--This story contains mild sensitive content of physical violence and sexual themes.--

One Hand Knocking.

The sun’s rays part the clouds, shedding a soft white light onto the windowsill, rain still clinging to the glass, warping my view of the passing cars. Her knocking still rings through my head, her lilly pale hands softly tapping the ornate details of my door, my apartment was built not long after the Boston fire and even so many years later, the smell of blackness, of burning still radiates through the entire city, at least for those of us that remember. Her scent stains my furniture, my clothes, the walls, and the floor. Its flowery aroma sings through my head occasionally, bringing back memories I pray would leave.

I remember the days that she would come, I would wait by the window for her knocking, and my stomach lie sunk to the bottom of my body while I anxiously bide my time awaiting that enlightening sound, that feeling of elation, of pure bliss when I heard that knock, a sound lost to time forever.

March 3rd, Rachel brought with her a bouquet, they were spring meadow flowers, and they reminded me of home, a blurred home of forgotten and unforgotten, forgiven and unforgiven, a home that will forever be buried under pain, buried under memories not lost, but thrown away.

“George they’re for you!” she exclaimed as I rose from my seat at the window,

“Why buy a man like me flowers? You’ll end up having to look after them”

“George I’ve told you too many times, I don't like it when you say such things”

“I can’t help it, my mother taught me not to lie, and the lord has punished me enough already”.

She made her way over to my old record player, Rachel always moved like a hummingbird, direct and formulaic, everything about her was perfection. The record player though, much to my dismay was an old, muffled piece of junk, left to me by my late brother, he was a musician with some travelling orchestra for most of his life. She loved the music I had, music far detached from her generation’s tastes, it was always surprising whatever she chose to play on the day, I could never pick it. Today she chose one a little newer, ‘Sweet Italian Love’ by Billy Murray, a bland song that I was never particularly fond of, but when Rachel played it, her smile shone like a lighthouse at midnight, it struck me with its blinding guidance, “enjoy this with me,” it called. Never did a visit go by that Rachel didn’t teach this ancient man something he had never learnt about himself, Rachel taught me that I did like Greek food, Rachel taught me that I still enjoyed board games, Rachel taught me that I could still dance, I could still love, provided I had something solid to hold on to.

The knocking again ran through my head, darkly surging through my body, a knock I could no longer listen to, a knock I had to ignore with every fibre of my being, a knock that could no longer exist. Reading through my diary by the lamp.

September 17th, Rachel’s knock was louder this time, I thought something had happened, and I rushed to the door to find Rachel, dimples welling her cheeks, her rigid body clad in a short white dress and fox fur jacket, sporadically swaying back and forth like Newton’s cradle.

“George you’ll never believe what I picked up yesterday morning at the market”

“Did you go with Dave?”

“Yes George I go everywhere with Dave you know that, never mind that! Look what I found!”

Rachel shimmied a pack of piano wire out of her small brown purse,

“Now you can fix big Beth! You know I’ve always wanted to hear you play!”

I hadn’t played in years, but the thought of playing to Rachel, I’ll admit, certainly helped with my motivation. I showed her how to repair the piano, it was no longer something I was capable of doing on my own, but with young hands, and an old head, repairing Beth was no longer an impossible task.

She requested song after song, mostly from the late 90s and early 00s, I played them with a vigour befitting of a far younger man. We had polished off the first bottle of wine within the hour and were now onto the third. My fingers slipped on the keys and the songs were becoming less about accuracy and more about being together. She knelt in front of me under the piano, demanding song after song as she worked on me, she brought a heat I couldn't remember ever having had, the warmth pulsed through my body and things I was confident no longer worked, had somehow sprung to life. After what felt like hours, we ended up in my room, lying on the floor, I couldn’t allow us on the bed. We were covered in each other's sweat and saliva, she let out an exasperated sigh, one that could have been contentment or regret, I was never interested in finding out.

We would regularly experience these blissful nights together, despite how much they meant to me, they mostly moulded into one blur of excitement, I am confident my mind didn’t have the ability to properly understand what happened, it couldn’t keep up with the fire that burnt through my body.

December 23rd, The first time I had ever actually met Rachel’s husband, Dave. Dave was far larger than me, taller and broader, he had dark brown well-cropped hair, and tan skin, boasting the look of an ox, Dave was a civil servant with the Boston Municipality, he was what I would call a “Big Wig” but to me, Dave actually lived up to the term. He addressed Rachel with a disgusting amount of admiration, he spoke like a true lead, a man befitting of a Hollywood heartthrob, this feeling made me look like a washed-up heavy, or even worse, a side character, written entirely to be quickly disposed of by the hero as I attempt to be his foil. Thankfully this feeling quickly left the front of my mind with Dave’s “gift”, a freshly clipped Spruce.

“We thought, considering the time of year, and your difficulties with getting out of the house, instead of inviting you for Christmas, we could bring Christmas to you,” exclaimed Rachel.

“Indeed, and after seeing the size of it, I thought now would be a better time than ever for Rachel to introduce us, considering she was likely to need an extra set of hands to get this up the stairs to your homely little apartment,” Dave said, as he dutifully scanned my shitty little 2 bedroom box.

“I appreciate the sentiment but I -”

“I will not allow you to deny us this time together, the 3 of us… Me and Dave will do all of the work, all you have to do is be our host, George, just this once allow yourself some cheer, I understand since Alice, things have been tough, but you have me now, and Dave, let us just have a good Christmas”.

The knocking has become deafening, what can I do to rid myself of this disdainful pounding that reverbs throughout my mind, this constant reminder of what was mine, or is mine, but is yet, not mine in the slightest?

“Open the door, please George, I’m not going to do anything, you can trust me, I just want to help you” cried Rachel, I could hear the pain in her voice, I could hear her subtle hatred for me and what I’ve done, but I can't open that door, I can't bring myself to let her in anymore.

December 25th, a hard knock at the door, two times, decisive yet civil. I open to see Dave, dressed in slick black trousers and a crisp white shirt, Rachel by his side wearing a flowy black dress with puffed sleeves and small black heels.

“Merry Christmas George!” they say in unison,

“Marry Christmas” I mumble back, certainly trying my best to appear exasperated at this forced celebration.

“Let me put the turkey in the oven and we can get to having some drinks” Dave exclaimed as he put on a faux drunk face accompanied by an all too realistic drunk stumble toward my oven.

Rachel reached her pipe-thin arms out for a hug, but I refused, those sorts of displays with another person around were never something I could muster. Rachel shuffled toward my record player with an expression befitting an addict, she gracefully, but hurriedly rifled through my collection before pulling out a record I had never seen before. The record had an entirely black sleeve with nothing written on it, but Rachel handled it with a strange familiarity as if it was a favourite of hers, despite me having never seen it among my records in the past. She placed it on the deck and lowered the needle, she did all of this in such a deliberate fashion I was perplexed at her efficiency, or more the necessity for such efficiency.

Then the record began, the sound the player emitted wasn’t so much a song, but a cacophony of pure sound, there was no instrument, no voice that could be distinguished as remotely man-made. The sound was bouncing from high to low pitch, fast to slow in tempo all as if it were made purely to inflict hurt. That was when I saw him, Dave, his large body moving, hunched over, toward me, his voice, emitting a low grunt, almost a growl, his eyes bore into me, they gouged out my soul and left me empty. He started moving faster and faster as I frantically scanned the room searching for something to defend myself with.

The noise, a sound I will never forget erupted from his mouth, within an instant his hunched run had turned to a flounder, his body flailing backward as a gargled scream encapsulated the room. His boarish hands grabbed at his throat, and an almost glowing red seeped through his grasping fingers. Blood erupted from his mouth as he fell to the ground, a sinister clucking sound stifled his screaming as more crimson blood violently shot toward the ceiling.

Rachel, without a wasted movement, whisked herself from the record player toward Dave's writhing body, she gracefully plucked a pair of gardening gloves from her cleavage as she stood above the mountain of a man kicking on the floor.

“I warned you to stay out of me and George's relationship did I not?” Rachel says as she fingers her gloves into place.

“You couldn’t do it, nope, YOU had to come and meet him, YOU had to force your way into our relationship out of what? Jealousy? Fear? Distrust?”

Dave replied with a gargled shriek, red-stained hands reaching through the air like the creation of Adam, finger pointed toward Rachel’s cold, pale face. He grabbed at her black dress trying to either pull her down, or him up, but it was no use, his neck was slit at least halfway through his arms were beginning to wobble his movements fading.

As I walked over toward them, I realised the pool of blood had spread across most of the living area, I was already standing within this puddle of life, drained so terrifically quickly from a human that I once saw as almost invincible.

“Don’t move! You’ll end up like him”

As Rachel spoke, a spider thread started appearing before me, well above my head, that’s when I realised what had happened, and what scared me most was the eerie accuracy of the wire that had been placed. ‘

I was left with no other option, I slowly paced my way to the record table, and I saw she had tied the piece of stripped piano wire to a nail slyly hammered into the doorframe of the spare bedroom. I carefully unwound it, using a kerchief to cover my fingers as I slowly wrapped it around my own neck.

“Up!” I screamed, struck with fear, coloured with whatever tinge of authority I could pull from my chest.

Rachel slowly turned, her dimples vanishing as she realised what I had done, her cold stare, her brown eyes now turned down as a frown covered her facade.

“Let it go, George, I have done this for you, for us, we can be together now, without distraction, without problems” Rachel snapped as she placed her hand out in front of her.

“Hand me the wire, I will clean all this mess up before the turkey is finished”

“I can’t let you do this. If you don't step into this bedroom now, I will do it, I’m an old man with nothing to lose, do as I say, or I will run my neck through with this wire and you’ll be left with no man.

Rachel slowly pirouetted around me, staring through me as she boleroed toward the spare bedroom door, when she got within arms reach of me I pulled the wire tighter, a threat I wasn’t sure I had the courage to carry through with. This was the first time in living here that I appreciated the outward locking doors, a decision that very few homes featured. The clunk of the lock not once used in its history, echoed through the silent room, only then did I realise Rachel had retracted the needle from the record as she danced past me, ending its arrhythmic torture.

Dave’s body lay sprawled on the floor, his head facing the door at an unnatural angle, dark red blood reflecting my face tinted yellow in the afternoon light that glared through the living room window. My mind spun, I couldn’t fathom the next step, and I couldn’t comprehend a solution to what I saw in front of me. I fetched every old towel and rag I had lying around in the hallway cupboard, as I knelt the smell of iron assaulted me, it seeped through my body. I swept the towel through the infinite pool, my hands were soaked in blood as I pictured myself as the rag, drenched with blood moving back and forward as I placed towel after towel into a garbage bag, left right, back and forward over and over.

I approached Dave’s pale drained corpse, my heart pounding, and my breath became shortened as I mulled over the action I was about to attempt. As my hands touched his bulging torso I realised how impossible a task it was, moving this mountain of a man, even after losing that much blood was not something my frame was capable of anymore.

As I retired to the windowsill seat I tried to block out the view of what was Dave, I covered his body with an old brown sheet I had used when painting the bathroom walls. I sat, staring out the window at the birds on the building across the street, their wings lit with the warm glow of the near-down sun, the sky a blueish purple hue, the stars slowly beginning to appear. I hear her soft knocking and knocking and knocking.

With relentless knocking rattling my brain, destroying any sense of peace in the early hours of this boxing day morning, the smell of smoke chokes me, the red glow of fire lighting the room around me. I make my way to my bed, the knocking growing faint behind the crackling flames. I see my Alice, laying peacefully on her side, her beautiful hand pats the space next to her, her grey hair splayed across her pillow reaching onto mine. As I lay down, my body eases into a feeling of rest that has evaded me for what feels like a lifetime, my bones feel in place, and my muscles are finally at ease as I drift off into the darkness, the stars lighting my way brighter than ever before.