Wreckage | John Forth
“I stared at the sun for a long time and it spoke to me.”
Bedevilled, directed by Jang Cheol-so
Was she a bad person? Did she have the right to do what she was about to do? Abigail Sky smoked another cigarette and stared absently up at the blue as if the answers might form from the wisps of cloud that hung overhead. She sucked hard on the filter until ash burned the backs of her fore- and middle-fingers, then stubbed what was left of the cigarette in to the overflowing ashtray that sat on the arm of the bench. Ahead, across the neat lawn, near the small lake that lay still and surrounded by verdant blossom, three or four of her fellow guests stood chatting; the men in tuxedos, the women in taut dresses, their hair worn in high, sculpted piles. Abigail brushed a fair ringlet away from her face and crossed her legs. The hem of her pale blue dress rode up around her thighs. She felt like a spy. Like an assassin. As far as everyone else knew, she was just another guest. Only she knew her true purpose. A ripple of laughter drifted over on the warm, windless air. How would they react, she wondered, when the moment came? How would everyone react?
The laughter would stop, that was for sure. So would the happy chatter than came from the paved patio on the other side of the hedge behind Abigail’s bench. The men and women there had come for a celebration, to see their friends wed, to eat and drink. How would they behave when Abigail tore the whole damn day down in front of them? There would be silence, she supposed, outrage, abuse. Somewhere in the back of her mind a small, sensible voice chastised her for not planning an exit strategy. She ignored it. Her control over the day was limited to that one moment when the registrar asked if anyone present had a reason why Thomas and Karen could not be joined together in matrimony. Beyond that all she could do was sit back and let events unfold however they pleased.
Abigail lit another cigarette. She smoked not out of nervousness, but more just so she had something to do. The nerves she had expected to grip her that morning had yet to appear. She felt oddly calm, resigned to what she had to do. From somewhere behind the line of trees bordering the hotel grounds a passenger jet cruised up from nearby Gatwick. It was the fifth or sixth airliner she had seen since her arrival. She watched it rise until it banked to the west and the glare of the sun forced her eyes to close. The whine and roar of the engines momentarily drowned out the sound of the other guests. The respite was brief, but welcome. Soon the jet would be somewhere over the Atlantic and locked on course. It would have no other choice than to continue until it reached its destination. Abigail listened until the sound of the jet’s engines had faded. When she opened her eyes the sky was clear apart from a criss-cross of already dispersing vapour trails.
“What are you doing sitting here on your own?”
Abigail blinked. She had neither seen nor heard Thomas approach the bench. He stood over her in his wedding suit, chest puffed out against his cravat, the flower at his lapel cocked at an awkward angle. He had shaved. That was unusual. Abigail didn’t think she’d ever seen Thomas clean-shaven in all the time she’d known him.
She tilted her head forward. “Nothing much. Enjoying the view. Thinking.” She gave her latest smoke to the pyre of ash and crumbled filters to her side. “Smoking.”
“So I see,” Thomas chuckled, “and I thought I was meant to be the nervous one.”
“You’re not?”
“You know what, I feel okay. More impatient than nervous. Now that we’re all here I just want to get it over and done with.”
“I know how you feel.”
Thomas grinned, but said nothing. The corners of his mouth began to falter. He swallowed, looked across to the lake, to the patio, back to Abigail. “Karen will be happy that you came,” he said.
Now it was Abigail’s turn to remain silent.
“I... I wasn’t sure you would, not after what happened between us.”
“Nothing happened between us,” Abigail said, coolly.
“Nothing like that, I know,” Thomas said hurriedly, “but after what happened...”
Again, Abigail said nothing. Instead, she rubbed her bare arms, remembering the bruises his fingers had left. She had found them on her shoulders, too, and across her back where he had pushed her against the wall of the Karen’s flat.
“I guess I’m trying to say I’m glad we’ve been able to put all that business behind us.” Thomas sounded decisive, as if he’d just made the decision for them. “And that we can all still be friends. We are still friends, aren’t we, Abi?”
She let him hang for a moment before saying, “We’re friends until we aren’t, Tom.”
His smile found its confidence again. “That’s good. I’m glad.” He glanced at his watch, then back to the patio. “Well, not long now. I suppose I better mingle while I’m still sober enough to remember everyone’s name. Really glad you’re here, Abi. I mean that, truly.”
No doubt he expected a response, but Abigail was looking past his shoulder, at another passenger jet climbing skywards. The engine roar, strangely out-of-synch with the steady trajectory of the plane, swept across the fields towards where she sat.
Thomas glanced over his shoulder. “Hell of a racket, isn’t it? When we first visited this place I was worried that they would drown out the ceremony, but once you’re inside you can hardly hear them, so there’s no chance of that.”
“No,” Abigail agreed, “there isn’t.”
When he was gone she turned her attention to the lake, to the inverted world reflected in its untroubled surface. She wondered what Karen was doing at that moment. The ceremony was in less than half an hour. She would already have her make-up on, would be putting the finishing touches to her dress, breaking in her shoes. When they had been girls together Karen had never coped well with stress, so no doubt her bridesmaids would have their work cut out keeping her calm, keeping her on track for the fairytale wedding. Once upon a time Abigail would have been there with her. She remembered vividly a conversation she had had with Karen – they must have been twelve or thirteen at the time – where they planned out their respective weddings, each according the other a head bridesmaid post. Now Karen’s day had come and here was Abigail on the outside of the circle, her invitation arriving so close to the day that it seemed an afterthought at best; a second tier invitation, issued only after the first round of RSVPs had been received. And, as for Abigail herself, there had never been even a hint of marriage. Her last boyfriend, a musician who had refused to believe that the chances of his band ‘making it’ had plummeted sharply after the last of its members turned thirty, had walked out on her after a week of furious rows. “Sometimes I get the feeling that if you could set me on fire with a glance, you would,” he’d said as a parting shot. Abigail had just stared at him, testing his theory.
Karen should have been there for her then, but she wasn’t. “I don’t think Thomas likes having you around,” she had had told Abigail during what must have been their last honest conversation. “The truth is, I think you scare him a little.” Abigail had laughed at that, but secretly she had been a little proud. She had seen the way Thomas watched her, the way his brow furrowed in confusion as he tried to work out whether he should laugh at her off-colour jokes, at her casual cruelty. For all the right-on bumper stickers decorating his Audi, for all he spoke of progressive politics, of charity work, Thomas was a heart an old-fashioned sort. He expected Karen to behave a certain way, and to fulfil certain duties. To Abigail’s surprise, and slight disgust, her old friend had been happy to slip into the role he had written for her. Perhaps that was why Abigail pushed so hard whenever she was around the two of them. She hated to see Karen – smart Karen, beautiful Karen, ambitious Karen – sacrifice herself to such an oaf.
When she asked Karen why she suppressed so much of herself around Thomas her friend had initially looked offended, then resigned. “He’s a good man with a good job,” she’d said with a shrug. “Honestly, I don’t know why you’re so hard on him.”
Because he was weak. Because he was turning the Karen she had grown up with and loved and shared her life with into a nobody. Abigail burned to say all of those things, but didn’t. Back then she didn’t have the right. Karen was a big girl, more than capable of looking after herself. Their relationship was different now, but they were still friends, weren’t they? They always would be.
She had gone to Karen’s flat to apologise that day, only Karen wasn’t home.
Thomas was.
Afterwards she considered telling Karen what had happened, but for some reason she held back. Once, Karen would have taken Abigail’s side in any argument; now she wasn’t so sure. Would she believe that her ‘good man’ was capable of what he had done – or tried to do? More likely a confrontation would only deepen the growing rift between the two women, and Abigail wasn’t ready to give up on their friendship. Not that it mattered in the end. She saw less and less of Karen as the months and years passed. When the wedding was announced, Abigail heard of it second-hand, via one of their few remaining mutual friends.
If not for Thomas’s phone call the month before, Abigail would have avoided the wedding altogether. Based on how early he had called and the state he was in, Abigail presumed he was on his stag do. The call had lasted quarter of an hour or so. She should have hung up after his opening salvo of abuse, but she had wanted to find out how far he would go. When the abuse subsided, the propositions began. “No man will ever marry a cunt like you,” he’d slurred towards the end of his rambling, drunken monologue. “You’re the sort of bitch who should be found raped by the side of the road, you filthy, fu—”
That had been enough.
She had lain awake a while after that, furious. The sun was coming up by the time she finally drifted back to sleep. She was met by the strangest dream. She stood on the dirt floor of a valley flanked on either side by steep cliffs. Into the sides of the cliffs were carved a selection of impassive faces, worn and weathered fists bunched beneath their crumbling chins. At the end of the valley, far away but clearly visible, stood Karen, naked, her hands clamped to her face. High above was a strip of bruised sky against which burned a furious oval of fire. Abigail raised her fists towards it and stared and stared and opened her hands and spread her fingers until the fire descended from the sky and flowed into her.
When she woke up she knew exactly what she had to do.
One of the ushers was calling people off the patio, directing them towards the room where the ceremony was to take place. She could hear the shuffle of shoes and the click of heels moving across the paving stones. The group of people she had seen by the lake walked across the lawn and up the steps to the hotel. Abigail was surprised to find that her heart was beating hard in her chest. As she stood, another airliner pushed itself skywards from beyond the horizon.
Abigail turned and walked up the stone steps to the terrace. The tables there were scattered with the detritus her fellow guests had left behind – empty bottles and champagne glasses, a scattering of flowers that rolled back and forth across the tabletop, blown by the warm, gentle wind. Ahead, Abigail saw the other guests disappear through the glass doors leading in to the hotel. Calmly, coolly, she crossed the terrace. The room beyond the doors was a dark cavern within which she could discern only the slightest hint of movement. As her eyes adjusted to the blackness, she began to make out men and women taking their seats. The room was small, intimate, family and close friends only. She noticed a chair near the door, but did not move towards it. Instead, she stood in the doorway, chest rising and falling steadily. From somewhere behind she could hear another aircraft. In her mind’s eye she could see it, rising, the wings shuddering beneath the slipstream’s onslaught.
Dimly, Abigail became aware that some of the other guests were looking at her. Someone whispered that she should sit down. Someone tutted. Abigail paid them no attention. She looked towards the far end of the room, where Thomas stood with the registrar. The latter had a pinched, angry look on her face. Thomas, for his part, looked faintly bemused, his brow deeply furrowed. Off to her left, someone started playing a record. Abigail recognised it as Thomas and Karen’s ‘song’. She clenched her fists. Abigail had been with Karen when she had bought the album it was from.
The whispers from the crowd were growing more urgent. “For Christ’s sake, sit down!” A man nearby glared at her, then began to push himself to his feet. Abigail glanced once more at Thomas. His frown had grown into an angry grimace. Abigail smiled at him, and closed her eyes.
The dream was waiting for her. Again she stood in the ruined valley, sightless monoliths on either side. The ground was strewn with rubble and picked-clean bones. Abigail stood at one end of the valley, Karen at the other, but this time they were not alone. Men in tuxedos and women in party frocks flanked both women. Every last one of them stared hard at Abigail and she stared back. One by one, the onlookers burst into flames. Still, Abigail could sense them watching her, even as the skin peeled from their faces and their eyes ran to white then yellow then a crisp black. Fingers of grey smoke angled up into the sky, finally curling and spiralling into the burning oval hanging overhead.
Karen opened her mouth to scream, but all Abigail could hear was the plummeting, anguished howl of a jet engine. When she looked up she saw twisted metal falling from the crack in the sky, twisted metal and bodies and coloured fabric that she first thought were streamers then realised were clothes, fluttering in the crosswind above the valley.
Oh, what was she? What had she become?
The doubt in her mind lasted only a moment. A man’s large hand clamped on her bare arm and she remembered Thomas, remembered the excitement and animal desire on his face as he threw her back against the wall of Karen’s flat. Without opening her eyes, she began to speak. The words came easily – God knows she had rehearsed them often enough – but Abigail did not hear them. Instead she heard only the roar of outrage her words provoked and, after a while, the choked, struggling whine of a jet engine on its way to something like paradise, or something like wreckage.
Bedevilled, directed by Jang Cheol-so
Was she a bad person? Did she have the right to do what she was about to do? Abigail Sky smoked another cigarette and stared absently up at the blue as if the answers might form from the wisps of cloud that hung overhead. She sucked hard on the filter until ash burned the backs of her fore- and middle-fingers, then stubbed what was left of the cigarette in to the overflowing ashtray that sat on the arm of the bench. Ahead, across the neat lawn, near the small lake that lay still and surrounded by verdant blossom, three or four of her fellow guests stood chatting; the men in tuxedos, the women in taut dresses, their hair worn in high, sculpted piles. Abigail brushed a fair ringlet away from her face and crossed her legs. The hem of her pale blue dress rode up around her thighs. She felt like a spy. Like an assassin. As far as everyone else knew, she was just another guest. Only she knew her true purpose. A ripple of laughter drifted over on the warm, windless air. How would they react, she wondered, when the moment came? How would everyone react?
The laughter would stop, that was for sure. So would the happy chatter than came from the paved patio on the other side of the hedge behind Abigail’s bench. The men and women there had come for a celebration, to see their friends wed, to eat and drink. How would they behave when Abigail tore the whole damn day down in front of them? There would be silence, she supposed, outrage, abuse. Somewhere in the back of her mind a small, sensible voice chastised her for not planning an exit strategy. She ignored it. Her control over the day was limited to that one moment when the registrar asked if anyone present had a reason why Thomas and Karen could not be joined together in matrimony. Beyond that all she could do was sit back and let events unfold however they pleased.
Abigail lit another cigarette. She smoked not out of nervousness, but more just so she had something to do. The nerves she had expected to grip her that morning had yet to appear. She felt oddly calm, resigned to what she had to do. From somewhere behind the line of trees bordering the hotel grounds a passenger jet cruised up from nearby Gatwick. It was the fifth or sixth airliner she had seen since her arrival. She watched it rise until it banked to the west and the glare of the sun forced her eyes to close. The whine and roar of the engines momentarily drowned out the sound of the other guests. The respite was brief, but welcome. Soon the jet would be somewhere over the Atlantic and locked on course. It would have no other choice than to continue until it reached its destination. Abigail listened until the sound of the jet’s engines had faded. When she opened her eyes the sky was clear apart from a criss-cross of already dispersing vapour trails.
“What are you doing sitting here on your own?”
Abigail blinked. She had neither seen nor heard Thomas approach the bench. He stood over her in his wedding suit, chest puffed out against his cravat, the flower at his lapel cocked at an awkward angle. He had shaved. That was unusual. Abigail didn’t think she’d ever seen Thomas clean-shaven in all the time she’d known him.
She tilted her head forward. “Nothing much. Enjoying the view. Thinking.” She gave her latest smoke to the pyre of ash and crumbled filters to her side. “Smoking.”
“So I see,” Thomas chuckled, “and I thought I was meant to be the nervous one.”
“You’re not?”
“You know what, I feel okay. More impatient than nervous. Now that we’re all here I just want to get it over and done with.”
“I know how you feel.”
Thomas grinned, but said nothing. The corners of his mouth began to falter. He swallowed, looked across to the lake, to the patio, back to Abigail. “Karen will be happy that you came,” he said.
Now it was Abigail’s turn to remain silent.
“I... I wasn’t sure you would, not after what happened between us.”
“Nothing happened between us,” Abigail said, coolly.
“Nothing like that, I know,” Thomas said hurriedly, “but after what happened...”
Again, Abigail said nothing. Instead, she rubbed her bare arms, remembering the bruises his fingers had left. She had found them on her shoulders, too, and across her back where he had pushed her against the wall of the Karen’s flat.
“I guess I’m trying to say I’m glad we’ve been able to put all that business behind us.” Thomas sounded decisive, as if he’d just made the decision for them. “And that we can all still be friends. We are still friends, aren’t we, Abi?”
She let him hang for a moment before saying, “We’re friends until we aren’t, Tom.”
His smile found its confidence again. “That’s good. I’m glad.” He glanced at his watch, then back to the patio. “Well, not long now. I suppose I better mingle while I’m still sober enough to remember everyone’s name. Really glad you’re here, Abi. I mean that, truly.”
No doubt he expected a response, but Abigail was looking past his shoulder, at another passenger jet climbing skywards. The engine roar, strangely out-of-synch with the steady trajectory of the plane, swept across the fields towards where she sat.
Thomas glanced over his shoulder. “Hell of a racket, isn’t it? When we first visited this place I was worried that they would drown out the ceremony, but once you’re inside you can hardly hear them, so there’s no chance of that.”
“No,” Abigail agreed, “there isn’t.”
When he was gone she turned her attention to the lake, to the inverted world reflected in its untroubled surface. She wondered what Karen was doing at that moment. The ceremony was in less than half an hour. She would already have her make-up on, would be putting the finishing touches to her dress, breaking in her shoes. When they had been girls together Karen had never coped well with stress, so no doubt her bridesmaids would have their work cut out keeping her calm, keeping her on track for the fairytale wedding. Once upon a time Abigail would have been there with her. She remembered vividly a conversation she had had with Karen – they must have been twelve or thirteen at the time – where they planned out their respective weddings, each according the other a head bridesmaid post. Now Karen’s day had come and here was Abigail on the outside of the circle, her invitation arriving so close to the day that it seemed an afterthought at best; a second tier invitation, issued only after the first round of RSVPs had been received. And, as for Abigail herself, there had never been even a hint of marriage. Her last boyfriend, a musician who had refused to believe that the chances of his band ‘making it’ had plummeted sharply after the last of its members turned thirty, had walked out on her after a week of furious rows. “Sometimes I get the feeling that if you could set me on fire with a glance, you would,” he’d said as a parting shot. Abigail had just stared at him, testing his theory.
Karen should have been there for her then, but she wasn’t. “I don’t think Thomas likes having you around,” she had had told Abigail during what must have been their last honest conversation. “The truth is, I think you scare him a little.” Abigail had laughed at that, but secretly she had been a little proud. She had seen the way Thomas watched her, the way his brow furrowed in confusion as he tried to work out whether he should laugh at her off-colour jokes, at her casual cruelty. For all the right-on bumper stickers decorating his Audi, for all he spoke of progressive politics, of charity work, Thomas was a heart an old-fashioned sort. He expected Karen to behave a certain way, and to fulfil certain duties. To Abigail’s surprise, and slight disgust, her old friend had been happy to slip into the role he had written for her. Perhaps that was why Abigail pushed so hard whenever she was around the two of them. She hated to see Karen – smart Karen, beautiful Karen, ambitious Karen – sacrifice herself to such an oaf.
When she asked Karen why she suppressed so much of herself around Thomas her friend had initially looked offended, then resigned. “He’s a good man with a good job,” she’d said with a shrug. “Honestly, I don’t know why you’re so hard on him.”
Because he was weak. Because he was turning the Karen she had grown up with and loved and shared her life with into a nobody. Abigail burned to say all of those things, but didn’t. Back then she didn’t have the right. Karen was a big girl, more than capable of looking after herself. Their relationship was different now, but they were still friends, weren’t they? They always would be.
She had gone to Karen’s flat to apologise that day, only Karen wasn’t home.
Thomas was.
Afterwards she considered telling Karen what had happened, but for some reason she held back. Once, Karen would have taken Abigail’s side in any argument; now she wasn’t so sure. Would she believe that her ‘good man’ was capable of what he had done – or tried to do? More likely a confrontation would only deepen the growing rift between the two women, and Abigail wasn’t ready to give up on their friendship. Not that it mattered in the end. She saw less and less of Karen as the months and years passed. When the wedding was announced, Abigail heard of it second-hand, via one of their few remaining mutual friends.
If not for Thomas’s phone call the month before, Abigail would have avoided the wedding altogether. Based on how early he had called and the state he was in, Abigail presumed he was on his stag do. The call had lasted quarter of an hour or so. She should have hung up after his opening salvo of abuse, but she had wanted to find out how far he would go. When the abuse subsided, the propositions began. “No man will ever marry a cunt like you,” he’d slurred towards the end of his rambling, drunken monologue. “You’re the sort of bitch who should be found raped by the side of the road, you filthy, fu—”
That had been enough.
She had lain awake a while after that, furious. The sun was coming up by the time she finally drifted back to sleep. She was met by the strangest dream. She stood on the dirt floor of a valley flanked on either side by steep cliffs. Into the sides of the cliffs were carved a selection of impassive faces, worn and weathered fists bunched beneath their crumbling chins. At the end of the valley, far away but clearly visible, stood Karen, naked, her hands clamped to her face. High above was a strip of bruised sky against which burned a furious oval of fire. Abigail raised her fists towards it and stared and stared and opened her hands and spread her fingers until the fire descended from the sky and flowed into her.
When she woke up she knew exactly what she had to do.
One of the ushers was calling people off the patio, directing them towards the room where the ceremony was to take place. She could hear the shuffle of shoes and the click of heels moving across the paving stones. The group of people she had seen by the lake walked across the lawn and up the steps to the hotel. Abigail was surprised to find that her heart was beating hard in her chest. As she stood, another airliner pushed itself skywards from beyond the horizon.
Abigail turned and walked up the stone steps to the terrace. The tables there were scattered with the detritus her fellow guests had left behind – empty bottles and champagne glasses, a scattering of flowers that rolled back and forth across the tabletop, blown by the warm, gentle wind. Ahead, Abigail saw the other guests disappear through the glass doors leading in to the hotel. Calmly, coolly, she crossed the terrace. The room beyond the doors was a dark cavern within which she could discern only the slightest hint of movement. As her eyes adjusted to the blackness, she began to make out men and women taking their seats. The room was small, intimate, family and close friends only. She noticed a chair near the door, but did not move towards it. Instead, she stood in the doorway, chest rising and falling steadily. From somewhere behind she could hear another aircraft. In her mind’s eye she could see it, rising, the wings shuddering beneath the slipstream’s onslaught.
Dimly, Abigail became aware that some of the other guests were looking at her. Someone whispered that she should sit down. Someone tutted. Abigail paid them no attention. She looked towards the far end of the room, where Thomas stood with the registrar. The latter had a pinched, angry look on her face. Thomas, for his part, looked faintly bemused, his brow deeply furrowed. Off to her left, someone started playing a record. Abigail recognised it as Thomas and Karen’s ‘song’. She clenched her fists. Abigail had been with Karen when she had bought the album it was from.
The whispers from the crowd were growing more urgent. “For Christ’s sake, sit down!” A man nearby glared at her, then began to push himself to his feet. Abigail glanced once more at Thomas. His frown had grown into an angry grimace. Abigail smiled at him, and closed her eyes.
The dream was waiting for her. Again she stood in the ruined valley, sightless monoliths on either side. The ground was strewn with rubble and picked-clean bones. Abigail stood at one end of the valley, Karen at the other, but this time they were not alone. Men in tuxedos and women in party frocks flanked both women. Every last one of them stared hard at Abigail and she stared back. One by one, the onlookers burst into flames. Still, Abigail could sense them watching her, even as the skin peeled from their faces and their eyes ran to white then yellow then a crisp black. Fingers of grey smoke angled up into the sky, finally curling and spiralling into the burning oval hanging overhead.
Karen opened her mouth to scream, but all Abigail could hear was the plummeting, anguished howl of a jet engine. When she looked up she saw twisted metal falling from the crack in the sky, twisted metal and bodies and coloured fabric that she first thought were streamers then realised were clothes, fluttering in the crosswind above the valley.
Oh, what was she? What had she become?
The doubt in her mind lasted only a moment. A man’s large hand clamped on her bare arm and she remembered Thomas, remembered the excitement and animal desire on his face as he threw her back against the wall of Karen’s flat. Without opening her eyes, she began to speak. The words came easily – God knows she had rehearsed them often enough – but Abigail did not hear them. Instead she heard only the roar of outrage her words provoked and, after a while, the choked, struggling whine of a jet engine on its way to something like paradise, or something like wreckage.