Jagged #1 (weekend freewrite)

_{Photo by Sasha Freemind on Unsplash}

Anthony Burris Green traced one jagged fingernail along the railing. Then, he opened the knife. Shut it. And opened it again and if you’d asked him that morning what he would be doing at precisely six oh five that evening, slitting his own throat wouldn’t have been his first guess. Yet he did it anyway.
And Anthony Burris Green spent the first twenty-four hours of the afterlife, lying cold, dead on a slab, with no one coming to claim him. The police who’d discovered the body hadn’t managed to track down one single human being who might be interested in burying Green, or at the very least, in identifying him.
No wife, no girlfriend, both parents deceased, and not one friend. Not even in his phone’s contact list. That was what truly worried Lieutenant Burley, who’d had the misfortune of being assigned to the dead guy. What could he say? It was a slow day and he was tasked with finding out what the hell happened or rather, no, because that was pretty obvious, judging by the sheer distance between the bridge and the water-shore below and the guy's opened throat. So, it didn’t matter much if Green had done himself in because he’d lost the love of his life or because his boss was about to sack him.
Right now, it seemed likely to Lieutenant Burley that what had pushed Green over the edge was the fact that the sole contact logged in his phone, in the past sixty days was a guy who repaired ovens. Actually written in the address book - “Jackson, Oven Guy”, up there with “Andrew, ComputerTech” and “Louie – Guy Toilet”. There were others and Burley had figured he’d call them all since he had nothing else to go on, but after listening to a strong fifteen minutes of the oven guy rambling on and on about what a strange man Green had been and how he was sorry, but he could’ve just sensed this was gonna happen, Burley didn’t really feel like calling anyone else for the day.

Anthony Burris Green was nowhere to be found in their files, no hospital stays in the past twelve years, the driver’s license in his jacket was five years expired and he had no other identification on him. He was, by all means, a dead end.
And yet, there was a story there, Burley felt certain. When he’d taken his first look at Green, what had immediately drawn his attention was the nail. Index finger of his left hand and at first, he thought he’d had some sort of accident, but upon closer inspection, he found all his nails were like that, brittle and down to the red, so much so it made Burley wince to even look at them.
Like he’d bitten them obsessively or scratched at something too hard. And it seemed it was the only lead Burley had to go on.
That is, until the young fellow walked in the door and started asking about Green.

Nellie woke. Not due to moonlight, but because of her dream, which was strange, since she was usually a very heavy sleeper. But she turned over in bed, almost at once, eager to wake Ollie and tell him about her dream, of how he’d walked into the police station of her mind, looking to cough up to a crime he hadn’t committed.
And she found Ollie was gone and that she didn’t quite know what to do. It was the first time in three years Ollie hadn’t been there beside her. Or maybe it wasn’t, maybe she just didn’t know, after all, she rarely woke during the night. She realized in the darkness and the sudden cold, how little she truly knew about her husband’s night-time habits. Did he walk the house in search of sleep? Did he sometimes wake covered in sweat from nightmares? And most importantly, did he often leave their marital bed to go God knows where?
She called out his name and the silence of the house sounded bitter against her ears. How lonely things could get in the dark, how quiet.
‘Ollie,’ she almost screamed . She was scared now, and Nellie wasn’t a woman who scared off often.

But Ollie wasn’t there. That much was clear, he wasn’t in the bathroom, he wasn’t in the corridor outside, smoking a stolen cigarette, like he used to when they were first together (and how long ago had that been?), he wasn’t asleep in the living room or nibbling a snack in the kitchen. Ollie was nowhere to be found and suddenly, Nellie remembered what had woken her in the first place. And she didn’t want to think it, because whatever her dream had been about, she knew for sure it hadn’t been good.

She pulled on a pair of loose jeans, discarded on her chair that was really just a heap of clothes, no underwear and an over-sized T-shirt, which – she only realized downstairs – wasn’t hers, but Ollie’s.
The doorman looked at Nellie’s uncombed hair and her wild eyes and called her a cab, trying to calm her down as he waited. There was something wrong with Mr. Ollie, that much was clear. Mr. Ollie was a good kid, the doorman always thought, never made noise, never was rude to him. In fact, he always had time to stop and chat, even for a second, even if he was busy.
Of all the people lived in this building, Mr. Ollie seemed like the last person who’d get involved in something like this, whatever this was. What, with Mrs. Nellie running around at three AM in the morning, scared out of her mind…

Nellie stepped into the police precinct on unsteady feet and found herself seeking a sign, some kindness perhaps, in the woman at the front desk.
‘Excuse me, Officer,’ she stammered, ‘but I think my husband’s just confessed to murdering somebody.’

‘She ain't what you think’ Officer Masthers told Lieutenant Burley, who was doing his best not to roll his eyes.

‘And how would you know what I think, huh? We have a dead guy, an obvious suicide, a guy who comes in and says he’ll tell me everything, including why the dead guy offed himself and this guy’s wife, who’s sure he’s somehow confessed to this suicide. Now, what can I possibly think about this and how on Earth might that be wrong?’

‘Well, you know, she’s not drunk or high or anything. And she don’t seem crazy. She looks like a very neat type, clean, lady of the manor type, you know? I mean, that guy came in earlier is her husband? I’m just sayin’ I can’t see how she got messed up with that sort of dude.’

‘Masthers, enough. I am really not interested. None of this makes any sense. And I would really like to find out what the hell happened to this Green character before the night’s out, so please, just show her to my office and I’ll listen to them both in peace.’

Burley waited for her at the door and thought Masthers was right. Nellie Patterson seemed a very clean woman, not beautiful, though by no means ugly. Just woken out of her sleep. Bags under her eyes, messy hair, she looked at Burley like she was about to pounce him.

‘Mrs Patterson, Lieutenant Burley, it’s a pleasure. Would you come with me? Your husband’s right in here.’
He thought it best to speak before she had time to say anything.
The two stared at each other in silence, or so it seemed, on the outside. But in their eyes, there was comprised an entire world, shouting and crying and love immeasurable at having found each other again. So much that the words ‘what are you doing here?’ would be too poor to explain anything.
And yet, they would have to, because what had seemed simple to Burley in the morning was now becoming infinitely more complicated.

to be continued

This is a weekend freewrite based on @mariannewest's 3 prompts. Check her out!

Cheers for reading,