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Home-coming
Belaia
The repetitive jolt insinuates itself in death - the icy berth, jiggering along ancient rolling stock,
working the cancer through an equally aged system of capillaries and muscle. Briefly, it hunkers down,
like a tiny beast, afraid of the cold (the time taken for supper, two hours out of Bucharest).
We order a hot meal with remaining funds: steak tartar, in a rich sauce, mulled wine. After, vodka
and aromatic cigarettes - the young waiter stepping forward to light us, away sprite-of-foot, as though
fearing to catch something, disappearing beneath the blue fug of our smoke. Lenuta watches him go,
a longing you could almost smell, glittering in her emerald eyes. If only I were forty years younger,
she jokes; we break into laughter - two old crones in mink fur coats, enjoying the long route home.
A little later, the tiny beast - its claws out like sharpened needles - tears at my insides, an intruder
remaking its nest. The pain excruciating. I tear right back. Let out a groan, more animal than great-aunt
to six nephews. Lenuta helps me back into our compartment, a sanctuary of pelt, leather, her warm enfolding arms,
the soft down on her cheek, the smells of lavender soap and lipstick. Blood.
Over her shoulder, the snow-bound countryside flies by.
Marin
I compete with myself for colour: a series of lazy metaphors strung together - gristle to the slender meat
of fact. The elderly woman, the fifth such victim in eleven months, in an attack of uncommon savagery,
"a fist of silken defiance around her box of jewels and mementos."
A sour metallic taste gathers in my mouth. I drop the copy into the skip; complete a pencil plot on
a pocket map, encircling an apartment, not four blocks away.
He returns not an hour later, the numbers of the elevator documenting his ascent to the twelfth floor.
On twelve, a random cough alerts me to a dust pool of yellowish light. I tense: the door open. For a moment,
the present lives: a stealthy animal, flexing and contracting the sinews of its seconds.
He sits inside, this man. This man I have hunted for three days. His outer skin removed,
his artificial leg out-stretched. He glances up, eyes fearful, hateful, hopeful, beneath the pouches
of his sorry flesh. I move off without a word, disappointed, observing myself wryly from a distance,
a shambling figure of some ancient conflict.
Belaia
Later, I remove the talisman from my purse: a photograph of a young beautiful woman in sepia.
In her eyes a noble defiance. Tears rest in my own, fruits of thought gathered in repose. Lenuta
takes my hand, shakes her head, kisses my cheek.
Home. Barren snow-bound streets, rendered slatternly by brazen smells of hot cheap cuts and coffee.
Lenuta struggles with the small portmanteau, supporting me on her arm. What a pair we are, she mumbles.
Rowdy youths jostle past. Idiots, I cry, and I hear their laughter and braying from half way down the street.
If only I were forty years younger, I think.
At first, I don't recognize him. He sits in the window, spooning broth into his mouth.
He's old, I think, frail now, like the two of us. Come on, Lenuta whispers. Fear cracks
her voice like ginger footing on thin ice.
The apartment is small, light, occupying the second floor, a view of the church, reflecting the forest
off its snow-stuccoes walls, sloping off into the blue of winter. We have the apartment for two days, the
doctor explains. Lenuta handles the arrangement, counting out money from an envelope.
I examine the room. The sink. The bed.
A vial rests on the side drawer of a bedside cabinet. You won't feel a thing, the doctor informs us.
It's like falling asleep.
Night.
The tiny beast is quiet now. I wonder if it knows. Perhaps it has given up the ghost and we can catch
the next train out tomorrow morning. People pour in and out of cafés, jostle for taxis, an unspoken dread
making them loud. I pick up the vial, examining the fluid carefully. Like falling asleep, he said.
Marin
An elderly couple at a nearby table. Holding hands, kiss. I turn away.
Belaia
Lenuta cries out, rushes forward, grasps my wrist. Too late. The liquid has been poured right away,
down the sink. Why? She cries. Tears roll down her cheeks. I hold her close, luxuriate in her warmth.
"The old ways are best," I tell her soothingly.
She helps me to bed, fetches coffee.
Marin
The fat moon reflects like milk across the inky black surface of my coffee. I'm aware of being watched.
An old woman gazes in at me, just outside the window. A ghost? Her gesture is unmistakable. I shiver.
Belaia
The door slams. Lenuta returns, the man beside her. We eye each other, an appraisal across years.
I smell his fear. "Well, what are you waiting for… you old coot?" I say with a snarl. His hands shivering,
he places a small wooden box on the ledge, removes a gun, begins to load up. The bullets gleam like silver
in the evening light. Superstitions die hard, I think. Lenuta rushes to my bedside, takes my hand in hers,
brushes my face tenderly, tracing the filigree of lines and hard won battles; we rub noses, she smiles.
The man pulls back the hammer, a click that commands our attention. Vapors of breath escape all of us,
as once thirty years before… up there, on the hill. In the moonlight, I notice his hand shiver.
I remember suddenly to remove the photograph. Does he even look? Yes, of course, he must.
There's a flicker of recognition, a flicker of emotion. Ellen, he thinks. My Ellen. Then
he sees only my hand, the luminous white-gray hairs running uncannily along the old withered
flesh under the moonlight. He pulls the trigger twice, then a third. Somewhere a wolf howls.
Steven Dorell is a MA student in Critical and Cultural Studies. He writes gothic-noir short stories
- Cream/Muskie, featured - and traditional gothic, and has previously had a play performed at the
Oxford Playhouse. He is presently finishing his first novel.
Email: Steven Dorell
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