time to return on his own, the conversation the night before was light, his mood was uplifting and the comfortable sleep they shared In the same bed felt like it had been normalising some parts of his life again, perhaps unwise in the decision but Katie chose to believe he would return to her having simply gone to walk off a new waking nightmare or some unexpected occurrence of that horrific lingering he felt. The innocent eager thought was interrupted, thumping at the door left her heart in her throat and the phone swirling towards the bed as she released it in her rush to answer, the banging on solid wood occurred again louder than first before she could swing the door open to answer. There was no doubt in her mind that this was Oscar, when the door was opened she had her suspicion confirmed as he stood before her a picture of dishevelment.
“What happened?” she asked looking him up and down as he stumbled into the room and sat upon the bed, her eyes fixating on his legs that appeared soaked through in dark red and brown, his hands dirty with mud.
No, not mud, as she leaned in slowly she could see it was dried patches of dried dark red blood.
“Oscar, what the hell happened?” she asked again standing up straight and giving him some space, knowing his capacity for flying off the handle unpredictably she left the void empty between them for any eruptions.
The lack of response made her stomach turn into knots of worry.
“Is that blood yours” she asked fighting to snap him out of his vow of silence he must have taken before entering the room.
“It’s not mine” he mumbled in reply giving her the reassurance at least that he was not physically hurt.
Katie stepped back when the next concern entered the chamber of her tongue.
“Then whose blood is it Oscar?” her hands begun to shake when the question left her lips.
His motionless body was only adding to the anxiety leaving her pores “the guy at the desk” he whispered out, as the words flew by her ears the face of the man she met the night before came smashing into her eyes, his kind older face with the silly dicky moustache and wrinkled eyes.
His face unmoved as she paced in silence at the foot of the bed Oscar sat upon like some terrible gargoyle.
“That man was worried about you, he mentioned it the night before I booked up again” she said to herself but meaning to involve the mess sitting before her.
“He’s in the drain” he mumbled through his wobbling lips.
Katie froze at the coldness of the confession,
“What?” she asked without really wanting a repeat,
“I killed him and dropped him in the drain to hide the body” he elaborated as Katie placed her hand over her mouth to stop a sob falling out.
Questions raced through her mind, but nothing broke the veil for the moment of alarm was too strong, the boy she tended to in hopes of restoring had dashed those hopes against the curb smashing them like a drunks discarded last bottle.
After waving her hands in front of her eyes to keep the tears held back and the air on her face, she stopped her back and forth dancing on nervous feet.
“Why did you do it?” she asked unsure if really needing the reason for his dive into the evilness she was desperate to save him from all that time ago when she handed over the money and supplies for his escape from Boothes reach.
Now her choices had led to a man dying and his family having to fish his remains out of the drains beneath his workplace. Katie held herself at the stomach to quell the vomit bubbling up from her panic.
“He wouldn’t leave me alone; It was an accident” Oscar answered but she knew in her chest that nothing he could have said would have made her stomach stop hurting.
“Why did you put him in a drain?” she asked another question without real desire for an answer, every word that left his mouth buried the young man she wanted to save and instead replaced him fibre by fibre with this stained stinking killer that soiled the bed for which she was paying.
“They told me it was the best place,” she was correct in her worries that his answer was only going to make things worse, somehow worse than the notion of killing a man in cold blood and burying his body at the bottom of a sewage drain.
“I really don’t want to hear They again Oscar” she replied with anger swelling her throat causing her voice to stiffen with firmness.
“It was them; it wasn’t me; he shouldn’t have touched me. This was not my fault” Oscar began rambling and his direction lost meaning as he sprung to his feet and switched places to become the pacer strutting around the small room in angsty stressful stomps.
Regrettably for them both this wearing out of the carpet came with thick staining steps that soiled the carpet and left residue from fluids both sewage and human, she could do nothing but stare at the footprints that walked all over the room creating a landscape painting of their nightmare, squelching at first from the soiled soaking treads inside his shoes but eventually quieting to steps once the majority of the ‘juice’ inside was dispersed onto the ground she once slept upon.
Katie managed to get him into the bathroom by cutting off his walking path through the room and gesturing to the towels beside the bed,
“You need to wash up before we figure this out” her words stung his pride as she switched her cadence and begun treating him as a scolded child preparing for a meeting with his parents.
The water rushing from the tap stopped almost as soon as it had started, Katie paused her thinking momentarily until she heard the relieving noise of the shower running replace it.
“What the fuck do I do now” she whispered to herself running her sweaty hands over her face and down the back of her neck cradling it for comforting safety.
It was her only choice, it was the last life raft leaving the Titanic, saving herself was now more important and unfortunately it meant selling Oscar to those he tried so hard to avoid, Katie grabbed her phone to call the police. It seemed fitting for the scenario she found herself lodged firmly in the midst of that her phone was draining of battery, it trickled down to ten percent before she could quickly plug it back in, she knew this was wasted time and Oscar was likely not far off from finishing his cleansing of the horrific substances that clung to him. Dragging the charger across the bed she sunk to her backside and slumped against the frame, cradling the phone to her ear while juggling the cable that kept it from dwindling of completely. Oscar barged out of the bathroom, his face still vacant, clocked her actions straight away.
“Who are you calling?” he asked with the terror swirling his words into frantic threat,
“Oscar” she began to explain as she burst into fiery rage and snatched at the cable that dangled across the bed ripping her phone from her hand and watching it land face up on the sheets, the name across the call reading ‘Emergency.’
Oscar stood in shock at the actions she had taken while he followed her instructions exactly, he was betrayed and the face was unlike anything she had seen before, bile and rage turned his face into some distorted twisted purple veiny tangle that dug its eyes clean through her soul.
Silence was somehow more uncomfortable than the screaming that was likely to follow, Katie saw his eyes turning red, likely vessels bursting as his blood pressure spiked higher than it had ever been.
“How could you?” he said with shaking words that jumped from his mouth rather than floated, “You was going to help me, I thought you would be the person who could help me” he continued as Katie stood up from the bedside and took some unnoticed steps backwards to keep her distance from the newly confessed killer.
“I wanted to help you, but this is beyond me now Oscar” she replied giving him the chance to calm down, she silently prayed.
“NO!” he barked at her spitting as he did “You are just like them! You don’t want to help me, you want me to suffer just like THEM!” he continued losing his head and knocking things over around him, first the lamp then the wooden chair beside the bed.
Each crash sending her jumping in fear for her safety and the room exploding into noise and shards of breaking furniture.
“Oscar I want to leave” she begged as she ceased dismantling objects for a moment to catch his breath, blood trickled down from the corner of his eye, but Katie assumed it was an awful idea to inform him of this while he was transformed into this swirling devil of hatefulness and violence.
With his delay in responding giving her the notion that he would not stop her from vacating this broken space, she grabbed her jacket and phone from the bed, pulled her purse over her shoulder and went for the door. It was not to be, Oscar grabbed her arm and slung her to the floor knocking her on her stomach and her belongings flying off like some burst piggy bank impacting the ground. Gasping she sucked in air, winded from the fall, unsure of any blows that might follow as she lay helpless on the floor now muddied and bloodied from his boots. Oscar stood over her with a look of rage still fixed across his lines, lines that would be out of place on a man his age but appropriate considering the events he had been through and the acts he had committed for his own justifications. The man possessed with spiteful fire scooped at her arm to pull her back onto her feet, whether apologetic or signalling an incoming escalation, Katie took its meaning from the latter and thew back an elbow landing square on the craning face of Oscar above. The impact knocked him backwards, blood detonated from his nose as he instinctively pulled his hands back and forth from his face assessing the damage she had caused in her defiant strike out, he watched out of watering eyes as she climbed to her feet and brushed her clothes down in tidying attempts to preserve her dignity.
“You let me out right fucking now” she shouted across the room watching this pathetic young man withering away like a shrinking violet tending to his wounded nose.
“No!” he threw back his answer with malice and stung pride in his shaking voice “You are going to stay until you tell me why?,”
Katie looked him over watching for signs of sudden bursts of violence from her momentary kidnapper.
“Get out of my fucking way!” she screamed back, her voice now surely loud enough for neighbours adjacent and adjoining to hear.
Truly she hoped that this would bring about some help from the authorities or at least a baggage boy passing through with his latest haul of strangers belongings. Katie burst towards him to push past, and Oscar once again grabbed at her with hurtful clumsy hands, this time finding his grip around her neck in a choke that turned to a struggle and finally a fall to the floor, as they both swirled in combative reel across the hotel rooms trashed floors littered with mud, dried blood, and fragments of broken plain items from his outburst.
“Get off me!” she screamed out with rage slapping and punching at his face and neck, Oscar never released his grip from her neck only dug his crimson stained fingers into her deeper with uncontrolled hatred.
“Stop fighting me!” he shouted back pushing her head back over-stretching her bones and causing moans of pain to leak from the nurses wide uncovered mouth.
The struggle ebbed and flowed into a moment of pause as she bit down on his arm to gain a release from that death grip locked onto her throat. Oscar bellowed out a shout in pain of his own as the blood trickled down to his elbow from the deep bite Katie left on his appendage, Katie scrambled to all fours and onto her feet, landing a heavy kick square on the face of the writhing Oscar that still lay about in pain on the floor.
“You know why I called them? You know why I wanted to see you taken away” she threw the words at his with disgust watching the boy she once felt almost friendship for squirm, bleed, and groan into the floor, “because you are a monster Oscar. Maybe it’s that thing growing out of you, or maybe you have always been like this…..but you are a monster” and with that she grabbed up her things once more and went for the door stepping over the downed target for her honest abuse.
Spitefully he was not going to let her get the last laugh. Oscar grabbed up at her leg as she lifted it above his body blocking the walkway to the door and rip it from underneath her, tearing her trousers in half as she did revealing a huge portion of exposed sore leg from their struggle. Katie flew forwards in uncontrolled descent and smashed her head hard against the door frame, lifeless she lay on the ground twitching and exhaling odd lingering strained breathes as her tongue fell awkwardly in place between her teeth. It was silent for a moment besides her gasping damaged breaths, Oscars heavy breathing seemed to slow as he climbed to his feet and shook off a splattering of blood that danced its way down to his hand, the red mist it sprayed out in motion landed on her bag and the bed leaving a sickening souvenir.
“Katie” he said looking over her body, staring down as she lay face pressed up against the wood of the door jam and the disgusting fuzzy carpet, her lack of response should have sent him into at least a faint concern.
Oscar felt nothing watching her occasionally twitch and her diaphragm expand with agonisingly slow breaths. Oscar scooped up her phone from the bed, unlocked it once again, after watching her do it so many times he had memorised her password, and checked the call log. Much to his surprise the call with the emergency services had not lasted long enough for her to give any information out, but it would inevitably be a call they return chasing up on the lack of response from Katie when it was connected, he knew he had to leave. The room was chaos, a hurricane of sudden unexpected violence had torn through it and the occupants alike, Oscar surveyed the landscape and saw her items lobbed about in various positions, the blood on the bag as wiped down with his long shirt sleeve in an attempt to hide the evidence but it was futile as he accomplished nothing more than smearing it further into the bumpy recesses of the nurses small bag.
“You caused this; I hope you know that. I wanted help and you did this” Oscar continued blaming Katie as he walked about the room mumbling in one sided debate, the rebuttal happening solely inside his vibrating skull.
“You are just like them, just want me in a cage to poke and abuse” his attempts to hide more of his destructive domestic abuse failing with every smear or footstep he spotted “FUCK YOU!” he abruptly screamed at her still limp body sank against the door.
“Breed” the voice called out. “….Breed” it continued whispering evil aspiration of abuse into his ears. It was a longer pause than he was expecting as he considered the voices command.
Staring down at this poor woman’s helpless body before him, vulnerable and unconscious, with the only bout of divine intervention Katie would receive that day the door thumping from the outside caused Oscar to lose his train of ghoulish infested thought.
“Hello, I heard screaming from this room, is everyone okay” a woman’s voice called out from the hall.
Oscar panicking clumsily dragged her body away from the door by her ankles and placed her with a hurtful thud beside the bed.
Shielded from view of the door “Looks like you are back sleeping on the carpet Kate” he mumbled to himself in sickening normalisation of his action.
“They know” it called to him from inside, “Not safe….Run.”
Oscar swung the door open without a further thought of his safety and burst forward pushing the woman aside, causing her to run back into her room opposite and lock the chain with a hasty metal scrapping noise. Oscar had gone, Katie was left flinching in an unconscious state beside the bed, bloodied and alone.
