True Black

Young Jack was sixteen. Jack lay on his back on his bed, staring at the ceiling. It was hardly the average teenager’s bedroom, other than a fairly typical teenage mess of discarded clothes. There was no X-Box, no posters of alternative rock bands, no pictures of barely-legal half-naked girl groups. Instead there were prints from artists like Hieronymus Bosch, Goya, and engravings of Gustav Dore, all bleak pictures, and a large selection of pencil sketches from Jack himself, all of an equal bleakness in their subject matter. Jack, not surprisingly, was something of a loner, preferring to draw and listen to opera than to socialize with his peers. So Jack lay on his back on his bed, in his jeans and a t-shirt, staring at the ceiling, with large wireless headphones on playing, of all things, Nessun Dorma from Turandot.

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Something interrupted his reverie and he lifted the headphones away from his head. He could hear the muffled voices of adults arguing. He listened for a few moments and then he put the headphones back on and resumed his ceiling-staring. Arguing adults was a normal part of life in his household and something he had long since lost interest in. But a few seconds later there was a muffled bang, like something heavy had dropped, and though the sound was partially drowned by the opera it was sufficient to make Jack lifted his headphones again to listen; one voice was louder now in the argument, and with a malevolence that he had not heard before. Jack slipped the headphones down around his neck, slid off the bed and headed towards the voices. They were significantly louder once he left the bedroom, and more violent; a man and a woman having a vicious shouting match, his father and mother locked in a particularly nasty exchange. The woman’s voice sounded tired, strained, and clearly no match for the man.

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As he walked down the hall towards to voices there was a sudden, loud, gunshot. Jack didn’t slow but he slid the headphones back over his ears. There was another gunshot, muffled by the loud music, as Jack pushed open the door to his parent’s bedroom. He stepped into the room just as his father fired the third – and lethal – shot into his wounded wife. Jack’s mother.

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The music was loud and almost drowned the shot. His father turned to Jack, shocked, his face contorted with rage and anguish. Jack stared back at him, completely detached. With a look of hopelessness his father slowly, almost reluctantly, raised the gun and put it in his mouth and, with a final, sad look at Jack he pulled the trigger and blew the back of his head off.

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The sound was muffled in Jack’s headphones, but the images were clear and stark.

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Jack didn’t flinch. He stood calmly, taking in the scene. Other than an involuntary blink when the gun was fired Jack showed no reaction. Now it was over he took off his headphones and tossed them onto a nearby chair. He slowly walked over to his father’s body, completely expressionless, and looked down on him for a moment, before walking over to his mother’s dead body, sprawled half across the bed and half on the floor.

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As he surveyed the mayhem his caught sight of a mobile phone lying on the bedside table; the latest iPhone, the latest gadget of his late mother. He picked it up. After studying it for a moment and scrolling through options, he turned to his mother’s body and started taking photographs. He was completely detached as he photographed, his motives unclear; he made no attempt to glamorize the scene nor did it seem like he was attempting to document it. It seemed more like an obligation, some quick snapshots to say ‘I was here’.  He noticed the wildness of the first two bullets and knelt to get a better look. One had barely scraped her arm; the other had hit her in the upper thigh. Only the final shot, squarely in the centre of her face, could be considered a good shot, and that was the fatal shot. It changed her face and her life for good.

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Jack stood over his mother’s body and gave a wry, cynical laugh.

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‘Ah, father, dearest; you were a crappy shot. A crappy father, a crappy husband, and a crappy shot.’

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He walked to his father’s body and began taking more photographs. From the front his father looked sad but peaceful; then Jack looked at his back, and the huge piece of skull missing from his head, and winced at the pieces, a spattered mess now decorating the bedroom wall.

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‘And man, you make a mean mess.”

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He stood up, took some more photographs in a very casual fashion, and then he sat on the end of the bed close to his mother’s body. He caught his reflection in the dressing table mirror. He thought he looked serious, more mature.

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‘So,’ he asked himself pensively, ‘What happens now?’

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