Wicked Women

by Gaie Sebold

  ‘Don’t fret, lover,’ her breath was coming in short harsh gasps, but she kept talking, ‘all this can be explained, sorted out, we can…’

  ‘You killed my fucking wife!’ Kitty saw red. How fucking dare he?

  ‘I’m your wife, you ungrateful piss stain!’ She snarled the words as she pressed harder with her thighs.

  ‘You made me eat her. That thing… that thing you’re… you’re wearing her. Oh god! It’s touching me!’ His voice cracked and he whimpered, the sound making Kitty’s patience slip a notch. Slip a few notches, truth be told, but by then it didn’t need any help.

  How. Dare. He?

  ‘Just because you were fucking her, doesn’t make her your wife. I’m your wife. Your only wife, your love. Say it! Say it or I’ll make you regret being born, you cheating shit! Say it!’

  ‘My wife? No, please. You’re not my wife, Kitty.’ He sounded out of breath, or was he less sure of himself now, battling to persuade her away from his deceit? ‘You’re not my wife. I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have slept together, I know that.’

  ‘You made me promises, vows, you said you…’

  ‘I shouldn’t have done it. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, so fucking sorry…’ His pitiful litany went on and on. He was pathetic. She’d done all this for him and this was all he had? All he could give her at the last?

  Red fury filled her with a vengeance. Gritting her teeth, she angled her head so she could look down into his treacherous face.

  ‘You lying bastard, you’d say anything, wouldn’t you? I. Am. Your. Wife. Say it!’

  ‘You’re our au… our au pair.’

  Two blond children, boys, swinging happily on the back garden set. Two smiling faces looking up at her, asking her for ice cream. Twin boys. Twin blond boys. Four glassy eyes as she looked down into their dead faces. Her boys. Her boys. They were hers –

  ‘Please Kitty, please!’

  Kitty realised how tightly she was grasping him around the neck, the throat. She was strangling him and he was gasping for air now. This man. This man who denied her. What right had he… two blond children, eyes like a summer sky; ‘Kitty, Kitty, push us some more before Mummy gets home, please, Kitty!’…

  Kitty shut her eyes against the unwelcome memory. She would not be seduced by his words. Would not. She tightened her hold, relishing the feel of his strain for breath, tasting his imminent death on her tongue like a sugar cube.

  She enjoyed it too much, it slackened her concentration, and he took advantage - they always do in the end - elbowing her in the stomach and hoisting her with her own petard by smacking the back of his head into her face. He missed the nose but caught her cheek hard. Her grip fell away and as she fell to the floor he stepped back from her, grabbing one of the kitchen chairs and throwing it hard against the kitchen window. The chair bounced off and they both watched - gormless rubberneckers - as it arced back at him. He stepped away before it could hit him, reached for another chair, but the stockpot was already in Kitty’s hands. She could be quick, quicker than lightning, quicker than that bitch’s knickers hitting the floor. Then the liquid was cascading over him, his whore’s (his wife’s!) head tumbling out with it, hitting him in the solar plexus like a fist, bowing him forward. He screamed again when he saw what had done it, but this time there was something broken, something feral about the sound. He stood there screaming, eyes wide and staring at the skinned head as it rolled aimlessly on the floor, screaming and screaming and screaming. Kitty would have laughed but… she was so tired now… she needed to finish this. It had all gone so horribly wrong, despite her careful planning, despite her attention to detail. How she wished it had turned out differently. How she wished… but if wishes were horses, as her mother used to say, beggars would ride. In truth, it was simple. She needed to decide. Keep him or kill him?

  It was no decision at all, not really.

  Carefully, Kitty placed the wig she had made on her head, pulling it firmly - that bitch’s scalp was big and she’d had to pad it right out - down over her own hair, fiddled with it until it sat just right and then checked her make up. The red scratches and burgeoning bruises on her face were hidden beneath a thick layer of foundation. She decided she looked a bit like Marilyn Monroe. She’d always wanted to go blonde and now she’d had the balls to do it. She smiled at her reflection. After a moment of rightly earned admiration, she turned, grabbing the holdall from the sofa (ignoring the sticky sticky stains) and the car keys.

  The body of her dead husband - employer, lover - had made her cry at first, but she was over that now. She’d mistaken him for the love of her life, for her destiny. He hadn’t been, he had been a wicked lying cheat instead. So she had killed him and he had deserved it, but now what? Her life was nothing without Him, without The One. Kitty knew what she had to do. It would complete the circle and she would be with her family again, in another place - deepest darkest Hell, you snivelling bitch - and they would be happy again. She just had to find them. That was her purpose, her mission. Her family were out there. She knew it. She just had to take it back from whichever bitch had stolen it from her.

  A perfect wife knows her place. Perfectly.

  RED RIBBONS

  Stephanie Burgis

  ‘I can help you forget.’

  That was the first thing she told me. Thérèse Mondoval, her golden hair unpowdered, her eyes like polished ebony... no, like the night itself.

  And I, only two weeks out of convent school, trembling with confusion and desire.

  I’d fled the ballroom and the Duc my parents had chosen for me, with his hot, groping hands and his contemptuous eyes. I ran until the candlelight and noise were all far behind me, and then I flung myself against the corridor wall and sobbed for my poor, broken illusions.

  And then she stepped out of the darkness before me and spoke, and my life changed forever.

  ‘Forget,’ she breathed into my ear.

  Her voice was as intoxicating as champagne, drawing me in; her slim hands, deliciously cool as she tilted back my chin. Her pink, plump lips curved into a smile.

  Oh, Thérèse...

  I would have fought a whole army to find her again. Clawing my way out of a mere grave, seven days later, was no effort.

  Not when I found her waiting for me, her face softening with delight. She reached out, touched my cheek. I saw tears sparkle like diamonds in her eyes.

  ‘You see? Now isn’t this better?’

  ‘Annette Davenant,’ Thérèse pronounced, when she chose my newest name this year. ‘Your father was English, no doubt a great lord in the North, and your mother...’

  ‘Died for love when he abandoned her for a pickled herring!’ I concluded, and blew a raspberry on her bare shoulder.

  ‘You rascal!’

  We were lying in each other’s arms in our favourite resting place, a spacious, ornate tomb left abandoned when its family turned emigré to flee the Revolution and the bloody Terror that had overtaken the world outside. Snow piled against the outer walls of the tomb, and starving wolves prowled around the outskirts of Paris, but inside, we were free, and the chill of the air was nothing to either of us.

  Thérèse pushed me over and landed on top, her hair falling around me like a shimmering, golden veil. ‘Silence, ninny!’ she ordered. ‘I am being perfectly serious. We’re going to introduce ourselves to high society.’

  ‘I already was introduced, ten years ago. I didn’t care for it.’

  ‘I remember. You tried to throw yourself at a fool of a Duc, as I recall.’

  ‘My lost love...’ I sighed wistfully. ‘Ah, what could have been, had not cruel Fate parted us.’

  Thérèse narrowed her black eyes at me. ‘You almost make me wish he had not met Madame la Guillotine.’

  ‘Why? So you could return me to him with your deepest apologies?’

  ‘No. So that I could bite him.’ She nipped me instead, her teeth grazing my throat enticingly but not breaking the skin. That was Thérèse to the essence. I wrigg
led against her, trying to pull her closer, but she pulled back.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Not until you’ve agreed to my scheme.’

  ‘Don’t I always, in the end?’ I sighed. ‘Well? If there is such a thing as high society left anywhere in Paris...’

  ‘Oh, now you’re just being sulky. You know perfectly well, now that our greatly esteemed Thermidorian leaders have saved all of France from the horrors of the Terror, out of the pure, unblemished goodness of their mercenary little hearts...’

  I rolled my eyes. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Anyone may join modern high society,’ Thérèse said smugly. ‘If only they have money, a touch of style, and... if they happen to be women...’

  I shook my head in resignation. ‘What are you planning?’

  Thérèse’s eyes sparkled. ‘I can hardly wait to see you in a dampened dress.’

  We made a grand entrance to the ball that night. Thérèse had found us both fashionably thin Indian muslin dresses, á la merveilleuse, and only the slightest application of water was necessary to make them cling to our figures quite as closely as the most shocking new styles demanded.

  But Thérèse, of course, was not one to skimp on the water needed.

  ‘If I were still alive, I would freeze to death,’ I whispered to her as we entered the ballroom and struck a carefully careless pose.

  ‘Citoyenne Annette Davenant and Citoyenne Thérèse Lacombe!’ the master of ceremonies boomed obligingly behind us.

  Public balls were the order of the day, and tickets-- like everything from lives to armies, in our grand new, Thermidorian Paris--were available to anyone with the money to purchase them. And Thérèse had been insistent: it was this particular ball, tonight, and none other, that we must attend. As usual, she hadn’t bothered to explain her reasoning, turning away all my questions with quips and distractions; and as always, in the end, I had sighed and laughed and agreed to everything she wanted, not even caring that I did not understand.

  The tall ostrich plumes in Thérèse’s hair bobbed as she smirked at me behind her fan. ‘If you were still alive, you would have died of boredom years ago.’

  ‘Without you, you mean? My, what a fine impression you have of my inner resources.’ I spoke lightly, but the words rang strangely flat in my own ears.

  It was the damned ballroom that did it to me. It was the first time I’d entered a room like this since my own miserable début ten years before; since I’d met Thérèse and she’d rescued me. I swallowed down sudden sickness.

  ‘Thérèse,’ I began, in an urgent undertone.

  But she spoke over me, looking out across the sea of dancers and mingling crowds before us. Her eyes narrowed; I could have sworn she was looking for someone in particular. ‘I have so much faith in your inner resources, my dear, that I’ll dare to leave you to them. Shall we meet again in two hours? They should be serving supper by then.’

  ‘I’m not...’

  ‘I’m sure we can both eat our fill before then, somehow,’ Thérèse said demurely, and disappeared into the crowd before I could call her back.

  I bit back my exasperation. There was no use chasing after her and causing a scene. And she had been right about one thing, at least: I was indeed hungry.

  As I strolled through the crowded edges of the room, I passed women in scanty Grecian tunics that skimmed across the tops of their thighs and women with bare breasts or bosoms covered only by shields of massed diamonds. They sighed and cooed and fluttered in turn at lisping dandies with powdered hair cut short in back á la victime; at soldiers with colourful uniforms and dazzled eyes; and, most of all, at the well-dressed, avaricious men who ruled the country now with the soldiers’ help. My father would never have recognized a single one of them as a gentleman... but then, the world had changed in the last ten years, and all our definitions with it.

  I kept my gaze half-slitted above my fan as I studied their faces and waited to select my dinner.

  I found a young soldier from the provinces. Already giddy from the wine and the company, he was determined to prove himself as sophisticated as everyone else around him... and easy to persuade into the snow-covered gardens outside.

  ‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asked as we stepped out into the darkness.

  ‘Warm me,’ I whispered, and pressed myself against him.

  He let out a high-pitched laugh; nervousness and excitement combined in his voice, spoiling his attempt at nonchalance. He was very young. ‘Could you have conceived of this gaiety only three months ago, Citoyenne? When blood ran through the gutters, and any word taken the wrong way and reported...’

  ‘Shh,’ I whispered. He wore a stiff cravat. I wormed my finger inside, working it loose. ‘All’s well now. The Terror is past.’

  I felt him swallow. ‘We can’t forget, though. Can we? Have you heard of the bals des victimes held at the Hôtel Richelieu? Guests wearing red ribbons around their throats as if they’d been guillotined, jerking their heads when they meet as if... ah!’

  He wasn’t drunk yet, fortunately. His blood tasted fresh and warm, just like him. I left him slumped just inside the back door, where servants would find him soon enough and take him for another hopeless intoxicant, overwhelmed by the manic gaieties of freedom. He wouldn’t wake in time to put me in any danger; probably he wouldn’t even remember what had happened.

  But I felt oddly melancholy as I stepped back into the warm, crowded ballroom. Thérèse was nowhere to be seen; probably she had taken her own meal to another part of the garden, or to one of the corridors upstairs. I had still over an hour to wait before we were due to meet. I ought to look for another meal myself; Thérèse had been right: a public ball such as this, crowded full with healthy, well-fed strangers, was a paradise of choice after years of poor pickings. I started forward...

  And a hand closed over my arm. ‘Annette de Rocheval, as I live and breathe!’

  It was the name I’d been born with, twenty-six years ago.

  ‘I can scarcely believe it. I heard you were dead!’

  I turned. The woman beside me wore a fashionable blonde wig, cut á la victime. But her round, smiling face...

  My heart sank. Henriette. My classmate for seven years at convent school, and one of the kindest, loudest gossips I had ever known.

  She twinkled at me beneath her wig. ‘Now, don’t pretend you don’t recognize me! I would have known you anywhere. You haven’t changed a bit, have you, you lucky creature? Why, I could swear you were still sixteen. And those unusual eyes I always envied--we used to call them witch’s eyes, didn’t we? Pure Rocheval.’

  ‘It’s Davenant now,’ I said. ‘How lovely to see you again, Henriette.’ She had left the school a month earlier than I, to be married; I struggled for the name. ‘And your husband, the Vicomte--ah, that is, Citoyen Marchande?’

  Henriette’s eyes dropped. ‘Madame la Guillotine. My sisters, too. And parents.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Oh, we all have our stories, don’t we? I was in La Force myself for a month. It’s a badge of honour now, isn’t it?’ Her laughter was bright and metallic. ‘Even my wig--it came from the hair of one of les victimes, that’s what made it so valuable. I like to think I might have known her, or even been her friend, years ago. Now she can enjoy herself again with me, when I wear her to these balls.’

  ‘How... sweet.’ I wished, so keenly it felt like a lance of pain, to be safely alone with Thérèse in our own quiet tomb, far from this glittering ballroom. I had hated my first ball, indeed, but I began to think it had been no hardship, compared to my second. ‘Well, I’m afraid I must really--’

  ‘Oh, no, you mustn’t leave now, when I’ve only just found you again!’ Henriette said. ‘You must tell me everything! Davenant—you married an Englishman or an American, then? I thought you were betrothed to a Duc. I thought you were dead!’ Her face pursed into a frown. ‘I’m sure I heard you were dead. And from more than one source. The funeral...’

  ‘You must be thinking of
someone else.’ I tried to tug away, but her small fingers clung to my arm.

  ‘But I’m sure it was you. Everyone said it was so mysterious-- that you’d been perfectly healthy and then, less than three weeks after you left school...’

  ‘I was ill then, I remember,’ I said. ‘But the rumours exaggerated. They usually do.’

  ‘But I’m certain...’ She trailed off, eyeing me wonderingly.

  I gritted my teeth. I was tired, I was unhappy, and I did not wish to kill Henriette Marchande, who had never harmed me in her life. Nothing short of death could silence her; even if I took enough nourishment from her to ensure hours of sleep, she would still wake eventually and remember this conversation and how we had met just before her strange faint. Worse yet, she might even connect it to the mysteries that surrounded my death, and to my unchanged looks; and even if she did not, she would inevitably spread the story until it met someone who knew enough to put all the clues together.

  But I did not want to taste Henriette’s blood, laced with memories and pain. The mere thought of it made me gag.

  ‘I must go,’ I said, and I wrenched my arm away with a force that made her gasp.

  The crowd felt suffocating now as I pushed through it, all the jewel-covered, warm-blooded animals around me whirling through their meaningless dances, manic with gaiety but not happiness, no, never that. Happiness did not exist in ballrooms, before the Revolution or afterwards. Happiness only existed in one place I knew of, and I craved it more than blood.

  ‘Thérèse...’ I breathed her name as I searched the crowd for her golden hair, her beautiful black eyes, her grin of perfect complicity.

  When I glanced back, I saw Henriette in deep conversation with two other women and a man in soldier’s uniform. Her brow furrowed in puzzlement as she talked, and the others leaned in close to listen. I clamped down on panic before it could overwhelm me.