by Rhyll Biest
She grabbed a t-shirt since her shirt no longer had buttons, slipped it over her head. Normal people didn’t think about hurting the person they’d just slept with. The person they cared about.
Oh, shit.
Did she have feelings for him? No wonder she was acting odd. Every one of her mother’s mixed-up, depressing truisms about Russians and relationships came rushing in like an unstoppable tide. People like us don’t know how to be happy. Russians don’t know peace, only suffering. Men enjoy, women endure.
God how she’d hated to listen to all that crap as a teen and now it turned out to be true.
Time to face Luka. He’d seen her dark side, he wouldn’t stay.
A hot punch of acid filled her throat.
She found Luka, coffee in hand, inspecting Stumpy’s mobility cart. His face carefully neutral, he crouched to prod one of the wheels with a finger. ‘The wheel is broken. Do you want me to fix it?’
‘Please, another time.’ Words she’d heard during lifesaving classes at school fluttered by—a drowning person, in their desperate struggle to breathe, will often take their rescuer down with them.
That’s me, the drowning girl. And if she wasn’t careful she would take Luka down with her. She didn’t want that for him.
While Luka was a cop he was also other things. A man who’d helped her make a mobility cart for an amputee puppy. A rescuer of kittens and small, fluffy lapdogs. Even his admonitions to be careful, waved at her like a parking ticket, were heartfelt. He was a soldier of conscience, determined to save her from bikers on ice and to heal her with seething kisses and a gaze like burning wind.
She would miss him. ‘I think you should head back to your place. They need me to come back to work early.’
He stiffened. Though only wearing boxer shorts he managed to look dignified as he faced her. ‘I can manage that. Thanks for taking care of me, I really appreciate it.’
‘You’re welcome.’ Christ, listen to them, so formal, so stiff, as if they’d never swapped dirty jokes and gone at it like sex-crazed stoats. He’d seen her wig out once and now it was all over. She’d hoped for more but she wasn’t going to get it. That was life for you. She wanted both things, safety and stability as well as the promise of passion and something deeper with Luka. But look what she’d done to him already, dragged him into a war with bikers. And how long before he and she turned on one another? It was as inevitable as death and taxes.
She was poison, and the only person who didn’t seem to know it was him. ‘Why would you even want to be with me knowing that my mother killed my father?’
His gaze rested on her, intent. ‘Are you worried that spousal homicide is hereditary?’
‘My mother was obviously unstable, both my parents were.’
‘That doesn’t mean you are.’ His tone, cold as anaesthetic, slipped into her bones.
She looked away. ‘I’ve heard all the nature versus nurture arguments, but both my nature and nurture were toxic.’
‘You have a choice, Kat. You’ve always had a choice. You can treat everything in life as a battle, like your parents did, and wage war through quarantine or animal welfare or whatever you want. Or you can demilitarise. You know that I’ll help. Always.’
Help, she didn’t want help, she wanted to destroy her enemies and be safe. Safety had to be fought for, by whatever means necessary. Why the hell was he looking at her that way? As if he knew exactly what she was thinking?
‘You have to choose, Kat.’
What if she couldn’t make the choice he wanted her to make? What then?
He looked away and when he looked back at her, it wasn’t to meet her eyes but to stare at the t-shirt she wore. He seemed about to say something but changed his mind. ‘See you around.’
‘Uh-huh.’ He was really going?
He disappeared and by the time she’d tipped her coffee down the sink in favour of water he reappeared with his belongings packed in a duffle bag. All packed and ready to go.
Her fingers twitched at the sight of the duffle bag, the quarantine officer in her wanting to paw through it.
He paused at the door, glanced at her and Stumpy. ‘You guys take care.’
And just like that he left.
Black clouds rolled in. It had been stupid to think that Luka would be able to overlook the more frightening side of her personality, or that she could hide it from him forever. Around him she was vulnerable, as volatile as triacetone triperoxide and twice as explosive. At least Luka’s skill at de-escalation had prevented detonation.
Galenka was determined to keep them safe, and Kat didn’t know how to shut her down, or her chainsaw diplomacy.
She went to her bedroom drawers, dug out her work clothes. Her job was never going to compensate for what she could have had with Luka but it was enough.
Perhaps it was all she could hope for. Not everyone was crafted for happy ever after. She’d always hated fairy tales anyway, with their smug, virtuous, human protagonists murdering the wolves and witches she so admired for their wild craftiness.
Give her a wolf over a princess any day.
Tiredness washed over her, left her eyelids drooping. That was love for you. Follow your heart and it led you into a bad neighbourhood to be mugged at knife-point. Just like her mother always said.
***
Back home, Luka knitted with angry stabs, abusing the wool as he worked on a pair of koala mittens.
His pride, still nursing its ribs after Kat’s grievous bodily harm to it, didn’t permit him to call her. Why had she acted the way she had towards him? Hadn’t he shown her a million times already that she could count on him?
The more he thought about it the more it bothered him. The way she’d lashed out at him suggested she was very stressed. Now, more than ever, he needed to keep an eye on her. This was no time for a gentlemanly retreat.
She’d kept him under observation so he would do the same for her. For just a few short days they’d become so absorbed in discovering more about one another that he’d forgotten about the outside world. No more.
The ball of wool rolled off his lap and he cursed as he retrieved it. She was complicated, perhaps even dangerous, but he loved her fierceness, her bravery, her humour. And her retreat had left him with an aching lump in his throat that had stuck with him all day.
He knew her.
When he hadn’t, he’d been afraid of her getting hurt. Whereas now he was more concerned about who she might hurt, and what boundaries she might overstep to protect the animals of Walgarra.
***
Kat sang along to an Otep song as she drove back from work. A memory slouched by, the look on Luka’s face when he’d met Galenka.
A small, wounded sound escaped her.
His expression had been that of a father presented with a newborn son—one with a tail.
I have not tail, Galenka snarled. Why need him anyway? We have us.
She shuddered. Back away, back away from thoughts of Luka. Focus on your job. Seizing two greyhounds from a property belonging to Grinder that morning had been very satisfying, but it wasn’t enough to make Grinder leave town.
Like a tick, he’d buried himself deep into Walgarra’s flesh. Removing him would require surgery, and she was just the woman for the procedure.
She parked close to the house so she’d hear if anyone tried to break into her car. People who stole radios and change were such a nuisance, impossible to distinguish from the sort of people who wanted to mug or rape you. With the distributor cap in her pocket, she hummed as she headed for the house. The jasmine bushes looked thirsty. She’d water them tomorrow.
A few steps away from the doorstep she saw it, stopped in her tracks.
Something nailed to her door.
It was tan. Long and thin.
A tail.
For a good long while she simply stared at it, unable to move or think, then reflexes kicked in and she searched for the expandable telescopic baton she kept hidden under the bottom front step. The
reassuring heft of steel beneath the spongy rubber grip soothed her.
Who would nail a tail to her door?
Who else but Grinder?
She’d rehearsed for disaster so often that she was ready for it, panic not part of her reaction. But something else tugged at the threads of her composure, set worry bubbling at the edges of her consciousness.
Stumpy.
She tore her keys out of her bag, stabbed her fingers on the edges of them in her haste to find the right one. But when she inserted the key into the lock the door pushed open without any turn of the key.
Her heart gave a mighty wallop.
Whoever had nailed the tail to her door could be inside. Unlikely but possible. Eyes searching everywhere, she moved soundlessly on the sides of her feet to the bathroom, baton gripped tight. She shut the door, locked it, took out her curling iron and set it on high. From under the bath mat she removed a box cutter and slipped it down her sock. She emerged holding the blistering hot curling iron in one hand and the telescopic baton in the other. Given more time she could have made a bleach bomb, too, and a garrotte out of dental floss.
Walking on the outer sides of her feet she prowled her home looking for the intruder and Stumpy.
The intruders had smashed the television, the lamps, and anything else that was smashable.
On the lounge room wall, barbeque sauce had been used to paint the word CUNT.
Lovely. Her nerveless fingers tightened around the baton.
‘Stumpy. Stumps?’
In every room she called for him. The answering silence filled her stomach with hooks and razors.
In the kitchen she found Stumpy’s mobility cart. Empty.
She looked away with a sound of distress.
Not Stumpy.
He’d already suffered so much. Had they taken him because she’d taken their dogs?
Hurt him?
Killed him?
Her body became a distant thing.
She’d ridden the same invisible flying rug when the police had called to tell her that her parents had finally succeeded in killing one other after twenty years of domestic cage fighting. Defying the usual gendered selection of domestic violence weapons, Marina Ivanovich had shot her husband with his own service revolver, while he’d stabbed her with the carving knife she’d so often waved at him during meals.
Reality so often defied expectation.
She put down her weapons, crouched, squeezed her knees to check she was real. Yes, there was flesh and bones under her hands.
She raised her head to look up. No entrails hanging from the light fittings. No blood running down the beige walls. But Stumpy was gone.
She ruthlessly applied a tourniquet to emotion. What was the ‘right’ course of action?
Galenka vaulted into the room, smile like a chainsaw. Nice puppy gone? I help. Time for needles, bones, blood. Teeth showered like confetti.
A thud by the back door drove her to her feet.
Galenka rubbed the claws she called hands.
Snatching up her baton, Kat made her way to the back door. She peeped out the window. Her wheelie bin was on its side.
The stairs were clear, no one on them or beneath them. And the bushes were clear too because of the sharp wire she’d pulled through the branches when she first arrived.
A little safety precaution. Because a woman living alone couldn’t be too careful.
Outside, she discarded her baton and curling iron to hook a rake through the wheelie bin lid handle and open it slowly, praying she was far enough away to avoid injury from any booby trap hidden inside.
Stumpy’s head popped out. He gave a bodily bob of excitement and a long, happy yodel.
‘Oh, my god, you boof-head.’ She scooped him up, held him close, picked off a stray piece of Gladwrap clinging to him. His warm, wet tongue licked her hands and his front legs paddled as he tried to climb her for a tongue kiss. ‘I don’t think so—’ she laughed through tears, ‘—I can just imagine what you’ve been licking while in there.’ She put him over her shoulder and he licked and licked her neck as she stroked his soft, baggy coat, the skin he hadn’t yet grown into.
Thank goodness she’d checked the bin. Imagine if she’d wheeled him out and he’d been collected by the garbage truck and compacted. Or he’d sat in the bin slowly dehydrating.
The thought rasped her already sandblasted nerves.
She held him tight as she carried him inside. He kept licking her throat. He probably liked the salty taste but she chose to believe that he was also glad to see her.
Even if she couldn’t have Luka she always had Stumpy. Even if she couldn’t have Luka she still had her puppy, her job, her life and her black, shrivelled heart that pumped broken glass through her veins.
She dropped like a tired dog to the sofa.
Holding Stumpy, she inspected him more closely for injury but found none, the intruder apparently happy to settle for stuffing him in the bin. Or maybe they’d planned to do more but had fled at her return.
The tail on her front door flashed before her eyes. Even as queasiness gripped her she frowned.
Grinder’s payback. That had been quick, him figuring out where she lived. And he could be sharing that information with anyone which was a problem. A serious one. A Mark Fairly-sized problem.
The best move would be to leave town.
But Walgarra was her home now. Things tethered her to it.
She frowned at the remnants of what had been her blank television screen. Should she call Luka and ask him what he thought she should do? Calling him might look like she was asking him to solve her problems, which she most certainly wasn’t.
She pulled her socks and trainers off so she could think more clearly.
Gut instinct told her to keep it all in, to play it safe by not reaching out.
Who, after all, was really going to care that someone had nailed a dog tail to her front door? Not the police.
Luka would.
It was a tiny whisper she wanted to ignore because it gave her hope, and hope always ended in hurt. It was easier not to believe, to doubt that others cared.
Her gaze shifted from the television to the phone. A light on the answering machine flashed red.
Someone calling her to ask how she liked her new door decoration? Though that person would hardly leave a voice message, would they? Not if it could be used to identify them. She leaned over and pressed the ‘play’ button.
The sound of Luka’s voice cleared the fog in her brain and snapped her back into the present.
‘Belovuk here. Just checking everything is okay.’ There was a pause. ‘Give me a call.’
The end of message recording kicked in.
Hearing his voice was a kick to the ribs. She stared at the answering machine. Give me a call. Like it was that simple. Like she could really believe that he actually wanted to spend time with her even after she’d revealed the darkest side of herself. He probably just wanted to get laid. Though was that really such a tortuous proposition if he did?
Her spine straightened. If she slept over at his place she could hide Stumpy there. Hell, if she played her cards right she could spend every night there and completely confound whoever had nailed that thing to her door and driven a nail through her sense of security at the same time.
No.
She pulled a face at herself. What sort of woman was she, running to a man at the first sign of danger? That was the kind of thinking that had landed her mother a life sentence via marriage. And here she was doing the same thing.
She was a train wreck. No, more like a plane crashed into a train carrying a nuclear submarine and radioactive snakes. That’s how much of a mess she was.
She rubbed a hand over her eyes as her head grew fuzzy again. Why not just up and go? Quit her job, run away and become a topless dancer or a secretary, or a topless secretary? Anything had to be easier than what she was doing now. Plus, running away from home, the only sane way to deal with insane parents, had work
ed out just fine for her. She could run away again.
Stumpy wriggled in her arms and she set him down. He licked her toes before finding one he liked to chew on.
If only she wasn’t a woman with the sort of job that invited certain types to nail animal body parts to her door.
That tail. Where had it come from?
That bothered her.
As an inspector, she’d dealt with dogs with broken legs and horrible wounds, and yet they all wagged their tail at her, so trusting, so eager to please. They deserved better, so much better, than what they often got from people.
Resolve gathered in her belly.
She played the message again to listen to Luka’s voice. It spurred her into putting her shoes back on and taking care of business.
There was no reason for Luka to visit her but if he did, the last thing she wanted him to see was a greyhound’s tail nailed to her door.
He would go out of his mind if he saw it.
Which was unnecessary, really, there’s no need protect her, because her upbringing had made her into something that bent rather than broke in the face of pressure, an urban honey badger.
Disaster is where she feels most at home.
Throw the human snakes and lions and hyenas at her because her skin is so thick a knife won’t cut and so loose that she can turn on what holds her, and her jaws made to grind bones.
Metaphorically speaking.
She righted her wheelie bin before retrieving a claw hammer from her car and using the curved part to pry the nail from the wood door. The tail fell to the tile with a thud. She picked it up with a plastic shopping bag, wrapped it in rolls of grey, crinkled, biodegradable plastic, and placed it out of sight in her rubbish bin.
But she still couldn’t stop seeing it.
How did she banish that image along with the one of Stumpy in the wheelie bin?
Strike back, hard, Galenka whispered.
She was more than a match for Grinder, the biker drug dealers, the whole fucked-up town. It was the town who was no match for her internal ugliness, and her dark pockets were unmapped, more difficult to detour than a bad suburb. From her bedroom drawer she took out a small velvet bag, inside it a little something her mother had left her in place of jewellery. A reminder of all the dark things they’d shared.