When I'm Gone

By Baxter Adams

WHEN I'M GONE is a collection of 20 bite-sized short stories by the author Baxter Adams. From the supernatural and scary to the complexities of everyday relationships, these stories cover a wide range of subjects.

Ghosts, legends, feathered aliens and unrequited love are all here, along with a time travelling DJ and two boyhood friends, inseparable even in death. How do people deal with the unexpected? And how do they cope when their partner has gone?

Funny, tragic, romantic, frightening... Baxter Adams explores all these themes in his first short story collection. And watch out for those twists!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baxter Adams
• Release date: Jan 14, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301172313

Baxter Adams

Short story writer, first collection WHEN I'M GONE.

Book preview

WHEN I'M GONE

20 short stories with a twist

Baxter Adams

Stable Door Books

Copyright © Baxter Adams 2013

Smashwords edition

The moral right of the author has been asserted. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing. All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, locations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The views expressed by characters in this book are not those of the author.

Our ebooks are licensed for your personal enjoyment only. They may not be resold or given away to others. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

Published by Stable Door Books at Smashwords

www.stabledoorbooks.com

WHEN I'M GONE is a collection of 20 bite-sized short stories by the author Baxter Adams. From the supernatural and scary to the complexities of everyday relationships, these stories cover a wide range of subjects. Ghosts, legends, feathered aliens and unrequited love are all here, along with a time travelling DJ and two boyhood friends, inseparable even in death. How do people deal with the unexpected? And how do they cope when their partner has gone? Funny, tragic, romantic, frightening... Baxter Adams explores all these themes in his first short story collection. And watch out for those twists!

STORIES IN THIS COLLECTION:

1. A CLEAN DEATH

2. COPYCAT

3. CUT BOTH WAYS

4. EASY COME, EASY GO

5. HARD TO SAY GOODBYE

6. HOUSEBOUND

7. JUDGEMENT

8. MIDNIGHT AMONG THE DINOSAURS

9. MRS GOODISON GOES WALKABOUT

10. OVER THE MOON

11. RACHEL'S ROOM

12. RETURN TICKET

13. SOMETHING IN THE AIR

14. SPARROWHAWK!

15. SPIRIT OF INQUIRY

16. SUMMER SHADOWS

17. THE HUNTER

18. THE MOON AND THE LOVERS

19. TWO-PART HARMONY

20. WHEN I'M GONE

Author's note

Copyright Page

Title Page

WHEN I'M GONE

A CLEAN DEATH

It was ridiculous for a middle-aged man to be afraid of using the bathroom. But Michael was seriously frightened.

A shiver of trepidation ran across his shoulders as he paused outside the door, pulled his dressing gown closer together, and reached towards the handle. He was nearly fifty - a man expected to make important decisions and control huge budgets, respected by his colleagues for good sense and reliability. So why should he feel like this at the thought of opening a door in his own house?

But Michael knew why, really. Throughout his marriage to Barbara he’d felt permanently afraid of disturbing the immaculate cleanliness of the bathroom. He'd always feared his clumsiness would sully the pristine whiteness of the porcelain. He’d been nervous of splashing the gleaming tiles, or leaving a face towel inadequately folded on the rail. And he’d approached with dread the remorseless sanctity of the toilet bowl.

With Barbara dead, it should have become easier, not more difficult. Lurking now within Michael was a simple childish urge - a longing to make a greasy mark in the washbasin with his fingers, or to push the toilet seat cover askew. Maybe he’d even leave the top off the toothpaste tube. He needed to make some small gesture of independence to help himself feel better.

But when he finally pushed open the bathroom door, he knew he couldn't do any of those things.

It was in this room that Barbara's presence seemed to linger the most. The bedroom was bad enough, and the kitchen too. She was there in those rooms, in the clothes that still hung in her wardrobe, in the racks of gleaming knives and the unused Crown Derby dinner service. But at least they had traces of Michael's own occupancy in them as well.

The bathroom was different. There was no reflection of his personality here, because Barbara had never allowed it. Cleanliness and neatness had been paramount. They’d become a passion and obsession for her in the last few years, so much so that she'd succeeded in making him feel like an object of suspicion and contempt whenever he went near the bathroom. If she could have made him use the tap outside the back door and a hole dug in the garden, she would have done it.

For years he'd been implacably pursued by an armoury of rubber gloves and Vim, Dettol and toilet cleaner, amid a barrage of scarcely restrained reproach. Once, Michael had woken in the night with the agony of a stomach bug that had driven him to the bathroom in desperate urgency. It had resulted in a frenzy of cleaning and scrubbing and clouds of steam that had lasted for days, as if the place were being fumigated. And perhaps it was. Maybe she’d fumigated every day after he’d left for work, trying to remove all evidence of his existence. It certainly smelled like it when he came home.

It had all started with Barbara's mother. Michael could clearly remember feeling the same way when he and Barbara had been courting, and he'd been invited to tea at her parents' house for the first time. As a working class boy from the terraced streets across town, he'd felt so inhibited in their bathroom that he'd suppressed what he wanted to do, and nipped behind a tree on the way home instead. Barbara would have been appalled.

But at least he hadn't sullied that bathroom with signs of his presence. The marriage would probably have been called off, if he had. He would have been declared a person of unsuitable habits. If he'd been thinking clearly he would have known, back then, that there would never be any children. How many times had he seen Barbara flinch and go pale at the very mention of the word 'nappy'? But he hadn't understood then. Not until it was too late.

Michael saw a picture of himself reflected in the mirror behind the wash basin, bright and clear, harshly lit by the fluorescent tube. He thought he looked like a frightened ghost. But everyone would forgive him, today of all days, for not looking his best.

The glass of the mirror was spotless and polished to perfection, of course,. He could see every pore and bristle on his face, reflected with absolute clarity. It was astonishing how the bathroom had stayed so clean - even now, five days after Barbara's death. It was as if the amount of work she’d put in was keeping it preserved exactly as she would have wanted it.

Over Michael's shoulder glittered the polished wall tiles. He’d always imagined he could see strange, distorted pictures in them, perhaps images of other bathrooms in some distant parallel universe that weren't quite so clean and perfect as this one. But now all he could see as he stared at the tiles was a series of twisted little faces glowering at him from that dim, illusory world. They watched him from every angle, hundreds of them, with identical censorious expressions.

He couldn't stand here much longer. If he was going to the funeral, he would have to shave. People would be arriving in an hour or so, speaking only good of the dead as they waited, dark-suited, for the hearse. He hoped he could force himself not to laugh out loud when the vicar talked of her dedication to her family.

After the service it would be a clean cremation, of course. No holes in the ground and clods of damp earth for Barbara. No dust to dust, ashes to ashes. She’d disappear in the cleansing heat of the crematorium flames, a faint spiral of scented smoke the only sign of her passing, like a whiff of Forest Pine.

Michael opened the door of the bathroom cabinet and peered at the contents. The bottom shelf was for his toiletries. A tube of shaving cream, after shave, a roll-on anti-perspirant and a razor in its case with a couple of spare blades. Everything glinted as if it had been oiled a few moments before.

The other two shelves were filled with Barbara's things. Opening the cabinet seemed to have released a little bit of her presence as he sniffed the scent of her special herbal soaps. Camomile and lavender, juniper oil and sandalwood, jasmine and marjoram. All the aromatic artillery of a woman intent on keeping the natural fragrance of her body at bay.

The smell drifted round Michael and hung in the air like an invisible mist, even after he’d taken out his razor and closed the cabinet. He could barely restrain himself from looking over his shoulder to see if Barbara was lurking at the door, ready to pounce on a speck of dirt. The aromas evoked such memories that he shivered briefly and turned his eyes away from the reflections in the tiles. You could imagine too many things if you stared at them long enough.

As he lathered his chin and throat, Michael felt a few splashes of shaving cream fall into the wash basin. He looked at them aghast, then shrugged and let them lie. In a surge of courage, he even put the tube back down with the lid off. He watched a little coil of cream creep out and lie on the porcelain. If he left it there, it would congeal and harden, and look unsightly.

Flushed with his sudden change of mood and tingling with a thrill of danger, he began to scrape at his beard, flicking blobs of cream and bristles into the basin. This was the sort of gesture that he ought to be making. He could almost hear the indrawn breath and the sound of Barbara tutting angrily as he did it.

The blade of his razor needed changing, and he reached towards the cabinet to get a new one, chuckling quietly as his fingers smeared