Already the blood on the floor was crawling away toward the wall where Frank was, the beads seeming to boil and evaporate as they came within range of the skirting boards. The room was like a furnace, as the dead man's energies pulsed from his body. The room, or the spirit in it, responded with soft sighs of anticipation. This time she was certain her senses did not deceive her. It spun across the floorboards and collided with the skirting. She had a breath's length to admire the phenomena, no more, before the lamb let out a wheezing curse, and-instead of moving out of the knife's range as she had anticipated-took a step toward her and knocked the weapon from her hand. She shrugged a small shrug, and turned back to the door. She fell against the wall, looking up to see him wrestling with the door handle, his free hand clamped to his cuts. It seemed his intention was not violence but escape, for he relinquished his hold as soon as he'd pulled away from the door. He put his hand into her hair and took a fistful. Anything the body might have usefully offered by way of nourishment had been taken the husk that remained would not have sustained a family of fleas. She crossed the blood-spangled floor to where he lay, and said:Īnd in mere moments, it was done. That done, she washed the knife, rinsed the sink and returned along the landing without bothering to dry herself or to dress.Īlmost as an afterthought, she registered that the lamb had stopped breathing. In the bathroom she stripped off her flower-patterned blouse, and rinsed first her hands, then her speckled arms, and finally her neck. If the ring on his finger hadn't already given his status away, she would have known him to be a married man by the underpants he wore: baggy and overwashed, an unflattering garment bought by a wife who had long since ceased to think of her husband in sexual terms. She let the knife lie.What is it? she asked, turning to look at him. But her hand was in the jacket pocket before the words were out, and as he stepped towards the door, she turned on him, slaughtering knife in hand. There was only the dim light that crept through the age-beaten blind. She looked to the wall, expecting it to tremble and spit her lover from hiding. Finally, after an age of this farcical stuff, he keeled over and hit the floor. He stumbled around the room, grieving and complaining, blood following blood onto his buttocks and legs. Indeed she lost count of the wounds she made, her attack lent venom by his refusal to lie down and die. She was already drawing the knife out, and plunging into him a second time, and now a third and a fourth. She brought the knife down in the middle of his pockmarked back. He had got the door open by inches, but not far enough. ![]() Across to where the knife lay, up, and back toward him in one fluid motion. But the blood was drying on her hands, and its stickiness revolted her. She stopped in her tracks, almost tempted to go back. ![]() As she moved down the landing she heard the room groan-there was no other word for it.
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