Griffin Has You on Speed Dial (Part Two)

Months rolled around and soon, April greens were sprouting on trees; hints of cherry blossom were lacing the air.

Friday noon, and I was in the kitchen washing veggies for the salad. My stomach leapt at the sight of their wilted spots and dirt residue ­̶̶ all glistening in the colander. From the corner of my eye, I caught Benji nearing the counter and crackling the radio to life. It spat staticky Oxford English – Stay tuned! Coming up next Dr. Sampson Kubler on how to speak with grieving people. I froze with a stilled breath. As I bent over the sink to dissipate the tingle in my legs, my mind was buzzing around on who might be playing jokes on us. Somewhere behind, I registered sounds of rustling and soon, the radio was muted. Benji’s muffled swearing floated over my shoulder.

I swept my gaze up with my nerves still in abeyance. Peering out the window, I picked mum on the patio. She was trudging in the full glare of the sun, with her black outfit and waxy face, and I felt my eyes getting moist.

‘Gwen? You alright?’ It took a little nudge and a couple of finger snaps before my eyes to cast me back to reality. Only then did I realise how hard I was squeezing the lever handle for the cold water ­̶̶ so hard it keyed to my palm print.

‘A little harder and blood would be circling the drain.’ Benji chuckled, head lowered, while dabbing my hands with paper towels. ‘What’s wrong?’

I slipped away arching an eyebrow to him.

‘Can’t you see? She’s meant to be setting the table. But all she does is picking things up and putting them down again!’ He let out a heavy sigh and draping an arm around my shoulder, he moved in to kiss my forehead that still furrowed.

‘Big bro guarantees that everything will be fine, okay? Just give her time. It’s been only four months.’

I faltered letting my stiff posture sag. An inner peace claimed my eyes as my smile found its footing. He was right. We couldn’t command the algorithms of nature by precipitating the healing. Time would do the work for us: it would hit the spot nicely.

‘Finish off the salad as I’m arranging the dips in their bowls and readying the gravy. She’s waiting for us.’, he said.

My feet crunched in the tall grass as I paced towards the cobblestone path. The mahogany door, parting the yard that gave onto scrub and the vastness of flower beds swathed in red-green netting, rumbled open with an arthritic rasp revealing my already seated mum. Despite her efforts to force a smile, I could tell she was unwell. I settled the basting pan down with a thunk and sat next to her. Benji stooped to kiss her cheek and then, nestled in between us. He rubbed his palms appraising the roast.

‘It needs to rest before carving son.’ mum explained with a pronounced frown though her lips barely moved.

‘No way mo'om! My stomach announced itself!’ he roared and thumbed a rasher of roast into his mouth.

Unlike Benji, mum helped herself with some pita and coleslaw but I noticed her bites remained unchewed in her mouth. Thick shards of bread almost protruding from her mouth–a bunch she swallowed hard to send down. As I skewered a chump of meat on my fork, I held it out halfway to my lips and winced at the squelch of Benji’s chewing; the coke gurgling at the bottom of his glass.

‘Benji Godfrey a.k.a the pig. Slow down man, nobody’s touching your food!’ I whined and flung a toast crust at him.

Mum snorted, a smirk flashing across her face. We all lapsed into a little pause. I shot a wide-eyed look to Benji and he stared back at me with a gaping grin until her vibrant howl broke the silence. Soon, peals of our laughter rippled across the patio. I relished at those newly rosy cheeks of hers but as soon as I held out my arms to hug her, the telephone rang.

Her laughter subsided; her face flushed from all exuberance. She stood to go but then halted. Looking quizzical as if she had forgotten something, she returned to her pooling brown of gravy smothering the pita remnants at the side of her plate. I began to rose and placed my hand on her shoulder as I padded fast.

Crossing round the hallway, I reached for the phone.

‘Hello?’

‘I’m hungry too. Feed me.’

My heart reacted with a frantic stutter at his gravelly voice. Days had passed, and the phone didn’t ring, nor had he shown up. I was even convinced Griffin plucked out of existence.

I hung up with my head throbbing. In a second, he called back and my breath snagged in my throat. At the third ring, I picked it up.

‘Quite a setup you guys are having in the garden! But, don’t you feel guilty having a blast while your father’s not here?’ As he spoke, I was pacing circles around the room trying to locate him. I even sneaked glances out of the window overlooking the park where he usually awaited. But he was nowhere.

He just kept on ranting from the other end of the line.

‘You should be in the cemetery talking to him instead of laughing Gwen! Your dad’s hurt now seeing how his precious daughter doesn’t give a damn about him.’ I couldn’t ponder a response to justify myself. I just sucked in a breath, critical of my easy mirth. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself!’

I bit my lips as the mouthpiece slipped from my clammy palm. My chest rose, nostrils flaring. Deep breath. Exhale.

The tears eventually fell. Sobs flooded out.

At some point, I felt the floorboards compressing before I heard them creak followed by the remote mutter of chatter. Through a groggy haze, I could make out mum and Benji’s silhouettes wounding their way closer to where I was lying on my back with dad’s frame clutched in my shuddering arms.

#

I switched off the faucet. Stepping free from the shower, I blotted myself mostly dry and donned a freshly ironed nightie. Hair still damp, I brushed it enjoying the painful snarl of knots. I treated the mirror to some shaming grimaces as I brushed my teeth and fossicked between my teeth with a floss. Tugging the drawer open in search of the mouthwash, a faint trace of dad’s aftershave eddied my way. A crystal tumbler with a wedge of lime precipitated on the taste buds of my tongue before issuing the whole room. I shivered.

Segmented pictures of him applying his aftershave jabbed my brain from all angles. His face was trying to form as I got more whiffs of the musky comforter. As the light bulb wobbled in and out, his face was drawing into focus and then ebbing away. When I buried my nose in the lid, sucking in a hefty dose of the aroma, the form stalked off the boundaries of my recollection. Dad congealed into a solid figure now striding erect towards me. An extent of my arm, upwards, and I would be touching him. I was so close!

Just then, however, a low hissing issued from behind and rocketed me to my feet knocking dad out of sight. I jerked my hand back and wheeled around only to source the sound floating overhead. I didn’t dare to glance up the ceiling. Rather, I crouched in the manic volume the hissing was reaching and skittered out the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind me.

Still panting and staggering across the hallway, I paused for breath on the halfway landing to mum’s bedroom door. I wanted to step inside, but she had the lights out. I reckoned she had already dozed off, so I creeped forward to Benji’s door, also ajar. I shouldered the door but stood on the threshold. There was Benji on his built-on desk, his even-paler face drinking in the fluorescent gleam of his computer screen. I watched him from somewhere in the murk and wallowed at the satisfying thoonk he produced each time he swatted the spacebar.

‘Benji? Can I get you anything?’

‘Nuh-uh’.

‘Okay, goodnight’.

He grunted his reply.

I squinted at my alarm clock to gauge the hours I spent squirming into bed: 2:27AM.

Before knowing it, 2:27AM morphed into 3:00AM and I was still tossing from one side to the other; my bed turned into a sloppy tangle of covers with sleep still eluding. From the backdrop of city noise, a siren suddenly screamed kindling a snarl of memories with me unwinding threats that granted me a triple visit to recent events.

First, the day of his death–the ambulance beating a hasty retreat in the roundabout on its way to Teddington Memorial Hospital with dad inside. Then followed, the funeral. The cemetery blanketed under a knotted canopy of eucalyptus trees wrestling with the crisp winter breeze. A crow at a twenty-yard standoff from everyone stalking off the blacked-out hearse needling down the hillside. And finally, mum, Benji and myself returning home fatherless.

My throat was already tuned in the cry-choke-y mode while tears were scalding my eyes. My wail was all set to gust out. But the door creaking open on quiet hinges jolted me up. A swoosh of air battered the window; the rustle of clothing made me aware of the presence that slithered inside. I propped my elbows on a brace of pillows and blinked frantically to sharpen my night vision. I could hear something lurching around in the room. Several breaths stuttered before being ripped free bringing back that hissing; more amplified than ever. I nestled deeper beneath the covers, pulling my hanging foot back to safety. A solid silhouette, manned by a rail-thin guy I recognised, arose from the darkness and tilted over the bedside.

His weight was soon sinking into the bed beside me. I stiffened and clawed at my pillow when the familiar oily-textured arm curled around my waist.

‘You’re so difficult to get along Gwen.’ Griffin’s lips were pinned to my ear, his fingers like worn leather were scrubbing tears from my face. ‘And we are not even worlds apart.’ He roamed a finger up and down my neck as I gasped out, twitching under his touch. ‘I’m part of you since January 21st.’ He accented the last phrase in a tetchy tone only to crawl over and pin me down. He wrapped his hands around my neck with his face resting inches away of mine. The glowing red of the alarm clock casted bloody shadows across his black-rimmed eyes and his jaw jutted out more.

‘Come on hun! Tell me about that ambulance that drove pappa to the hospital. About the funeral.’ His forefingers and thumbs squeezed harder and I gripped on the mattress. Small sobs hiked up my throat only to clump inert on my tongue. ‘Tell me all the stuff no one else wants to hear’, he growled applying more pressure which arrived in intervals: he loosened up only to jam a fist into my mouth and muffle my whimper. I was choking up, I didn’t know how many lungsful of air I could hold in.

My breathing grew shallow and I squeezed my eyes shut at the pulsing sensation striking my temples. An image strobed through the inkiness of my eyelids. Here came the burial and dad’s coffin creaking when entering the soil. It was an indication of how he wasn’t ready to depart the world of mortal comforts, let alone to be laid into the earth.

That was my final screen grab with "Forgive me dad, I love you" my last words before the world quivered with potency and drifted over a patch of black.

I hauled in a screeching breath as if I was gasping into punctured lungs. But I couldn’t complain, I was finally tasting of oxygen. My mangled pillow was sodden; the fabric of the pillowcase had clung to the flesh of my cheek. When I opened my eyes, all I could see was a great big lump. The sun, a blurred splotch of gold, indicated that evening had faded into morning. I sensed a difference in the air consistency. The stickiness of it had toned out by proof that Griffin was gone. Yet I could still feel the mattress shifting on the foot of the bed. I could also hear laboured breathing and a voice - trailed off into silent shaking - calling my name.

‘Benji?’ It was a somewhat relief to confront him. I sat cross-legged, bunching a blanket up around my shoulders.

‘Have you been crying again?’

‘No’, I lied and jumped out of bed to eschew further questioning. I tripped in my attempt to get to the window; my knee prowled into a drift. Tottering for a moment, I was soon gazing upon a world that was waking up. Someone in the distance was blaring a Queen mash-up and I bit the edge of a smile at his out-of-tune singing. Surer of my feet, I inched the mirror and surveyed all my captured deficiencies: the blotchy face, the eyes reduced to little puffy slits, the red nose, the chapped lips and finally, the swollen neck. For the last, the sense was pyrotechnic at touch but fixable, I thought, with a few sips of warm tea.

Flopping back to bed, I saw the tremble in his knees: the first show of fear.

‘How are you keeping Benji?’

‘Alright…’ he muttered avoiding eye contact. I folded my arms in skepticism.

‘No, you’re not.’

‘Well, ever since… dad,’ his voice cracked and he cleared his throat to relocate it.

‘Pretty frankly yeah? I feel as if I’m mopped in a soaking wet wool blanket’. He was openly sobbing now.

Realisation dawned on me. The pent-up bereavement had leaked through his mask of coping, thawing out his denial over father’s passing. For the first time, he let me peer behind it and the fine line of "well-adjustment" had snapped.

‘You poor thing.’ I leaned forward to hug him, but he brushed my hands away and stood up.

‘Gwen, the problem’s not me. Mum is. She’s losing it.’ I frowned. ‘She’s depressed, and I feel there’s little we can do to beam her up.’

‘But… we’re trying.’

‘Your bloodshot eyes and my outburst two minutes ago prove otherwise. We’re not trying enough Gwen.’

‘It’s not easy to forget. It’s been only four months. You said it!’ I countered in all-caps volume and he jerked back.

‘Let’s be realistic Gwen, shall we? Forgetting’s far from possible! What I’m saying is to purge of whatever holds you back. Rip it apart, shoot it, whack it with wire and flay off its skin, I don’t care. Just don’t let it drag you with it!’

Two hours after Benji left the room and I remained positive that when saying don’t let it drag you with it, he meant don’t let Griffin drag you with him. Much have been a merciful blur since January 21st, but it was all clear now: I’d reached my saturation point with Griffin. I’d been “tagged” and he had my itinerary on his watch list. For he eavesdropped on my conversations and snooped through my personal affairs, I was kept on a 24/7 red alert. So, it marked no difference whether I mopped the floor where he treaded every day; he’d run back to me.

The ‘Griffin loop’ I was stuck into was simple: whatever recalled dad summoned a crying jag that would leave me vulnerable to Griffin’s power. Taking over, he would alternate between handing me one tissue after another and grinding salt into my wounds by accusing me of dad’s loss. That’s how he worked: offering solace while seeding guilt and then, reaping all energy fit for life. But my brother was right. Letting him drag me with him would snuff me out, especially if life at eighteen could be something worth exploring. So, I’d better shove Griffin off my path and step along on my own.

#

I stuck by my promise to Benji. Over the next few weeks, memories of dad would only float to my mind’s surface. I couldn’t stop myself from remembering, but I’d blink my way back to present before they spread over its banks, encouraging Griffin to turn up. Of course, his face would poke through my bedroom’s window as dad crossed my mind, but I’d forestall him entering the house. And the more I was keeping my ill-mannered guest at bay, the more upbeat I felt when going about the business of living again. I sniffed out the world to find my angle and applying to university vivified the concept of normality that Griffin had anesthetised. That was quite a win, wasn’t it?

#

When I got back from the gym there was nobody home. As I dumped my bag on a chair, my stomach rumbled for a snack. Walking into the kitchen, I was greeted by an invigorating wave of coolness when I opened the fridge door. Scents wafted up; lingering bite of strawberry.

‘Yes please.’ I licked my lips and plopped a dollop of sweet, tangy homemade strawberry yogurt into my mouth. I stumbled backwards, moaning at its rich flavour and its pulpy texture. ‘Sheer ambrosia in my mouth! You make me happy, you sweet thung.’

An aloft theatrical tap on the door bolted me from my monologue.

‘Open the door Gwen.’ I gulped in a breath and sprinted towards the door.

‘No! Get the hell out of here Griffin.’ Adjusting my weight against the hefty wood I gripped on the handle that was frantically jiggling.

He kept knocking.

‘You knock away,’ I groaned.

‘I brought you something.’

Clamping my hands over my ears, I scrunched up my eyes and started chanting:

‘I DON’T WANT TO KNOW! La-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la.’ I stopped only when his knocking shifted into violent banging.

‘I dropped you off something you’d been expecting. Open up!’

My heart rate ticked up with curiosity and my grip slackened a bit. I yanked the door open and he barged in with his arms spread in a ta-da gesture.

‘Did you miss me?’

I tossed him a loathing look.

‘Yeah, I knew you would! Here.’ He handed me an envelope with my name written on it and I narrowed my eyes at him before flipping it over and using my thumb to rip it open.

Dear, Mrs. Godfrey,

Huge congratulations on being accepted into Kingston University…

I whooped and hopped from one foot to another without reading any other word.

‘Shiiit! I was convinced my application was already sitting in the admissions office with a fat red ‘REJECTED’ on it!’

‘Doesn’t seem like it, hun!’

‘I need to call dad, tell him the news first.’ My words spilled out my mouth unchecked. A smirk creeped onto his face before he wrenched my arm and reefed me to the chair.

‘Go on.’ He sprawled out on the sofa watching me with hands behind his head. A squeal slipped from my lips as I fetched my phone out of my bag and began typing. ‘Oh! And don’t forget to pass him over once getting hold of him.’ I waved him off to concentrate on the phone reception.

‘We're sorry. The number you have dialed is no longer in service. Please check the number and try your call again.’

His laughter erupted in gusting bursts. ‘Mr. Godfrey cannot come to the phone right now. Why? Cause he’s deaaaad,’ he hollered and hopped off the sofa. The word ‘dead’ weighted so heavily to my shoulders that instantly kneeled me down and freed a flood of tears.

Paradoxically, however, the more he repeated it with steroidal fury while running in circles around me, the angrier became my tears as if my sobbing was now differently-flavoured. In fact, frustration flared up inside me and Benji’s rip it apart, shoot it, beat it with wire and flay off its skin raged over, scouring my whole being. I needed to block Griffin’s voice somehow.

Still on my knees and blinking furiously to clear my vision, I flicked a swift gaze to his direction and measured the distance to the tips of his trainers. Around six feet, a single lunge might close the space. I sidled closer and launching my leg out from under him, he struck the floor flat on his back, head craned to one sight. Immediately, I shoved myself up and lurched towards him.

‘No, he’s not you bastard!’ I roared, and my double kick glanced his chin off, I could hear his breath leaving him more ragged by the second. With his upper jaw floating, unattracted, his lips parted and blood oozed outwards. It sheeted over his teeth and streamed down his chin. It poured across his chest, then the floor only to end up seeping my shoes.

I looked up, and closed my eyes grinning in triumph. To see him immobilised, slowly dying, was to reborn myself.

‘I shoved you off my path Griffin, I’m step-‘

Scarcely had I finished my sentence when I felt the heel of his shoe hammering into my leg and crushing my ankle, knocking a clump of air out of my lungs. The floor smashed my cheek, and dots of dancing yellows grabbed my focus; the world was gradually whisking away. I pegged my pupil to the corner of my eye, battling to look up at him.

He, an enormous form that lurked, leaned in and after spitting a gob of blood beside me, he patted my cheek. ‘Good play, hun but in your dreams.’

---

Griffin Has You on Speed Dial (Part Two) last modified: 18 December 2020

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