Sarah bowed her head as if in relief and Lara brought the axe down hard.
"No!" Imelda yelled.
Her cry of alarm accompanied the thud of the axe blade burying itself in the back of Sarah's neck.
"Stand back unless you want the same," Lara warned Imelda.
Sarah's blood poured from her and spread across the boards. Lara stepped into the growing puddle with Roger's trainers and finished the job. Thud. Thud. Thud. It was difficult one handed. Thud. Thud! Until the axe splintered the boards.
"Christ!" Imelda snapped.
"Now Matilda," Lara said and headed into the cottage.
*
Neither of them wanted to get close to the chest. It sat there against the wall, silent and still as if it were only a chest, as if it contained clothes or sheets and blankets and not Matilda. With the light on, it seemed to pull the darkness towards it, a shroud of protection. But it wouldn't be any good.
Lara knew that the longer they waited the more powerful she would become. The axe might fly from her hand and start whizzing around the room. Being nothing made you powerful. Lara knew that now.
She crossed the room quickly and delivered the axe head into the top of the chest. The bang resounded in the small room. She hit it again and again, burying the axe head in the wood and wrenching it out, tearing huge splinters out as she went. She smashed in the drawers as if they were Matilda's face. Eventually, they caved and fell out in ruined pieces. She was careful not to touch them with her hands, only the axe. She split everything into two and then four and then eight.
She thought that she heard ragged breathing coming from the chest itself, but it was her own lungs. She was slick with sweat from the effort and when she felt dizzy she thought that it might be Matilda, trying to take her place, but it was nothing but blood loss. Good, old-fashioned blood loss.
Imelda stood in the doorway, watching, flinching every time the axe struck.
After forty minutes, the scattered wood was unrecognisable from what it had once been. Lara was too.
The fire had already been laid, perhaps by Roger himself, and Lara lit it with one match. When it was good and hot, she picked up pieces of chest and threw them on. They turned black. They spat. The varnish curled and turned grey and they burned, sending smoke up through the chimney. Every piece she threw on made the conflagration bigger and it burned faster and brighter, but it couldn't burn fast enough or bright enough. With every piece that went on, Lara felt happier.
This isn't for taking Roger from me, she thought. He was never mine. I realise that now. But now he is. Now he is.
Imelda helped, gingerly at first, but then eagerly, feeding the flames. She removed the old man's jacket and rolled up his sleeves.
The fire burned green and red and blue. It whistled, which could have been mistaken for a scream. Lara and Imelda, guised as Roger and the removal man, looked at each other and threw more shards of wood onto the pyre. The handles didn't burn. They gleamed and then turned black and fell into the embers.
Lara was sitting on the stool with her knees together, like a lady. She stopped that, remembering what she was now.
"Aren't you afraid he'll take you?" Imelda asked.
Lara could feel Roger in the stool beneath her, frantic, like a bumble bee caught under a glass. He would have heard everything, seen everything and understood nothing. He was powerless for now.
"I'm not afraid of anything," Lara said and Imelda stared into the dark eyes she had so recently stolen. If the night was dark, then her eyes were impenetrable. They were like voids in outer space, sucking in the room. Imelda believed that she feared nothing. Not anymore. Perhaps never again. Not even her.
"Now what?" Imelda said carefully.
"Now an experiment," Lara said and she made Roger's body stand up although it pained her to do so.
She didn't say goodbye. She kicked the stool into the hearth and positioned it in the flames with her foot.
"What are you doing?" Imelda spluttered.
"I'm never going back in there," Lara said. "I'll take my chances out here. I'm not hiding anymore. And no-one's getting rid of me."
Imelda shivered, even as the flames found the legs of the stool and sought their way over, under, around and through. She was standing now too, looking as if she might rescue it from the flames even though it was nothing to do with her.
"Isn't Roger in there?" Imelda said.
"Yeah," Lara said. "But there's only room for one of us. He never loved me. He loved her." She stared into the embers. "And you know what? I never really loved him. I loved the way he made me feel. Sometimes. I was in love with the way I saw myself when I was with him. But that's not the same thing. If he'd really loved me, he'd have noticed when I was gone. He didn't."
"What's going to happen to him?" Imelda said.
"He's going to die," Lara said. "We all do."
Imelda and Matilda had both said that she wasn't capable of doing what needed to be done. Well, that just wasn't true in the end.
Imelda clenched and unclenched her wrinkly fists, as if it were not too late to grab the stool out of the fire and throw a damp towel over it, but it was. It was too far gone now. It had split in two and the flames were finding their way through the top and dragging it down, feeding, growing, dying.
Imelda found herself in the corner of the room. She didn't mean to back away from Lara, but she couldn't help wanting to distance herself from what was happening, physically and emotionally. After all the threats that had been bandied about regarding who was going to chop who up and feed who to the fire, seeing Lara do it, not only to Matilda but to her own stool, troubled her. It was wrong. The furniture: they had been together a long time. It would never be the same. There was no coming back from the fire. There were meant to be twelve items, twelve sisters, twelve months, like the numerals on Katja's face, like the cups on Petra's mantlepiece, like the slats of Anna's chair. Twelve, twelve, twelve. Now there were eleven sisters and ten items. It wasn't meant to be like this. Somehow, things weren't going to work anymore.
"Stop worrying," Lara said.
Imelda tilted her head.
"You can hear my thoughts? Or are you just guessing?"
"I've learnt how to find you," Lara said. "I learnt a lot while I was away, but I know that I don't know everything yet. Hence the experiment."
The last of the stool tumbled into the embers and burned steadily. It showed no signs of going out. Roger was gone. No fanfare. Just gone.
"How do you feel?" Imelda asked.
"I'm still here," Lara said. "Destroying the stool didn't kill me. I didn't much care, but I didn't think it would."
"Good thing too," Imelda said. "I'm glad you're not dead."
"Where's your dressing table?" Lara asked.
"A safe place," Imelda said.
"Still in storage?" Lara asked, turning toward her. "With the others." There was safety in numbers, apparently, unless the number was twelve.
Imelda shook her head, but because she was wearing the old man's face it was hard for Lara to tell if she were lying or not.
"What happened to the removal guy?" Lara asked. "Is he in your table?"
"Why do you ask?" Imelda said.
Lara pushed, searching for the truth and Imelda winced. She pushed back.
"It's in a safe place," Imelda repeated when Lara's mind let go of her. "He's in a safe place. Leave it at that." She massaged her temple with her fingertips, offended by the assault as well as astounded that it had even been a possibility.
"There are no safe places for people like us," Lara said.
"Come back with me," Imelda said. "We'll make it work. We'll get the others, go back to the house. Matilda put it up for sale, but it's not too late. Even if we have to buy it back. We can afford it."
"First," Lara said, "part two of my experiment."
Lara crossed the room in two strides and pinned Imelda against the wall with her torso and forearm. She stared into her grey eyes and saw that they
looked frightened. They needn't have done. The only person in danger here was Lara herself.
Imelda punched and clawed at Lara, but Lara had the superior body strength. She pulled Imelda away from the wall and slammed her against it again, knocking the wind out of her.
"Don't fight," Lara said, "and I'll make it quick."
Imelda didn't listen. She bared her tombstone teeth and fought as hard as she could. Despite her vessel's age, the two of them were fairly evenly matched and becoming more so the more tired Lara became. She could feel herself wheezing. She had to end this quickly or it would end her.
Imelda raised her knee and sent it hard into Lara's thigh.
"Nice try," she panted. She wasn't going to get caught with that one twice on the same day. The pain had been crippling and out of all proportion, like a supernova.
She pressed her forearm against Imelda's windpipe and watched her assumed face turn blue. She had no intention of killing him though. She needed him healthy. She needed his body.
She took it.
She blinked. She tried to breathe but could not and that was terrifying. Worse was the sight of Roger's face, close to hers, above her, with dark, empty eyes boring down into hers. It was the kind of face you never want to see; the kind of face you can never forget.
For a moment, she thought that she was dying and that Roger was killing her. She forgot what was happening and where she was. Then, an instant later, Roger's body collapsed to the ground at her feet. He fell straight down and sort of crumpled, then went sprawling out to one side. He seemed lifeless.
Lara put her hands to her throat and rubbed the skin there, massaged her Adam's apple. She hadn't realised how hard she'd been pressing. She cleared her throat and wheezed. From one physical wreck to another, she thought, but at least this one wasn't bleeding from the face and neck, shoulder and hand.
Once she got her breath, it was a relief to have two working arms again and to walk without too much of a limp. One leg didn't work right. Maybe it was shorter than the other. But it wasn't the result of some recent violence. It didn't hurt and that was a relief.
She checked herself over, shaking out her arms and legs, tilting her head to one side and then the other and hearing a worrying creak as she did so, but still there was no pain. Just the sore throat where she had almost strangled herself.
She closed her hands into fists a few times. These were sore. Arthritis. Shame. She wriggled her fingers. Yes, really sore.
She looked at the fireplace. She looked at the few chips and splinters of wood remaining on the floor, needing some sweeping before she quit the cottage. She looked everywhere but the body at her feet, because that was Roger and she'd killed him.
It was a long time before she could look down.
He hadn't deserved this.
He was already dead, burnt up in the stool in the fireplace, but that had just been a stool. Seeing his body brought home what she'd done and what it was too late to undo.
She knelt down beside the body. The old man's knees clicked.
She felt for a pulse and there was none.
Experiment complete.
Lara had successfully cast Imelda out of the removal man and had taken ownership of the body. Imelda, most likely, was back in the dressing table, wherever that was. The removal man? Perhaps he was in the dressing table with Imelda and they were circling each other now like wolves. Who was to blame? Imelda? Matilda? Herself?
Lara had successfully vacated Roger's body and nothing had come to take up residence. Roger was dead. He'd have to go on the fire as well, but perhaps not right now. Not this morning.
Lara could now become anyone she chose. She could take over their bodies as easily as if she were knocking them off a bicycle. She could hop from person to person. Whenever caught, she could become the captor. She never need stop, until death caught up with her, which it would. It catches up with everyone, especially those who hide.
Until death came for her too, she was anyone. She was nothing.
She was nobody.
The End
More Fiction by Dean Clayton Edwards
The Hollow Places - A Novel
A journey of rescue, revenge and redemption.
Simon delivers live bodies to a psychic creature in the water. He has a natural ability for the work and is even beginning to think he might enjoy it, until the creature asks for the life of his sister, giving him a window of fewer than 24 hours to save both their lives.
The Chair – A Novella
A psychological, dark fiction novella on the borderlands of horror and magic realism, inspired by a true story. After a bloody car crash, self-involved Alan is struggling with survivor guilt and a terrifying, new phobia about chairs. When his girlfriend recommends facing his fears head on, he does so, with terrifying consequences.
Connect with Dean Clayton Edwards
Thanks very much for reading The Body.
Find me on Twitter (@deancedwards), add me to your network on Facebook, or check out what’s new at my website.
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