The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 10
Page 67
The baby opens his mouth as he sees the blood of his father drenched all over me. His toothless grin. He laughs at me. A gurgling, bubbling sound like someone drowning in their blood. I know that sound so well!
I throw my arm up over my face. Don’t laugh at your daddy’s blood! Don’t look at me! I can’t stand it. The mother screams, far away the shouting of voices. Under the scream all I can hear is the terrifying gurgling laughter of the little boy I will never ever have. I am melting.
Throwing down the knife. Get away! The baby, the drowning laugh – get him away from me! Help me! Blood! Blood, little baby! So much blood!
Jumping into the river to flee from his laughing eyes. Down. Down. The dark water, so dark even my eyes can’t see. The deep cold water and my mind is clearer.
Down deep in the water, I push my feet in the sand and feel the cold flow against my bare skin. The solitude calms me. What was I doing just now? For a moment I’m not sure where I am. Everything is a coffin dream. I want to see Daniel. It’s the only thing I know. Climbing up out of the water, thrashing through the tall thick weeds, the riverbank is slippery and hard to climb, but I must see Daniel. I’m so tired. I wish I could really become a bat. Or a wolf would be nice. I wish I could do those things and not be a woman ever again. All around me there are animals watching me. I don’t want to see people ever again. Up river where I was, the woman is crying and still screaming like crazy and now another woman is screaming with her. I remember everything, but it is fuzzy. Well, now I guess they have found him. A new smell, of sour food. Strong men are vomiting.
There he is. So still. So vacant. He is all inside me now, but I would give my useless pointless life a thousand times to put my broken doll back together again. On the other side the sun is rising over the trees, like a hot silver blade in the high clouds. It will be light soon. It is humiliating to hide from it in defeat. I want to make my stand here and curse at it until it burns me up or until I can blot it out. I don’t want to go on anymore but maybe not just yet. I want to hold him in my arms as I rest. I want to be with him longer, both dead together, each in our way.
Shaking water from my hair, drawing away a strand from my eyes. I dress myself again in my torn clothes, and it reminds me of the mornings before, dressing myself after the love, his eyes eating me up, his cock rising back a bit, offering me a little more. The good dawn time when he would pull me back down on to him and undress me again, grabbing each other and laughing like children.
Oh the little baby.
Soon the people will come looking for me. I will carry him with me into the water and we’ll wait out the day in the bottom of the river. I will hold him tight to me until there is nothing left of him. Oh, but see him. I will never see him again as he is now. Let me hold him a while. See, how he looks at peace. We had to sleep apart in the day, because I might kill him by accident in my sleep. But see – it happens anyway.
So ist Das Leben … It’s just the way it goes. In the end, we are only what we are.
I dress him now too, like the little boy we might have had. Wake up! Wake up! Time to get up, sleepy head! Must get you ready for school, here’s a nice sandwich and an apple for you, and one more for your teacher too, all in a bag and a kiss goodbye at the bus stop that will embarrass you in front of your little friends. Goodbye sweetie, goodbye!
Now. Now here they come. I have my tears. And is this how you make of me a real girl, kuschelbaer – to make me cry? Was it the best you could think to do?
Sit now nordchen, by the waters of Babylon and weep.
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About the Author
Maxim Jakubowski is a London-based novelist and editor. He was born in the UK and educated in France. Following a career in book publishing, he opened the world-famous Murder One bookshop in London. He now writes full time. He has edited over twenty bestselling erotic anthologies and books on erotic photography, as well as many acclaimed crime collections. His novels include It’s You That I Want to Kiss, Because She Thought She Loved Me and On Tenderness Express, all three recently collected and reprinted in the USA as Skin in Darkness. Other books include Life in the World of Women, The State of Montana, Kiss Me Sadly, Confessions of a Romantic Pornographer and, recently, I Was Waiting For You. In 2006 he published American Casanova, a major erotic novel which he edited and on which fifteen of the top erotic writers in the world have collaborated, and his collected erotic short stories as Fools For Lust. He compiles two annual acclaimed series for the Mammoth list: Best New Erotica and Best British Crime. He is a winner of the Anthony and the Karel Awards, a frequent TV and radio broadcaster, a past crime columnist for the Guardian newspaper and Literary Director of London’s Crime Scene Festival.
Copyright
Constable & Robinson Ltd
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First published in the UK by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd., 2011
Collection and introductory material © Maxim Jakubowski 2011
The right of Maxim Jakubowski to be identifi ed as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988
All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
ISBN : 978–1–84901–762–6