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Joe hesitates, confused. Maybe she’s been drinking or she’s so overwrought that she just can’t bring herself to move, because he’s sure he didn’t push her that hard, did he?
“Sally?” Colors glitter brightly, trailing at the corners of his vision.
She doesn’t answer. Her hand twitches and then so does her leg. Her eyes, wide open, look left and right as her mouth tries to move.
“This isn’t funny. You know I’ve been tripping. Don’t freak me out.Get up. We can talk about things.” He’s afraid now. He doesn’t know quite what’s happened, but he knows, deep down inside, that with that push something went very, very wrong.
It’s when he kneels beside her that he sees the blood starting to pool behind her head. “Oh god.” It’s his turn to sound distraught now. Her throat gurgles. She’s desperately trying to say something, her eyes darting this way and that, confused, not understanding what’s happening to her.
Hesuddenly understands though.
The nail.
The one that he was supposed to take out from the loose floorboard after she nearly trod on it a week or so ago. He doesn’t even know how it got there. An inch of nail sticking up the wrong way, a floorer’s revenge perhaps for a snotty homeowner not happy with their work. He almost trod on it himself once and has skirted around it since then, too busy creating art to find pliers and a new floorboard and make the repair himself.
Now it’s too late.
He lifts Sally’s head and shoulders carefully away from the floor and hears the awfulsquelchas the base of her skull comes free from the bloody metal spike underneath. He wonders how something so small can have done so much damage and that maybe in a minute when the shock wears off she’ll get up and start shouting at him again. As his adrenaline fires up, whatever’s left of the acid momentarily makes her blood a beautiful bright red, but it’s sticky on his fingers and he’s worried he’ll never get it off. Her eyes are terrified, and he knows, deep down, that something irreparable has happened and that she’s not going to be getting up ever again.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he whispers, sitting back on his heels, eyes wide in horror, not knowing what to do. That’s not strictly true. He might be high, but he does know what to do. He should go downstairs, pick up the phone, and call for an ambulance. That’s what heshoulddo, but he can’t bring himself to move. What would be the outcome of that call? A wheelchair maybe. A life spent feeding her with a teaspoon. Cleaning up her shit. Maybe he could do all that if she was the Sally he loved. But the jealousy and insecurities will still be there. They will turn to hate. He’ll be chained to her in something awful. He can see the years stretching endless ahead, a prison of a life.
A prison of a life for her too.
He moves forward a little. “Sally?” he whispers. The air vibrates with his word, but he ignores the shimmer of acid trails in his vision. They’re not real. Sally is real. What he’s done to Sally is real. Isn’t it?
Her eyes dart toward him, no movement at all in her limbs now, and they stare at each other, and for a moment all he feels is a rush of love and warmth for her because she’s so afraid and helpless. And then he sees it. The tiny kernel of rage, a splinter of it clear in her expression.
“I’m sorry, Sally,” he says again, as if there’s any way she can forgive him for what he’s about to do. “I’m sorry.”
He closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to see his bloody hands as they press against her mouth and nose. Her face feels like cold dough, and he wonders if his hands will sink right through it. He doesn’t have to hold tight because she can’t struggle, but he twists his head away even as he sobs, wondering how he got into this nightmare. After a minute or so he takes his hands away and slowly, so slowly, turns back to look at her.
Her eyes are still wide and staring upward but there’s no life in them, no life or love or jealousy or light or darkness. She’s empty. She’s dead.
Time passes. Hours. Day turns to night. He sits on the floor beside her and tries to think. It’s done now. It can’t be undone. Can he say he found her like this? He was in the garden collecting flowers and came in and she was dead? He smokes skunk until his throat and eyes burn from the weed and exhaustion.
When he finally straightens out a little, he looks at her splayed body. She fell backward. In the middle of a hallway. There’s no way that could happen without a push. A shove. Even the local yokel police would have suspicions about that. So what else is there he can say? Tell half the truth? They argued and he pushed her away and she landed unluckily. Could he get away with saying she died fast? Would they be able to tell? It’s been hours already since she landed on the nail and he still hasn’t called anyone. He’s not local. Will they turn on him? He can see the headlines now.
“Drugged Artist Murders Local Girl After Fight Over Another Woman.” “Crime of Passion.” “Life Imprisonment.” His life is over. He doesn’t know what to do.
So he does nothing.
For three days he does nothing.
I watch him through the endless hours, the sleepless nights and days of it. Sometimes he laughs. Sometimes he cries. He drinks. He smokes weed. Takes pills. Not acid, he won’t trust himself on acid, but the time passes in a haze. He plays music. He sits in the garden and howls at the moon. It’s a fever dream I live through with him. He thinks very hard about killing himself too but doesn’t know how to do it and very much wants to live. He thinks about running, but he has nowhere to go. No passport even.
It’s a hot summer and this week is the hottest, dampest of the year. Thunder bugs hang in the air on the moisture, nature holding its breath, waiting for the weather to break. On day two, Sally, forever on the middle landing floor, starts to stink. She smells bad, rotten and sweet, and if he gets too close, he thinks he can hear little popping sounds coming from inside her.
He opens the landing window to let the stench of her out, but the upstairs is becoming unbearable. Still, he can’t stay away. He goes and looks at her and sometimes he can’t remember a time when she wasn’t just a body on the floor. He wonders if the world outside has died. Or maybe he has died, and this is his hell. He wishes he could sleep. If he could sleep, then there is half a chance that this might be a dream when he wakes up.
But he’s not asleep, he’s high and drunk, and Sally’s rotting and time is moving on.
On day three her mother calls. He doesn’t answer at first, the noise so alien and not part of this new universe of him and rotting Sally and the stench and his madness, but finally he does. He hears himself saying she’s in Taunton for the day. He’s going to pick her up later. He says yes of course they’ll visit this week. Yes, she is feeling better. When he hangs up, he has no recollection of calling in to her work sick on her behalf, but he must have done. His self-preservation instincts working for him even if the rest of him is failing woefully.
In the middle of the third day he decides enough is enough. He’ll hide her for now and then find some way to dispose of her. The septic tank perhaps, if he cuts her up into small enough pieces that will rot down. Buy some sulfuric acid and throw it in. Put her in a drum. Something. But he needs her gone. He needs to sleep and he can’t do that with her on the landing.
He stares at her fizzing body, watching the fly crossing her eyeball. He’s opened and closed the window so many times, afraid that the stink may waft down and carry his guilt straight to the local constable, that now he thinks it would be odd without the smell. He looks up the stairs. He’ll put her upstairs for now and think on it all. The small part of his rational mind that remains knows that by tomorrow, one way or another, the game is up. They can’t stay here, just the two of them, how jealous Sally always wanted it, forever. He must either confess or get rid of her.
He has washing-up gloves on when he wraps her in a sheet and ties the end off with thick garden wire. He’s never thought of himself as physically strong, but all that time spent outside digging the plant beds and laying fresh lawn has given him some summer muscles, and combined with his sheer desperation, he manages to haul her up a few steps and then leverage her over his shoulder. He’s rubbed Vicks under his nose and taken a couple of uppers, but it’s no match for the new Eau de Sally enveloping him.