Bed Socks

She was finally rid of him. She couldn't believe her luck. As Gwen watched him walk out of the flat, bags packed, she felt elated, two fucking years she'd wasted on the rat and then he goes and fucks Karen? The two of them could burn in hell. He gave her a little hang-dog look as he turned the stairwell. She almost giggled. Gwen slammed the door shut in his sickening face, leant against it and laughed. It was an expression of pure relief. She'd felt him less as a boyfriend and more of a dead weight she carried, now he was gone, finally gone, she could get on with her life.

First of all, she decided, she would clean the flat from top to bottom, to get rid of his lingering presence; the smell, mostly. Twisting her hair back into a ponytail she marched into the kitchen and from one of the drawers pulled out a roll of black bin bags and began, systematically, to remove all physical trace of the clown she'd lived with. His shitty pretentious fair-trade organic coffee was first to go, followed by his collection of arcane spices and herbs that had never been used, just sat at the back of the kitchen counter collecting grease and dust. After that went his array of artisanal olive oils, then some stupid fucking implement that he'd seen, like all the stuff she was throwing out, on a cooking show.

As she emptied the kitchen of his unwelcome leavings, she realised that summed him up. The prick thought he was smarter than everyone, but did he ever pick up a book? No, he sat on his arse watching cookery and decorating shows and thought he was a Michelin Star Chef and a world class interior designer. He was neither, of course, he was a clerk in the magistrates court, and by all accounts was shit at that too.

She followed the kitchen with the living room. His car-porn magazines and Top Gear DVD's went in a separate bag, she'd give him them all back. He deserved to live with the shame, the dumb bastard couldn't even drive let alone afford a car. She had driven him everywhere like some woman driving her toddler to play-dates.

The bathroom came next, toothpaste, ridiculously expensive shaving soaps, his straight razor, the several aftershaves and hand crafted Scandinavian pine needle body scrubs were all dumped.

He'd taken his clothes and so that was it. Gwen realised, that indeed was it, the whole sum of him. All he ever aspired to was to look good. In physical appearance, in how he wanted to appear as a human, with all the pretensions of being one but never quite making it. He'd been like an automaton, programmed to look handsome and appear interesting but it was all surface, all glamour.

Finally she went into the bedroom, it was time to wash the bedclothes and flush away all scent of him from her boudoir. She pulled back the duvet and there they were, three pairs of grey, rumpled and still slightly damp bed-socks. His… fucking… bed-socks… again!

Gwen made a noise which was equal parts groan and growl, a noise of utter displeasure. Him sticking his dick in her boss might have been the straw that broke the camel's back, but a large portion of the hump-crushing weight had to have been his fucking bed-socks. He wore them every night, complaining his feet got cold and then once his feet had begun to sweat in them, he'd struggle to pull them off, with his feet, while half asleep. Several dozen times this had woken her up, but most nights he'd managed it without her notice only for her to roll over an hour later into a wet and cooling rag which seemed to engulf her own feet. Gwen had asked him constantly to stop it but he just kept whining about his cold feet. Which, it dawned on her, was symbolic of so much about their relationship.

With disgust she plucked each of the bed-socks out of the bed and flung them in the black bag. After stripping the bed and stuffing the sheets in the washing machine, she took all the bags around to the communal bins and dumped them. He was gone, out for good. Time for some Gwen-time, she thought to herself. In her minds eye Gwen-time was symbolised by a very nice bottle of white wine.

It surprised her how much she was glad he was gone when she sat alone drinking and watching the late news. She had felt sure that she'd miss something about him but hours after the event and she still felt nothing but relief. The wine had helped her relax, that was certain, but it was more than that. Gwen had, to her estimation, slept for two years with a stranger. She knew all about the persona he cultivated and projected but there was nothing of the person underneath. It was like she had had a relationship with a shadow disguised by the trappings of normality. So now he was gone, it made little difference, there had been no real person there at all. Two years they'd lived together, fed together, slept and bathed and fucked together and yet within four hours of him leaving, she was beginning to forget what he even looked like. She only knew she was glad to be rid of him.

In the early hours of the following morning she staggered off to bed, too drunk to realise taking 5mg of Valium over two bottles of wine was not the greatest idea ever. Twenty minutes later she collapsed onto her pillow and into a sleep so deep it could only ever be reached by drugs. She did not dream, time did not seem to pass, Gwen was there, gone and then Gwen again. Something cold and damp, like a thick puddle constricted round her foot.

His fucking bed-socks again! Gwen kicked it off, muttered a few incoherent angry words at him and just as she was about to fall asleep again she was hit by a bout of panic. She'd thrown them out, he'd gone, what had wrapped around her foot? With a yelp she drew her legs back up to her chest and pulled away the duvet.

Lying in a similar position as always was a single damp grey bed-sock. One of his bed-socks. She was too groggy to grasp what had actually happened so she just picked it up and tossed it out of bed to deal with it in the morning and collapsed back into her empty bliss.

When she “officially” awoke she immediately felt a familiar, unpleasant, heavy sensation on her feet. Gwen pulled the covers back to find that both her feet were under perhaps half a dozen of his bed-socks, all of them the same, grey damp and clinging to her flesh like soggy cloth leeches. She freaked a little, kicking them off and springing out of bed to stand staring and the now scattered bed-socks.

“How the fuck…?” She asked no one, immediately suspecting him. Had he surreptitiously had a key made and sneaked into the flat to mess with her? It seemed unlikely, far too much effort on his part. Eventually she reasoned that they must have somehow been stuck to the duvet cover, perhaps hidden inside and when she tossed and turned they somehow got loose. She wasn't convinced by that, she was quite meticulous when it came to her washing but could come up with no other solution, so that must be it.

After showering and getting ready for work she picked up the bed-socks and stuffed them in a bin-bag. She checked to make sure there were no others secreted away waiting to torment her and then satisfied took the bag out the house and dumped it on her way to work.

When Gwen got home it was late, past ten and so she nuked a microwave curry, watched some crap on Channel 4 and went to bed. She had completely forgotten all about the incident with the bed-socks as she drifted into sleep.

She remembered though, when she woke up in the dark several hours later with a cold damp lump on her foot and a cold damp sweat on her body. Gwen threw back the cover and saw that there were three bed-socks on the bed, only one of which was draped across her foot. She kicked it off, it went high into the air and arced across the room, hitting her mirror and landing atop her hair tongs which fell off the dresser with a clatter.

Gwen stormed out of her bed and into the kitchen where she picked up a bread-knife. After that she searched through every nook and cranny of her home, looking for him. To her relief and yet dismay, he was not there. She wasn't yet ready to accept the fact that something else was happening.

Apprehensively she looked back into the bedroom and the bed-socks were all over her bed, dozens if not hundreds of them. She gasped in horror which became a shriek when one of the bed-socks moved.

It was a slow tumbling flop, but it had definitely moved. Gwen gripped the knife, an overwhelming dread bled through her, cold and merciless. She stepped back into the bedroom. There were bed-socks everywhere, all over the floor, stuck to the walls, everywhere. They flopped and writhed and wriggled like worms and the pile on the bed were swarming into some kind of shape. Over a period of seconds it became more and more human like, until she recognised it as male, as a handsome male, as him, as him!

The creature made of bed-socks rose from the bed slowly and said in a groggy voice, “Gwen is something wrong?”

Gwen screamed as she attacked the monster, hacking it, tearing bed-sock after bed-sock from it with her bare hands, damp and sticky with the stale sweat. She'd butchered it and stood back satisfied, panting, letting her terror subside. She'd won. She sat down on the bed and laughed and laughed and laughed. For how long she couldn't say.

A banging at her front door made her realise her neighbours called the police, again! They were always doing it and they always took his side. He'd gone though so she'd be able to rub their faces in it when the police saw what had actually happened.

Gwen was apologetic as she opened the doors to the two officers, one of whom was quite handsome. She tried her best to explain the bizarre circumstances to the officers but they seemed more concerned with the bed-socks everywhere. When she explained that was exactly it, that somehow her house was infested with bed-socks she did not understand why they handcuffed her.

Nor was she sure why they called for a forensic team.

She was even more puzzled as to why one of the officers was sick when she pointed out the bags filled with bed-socks, they were only bed-socks. That was the point. It wasn't actually the remains of him in the bin bag it was bed-socks. Just as the same as all the ones spilled across the dresser, stuck to the walls and in pieces on the bed. It was all just bed socks, just bed-socks, just dirty, old bed-socks.