Gordon Green

Gordon Green liked to cause damage. Some people might say he had a talent, others might say he was wicked. Whatever he was, he did manage to wreak havoc wherever he went, and he went lots of places, he was constantly on the move, slipping through the grieved fingers of his victims.
Gordon Green was on the move once again. He snickered to himself and stuck his tongue out the window at the sheep flashing past his window. Scenes flicked by, like one of those plastic children’s toys, the slideshow cameras with the pictures in them. Viewmasters they were called, and the adverts showed happy, smiling children with perfect teeth and bowl-cuts, laughing as they changed the slide. He despised children. They were much harder to manipulate than adults, and they often laughed at him, for Gordon was immensely fat. His stomach flowed over his huge pants, and his chin wobbled furiously whenever the train went over a bridge, a bit like a turkey. Gordon was very fond of turkey, especially in sandwiches with a smear of mayonnaise. He swallowed the last bit of crust, and wished he had more. The woman across from him had a sausage roll. He could smell it, the scent tickled his large nostrils, and he sniffed deeply, eyes shut, tongue lolling like a dog. A child nearby started crying.
Gordon was heading for Wellington. He’d never been to Wellington before, he imagined it to be full of windswept hills, with hundreds of foolish people living on the windswept hills, foolish and stupid and ready to feed his addiction. He hoped it was something exciting this time, he was sick of ruining marriages, and it wasn’t really such a challenge anymore anyway.

The house didn’t look quite like the picture in the book, but Gordon just shrugged, who was he to complain about a bit of deceit when lying and stirring was how he got his kicks? And the landlady didn’t look quite like the smiling, cardiganned grandmother-type figure in the picture either, more like an old bag, and was that necklace made out of real teeth? The room was a bit crusty, and there was a peculiar and unexplainable smell of cheese in the air, but Gordon didn’t mind, he’d slept in worse, like that time he was on the run from the Aitkens’s after he ruined their business, and he nearly got caught so he slept in a supermarket trolley. It wasn’t that bad though, once he’d managed to squeeze himself in his fat cushioned him. So he took the room, and unpacked his few possessions; Gordon was one for travelling light, it made for a fast getaway. Now all he needed was friends, friends to twist around his fat finger, friends to ruin. Gordon had found, through experience, that the best way to make friends was through game nights. Bingo, Poker, that sort of thing. Yoga, Karate, whatever, as long as there were people ready to talk, people ready to be sucked in. Belly jiggling, he climbed down the old stairs to the street and waddled around until he found the community notice board.
The first poster he saw was for a pregnancy support group, the second a seminar for the deaf, and the third, Latin dancing classes. Although he looked it, he wasn’t pregnant, and he couldn’t do sign language. Gordon sighed and read the Latin-dancing poster once again. $8 a lesson, 184 Peacock Street. 7-8pm Thursdays. Beginners’ welcome.

Gordon licked the last crumbs of chocolate from the foil, and dropped it on the ground. He loosened his belt, smoothed down his greasy hair, and slowly began to climb the dark and dingy stairs to the third storey of 184 Peacock Street. The top of the stairs melted into a large room, with wooden floors and wide wooden windows filled with the blackness of night. He studied the reflection of the tiny woman in tight clothing who had just appeared in front of him.
“Good evening, my name is Miss Scarletta”, she said with heavily painted lips and a mere flicker of a glance at Gordon’s immense rolls of fat.
“Gordon Green,” said Gordon, extending a fat, podgy hand that enveloped hers. “I’m here about the lessons,” he said without batting an eyelid. It wasn’t often you caught Gordon off-guard. Miss Scarletta raised a pencil thin eyebrow. “Ah yes, come this way.” She grabbed him by the arm quite violently, her blood-coloured nails digging into his flesh, and hauled him over to a small, mousy woman in the corner.
“Mr. Green, this is Alison Brown. Alison has been going a few months now. She will be your partner.” And then she sailed off again leaving a very startled looking Alison Brown with the voluptuous Gordon Green. Miss Scarletta clapped her hands and everyone paired up. Alison Brown turned nervously towards Gordon.
“Do you like horses?” she said, long brown hair in a ponytail that reminded Gordon of, well, a pony’s tail.
“Ah, yes,” said Gordon, making a mental note to read up on horses.
“I like horses,” she said, smiling a little.
“Oh really?” said Gordon. “Same.”

Miss Scarletta yelled something out, and Alison showed him what to do. “No, like this,” she’d say, at first timidly, later with more confidence. “Put your leg like this.” Gordon found all this moving and turning and twisting very difficult indeed. After 15 minutes the sweat was cascading off his forehead like a waterfall, and his breath was coming in short gasps. Miss Scarletta’s favourite sentence seemed to be “Slide your hips! I said slide your hips, not thrust, slide!”
“So, ah, what do you do?” asked Gordon between breaths, tactfully trying to find out how much money she had whilst sliding his hips.
“Oh,” she said. “I’m just a secretary.”
“Ah,” said Gordon, looking around for a new partner.
“But I get by. I inherited a bit of money from my aunt. You may have heard of her. Frances Waterhouse?” Gordon perked up his flabby ears. He had certainly heard of Frances Waterhouse. Who hadn’t these days in the financial world? She’d been rich as well. Very rich. Almost as rich as Gordon would like to be. He decided to pal up to Alison Brown. She would be his new project.
“Chests out, buttocks in!” screamed Miss Scarletta.

On Monday, Gordon invited Alison out to lunch with him. He paid, even though he knew she had plenty of money, because nothing makes a rich person feel safer than someone else paying for them. She talked about horses again. He agreed with everything she said, and laughed at her pathetic jokes. She came away feeling good about herself, he, despising horses, but feeling one step closer to his goal.
On Wednesday he took her to the carnival. On the Ferris wheel, their faces lit up with carnival light, their hair blowing in the wind, he asked her about her family. She said she had none. She came away feeling as if somebody cared about her, he, that this would be easier than he thought.
On Thursday, after Latin dancing, he took her out to dinner at a fancy restaurant, and asked her about her inheritance. She said her bank account could only be accessed with her palm print. She came away feeling like she finally had a friend, he, thinking of ways he could chop off her hand.
On Friday he told her he’d bought a new horse, and asked her if she wanted to come see it on Sunday.
Saturday he spent rehearsing his plan on the corner of someone else’s property. He purchased a sharp knife and put it beside the immensely deep, dilapidated, and quite frankly dangerous well.
On Sunday morning he awoke in his faintly cheese smelling room and wrung his hands together in glee. He picked her up at 11. She’d brought her special horse grooming mitten, he, a cloth to clean up the blood.
“What’s she called?” Alison asked as they scaled a stile and trudged over a field.
“I named her Alison, after you,” replied Gordon with a sickening smile. Alison thought how lucky she was to have a friend like Gordon. Gordon envisioned himself stabbing her in the heart, hacking off her hand, and disposing of her body down the well. And then getting away scot free, with all her money.
“Where is she?” Alison asked as they turned yet another corner.
“Just round the next bend. But first, lets make a wish in this well.”
“Are you sure we should go near it?” said Alison looking rather doubtful. “It looks like it might give way any second.”
“Oh no, its fine,” said Gordon with a very comforting look in his eye.
“Alright then,” trusted Alison. They climbed up. Gordon picked up the knife and gripped it behind his back.
“Look as far into the well as you can see, and make a wish,” said Gordon. Alison looked down, and Gordon stepped forward, knife raised, muscles tensed. There was a tremendous crack. Perhaps if Gordon hadn’t been so fat, or perhaps if the well had been 50 years younger, it would have been alright. But it wasn’t. Gordon weighed about as much as a small whale, and the wells foundations were rotten and weak. It gave way. Alison screamed and jumped aside, but Gordon, Gordon fell through and down into the well, the immensely deep, dilapidated and quite frankly dangerous well, his fat arms flailing and clutching the air desperately, until he disappeared out of sight. Perhaps if Alison hadn’t been so busy screaming she might have heard Gordon hit the empty well bottom with a mighty thud, but as it was, she was. Rain began to fall, a gentle pitter patter, which gradually turned to a fierce pounding, stinging Alison’s face as she shrieked down to her only friend who lay dead in the bottom of a well. And so the tale of Gordon Green ends.
If only he hadn’t been so greedy.