The Slaughter Man

by Parkin, Cassandra;

  First a raspberry, and now an egg. She’s a thief. She ought to leave it here for the morning. It’s not her property. She has no right to it.

  Katherine won’t mind, she thinks. She lifts it out and tucks it into her pocket, but she’s still not satisfied. She’s come here to be reminded of all the things that are still alive and happy in this world, but everyone’s asleep. Where can she go where someone will be awake?

  In contrast to the eerie stillness of the yard, the haystack buzzes with activity. She can hear the scrabbling and rustling of what sounds like a thriving rodent city, and when she gets closer, a dozen rats pour out of the darkness as if someone’s tipped them from a bucket. As she slips her feet out of their clumsy rubber shoes, she thinks about the sharp yellow teeth of the rat the kittens killed and hopes she won’t be bitten as she climbs. And what if she falls?

  It’s okay, she decides. She won’t fall, and even if she does, she won’t feel it. She’s cushioned by vodka. Halfway up the haystack, someone says ‘roo’ down her ear, and she finds herself face-to-face with the enquiring gaze of the mama cat.

  No wonder you’re so glossy, Willow thinks. This barn must be like an all-you-can-eat buffet. The cat sniffs politely at Willow’s hand, but backs away from her attempt to pet her, making a long elastic leap downwards towards the feast waiting in the barn.

  In the nest at the top of the haystack, the kittens are huddled in their burrow. She scratches lightly at the hay, and is rewarded with five little heads going up like signals, radar-dish ears turned towards her.

  Come on, she thinks, and scratches again.

  It takes longer than the first time, maybe because Luca isn’t with her, maybe because it’s colder and they’re reluctant to move. Finally, a single kitten detaches itself from the ball and comes marching towards her with its tail quivering. She picks him up and holds him against her, trying not to crush him. The idea that comes to her has the brilliance of curved glass gleaming in the moonlight, arrives on a bubble of fiery inspiration that burns and hiccups in her throat.

  The kitten is tiny and new, but he’s starting to hunt. He must be almost ready to leave. He’s Katherine’s kitten, not hers, but Katherine has plenty of cats already. Surely she won’t miss just this little one? If she could have him on her pillow, protecting her, perhaps she’d be able to sleep without nightmares. The kitten is purring and kneading painfully at her chest.

  Spiney fucker, she thinks fondly, and kisses his tiny head as she tucks him beneath her top.

  The strange contraction of space has reversed itself, and now the distance back home stretches endlessly outwards, until she begins to wonder if she’s taken the wrong path. No question now of whether she’s sleeping or waking. The ache in her legs and the chill in her flesh tells her she’s definitely in the real world. The vodka tide in her blood is on the ebb, leaving her mouth sandy and sour. Her arm complains at the effort of holding the kitten in place against her chest. When she finally reaches the fence at the end of Joe’s garden, the feeling of relief is so great, it’s almost like joy.

  She’s made it. She’s home. Her adventure is complete. Beneath her chin, the kitten stirs and stretches, as if he knows he’s home too.

  The delight in what she’s done is overwhelming. She creeps into the utility room, slips off the Crocs and pulls the back door closed. Outside in the yard, her feet revel in the feel of the ground beneath them. Dancing carelessly up the stairs that lead to her bedroom, she steps on something so sharp she feels the impact in the base of her skull.

  Shit, she thinks, hopping frantically on one leg and trying to get to her foot while still balancing the kitten. She can feel a warm ticklish trickle that must be blood. Her fingers, creeping gingerly across damp muddy skin, make contact with a sliver of metal. It’s one of the blades from the razor she stole. Shit, shit, shit. She pulls it out, the pressure of her need to sob pushing back against the terrible compulsion that keeps her voice locked away. The blade is bright and sharp in the moonlight. She drops it to the floor in disgust, then picks it up again and puts it in her pocket. She doesn’t want to step on it again.

  Limping with every step, she makes it into her room and closes the door on the night. She puts her foot down on the floor, then lifts it up hastily. A bloody heel print stares up at her.

  She doesn’t want to deal with this now. Perhaps she could put on a sock and let that soak up the blood and sort it out in the morning? But a moment’s inspection shows her this is a terrible idea. Blood mingles with mud, dust and scraps of grass. She can’t go to bed like this; and besides, she has this kitten to deal with, this kitten who’s prowling curiously around her bedroom and sniffing at her mattress with his mouth half-open. She has to steal him some food, build him somewhere to sleep, and get her foot clean. Will this night never end?

  Feeling as if she’s trapped in a time-loop, she forces herself to go back downstairs to the kitchen. The fridge is humming and buzzing, frantically trying to replenish the cold air that’s pouring out of it. Someone as organised as Joe is bound to have a first-aid box, but she has no idea where it might be, and she doesn’t dare put on the lights. Besides, she has to keep as close a watch as she can on the kitten, who is currently mountaineering up the side of the sofa, tail whipping and claws clutching tight.

  Instead of a first-aid kit, she fills a bowl with warm water from the tap, grabs the kitchen roll, and sits down at the table to clean up her foot. The cut’s smaller than she’d first thought, but so deep it makes her ears sing. She takes three more sheets of kitchen roll, folds them into a pad and soaks the pad in vodka. Then she holds it against her foot and presses hard, biting her lip as the alcohol touches the opening in the skin. She takes another mouthful of vodka. She’s almost sobered up from the first lot, and besides, she’s not drinking alone. She’s got the kitten for company, even though he’s rolled into a ball in the corner of the sofa and is purring himself to sleep.

  When she takes the pad away, the wound seems very clean, but has started bleeding again. She makes a new pad and holds that against her foot, counting slowly in her head to give the blood time to clot. Her initial plan is to count to five hundred, but by the time she reaches two hundred and seventy-three she can feel her head rolling on her shoulders and knows that if she sits any longer, she’ll fall asleep at the table.

  Come on. You can do this. Just a few more jobs and then you can go to sleep. She collects the various leavings of her emergency clean-up and drops them in the bin. She opens the cupboard beneath the sink, finds the kitchen cleaner and sprays a thin bleach-scented mist across the table, then wipes it clean with a cloth. She rinses the cloth and drapes it over the rail of the Aga to dry.

  Next, the kitten. He’ll have her for company, but he might get hungry in the night, and he’ll need a litter box. In the fridge she finds a bag of cubed meat. She chops a few pieces gingerly into tiny morsels and arranges them on a saucer, then fills a teacup with water. The litter box stumps her for a minute, but a frantic rummage through the recycling uncovers several editions of the free local newspaper. She’ll tear these into strips and lay them out on a piece of cardboard in the corner of her room. Hopefully the kitten is clever enough to work out that it’s meant for him to pee on rather than sleep in. If only she could explain to him. If only she could ask him if he understood.

  But at least she won’t be alone now. There’ll be someone else in the room with her, someone who will keep her company even without speaking. Someone small and young, who needs her. She’ll have to get better now. She’s got someone she has to look after.

  That’s how Joe feels about me, she thinks. I keep him company. He talks to me and I don’t say anything back. I can’t talk so he has to try and guess what I want, but it doesn’t matter. He likes having me here so he’s got something to look after.

  She looks again at the bottles of vodka. Joe does this in secret, once she’s gone to bed, and he always seems fine in the morning. But what will happen to him when she has to leave?
Apparently, this kitten isn’t for her after all.

  She puts the meat and the water on the floor near the sofa, and the litter box in the corner. The kitten is fast asleep now, paws twitching as he dreams. She knows from experience how comforting it can be to cram yourself into the crease at the edge of a chair, how safe and protected you feel against the padded edge. But perhaps once he gets settled in, he’ll come and sleep on her bed sometimes.

  In her pocket, the egg remains safely nestled, warmed now by the heat of her body. She takes it out and lays it on the table, next to the vodka bottles, balancing it carefully. She’s afraid it will roll and smash on the floor, but it simply waits there, smooth and enigmatic, a sealed chamber. She hopes the inside is as blank and empty as the outside, and she hasn’t stolen away and then killed an incipient yellow chick.

  Once she is sure the egg isn’t going to roll across the table and hurl itself to the floor, she takes the razor blade from her pocket and lays it down beside the egg. There’s a small smear of rusty brown around the point where she pulled it out of her foot, and she feels her skin itch and wince with the memory of pain.

  She closes the fridge door and waits for the darkness to grow lighter again as her eyes adjust. There are no street lights here and the windows are too low for the moonlight to make much impact, but eventually she finds she can make out the shapes of things by the tiny red glow of the light from the socket over the worktop. She doesn’t dare sit down. She’s so tired she could sleep even upright in a dining chair; or maybe on the sofa, curled into an awkward semi-circle with the kitten tucked underneath her chin, a talisman against bad dreams.

  All right, she thinks. That’s it. You’ve done everything you needed to do. You can go to bed now.

  She gives the kitten one final stroke, astounded by how infinitely tiny he has made himself. Then, reluctantly, she leaves the kitchen. She moves cautiously, not because she’s afraid any more that she will wake Joe, but because she’s afraid of disturbing the fragile arrangement of the things they have left for each other in the clean warm emptiness of the kitchen, huddled together like unspoken confessions.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  When she wakes the next morning – dry mouth and fuzzy head, swaddled in the quilt because her bed has no sheets – it’s so late it’s almost afternoon, and there are words hovering in her head, as clear as if someone has crept into her room and whispered in her ear. You shouldn’t have done any of that.

  She sits up cautiously and wonders what the chances are of her getting away with any of last night’s antics. What was she thinking? The stolen vodka she might just about get away with (Joe seems to have a pretty good memory of what being a teenager is like, and besides, he left it where she could find it). He might interpret the egg as simply a bit of teenage weirdness. But the kitten? What on earth will he think about the kitten, which can only have come from one place? Last night, made brilliant with vodka, she had thought only of how perfectly the kitten would fit into Joe’s home, a small piece of flotsam from the disorderly torrent of life that pours through the rooms of the farmhouse. Now, she can see that he’ll know she went into the forest at night and walked all the way to Katherine’s farm. And whatever position he takes – whether he’s gentle and bewildered, or impatient and irritated, thrilled with his surprise present or insistent that it has to go back – everything is going to change, because the forest at night was something just for her.

  Or will this be the start of something different? Will he want to talk to her about what she found out last night?

  Through the floorboards, she can hear Joe talking to someone. She can’t make out the words, but she can hear the cheerful rise and fall of his voice, the pauses for the other person’s replies. Has his partner come back early? She strains to listen, but can’t make out anything. When she looks out of the window, there’s only Joe’s car parked outside.

  Still, if he has come back, Joe will be happy to see him, and perhaps they’ll both be happy about the kitten (and maybe Willow will get to know Joe’s partner’s name). Maybe in the flood of greetings and explanations and unpacking, she might manage to escape any discussions. She can feel the pull of tender flesh in her foot as she goes downstairs, the seam threatening to burst open.

  “No, you’re not doing that. No. No. No!” Joe’s voice is amused and scolding, as if he’s talking to a small child. She opens the door to find him peeling the kitten off his sleeve where it hangs like a sloth, biting frantically at his elbow. “Let go now. Come on. That’s right. No, don’t grab on again. Sit there on the sofa and think about how you can do better in future. Morning, Willow.”

  The table is clean and bare. The newspaper box has been replaced with a plastic tray filled with white dusty granules. Where Willow left a saucer of meat-scraps and a cup of water, there’s a dish filled with cat food and a metal drinking bowl.

  “Sorry about that,” Joe says as the kitten flings himself off the sofa and gallops over to pounce on Willow’s toes. “He can’t help it. I think he’s a bit of an idiot. You might want to start wearing socks.”

  Aren’t they going to talk about this? (Or rather, isn’t he going to talk about it, while she listens, and nods or shakes her head at the right moments). She stands still and wary, waiting to see if this is a cunning way of softening her up. But from the way Joe is carefully not catching her eye as he hurries around the kitchen, sweeping non-existent crumbs into a cloth, it looks as if they’re not.

  She ought to feel relieved. Instead she feels a strange little chill at the back of her neck, as if someone is pressing there with cold fingers, trying to get her to pay attention to something that matters.

  “Anyway, the traffic wasn’t too bad,” Joe continues, which mystifies Willow until she realises he’s talking about his trip to replace her cup and her saucer and her newspaper box with the real thing. She reaches down and scoops a hand around the tight little curve of the kitten’s belly. He crawls onto her shoulder and bites at her hair.

  “Right,” Joe says. “I’ve got to get on.” A small paw shoots out from Willow’s hair, and Joe catches it between his fingers to give it a friendly shake. “He’ll try and drink out of your cereal bowl, so you need to decide if that’s okay or not.”

  She wants to challenge him. She wants to say, Aren’t you even going to ask me where I got him? She wants to ask, Aren’t we going to talk about anything at all? She wants to ask him, What the hell is wrong with you? Is anyone even in charge around here anymore?

  “Right.” Joe’s smile doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “See you in a bit.”

  And then he’s gone, whistling to himself over the whirr of his laptop springing back into life.

  Willow eats in a daze. She finishes her cornflakes – fending off the kitten, who does, indeed, think he ought to be allowed to share the milk – puts her bowl in the dishwasher, and goes back upstairs. In her room, she’s confronted with her bare mattress, and remembers the sheets she left in the washing machine last night. They need taking out and hanging on the line in the yard, or at least bundling into the tumble dryer, so they can both pretend they don’t know why they needed washing in the first place.

  Her aim is to complete this task without Joe having to know anything about it, and she nearly succeeds. She’s got the sheets into the dryer, and she’s just turning the dial when he comes into the utility room, carrying the recycling crate that lives next to the bin. When he sees her, he jumps so violently that Willow jumps too, knocking off the box of washing powder. A long trail of bluey-white grains pours out.

  “Sorry,” Joe says. “My fault.” The recycling box rattles and shivers as he puts it clumsily down by the door. “Um, I didn’t realise you were – I mean, obviously it’s – um…” His smile doesn’t fit properly into his face. “I tell you what, shall I maybe go out and come back in again five minutes from now?”

  Willow’s cheeks burn. What’s the matter with Joe this morning? Of course she feels awkward, but isn’t he supposed to be the grown
-up? She starts the tumble dryer, then takes the dustpan and brush and sweeps the powder off the grey slate floor, making sure to get all the residue out of the cracks. Then she goes to the recycling crate and takes off the lid.

  The contents are as carefully stacked as if Joe has been playing Tetris. At the top of the crate, a thick layer of tall glass bottles nestle like jewels, their labels turned carefully outwards.

  But this isn’t fair, Willow thinks, knowing she’s being childish. He’s supposed to be looking after me. What am I supposed to even do about this? Is he asking me for help? Or should I let him get on with it?

  Her foot’s hurting again. She presses hard against the floor, feels the skin split and tingle, and then the spreading warmth stretching out towards her toe.

  “We going to your place then? Or somewhere else? Do you even know?” Luca laughs. “Hey, if I, like, annoy you enough by asking you questions will you start talking just to fucking shut me up?”

  Spending time with Luca is like a game of Shag, Marry, Kill. She doesn’t like being laughed at for her silence, but it’s better than his guilty awkwardness when he first found out about Laurel. She’s not enjoying his company exactly, but she’d rather have him, with his bad past and his bad behaviour and his endless, endless monologue, than the awkwardness of her and Joe, stepping uncomfortably around each other as if they’re afraid the other one might bite. If she was playing Shag, Marry, Kill and Luca was one of the options, which category would she put him in?

  “Or are you going to, like, drag me off into the woods and stab me with a kitchen knife or something?”

  Definitely kill, she thinks, and smiles to herself, and knows Laurel would agree.

  “When you smile like that, you look just like a murderer.” Luca laughs breathlessly. If he talked less, he’d be able to keep up with her without effort. “I’ll probably meet some of them while I’m inside. Murderers, I mean. Maybe even a serial killer. Might as well get some practice in on dealing with them. Come on, mate, this is getting annoying. Give me a fucking clue or something.”