MURDEROUS THOUGHTS

Who woud want to kill a long-past lover?

“Six Months…”

The grey-faced doctor looked at him most seriously. “I’m afraid that’s about it,” he added

The promise of an early demise and visit to the crematorium boomed through Jeremy Summer’s brain with the kind of echo that could only spell one thing.

Jeremy was going to die. The doctor had set the clock ticking. His decline was already under way and soon he would be subject to the invisible rules of decay.

He ran his mind over the promise.

“Six months?” he stammered, questioningly

“I’m afraid, Jeremy, but I wouldn’t make any plans for more than six months… you may be lucky, of course, and time may take a back burner, but I’m afraid it’s not likely to be much longer than six months. And the positive side is it does give you time to sort out your affairs…”

That much was true, then. He could sort out the one affair that needed to be sorted out.

David Stonyford.

When he’d been a kid David had been his best friend. They’d done stuff together, good stuff, down the Junction where countless trains, belching toxic smoke and steam juddered past the fence where they set and marvelled at all that power.

But they hadn’t been kids for long, and Jenny had entered the fray.

Jenny had been the school beauty. Everyone, at least all the boys as well as a handful of girls,, agreed on that, and it had been Jenny who had smiled that white-tooth smile of hers and guided him down paths that went nowhere near his precious junction, but wandered into the woods by Scratch End and taught him a thing or two that his parents most surely would have been horrified that he was learning. How old had he been back then? Fourteen or fifteen at the most?

But Jenny had different parents to his, and liked taking risks.

“We’d better not,” he had protested when she had shown a little bit too much interest in the contents of his underpants, and that had sealed his fate.

“Spoilsport,” she had jeered, rubbing one hand enticingly on his trousered thigh, and without giving him s second chance she had run off.

Only to be seen next day with David Stonyford, and out with him she had tauntingly been dressed in that tiny yellow dress of hers, the one she made look shorter than it should have looked by hitching it up at the waist. The one that made it quite clear what colour underwear she was wearing, the way the thin fabric swirled ehen she flashed everything when she ran and jumped and spun around.

And that was all fifty-odd years ago, so why was he so uptight about it all these years later? After all, he’d grown up, taught at the modern comprehensive, thought he was happy. He was, wasn’t he? Single with nobody to nag him, not living a defunct old dream.

Back then, he had dreamed of a future in which Jenny became Mrs Jeremy Summers and his life was filled with years in the company of those eyes, those lips, that smile, and the wholesome perfection that was Jenny. But that was never to be because before her twentieth birthday Jenny became Mrs Stoneyford, wife to the traitorous David who had lost interest in meetings at the Junction and taking down the numbers on the engines of the trains that passed by there.

More than half a century ago.

And that half century had been tarnished by the shape of her, every time he passed her on the street or avoided her on the bus He’d even tried to ignore her, not to go physically near her should they chance to be in the same room at, say, a party, and years ago there had been plenty of parties.

Six months. That’s how long he had to sort the whole thing out, and if he didn’t then it would be too late and David and Jenny would have won. They’d still be around, she with the same lovely face, albeit a bit older but nonetheless lovely. Because if he didn’t do something, maybe something he should have done years ago, he’d be taken to the crematorium in a lonely coffin before being scattered to the four winds, and that would be that.

“Are you all right, Jeremy?” asked the doctor, troubled by the strange new expression on his patient’s face.

“Sorry, doc… yes, six months, you say? Fine, I’ll sort it all out before my time’s up.”

“Take my advice and try not to think about it too much,” sighed the doctor, “it’s what I did, and look: I’m still here…”

“Er… I’ll try…” he mumbled, and left the surgery with a heavy weight seeming to pull him to the ground. That night when he went to his lonely bed after the late news on the television he got to thinking about how short a time half a year, or six months, is. Then, out of the blue after an uninvited tear had found its way out of his eyes, he knew.

Somebody had to die, or maybe even two somebodies. They needed to be executed and he, with time no longer on his side had to be the executioner.

And it had to happen now, Not tomorrow because tomorrow might be too late if the doctor’s six months was out by six months, but now.

So in a burst of nervous energy, the sort that he hadn’t experienced since his younger years, he pulled his clothes back on and did his best to race for the stairs.

“Prepare to meet your maker, David and Jenny,” he growled, and in his eagerness to get down the stairs and get to the kitchen drawer where he knew there was a set of bright and shiny knives, his elderly feet became tangled together somehow, and he fell.

Almost from the top to the bottom, though he didn’t know it.

All he knew was e was standing at a crossroads on a misty summer night and the signpost urging him on pointed to the little village he hadn’t heard of even though he’d lived in these parts all of his life. YESTERDAY, it was called, and as he took his first step along the dusty track, the name faded and the sign was suddenly blank.

© Peter Rogerson, 16.04.25