Human Remains by Elizabeth Haynes

kitchen to find some cat food.
    I cooked myself an omelette for tea, watched a programme about Africa on the telly and then went and had a bath. I sat there in the hot foamy water and listened to the silence in the house, the echoing silence.
    I tried to imagine what could have happened in the months since the time I’d seen Shelley Burton. Maybe she’d been so unhappy after her partner had moved out that she’d given up on gardening, given up on life. Maybe he’d had an affair with someone, and she’d been devastated by it.
    All of these things could have been happening next door and I hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t seen her for a long time. Maybe because of this I’d assumed that she’d gone, that the house was being sold or put up for letting, and it had turned out she was still living there, all along.
    I wasn’t feeling unhappy but the tears started before I even really expected them. Tears for the silence, the being alone. Tears for the people who died in their houses and stayed there, their bodies rotting away to fluid and bone and slime, nothing left in the end but a black stain on the mattress or the chair. Buried with nobody there but some woman from the council who’d tried and failed to find someone who’d loved them.
    If I died, here, now, would I be missed? Surely work would notice? Surely Mum would phone the police, if she couldn’t get hold of me? Someone might call round. What if I didn’t answer the door? How long would it be before someone kicked the door in? Days? Weeks? What state would I be in, by then?
    Outside the bathroom door I heard a scratching sound. The cat, my support, my rock.

Colin
     
     
    At work today I noticed Martha talking to Katrine, the new temp. I hardly registered her presence for the first couple of weeks, and then she smiled at me in the lift and ever since then I find myself acutely aware of her every time she’s in the room.
    She’s Danish, apparently, although she doesn’t appear to have an accent. They all talk about her when she’s not there, the same way they undoubtedly talk about me the moment I leave. I hate their pettiness, their bitchiness, the way they pretend to be friends all the time and then verbally tear their prey to shreds in their absence.
    They tried to get me to join in, asked me what I thought, but then realised that I didn’t want to play their juvenile games. I’m there to work, not to socialise.
    Actually, I’m there because it suits me. I earn the same amount of money every month and I can do the job without expending any intellectual effort. In fact, most days I can get my work done by half-past ten in the morning and after that I use my workstation to complete study assignments or research. There is no point in looking for additional work to do, after all, because that would just be setting myself up for bigger challenges in the future. No: I do what I have to do, I do it well, I do it slightly better than anyone else, and they leave me alone.
    I’ve stopped masturbating, for now. I was disgusting myself. I’m saving it for the weekend, when I can waste time with it if I feel like it. I am, as always, in control.
    Vaughn Bradstock has asked me if I would like to have dinner with him and the delightful Audrey on Saturday.
    My first thought was that it would interrupt my evening of wanking and porn; then I reconsidered. It would be intriguing to meet Audrey, after having heard about every intimate detail of her life, her physique and her personality over the last few months. He has decided against Weston-super-Mare, by the way. I told him it was wise. If you were going to go somewhere with the woman of your dreams, then surely you would find somewhere more exotic than Weston-super-Mare?
    ‘About six-thirty alright?’ he’d asked.
    Typical, I thought. ‘Can we make it a bit later? I have a phone call to make at that time.’
    There was a momentary pause. ‘Oh, well, I suppose so. Can’t you ring whoever it is earlier? It’s just