'Gin and Tonic'

'Gin & Tonic'

By Graeme Keeton

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Meet Joni Hart.

Joni Hart's lecture theatre is on the top floor of the university, at the end of a long corridor, whose only other visitors out of hours are the occasional cleaners, who might give the place a quick once-over every other Friday evening.  It is high and faces west, which suits Joni just fine, since once it passes around 3:30pm she gets the room, and the afternoon sun all to herself  until she leaves at around 7:30pm.

It is a Friday in late July. Joni opens two of the large windows near her desk to let the breeze in, as she reads over a set of notes from a previous class. She turns on a radio she keeps on the windowsill; it's Vincent by Don McClean, one of her favourite songs.  She turns around and begins to walk back to her seat, raising an eyebrow at some questionable essay.

“You always did love this song.”

Joni clutches the paper to her chest in fearful surprise. Stood wiping the odd letter from the blackboard at the front of the theatre, is a man wearing a weathered denim jacket. He looks to be approaching forty, he is handsome with short, dark curly hair, but, like the rest of his clothing his expression is mute.
Still gripping the paper tightly, Joni appears to be frozen to the spot, her eyes frantically looking this strange man up and down with equal measures of panic and excitement. He begins walking towards her, and like two wrong ends on a pair of magnets, Joni jerks backwards towards the window.

He holds his hands out and looks around the room, “Ten years. The last time we were in this room together was ten years ago.”

Joni reaches for the ledge and stops, pulling her shoulders backwards. He approaches her and stops  just a few inches from her face. He places his hand on the radio and turns it up a few clicks. He is considerably taller than Joni, and as he turns his head back towards her, she grabs both sides of his face and kisses him repeatedly. Now, with her arms anchored around the back of his neck, she places her head on his shoulder and lets out a sigh that quickly turns into a sob.

“Jesus, Raymond!” is about all Joni can muster, before he picks her up and sets her down again gently on the ledge. Kissing her on the forehead, he places both hands on her shoulders. He pushes her out of the window.

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The Funeral Speech.

“My daughter, Joni, was remarkable in a lot of different ways, and she mattered deeply to a great many people. A teacher of the English language for almost half of her life, her students had utilised what she had taught them to talk their way into some of the country's most well-respected jobs. Teachers in our local primary schools and at Joni's own university, had been taught and supported by her for years.

She was a good person, but, like most, she had her vice. My Joni was fixated with Raymond Doppler, the 'Painter'. When he went to jail, she collected every single piece of news on him that she could find. She became obsessed with him! It cost Joni her marriage! Her two beautiful daughters suffered, and now that bastard has escaped! I can only be grateful that we were able to recover her before he could...”

Choking up with rage, Joni's father, Leonard, leans heavily on the podium, trying to compose himself.

Although meticulous enough to never make any of his crimes entirely traceable, and with a total of  twenty-three murders spanning five years, Raymond Doppler was eventually convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Known as the 'Painter', no bodies were never retrieved, but skulls, stripped, cleaned and intricately painted, were found stored in the basement of Doppler's home.

Doppler never offered any explanation during the ten years he was imprisoned, and yet, until the time that he escaped, Joni had kept careful records of his handiwork. She had multiple copies of police photographs, and she would talk about him at length to anyone who would listen.

“Joni leaves behind two of the scientific community's greatest young minds; her twin geniuses, Penny and Paisley. As you all know, the brains inside these two can do things that most of us probably can't even comprehend. I remember how as pre-teens, they had cured the cat of its kidney stones using a homemade ultrasound machine. I never really understood then, and I continue to be baffled by them now, but I was always proud, and so was their mother.

My girls have done a lot for this world, and so I would like to invite you to join me, in supporting the two that we still have left; Gin and Tonic, my Joni's finest achievement. ”

A distiller for most of his life, Penny and Paisley's grandfather, a widower of almost ten years, had nicknamed the pair 'Gin' and 'Tonic', both for their complex and vivacious personalities and because of how remarkable they were together.

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The Prior Projector.

There is a loud 'BANG' as the lecture theatre doors shunt open, and the sound echoes off of the walls and empty seats. Penny and Paisley enter, pushing a super 8 projector on a rickety-wheeled trolley. The only difference between this projector, however, and the one which their grandfather had used to show them films of Joni as a child, was that theirs did not require any tapes. It was not even necessary for the event to have been recorded at all. Developed with some trepidation over the past few years, the Prior Projector could potentially act as a window into the past. Restricted by a lack of sound and by whatever the user was pointing the machine at, it was, nonetheless, Gin and Tonic's most incredible invention to date.

“How safe is this?” asks Penny, half whispering, “Those people don't need two of grandad's speeches in as many days.”

Paisley jiggles a loose bolt attached to a folding framework at the front of the trolley: “I'm sure it's fine! It's probably fine, it's just a little dangerous. It's not dangerous at all, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Please, just calm down.”

“I want to know for sure that it was him, too, I just -”

“I know” says Paisley, “Come on, let's set up the frame.”

In theory, the Prior Projector creates a fragile window into the past by means of an electrified membrane, stretched over a frame, which is then pointed at the desired location. The higher the voltage, the further back in time the window can reach. So far, the projector has allowed just a three minute window, seven hours into the past. It has been over twenty-four hours since Joni was murdered.

Penny goes quiet as they begin to unfold and bolt together a thin steel frame, that sticks out about two feet in front of the projector. Fumbling slightly, with a bundle of trailing wires between her lips, Paisley asks:

“Why would he kill her? I mean, we know that she kept all of that weird shit, and that she wrote him letters all the time, which, by the way, was horrendously inappropriate, but...”

Penny doesn't stop working, “She wasn't herself for a long time. It's why dad left. I doubt that Doppler had a more substantial reason other than he knew she'd be here when he got out.”

“They didn't even know each other, Penny. They never met. She knew about as much of him as everyone else did, before she started her collections.”

“Let's just start with this. Are you ready? It was that window there.”

Gingerly turning the whole assembly around to face the window, which had been criss-crossed with police tape, they stretch a transparent membrane across the corners of, and attach a set of wires to either side of the frame. They edge backwards, stepping slowly behind the projector.

“Twenty-eight hours ago...” puzzles Paisley. “60% power?”

“That's what the maths says, but I don't think anyone's ever done this before.”

Paisley clicks on the projector and the reels begin to turn. The powerful light bulb flickers on, illuminating the membrane, which appears to be made from some kind of clear gelatin, riddled with tiny air bubbles. She turns a dial, increasing the voltage to the frame, and as it begins to hum, outside the window, where it had just been night, quickly fades into a late afternoon sunshine.

“It worked...” they whisper, simultaneously.

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Discovery.

“I don't see them, Pen. What if this isn't the right time?”

The window is holding, and they have been watching for over five minutes, the sound of the wind matching the curtain in the projector's window almost perfectly. Suddenly, a dark blur flicks across the left side of the window.

“What was that!?” snaps Penny, darting over to the frame in a vain attempt to see beyond the edge of the window, like a child trying to see the off-screen action on a television screen.

“Spin it around!”

Taking one side of the trolley each, the scene in the window flickers as they swing it around slowly towards the desk. It is Joni. All the way to the first row of seats the floor is lined with a heavy plastic sheet. The desk has been moved forward and now sits at an angle, revealing a trapdoor in the old wooden floorboards. Joni picks up a cumbersome black bag and carries it down through the hole in the floor.

“What is she doing?” asks Penny. “She never said that there was something under there. It must be a room between floors.”

Nearby, are several other bags of various sizes and shapes, all bundled together.

“One of those bags is open, slightly, Paisley.”

“Look! She's coming back...”

Joni returns to the pile and appears to notice the open bag. Bunching up a corner in each hand, the contents are briefly revealed – a third hand. A human hand.

“What the fuck is that, Penny!?”

Penny does not reply. The membrane splits and the view through the window is lost.

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Between Floors.

Within seconds of losing the window, Paisley is at the far end of the heavy wooden desk, trying frantically to tug it out of the way.

“Help me move this! This has to be a mistake!”

Penny grabs a leg at the same end, and together, they edge and scrape the desk across the floor, revealing the faint, gapped outline of a trapdoor. The scraping and shuffling stops, and the only sound left is that of the projector's reels slowly ticking around.  The light bulb that had faded through the gelatin membrane onto the desk, now caught every particle of dust, stirred by the shunted desk. Neither twin moves an inch.

A brief glance at each other, before Penny kneels down and clasps her fingers underneath a small golden handle. She lifts the door open.

“It's too dark. Can you see a light switch anywhere?”

“Here.” Paisley wheels the projector over, tilting it forwards so that the bulb shines straight into the hole.

A small set of steps lead down into a shallow room, just a few meters from wall to wall. Hesitantly,  they edge their way down, Paisley first, followed by Penny, who first wipes the dust from her knees. Piled either side of a makeshift walkway are dozens of tightly sealed black bags, all lumped around each other and peaked with pointed edges. There is little odour, just old wood and perhaps a little ammonia.

“These are the bags we saw her bringing down here.” says Penny.

Paisley holds her hands out, palms facing downwards, “She looked younger. At least ten years younger.”

“What are you doing?” Paisley turns around to see Penny untying one of the bags nearest the opening.

“There was a hand in that bag, we saw it. If these bags are what we think, then-”

She jolts backwards, covering her mouth with her elbow to muffle a scream. A skeletal hand with an entire arm attached, and another, each bone clean and without any apparent damage.

Paisley takes a bag and tears it open; an intact spine and ribcage. Femurs, feet, hand and spine after spine, they tear open every single bag in a near-blind panic.
“There are no skulls here.” snaps Penny, her heart in her throat. “I have to get out.”

She scrambles back up the stairs and immediately bursts into tears, she wants to vomit but her body seems incapable. Paisley follows, quickly wiping her nose on her sleeve.

“Get up. Help me put the desk back.”

Penny gets up, and in just a fraction of the time it took them to move it out, the desk is back in place, having slammed the trapdoor shut on its way back.
Pushing the projector back and rearranging it to point at the desk, Penny then begins hunting through a large duffel bag.

“Help me set up a new membrane. This is not happening!”

Pulling out a silver tin, she rips off the lid and throws the bottom half onto the floor. Just like before, they stretch the membrane from corner to corner, and within seconds of rewiring the frame, are back behind the projector. Paisley turns the dial, and an image begins to appear through the window.

“That's Doppler” says Paisley. “He looks like he's panicking.”

“What is he doing there? Mum said that the two of them never met.”

Doppler appears to be talking to someone not viewable through the window. Whoever it was, would have been stood just behind the projector, right next to the twins. His gaze pans to the left, and then into view walks Joni, she is holding a human skull which she places down carefully on her desk. She takes out a paintbrush from one of the drawers and begins spinning the skull, inspecting it. She tilts it backwards and uses the brush to wipe away some specks of dust from around the nasal cavity. Doppler is clearly distressed, pacing in a tight line in front of her.

Paisley places the back of her hand over her mouth, “It's not him. It's her. She's the Painter.”

Penny turns off the projector.

--------

The Painter's Assistant.

“He wanted revenge. For some reason, he ended up in jail instead of her, and so he came straight here to kill her, knowing that she'd be on her own.” Penny paces back and forth before sitting down in the front row of seats. She continues:

“The police must know that it was him. No-one sent him fan mail quite like mum did. So what's his plan?”

Paisley pauses...”He's coming for us. He knows that they'll catch him, and there's still no proof that he isn't the Painter. You think he believes in us to turn over our own mother, who he just killed?”

“He knows us, though. What we're capable of, I mean. He won't come for us until he's done as much damage as possible.”

“Grandad!” exclaims Penny. “Tomorrow is Sunday, he visits his distillery on Sunday mornings. You think Doppler knows?”

“She could've told him a lot of things while he was inside, Pen.  We need to send grandad somewhere else.”

The next morning at around 6:30am, approximately seven hours after leaving the university, Penny and Paisley arrive at their grandfather's house.  Every Sunday since their grandmother died, he has driven to his distillery and spent almost the entire day there. Somewhat isolated, it was a welcome sanctuary for a thinking man such as himself; an important figure at the centre of four remarkable women's lives.

Penny knocks on the door, and after a quick peek through the window, he appears:

“Morning girls. A little early, don't you think? I was just getting ready to leave.”

“About that, grandad,” Paisley interrupts, “We think that now would be a good time for you to perhaps introduce something a little different into your routine.”

Penny continues, “Yeah! The geriatric theatre is down by the river this morning. Sloe drips that make you feel better about yourself, it's pretty much the same thing as gin distilling!”

He sighs heavily, “You're right. Not about the geriatrics, they try their best, but about me. Maybe it's time for something new.”

“Great! It starts at 9:00am, so you've plenty of time to work on your heckling!”

They head back to the car and set off  towards the distillery. When they arrive the sky is still a mixture of dusty orange and pastel blue, and nothing is quite bright enough to see properly yet. They park the car out of sight and go in through the back using the spare key their grandfather had given them.

Nothing was out of place, and although the distillery was old, each piece of steel machinery looked almost brand new, thanks to religious weekly cleaning.  Leonard only distilled larger quantities around Christmas time nowadays, but the smell of juniper and sloes lingered year round. He spent close to thirty-five years here, every single day, and as a result, never felt the need to wear aftershave.

A second car pulls up outside, leaving them little time to look around. A man steps out.

“That's him, Paisley! Quick, behind here!”

They both duck behind a large cylindrical tank. Doppler approaches the same back door, and, realising that it is unlocked, draws a gun from inside of his jacket. He creeps inside, keeping his back against the wall. He rounds a corner away from them, but as Paisley moves to see around the tank, the zip on her jacket clinks and scrapes along the side, the massive hollow innards amplifying the sound. Doppler spins around and points the gun straight at the tank. Penny takes out a small, bronze remote control from her pocket.

Paisley shakes her head, whispering, “Not yet. He needs to be closer.”

Penny taps on the tank, causing Doppler to leap forward to within three feet of them; aiming and about to shoot, Penny presses the button and he slows to a near stop, as though he were moving through heavy syrup.

“Woah! What?”

Penny holds up the device, “It's temporary! It'll wear off in ten minutes.”

“You know who we are, don't you?” asks Paisley. “You killed our mother.”

“Your mother was not who you think!”

“We know that it was her!”

Still moving through his original trajectory, his words are a struggle, “What? Why would she tell you?”

“She didn't” replies Penny.

Paisley continues, “It doesn't matter now. We just want to know why. Why was she collecting skulls? Why was she painting them, and how do you end up in jail instead of her?”

“Your mother was delusional! She painted part of a code into each of those skulls, which she believed was the key to some stupid secret! She would never explain to me what it was, I just liked her! I let her keep them at my house. I didn't know she was killing people to get them until later on. That's when they took me in. They found the skulls. I didn't stand a chance. Nobody knew that we were seeing each other.”

Still clutching the remote, Penny asks, “The police kept hold of all of those skulls, didn't they?”

“Yeah, probably. Jesus! What's happening to me?”

“It's a trade secret, but we've got to go.  The police are on their way.”

Making a quick exit, they cross a police car on their way back into town.

“We need those skulls, Paisley. She killed a lot of innocent people, and we should at least try and find out why.”

End.