A Peculiar Collection

curled up, her body pressed against his. The sirens reached a crescendo. Cars squealed into the end of the alley. Policemen ran at her and pulled her off Joe. She pawed at the body, wailing, struggling.

  Four men had to carry her away. They placed her in an ambulance with a policeman.

  Mary Beth screamed at him, “Go find Ritchie, he killed Joe!”

  Sergeant Garroway shook his head. “Ritchie? Who’s he?”

  “He’s a bookie, my husband had a tab with him. He murdered Joe!”

  “You have a last name for Ritchie?”

  “No…”

  “Or an address?”

  “No.” She looked down the alley as the paramedic took her blood pressure.

  “Did you put the knife at your husband’s feet?”

  She nodded.

  “Where did you find the weapon?”

  The back doors of the ambulance hung open, and Mary Beth pointed to the place.

  “Under some weeds.”

  Garroway followed her finger. “That’s a long way off,” he said, peering into the dark. “How did you find the weapon?”

  Mary Beth froze. “The blade glittered in the light,” she whispered.

  “So you ran past your dead, or dying husband, to the end of the alley. Then what? You picked the knife up and took it back to his body?” He raised his eyebrows, and then scribbled in his notebook.

  “I didn’t kill him.” Her voice sounded thick, unfamiliar. “Why would I stab him?”

  “There have been fourteen call-outs to your premises in the past…” He flipped back pages in his notebook. “…four years. Your husband was not very nice to you.”

  “He gets tired.” She turned her hands palm up. Joe’s blood coated her skin.

  Mary Beth stared out of the ambulance as the paramedic put a monitor around her swollen stomach. Joe hovered under the tree, while two men circled the body, taking photos. They walked through her husband three times as she watched.

  Slowly, Joe faded to shadow. She couldn’t find the scar that ran down the length of his face. His clothes showed no definition. The tattoos across his knuckles had watered down into a blue-green smudge. But she didn’t mistake the cruel smile.

  He caught her with his eyes, and placed one hand against his stomach. With the other, he slowly uncurled his fist until one finger pointed at her. Mary Beth looked down, to her belly, mouth dropping open, eyes wide and wet. From across the alley, Joe broke into a full-bodied laugh that echoed in her head long after he disappeared.

  Naïve, Once Seventeen

  I still cry when an ambulance screams past. Maybe the glare of the lights, the penetrating siren, attacks my emotions. As the alarm fades, my face heats up and tears fill my eyes until the world is underwater. My feet drift off the path, and I swim down the road. A wrought iron fence with sharp spikes encloses the park. I find an entrance and climb out of the water.

  I miss him, even now.

  “Where’s your PE bag?” Mum shouts across the park.

  I realize she’s not there, not following me from the train station. She’s been gone five years, decomposing beneath a cheap gravestone. Still, I search the hill, between the sunbathers, the lovers entwined. Bright snatches of fabric adorning writhing bodies, all laid out under the midday sun. Their clothing is disappearing, reducing until they’re all naked. They merge, an unrepentant orgy.

  I turn, sneering my distaste at their open carnal lusting. At the bottom of the hill, where the woods begin, I catch sight of something, ethereal, white, gliding through the trees. I follow it, floating alongside on the path.

  A dog bounds out, all yapping, tail wagging merriment, his coat dripping. He makes my trousers damp as he licks my fingers. I’m still focused on my mother’s phantom.

  A voice calls from behind the wide trunk of a gnarly oak tree. “Billy, come here. You bad boy!”

  A man with a creamy shirt, XXX printed in drops of blood across the front, emerges. My ghost. He flicks oily black hair off his forehead, bares his teeth, and growls at me until Billy runs from my side.

  I remember where to go, to tiptoe alongside the saplings to the hidden place. The younger growth is new, but I’ve seen it all before. I travel to this park most nights. I float down from the stars on the cloud of my nightdress. He pulls me between the trees, over the bracken and bramble the council left to grow. I grasp at plants, to stop the pull. Shouting and screaming makes no difference. He takes me, silent and unyielding.

  “Where’s your PE bag!” she shouts, behind my left ear.

  “I’ve got the kit, only the bag’s missing!” I cry back. Without pause, I spin around, half ducking.

  She’s there. Blue grey hair, and a soft squidgy chest, huge in proportion to her cake-indulged frame. Some children cuddle up to mothers like that. I cower.

  “How the bloody hell did you lose only the bag?” Her arm rises up and back. She does it slowly, savoring the terror on my face. The joints ping and pop as she extends her hand, clamps the fingers together. “Stupid girl!”

  I’ve been watching for movement, to duck and run. She’s too fast and my cheek burns as her palm catches my face.

  “I’m sorry, Mummy.” I start to blubber. In the middle of the park, by the copse of trees the locals call The Woods. She hates crying. Using the back of my sleeve, I wipe at my eyes, my nose. When I look up, she’s gone. I’m staring into the red embers of the setting sun.

  A jogger has stopped, seeing me cry. Listened to me talk to Mummy.

  “You okay?” He starts towards me. I turn and run under the canopy, to the cool green-tinted shade

  Before secreting further, I watch the man. Wires hang from his ears, feeding him messages. His shirt sticks to him, a patch of sweat down the middle. He’s running now, pulling something small out of a pocket. The trees sigh, and the moment freezes. Jogger-man suspends in the air. Pollen, falling from white blossoms, sparkles like gold. Two birds, previously dipping and diving, show their best colors, captured as they play. The lovers on the hill are clothed again, books in their hands, the flapping pages still. A Scottie dog is jumping for a ball, almost catching it. His eyes roll around and find me. He wants his toy so much. I run into the woods, and time restarts.

  The space between the plants increases with each step I take, until I’m creeping through a Redwood forest, a mere ant tripping over roots the size of trucks. The journey takes longer this way, feels like hours of hiking before I reach the brook that snakes past my favorite silver birch. I grow enough to wade through the water. The current pulls at me, I struggle, but I need to get to him, to the hidden place.

  Bark from the tree weeps in strips, the ground ankle deep in its sorrow. I nestle down, and throw my arms around the trunk. Slivers float through the air. I want to hide here. Shrink back to my ant size, and wait until the peelings to cover me for good. I’ll join him then. Twenty years too late.

  Before I start digging, I peer between the trees surrounding me. I’m looking for my mother. She doesn’t understand. She’d kill me if she did.

  The woods chirp and chatter. Twigs fall, and leaves, as wood pigeons court up high in a chestnut tree. Somebody loved me once. Then they left. I pull the trowel from my bag and stab the ground.

  I dig for days. Not sure how I survived the starvation. The hole is bigger than my house, and I’ve still not found him. When I finally see the corner of the bag poking out, the sky has darkened so that Venus is staring through the leaves at me. She’s tut-tutting, arms on hips. And black, she’s dark as coal, and the prettiest woman ever to be born. Her hair cascades in thick dreadlocks, past her feet, they wave in the sky, float there, like Medusa’s snakes. But hers won’t turn me to stone. She’s interested in Doing The Right Thing. That’s why I’m brushing the last crumbs of soil from the bag. That’s why I’m not frozen in my grief, forever with one hand in a crater the size of Scotland.

  Venus is setting. Her lips are blood red, and releasing their pout. She’s spotted the material under my
fingers. I know she approves, and wave her a silent goodbye.

  I reach down over the edge, and tug at the bag. It’s so small. The PE bag still has my nametag stitched at the top by the pull cord. I release the string, open it up and gently remove a tiny bundle wrapped in two tea towels.

  The jogger is standing some ways off, talking into his mobile phone. And a siren, getting louder. I’m brave for my boy, and hold back the tears.

  The Girl That Could Fly

  Clarity can be difficult to work with, and as Silvia stared out of her economy seat window, she found it hard not to scream. Obscuring the light was the face of a demon, its features long and drawn - bones growing in sharp ridges along its face and tugging painfully at the skin. Eyes of winter blue stared piercingly back at her, blonde hair pulled long and straight by the wind, it appeared to cling onto the side of the plane. Silvia looked to the middle-aged businessman with his gut hanging out and his hair cut short in admission of loss. He stared intensely into his laptop screen as he played cards. Silvia searched around to see if anyone else had seen, then fearfully returned her gaze to the window.

  Her heart pounded and she shrank back in her seat as the creature smiled revealing almost human teeth, before it swooped away. Silvia stared unblinking as the creature landed on the wing. She could see now the bony wings with an almost transparent lace-like tissue covering them. The creature ducked and dived clearly enjoying the velocity of the wind, when