Friends By Heart

By Rich Cole

The woods. Dark of night. Two young girls drag a lump bundled in bedsheets.

When Joanna wakes up one morning to a phone call from her best friend Monika, she has no idea what awaits her. A horrifying truth will test the boundaries of their friendship, bringing dark secrets to light. Joanna will have to learn what happens when your loved ones are those who drag you down. But by that point, it might be too late…

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seagull Editions
• Release date: May 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215956724

Book preview

Friends by Heart

© 2021 Seagull Editions s.r.l.

www.seagulleditions.com

Rustle, rustle. Rustle. White fibres grind on damp ground. Pine needles get stuck in the gaps between stitches. In the darkness, the lump of bedsheets could be mistaken for an oversize sack of potatoes.

‘Stop, stop,’ Monika says. ‘Can’t you see it’s got stuck on a rock?’

Johanna stops tugging at her side of the lump, which is sealed off with adhesive tape. ‘Oh, you’re right,’ she says quickly. She lets go and bends down to the ground. She starts pulling at the section that is stuck.

Monica grabs at a corner of bedsheets with her other hand. ‘Ah, now you’ve left me the whole weight of it. Great,’ she says. The light coming in through the pines shines white on her exposed arms. They are trembling.

‘I can’t get it unstuck. It’s too heavy and the rock seems to have cut through the sheets.’

‘Oh, shit, shit! We’re never going to get out of here.’ Monica hears the whine in her voice. This is not how it was meant to pan out. It’s all wrong. ‘Here, give it,’ Monica drops the lump onto the bed of needles. Thud. She walks round to where Johanna is crouching. A jagged piece of rock has dug a hole in the fabric. ‘Let’s pull on it together, come on.’

Both of them settle their feet down on the soft mulchy ground and grip the lump with both hands. ‘One, two... and three!’ Johanna lets out an animal yelp and Monika is about to hush her when she hears a ripping sound. She looks down.

‘Oh, no, no.’ Johanna says, slouching back into the mud.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Monika hisses. ‘You want the whole damn forest to hear us?’ But her heart is a blunt hammer barrelling through her chest. The fabric has come unstuck, the jagged rock now glinting in the shadows. Next to it, the hole in the bedsheets is wider now. Wide enough for three white toes to jut out. The nails are perfectly trimmed, the skin is white, almost too white. There is only a light caking of mud and pine needles on it, like a dash of cocoa powder.

‘Come on,’ Monica says. ‘It’s not going to carry itself.’ She pulls Joanna up and they start tugging at the lump once again. Rustle, rustle. The dragging noise and their breaths is all that punctuates the forest’s silence. Joanna’s fast and shallow breaths, Monica’s deeper, almost wolfish ones. Around them the forest’s soft uneven ground is bluish in the light filtering between the trees. Blacker dots of underbrush here and there. The terrain is slightly sloping downwards, making it easier for the body get carried down. If Monika were to raise her eyes ahead, between the gaps in tree trunks she could see a glimpse of moonlit water.

‘The bastard,’ she says. ‘He’s gotta be a nuisance even up to his death.’

Joanna isn’t sure what to reply. She catches her friend’s eyes staring into the forest.

Rustle, rustle.

15 hours before

Joanna had a habit of waking up at daybreak. She checked her weather app each night to know the exact time the sun would be up, and set her alarm accordingly. The first two hours of the day she spent in her living room practicing Shibari Yoga. The space was quite tight, to be sure, but this tiny flat in the suburbs was all Joanna could afford with her beginner’s salary at the GymLife. And the closeness to a green patch meant she could go on runs.

Joanna had been trying out the Sukhasana position when her phone buzzed. It was connected via Bluetooth to the speakers, so the ringtone bounced off the walls of the tiny flat, inspiring in her a sense of urgency. Nobody usually called her at this early hour of the morning. Joanna didn’t have all that many friends, and most of them loved a good lie in. She leaned over and looked at the white rectangle of light from the screen. Monica? Not even the sweetest tang of pancake and maple syrup could get her out of bed before twelve. She considered herself a night owl, and studied at university in panicky fits hours before exams.

‘Hello.’

‘Oh, thank God I could get hold of you, Jo. I knew you would be about –‘

‘What’s up?’ Something was off. Joanna could hear it from Monika’s snatched breaths between words. She was close to one of her tantrums.

‘Something’s up. You have to come here and help me right now.’ A noise like rustling cloth.

‘Ok, ok. Calm down. What is it?’ Joanna stood up and grabbed her towel, started wiping the sweat off her face and neck.

‘I – I... oh my God, how could he do this to me –‘

‘Hey, Monika. You need to tell me what happened.’

‘I can’t. You don’t get it. Come... you have to come here. Please come here now.’

Joanna walked into her room. She put the phone on loudspeaker and dropped it on the unmade bed. She took out a baggie jumper from the wardrobe and shrugged it on. ‘I’m coming right now. Give me a few seconds. But listen, you have to calm down,’ she said from inside the jumper.

‘What? Hey, don’t you be telling me to do shit,’ Monika started wining again. ‘I would like to see you in this situation.’ More rustles on the line. Something smashing. ‘Fuck!’

Joanna slipped her shoes on. ‘Where’s Mark?’ she said.

‘Oh – that’s the whole thing –‘ Monika let out a high-pitched scream ending out in a growl. Something else smashed, then a beep and the line cut off.

Joanna froze for a moment in the silent room, looking at the small black rectangle of her phone amongst the flowery yellow bedsheets. That phone was the only source of tension, the only element which had come to tear up her day. But it was Monika, she told herself. Crazy Monika, yes, but she had a duty to help out her friend. As she rushed out of the house and shut the door, she felt a pang of guilt at even having entertained such a thought. She smashed the main door shut and ran up the street.

Joanna had to ring the doorbell three times. When the door finally buzzed open, nobody spoke in the intercom. The door to her flat was a notch open, a rectangle of light streaming out onto the landing floor. Joanna pushed.

She knew Monika’s apartment by heart, she’d been there so many times. The entrance gave onto a short corridor that branched out perpendicular to the door. To one side was the kitchen, on the other was their bedroom. Joanna stood in the corridor, listening. The kitchen seemed empty. On the other side, the door to Monika’s bedroom was shut.

A growling noise, then a thud. Another growl, a thud. Joanna felt some slimy substance cruising up her windpipe. ‘Monika?’ she called. No answer. ‘Monica, are you here?’

The growling and thudding kept on as she tiptoed up corridor. Under the carpet, a wooden plank creaked. She winced. This was not what she had signed up for. Monika was her best friend, she would do anything for her. But this, this was too much. Was it some kind of joke? She rested one trembling hand on the door handle, the red nails curving out of sight as she made her grip firm. She turned and pushed.

Monika was squatting at the foot of the bed. She was tugging with both hands at an oblong bundle wrapped in bedsheets, which looked like a lump of clothes. Monika turned as Joanna walked in and their gazes locked. Monika’s blonde hair was dark with sweat and stuck in lumps to her forehead. The sky was overcast, but enough light came through the window above the bed to show beads of perspiration over her lips. Her brown eyes were wild.

‘Monica, what the hell is –‘

‘Joanna, dear. Thank God you’re here.’ Monika let go of the lump of bedsheets and took a step towards her friend. The lump fell to the carpet with a thud. So that was what was making that noise.

Joanna took a step back. She didn’t like the look of that lump. Not one bit.

‘Monika, what is that thing?’ Her voice came out calm. Only the rising note at the end stank of hysteria.

‘Jo-Jo. I can explain. Please.’

Joanna was frozen into place. Monika extended her arms towards her friend. ‘Come, come to the kitchen. Let’s have a cup of tea.’

‘M – Monica.’ Joanna felt that she couldn’t move her lips. Her saliva had become glue. She flinched as her friend touched her shoulders and directed her back towards the door. ‘Come, we’ll have a cup of tea and I’ll tell you all about it.’

Joanna let herself be manoeuvred into the grey shade of the corridor. They were half-way down it, Monika mumbling soothing words in her friend’s ear, an arm over her shoulder, when Joanna erupted in sobs.

‘Monika!’ She twisted and disentangled herself, looked her friend in the eye. ‘What the fuck is happening here?’ Hot tears came down her cheeks. ‘Where the hell is Mark?’ There must have been something in her gaze that caught Monika off guard. She slumped against the side of the corridor and looked at the floor. Then she slowly raised her eyes to meet Joanna.

‘Jo, something really bad has happened.’ The clock in the kitchen ticked on. An ambulance in the distance. Joanna waited. ‘I – I woke up this morning. And...’ Monika put a hand on her mouth, her eyes bulged. ‘I just found him there,’ she blurted out.

Joanna looked at her friend, suddenly feeling out of touch with reality. ‘Mark?’

Monika collapsed onto Joanna, nodding into her shoulder. ‘He was just lying there,’ she said, her voice muffled.

Joanna saw herself putting a hand on her friend’s back. She stared at a crooked painting of a beach on the wall opposite her. There was just a huge empty stretch of sand, a lone vessel, and the blue sea. She wished she could be absorbed into that painting.

Jolty hiccups from her friend brought her to reality, time speeding up for her once again, becoming too fast. Something she had no control over.

Joanna left her friend and rushed down the corridor, stumbling along the walls. She pushed the door and exploded into the bedroom. In a blur her hand went to lift away the bedsheets. White skin, a lock of black hair falling onto the floor, an unseeing white eye looking up at her. She shrieked, her vocal cords sending a vibration through her whole body. The room seemed to pulsate with the intensity of her scream, her eyes fixed on that one white orbit. Mark.

‘Jo, Jo. Stop!’ Hands pulled her away. Something covered her throat. Everything went black. A voice in her ear. ‘Jo. You have to chill out. They’re gonna hear us from the other flats.’

‘But how did it happen?’ Jo sobbed through her friend’s fingers covering her mouth.

‘He overdosed, he overdosed Jo. It was his own fault.’

Joanna twisted around. ‘How could you say that? I mean the poor boy is dead.’ She ended in a squeal.

‘I know, I know. It’s horrible. But he brought it on himself. There’s things you don’t know, Jo. I always told him to take it easy, that he couldn’t go on this way...’

‘But this is Mark. How – he’s the Mark who works as a real estate agent. The one who would never hurt a fly.’

Monika put both hands on Joanna’s shoulders and pushed her onto the end of the bed. ‘Jo. Sit down.’ She looked her in the eye. Joanna thought there was a new fire dancing in there, one she hadn’t seen before.

‘Mark had a problem with smack, Jo. He managed to lead a normal life, yes, but he never could quite get over it. When I met him he kept it secret, but that couldn’t last long –‘

Joanna stared down at the lump of bedsheets and emitted low moaning sounds.