Daliso Chaponda is an African standup comedian and freelance writer based in England. He has published stories and poetry in magazines and newspapers like The Malawi Times, Apex Digest and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. -1-
Jonathan could not believe that his wife had just killed him. It did not make sense. Incredulously, he watched as Pippa used a pair of scissors to slice the gloves she had been wearing into small pieces. She then walked into the study and scanned the room, making sure that everything was in order. She smiled.
Bitch, Jonathan thought to himself. Calculating, villainous, bitch! How long has she been planning to kill me?
He dredged through his memory, searching for any changes in her behaviour towards him. He could find none. The way Pippa killed him was also surprising. She was very squeamish about violence. Unless her fear of violence was a ploy to throw me off! No, that’s ridiculous. But how could he be sure of anything now? He had thought she loved him and yet she had brutally stabbed him in the neck with a fountain pen. He had to commend her for that. There was a definite irony in her choice of murder weapon. Because he was a writer, his meeting his end at nib-point was apt. He wondered if she had intended it that way. Maybe she was delivering a message by her choice of murder weapon? Had she been driven to murder because he paid more attention to his writing than to her?
He dismissed this idea immediately. It was preposterous. His writing had always been second to Pippa. He always made time for her. A few months earlier, when Pippa had become ill Jonathan had stopped writing altogether. When the doctors made a pessimistic diagnosis he had become her nurse: bringing her food; mopping up her vomit; renting her movies; spending afternoons talking to her. He had done everything he could because he had been terrified that she was going to die. He had been sure that their love had grown during her illness. He recalled Pippa whispering through lips coated with blood and mucus, “What did I ever do to deserve you?”
What a hypocritical bitch! Enraged, Jonathan charged out of his study and leapt up the stairs. He stormed into the bedroom and, on seeing Pippa, flung himself at her. He went right through her, the wall, and sailed through the air until he ran out of momentum. He landed flat on the floor and when he opened his eyes he beheld a curved white surface. His eyes were just above a waterline. He realised where he was. He was in the bathroom and his head was in the toilet-bowl.
He rose immediately. His face was not wet but he still felt as though God, Lady Luck, or some equally qualified being was enjoying his plight. He should have known he could not affect Pippa physically. He looked down and realised he did not have a body any more. He was some sort of gaseous fog. But he remembered running up the stairs with legs?
As he thought of legs, suddenly he had legs.
“Oh, I get it,” Jonathan said aloud.
Jonathan concentrated and gradually the rest of the gas morphed into arms and a torso. He was curious how well he had recreated his face and looked in the mirror. He had no reflection.
Damn. I have to get used to the idea that I’m a ghost. And if I’m going to have revenge on Pippa, it won’t be in any conventional way. He thought for a few moments. I’ll haunt her until she goes insane.
He walked back into the bedroom and screamed, “Boo!” at the top of his voice. Pippa did not react. That clearly didn’t work.
Pippa was kneeling on the floor sifting through a pile of papers. What the hell is she doing? Jonathan wondered. He leaned forward and inspected the papers. They were his story drafts. “So, not only do you kill me but you’re going to desecrate my art. You heartless, flat-chested guttersnipe!” Unfortunately she could not hear this colourful insult.
Jonathan watched her in silence, attempting to figure out what she was doing. After a minute or two, she shouted in delight. “There you are!” Pippa reached forward but then stopped. She rose and walked to the bed. Jonathan leaned over the scattered papers and looked at what she had just found. It was a page from a story he had been writing a couple of weeks ago. It was not very good and he hadn’t submitted it to any magazines. He felt it needed a few re-writes. Pippa was the only person he had shown it to. He read from the top of the page.
“It is with great difficulty that I try to find the right words. I am writing this letter because my life us no longer worth living...” It dawned on Jonathan what she was doing.
Pippa returned with her hand wrapped by a pillow case. She picked up the note and then walked back down stairs. She put the note on his desk then she did something very strange. Earlier she had taken pains not to touch anything in the room. Now she invalidated her earlier efforts. Putting aside the pillow-case she began touching Jonathan’s corpse. She touched the neck then knelt in the blood. Finally, she walked to the telephone and dialled 911. When someone picked it up, Pippa proceeded to prove that the dramatic talent she had exhibited in high school performances of The Crucible had not faded. She launched into hysterics; gasping and screaming. “He’s dead! Oh my God! Please, help me! He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s dead...” This continued for an extended period after which Pippa told the police -- pausing repeatedly to scream and wail -- the address of their house. She then hung up, relaxed and smiled with self-satisfaction.
Jonathan’s mouth fell open in astonishment. What had triggered this? What could I have done to incite such savage retribution? Jonathan had cheated on Pippa two years earlier with a girl called Martha who was in a creative writing class he taught at Concordia University. It had initially been a purely flirtatious relationship but one evening it became more. After sleeping with Martha that one time he had broken it off and confessed to Pippa. He considered this as a motive for her murdering him. That couldn’t be it. That had been two years ago. Why would she have waited? He must have done something recently, but all his recent memories…
The doorbell rang.
-2-
Jonathan walked to the front door. It was the police. Pippa’s phone performance had been a mere prelude of things to come. She threw herself at one policeman, wailing and beating her fists against his chest.
After a few disoriented moments he stuttered, “T…take it easy Miss. Take it easy.” The policeman was a tall corpulent man with a dishevelled mop of auburn hair and a face characterised by a constellation of freckles and coarse stubble. Presently, his expression was one of bewilderment. It took a few moments for him to compose himself. “It will all be all right. I promise.”
He signalled a policeman behind him who escorted her to a car in the driveway. He entered the house with two other officers. Jonathan decided not to follow Pippa, staying instead with the policemen.
They will figure it out, Jonathan thought. Because he wrote crime novels, Jonathan often researched crime and one thing his studies had told him was that it was almost impossible to commit a perfect crime. Pippa had left many loose ends. Jonathan watched, but as time passed his dismay increased. For the next half an hour, the policemen stumbled straight into the web Pippa had spun. On reading the excerpt from his story one of them exclaimed, “Lester check this out.”
“Suicide note?”
“Yep.”
“What a way to do it. I wouldn’t think that a person would have the will power to stab themselves in the neck with a knife, let alone a blunt object. It’s pretty sharp edged. I think its one of those calligraphy jobs but it’s still a fountain pen.”
“You’re right, though what are the other options. That someone came in and attacked him with a fountain pen. As for the will power thing, Gauguin, or was it Van Gogh, cut off his own ear to give to a prostitute”
“It was Van Gogh, and that prostitute story is a myth,” Lester replied. “He had severe migraines and he cut off his ear in an attempt to stop the pain.”
“Bet that didn’t work. Maybe this dude was in pain killed himself to stop the pain.”
“That sound’s pretty far fetched but I can’t say for sure until an autopsy is done.”
Is that it? Surely they will check the wound and say something like, ‘The angle of entry does not indicate self infliction.’ Come on.
Instead, the words that broke the silence were spoken by the third policeman. He had been checking the living room. “I found something.”
“What Kenneth?” Lester asked
.
“This.” Kenneth was holding ‘Slow Death by Hot Moonlight’, Jonathan’s second novel. “He was a writer.”
“Yeah, I know, I read one of his books in high-school.”
“How was he?”
“Not very good, he was your typical adolescent crime thriller writer; lame, cliché, James Bond stuff.”
Oh wonderful. Of all the policemen in Montreal, Pippa had to call the one bloody literary critic.
“Well, I was flipping through it and listen to this.” Kenneth held up the book and read. “‘Robby Fogonthal stepped away from the fat drug-dealer’s body. He had emptied his whole magazine into the obese crime lord’s body. He looked like a pincushion. Despite the blood and gunpowder, the man still stank of Pizza.’” Kenneth stopped reading. “He was obviously a loon.”
Oh, even better. A critic and a psychologist.
“And he had obviously never actually seen a gun-shot victim,” the critic interjected. “Someone with multiple bullet wounds looks nothing like a pin cushion.”
“You read the suicide note? Why’d he kill himself?”
“It says something about his being involved in some drug heist.”
“What?”
Jonathan brimmed with joy. When they investigated and discovered that no such heist had occurred they would realise it wasn’t a real suicide note.
Lester spoke again. “He says this heist occurred at the Ovingdale police station. As far as I know, there’s no such place as 'Ovingdale'.”
Ovingdale was the alternate Montreal in which Jonathan had set all his novels.
“Wait a moment. It says ‘Ovingdale’ here.” The policeman holding the book said, staring at the page he had opened.
Jonathan jumped nervously again. Surely they would realise the letter was fictional now.
“He evidently was so lost in his fictional world, eventually he killed himself for some imagined crime. Poor bugger,” These words of course, were courtesy of the psychologist.
Jonathan was actually happy to see the policemen leave
.
-3-
All night Jonathan watched Pippa sleep. He felt totally impotent. He attempted to strangle her thrice but his fingers swept through her flesh. Giving up, he resigned himself to trying to fathom Pippa’s motivation. It could not be money; he wasn’t rich.
He decided to follow her around for the next few days. Hopefully her actions would enlighten him. The next day yielded no answers as she played the grief-stricken widow with gusto. She received visits from friends, co-workers and with each she bawled magnificently. The days that followed were equally bewildering. Jonathan’s funeral was a small affair and throughout it Pippa was quiet and withdrawn.
Day after day he watched her with augmenting puzzlement and then, exactly a week after his death, Pippa began behaving peculiarly. She dressed herself in a sleek dress that showed off her legs. She even wore a lot of make-up. When she was sufficiently dolled up, Pippa got into her car and drove out of the city to the South Shore. Jonathan was rarely this far out because it was a French speaking area.
She got out of the car outside an archaic tenement. She rang a doorbell and after a great deal of shuffling and moving things around inside, she was welcomed into a shoddy apartment by a short, plump man.
Jonathan followed her in and as the door was closed, Jonathan recognised Pippa’s host. It was Davey Odeyus. He had been a student in one of Jonathan’s creative writing classes a while ago. The repugnant little man had always disgusted Jonathan. Other than the fact that he always reeked of paint (he figured himself an artist and always had spots of paint adorning his clothes to remind people of this), he also had mannerisms that were exceptionally irritating. He would always stick his circular belly out when he was angry, pouting with it as opposed to his lips. When he was excited, he would bob up and down. In arguments held during the Creative Writing class, this bobbing became actual lift-off and he would jump up and down as he shouted his points in an equally annoying voice. He was like a cross between a marsupial and a gnome. Other than the voice, his gnomic genes had manifested themselves in an unkempt, bushy beard that covered two thirds of his face; usually decorated with a mixture of paint flecks, crumbs and grease from food he had gobbled. Jonathan wondered when Pippa had met him, but even more than this, he wondered why in Christ’s name she was visiting him. His questions were answered quicker than he expected, for, on seating herself on a grimy couch, Pippa spoke. “I know it’s only been a week, but, I couldn’t stay away.”
Jonathan was aghast.
“I understand Philippa. Every moment away from you has been torture.”
“Oh, my God,” Jonathan gasped. What followed was more traumatising to Jonathan than seeing his own corpse. Davey rushed forward and kissed Pippa violently. He pulled her to a standing position and then began kneading her buttocks with his stubby fingers. It only got worse because, following a clumsy disrobing, the two of them proceeded to copulate.
Jonathan wanted to leave, but the travesty he was witnessing transfixed his legs to the floor. What? His mind screeched. Don’t tell me Pippa killed me so that she could be together with this ugly dwarf! At least if it had been for some Don Juan.
Any hopes Jonathan might have had that Pippa had been seduced by Davey’s sexual prowess were dashed when after barely a minute, he had reached completion. At least he pulled his jeans back up, so Jonathan was rescued from the sight of his furry posterior. In his mind, Jonathan envisioned the scene. Davey coming to his house to hand in a late assignment, meeting his wife, and then seducing her… Impossible. And yet, on the couch, both panting, the two lovers once more launched into Harlequin jargon.
“I love you so much it tears my soul into shreds.”
“I love you too Davey...”
It was nauseating, not to mention, implausible. Perhaps Jonathan was in hell. For unless it was punishment for his sins, Jonathan could not understand what he beheld. Pippa was perfect. With a supple form, small but perfectly shaped breasts and a face that seemed an amalgam following a conference of great artists on ideal beauty. In her arms, was Davey. For the first time in his life, Jonathan found himself wondering if ‘Beauty and the Beast’ was not just a fairy-tale after all.
“Did the police ask a lot of questions?”
“No Muffin,” Pippa responded.
Muffin! What kind of pet name was that!
Jonathan watched as Pippa recounted her perfect execution of murder, then, elated, the two engaged in a repeat performance of their inept rutting. This time Jonathan left the room. He tried to bang his head against the wall. Unfortunately, his head went straight through and his eyes were once more assaulted by the image of Pippa and Davey.
After an hour or so, Pippa left and Jonathan followed, depressed. To think, she had even dressed up for the contemptible little troll. Unless there was a book launch or an equally important function, she never dressed up for Jonathan. He was now even more resolved to have revenge on Pippa.
That night, Jonathan tried again to choke Pippa. Then to haunt her, attempting to move objects with his mind. He could not do any of the things he’d read that ghosts were able to do. Jonathan had tried other things too; like flying. While he was able to become gaseous and hover, he was not able to rise above his body height or move faster than his own running speed. The strange thing was his movement through objects. Most of the time, while he could not affect objects, large objects could affect him. If he sat in a chair he didn’t fall through it and he could travel by train. Jonathan concluded from the way gravity and other forces still affected him that this must mean he was still made of particles, even if they were invisible to the human eye.
The strange thing was that sometimes he did fall through things and go through walls. He could not make it happen at will, and to walk through a door he usually turned himself into a gaseous fog and slid through the keyhole. Sometimes, when he was angry, joyous, or under great emotional strain like he was when he first saw Pippa and Davey sleep together, he would go through objects. This made no sense to him, but as he could not explain it, he merely accepted it as fact.
Pippa and Davey’s relationship was harder to accept than these metaphysical paradoxes. The next day yielded another torturous session of watching Pippa dress up, this time, in a sheer blouse that was partially see through in the light. Again, Jonathan followed her. He wanted to stay at home (she’d moved back into the house) but found himself following despite himself.
At his apartment Davey made her a gourmet meal of spaghetti and pasta sauce that he was audacious enough to serve her by candlelight. As they ate, Pippa commented, “I don’t know how I stayed married to that Neanderthal for so long.”
Jonathan bubbled with rage. He would somehow exact his revenge if it was the last thing he did. “I know,” he muttered angrily. “I’ll possess him.”
Without further ado, Jonathan jumped into Davey’s body. This, alas, did not work. He ended up plopped on the floor behind Davey. Pippa was in the midst of insulting every aspect of Jonathan. Enraged, he did not give up and he concentrated on his body until he became gaseous again. He imagined himself as a long, thin, smoky snake and he drifted through the air, sliding through Davey's ear, into his brain.
As he touched Davey this time, Jonathan was filled with immense pain. Davey convulsed, vomiting. Jonathan was ejected from Davey’s brain and he took a few seconds to recover. The sight that met him when he recuperated made the pain worth it. Some of Davey’s vomit had splashed onto Pippa.
Jonathan laughed triumphantly.
Pippa left soon, wearing a filthy sweater of Davey’s to conceal the stain.
“This is just the beginning,” Jonathan sniggered.
He did not follow Pippa this time, but rather stayed behind with Davey. He tried to slide into Davey’s brain again but was too exhausted to manage.
Not to worry, he comforted himself. I’ve got all the time in the world.
-4-
The next day while Davey was eating breakfast, Jonathan slid through his ears. The reaction was as violent as it had been before and when Davey vomited, Davey lamented Pippa’s absence. What a waste. Jonathan was not as fatigued by doing this as he had been the day before, but he was still unable to repeat the feat. The sight of Davey having to mop his floors was invigorating and, a few hours later, he felt sufficiently recovered to try again. He didn’t do this immediately, letting Davey and Pippa have their last two hours of piece together.
Jonathan then began experimenting on Davey, who proved a most entertaining guinea pig. Jonathan was limited in how much he could try by his exhaustion, but, as they days passed and he got better at invading Davey’s body, Jonathan’s recovery period shortened. Jonathan discovered that rapid taps did not exhaust him at all, but these resulted in spasms and gasps of discomfort from Davey.
Once Jonathan entered Davey’s brain more slowly than he had previously and he was filled with nausea. His perception of the room also changed and he realised later that he had shared what Davey saw and felt. Inspired, he began experimenting with slow entry. He discovered that by changing his gaseous body into a long spear and then slowly injecting himself into Davey’s ear, he could get a clearer glimpse of Davey’s thoughts. Davey convulsed as though jolted by electric current when subjected to this treatment. It was delightful. And these were just Jonathan’s first discoveries.
Following his first success, Jonathan began tutoring himself in the art of body possession with Davey’s body acting as his college campus. It was an intensely enjoyable class, especially when Jonathan managed to complicate Pippa’s life. Whenever she visited, Jonathan drove Davey into fits and attacked him with waves of nausea at opportune moments, such as when the two were making love.
Pippa was surprisingly supportive of Davey during his ailment. She took him to see a doctor and the doctor was unable to figure out the cause of Davey’s symptoms.
Jonathan screamed, “You should have taken him to see an exorcist,” in Pippa’s ear.
Other than this and a number of other small triumphs however, on the whole, Jonathan was unsatisfied. Even making Davey’s detestable bobbing into convulsions was becoming boring. He needed more.
What I really need to do is actually possess him.
He had got small glimpses of what Davey was thinking when he dashed through Davey’s head so he knew actual possession was possible. This became his new, primary field of study. He first began allowing himself to pause for a few moments in Davey’s head before dashing out. He increased this time periods in small increments: from a few seconds, to half a minute, then, a minute. He also learnt that if he enveloped Davey like a cloak, and then slowly entered his ears from both sides, he could stretch this time to five minutes. If he went in very slowly, Davey did not even react to the intrusion.
Now, I just have to alter what he thinks.
He tried for the first time when Davey and Pippa were together. As soon as he entered, his mind was filled with extreme love for Pippa. He found himself wishing he could hold her for all eternity. He dove out of Davey’s head immediately. He hadn’t expected his feelings to be influenced. Remembering the experience Jonathan was slightly perturbed by the magnitude of Davey’s love for Pippa. It was far more than Jonathan’s had been, for Pippa or anyone. The right term for it was not love. It was obsession. He adored everything about her and it seemed that his cliché declarations of love were not just the act Jonathan had thought they were. Davey actually believed the words he said.
Over the next few days, Jonathan tried again many times. It was useless. He had succeeded in making Davey do small things, such as dancing in the middle of the street and, singing Celine Dion songs in an out of tune warble wherever he went, even though looking into Davey’s mind revealed that he liked alternative music and disliked Celine’s ballads. These small successes were a lot of fun because there are lots of foolish things one wants to do in one’s own body, but never does because of common sense. Jonathan did all of these. Some were little things such as making Davey fondle the breasts of voluptuous women in the metro, then exiting Davey’s body before the slap or kick in the groin that followed. Most satisfyingly of all, Jonathan sent Davey to his editor’s office, where he made Davey fling a can of Pepsi in the face of the man who called Jonathan’s last book ‘senseless fuzz’. Jonathan also learnt that if he thought of doing something, and dashed out of Davey’s body, the suggestion would linger like a bomb on a timer, and he could watch Davey perform these actions from a different vantage point.
However, whenever Pippa entered, Jonathan became powerless. Davey’s love for Pippa overpowered every attempt Jonathan made to change his attitudes toward her. He tried for days and was about to give up when one of Davey’s ridiculous declarations of love gave him inspiration.
“Every time I go to sleep I dream about you, but it still feels like pain because nothing I can imagine compares to you.”
Really, Jonathan thought. Then maybe you’ll be more pliable asleep.
That night he seeped into Davey’s brain when he was fast asleep. He immediately found himself in the middle of a battle. People who had laughed and teased Davey during his youth surrounded him. With physics defying kung-fu moves he was pulping them into whimpering, apologetic, slugs.
I guess that didn’t work, Jonathan thought and started to pull out. Before he left, he suddenly was no longer in Davey’s dream, but still in his mind. That must have been his subconscious.
Now that I’m here. What do I do?
Davey’s body answered this question for him, for, Davey’s hand rose and scratched his forehead; a physical response to Davey’s musing.
I have control of his motor functions! Jonathan realised. He immediately raised himself to a sitting position and lifted his arms. He made Davey’s lips curl into a malicious leer as he reached for Pippa’s throat. It was so frail and pale. Finally, he thought, resting his palms against her warm flesh.
He was about to strangle her, when it occurred to him how unsatisfying it would be to kill her in her sleep. He would be robbed of seeing her in agony. He was about to wake her up, when he further realised that even if he strangled her when she was awake it would be unsatisfying. She would die and then...
What?
Jonathan was disconcerted. He’d dreamt of this moment for so long and now, just as he was about to be revenged, he was having doubts. Why? He wanted to strangle her so badly.
But then what?
And would he truly be revenged? All he would have done was kill her. She had humiliated him by murdering him for the love of a repulsive dwarf. That she had fallen in love with Davey still confused him. He had watched Davey and Pippa together for weeks and he still couldn’t see the root of the attraction.
What could possibly have led Pippa to prefer Davey to him?
He realised that he could find out. All he had to do was go into Pippa’s mind. At least if he knew why, he wouldn’t feel that she had the upper hand on him. Jonathan seeped out of Davey’s ear. His body slumped back to peaceful dreams of justice via martial arts. He then enveloped Pippa and trickled through her ears. He immediately met great resistance but he persisted. Pain racked him and he felt as though he were being shredded. It was far more pain than even the first time he had burrowed into Davey’s brain and despite his willpower he was expelled from Pippa’s body. He regained his bearings and when he looked at her he saw that he really had been shredded in two. Beside Pippa, was a mass of gas.
It suddenly moved of its own volition. Jonathan was terrified. The irony of a terrified ghost failed to impress itself upon him. He moved backwards in fear when he saw that the gaseous fog was a different colour from him. It was pinkish-red. What the hell? It moved towards him again and he realised it was another ghost.
“Who are you?” he demanded frenetically. The other ball of gas paused and after a few moments of silence he asked. “Is that you Pippa?”
The ball of fog trembled and within it, a mouth appeared. “Jonathan?”
“Yes. Pippa?”
“No. I’m not Pippa.”
“What?”
“Don’t you recognise me?”
“No.”
The fog slowly coalesced into a female form and began solidifying into features. When the eyes and lips emerged from the fog, he recognised who it was.”
“Martha?”
“Yes, what are you doing here?”
“Well that’s my wife and...”
“I should have realised what was happening,” Martha said to herself.
“Excuse me?”
“When Davey started getting sick.”
“What! You know Davey?”
“Of course I know Davey you idiot. I met him in your Creative Writing class.”
Jonathan was confused.
“What’s going on?”
Martha now looked at him as though he was disturbed. “Please tell me you’ve figured it out by now.”
“Figured what out?”
“Oh, you really are a simpleton. What did I ever see in you?”
A disturbing idea hatched in Jonathan’s mind. “How long have you been in Pippa’s body exactly?”
“How long do you think Jonathan? Months.”
Things Jonathan had never noticed now began to make sense as he distilled what Martha had just told him. He remembered Pippa’s sudden illness and looked at it now in a different light. That had been Martha trying to get into Pippa’s body.
“So, you killed me?”
“Of course I did.”
“But why?”
“I can’t believe you have to ask that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well you led me along for weeks then you slept with me, only to dump me the next day. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, a month later you introduced me to your wife. Can you imagine how painful and humiliating that was for me? Having to be in the same room with the reason you looked at me in disgust every time you saw me.”
“I didn’t look at you that way.”
“Don’t try to deny it. You were so guilty about what you had done that every time you ran into me, you looked at me as though I were a cockroach. If it wasn’t for Davey I don’t think I would have survived.”
“Davey?”
“Yes. He comforted me and took time to work on my writing with me like you never did. That was when I fell in love with him.”
“You fell in love with that?”
“Yes. But he was not interested in me at all. He told me that he was in love with your wife. ‘Philippa Orlean this.’ ‘Philippa Orlean that.’ She was all he talked about. Even when I wasn’t with you, you still caused me pain indirectly.” It was torturous to love two men and yet have neither.”
“But if you loved us both, then why did you kill me and get together with him?”
“At least he came to my funeral.”
“What?”
“You did not even respect me enough to come for that one ceremony.”
"I didn’t know you died.”
“What? Did you think I stopped coming to your class because I was sick.”
“No. I thought that you stopped coming because you were awkward around me.”
“I was, but do you think I would withdraw from a six hundred dollar course.”
“I didn’t know you were dead.”
“You just didn’t care but don’t worry. I only got to know Davey because of your indifference.”
“Speaking of which,” Jonathan demanded. “Why him? He’s a disgusting little dwarf.”
“And you’re Prince Charming? I hate to be the one to tell you this Johnny, but the years haven’t been all that kind to you. You may have been a stud back in nineteen sixty whatever, but now you’re a wrinkled old fart. The reason that I loved both of you was your writing. You are such geniuses.”
“Why thank...” Jonathan began, but then he realised exactly what Martha had just said. “Both of us?”
“Yes.”
Jonathan brought to mind Davey’s romantic drivel and realised that this wasn’t a compliment. It was an insult.
“You like Davey’s writing.”
“Of course. It’s like the two of you are two sides of the same coin. He is the romantic you. Both of you use words so well, and you’re ideas are so original. I confess, I liked you a bit better, but at least he pays attention to me.”
“In Pippa’s body!”
“Yes. But he loves me, not just the surface. Before I took her body he’d never actually talked to your wife. He loves me more than he does her body.”
“Yeah right,”
Martha’s eyes filled with rage and she seemed about to attack Jonathan. Before she could act, Pippa spoke. She had woken up.
“Where am I?”
A light came on. Then Pippa screamed.
“Who are you?”
“Philippa relax,“ Davey said groggily, awakening and reaching for her. “You must have had a nightmare.”
“Don’t touch me! Who are you?”
“What do you mean who am I? I love you.”
“Don’t you say that. I don’t know who you are, or where I am.”
Pippa had fled from the bed and retreated to the wall. Davey followed her, getting up.
“Don’t you say that Philippa. I know you love me.”
“I don’t love you! I don’t love you, you disgusting runt! Stay away from me. I could never love someone like you.”
Jonathan recoiled at this for in his mind he could recall a memory that was not his own. It was the memory of Davey being teased in high school with the word ‘runt’ by some of the people who he had been pummelling in his kung fu dream. He approached Pippa and grasped her shoulders.
“Don’t say that. Please don’t say that,”
She was thrashing now, and he put his hand over her mouth.
“Please stop playing whatever game you’re playing, please...”
Pippa bit him and when he let go screamed, “Get away from me.”
His hands wrapped around her throat. Jonathan froze. He must have left some residue of his desire to strangle Pippa in Davey’s head? Now, Pippa had catalysed the impulse. He ran forward and dived into Davey’s mind but the mixture of love and hatred was so strong he could not even enter.
Davey was weeping now, and as Pippa crumbled to the floor Jonathan reeled in despair. He had no control over what was happening. Out of Pippa’s ear, he saw wisps of fog slowly pour out until her body became inert.
“Jonathan!” the fog said immediately on seeing him. It turned into Pippa’s form.
“I don’t know what happened?” She was crying. “I promise you that I didn’t do anything with this sick man. Please believe me. I don’t even know how I got here. The last thing I remember I...”
Pippa stopped speaking abruptly. She was looking straight at Martha. “Wait a minute,” she said, her voice metamorphosing instantly to rage. “Aren’t you that girl who...aren’t you...”
She swerved to face Jonathan. “I can’t believe you betrayed me like this. You promised me that you would never see her again. You son of a...”
“No. Pippa. I can explain. It isn’t what it looks...“
“I don’t want to hear it!” Pippa screamed, storming out. She did not even know she was dead.
To the background sound of a wailing and screaming Davey - who was holding Pippa’s corpse in his arms - Martha turned to Jonathan and spoke. “Now look what you’ve done.
THE END