Variations on a Theme Read online

  ~-o0O0o-~

  He almost complied, but he’d needed a large stiffener before leaving the house, and that had turned to two before he got out the door. He thought the walk round to their house would clear his head, but when Jane opened the door she took one look at him and shook her head sadly.

  “I knew I should have asked for the Cosmos to make you sober.”

  Dave thought about protesting, but she had already turned away from him in disgust, leaving him, to shut the door behind him. By the time he arrived in their kitchen Jane had already sat at the table. Maggie and Jim were already there nursing cups of coffee.

  I should have brought a bottle.

  Jane poured a coffee for him but he left it untouched in front of him.

  “So what’s the big emergency?”

  He looked over at Jane and realised he’d misjudged her tone -- misjudged it completely. It wasn’t fear or worry he saw on her face. It was joy. And Dave wasn’t sure he wanted to know the cause. He was even more sure when she spoke.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said. She smiled, and something inside Dave broke.

  “Congratulations,” he said, and lifted his coffee cup to hide his face -- he couldn’t let her see his disappointment.

  Jim looked like the cat that got the cream.

  “We’ve been trying for ages. I thought I was firing blanks but...”

  Jane took an envelope from a pocket and lauid it on the table.

  “I’m not quite sure how. But whatever we did last night, it worked.”

  Dave was too far lost in his disappointment to put up much of a fight.

  “That’s not possible...” he started, but Jim interrupted him.

  “That’s what I thought. But I got my envelope back this morning too. And when I got into the office, they gave me the news. You‘re looking at the new Vice President of sales for Europe.”

  Dave laughed.

  “You could have asked for anything in the whole Universe, and you opted for the keys to the executive lavatory?”

  Jim smiled.

  “Well, when you put it like that... but it’s ten grand a year more, and a whole load of fringe benefits and...”

  Jane stopped him with a hand on his arm.

  “The thing is Dave, it worked. For both of us.”

  “And what about you?” Dave said, looking at Maggie. “Did you get what you asked for?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “My post must be delayed. But I fully expect it any minute now. Are you sure you didn’t get anything?”

  Dave shook his head, afraid to repeat his earlier lie. He gripped his coffee cup tight.

  I really need a drink.

  It was Jane who made him show his hand.

  “Come on Dave. You’re hiding something. I know you too well.”

  I never could refuse you anything.

  He dug around in his pocket and dropped the torn fragments of paper on the table in front of him.

  “There,” he said. “Happy? I got the bloody envelope. But I can tell you know, I didn’t get my wish.”

  He saw that Maggie was looking at him with some concern.

  “That’s right,” he said bitterly. “And you want to know how I know? Because you are still here. You’re all still here.”

  Maggie went white.

  “What did you ask for Dave? What in God’s name did you ask for?”

  Dave started to rearrange the torn strips of paper in front of him. Finally he got the jigsaw of pieces together and slid them carefully across the table. Jane was still looking Dave in the eye, so it was Jim who bent over to read what was written there.

  “Dear Cosmos. Please just go away and leave me alone.”

  Jim poked at the papers with his finger.

  “And written in blood too by the looks of things.”

  Maggie looked like she might faint.

  “What have you done?”

  Dave laughed.

  “Done? I’ve done nothing. It’s all a load of old...”

  Jim stood back, a puzzled look on his face. Down on the table the scraps of paper were spinning slowly.

  “What is this?”

  The papers started to swirl faster, a chill wind rising in the confines of the dining area.

  “Maggie?” Jim said, puzzled. “Is this your doing?”

  She didn’t get time to to answer. All the lights in the house switched on at once, the bulbs getting steadily brighter and brighter, until, finally they all blew in a series of small explosions.

  Electric sparks ran across the light switches with a hiss, and smoke came as all the cabling up the walls burned.

  Everything fell suddenly dark. There was just enough streetlight coming in from outside for Dave to see three pale frightened faces across the table from him. Smoke from the burnt cabling drifted, like thin fog, across the room.

  Jim was the first to move. He stretched out a hand towards where the fragments of paper continued to swirl on the table top. His hand jerked, as if he’d touched a live wire and he was thrown across the room as if hit by a lorry. His body hit the far wall and fell to the floor, contorted and broken.

  Dave was still sitting, stunned, when Jane jumped out of her chair, heading for her husband.

  “Jane. No!" Dave shouted.

  He was too late. She bent, touched Jim’s body, and was thrown four feet backwards to crash into a doorframe with a too-loud crack. Dave knew before he looked that her eyes would show no more than a dead stare.

  Maggie and Dave looked across the table at each other dumbstruck. Maggie showed more gumption than Dave could manage. She took a white envelope from her pocket and thrust it at Dave.

  “Quick she said,” handing it to him. “There’s still time to reverse this.”

  Dave was watching the small vortex on the table top, the scraps of white paper, stained red where he had bled.

  It’s all my fault.

  He smashed his cup on the table.

  “It was me... my years of self pity, blaming the people round the table, anybody but myself. All that despair, focused into a moment's rage. That is what we have to undo... what I have to undo.”

  He raised his fist.

  “It was all my fault. I want what I deserve.”

  He banged his fist down on the table. A shard of broken cup sliced deep into the previous wound. He pulled the shard out, and blood pooled once more on the table.

  It was all my fault.

  He opened the envelope Maggie had given him. There was a single sheet of paper inside with a meticulously neat sentence written there.

  “Please Cosmos, I know he’s an arsehole, but I want Dave.”

  He looked over at Maggie.

  “Maybe later darling.”

  Dipping his finger in blood he wrote two words on the paper. Even as he did so the vortex started to spin faster. The wind rose to a howl that dragged loose cups and saucers across the table towards it. The spinning center became a coreolis whirl of smoke and paper scraps spiralling down to a black hole at the bottom.

  “Hurry,” Maggie said, coming round the table towards him, fighting all the way against the rising wind. She had to grab the table edge tight to shuffle her way round to him.

  “What did you write,” she said, having to shout above the wind which now roared like a jet engine. The table fell in on itself, wood cracking like the pop of an automatic pistol. Dave had to grab Maggie as she staggered and was almost drawn in to the inverted-cone funnel that danced across the floor, a tornado looking for something to suck.

  “What did you write!” she shouted again, more insistent.

  “Forget it,” he shouted back. He flung the paper forward and it was whisked away into the howling tornado. Then neither of them were able to talk. Despite all their efforts to pull away the spiralling vortex grew, sucked, and consumed them in an instant.

  Dave’s cosmos went away in a flash of white, then there was only blackness.

  ~-o0O0o-~

  Dave was getting roaring drunk. H
e wasn’t enjoying it, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that two of the other three people in the room were his best friends, and they were doing better than Dave was -- better at their jobs, better in their sex-lives, better at life.