Hands

By A. Ashley Straker

'No. Listen. Liz isn't being haunted. Liz IS haunted.'

Andy and Liz are newlyweds. They've just moved into their first home together. But Andy is struggling to adjust to married life.

He doesn't mind that Liz is kinky - in fact he quite likes that. He doesn't mind that she holds grudges - so long as she's not holding them against him. And he doesn't even mind that she finds it hard to make friends, and hates some of his.

What bothers Andy is that Liz has unseen companions.

She didn't tell him about them before the wedding. And now they're sharing the house too.

Andy confides in his big-mouthed friend Morris, and they resolve to investigate. But if Liz finds out he's told anyone, she won't be happy.

And when Liz gets upset, SO DO HER FRIENDS.

• Language: English
• Publisher: A. Ashley Straker
• Release date: Jun 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370006199

A. Ashley Straker

A. Ashley Straker lives in the UK.

Book preview

HANDS

A. Ashley Straker

Hands

A. Ashley Straker

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 A. Ashley Straker

A. Ashley Straker asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, products, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

www.infectedconnection.com

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'You are not free. Myriad invisible hands hold your hands and direct them. When you rise in anger, a great-grandfather froths at your mouth; when you make love, an ancestral caveman growls with lust; when you sleep, tombs open in your memory till your skull brims with ghosts.'

The Saviors of God (1923)

Nikos Kazantzakis

Horror happens when someone's idea of normal is – frankly – fucked in the head.

That's what I've decided, while I've been sitting here swallowing blood. And the more I think about it the more it makes sense.

Look what happens to the future spouse of a kid who grows up thinking domestic violence is normal. To members of a minority when others are taught normality means a particular shade, sexuality or belief system. To any unlucky person in a country where the armed conflict of us versus them is the norm.

Horror. That's what happens.

And it's transmitted, taught by word and deed, propagated down family lines. Generation after generation. Fucked in the head.

Whatever Liz inherited, she thought it was normal.

Liz's idea of normal was fucked in the head.

And guess what?

You fucking bet horror happened.

*

One month ago.

She was preparing dinner. I was at the kitchen table, pretending to fix the pepper mill. I shook the peppercorns out, reassembled it, twisted the bit at the top and said, 'Hmm.'

But I didn't give a shit about the pepper mill. I was waiting for Liz to do it again.

The weird thing.

It was night number three in our tiny two-bedroom starter home. Two weeks since the wedding. We were both still adjusting to our new-found domestic arrangement; both a little uncomfortable with the new roles we had agreed to adopt by the formalisation of our relationship. The house didn't feel like ours yet. The furniture was too new, surfaces as yet unmarked by careless placement of mugs and bottles, seats neither moulded nor dented by the repeated application of our buttocks. The rooms could have been showrooms in IKEA. Only our names on the documents said we weren't just passing through.

Liz paused, mid-cut, half-way through the flesh of an onion. It might have been the same knife.

'Just going to sit there and watch?' she asked.

'You look good cooking,' I told her.

She arched an eyebrow. I could tell, even though she had her back turned. 'You know I won't be that kind of wife.'

'I know. And I'm not going to be that kind of husband.'

'So?'

'So, what?'

'So help, moron.'

Liz pushed the blade through the onion, knocked the halves apart and continued chopping, but still I didn't move. I reached for the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and the corkscrew and made a show of opening it, but didn't take my eyes off her.

'Met any neighbours yet?'

'Waved at the guy opposite. He didn't wave back.'

'Fuck 'im.'

'He let his dog shit in his garden. Right in the middle. Didn't even pick it up afterwards.'

'Ew.'

'Horrible thing. Like a rat.'

'I don't see the point in those tiny dogs.'

'No, the dog was a lab. I was talking about the neighbour.' Liz looked back over her shoulder with a grin. 'What about you?'

I shrugged. 'Haven't met anyone yet. Seems like the neighbours keep to themselves.'

'Until there's something to gossip about, I bet.'

And as she said this, Liz did it. What I'd been waiting for. She opened the cupboard, reached in without even a glance, took out a jar of pasta sauce, and said, 'Thanks.'

'Speaking of gossip…' she went on, but I cut her off.

'Wait.' I pushed back my chair and stood. 'Wait. Hold up. Did you just thank the cupboard?'

Liz turned, leaned back against the counter and opened the jar with a pop. 'Did I what?'

'Just then. You thanked the cupboard for the pasta sauce.'

Liz blinked and blushed in that cute way she has. Had. Maybe had. It's hard to find anything cute right now.

'Okay. Maybe. So?'

'So? So that's weird.'

She shrugged. 'Not really. I always do it.'

'I know. I'm starting to notice. Why?'

'Because it's polite? And anyway, I've seen you thank a cash machine for giving you money.'

'That's different.'

'Why is it different? It's not different.'

'A cash machine gives me money. You just took the pasta sauce. And besides, one day cash machines are going to be intelligent. AI is coming. I'm just practising treating robots with respect.'

Liz snorted and turned back to her cooking. 'One day cupboards might be intelligent too. Maybe I'm just practising as well.'

'That's stupid.'

'You're stupid.'

'You're sexy.'

'You're just stupid.'

I stepped up behind her and put my hands around her waist. 'I think it's cute.'

'What is?'

'Thanking everything.'

'I don't thank everything.'

'Nearly everything. Why do you do it?'

'I don't know.' I could feel the tension in her body as she answered. 'Just a habit, I suppose.' It elevated this small curiosity of my wife's personality into a mystery. One I had to solve. I think I was fucked from that moment.

'A habit from what? Childhood?'

'Yeah.'

'How did it start?'

Liz reached for a pan. 'Let it go, Andy.'

'No. I want to know.'

'It's just a habit. Forget about it.'

'I can't. You're my wife. No secrets and all that. I won't judge.'

She relaxed, just a little, and twisted in my arms. 'Promise?'

'I swear.'

'Okay. But later. After dinner. When I've had some wine. Lots of wine.'

I planted a kiss on her lips. 'Okay. Now let me help. Any more vegetables to murder?'

*

That night we got the handcuffs out and christened the spare room in our efforts to fuck our way round the house by the end of the first week. Then, when we were in our own bed and she was fumbling for her phone charger, she said 'thanks,' again, upon finding the end of the cable on the floor.

I rolled over to look at her, and saw the blush as she realised she'd done it again.

'What? It's just a habit.'

I propped myself up, then flopped over