The Cottage Door

The Cottage Door.

It was a raining outside, as Gillon could clearly see it hitting the window from which he observed his world. The pretty gardens, with their boxwoods arranged into perfect cones, the paths, raked with gravel so tediously to perfection; and the little cottage at the end of the courtyard. It was peculiar, with small little round windows, and only one door, which he knew was at the back. From the front a naive passerby would think the wood door with stone steps at the front to be the entry; but it was not. The front was cascaded over by a single planting of a climbing rose.
Once, he had been out there, with his violin, playing it while seated on the bench in the tiny little yard of the cottage. Dan, the gardner had approached. Dan was the gardener stereotype, Dark hair, tanned arms and rough hands. His dark hair glistened with it's strands of sterling grey. Dan commented that he didn't wish to disturb Gillon, simply he came to fertilize the plants with some dryed blood. Of course Gillon didn't mind this, He just kept practicing with the little wood thing cradled carefully under his chin. The roses had grown tall that summer, climbing their way across the aged grey of the cottage walls. Soon the
scraping of the shovel on the roots of nearby bushes and ancient bricks hidden in the dirt bothered Gillon somuch that he, in some fit of annoyance took to the back of the little manor. The back was neglected. No fancy gardens, no trees, no fine grasses. Just wild untamed weeds trimmed now and then, maybe once or twice a year, by the mower and the sun. No care was taken to tend it; as it would only cost Gillon's father more money, and noone really ever stayed in the empty guest house at all anyhow.
The backyard offered Gillon a certain sense of solace, wildness and refuge. It was here, that inside the backyard of his father's house that he could be securely safe, and yet a million miles away from his own life of lies for order. He often came here, to ocassionally steal a ciggarette. He had started the horrible
addiction while still in middle school. If his father had ever been concerned as to where Gillon was, he would only have had to walk behind the cottage to see Gillon with his left hand down the back of his pants and his right hand limply helping him to suckle the ciggarette to his lips as he leaned against the bloodred brick. But Gillon's father always was preoccupied with work, papers, or to what Gillon jokingly called "Briefing Sessions," when Dan and Mr. Kosovic would dissapear for an hour or two. Mrs Kosovic often fussed and nagged her husband about having drinks with the help. He did not care, or did not seem to, since Gillonnoticed the meetings occured more frequently.
Gillon now shifted on his bed. The rain was hitting the window more now, as if a vengeful wind wished to break the glass with the shattering of rain against it. Gillon had been eighteen that summer. It was his first love he took there. Named Emily, she had been stalwart, equally busty, and sassy like no other he had ever known. So when she told him she was "ready" he of course didn't mind. He was eager. The day drew closer though, and Emily grew more and more anxious to take Gillon inside of her arms. Gillon was not afraid to do the act, rather he thought it more of an extension to his already oversexed imagination.
Gillon had led her there by her arm, since his mother was in bed with the flu. It was customary, he thought, to romance her first by caresses and kisses and promises he knew he would not keep. He did it well, keeping her mind at ease and feeding her body's appetite for physical intimacy with brushes of his hands and kisses on her neck. She would never admit she wanted it; she wasn't the sort of girl who admitted it. She hid it, by brushing his hands off her breasts, and placing them on her back or her shoulders. She did desire the breath of his mouth on the nape of her neck, and his honeyed voice to whisper things she couldn't understand because of anxious nervousness. And he did, and did it well. Telling her that she was his first, she was the most beautiful of created things, and that she reminded him of tasting paradise.
Dan had noticed the two dissapear through the yard as he was trimming the camillia bushes, and he followed, then watched from the window, alarmed that two adolescents would dare take such length to commit the act. He was alarmed; it was near five o'clock, and Gillon's father would be home. Emily noticed a shadow in one of the round windows partially covered by vines of roses. She immediattly iced over, and it become immediate to Gillon when his lips felt the goosebumps arise along her spine. "Go see," she had said. So he got up, pulled on a displaced shirt, and went out the door. Emily waited.
A car pulled into the driveway, Gillon's father at the wheel. Dan ran to the garage to buy the boy some time. Dan understood the need of privacy for such affairs, and after all, he had been young once. He commented to Mr. Koskovic about the weather, stock, and that Mrs. Koskovic was doing much better this afternoon.
Gillon walked around the back, buttoning up his shirt. Emily huddled down beside the bed, on the floor away from the window, hoping not to be caught. Something like this getting to her mother could result in packed bags and christian school.
Mr. Koskovic asked Dan to help him with some litigation files from the trunk, and so Dan was obliged to be relieved of his duty to buy time for Gillon- if Gillon was old enough to have relations, he was old enough to cover his tracks.
Gillon huddled down into a corner flowerbed of a tall cedar tree when he saw the robed figure bent, looking in the window. A burglar! He thought, immediatly running back to the back door of the cottage. He needed a weapon, and nothing would be found. All that could be used was a few rocks left over from the spring's task of edging the flowerbeds. He picked a three pounder up, and silently hunkered in the shadows. The figure moved to the front door, which at that time had been a real door. The figure was hard to recognize through the cedar from which he hid behind. At the right moment, he placed his soul there, in the bed of roses and cedar.
Emily waited, and in her carelessness had chosen to daydream of the moment when he would come back, and take her, claiming that she was his forever more, just as in the movies. She awoke to shrieks of distress outside. She quickly stood up and thinking it to be coming from inside the cottage, she ran out the front door. Pushing the door open took more effort than usual, and after she had rammed into it a few times she finally lunged out onto the steps on which she slipped from water or something being on them. She must have hit her head, because she blacked out and henceforth would never recall anything that was to take place.
Dan dropped his box on the cementfloor in the garage. Mr. Kosovic had just hopped back into the car, and drove back to the office, since he had realized he had left an important paper in there. He had cranked the mercedes and promised to be back as soon as possible. Dan ran to the backyard, where he found a robed figure covered in blood and topless Emily Durham lying silent, blacked out, her legs covered in the blood as well.
Gillon rose off the bed in his room. He began walking to the window as he visualized her taut body lying in mangled form in the puddle beside the robed figure. Lightening flashes. How he wished he could forget. All of it. The whole affair. The rain is letting up a bit, but the storm has not. He recalls what Dan had said that day.
"We have to get rid of the body!" They had both agreed and while Gillon dug a hole in the backyard, Dan took the rock and slammed it into poor Emily's head. She should have bled more, but when they dropped her in the shallow hole her face looked as radiant as it had when Gillon had been kissing it and unhooked her bra, allowing her breasts to fall with a small bounce.
Just as they started the fire and changed clothes, tossing their old ones on the heap, Mr Koskovik pulled in, and carried his daily sixpack box and put it in the trash. Then he stumbled inside, only to pass out in his favorite chair, leaving the door wide open and not once going to check on his wife.
Now, Gillon opened the window, letting the rain drizzle in through the screen. He tried to see through it to the cottage. The door they had bricked up, in a bit of panic and revenge. His dad had become even more of a beer connoisseur than before he claimed his wife left him. Often, through tears, Mr Koskovik recalled the day his wife lyed about having the flu and left him. That same day, when Mr Koskovic was passed out, Dan had his way with Gillon beside the fire they built to burn their bloody and muddy clothes. Mr Koskovic didn't know this much of the story, as his missing wife was all he cared for anymore. Gillon now and then went back to the backyard, glancing at the ever dissapearing firescar in the ground, and the mound at the edge of the property where he there laid three bodies. It was now covered in mulch, a pile he and Dan had placed there. Gillon never did forgive Dan for stealing from him in a moment of fear what he had wanted to give and get from Emily. Dan threatened him and said he would tell Mr Kosovik everything if Gillon ever spoke a word or implied the hidden character of Dan's sexual appetite.
Gillon stepped away from the window and packed his final boxes for college. Placing two roses in a shoe box that contained a pure, clean white bra. He never spoke of those times to his father.
Mr Koskovik never thought it strange that on Gillon's first spring break back home that Dan would request that Gillon help him spread the mulch from the pile with a tone of certain urgency. Mr Koskovik took to his beers and waited for them to come back from the backyard. He wasn't alarmed when Gillon, the most honest person he knew told him that halfway through the process of piling the mulch, Dan had suddenly revealed a secret desire to him. "Dan said hes wanted to quit for a long time now, and so he couldn't tell you, dad, because he was too ashamed since he's worked for you so long and all."
Mr Koskovik cryed at this news, taking his son into his arms. "Dad, he left right then, and said he'd not be coming back here. Ever." Mr Koskovik was too drunk to assess the lie. And too hungover the next morning to see the mulch pile had only gotten plumper instead of smaller, as it should have. He dismissed it, and went to bleach the bloody work clothes of Gillon. "Poor Gillon" he thought, who had explained that rose thorns from the beds had dug through his back and caused the release of so much blood. He half doubted the story. He knew everyone has certain lies they have to tell. And today he missed his lover, who had just dissapeared out of his life the day before. Dan would surely never tell anyone of their nights together, any such thing would cause his career to fall. No, Dan was the wandering type, he was surely far from here by now. He thought to his wife, whom knew the entire marriage but stayed for her son's sake. Why did everyone he love go away? Gillon is all I have, he thought to himself. With that, Mr Koskovik rewarded himself of completing the task of laundry duty by popping open another can of beer.
As for Gillon, He comes home from college and always avoids the cottage now, and the memories hit him often when he's in his room at home, and he always ends up staring through the rain at the cottage from the window, from where he can barely see the mound next to the mulch pile that grows more weeds to cover it with every year that passes.