Archive for the ‘Angela Slatter’ Category
Things Best Left Alone
Monday, October 27th, 2008
I made her swallow it, just before she died. Her blue eyes washed pale with fear.
‘So you’ll come back,’ I said.
She was frail, so light she made no dent on the mattress. Her hair was bleached by the surf, from the days when she would ride the swell, thinking of ways to leave me. It fell out in clumps on her pillow when she tried to move, to relieve the ache wading through her bones.
When finally her eyes rolled back, I picked her up. She was bird-light.
Four years together. We were perfect. She’d loved me for so long without my knowing; when she declared, I was amazed, grateful, bewildered, ecstatic. Eventually I believed in only us. I had not truly seen her before. Everything became peripheral to my obsession: her taste, her touch, her voice, she became breath to me.
Then she decided to leave. Said I smothered her, that she no longer recognised the woman she had loved. That, in being so immersed in her, I had become less than I had been. She thought I didn’t hear the furtive phone calls, didn’t see the flirty emails.
She stopped noticing me. I tried to speak of the clever things I once knew and embraced, but I’d forgotten them; or they had forgotten me and were not forgiving. And I had cast aside my friends long ago.
I carved it from wood, hollowed out the small oval, stuffed in clippings of my hair, dripped in menstrual blood, sealed it up with bees wax and whispered over it. I cooked all her favourite dishes. When she started to get sick, she needed me again.
Six months ago I laid her in the ground. I’ve bided my time, letting the need build until tonight. I whispered her name, spoke the words to the earth so they’d seep into her bed of dirt.
It’s a moonless night. I hear the door creak, familiar and sad. The bed moves. I smell decay and things best left alone. The bitter taste in my throat may be regret, may be fear. I thought the arsenic would have preserved her better. She slithers across the sheets and settles her rotting flesh against mine, her fetid mouth pressed to my ear and whispers, ‘I’m home, my love. I came when you called and I’ll never leave you.’
Sunday Drivers
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
A new voice joins the Cabal today, one whose stories are powerful if (and perhaps because) they’re often more than a little unsettling. So please welcome Angela Slatter as she takes us on a dark road trip…
The dead girl sits in the passenger seat, watching me. Her face is etched with spider-web petichia and her eyes are jelly-red.
My hands are pale and tight at ten and two.
“I’m so sorry, Rachel,” I say. I really mean it, not just because I’m in big trouble.
“I cannot believe,’ she spits between blood-stained teeth, “that you slept with my husband.”
“It was an accident.”
“What, you slipped and fell on it?” It’s amazing the volume the dead can reach. I feel a trickle from my ear. My fingers come away red.
“I’m sorry,’ I whimper.
“Sandy, if you say that again, I’m going to kill you.” She deflates. “My own sister.”
“I’m – not going to say it again.” In front of us the headlights gallop, illuminating the bitumen and the piles of banked-up snow. I should have put the chains on.
“How long?”
“Only a few months.” It was more like eighteen, but least said …
“He decided he wanted to be with you so much that he strangled me?”
“Well, maybe he just liked someone who didn’t spend all her time in front of the mirror.”
“You could do with a bit more time in front of the mirror.” Recognising the truth, her retort lacks sting.
“There was no need for him to kill you. I really am sorry about that.”
“I appreciate you avenging my death,” she admitted.
Walter hadn’t realised that family comes first. He called me to help get rid of Rachel’s body. He dropped her into the boot and leaned over to brush hair away from her face. That’s when I hit him with the claw-hammer. Seven times. He slumped in on top of her.
Rachel is still talking. “It’s almost enough for me to forgive you.”
She reaches out. I flinch. Her hand passes through mine like needles of ice. I reef the wheel hard to the left.
The car fishtails, skids, ricochets around the bend and slams into a parked police car with an ear-shattering crash.
I hit my head on the steering wheel, see dark stars. I turn to Rachel, to see if she’s okay.
She smiles, fading away. “Almost.”
There’s the ‘pop’ of the trunk and I see the lid rising in the rear-view mirror. Two pissed-off cops clamber out the undamaged side of their vehicle.
I let the darkness flood over me. I’m not going anywhere.