COLD INSIDE

COLD INSIDE
by D.A. Cairns

“They call this reality TV?” said Eddy, as he lifted a can of Victoria Bitter to his mouth. He dipped his head so he could reach. “They wouldn’t know reality if it slapped them in the face.”

Sharon looked sideways at her husband, felt a familiar disdain. “I’m going to slap you in the face if you don’t shove a cork in it. Can’t you just watch it? Do you have to comment on every bloody thing?” She focused on the program, hoping Eddy would cop the rebuke and keep quiet for a while. His silence never lasted though, barely stood a chance, especially when he was on the cans. He’d been a miserable beggar ever since the factory laid him off. It was crap job which Eddy hated and complained about all the time, but at least it got him out of the house. It seemed like the factory took more than his job when they sacked him.

“They edit the shit out of this stuff,” said Eddy. “They’re like telling us what to think. I want to think what I want to think, not what they want me to think.”

“You know what I think?” said Sharon.

“Yeah, yeah.” Eddy burped into the can, then polished off its contents. He wagged the empty, waved it in Sharon’s periphery.

“I’ll get you another one in the ad on two conditions,” she said.

Eddy eventually placed the empty can in the cupholder of his recliner. “What’s this conditions business?”

Talking to Eddy guaranteed more of his nonsense but ignoring him never worked either. Sharon took a deep breath, shivered in the middle of it. “One you let me watch the rest of the show in piece and two, you let me put the heater on. I’m cold.”

“Get a blanket,” said Eddy.

Sometimes, she couldn’t believe she married such a parsimonious booze buffoon. Every winter for thirty long years, they’d had the same argument, and it was now a sad joke. Sharon’s father had always used that line about the blanket too. His other favourite was to advise anyone in the house, Sharon’s mum and her two younger brothers, that if they wanted to get a job to pay for the electricity, they could go ahead and run the heaters until they toasted themselves. The ridiculous suggestion, birthed in a miserly heart, also carried a warning that if they did get jobs and had all the heaters running, he would have to get his gear off because it would be too bloody hot.

Sharon was wearing a thick blanket over her dressing gown, but Eddy hadn’t noticed. She felt she only partially existed these days; more like an invisible service provider than a wife. If she cooked, fetched his beer, and played wowie zowie with him once a week, she mattered. Otherwise, she was more an accessory than a person. A tear stung her right eye.

SAS Australia broke for an ad. Sharon hit mute on the remote control.

“Hey,” said Eddy.

“Hey,” said Sharon as she got up and walked off to the kitchen with the remote control in the pocket of her underperforming fleecy dressing gown. She left the blanket behind, knowing she would welcome the extra warmth when she returned to her seat.

Opening the fridge, Sharon took a can from the bottom shelf which Eddy had perpetually reserved for beer.

“Sharon!” called Eddy from his padded throne.

“I’m coming.”

“There’s someone outside. Go and have a look will ya love.”

Now he cares about a bit of noise outside. She should have left the sound running on the TV because it would have drowned out the outside conversation. It wasn’t unusual. They lived on the main road, a kilometre from the town centre which huddled around a train station, a pub, and a rundown mall. The mall had an open square which once might have glimmered as the cynosure of pride for town planners, but now served as an outdoor karaoke venue for a collection of societal misfits: the homeless and the drunks. She imagined Eddy sitting there with that crowd as they partied to the tunes of discontent and complaint. He’d fit right in.

She opened the front door, gasped with the shock of the frigid air. She was cold inside the house, chilled to the bone without the benevolence of a heater, but out there? Wow.

“Can you see them?” asked Eddy.

There was a group of people gathered on the nature strip, appearing like an amphorous blob as they congregated beneath dark beanies and thick overcoats. Even with all those heavy jackets and the inner glow of cheap wine, they must be cold. Sharon closed the door. Not my problem, she thought.

“Your show’s back,” said Eddy. “Are you going to turn the sound on?”

Sharon handed Eddy his beer, then moved towards the heater.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“I said to get a blanket.”

Instead of having another pointless argument, Sharon hit the mute button, collected the blanket, and sat down, pulling it tightly around her. At least she wasn’t outside.

“So,” said Eddy. “What about those lazy, good for nothings outside?”

“They’re outside,” she said. “They’re not doing any harm.”

“Not doing any harm?” Eddy moved, almost lifted his back off the recliner. “How about disturbing my peace?”

Sharon snatched the can from Eddy’s hand.

“Hey!”

“How about you stop disturbing my peace,” she said. “If I can’t have the heater on, at least shut the hell up so I can watch my show. You can’t even hear them out there.”

“I can feel them,” said Eddy. “They’re coming closer.”

“Don’t be so bloody ridiculous Eddy!”

He put his thumb and forefinger together, pressed them to his lips, zipped them up. He held out his hand, made “sorry” eyes at Sharon. He’d do anything for beer. How much would he do for her now? He used to say he would make sure she not only had everything she needed but also whatever she wanted. He made those promises on the back of a steady job and stingy habits. He kept his promise until he lost his job. She never knew how much work meant to him. More than just money, it was masculinity, and the Eddy who sat beside her on the lounge, had little of either commodity left. She relented, gave the shadow of her husband his beer.

“Sharon?”

“What now Eddy?”

He pointed at the bay window to the left of where they sat facing the television. “See that?” he said. “I told you they were coming closer.”

There were a couple of silhouettes shimmering behind the pull-down blind. Sharon stared for a moment trying to figure out what she was looking at. Her stomach tightened in an irrational response to a trick of light. That’s all it was. That’s what she told herself as she got up and walked towards the window. The trembling shapes looked like people, but they could have been anything. Her mouth was dry, heart beating faster, as she neared.

“Careful love,” said Eddy.

“Hush!” She turned to him, then back to the window but the shapes were gone. “Just an optical illusion.”

“Optical illusion,” said Eddy. “That’s fancy.”

Sharon walked back to the lounge, ignoring Eddy’s mocking tone, angry at herself for getting worked up over nothing. She shivered as she sat, rearranged the blanket around her.

“Are you sure?” said Eddy, pointing at the window.

“What?” Sharon turned around, stood, took a few steps forward then stumbled back. She screamed. “What is that?”

A thin, grey faced man wandered toward her, then walked through her, to take her seat on the lounge. She stood there, stunned and violated, unable to comprehend the feeling let alone articulate it. The man sat down heavily, despite his insubstantial appearance, then pulled the blanket tightly around his body, stared at the television.

“Eddy,” she said, as the frosty atmosphere chewed her skin. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

“Here comes another one.”

Sharon turned, her eyes blinking furiously as they tried to process the flickering image before her. A female shape. An unpleasant odour. The cold inside her biting deeper into her bones, she breathed a thick plume of air which hovered in front of her face. “Eddy?”

“Looks like they’re all coming in now,” said Eddy.

Four more people drifted through the walls and windows as though they weren’t there, floating across the floor: walking without touching it. They mumbled greetings but Sharon wasn’t sure who they were talking to. She shivered again, grabbed the blanket, pulling it from underneath the first wraith who had come in from the cold. She turned the heater on.

“Hey!” said Eddy.

“Hey!” said the man.

“Hey!” said the woman.

A chorus of heys followed, echoing around the room, taunting Eddy. His response manifested his impotence. “Hey!”

“Looks like you lost out on this one Eddy,” said Sharon.

Inexplicably, her fear melted as time passed and heat filled the room. More homeless ghosts drifted in, occupying all the available space, occasionally overlapping each other. Sharon concluded these must be friendly ghosts. They had not only not hurt her but had successfully silenced Eddy. The heater was running, and as her skin absorbed the warmth, she felt bold enough to reclaim her seat. When she sat on the man, he neither moved nor protested.

“It’s not what I expected love,” she said. “I thought we were dead. I thought we’d be frozen to death or ripped to shreds or strangled or something. I didn’t know ghosts could be so…what’s the word?”

Eddy waved an empty can in her face. The ghost with whom Sharon shared the lounge chair, grabbed the can, threw it over his head. “Hey!” said Eddy.

Sharon laughed.

Paralyzed, by the weird absurdity of the situation and the challenge to his authority, Eddy huffed loudly in his chair. Sharon watched him, wondering what he would do.

“I’ve had enough of this,” he said, suddenly standing: too quickly in fact, as he lost his balance and toppled back onto the chair. “Damn it! It’s not right.”

This caused the choir of “heys” to begin again which further angered Eddy. “I said that’s enough. Get out of my house. Get out!” He made several comical attempts to push them before going over to the heater and switching it off. One of the visitors, turned it back on again. Eddy pulled the plug out of the wall. “I said get out. You’re not staying here and you’re not using my electricity you bunch of good for nothing bludgers. Get the hell out. Ge-”

Eddy’s passionate eviction speech was cut short when he was struck in the head by a beer can. Almost recovered from the shock, Eddy started to speak again, but suffered another blow. Soon, a storm of empty cans pounded against Eddy driving him backwards, staggering and stumbling toward the kitchen. Sharon watched Eddy go, saw the ghosts following him. One opened the fridge and took a can out, offered it to Eddy, but as Eddy instinctively reached out his hand to accept it, the ghoul swung it against the side of Eddy’s head.

“Eddy!” cried Sharon. It had been funny when the cans were empty, but Eddy had crashed to the floor, blood flowing from a cut to his head. She went to help but had only made it a few steps when other ghosts holding full beer cans beat Eddy’s head to a pulp. “Eddy! No! Stop it!”

Finally, and mercifully the ghosts stopped, but the damage was done. Eddy lay slumped against the wall, lifeless. Sharon stared at him, then at the violent wraiths. She’d misjudged them, yet they made no moves to hurt her.

“Hey!” said one.

“Hey!” said another and soon they were all saying hey, in a wicked parody of her dead husband’s pathetic protests, as they began to exit slowly.

Sharon was sorry to see them go, but relieved at the same time. She looked at Eddy, realized she should call the police but wondered how she would explain what happened. She wandered into the living room, noticed SAS Australia was still running. She picked up her phone, stared at it, then looked at the TV. Wrapping the blanket around her for comfort more than warmth because the room was nicely heated now – cosy, just shy of toasty, she settled to watch the rest of the show. She glanced at her phone again, then put it down. It wouldn’t make any difference if she waited. Eddy wasn’t going anywhere.

Fiction © Copyright D.A. Cairns
Image by adriannesquick from Pixabay