Chapter 14: All The Things We Don't Discuss
All The Things We Don’t Discuss continues this week. This is a genre-bending literary gothic novel with a missing person at its core. If you like magic realism, unreliable narrators, 19th century Gothic, dreamy slipstream type stories, and mysteries…you’ll like this. Maybe. You can read the entire book so far from the beginning here.
At that minute, the doorbell rang. It was broken and emitted an abortive squeal.
“Hello.” Melvin said when I opened the door. He was cowering from the rain in a weather-weary mac.
“Hello,” I said, nodding at him. I wanted to lean in and smell him but I resisted, stepping aside to welcome him in. Silence from upstairs. We stood in the main storage area, and as he dripped on the floor I was reminded of the first time we’d met. He was wearing a three-piece suit under the mac. Had he been at dinner? Or something? Who with? What time was it? The school was a vacuum.
He smelled of Cool Water, the women’s perfume. For months I would remember it as an irresistible odour. It smelled like something forbidden. His hair was mussed up as usual. I wanted to touch the thin skin beneath his eyes. Inwardly I cringed from myself.
He looked around him as though he’d never been there before. I wondered what it felt like to be so tired.
“Where are you going?” he asked. I didn’t immediately but then I told him and it all tumbled out – Ryan, Sarah, my vision of Beatrice.
“You saw a dead person,” he said.
“I swear to God.”
“I believe you.”
I would have thought he wouldn’t. Scientific types are like that.
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