Noises in the Dark - 6. How Times Change

Will ignored the first three emails as spam. He didn’t even bother reading them before deleting them. He’d been deep in the dissolving of his Civil Partnership and that, plus work, was all that Will could focus on.

At forty-five he’d realised that he didn’t want to be in a Civil Partnership with Isaac for the rest of his life, and certainly not convert it into a marriage, especially as Isaac was suffocating him. They’d had their Civil Partnership six years ago, and at the time Will had thought it was the right thing to do. He’d been with Isaac for three years before that and felt that it was accepted by everyone around him that he’d stay with Isaac, especially as he approached forty.

Now at forty-five, he felt that his life was falling away from him and he was missing out on so much. He’d still kept his lean and muscular body (his gym membership saw to that), he knew he was still attractive (he got enough compliments at the gym and at work, from both women and men) and wanted to use it more than just once a week, on a Friday night. Gay sex was so much more acceptable and available now. Saunas, sex clubs and backrooms were all legal and readily available here in London. He saw adverts and promotions for them all over the place and for nude clubs and bars too. He saw other guys using Gindr on their phones and posting their naked profiles online, and he wanted to taste some of that.

As Isaac had grown older (he was only a year older then Will) he’d grown less interested in sex. For him, once a week, on a Friday night, had been enough. When Will suggested that they “open up” their relationship sexually, suggesting that they go to a sex club or nude bar together, Isaac had bluntly refused, saying that they should be enough sexually for each other. Will knew then that he’d had enough of Isaac. Days later he left.

The emails had returned the day after Will had received the final documents to say that his Civil Partnership was ultimately dissolved. He’d never realised that there was so much paperwork involved in it and it had taken so bloody long. The three emails were entitled: “I wish I had your life”, “Things change and it’s so unfair” and “I wasted my life, why didn’t you?” Again, Will deleted them, unread. Since leaving Isaac, he’d created several online profiles and had been receiving more spam since then.

A week later, the emails returned. It was curiosity that finally made him read the first one.

The email was self-pitying and rambling, the writer complaining about how good Will’s life was and how Will was “wasting” it. There were paragraphs and paragraphs of it, and Will soon gave up reading it. He deleted it, and the other two, but before doing so he’d checked the name at the end of it, the email address was just a string of numbers. It was signed Simon Reid, but the name meant nothing to him. Will guessed it was someone he’d brushed off online.

Two days later the emails returned and again he deleted them, unread. They were back the next day and again he deleted them, but they were back the following day.

After a week of the emails appearing in his inbox Will had got so annoyed with them that he’d replied to one of them. His message just read:

“Piss off and leave me alone, you sad bastard!”

The email was bounced straight back to him, marked recipient unknown.

Shortly after this the text messages started arriving. They were brief, compared to the emails, and always from a number that identified itself as “Simon Reid”. The first message read, “Why can’t I be you?” When, after the third message, Will called the number back all he got was a recorded message telling him that he’d dialled incorrectly, the number was not recognised.

The three emails continued to arrive each day, but now he also received ten to twelve text messages a day. The messages were always the same, pathetic pleads for his attention, and Will always deleted them after he received them.

The texts were harder to ignore, his phone bleeping all through the day, and he soon grew tired of deleting them. This quickly drove him to doing an internet search for Simon Reid, but it lead to nothing. Even when he added the email address or the mobile phone, it still produced nothing. There were a lot of Simon Reid’s but none of them had any link to him, none of them had a profile on any of the gay dating apps he’d been using.

Two days later his mother had called him (She was speaking to him that month). By then he was almost boiling with frustration about Simon Reid. After her usual monologue about how disappointing her other children were (he was sure she complained about him to his siblings behind his back) he was able to pick her memory. His mother always had an excellent memory for names, against all her other faults.

“Do you remember anyone called Simon Reid?” Will asked her.

“Of course I do, you went to school with him. Why do you want to know?” She replied.

“He’s trying to get back in touch with me.”

“That will be a bloody miracle,” she snapped back, “He’s been dead for nearly thirty years.”

“What?”

“He killed himself, pills I think, when he was nineteen. It drove his mother over the edge, but she and his father were religious nuts before he died...” His mother’s voice droned on in his ear. Will did remember Simon Reid now. He’d been a thin, dirty blonde boy, in the same class at school as him. Simon Reid had been weak and effeminate, marking him out as the class queer and so bringing the worst bullying pouring down upon him. In suburban Liverpool, as he grow up in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the worst thing you could be was “Queer”, and Simon Reid had been labelled that. Will had been silently grateful that it had been Simon, and not him. He’d been able to hide his sexuality away unnoticed, as Simon Reid took the bullying instead.

He’d left home at eighteen, fleeing Liverpool for the anonymity and freedom of London. Less than a year later Simon Reid was dead, but by then Will was fully immersed in his new life in London and not speaking with his mother much.

After he’d finally got his mother off the phone he’d had time to think. But it didn’t take long to realise it. This was some sort of revenge by one of Isaac’s brain-dead friends. He knew it. It was just typical of one of them to think up this as “punishment” on him for leaving Isaac. If only they knew the real truth, he scoffed to himself.

The next day, Friday, he was rushing home from work. He’d had to stay late, making sure a shipment was delivered correctly, and now only had two hours to eat and get himself ready. He was going out to a Nude Bar that night, and he needed to shower and preen himself. As he opened the front door to his building he felt someone standing behind him but when he turned around there was no one there. He still had the same feeling, of someone following close behind him, as he ran up the stairs to his flat, but again there was no one on the stairs behind him.

As he left his flat, later on his way out, again he’d felt someone following close behind him, but when he looked back there was no one there. The feeling continued as he made his way to the bar, like something unpleasant dragging at his heels. It also dragged at his mood, a constant annoyance there behind him.

Will had left the bar earlier then he planned, in his hurry he’d pulled his underpants back on inside-out. The place had been such a disappointment to him. It had been full of naked men, but most of them were sagging middle aged suburban gay couples up for a Friday night walk-on-the-wild-side of a threesome or some exhibition sex. It hadn’t been the Gay Babylon of wild sex and buff men he’d been hoping for.

As he stepped out on the pavement, outside the bar, he’d again felt that feeling of someone walking close behind him. He didn't look back, the chill night air was pricking at his face, instead he stormed off towards the tube station, but the feeling couldn't be walked away. All the way home he kept feeling something hovering behind him, twisting at his nerves and dragging down his mood. It was only when he reached home and locked his flat's front door behind him that the feeling finally left, and Will felt a wave of relief.

The phone call woke him up in the early hours of Saturday morning. Snapping him out of sleep, Will grabbed his phone and answered it but there was only silence on the other end. Groaning to himself, Will hung up his phone, and fell back onto his bed, but sleep didn't come back easily.

The second call came mid-morning. He was still groggy from his poor night’s sleep and so answered it expecting it to be a friend; instead he was just greeted with silence again. He angrily ended the call, tossing his phone to one side.

The third call came at lunchtime. His phone had been buzzing all morning with Simon Reid’s pleading texts. When it rang he was tired and frustrated and bluntly said:

“Hello, yes?”

But again he was only greeted with silence. The frustration broke inside of him and he barked back:

“This Simon Reid?... Well, I’m fucking on to you and I know what you’re doing and I know you’re not him! Fuck off!”

He snapped, ending the call and then turning his phone off. He didn’t usually do this, keeping his phone on all the time because Gindr and other apps would text him when he got any messages to one of his many profiles. Now he just wanted some peace from this Simon Reid, whoever he was, and didn’t care about missing any potential messages.

He’d intended to go out that evening, there was an exciting club night he’d wanted to go to, but after that third phone call he’d lost all interest in it. Instead he’d stayed home, watching re-runs of old crime shows on television.

He slept poorly that night. He kept waking and looking at his phone, dreaming that it had been ringing and had woken him from sleep. When he did wake he found that it was still turned off. Each time frustration flooded him, as he fell back onto his bed.

Sunday morning his body ached with fatigue, he’d slept so poorly, and his temper was short with everything. When he found that the small amount of milk left in his fridge had gone off he’d screamed in frustration, swearing at the open fridge door.

As soon as he left his flat, to buy more milk and a newspaper, Will felt someone walking close behind him. Again he looked over his shoulder and again there was no one there. He hurried to his local shop, all the while dogged by that feeling he was being haunting, and rushed back with his purchases clutched in his hands. He only felt safe once he’d locked his front door behind him, but that feeling had left a deep unease inside of him. He didn’t want to step outside of his flat again. It was a stupid feeling but he wasn’t going to deny it. He wasn’t going to leave his flat again that day.

The knocking on his front door came at six o’clock. A heavy and continues pounding of a fist against the wood of his front door. The flat had an entry phone system stopping visitors at the building’s front door. Only his neighbours ever knocked on his flat’s front door, and that was rare. Frustration and his poor mood were still running within him as he snatched open the front door.

At the entrance to his flat stood a pale young man, obviously in his late teens. He was dressed in pale, stone-washed jeans and a white cotton shirt. His fine, blonde hair fell to his shoulders in an untidy style. The only brightness about him was his blue eyes that stared back at Will with a cold and hard expression. It was Simon Reid, Will recognised him the moment he opened the door.

Will just stared back at him, his mind no longer able to process what was happening before him.

“Aren’t you going to let me in?” Simon Reid said, his voice as cold as his eyes.

Will stepped back, letting go of the door, and retreated back into his sitting room. Simon Reid stepped through the open door, slamming it behind him, and followed Will.

“You’re died,” Will said, expressing the thought pounding inside his head.

“Yes, and you’re squandering the life I should be living!” Simon Reid hissed back.

“Wait a minute,” Will said, holding up his hands.

“No! My life was stolen away from me and you’re wasting your life on sex clubs!”

“You killed yourself. That wasn’t my fault,” Will protested.

“I killed myself because I was forced to because I’m gay, and you abandoned me!”

“Hey, wait a minute there,” Will said.

“My parents found out I’m gay when I was eighteen and sent me to that Christian-gay-cure group. They made my life a living hell. They told me I could pray-away-the-gay and be an ex-gay, but I couldn’t. One of the other men in the group came on to me and I had sex with him, I was so lonely. He told the group’s leader, who told my father and he beat me stupid. That’s when I killed myself. I took every pill in the house. I couldn’t go on.”

“I’m sorry, but that wasn’t my fault,” Will again protested.

“You weren’t there!” Simon Reid almost screamed back at him, making Will step back in surprise. “I loved you and I always looked up to you. I wanted you to help me but you’d cleared off to London and left me alone. No one knew your address or anything.”

“Look, it was all twenty-nine, thirty years ago. The early eighties were really crap and homophobic, God I remember that. I had to get away from Liverpool. Look, everything’s really better now. You can be gay and no one bothers about it,” Will said. His mind was tripping over his own words.

“And I’ve missed out on all of that!” He now shouted back at Will, Simon Reid’s face was creased with the anger raging through his words. All Will could think of to do was to end this and get rid of this thing as soon as he could.

“I’m really sorry mate, I really am,” he told Simon Reid.

“And you’re wasting your life!”

“What?” Will replied.

“You’re forty-five and you’re acting like a teenager in heat, having casual sex all over the place. You had a lover and you were almost married to him and you threw all that away so you could screw around like a teenager. Your life is pathetic and useless.”

“Hey. This is my life,” Will replied, his own anger at Simon Reid’s comments flashing into his mind. “You don’t know what happened. I had my reasons.”

“If I’d had your life I’d have lived it so much better. If I’d had a lover like Isaac I won’t have thrown him away, I would have treated him fine and loved him. Not the way you did. I won’t have wasted a relationship the way you did! You disgust me. I envied you so much.”

“I’m not perfect but it’s my life,” Will protested.

“I should have had your life. I want your life!” Simon Reid shouted back at him and lunged at Will. Simon Reid’s hands clutched at his chest, cold hands grabbing painfully at his chest.

Will cried out against that cold pain and threw himself backwards, trying to escape Simon Reid’s grip, but his feet won’t move. He went to throw his arms up, to block Simon Reid, but they won’t move either. His body was suddenly motionless. He was trapped.

Simon Reid’s hands then sank deep into his chest, disappearing into his very body. He wanted to scream out against it but nothing happened; only a cold darkness filled his mind.

*****

Tuesday, two days later, Isaac received a text message from his ex, Will Carpenter. He’d never expected to hear from Will again, Will had made that plain when he’d started to dissolve their Civil Partnership, casting Isaac aside.

He left the message unread for most of the day. It was probably Will wanting him to sign some piece of paper or other, wanting Isaac to give up some benefit or something. If it was Isaac wasn’t going to rush to sign anything for Will, he’d make the man suffer.

When he finally read it, at home that evening, he found it said:

“Can we talk? I’ve made a stupid mistake. I want us to get back together again.”

Typical, Isaac thought, the stupid bastard could never make up his mind.

He deleted Will’s message with no intention of ever answering it.