Chaos Intrepid: In Her Shoes

Prompt the Third: Here Comes the Baker

Meet Chaos Intrepid, Blogger

The headline glared across the screen, size twenty-four cambria letting declaring:

Lawyer Dead in Apparent Murder, Girlfriend Brutalised

Something about it... Chaos frowned, his grey eyes reflecting the glow of his computer, and sat back in his seat. With deft movements, the kind that only arise when a motion has become so ingrained that the whole act is unconscious, he opened the left drawer, drew out paper, filter and tobacco, rolled the three into a slender cigarette and lifted it to his lips.

Murder. Girlfriend. Brutalised.

His eyes flicked between the words. They stewed together, blurred and bruised into one large black scrawl on bright white. He willed them to make more sense... because something lurked behind them, he just wasn’t sure what.

His gaze drooped to the bullet point subtitles that the Mail always provided:

•          Jacob Harris, 26, and Mathilda Lythwaite, 24, discovered locked inside Bayswater flat.
•          Mr Harris was found hanging by the neck, and was pronounced dead-at-the-scene.
•          Miss Lythwaite was rescued by Mr Harris’ cop twin.
•          Police say the crime is ‘likely’ to relate to Mr Harris’ profession as a barrister’s pupil.
•          Police have taken neighbour for ‘informal’ questioning.

Surprisingly lacking in sensationalism, he ticked over the information with each inhalation of smoke. He loved the swill of tobacoo smoke, the lingering smell that clung to his clothes and breath, burned in his lungs and throat until he remembered that he was alive. Stretching his long arms above his head, he found a pen tucked behind his ear, slightly tangled in his too-long curls. He tugged, twice, and gave an exasperated sigh.

There was no point in this. He couldn’t fit the clues together. And when he’d tried to enter the apartment complex where the crime took place, he’d quickly found himself turfed on his butt. Or rather, he was turfed out after one of the neighbours raised the attention of the police, pointing and wagging their bony fingers at the stranger whose clear ethic background meant he couldn’t possibly have been a resident, no matter how expensive that signet ring was (it cost less than a tenner but was worth several additional zeroes, which he only found out when he went to Sotheby’s that one time...) or how British his accent sounded.

“Murder...” He mused aloud, sotto voce, in the way that his father spoke aloud. The murder seemed so unremarkable – death by hanging. But the girl... why target her at all? She was pretty, but nothing special...

Scratching his head, no doubt mussing the dark curls even further, he stubbed out the blunt and instantly his hands were busy rolling the next.

What to type on his blog as well? How could he spin a hunch over something he couldnt’ quite formulate, something he didn’t fully understand. He needed to see the scene. He let out a sigh. Hell, he needed a better headline too. The lawyer was probably the place to start – after all the girl didn’t die, or hadn’t yet. He wondered what happened to her. Brutalised. That was a strong word. When the screen scrolled passed the headline, he could tell they were a beautiful couple: Harris was the kind of guy who probably played rugby at school but never broke a bone; and her... Mathilda.. She wasn’t the normal sort of pretty: too soft, too short, too focused on everything to be anything less than intimating. And that was a photo.

No wonder she didn’t die.

A buzzing interrupted Chaos’ thoughts with a blast of the Lumberjack Song. His father was calling. Again He let it ring and ring until he could bare the incessant drone no more.

“Father.”

“Mother actually.”

“I guessed from your voice actually.” He replied.

“You know we expect you home on Friday.”

“Yeah.”

.Silence stole into the cracks between them, the fissures incurred purely through subborness. He and his mother had a list of taboos. More of them was talking in monosyllables. Not that the woman on the other end of the phone really paid attention when she was so convinced he needed a woman and needed a real job and all the rest of that Blah Blah she spewed in her affected English.

"So you will be here.”

“No.”

“Your father –”

“Will be a right git, as usual. Patronise the cripple, pay respect to the dead, we must always remember Soraya. Whatever madar.”

“It is the anniversary -”

Without raising his voice, he enunciated each word: “And still, I will not be there.”

He clenched the cool phone in his hand a little tighter as he heard her begin to natter in half-remembered Persian phrases. Almost all his genes seemed to be his mother’s, from his olive skin to his bone-structure and the propensity toward laughter. He received much, but not the strange, gibberish language that supposed poured all over twitter.

“If the asshole wants me there, tell him to call me.”

He placed the receiver gently down. Mood soured curiousity forgotten, he went to stand up and immediate collapsed again. The only thing from his father beside the greyness of his dark eyes was the politeness – a habit he couldn’t and wasn’t sure if he wanted.

Things were becoming morose and he hated morose. He needed a coffee.

Pushing back the chair, he moved to leave the screen, the sudden influx of incensed Madar.

And he landed smack on the floor. Tall and skinny, he landed, yelped, and his missing leg throbbed, only alleviated by the warmth of his rough skin against the cool tiles.

From the floor, the stick of smoke became acrid, full of flame; his skin prickled with heat remembered far too well; his gaunt frame shuddered in remembered pain.

Murder. Apparent. Girlfriend. He resurrected the words, clung to them as a liferaft. Lapsing into a silence only broken by the raggedness of his breath, Chaos Intrepid trembled on the floor.

Word Count: 1,009.