Sample: Extract
If she let go of her she would go cold. Her body would roll sickly to one side and there would be nothing left to give her the illusion of life and warmth. She wouldn’t allow it to be real. She would not let it have any solid purchase on the slippery walls of her mind; there could be no foothold for such a monstrous idea. Yet all the same, she couldn’t ignore the stillness of her; the absence of any rise and fall of respiration; the huge and awful silence of her breath.
“I’m still waiting for it not to be so.”
She realised this in the tiny part of her that remained coldly detached from the seeping blankness that comes with extreme shock and incomprehension. It was a very rational voice that explained patiently to her, that this might not be forever; that this could certainly be negotiated. She just needed to be very quiet and very patient. She needed to refuse to accept it. She needed to refuse to let her go; to clutch at her spirit, to pull it back to where it belonged, to yank it back, squeeze it covetously to her chest, force it back into this body that it belonged to, that needed its presence to animate it once more.
Bridey’s hair was tickling her. She could no more push it away from her skin than she could conceive of letting her arms relax their grip for a second; squashing her to her heart so that her own life’s rhythm pressed against Bridey’s silent chest; perhaps so that it would help her heart to pick up the beat again; it was possible wasn’t it? If you wanted something badly enough. Surely a horror such as this could not be acceptable; could not be allowed to be so?
Kat began to rain kisses on her lover’s face, covering her cool damp skin with the heat of her lips. She tasted salty still. She was unaware that a low moaning was coming from deep in her throat, filling the torpid air of the room; stirring the languishing gloom of the atmosphere that had settled around them. The deep swells of audible grief cut through the brooding silence, announcing to the universe that this was too much, too great and couldn’t be contained.
The contours of Bridey’s face were deliciously familiar; it thrilled her to be reacquainted with them. She felt the strong line of her jaw, the soft curve of her cheek, the rounded strut of a small neat nose, the whispery caress of tiny fine hairs. At last she found her mouth and it was here she lingered, parting the lips and kissing deeply, her hands clutching at her now, feverishly, and she knew that if she had been able, Bridey would have cried out. This knowledge, far from curbing the force of her actions, only seemed to re-focus it and narrow it to a single point.
“I will make you cry out! I will squeeze you until you shriek and the reflex snap of your angry arms connect your hard solid fist to the side of my head. I challenge you! I dare you! Stop me from doing this! Stop me, stop me, stop me!”
She was on her knees on the bed. She had no real notion of how she had come to be in this position. She couldn’t even hear the animal sounds coming from her own wounded throat. She had Bridey’s body clamped against her, one hand behind her head now to seal her lips to hers and keep her there; the other hand bit into flesh that barely covered the bones of her hips. So far from clenched fury were Bridey’s fists that there could be no comparison; they were limp; hanging from slack arms that fell away from Kat’s hungry embrace; uncaring and unmindful of her insane and ferocious need for their touch.
Bridey felt like so many brittle sticks wrapped in a thin bundle of cloth; weightless and dangerously fragile; helpless and hopeless and vulnerable in their complete reliance on her and the pressure she chose to exert.
“Oh my baby my baby mysweetsweetbabybaby.”
The horror of realisation sent Kat’s mind spinning into terrifying territory. She didn’t feel Bridey’s body slip from her, as much as she sensed the air rushing into the space where she had been. Bright spots of colour danced where moments before the room had been. She sensed she was swaying and that a thick blanket of blessed fog was descending over her. As she gave up to the welcome sensation of cold and detachment, the idea formed in her mind and sat proudly for the clinical fingers of her thoughts to paw at.
Follow her into the mist. Run fast and you will catch her up. Call out her name and she will wait for you to join her. How unbelievable that you didn’t see this before. How perfect all of this is. How utterly wonderful that the answer be there all along. How unfair that you had to suffer this exquisite agony these last moments, without a hint of this solution. Of course no one could change what had happened; no one would make it not so. That was not a choice any rational sane person could consider. She could not reverse this cruel thing that had occurred, she could not tug Bridey from the cancerous jaws that had eaten away her life; but she could exercise her right to choose her own fate, she could put right a wrong here; the wrong that had condemned her to a loveless future.
The solution took firm shape as the swirling colours cleared and the fog retreated for now, allowing her to look passed the shell of her partner; lying in the tangle she had left her, to the side of the bed where the medicine waited; medicine that would cure this pain forever
Sample: Extract
It feels like walking through sludge in a hurricane. She can hardly lift her feet off the ground and keeping her eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time is impossible. Tears of pain, frustration and abject misery cut a ragged path down her raw blanched cheeks. She has her arms out stretched in front of her; as if she can claw her way through the air itself. She is moaning and sobbing but the sound is lost in the wail of the wind. Once or twice she stumbles, but she always gets back up; resolute, determined; she is not going to be denied.
The vivid colours around her are fading. At first it seems as if the vitality of this place is simply draining away, as though some-one pulled the colour plug and it has seeped away just like that. That’s not it though; it only appeared that way for a second, now she can see that the colours are being swamped, they are being suffocated by an insidious creeping mist. It has come from no-where and it is eating this beautiful world right in front of her.
She can no longer see, and this is the scary part. She can no longer be sure if she is going in the right direction or if there is any one waiting for her in all this mist and raging wind. She calls out Bridey’s name over and over, hurling her anguish into every cry. Her legs feel like they belong to someone else. This is awful; this is just so terrible. She is lost. She is floundering in a stricken place where the fog has swallowed the landscape and the woman she loves. She is alone. She is slowly being rendered immobile by the force of this monstrous powerful gale and she can no longer see herself. She is left only with her frantic hectic thoughts and a feeling of powerlessness and terror, so great, that it is the world now; it is all that is left of every thing; this rancid cloying panic.
There is some-one coming. She senses it more than anything else. She feels a presence moving at a pace towards her, but she can’t see a thing. Whoever, Whatever it is, it is coming straight for her. She finds herself backing up, and this is just fine with the freakish wind here, this is just what it wants and she lets it push her back the way she has come, away from the place she so needs to be. The more she reverses her course, the clearer the air seems to be; the mist is thinning, she can see the vaguest outlines of the world again; peeking through.
She is reminded of a song; she thinks it is by Suzanne Vega, something about finding the line and the form. Bridey had loved it; she used to play it all the time. She can’t remember what it was called, but the concept is relevant here. This thought; Bridey and the music she liked, has stolen into her mind and it has immobilised her once more, and as she stands, suffused in grief and loss, she sees the space around her giving up its secrets: Book case, Photographs on walls, a plant, phone table, stool.
She is standing half-way down her stairs, facing where her front door should be. She can see the patterns in the rug and the curling leaves of the Spider-plant near to the telephone. She can almost make out the lines of the mirror on the left-hand wall, but beyond that there is nothing; a drop-off into bleached fog. She is gripping onto the banister, amazed to be able to see her own hands; knuckles, white with the effort of her grip. She looks down at her-self; at her rumpled clothes, her shoeless feet. The garments she had tugged on that morning; that long ago hour that could have been days before; clothes she had neither chosen for comfort or aesthetics, merely something to cover her body. Bridey had taken her final breath with her face pressed to these.
She squints; peering into the restless moving cloud of white that has stolen the front of her house. She has no idea how she came to be standing here, or what on earth is taking place. Too awed to be startled, too confused to be afraid, she simply frowns; puzzled, bewildered; waiting to see what will happen. She doesn’t have to wait long.
Directly in the space where the door is supposed to be; dark stained wood with a small frosted pane of glass, she sees something hovering in the air; floating, disembodied; fluttering softly towards her. It looks as though it is turning over and over, as though propelled by a gentle breeze she cannot feel. It tumbles towards her, rotating and twirling. Her eyes aren’t able to focus on it long enough to find any kind of line or form that might give up its name.
She lets go of the banister and reaches out to swipe it from the air in front of her face. She misses. It sits in front of her for just a few micro-seconds more, and then plummets with force to the floor. From where she is standing it looks as though it has been snatched from the air and hurled to the ground. It lands with an audible plop at her feet. Frowning she takes the couple of steps to the bottom of the stairs and bends to pick it up...
