You used to call me Toni
...I can't blame anyone but myself for what happened. I mean I could, though it would be pointless really. It has been said enough times, that we have to own our actions, each and every one of us, and so I have to own mine, even though I realise that it will undoubtedly deliver me into the hands of an uncaring legal system that cares not for the whys and wherefores of the situation, only the facts.
The facts are plain enough. The facts are lying inert and lifeless on a cold stainless steel table in the mortuary. One of the facts is his name: Eric Steadman, though that is not always the name I knew him by. In the past he went by several other aliases. They all meant the same to me. Most of the time I would call him Eric and Eric is how he would identify himself to me. After hearing what I have to say you might feel that, in some ways, Eric deserved what happened to him, that he brought it on himself.
Yes, it was true his behaviour was appalling, but he didn't deserve to die that way. No-one does, do they?
When he arrived that afternoon, I believe I was down to my last two customers. The doorbell sounded as he strode in and honestly, I did not initially recognise him. Not at first. He sat down on the couch next to Mr Gilliver and the weird looking student, whose name I seem to have forgotten and appeared to pay me no never-mind. I continued with John Stretton's flat-top and watched him surreptitiously in the mirror.
He did seem familiar, in that way that certain men do. He was tall, square-jawed and had the athletic frame of someone predisposed to manual labour. I wondered if he was a builder or someone who worked outdoors, with their hands. I mention that because he was very healthy-looking, tanned. Perhaps I had seen him nearby, working at a building site, or a garage, or... As I said he did seem kind of familiar.
When I had finished Johnny's trim I showed him the back of his head in the hand mirror. He liked it, he said, and obviously I was more than pleased. Yet, as I replaced the mirror on the hook I noticed that the guy - the last guy who had come in - was staring at me. He had this weird, crooked smile on his face that was more like a sneer than a smile. It completely creeped me out, but I held my tongue. After all, it had been a long day, there was a possibility I had just imagined he was regarding me more peculiarly than others do.
Johnny paid for his cut and left; he tipped me exceptionally well. I turned the 'OPEN - Welcome' sign round on the door after he'd gone so that it was apparent to anyone arriving late for a haircut that we were closed. Then, I swept up the detritus from the heads of my last three customers into a small pile by the sink and invited the student into the chair.
I still can't recall his name. I'm sorry. It might be because of everything that happened afterwards or maybe I don't remember because he never told me what it was, or perhaps I never asked. Anyway, all he wanted was a trim. Nothing special, a bit off the top, a bit off the sides and a square neck. He was done in seven minutes exactly.
How do I know that? Because I could see the clock on the wall above my last customer of the day reflected in the mirror. I could see him too, still watching me, slyly, from time to time over the top of a copy of this month's FHM he was reading. His eyes followed me. It made me very uncomfortable, yet still I said nothing.
The student left then, leaving the seat vacant for Mr Gilliver who only wanted a shave. It was his normal weekend treat.
I like to think he came, religiously, to me every Friday because he was seeing some special lady on Saturdays and Sundays, which was why he liked to be trim and clean shaven. His wife had died some seven years back from ovarian cancer or some other such horrible disease. It was such a shame. He took it really badly at the time.
I always did my best for Mr Gilliver. He had nursed his wife from when she was first diagnosed right up until the day she died. He was devoted to her, but now she was gone, I imagined he felt lonely just like the rest of us do from time to time, perhaps more so. I figured that if he had found someone new to share his life with, God knows he deserved it. That's why I always made sure the razor was sharp and the water was hot and he got the closest shave I could manage.
Afterwards he would smile at himself in the mirror, admiring my handiwork and say, 'Son, you've done a grand job.' He always tipped well too.
When Mr Gilliver left that left just him and me.
He walked over and sat in the chair, his heavy frame causing it to dip slightly, then waited with his hands in his lap for me to attend to him. I put the paper collar around his neck, put the nylon cover over him to prevent any hair from falling onto, or even into his clothes and adjusted the seat with two short pumps on the foot lever, so that I could cut his hair without stooping. It's very important - in my profession there are a lot of barbers with serious back problems because they don't have their clients at the right height. Constantly bending over someone can cause real problems.
I stared at him in the mirror, a vague thread of recognition starting to form in my mind.
"What's it to be sir?" I asked him.
He looked at me as though I was a piece of shit he had picked up on his shoe.
"Take it all off." He said.
That was all he said, but in that instant I remembered him, who he was and where we had met. Sometimes it's like that. Someone says something and there is this element to their voice, some inflection that brings the memories flooding back.
I began shaking, not noticeably, but I was acutely aware. His eyes never left me. They were pale blue, flecked with darker blue or grey. I noticed that one of them was slightly bloodshot, though I couldn't imagine what might have caused it.
I think I might have been lost in thought because he spoke again, this time more impatiently, prompting me to make a start.
"Are we going to do this or not?" He asked me. "I haven't got all fucking night!"
That was how he spoke to me. Me! A customer addressing me as though I was some low-life on a street corner! It was then that I realised exactly who he was and, more importantly, that he hadn't changed. In his mind everything was exactly the same. He imagined that I was the same. He really did; that was why he spoke to me the way he did.
Everything started falling into place.
My head began to spin as fragments of memory that I had purposefully pushed into the furthest reaches of my mind began to reassemble. Faces, places, dates, times, names, all came spinning back towards me, filling my head with unbidden recollection. I remembered him. I remembered his name was Eric.
I am unsure if he noticed that spark of recognition that threatened to engulf me and tear my body apart with the shame and humiliation that had begun to assail me for the second time in my life. Could he see it, I wondered. What was it that he saw reflected of me in that mirror? Because all I could see, was him. Him and that day, which, until he had walked into my shop had mercifully seemed so long ago.
My body convulsed. In the mirror was the sole orchestrator of my shame and terror and degradation. The perpetrator of my anguish. The architect of my suffering. Here was the demon from my past, made manifest in the sun-kissed, rugged form of a stranger with pale blue eyes. They bored into me, searching for something. Another opportunity to whet his sadistic appetite on my naked, broken body?
He stared at me now, eyes full of rage, a cruel smile on his lips, just like before. Exactly like before.
"You don't remember me do you?" He growled. Like a dog. Like a ravenous dog, getting ready to tear it's prey to pieces.
I tried to remain calm. I tried to recall what it was he used to say, the jibes and the taunts, designed to embarrass me, to ridicule me and my desires which I know were different from my peers, yet unworthy of his bile and vitriol. My name is Anthony Shapiro and even back then I knew I was worth more than his sadistic barbs.
"Yes." I replied. "You used to call me Toni..."
I slit his throat from ear to ear.
I can't remember how the razor got in my hand. I recall seeing it hanging limply from my hand though in the mirror, as I watched him thrash around, impotently in the chair.
He tried to get up out of the seat but I had severed his carotid, the major artery into his head and the blood loss was rapid and far too great. It went everywhere. I saw it pumping like a geyser from the gash in his neck. It was a very neat, very deep cut that had not only sliced through his blood vessels, but through his windpipe too.
He gurgled like a student who had been beaten half unconscious because of his sexual orientation and was too weak to rise up against his tormentor.
His eyes were filled with the same fear that might be evident in the eyes of someone who had been bullied and victimised to the point of suicide for being something that they were unable to alter or control.
I watched him become quieter, the rage that had consumed him for most of his life passing from his body until, in death, he looked serene and just like any other of my customers stopping by for a haircut - except, obviously, for the blood...
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