A RAG AND A BONE: By Ash Scott-Lockyer
Thursday, December 23rd, 2010She sat and stared at the dried out husk of what had once been a man. A small bead of moisture squeezed into the corner of her eye. She wiped away the tears with the heel of her palm – sniffing back the emotion – and with it, the last clinging vapours of corruption from the desiccated corpse. How long she had watched him she couldn’t say. With breaks for the natural functions and needs of life it had been perhaps six months, maybe more.
At first the smell had been miasmic, as the waxy-taught skin had split, softly yielding to the ingression of blowfly, then the outpouring of their ravenous progeny.
Perhaps two months after his last rasped breath, his right eyeball had rolled out of the socket to hang, forlornly on the caved cheek. She pushed it back into its proper home, then, when it simply fell out again, she found a pair of sunglasses and put them on him. The gristle of the ears still seemed capable of holding up the arms of the cheap plastic frames – at least for the time being.
‘There,’ she had said, ‘all neat and tidy again.’ She half expected him to thank her. Perhaps he was sulking.
As the body had finally dried out she had found it necessary to tie it to the chair. Sticky fluids no longer glued it in its final death position. She needed to give it a little help.
Every day, at least three or four times she told him how sorry she was, how much she needed his forgiveness. He was resolute, up to the point his head fell off of course. She had raided the cupboard and improvised with scotch tape. Remounting the cranium at a slightly jauntier angle than it had been.
Of course he’d known about her little problem when they married. He’d said it was nothing, some women snored, some abused their husband’s credit cards, nobody was perfect. He loved her just the way she was he said. Okay she liked a little drink now and then … well perhaps a tiny bit more often than now and then, but she never let it show in front of their friends. It never was an issue.
‘Well okay, it wasn’t an issue until that night,’ she thought. The argument was stupid; they’d both been bloody minded, unwilling to back down.
‘I thought you understood,’ she said, ‘I thought you knew sometimes I need it, to help me cope.’
‘But you could have stayed here with me – I’d have helped you, like before.’
‘But it’s not the same. You can’t satisfy … all my needs.’
‘Once, you said I was all you needed…’ he stared into her eyes, searching.
‘I fucking lied’ she’d screamed. He was just like all the rest. They’d seen her shell but not what was at her core, what made her tick.
She looked at the stained, reflective lenses now taped in place and realised he’d been right. He should have been all she needed but lust got in the way.
She’d left him earlier that evening, crossing to the suited businessman sat alone at the far end of the bar. ‘He’s my brother,’ she’d lied, ‘I often go out with him … he’ll be alright, make his own way home.’ Their eyes met for a split second as she walked out with the stranger. There was regret, fear, love and weakness in them. She hated weakness in a man.
And so the row had started. It was three when she got home, still with the other man’s scent on her. He’d been sitting alone in the darkened kitchen. Taking off her heels for stealth had been pointless.
‘We need to talk,’ he’d said as she put on the light.
‘What’s to talk about?’
‘Letting me help you.’
‘I’m beyond that,’ she said smiling. ‘I’m going to make myself a drink, do you want one?’ She walked to one of the cupboards and took out a bottle of vodka and a tumbler.
‘Haven’t you had enough … of everything? It won’t help.’
‘Not enough alcohol,’ she said, ‘It makes it easier.’
There was a silence, one of his long, smug silences.
She felt her temper flare. ‘I try to keep you out of it,’ she said.
‘Don’t you bloody understand,’ he’d said. ‘I want to be part of it – I want you to let me in.’
‘You arrogant little bastard,’ she’d screamed, ‘what makes you think that someone like you could ever get close to me.’
Another tear welled in her eye, and this time she let it roll down her cheek. She’d not meant to let the anger rise that night – after all she was no longer hungry – not meant to turn on his unprotected back, to sink her teeth into the soft, yielding neck, to find the carotid artery pounding under its flimsy coating of flesh. Yes, she liked a drink now and then – it was in her nature.
Now she would sit in that room until only his bones remained, it was the least she could do. Something always happened to them, they were too fragile, too fleeting. Still, patience to wallow in remorse was a luxury immortality gave her. There had to be an up-side to balance all her years of applying lipstick by guesswork.
______________________
@2010 Ash Scott-Lockyer
Ash Scott-Lockyer lives in the English countryside, rides horses and writes horror and dark fiction. His work can be found on Flashes in the Dark and several other webzines. A short story of his will appear in the April edition of Necrotic Tissue magazine. His website is http://www.shadowtales.co.uk
