I watch her polish the knives.  The evening sun strikes the blade edges and sparkles through the kitchen.  Julie - she told me her name - hones each one with precise strokes, then lays them out, side by side, along the sinkbench.

I can tell she likes things tidy.  She’s had a manicure recently and her hair is layered and red to the roots.  When she tied me to the breakfast stool she was deft and delicate, the knots so tight I can’t budge.

Outside the hail has started up again.  Squalls have been coming off the sea for the last couple of days, tearing across the lush late summer farmlands and into town, lifting roofs and hurling occasional cars through fences.

“You are much too perfect,” she says.

“Likewise,” I say.

There is an elegance to her movements and presence that makes it hard to believe that these knives might be for anything other than food preparation.

“But you’ve only known me for a few minutes,” she says.  “I’ve been watching you for ages.”

She is wearing a slim black dress, smooth and elastic, as though she is attending cocktails at a gala opening right after she is done with me.

“A few minutes is enough,” I say.

She huffs.  “I am far from perfect.  I’m slightly manic-depressive.  Now be good while I get to work.  I’m going to re-tie your waist,” she says, turning, “and free your arm for the first cut.  Please don’t do anything like trying to grab me.”  She stands for several moments, almost meditating upright.  This gives me the chance to examine her in the light again.  She’s a tall woman, perhaps in her early thirties.  Young enough to be my daughter.

Then she reties me and lays my arm across my lap.  She takes a small knife, and slits my sleeve from wrist to elbow with a deft swipe.  She ties back the open sleeve and looks at my face.  She doesn’t see the marks on my arm.

“So what do you do now?” I say.

“I cut you up slowly.”

“People will be home soon.”

Julie steps back from me, smiling.  She leans against the bench and studies the knives.  “Do you think this is random?  You think that I wander down the street and think ‘oh, that place will do’?”

“Don’t you?”

“See out there, through your garden?  Your path through to the back gate?  That’s where I would escape, if ‘people’ came home.”

“The gate?  It’s probably rusted shut.  It hasn’t been opened for years.”

Julie smiles.  “Yesterday, actually.”

“Yesterday?”  And I realise that she has, of course, plotted this out. Watching me for days, perhaps weeks, judging how to enter, how to exit, watching my habits.  Timing this.  It is the end of the week, I have met my loan goals at work, but skipped 5pm drinks, politely, as I always do.
She knows the property, has her escape route planned, she knows the house and knew where to wait out of sight but where she could easily snare me and tie me to this stool.  Her planning is as precise as her appearance.

“I did have to oil it though,” she says.  “You really ought to take better care of things.”

“Never use it,” I say.  “I am less than perfect.”

She grins and nods and touches my cheek, drawing her finger along evening stubble, almost touching my lips.

I flush.  “Does your therapist know what you really get up to?”

She tips her head so her bangs drift across her face.  “Nice change,” she says.  “Most people try negotiating before I start in with the knives.  Of course, once I cut, they just plead and plead.  But you, you’re a little different.”

“Different?” I say.  “Different how?”

“I guess I should have picked that.  Maybe because you deal in numbers all day.”  Then she grins.  “But you’re a people person.  People have a dream, to own that home, to have their … how does your bank sell it … have their own ’slice of paradise’?”

“‘Piece of paradise to call your very own.’”

“That’s it,” she says.

My arm is still free.  I keep it motionless, palm-down across my lap. “It’s true.  Things were bad for banks for a long time, but we have a good attitude to customers.”

The hail, which had eased, launches in stronger with a staccato din on the roof.

Julie’s smile fades and she leans towards me, still with her ass against the bench.  “That’s the point.  The bank is so precarious, but you look after people.”  She taps my clavicle with the knife’s bright tip.

“Perhaps if you had just a little greedy capitalist in you.”

I whip my hand up to grab her wrist.

She’s faster.

Catching my hand, Julie yanks me around.  The stool flips and I crash to the floor.  She wobbles as my peripheral vision closes in.

I feel her breathing at my ear.  “I can butcher you now.”

The sound from the roof changes as the hail becomes heavy rain.

I slide my arm around, though the bones graunch and rub.  Her judo move, whatever it was, has left me with a fracture.  This woman is gorgeous in her grace and poise.  If Madeline had survived, this is what she might have become.  “Please,” I say, holding up my good wrist.

Julie takes my arm and draws the blade.  “You-” she squeaks and drops the arm, stumbling back against the bench.

Now she’s seen the scars, though after forty years they are blurred and soft.

“You think you know me,” I say, remembering sitting with blades myself, making the marks, covering the blood with stolen bandages.

“You’re damaged,” she says.

“Almost everyone is.  Perhaps not you.”

I see tears on her face.  “I am,” she says.  “I’m very damaged.”

“We’re the same,” I say.

But she’s gone, out the back door, plunging along the garden, vanishing into the cold rain and through the newly-oiled gate.

__________________________

©2010 Sean Monaghan
Sean Monaghan’s collection of kitchen knives is short by one.  Sean’s stories have appeared before in Flashes in the Dark, and also in MicroHorror and PulpMetal Magazine, amongst others.  His science fiction novel is serialized at Infinite Windows, and his dieselpunk novella is a forthcoming serial at Bewildering Stories.  More information at his website www.venusvulture.com

Derek can still see the occasional flickers of those oncoming headlights. He does not know how much time has passed. He is enclosed by steel.

Long ago Derek had bought flowers. A bunch of carnations for their second date. Mary had glowed.

He feels his own brittle veins, feels the stemming of fluids in his body.

“I just stopped by the florist.”

“More than just stopped by,” Mary had said. “Carnations. It’s like some kind of intuition, like we’re connected.”

Derek blinks. His eyes feel dry and raspy. He sees again the echoes of the headlights, feels again the road’s ridges rumbling around the tires, shuddering through the car.

How can he remember these things?

“Fifteenth anniversary,” Mary said, just today. “Can you imagine?”

“I couldn’t imagine any different.”

She was still beaming from the house full of carnations. She poured him a second glass of the Shiraz.

“I’ll be driving,” he said.

“It’s okay, our reservation’s not for another hour.” She glanced at the stairs. “Maybe we could, you know, have a quick lie down.”

Derek glanced at his watch.

How long has he been here?

“Don’t spoil it,” she said. She slipped her jacket off, undid the top button on her blouse, then the next. “It’s cold out.”

Snow on the road. The other car swerving.

He chased her upstairs, grabbed her by the bed. Mary giggled, kissed him. “Maybe tonight,” she whispered. She’d stopped taking the pill three years ago and still nothing.

“Maybe,” he whispered and opened the rest of her buttons.

Things slow down. The approaching car swerves. It crosses the centerline.

Mary slipped Derek’s clothes from him and shed her underwear. She gasped

The moment of impact tears both cars apart. Mary cries out.

They separated, breathing, sweaty under the blankets. The bedside lamp glowed through the room.

“Whew,” Mary said.

Derek said nothing. He knew silence was right, for the moment.

He rolled on his side and stretched his arm across her belly. He stroked her gently and she put her hand on his, and the both of them rubbed her abdomen.

The windshield splinters. Mary’s momentum drags her through the showering glass. She pummels the hood. She flips and twists like a discarded and crumpled envelope, clipping the other car’s roof and bouncing onto the tarmac.

“Crap,” Mary said, bounding from the bed.

Derek sat up. “What?”

“Look at the time. We’ll lose our reservation.”

Derek looks and scampers. He can’t help grinning though. Unrushed and lost in each other, they’ve devoured time.

Then it stops. There’s nothing after seeing Mary broken on the bitumen.

They rushed to the car.

“You drive,” Mary said.

Derek reaches his hand up. He feels cold. He remembers snow.

He backed out of the garage, into the street. Piles of muddy ploughed snow lined the verges like tiny mountains lit by gigantic streetlamps.

“Can you remember the way?” Mary said. “It’s pretty far out of town.”

“We’ll go out along Roosevelt.”

“Good idea.”

Derek feels the steel again. He pushes against it. He realises he is prone. His body is not in pain, but it aches, still and unmoving.

The traffic lights at 32nd were jammed again. Derek waited, then eventually drove through the red.

“We’re already twenty-five minutes late,” Mary said. “We’re sure to lose it.”

Something moves and he slides. Light pierces his desiccated retinas.

“It’s okay,” he said. “How busy can they be? Call them.”

“Oh.” Mary laughed. “Why didn’t we even think of that?” She pulled out her cell, scrolled through the numbers.

Derek realises he is not in the car. He keeps pushing into the light. He is in a bright white room, lined with doors.

“You know,” Mary said, with the phone to her ear, waiting for the restaurant.

“Know what?”

“Well, I think … oh, hi. We had a reservation for seven-thirty.”

Derek saw headlights in the distance.

Doors. Tiny square doors. Derek sits up. Not the car. A sliding tray. He’s seen this kind of room before, on TV. On cop shows and medical dramas.

“They’ve held it,” Mary said. “Wow, that’s great service.”

“Good.” The approaching car shuffled across the road and back. Derek slowed. “What should I know?” The car worried him.

Derek sits, leans forward. His body is cut, his arms shredded and mangled. A white plastic sheet slides away from him, drops to the floor. Unsteady, he looks around the room. The light is too bright.

The other doors are all closed. There is a normal-sized door at the end of the room.

What is he doing here?

He swings around to step off the sliding tray and tumbles to the floor. He feels bones grinding within his arm and chest, but no pain. He reaches for the tray, pulls himself to his feet. He is naked and shaking.

The main door opens. “What’s going on-” an orderly says before jerking back, screaming and slamming the door.

Derek takes a step from the tray. He can just balance, just stay upright.

“What you should know?” Mary said.

“You think you’re pregnant?”

“Something’s up … maybe.”

“We’ll buy a test at Rite Aid on the way home.”

The doors are all the same, but he knows where she is. He stumbles across, falling twice. He reaches her drawer as the main door opens and a security guard steps in, hand on his gun.

Derek pulls the drawer open. Mary is scratched and battered, butchered as if with flailing knives. He touches her hand and pulls himself up to lie beside her. The light fades away as he puts his hand on her belly.
 
___________________________

©2010 Sean Monaghan

Sean Monaghan’s visits to morgues have fortunately been mainly via television.  His stories have appeared before in Flashes in the Dark and also in Pulp Metal Magazine, Infinite Windows and Bewildering Stories, amongst others.  More information at his website www.venusvulture.com