The Killing of Bobbi Lomax Read Online Free PDF

minute, stop giggling, I’d be able to do it.’
    ‘I don’t want to be hypnotized as me, can’t you hypnotize me so I can be someone amazing, someone beautiful? Princess Grace, Farrah Fawcett.’
    ‘Farrah Fawcett?’ Clark’s face lit up. ‘Now there’s an idea.’
    ‘Clark!’
    ‘What? You said it.’
    ‘But I didn’t mean it. You should love me for who I am.’
    ‘I do. But I love Farrah for who she is, too. Really love her.’
    Edie threw the cushions at him. One slid along the corridor and landed right at the entrance to his den, its door firmly shut. When he got back into the room he heard Edie’s unmistakable purr-like snores. She must have had a day of it with Jack. Well, at least he’d get to watch what he wanted on TV. He sat back down next to her, softly, so as not to wake her up. He clicked the TV on. Pop music blared out. He quickly hit the remote, watching Edie as he did so. He turned down the volume, just enough to drown out her snoring, but not high enough to wake her. It was some variety show. Looked like a rerun. Onscreen, a bunch of beardy guys in satin shirts and tight pants were singing something he kind of recognized. Next to them, in a retro ’60s nod, five girls were dancing in miniskirts and knee-high boots whilst a psychedelic background twirled around and around behind them. Clark stared past the guys, towards the girls to where the background pulled him in deeper. He stared at it, into its centre, as it turned around and around and around. In the room, he could hear Edie’s breathing, in and out, in and out, the clock in the corner of the room, tick, tock, tick, tock and, outside, the weeping birch with its long draped branches rustling in the night breeze. It was almost like a lullaby. He surrendered himself to it and soon he was drifting off someplace, someplace far away in time.
    *
    Inside the sparsely decorated room, he watched his boy-self, sat uncomfortable, hunched over, at a small table doubling as a desk. A calendar on the wall marked the year, 1968. The month, December. One of the coldest on record. On the desk were schoolbooks, none of them open. He started to walk towards young Clark, but the sound of an argument drifting from downstairs disturbed him as it crept up through the ill-fitting floorboards. As it got louder there was no escaping it, no matter how much both Clarks put their hands over their ears. Glass shattered. He hoped she wasn’t cut again. Clark flung open the door, heavy footsteps on glass crunching along the downstairs corridor. Fast, angry feet on the stairs towards him. He stood, as if frozen, unable to move as his father appeared in front of him. He stopped, glared at Clark, maybe he had gotten too big to hit. Finally. His father mumbled something, Clark thought he could smell liquor on his breath. But he didn’t drink. Or, at least, Clark had never seen him. Clark looked back to young Clark sat bent over his desk, too frightened to even look up. Clark closed the door and crept downstairs towards where he could hear his mother sobbing.
    She was crouched over, housecoat on. Around her was chaos, tumbled furniture, liquid seeping into the carpet and at her feet a picture frame. Before he felt his feet move, he was crouched down beside her picking up shards of glass splintered out of the frame. She looked up at him. Her face so lined with woe, he feared if she smiled at him it would crack open like the desert floor. He reached out his hand to dry his mother’s tears. As he did so, he noticed that his hand was small, a child’s. Clark looked behind him to the door where he’d come in. His adult-self was standing there, watching. His mother took his hand, brought it to her lips, kissed it. Tears rolled down her cheeks. He saw that she had the frame’s photo in her hand, unscrunching it. She looked right into Clark’s eyes. ‘He hates me.’
    ‘No he doesn’t, Mommy.’
    ‘Hates who I am, hates that my blood’s tainted. Your blood’s