The Body

by Dean Clayton Edwards

  Tap-tap-tap.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  tap-tap-tap.

  Until finally it responded to her wishing and wishing and it went away.

  She took a deep breath and fell, blissfully, to sleep.

  In the morning, she found the corpse of her goldfish, Coco, stiff against the boards. She knew at once that it was the goldfish's flapping that had kept her awake what had seemed like half the night and not some ungodly finger that had murdered it. And so, she knew too that she had unwittingly killed it by doing nothing, by being too afraid to look.

  She vowed then that she would never turn the other way, no matter how frightening or dangerous the alternative might be.

  About halfway through the telling, Lara had known that the story was true. She hadn't known then, however, that the story wasn't finished yet.

  In the end, she had done exactly that which she had vowed never to do again. She'd had herself hung on the stairs, away from those that could hurt her and those that needed her. In the end, she'd let someone she loved suffocate herself due to her misguided ambition to be free.

  In the spare room, she could hear wet sounds - sucking and smacking, sometimes gentle, sometimes hard, like a grotesquely oversize goldfish, undead, flapping around in an attempt to escape the room and thus the world.

  Isla didn't talk about what she'd done with the goldfish when she'd found it. Lara didn't think that she'd given it a burial. It was more likely that she had flushed it down the toilet with no more ceremony than the washing of her hands after the deed was done.

  The thought that when a thing was done there was no choice but to move on comforted her.

  *

  There was a space inside her, that she hadn't known existed, like a crawlspace between floors. It was a panic room and it was roughly the size and shape of her. It moved when she moved, breathed when she did. It was a place where she could survive anything. Since there was no choice but to go on, she wished to do so with as little pain as possible.

  Matilda was sitting on the bed with a white sheet wrapped around her, knees drawn up to her chest like a gargoyle. She was beautiful and outrageously ugly at the same time. Her skin seemed to be slimy with sweat.

  "I'm sorry," Matilda said.

  Deep in the panic room, a white light began flashing. The light beside it would be amber. The bulb after that would glow red.

  Lara heard the sound of laughter. It was bitter enough to sound like crying, but there was genuine humour in it too. It was the way someone might laugh if they had lived through something dangerous and couldn't believe that they had survived. It took her a while to realise that it was her and she stopped laughing immediately, shocked and embarrassed.

  "Sorry for what?" Lara said. "Which bit of it?"

  "All of it," Matilda said, but she wasn't leaving.

  "You know that I loved him," Lara said.

  "Yes."

  "I could have understood if you'd done it once," Lara said, though she was reaching high, even for this. "Sometimes things like that just happen. But three times?"

  There were a myriad of things Matilda could have said, but none of them would have made any difference to Lara and they both knew it. She looked out of the window.

  Matilda looked beautiful. Lara could appreciate what Roger saw in her. She was enigmatic and mysterious. Lara wondered what was going on inside her head as she gazed out of the window, because it was clear that she was not seeing trees or field or valley or whatever there was to see from that angle. It was dark outside and light in here so all she could see was probably her own reflection. That might explain the look on her face. She appeared to be searching for something. It would have made a good painting; something to hang on the wall and throw darts at and then cast on the fire and watch it blacken and smoulder, tear and turn to ash. Lara would have liked very much to do that.

  She wondered if she had ever looked so beautiful while inside Sarah. Matilda had her own way of carrying her. She was like an old soul in a young body. The naivety was gone. This was a woman who had seen and done many things in her lifetime and this was just another pebble on a long stretch of road.

  "Thanks for that," Lara said. "This is just what I needed to get me back on my feet."

  "I said I was sorry," Matilda murmured. "There's nothing else to say."

  "No, perhaps not. Perhaps not you anyway."

  Matilda looked away from the window as Roger entered the room with hot drinks. He sat beside Matilda on the bed, in full view of Lara in his dressing gown now with nothing underneath. Their clothes were still strewn about the floor, discarded in their haste for him to be inside her; forgotten and forsaken, even now, despite the chill that Lara imagined was emanating from her.

  The drinks steamed as Matilda took a sip.

  Lara imagined scalding her with it by throwing it in her face, but it was their face, and she didn't have the power. Would she have done it if she did have the power, she wondered. She should probably have been thankful that she didn't have the capacity to find out. For the time being, it was probably best for all three of them that she was impotent.

  "I'm so lucky," Roger said.

  Matilda smiled a sickening grin at him, downed her drink despite the obvious heat and then said:

  "Let's go to sleep."

  He nodded and turned out the light.

  "I was thinking that we could go upstairs," Matilda said in the darkness.

  "I'm in no hurry to leave this room after tonight," Roger said. "I don't know what it was, but something about this room made what we just did extra special."

  Matilda faked a laugh. Again, performance or not, Lara found it sickening

  "I think we should make love in every room in this place. When the weather's good enough, we'll make love outside."

  "Shh," Matilda said.

  "You gone shy again?" Roger enquired. "That was quite some talking you did, back then. I have to confess that I didn't know you had it in you to be so ... sexy. Not like that. You're not having regrets are you?"

  "No," Matilda said. "Of course not."

  "Good," Roger said. "Because I've not had a single regret since I met you. Except for lying to you. I regret that. I just wanted you to think I was special; I wanted you to think I was a big shot. I've been lying to people all my life, not least of all myself, but when I'm with you I feel like I can be myself and it's enough. It's enough for me now. I hope it's enough for you."

  "It's enough," Matilda assured him. "Let's rest."

  "Sarah," he said solemnly. "I've never loved anyone the way I love you. And I have to admit that I feel a bit intimidated by you, because you just keep on getting better and better. Ever since you gave me that money to pay off those crooks - and it's not just about the money - but ever since then, it's like I'm seeing you with fresh eyes. I'm seeing everything for the first time again." He laughed, which ought to have been a joyful sound. "In the space of just a few days, I've come to learn so many new things about you. You've transformed my life, Sarah, and you've transformed me. I'm a better person. Really."

  "Thanks, Roger."

  "If I could marry you all over again ..."

  (Don't say it.)

  "... I would."

  Amber.

  In the silence that followed, Lara could hear them repositioning themselves in bed. She couldn't help imagining his arm around Matilda's waist. She bet that they were warm. She remembered how it felt to have his breath against the back of her neck. Right now, she felt nothing, nothing real and physical anyway, just phantom pains as if from amputated limbs. She had a phantom stomach that turned and a phantom head that did the same. She saw whirling stars and felt the sensation of wanting to vomit although there was nothing to expel.

  And so it was that she would have to spend the night in their delightful company.

  "I love you," Roger said in the darkness.

  Matilda's words were a whisper, but Lara didn't need to hear them to know what she had said.

  "I love you too."r />
  *

  She didn't realise that she had slept until she was awoken by the sensation of being carried.

  "Get your filthy hands off me!" Lara spat.

  When Matilda didn't respond, she knew that she was in trouble.

  Matilda opened up the wardrobe door with one hand and then returned her attention once more to the stool.

  Lara used all her force to leave the stool.

  She thought of many things in that instant. She remembered Roger and her desire to touch him again, to be the woman that she knew she could be. She thought of Isla, not smashing into a dozen pieces now, but hanging silently on the wall, watching people come and go, reflecting the truth back at them and taking a piece of them at the same time. She thought of the axe that she never got a chance to use. She imagined its weight in her hands and willed it up, up, up. She thought of Matilda, trapping her arm in her bottom drawer like it was the lower lip of a giant mouth and the jaw had closed around her, quickly, terrifyingly, swallowing her up and then there had been blackness and Matilda was out and Lara was out cold. How she hated her then. How she hated her now.

  She punched herself out of the stool. She was an explosion of hate and fear and she'd had enough of being treated like shit. She was taking what was hers. Sarah. The body belonged to her. It had been her idea to leave the sisters. It had been she who had married Roger. It had been her idea to change things for the better, but this wasn't better. This wasn't right. She had to get back in control.

  She threw herself out of the stool, or at least she made a concerted effort to do so.

  She raged against the blackness.

  Matilda dropped the stool inside the wardrobe and rubbed her fingers as if she had a sudden stab of pins and needles. She looked surprised, but she hadn't vacated the body.

  Matilda's chest was right there on the other side of the room. Lara tried again and again to get into the body and send Matilda back into the chest, but Matilda wasn't touching the stool anymore. She used her foot to kick the stool back against the rear wall of the wardrobe, then crossed the room to the bed where there were towels, a duvet and some wool blankets folded neatly on the bed. She fetched the armful of towels and dumped them on top of it.

  Now Lara could only see Matilda's feet, crossing the room back to the bed and then returning with another load of material. Something else landed on top of the towels and closed off her view until it was nothing more than a slit, like light peeking through the bottom of a doorway. A third trip and then the creaking sound of the wardrobe door closing.

  (Matilda! Matilda! No!)

  "I just need some time to think," Matilda thought.

  A key turned in the lock.

  (Matilda, I didn't mean it. Let me out. Let me out! Please, Matilda!)

  No more sight. No more sound, except for her own thoughts.

  "Katja?" Lara whimpered in the darkness. "Anna?" she tried, although her sisters were far away. She had stopped feeling them the moment they left the street, as if some innate part of her had drifted away with them. At first, she had felt relief, but now she felt their absence as a smothering weight.

  She called for all of them, even Imelda, knowing that they would not answer. Even if she had been able to hear her, she would not have answered. She'd had this coming.

  The only response came when she felt that she had lost all hope. The voice replied, because it wasn't real.

  "Isla?" Lara said.

  "I'm here," said Isla.

  "You were right," Lara whispered, to get it out of the way. "You were right, you were right, you were right. About Matilda. About me. About everything."

  "There's no comfort in being right," her imagined Isla said. "Not for you anyway."

  "So what now?" she whispered, more to break the silence than for a real response.

  "We wait," Isla said.

  "What for?"

  "You'll know when it happens," Isla said.

  "Is Matilda ever going to let me out of here?" Lara asked.

  "No," Isla said and Lara whimpered. "No, I don't think so. You're going to have to get yourself out."

  "How am I going to do that?"

  "How did Matilda do it?"

  "I don't know," Lara admitted.

  "Then you're going to have to find out," said Isla.

  "Will you help me?" Lara asked.

  "I already am," said Isla. "When you don't need me anymore, you'll be ready."

  "I'll always need you," Lara said softly.

  "There's no point in both of us dying," Isla told her.

  *

  "I didn't know I could do this," Lara thought and then she stopped suddenly and returned to her usual size. "But what's the point?" No matter how big she got, she was only ever as large as the stool allowed her to be.

  "It's good to learn new things about yourself," Isla suggested. "Even now."

  "Parlour tricks," Lara spat. "With no-one to see them."

  "It doesn't need to be witnessed to make it worthwhile," Isla said. "Try again."

  "I can't," Lara said.

  "Can't or won't?"

  "Can't!"

  She tried the door side edge of the stool again and saw nothing but blackness. There was not even a light underneath the door.

  "I hate this!"

  "You're not meant to like it."

  "Well, I don't. She's got what she wanted. And I've got what I deserve."

  "Why what you deserve?"

  "Because I should have seen this coming? You warned me."

  "I didn't think you were strong enough to survive with her."

  "You were right. Imelda warned me."

  "She didn't want you to survive with her."

  "Well, she was right anyway."

  "I should have known this would happen."

  "How could you have known? Even I didn't know."

  "I was greedy," Lara said. "I wanted everything. Freedom. Roger. Everything."

  "That doesn't sound like too much to ask."

  "Well, it was. Greedy people never get what they want. They want more and more and it's never enough. And then it's gone and there's nothing. There's this."

  She moved her attention back to the door side of the stool. Still nothing.

  Still.

  Nothing.

  How long had it been this time? A few minutes. How often was she going to do this?

  "I'm going to go mad," she said out loud. "I can't do this."

  She thought of Matilda in the shed for two years. She'd gone mad. They'd all heard it. They had all fallen silent when she began raving to herself. Some of them had even missed the sound of Matilda screaming at them about all the things she was going to do to them when she was free. Her blood-spittle threats were preferable to the sound of her laughter, her madness.

  "I'm going to go mad," Lara thought, drifting to the door side of the stool. How long had it been?

  She couldn't stop thinking about Matilda and Roger and how perverse it was that they should have become Matilda and Roger at all. She couldn't think of one now without the other. They were inseparable. Even when she had been outside of the wardrobe, Matilda had had to steal a moment away from him to talk to her. Before long, he had been at the doorway, calling for her, as if they had already fallen into a comfortable rhythm of doing everything together, just the way Lara had envisioned for herself. She thought that that was what it meant to be man and wife: it didn't matter what you did as long as you did it together. Everything became an adventure. Doing the dishes. Folding clothes. Going to the supermarket. It was all an opportunity to be more than you were by yourself, to be part of something better and bigger.

  She was plagued by the sight of Matilda riding Roger in the single bed under the window. Her naked body was framed by the dying light from the setting sun and his hands were reaching up for her and she was throwing her head back and gasping, panting, saying dirty things to him and he liked it and he hadn't thought for a moment that anything was wrong. She'd stolen him and it had been as easy as taking o
ff her clothes. Men were stupid.

  "I'm not stupid," Lara said. "I see through you."

  Where were they now?

  She listened, but there was almost silence. Occasionally, a car passed by in the distance, very far away, like a thought getting closer and closer but never stopping. Sometimes, every day, an aeroplane passed overhead. She heard it through the door and through the walls. That was how quiet it was. There were no voices but her own and that included Isla's, because Isla wasn't really here. She was dead. As long as she had Isla to talk to, she'd be able to keep a grip on things. The day she started to think that Isla was real would be the day that she went mad, and she didn't want that to happen. She didn't want to end up like Matilda.

  Although ... Matilda was out now. She'd gone through it and come out stronger the other side.

  "I'm not strong," Lara whimpered to herself. "If I go mad, I won't come back out. So I just have to stay sane. And suffer. And."

  And what?

  If she was good, she thought, if she stopped having these turbulent thoughts, perhaps Matilda would open up the wardrobe and they could talk. This was the naughty corner. When she was calm, Matilda would talk to her again. They could come to some agreement.

  She shook her head.

  She wasn't getting out of his wardrobe until Matilda was dead and the body with her. Then where would she go? She wasn't getting out of here. This was it.

  Whatever was going to happen, there was nothing she could do about it, not from in here. And so ...

  She peeked through the door side of the stool. Darkness. Too profound and deep to call it black. It was a darkness that stared back into her, but she kept looking, in case there was something in it, some sliver of light, some shadow that proved that the darkness wasn't everything.

  There wasn't.

  "The trick to waiting," Isla offered, "is not to wait at all."

  Lara floated down to the legs.

  "What do you suggest?" she asked. "Cribbage?"

  "Snap, maybe," said Isla, undaunted.

  Lara laughed long and hard. She liked the sound of it and so she kept going. The sound kept going long after she'd stopped.