Good Samaritans Read online

  GOOD SAMARITANS

  WILL CARVER

  For Tuesdays

  ‘But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him.’

  —Luke 10:33

  ‘When you have insomnia, you’re never really asleep. And you’re never really awake.’

  —Narrator, Fight Club

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  THAT WEEK: SUNDAY

  MONDAY

  TUESDAY

  WEDNESDAY

  THURSDAY

  FRIDAY

  SATURDAY

  SUNDAY

  THAT NIGHT

  THIS WEEK: MONDAY

  TUESDAY

  WEDNESDAY

  THURSDAY

  FRIDAY

  SATURDAY

  SUNDAY

  MONDAY

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  GOOD SAMARITANS

  It doesn’t get you clean. Not that much bleach. Sure, there are face creams that you can buy that will help with dry skin or dark patches left from overexposure to sunlight and they’re clinically proven to help. But it’s a trace amount.

  And, for those suffering with eczema, a bleach bath may be recommended. Your dermatologist will tell you that the bleach can significantly decrease the infection of Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium prevalent in those who are plagued by this skin condition. Still, it is recommended to use no more than half a cup of bleach in one half-filled bath of water.

  Because it won’t make your skin sparkle like it does your toilet basin. It will burn. It will blister. You will bleed. It will hurt like hell.

  Unless you’re already dead.

  It’s the moment before that hurts like hell. That drowning sensation you can sometimes experience when somebody much stronger than you forces their weight down against your windpipe. It’s the gasping for air that will hurt, not the bleach.

  And then there’s that weird buzzing in your ears as you die, and your face is discolouring, which makes it easier for coroners to determine the cause of death, though the compression marks on your neck are a huge giveaway. And the way your eyes are now protruding. They won’t know for sure about your tingling muscles or vertigo, and the bleach will take care of the blood that came out of your ears and nose.

  But don’t worry about the bleach, the six bottles of bleach poured into a bathtub topped up with hot water that you are dumped into and left for days. The one where you are scrubbed inside and out as the chemicals burn your entire body and strip your hair of any colour. That part won’t hurt.

  So there’s no need to run your skin under cold water or wrap your wounds in plastic. But that will still happen. You will still be taken care of. And your fingernails will be cut and your teeth will be brushed, just in case you bit or scratched when you could still feel pain.

  And you won’t be cold when you are dropped in a ditch or a field or some undergrowth with only the plastic to protect your modesty and cover your mottled skin. Of course, your body will be cold, but you won’t feel it.

  It will be okay. You can just lie there. Rest.

  Hope a dog-walker wanders by, or an overamorous couple lie down in the wrong place or a kid goes searching for a ball near the wrong tree.

  Wait for that Good Samaritan to find you.

  They will find you.

  THAT WEEK

  SUNDAY

  1

  I was troubled. There was no doubt about that. The list of things I hated about myself was long and easy to compile. And, like so many people who need the support of others around them, who need to be able to talk without fear of judgement or ridicule, who need love and encouragement and positivity, I was alone. Everyone had given up. Even those who were still in my life were waiting, counting the days until that phone call would be placed to say that I’d finally succeeded and they could all get on with their lives now without Hadley Serf getting in their way.

  I’d tried to kill myself before.

  I’d tried a lot.

  That first time – well, what everybody thought was the first time – was a classic wrist-slashing attempt. Poorly thought out and badly executed as it was, people started to sit up and listen.

  I was in my flat, alone, and I’d had enough. I took a razor in my right hand, placed it on my forearm, pressed it into the skin and swiped downwards through my wrist towards the palm of my hand. I would have gone across the wrist but I’d watched a film that had very clearly stated that it was the wrong way to do it. How embarrassing to be found dead having cut your wrists the wrong way. I’d never live it down.

  I only cut the left wrist, a good four-inch line in my arm, and then I called my boyfriend, who came to get me and take me to the hospital. Then he dutifully and diligently called my friends to let them know.

  And they rushed from wherever they were at that point to come and see me.

  And they didn’t understand it.

  And it was awkward.

  And it still is. Because they haven’t really bothered to dig a little deeper.

  To understand just how much I can’t stand me. And that ever-growing list of things that I don’t like and can’t seem to fix.

  They talk amongst themselves, saying that it is my father’s fault. He has always suffered with depression but won’t admit it to himself. He has always belittled Hadley. That’s what they say. And they say other things, ‘I don’t know what she’s so depressed about, her parents have loads of money.’

  They yawn. They wheeze. They spit.

  Of course, I don’t care about my family’s apparent wealth. I thought about my father and my mother and my younger brother before I ran that blade through my skin, unzipping a dark-blue vein that released a beautiful crimson worm. I thought about them and how much they would hurt if they found out I was dead. I thought about my boyfriend, too. And all my friends. It wasn’t a decision I was taking lightly. But I figured that, in the long run, their lives would genuinely be better, richer, without me. And I figured mine would be infinitely improved if I was no longer getting in my own way.

  I cry.

  I fake.

  I bleed.

  I had tried to explain this to my friends and they had tried to understand. They were supportive for a couple of weeks, then they thought I was fixed and they got on with their own lives again.

  My boyfriend called it all off a week or so after that.

  2

  ‘Samaritans, can I help you?’

  That’s how it always started. It was his third call that night. Nobody suicidal; that was a common misconception. It was just late. People often called because all of their friends were asleep and they had nobody they could talk to. About the difficulties they were having in their relationship, or the questions they had about their sexuality, or the fact that they just felt so lonely.

  And sometimes, not a lot, it’s a prank. Somebody who doesn’t need to talk, who doesn’t need help, who has no questions burning inside that they have no outlet for. Who, instead, think it is funny to waste somebody’s time. To interrupt the precious seconds of those in true need of assistance and companionship.

  He’d had three calls already. None of them were a waste of time. Not to him. He was helping. He was there for those who needed it most.

  Trying to fill that hole inside of him.

  Trying to get himself clean.

  His name was Ant. He was twenty-five. He had finished university and travelled around Australia, New Zealand and Fiji with his friend James. Two months into what seemed like their greatest adventure, Ant found James hanging from the back of a bathroom door, a leather belt around his neck and his dick in his hand.
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  It had looked like an accident, as these things so often do. And the trip was cut short as Ant helped with paperwork to get the body flown back to the UK. And, just as he was getting closer to finding out what he wanted to do with his life, Ant became lost.

  Impure and hopeless.

  It changed everything. From that point on, Ant just felt so goddamned dirty.

  In an effort to deal with what had happened, he volunteered with the Samaritans. And now he was here, still, years later, listening to somebody who possibly wanted to go the way James had and, this time, he could help.

  And when he did, in just that moment, he felt a little less dirty, a little less lost.

  3

  Mostly, they’d just hang up the phone.

  Whoever they were.

  Seth didn’t know.

  He was just dialling a random number.

  Hoping for some connection.

  It goes something like this.

  There are two sofas in the lounge. One for Seth, with two seats, that he sits up in. One for his wife, with three seats, that she lies down on and then invariably falls asleep – halfway through the programme that she has insisted they watch. This is called marriage. Routine. Settling down. Settling in. Settling. He tells himself that she has no idea they’re unhappy. Because it’s too pathetic to think that they both let this happen.

  She misses the second half of the TV show. He watches it to the end just in case she wakes up and finds that he’s turned over to something that doesn’t turn his brain to a liquid he can feel dribbling out of his ears. What he wants to do is turn it off. Read a book. Do some exercise. Masturbate. Take one of those floral cushions from her sofa, one of the ones that really ties everything in the room together, and place it over her face, holding it down tightly so that he never has to ingest another minute of The Unreal Privileged Housewives of Some American City He Doesn’t Give A Fuck About.

  He wants some warmth.

  To feel loved. Needed. Wanted.

  But he sticks it out. He watches it while she snores. He doesn’t remember the names of any of the characters, just like he can’t remember anything his wife likes anymore, or the reasons he fell for her in the first place.

  It gets like this.

  The credits roll. He wakes her up. She apologises. He says something like, ‘Don’t worry, babe. You didn’t miss much.’ Then she goes to bed. She used to kiss him goodnight but that stopped a couple of years ago. He’s pleased it did. It felt wrong. Forced.

  Then he’s alone. With his thoughts and ideas and anguishes. And nobody to share them with. No one to lighten the load.

  He wants to pick up the phone now and dial a number. But it’s too early. That’s like admitting defeat. Tonight could be the night. He could fall asleep. He could stay asleep.

  He doesn’t fall or stay.

  That’s how it always goes.

  It’s been like this for eighteen years.

  His evening continues.

  He flicks through the channels with no real purpose. Perhaps the small hope that he’ll stumble across a movie where a woman is showing her breasts, because he can’t always rely on his imagination when he wants to grab hold of his cock. They don’t have sex anymore. He thinks that, maybe he’ll feel sleepy after he has come. He just feels pissed off, though. The pleasure lasts for a second. Maybe. He used to be able to control the ending, prolong it, make it last. It seems too much like work, now. It’s not about pleasure anymore.

  It’s truth and nothingness. That moment when you come, when you can’t deny the pleasure of orgasm, no matter how short it is, there is an inescapable nothing. Everything in that instant is true. And he’ll take that, because all the other things in his life seem to be a fucking lie.

  Seth can’t sleep. And that’s a problem. It affects everything in his life. And everything in his life affects it.

  Afterwards there is a come-down. The inevitable low. Because there isn’t a thing that will top that half-second of joy. Seth’s shitty day is about to get so much worse.

  Could he try harder? Should he have to? Things aren’t unpleasant. They don’t argue. She puts him down from time to time but he guesses that’s just to make her feel better about herself. He’s heard that marriage is about compromise. He figures that’s what he’s doing here. Compromising. Occasionally, he lets her make him feel like shit and, sometimes, in return, she goes to bed early.

  He has ideas. They are far beyond his incredible lack of talents, but he thinks about things. All those things that he could do but tells himself he doesn’t have the time. He could leave his life. He could get out and start anew. He could pick up his clarinet and fly to New Orleans and play it on the streets. He could read more. And not the two hundred contemporary novels that his wife ingests every year on her commute to work and that she forgets within seconds of finishing. Important books. All those Americans that lived in Paris in the twenties who wrote things that should be read. He could learn a language. He could do anything. He has the time. He’s awake so much. It’s the state of mind that stops him.

  Heart is up. State is low. Brain is racing. These three simple ingredients are enough to now keep Seth awake for the next six hours. Quarter of a day of doing nothing. He feels tired. Exhausted, actually. But somehow ultra-responsive. Stimulated. Yet with no impetus to do anything. He just wants to sleep. And he can’t.

  Is this who he is now?

  Who was he before?

  Was he kind? Is he still?

  He gives it three hours of tapping his foot and flicking through channels on the television. Half watching a programme before changing again.

  Finally he concedes and picks up the phone. He flicks through the phone book, his homemade phonebook, made from a database of thousands of customers who had ordered from DoTrue, the computer company where Seth works. He found the file while fixing an error on his boss’s laptop.

  Seth stops at a random page. He dials a number and waits. It rings seven times. A man picks up. He has an accent that is about seventy miles north of Seth’s home.

  ‘Hello?’ he asks.

  ‘Hey, it’s Seth. I can’t sleep. Want to talk?’

  ‘Go fuck yourself, freak.’

  He slams the phone down at his end.

  And so it begins.

  Another night.

  4

  It was a cold night in Warwickshire but Theresa Palmer couldn’t feel a thing.

  She’d been there for a few days, tucked away between four or five trees. People would eventually tell the tale of how she was found in the woods, because it romanticises the story; it somehow makes it darker, creepier. The local and national news, however, would flit between the use of undergrowth and copse.

  The grave was pretty shallow. You’d have thought she’d have been found by now. It wouldn’t be too long. Whoever had left her there must have been in a rush. Or maybe they were simply lazy. Cocky. Didn’t want to get their hands too dirty.

  It wouldn’t be long before a man would enter the woods/undergrowth/copse with a plastic bag rolled over his hand, thinking he was only going behind that tree to find a small pile of beagle shit.

  Not long until that man’s body would turn cold and he would inhale nervously and knowingly.

  Not long until he let out a short scream that only his faithful dog would hear.

  Not long until he would call the police to inform them that he had found a body, bleached and bloated and wrapped in plastic.

  It really wouldn’t be that long until Detective Sergeant Pace would discover that the woman who had been reported as missing was dead. And that she is the second person to be found like this, miles from home. Alone and dead.

  Detective Sergeant Pace is a shadow.

  Detective Sergeant Pace is paranoia.

  Detective Sergeant Pace is losing.

  5

  Pills. It was pills the next time. It’s good to try new things.

  Pills can be a great way to go. Have a drink. Swallow enough tablets to
stun a small elephant. Drift off into a pain-free, eternal slumber.

  When you don’t get the pills thing right, though, it is horrific.

  I did not get the pills thing right, either.

  My friends would say things like, ‘If she really wanted to die, she could do it properly. Get a gun. Jump off a really tall building. This is a cry for help.’ They were wrong, but that’s what they wanted to believe. Yet, still they don’t help.

  I had a new boyfriend. I always thought that it would help. He was so much better than the one who had left me when the first sign of challenge presented itself. My friends liked him. I loved him. And he seemed to love me.

  I was thinking about him as I popped another pill in my mouth, sitting in the driver’s seat of my old Fiat. I reminisced about our holiday to Rome, where we had crept out of our window onto the roof of the hotel and made love under the dark Italian sky with traffic buzzing around below us. I remembered him going down on me and the sound of my climax being drowned out by the horns of a thousand mopeds working their way around an unmanageable one-way system.

  I recalled our smiles and laughter and his white teeth and dark skin and those muscles in his shoulders that I loved to squeeze in my hands as we kissed. And I decided that he would be better off without me in his life, dragging him down.

  So, I swallowed a pill and took a drink. Swallowed a pill and took a drink. Swallowed and drank. Swallowed some more. And my eyes felt heavy. And the music on the radio was not worth listening to. Not worth dying to. So I opened the door and got out of the car but my legs were not working and they buckled beneath me. And I hit my right eye on the car door as I fell. Then my cheek grazed against the concrete where I landed. And the screen of my mobile phone cracked under the pressure of my body. I fished it out of my pocket and called my boyfriend to tell him what I had done and where I was. That boy who I loved.