Bent Tempest - Kane Morrison

BENT
TEMPEST



KANE MORRISON









CHAPTER 1


A man parks his car on a hectic downtown street. He is going to visit with a friend and down a few beers. When he departs, in the mid-morning, his car will have been towed.
This starts a sequence of seemingly understated miscalculations in his bid to salvage his car from an impound lot.
These modest mistakes amplify, and when added jointly, cause him to fear for his life, become paranoid of anyone and anything, and all for feasible and rational reasons.

1988

On a weekday night, the core of the city shuts down, as all drudgers return to their suburban dwellings. If you require gas, you have to go outside the city core to find an open station. At four in the morning, there is not a soul in sight, perhaps the odd cab or cop car, but that’s about it.
In an outmoded apartment complex on Bank Street, the Ottawa’s main thoroughfare, there is some semblance of life. The building was not historic, or grand in its age, it leaned toward dishabille. It was not hospitable in look, or pleasant in its odours.
On a standard sectional davenport sit two men in their mid-twenties, watching the music video station. The table was littered with a hodgepodge of spent late-night television viewing provisions; an empty pizza box with the ever present rock hard dough ball that was deemed too obnoxious for human consumption, a few compressed beer cans with a couple of spent plastic connector rings and an overflowed ash tray with unmolested brown filters and crumpled white filters. The filter management easily branded their past owners.

Tom rose from the chesterfield and walked into the kitchen. He grabbed a brown paper bag from out of the refrigerator. Before closing the door, Tom took a long swig from the plastic container of Minute Maid orange juice. He departed from the kitchen, turning off the light, and put his lunch bag near the front door of the apartment.
‘I gotta be getting. I don’t want that little French fuck chewing my ass out again for coming in late.’
Eddie recognized this statement by raising his hand in the air; his feet skittered across the coffee table that acted as a stool for the time being. He never permitted his eyes to leave Samantha Fox, the delicacy that glowed from beyond his socks.

“Touch me, touch me, I want to feel your body…”

‘Back out in a sec’, Tom ambled off to the bedroom, which was in close proximity to the front door.
Ed reached for the remote control, which seemed to be just beyond his grasp at that moment. Samantha’s song had ended, and some species of pop rock crap had come on.

“Don’t forget me when I’m gone, my heart will break...”

Eddie resettled himself on the cushions and reattempted his grab for the television controller. Stretched to his body’s utmost ability he manages to get a finger on the lip of the remote and tenderly pulled it toward him. Once it was closer, he moved his thumb under the device and reached for the gritty tabletop.
Suddenly, in a mélange of uncontrollable actions, Ed found himself sitting on the floor, at the foot of the sofa. One arm remained bucked on the arm of the couch. The ashtray, which had once balanced on his thigh, had clattered to the coffee table, sending a column of ash in the air, and depleted cigarette casings far and wide.
The resonance of these mishaps reverberated through the modest apartment louder than one could hope to envision.
He decided to remain in the position that he had fallen into by misfortune. He still had won, the trophy, the remote, which had remained in his hand.
The cloud of ashes began to settle, dusting his hair and attire.
Ed glanced to the bedroom door, fully expecting Tom to come bursting out at any second. He expected a scolding for waking his significant other. The noise was certainly loud enough.
After twenty seconds, there was still no sign of Tom, or his wife. Slowly, Ed began trying to normalize the situation for which he found himself. He plucked the cigarette butts from the carpeting and swished the ash specks from the coffee table and back into the tray. Finally, yet importantly, he changed the channel on the television, which had been his primary objective.
Tom finally emerged from the bedroom, slowly closing the door as he peered in at his wife. After it closed, Tom quietly spun to face Eddie.
‘Okay, I’m leaving now. Are you gonna stay, or what?’
There was no mention of the tumult that erupted moments earlier.
‘Ah… you didn’t…’ Ed thought better of bringing up what had just transpired’, I’ll just stay for a bit if it’s not a problem? I’ve never seen the end of this movie. It’ll be over in about ten minutes’.
‘All right then. I guess I’ll see you Friday at Vic’s.’
‘Sure thing. Take it easy.’
‘Will Dude, gotta go’.
Tom left, quietly closing the door of the apartment behind him. You could hear his first steps down the bleak stairwell as he made his way out of the building.
Ed, according to his previous agreed upon plan, began getting his belongings together as the film wound down. He put on his coat, grabbed his bag of newly purchased albums, placed his pack and lighter in the inner coat pocket, and tapped on his pant pocket to make certain he still had his keys.
He turned off the television as the movie flashed the end credit- “fin”. It seemed he hadn’t missed very much. There had been more sex scenes that didn’t really illustrate very much. “Bleu Nuit” was always a let down, but for some reason, one that you always had to finish watching. Maybe once you would see something worthwhile.
Ed stopped as he neared the front door of his chum’s apartment. He glanced back into the living room and noticed a light was still on.

I should really turn that off. Nah, fuck it.

He was trying to be excruciatingly quiet, and was overcompensating due to his previously ill contrived manoeuvres on the sofa. He gingerly twisted the rickety knob and slowly opened the creaking door toward him. The hinges snapped and howled with each little movement. If he had been sleeping, where Tom’s wife was, he would have awoken.
Ed aimed his ear to the bedroom door, listening for her stir, her ire.

Who in the hell would design an apartment like this?

There was no sound. Not even a thrash or unsettled rustling.
Outside, Ed closed the apartment door with the same success he had achieved when he had opened it. The moaning and creaking was equal. He listened for Tom’s wife to go off in a heightened bloodshed attack. Nothing stirred.
He stalled at the entrance, staring at the knob.

How the hell am I going to lock up?

Ed ran his fingertips along the top of the doorframe; there was nothing but dust. He knew he couldn’t leave it open, not in this part of town. He had to open the door once more. Ed had no option.

Why does Tom never make this much noise?

The hinges again played the irritating serenade. Ed popped his head around the door and looked around. There was still no sight or sound of life from the wife’s bedroom. Ed began to rummage around for the key to the door; they had to be somewhere close by. He looked for a key hook; scanned table tops, counters, but saw nothing resembling a key.
His hopes went up when he found a series of nails banged into the wall just down the hall, but there was only one small key, which would have matched up with something like a bike lock. He opened the closet and checked out the pockets of everything that hung, but could not find a key.
There were no signs of keys anywhere, just that small bike lock key. He had looked everywhere he could, even through the glasses, dishes and cutlery in the kitchen. He, however, recovered two dollars and thirty-four cents in change, which he collected for this inconvenience.
He sat on the sofa and pondered over his mid-morning mini quandary. Ed eyed the layer of ash that he had spewed across the People Magazine underneath the coffee table.
Should he just stay there? Wait for Bonnie to get up? She was a downright bitch in the mornings, all the time, actually. Should he just leave and take the consequences for leaving the door unlocked? How could he arrive at solving the situation?
The resolution Ed found himself at was to, basically, wake Bonnie. He would face her wrath and deal with the insults. It wouldn’t be the first time.
He softly bounced his knuckles against the bedroom door. It was slightly ajar, and he could discern that at least one light was on within the room. He would not get a reaction, even though he would replicate the knocking several times, with increasing vigour. She was out like a light.
Ed decided to shove the door open and see if he could spot the keys on a night table. The light from the living room added fuel to his search as it bellowed about the muddled bed and floors.
At this point Ed witnessed something he had only seen on one previous occasion. That episode was at the gang’s summer shindig back in 1985. This was what was perpetually referred to as the Nude Party. It was a simple, yet definitive adjective to have thrust in front of the word party.
Bonnie lay on her side, facing away from Ed. There was not a stitch of clothing on her frame and the bedding had all been kicked off. Her shoulder length dark hair had hardly been mussed in her bid for sleep.
‘Bonnie… Bonnie. Wake up Bonnie. It’s Ed… Bonnie?’

Christ, is she dead or something?

Ed decided to get closer to her, perhaps tap on her shoulder to awaken her.

Free show. Free show.

He stopped short of directly waking her. Ed checked her out for a few seconds; he liked her legs.
‘Bonnie… Bonnie’. He hushed so as not to alarm her too much.
She tossed over on to her back for an instance. For a short-lived moment, Ed had garnered a jam-packed frontal observation of Tom’s wife.

Nice, real nice…

Then, in a brief second, Bonnie let out with a blood-curdling shriek, grabbed a three wood from alongside the bed and wickedly pulverized him in the meaty part of his upper arm.
Ed fell into the dresser behind him and let out with an audible grimace of pain and surprise.
‘Holy shit Bonnie, take it easy. This is Ed, for Christ’s sake, put down the driver’.
“What the hell are you doing? Sneaking up on me like that… I thought you were a rapist, robber, or something like that, you goof’. She wrapped the azure comforter about herself as she started to chastise Ed.
Ed began to unfold the account of why he was in there. ‘Look, Tom went to work. I stayed on to finish watching the movie. I went to leave, but didn’t have a key to lock up. So, would you have rather I left the door open, or came in here to get the key?’
‘It’s 4:30 in the morning…’ Bonnie looked at her watch on the nightstand.
‘Yes, that is correct…’
‘Get outta here. I’ll close it behind… Jesus, I have to work in three hours.’
‘Okay. I’m out of here, I’m leaving… by the way, nice legs.’
Bonnie raised the three wood and hurled it at him as he scrambled out of the bedroom; and again, she had hit him in the same area of the arm as before.
He rapidly made his way from the apartment without receiving further harm to body or soul.
Bonnie got up and locked the dead bolt behind him. She glanced at the full-length mirror as she returned to her bedroom. She scanned her legs- ‘They are nice…’