Category: Fiction

Earth to Earth

J.S. Watts

At the end, we all return peacefully to the elements that gave birth to us—unless the element that took us claims us first and for itself alone.

The world is full of echoes: the fading shadows of the taken. Water flows with the spirits of the drowned. Flames crackle to the anguished screams of the burned. The thin shades of those whose last breath was ripped into the air flock the ether and those whom the earth swallows lie absorbed within its vast unforgiving darkness.

#

The town of Blackhill squats deep in the heart of the Draymar Mountains. It has been a mining town for centuries. Coal runs under its skin and in its blood. It was home to the first Draymar Mine, and then the Great Draymar Mine and then the New Great Draymar Mine, but the mining ended in 1927 with a cave-in at the New Great Draymar that claimed the lives of over one hundred men, tearing out the bleeding heart of the town and seventy-three fragile families.

On that day, Death walked through the town’s streets hand-in-hand with despair. For the families left behind, it was the not knowing that inflicted the most damage. Many men were killed instantly, crushed like dry seeds by the weight of the mountain’s falling guts, but others…  Those cursed ones lived on for days after the cave-in, buried alive in their waiting graves while the earth and rock around them slowly ate them: absorbing their breath, their strength, their anger and hope, and finally closing-in forever on the husks of the men they had been and taking those too.

My only son died in the disaster, leaving behind a distraught young widow, an endlessly grieving mother, a baby daughter who’d barely had the chance to know him and taking with him the future of our family. He had been the focus of all our hopes: the way out of the coal dust. He shouldn’t have been down the mine that day. We thought we had given him a hard-scraped escape route, an education invested in by our back-broken labour and the daily struggle of our lives, but with a new baby, he needed more money and such were the times, he went down the mine to work a shift or several alongside me. On the day of the disaster, he had gone down into the dark to work one last shift. He never came back up.

His loss and the manner of it were bitterly unbearable, but worse still was my solitary knowledge that it was not an accidental death. I knew it was murder, but I could do nothing with that knowing. It surrounded me, held me in. There was no escape.

Without the mine, Blackhill withered and declined. Those that could, abandoned it and its all-consuming poverty. McKillip, the mine owner, was amongst the first to go. He had lost a mine but had gained a fortune through insurance deals. He went off with his young family intact to start afresh in another town, abandoning the one his mine had gutted.

Years passed, even if their passage no longer seemed relevant. Changing times brought fresh opportunities for some. In due course, the son of the mine owner returned to Blackhill, though whether he did so in the knowledge of his father’s past actions, I neither knew nor cared.  What drew me to him was the blood that pumped through his veins: his father’s blood. I sensed it and it awoke the living hatred that had held me together all the while. Time became relevant once more: it was time for revenge.

#

Marcus McKillip came back to town on a storm-battered day. It felt as if the elements themselves were protesting against a McKillip’s return. The wind tossed leaves into the air and then branches as if they were leaves. Rain poured down like the torrential gush of water from a giant hosepipe. Under the weight of so much water, the earth became heavy and started to move, sliding down the hillside towards the road that McKillip was on, but he drove a flash, fast car and out-ran the mudslide.

“Eh, it’s a wild night out there, boys,” was all he was heard to say, and then he smiled, as if the anger and wildness of the elements was of no consequence. A home-coming drink at the local inn and he was off to reclaim the family house. I observed and waited.

The next day there was an unexpected earth tremor, but McKillip kept on smiling as he went about his business. “It’s good to be home,” he said and he made himself properly at home, reopening his father’s old house, reclaiming its formal garden from the natural wilderness it had become, digging deep into the poor soil that many of us had greater cause to call home. The earth showed him what it thought of this. The earth tremors continued for days and more mud slid down the hillside towards the town, but not far enough to do any real damage.

Then the purpose of McKillip’s return became clearer. He sent men to the mine with measuring devices and surveying equipment. He did not dirty his own hands, just stayed at the family house where he shipped-in rich, fresh, alien soil for the garden and the thirty new rose bushes he had ordered: soil that did not come from the Draymars. His feet no longer walked on our earth.

A week after the surveyors and engineers left, he announced he was re-opening the mine as a theme park. The graves of brave men, the workplace and lifeblood of hundreds more, turned into a mindless place of amusement for the unknowing, thought-free public.

Safe in his father’s grand house, McKillip watched as the diggers came, gouging into the soil and rock that had formed us, tearing up our past and then unceremoniously uncovering things Old Man McKillip must have thought covered up for good. Revealed at last to the knowledgeable few was evidence that the ’27 cave-in had not been a natural disaster.

Marcus McKillip came to the mine then. I watched and waited to see what he would do, all the while the blood-hate pounding inside me like a shaman’s drum. But I held back. Yes, he was his father’s son, but he was not his father. Some faltering vestige of humanity held me back.

I looked on as Marcus McKillip stared down at the sabotage that was the brutal work of his father, the physical manifestation of his father’s greed and the black ruin it had brought crashing down on us. He said nothing, but smiled, a slow thoughtful smile and still I hesitated. Then he was gone, back up the hill in his fast car to his grand house and gardens. Within the hour the McKillip family secret was once again buried, this time beneath one hundred tons of pulverised rock and liquid concrete. The work of constructing a tawdry theme park around our suffering and misery continued unabated.

It was as if the earth had been holding its breath and then finally let go. There were more tremors and mudslides, this time more destructive, but McKillip just brought more men in to shore-up the workings. Finally, the unquiet earth claimed a man, but it was not McKillip. Accidents happen and McKillip did not care. He felt no need to come back to the mine.

Eventually, despite the restlessness of the earth, the monstrosity was completed. It was called the Draymar Theme Park Museum of Mining, but it was no academic temple to the past. Children, and adults little better than children, were to ride fake coal-trucks down thrill-inducing slopes into what was left of the original mine, laughing and screaming within feet, and sometimes less, of where men had struggled and lost, desperately relinquishing their souls to the soil. It was an intolerable abomination. And still, McKillip stayed away from the mine.

The day of the “Museum’s” grand opening and at last Marcus McKillip came back to the mine in person to gloat over his desecration of our rock and soil. He walked slowly up the new path to the old pithead, past the waiting crowds, smiling broadly as if he thought he had laid claim to a fresh gold mine. 

He took the new, shiny cage, far bigger than the original had been, down into the mine and then began a slow, satisfied, lone walk along the new corridors and passageways he had created. His expensive leather shoes glided over the smoothness of the artificial flooring. His pride oozed from the pores of his skin and into the air that surrounded him. I could smell his heavy aftershave, no doubt expensive, but certainly not subtle, and the pride that underlay it. I whispered his name, but there was no sign he heard me.

He continued the inspection tour of his grand work. He slowed as he neared the site of his father’s iniquity. It was buried beneath the new flooring, but there was still an old access passageway, left, no doubt, for authenticity’s sake, that skirted the area. I whispered his name again and he paused and then stepped off the new pathway and into the old passage, his shoes making contact with the soil and dirt of ages that had accumulated there. He bent down and scooped up some of the dry earth, letting it run between his fingers as he walked further down the passage, away from the new and into the old.

I waited, close to where Old Man McKillip had secured his own family’s future by taking away mine and the lives of one hundred and four men in their prime. For a third time, I whispered McKillip’s name and this time I think he heard me. He stopped and looked around. That was when I made my move to restore the true balance of the Earth.

The floor of the old tunnel shook and soil began to shift, trickling gently and unnoticed at first into the passage from the walls and ceiling and then accelerating its cascade. Mud and coal dust began to pour into the shaft. Out in the new area, honest dirt was sliding behind and around the fake mine fittings, but Marcus McKillip would not know this. It was his turn to be trapped, becoming rooted to the spot as his expensive leather shoes sank into the loosened earth of the tunnel. He shouted out. Fear took hold of him. But it was not just fear. The earth continued to shift. Verticals buckled and horizontals tilted. Thick fingers of soil and coal dirt seized his ankles and then his calves, wrapping themselves round him like stout blackened vines and pulling him backwards and down into the ground. As he fell, the rock itself parted like torn flesh to allow him entry to the bowels of the mountain and the deeply buried grave that had waited over thirty-five years for McKillip flesh and bone to lie in it. Then it began to close back over him, filling his eyes, nose, and mouth and suffocating his final frantic cries.

Now it is his: his grave, his coffin, his shroud. He will, though, have to share it with what is left of what I was, but he is welcome to it. What do I care now? Vengeance is mine: an elemental truth enunciated and let go. The anger that has held my echo captive flows with McKillip into our resealed tomb. In the earth I died. In the earth for so long I remained. To the earth I now return.

J.S. Watts

O’Leary’s

Donna Vitucci

A gloomier house you would not find, perched there atop the hill, complete with a German Shepherd to guard it and a rattle trap barn in the rear. The main structure stood at the end of a long gravel drive, amid trees whose dark and icy shadows embraced our slight shoulders. A wind rattled the last leaves on the spindly branches, and the ones that scuttled across the gravel like crabs and mice and lemmings. 

The house stands unoccupied, abandoned by the owners, the O’Leary’s, now living in Pennsylvania.  They are unable to sell the once-magnificent white clapboard house with its grand staircase of now rotting boards to trip the unsuspecting. So imposing it doesn’t need locks. Its reputation for horror and bad dreams are quite enough to keep out vandals. Or maybe vandals themselves contributed to its demise what with the clap-trappy state of the place.  Nevertheless, this frightening structure is rooted like a vine deep within our imaginations. 

In the front yard is a well, where we drop many a stone and a penny to try and hear it hit water or dirt.  We are just looking for some definition to our boundaries. There are signs reading “Don’t Trespass” and “Danger” which we never mind anyway. The bottomless well, the lonely tire swing swaying in the wind or its own haunted propulsion are not enough to stop us. 

We stand on tiptoe at the kitchen’s back window to peek inside at the shifty stacks of mail on a table, nothing opened, all unread.  Our sight continuing to sweep the room, over the kerosene lamp, andirons, and butter churn until the German Shepherd’s bark runs us off. Yet, the dog has never been seen and though the house is never entered, it creaks all the same.  But we are drawn to the barn. 

The barn we can get into so we do.  Bales of straw piled in corners for long ago sheep whose stench remains in the barn-boards and the stalls, some of their wooliness in cobwebs.  The straw was ideal for extending fire. Matches enthrall me. Once I set a book of matches on fire, dropped them in the ashtray and watched as the ashtray split from the heat. 

Firebug, my dad called me.  My mom told me to quit. 

Younger children revere me.  I enter O’Leary’s barn near dusk with Tracy and Ellen following.  Fire and esteem have my head swimming. I am going to strike a match.

The neighbor girls’ eyes shine bright, their eyes fastened on me and what I take from my pocket.  School teaches fire safety; our families scold, “Don’t play with matches.” But like the warning signs on the O’Leary’s property, I ignore them.

“We’re in O’Leary’s ramshackle barn,” Tracy says. 

“Our shoes are caked with mud,” says Ellen. 

“We’re going to be whipped anyway,” I say. The sulphur smell in the air, the match I strike illuminating the three of us, the stalls, and straw. “Voila!”

The first match’s flame descends until I have to drop it. Two, three, four, five more.  One, when it drops, touches a strand of straw and glides along it before winking out. Once each match goes out, the barn appears eerier, darker, bereft. Our small hands huddle together holding a teepee of straw. A lit match makes it burn brightly. Ever more teepees, ever more burning, until I touch the last match to a whole straw bale and then the fire takes the next bale and the next, eventually catching the stall boards and the posts. Like an electric bird it flies to the rafters and cuts across the main beam. We stay rooted, watching until the roof comes down and the sides fall in. 

Outside the grass slashes so cool against our ankles. Dead grass, but grass all the same. Once green, it almost feels wet to us. We remember we want a drink, and run to the well.  No water there, but we are a little out of our minds. Fire does that, it covers everything and then clouds, scars. It makes you forget. It overcomes you. It overcame us. It’s why horses panic in a fire, why they stampede and why they mow down one another in their fright. We try to find each other in the dark, and only come up with two and still parched.

“You pushed Tracy in the well!” Ellen cries. 

I swear it was like flicking a match, it was that easy. 

Screams and sirens and suffering smoke. You can’t tell who is alive or dead, white or black, blond or brown. Neighbors are everywhere, rescue folks, gawkers you can’t begin to count.  The revolving red lights of night where all numbers, letters, identification burn. Even the long-dead sheep are screaming a cry I never want to hear again. Call it purified, the burning barn is beautiful to me.  My fingers itch to strike another match.

Tracy disappears, but not in the well. But, we knew that, didn’t we? She walked out of the barn like a stick on fire, her blond curls sparking, her fingertips smoldering, her shoes burning a path brightly to O’Leary’s back door, where she knocked, where she bleated with what was left of her voice, her little handprint a ghost burn on the bottom of the door.

Donna Vitucci

The Post

Dorian J. Sinnott

I’ll never forget that post at the far end of the field. It was old and rotted, wood splintered from years of weathering. Father said they used to tie horses to it after the plows returned at dusk. But we never saw any plows, nor any horses. All we saw was the post, and the circle of dirt around it where no grass ever grew.

I was only seven when the Fitch family agreed to take us in. I’ll admit, I was terrified at first. The gray, dreary orphanage had become so homey over the years, and looking back, it was all I had come to know. But for you, I know it was different. You were nearly twice my age, and memories of a world outside the walls were still fresh. You longed for freedom. All of us did. But there was something about the farms and fields that brought fear to my young heart. There were no streetlights around, no cars, no people. It was nothing like our temporary home in the city. On the farms, there was nothing but darkness. Silence.

On our first night at the Fitch home, I remember that silence. The stillness. There was no laughter from other children, no sirens in the distance. And there was no you. For the last three years, after the caregivers had turned us in for the night, you’d always let me sneak into your bed. But now, for the first time, I was alone.

Your bedroom was on the opposite end of the farm house, and the lack of light kept me from venturing the halls. The shadows were far thicker than in the city, heavy and foul. Endless. For the first few months, you’d tell me they weren’t anything to be afraid of; that shadows thrived out in the country, no different than flickering office lights in the city. But I was convinced otherwise.

                There are shadows in the halls, I’d tell you. Ghosts in the walls.

                Yet the only time you believed me was when I told you, there’s a monster in Father’s heart.

Before we came along, Fitch lived alone. He was a widower, his wife and young son passing from what he claimed was illness years before. He was always so quiet. Sullen. You told me it was grief; that having children in the house again most likely reminded him of his life before, perhaps even of his own son.

I know you tried. You tried with every bit of your might to comfort him, to please him. But the kindness was never returned.

  Fitch made it clear to us that we were merely coming to live on his farm as extra hands—workers. He said the crops were full in the summer, and by winter, we’d be strong enough to do chores and manual labor. Me, on the other hand, he had time to wait on. And so, for that first summer, from sunrise to sunset, you’d be in the fields. Watching. Learning.

At first, you didn’t mind the chores. But as soon as autumn began to rear its head on the crest of dying summer, so too did the beast. Fitch’s stone-like exterior grew darker. More gruff. And that’s when the shadows fell heavier on the house than before.

  I noticed only a few bruises at first, hidden under the sleeves of your flannel shirt. But as the weeks went on, they became darker. Deeper. Soon it was more than just on your arms. I spotted them on your back when you undressed in the late evening. And on your cheek. You’d always been the stronger of us—after all, you were the big brother. But I remember the tears. You tried so hard to hide them behind your puffy and irritated eyes. Pain poured out when it couldn’t withstand any longer. And so did heartbreak.

Even when there were no more crops to tend to as autumn began to fade into dreary winter, Father would have you in the fields. Learning. I’d watch from the frost covered windows. He’d stand over you, barking orders, having you dig. The frozen earth wouldn’t budge as easy as it had in the summer, and your cracked and blistered hands trembled with every attempt you made. 

You had no coat; only your thinly worn out flannel shirt was left to cover you as you drove the shovel harder to the ground. I could see the tears pricking at your eyes again, even from behind the glass. With every failed attempt, Father only got more impatient. Angrier. I shielded my eyes when his demands became louder, and he grabbed your shoulders.

One night I managed the courage to slip into your room. Through the shadows and past the door to Father’s room. We knew he was usually fast asleep once the last light of day had vanished. A bottle of gin usually helped with that. I remember sitting at the foot of your bed that night, watching you with weary eyes. I wanted nothing more than to be away from the farm. To be back in the bleak orphanage.

“It’s not Father’s fault, Freddie.” Your words were soft. “I know he’s sad. He drinks. It’s not his fault. I… I just need to work harder.”

“But there are shadows,” I’d say again. “Shadows in the halls. Ghosts in the walls… And there’s a monster—”

                “I know,” you’d say. “A monster in Father’s heart.”

                You shifted under the covers, wincing from the marks left behind by your lessons. With a sigh, you glanced back at me before ushering me to my room.

“It’s called grief. That monster. He misses his wife. His son…”

             I stopped in the doorway. “Bill… is he ever going to actually adopt us?”

“Next summer, maybe. If we work hard.”

Every day as autumn faded, you were back outside digging. I’d grown tired of watching from the window. I knew the routine well. It was always the same: you’d struggle with the shovel, barely breaking the frozen dirt beneath you. Then the words would begin, and the shouting, and the lashing. 

It took until the first week of December for you to dig the hole as wide and deep as Father wanted it.

For a few days after that, the chores stopped. Father retired to his room and only made himself known for dinner. We spent the days together like we used to, playing board games and laughing over old memories. That was the first I’d seen you smile in months.

But your smile vanished just as quickly as it returned. You came to my room one afternoon, pale, with a look of dread on your face. I remember asking what was wrong. Are you sick? You told me we needed to leave. Back to the orphanage—anywhere.

I didn’t ask why. I didn’t get a chance to. You tossed a box of photos on my bed, silent. When I asked where you found them, all you could muster was, “wall”. 

Ghosts. 

I fingered through the photos, carefully taking note of their contents. Children. So many children. About your age. All the photos weren’t on the farm, however. They were photos taken at various orphanages and children’s homes. All children taken in for “work”. But what caught my attention was the fact that they all had been crossed out. Thick, black marker struck across their faces. As if they were unworthy, and must be forgotten.

“W-where are…?”

I didn’t know how to finish my sentence. Even at a young age, I knew very well what was going on. It was then my fingers stopped on the final photograph. The photo of Fitch’s wife and young son. The marks were old, but the ink was still dark and thick across their faces. Thicker than any of the others.

You wasted no time in gathering a few items in a knapsack, then waiting for dusk. At first, you told me to stay and wait, that you’d be back with help. But I begged to go with you. I pleaded. When you finally gave in and agreed to let me come along, your plans were foiled.

Father stood in the doorway, having overheard everything you proposed. His eyes were red and irritated, most likely from drinking, and his tone was deep. He called you an ingrate for wanting to run away, after all he had done for you. For us. How we were never going to be worthy of being his children. How no one had ever been worthy of being his children.

He dragged you outside through the cold night air. He shoved you to the ground before the hole you dug and threw the shovel beside you.

“Dig.” Was all he said. “You keep digging until I say you can stop.”

And so you did. You dug harder and deeper than ever before. Your calloused hands split open, staining the shovel in a sticky red. But you never stopped. Not until Father watched the sun rise over the fields. And then, he stepped in and yanked the shovel away. I couldn’t hear what he said through the tightly shut windows, but he stared at you—so closely—and I saw you flinch.

Once again, I watched as he dragged you, further into the fields. To the post.

Father always told us to never play near the post. He said it wasn’t safe, that the ground there was weak and we might fall through. He said, that’s why the grass never grew around it. Weak spots.

There were tears rolling down your cheeks as you begged him to forgive you. Yet, Father didn’t listen. Using the thick leather reins from a horse the farm no longer had, he bound your hands to the post. You squirmed and pleaded, wrists burning as the tight binds dug deeper into your skin with each movement you made. Your blood smeared against the wood—and for the first time, you noticed that yours wasn’t the only one. The post was more than just withered and splinted. It was stained in blood. Through the cracks, old and soiled.

After Father took you to the post, I never saw you again.

He told me that you were to stay out there all day, all night, as punishment. That this was the only way you’d learn your lesson. That you’d be strong. Strong for next summer. He told me you would be untied when morning came, and so I waited. I watched out my bedroom window, until the darkness flooded the fields, and there was nothing but blackness to stare back at me.

At dawn, you were gone. The leather reins had been removed, and you were nowhere to be found. Father was up early, making coffee, mixing it with his gin. He didn’t speak a word to me, and his expression was stoic. I went into the fields that morning, hoping that you had escaped in the night; that you had cut the reins free and gone to get help like you promised. But in the chill of the winter air, I felt the sting of solitude. I knew you weren’t coming back.

Father joined me outside not too long after that, with a wooden post in hand. He carried it over to where you dug the hole the night before—only now, it was filled back in. He secured the post into the dirt, and then hammered it down, deep, with the shovel. When he finished, he wiped his brow, and looked at me for only a moment.

“Don’t play near the post, my boy,” he said. “The ground’s weak. You might fall through. Couple years’ time, I bet the grass won’t be growing.”

At nightfall, I waited for Father to fall asleep before taking my knapsack and leaving the house. The shadows and darkness were thick as I crossed the field, careful not to tread near the posts, in case the soil dragged me under. I must have been silent, or Father under a heavy gin-induced sleep. He never woke, and he never looked for me.

I traveled as far as I could before I was picked up by an older couple. They told me I looked as though I’d seen the devil. At this point, I’m not sure I hadn’t. 

It’s been almost twenty years, and I’ve moved back to the city now. I’ve always felt comfort in those lights and sounds. The shadows are few and far between. 

I’d read in the papers some time back that children had gone missing near an old farm. Something about them being found buried in mass graves. I tried not to think of it. But still, sometimes I stay up late thinking about you. About the cold air that night. About the shadows, the ghosts, and the monster. And I still think about the farm. Graves. About Fitch. But, more than anything, about that post. The one at the far end of the field, old and splintered. The one where the grass around it never grew.

Dorian J. Sinnott

Silhouette

Larissa Reid

It had been years since she’d been in the woods in midwinter. She arrived late one afternoon, long after any walkers had gone home. She moved as quietly as she could over the ground, placing her feet carefully so as not to disturb the stillness with the snap of twigs. Her toes were cold, close to numb. Her cropped dark hair melted into the shadows in between the trees, leaving her pale face stark against the backdrop.

The trees were short and not too tightly packed together. Their growth had been manipulated over centuries by the prevailing winds along the coast. Their limbs brushed against her as she diverted from the main path, moving deliberately through the oakwood.  

At the burn, she stopped. The sound of the water was muffled, enclosed beneath a thin coating of ice. Bubbled air-locks created patterns across the frozen surface. A flicker at the corner of her eye made her turn her head, and she watched as a black and white wagtail hopped across the stones a few yards upstream. 

Concentrate, she told herself firmly, picking a route across the water. She placed one foot onto the first stepping stone, which was covered in jagged pins of ice. Something glittered just out of reach, caught underneath in the middle of the burn. She hesitated on the edge of the bank for a moment, her fingers involuntarily moving, itching to pick at the ice and release its treasure. But this was a moment’s weakness, and it vanished as quickly as it came. She moved on, stepping lightly on the stones to cross the stream.    

She rubbed her hand across her mouth, removing the last traces of red from her lips. Now that her hands were cold, she suddenly found herself missing the feel of another’s in her own. This was not the first time she’d admitted to feeling a little more for him than she first expected.

She thought she planned it all perfectly. It was never meant to be anything more than a trap, the perfect seduction. 

A pink dusk was falling as she climbed upstream towards the old mining path. Here, the ground was well-trodden – folk must have passed by here only recently, she thought, as she placed her own feet into far larger boot prints. It was strangely satisfying to destroy the perfect imprints of boot soles with her own feet, pressing down the regular battlements of mud with each step. She slowed her pace as she rounded the next bend, holding her breath. Familiar though it all was, she wasn’t quite sure what she might find ahead of her after so many years of neglect. 

When she first came here it was the height of summer. A thick, hazy afternoon, buzzing with insects and full of bird chatter and the rustle of small creatures. She remembered the feel of warm, soft grass between her toes as he urged her off the path, ducking under branches and pressing through the patches of ferns that had sprouted up in the forest clearings. 

He seemed reluctant in his task, nudging her gently onward rather than pushing. She could turn on the charm, of course, she knew that. But it seemed pointless – it wasn’t like he could do her any real harm, not here. 

The vibrant green of the forest was all-consuming; every shade, every shadow took on a deep green tinge, shimmering in a heat haze as though they were underwater. Sunlight broke through in places. She had hoped to stumble across a sunbathing adder – she knew he had a fear of snakes and it might have given her a chance to vanish into the woods she knew would protect her. 

Instead, she turned to him and smiled. 

Her attempt to disarm him failed, she saw that in an instant. There was simply no need to try and change his mind – he’d done that himself already. As he gazed at her with soft, pathetic eyes, a ripple of pleasure shot through her. The sheer satisfaction of being able to manipulate at will, the simple delight of seeing someone – male or female – reduced to putty in her hands. It gave her a thrill like no other.

She thought for a moment that she might offer herself to him – not in gratitude, of course, but rather to ensure he would never tell the truth when he returned. But something about his thick, hairy upper lip made her squeamish, and sweet though he was, she figured she’d caught enough of him in the net already – no need to subject herself to something unpleasant if there was no need. 

In hindsight, she thought she played the innocent schoolgirl rather well. She handed him the wild rose she’d been twisting round her fingers as they walked, and placed a firm but sweet kiss on his neck. Then she turned and ran, a flash of yellow skirts disappearing into green, black hair melding with the shadows. 

That was before. Before everything changed, and summer sunlight faded into memory. Now she wasn’t a day older, but she considered herself at least a little wiser.

Looking up, she stopped. The corner of the cottage had come into sight, nestled in the curve of the path. It was utterly derelict, chimney stacks pulled down to rubble under the weight of tangled ivy. The weak evening light played tricks on her, reducing what she could see to two-dimensions, a series of flat outlined images on paper. The trees, in silhouette, appeared cut from black card and stuck down on the surface of the sky, the house taken from the pages of an old book. 

She stood, ever alert. Nothing moved.  

Her toes ached with the cold. She replayed the events of the afternoon once more in her mind, fire and flame warming her, his skin against hers. As she walked up to the cottage doorway all their voices floated in on her memory, each one easily distinguished without her needing to see their faces. Dead for many years, yet still clinging to her return. They knew she was here. The broken slats on the front door were splintering in the elements. Her hand reached out, careful to push without hurting herself. 

Among the fallen leaves, evergreen ivy, and wrought-iron bed frames, she found what she was looking for. Lifting it she was once again surprised at its weight. The glass was hazy, its frame pitted with rust marks, and a large diagonal crack ran across it from top to bottom. It didn’t matter—she couldn’t see herself in it, anyway. She carried it carefully across the room, stepping over gaps in the rotting floorboards to set it gently on its hook on the wall where it belonged. 

Before she spoke, she took the lipstick from her cloak pocket and reapplied it. She fished out her comb and tugged it through her hair, smoothing out the curls that were stubbornly returning in the cold air. 

He told her what she wanted to hear. Satisfied, she blew him a kiss before heading back out into the dark, revelling in the latest pleasure he had given her. Ready to begin again.

Larissa Reid