The Body

by Dean Clayton Edwards

  Any moment now, she was going to get back to taking action, only she was fascinated by the sight of Matilda's chest. The build up of grime and dirt marked how much time had passed since the object had been dumped in here, but there was really no need for it to have been in this state. Whereas the rest of the sisters benefited from a polish, but essentially kept themselves meticulously clean simply by force of will, Matilda had allowed herself to deteriorate. She had permitted spiders to construct their webs in her corners.

  Or she was dead.

  Lara didn't know if that were even possible, without the body. As far as she knew, it was impossible to die within the furniture, unless the item was destroyed. It was all theoretical. No-one had tried it yet, so she would be the first.

  If Matilda wasn't dead, then who knew what was going on in her head. She'd been in this room, in darkness, for two years, two cycles, with nobody to talk to, nor any voices to hear. There were only the creatures crawling in and out of the tiny cracks, making their optimistic traps beneath her.

  She hoped that Matilda was dead. It would simply be easier that way. For everyone, including Matilda. She hoped that it was possible for her to die and that it had been quick.

  "This is for Matilda," Lara thought of saying as she sank the axe into the others.

  Lara trained the light away from the chest and across to the opposite wall, feeling free to search for the axe again now, as long as she didn't spend a moment longer in here than necessary. She cast a fleeting eye over worksurfaces cluttered with ancient pots of paint and wood varnish, expecting the axe to be lying up against a wall in the corner.

  She saw that the walls were practically supported by tools and cardboard boxes, and there were shelves with yet more flowerpots in various states, and cobwebs of course and, worst of all, the dead things that had been caught in them but unconsumed. Even the monsters had died.

  Imelda would have been the last person to have been in the shed and she had evidently moved things round in a hurry to make room for Matilda's chest. It had always been so well-organised in here before. Now, however, Lara had to squeeze between stacks of cardboard boxes to get to the far side of the room. The boxes were too heavy for her to lift and threatened to bear down on her as she struggled in the dark. She left the torchlight dangling from her neck once more. Shadows danced crazily on the walls, but she tried not to pay any attention.

  A noise like sandpaper on sandpaper whirred up behind her, however, and she stopped suddenly to stare in the direction of the chest.

  After a few moments, the sound came again, but longer and more consistent this time, like a snake uncoiling beneath plastic and whispering through the grass.

  Matilda's shiny green surface glowed under the torchlight, but there was no movement.

  Seeing nothing new or unusual, Lara was reassured until she heard a voice say her name.

  Lara's insides now felt as cold as her skin had felt for twenty minutes. The chill that developed within her was a strong physical sensation that rooted her to the ground. She might die here, she realised. Her worst fears were all coming true.

  Her silent stare at the chest was rewarded with hearing the rasping voice a second time.

  "Lara ..."

  "Yes," Lara confirmed. Her tone was snappy, to make the voice saying her name stop, and it seemed frail by comparison.

  Her torch made trembling, concentric circles on the chest's face.

  When no conversation was forthcoming, Lara quickly returned to her search, desperate to find the axe and be out of here before Matilda woke fully an came to her senses, such as they may have been. She clambered over an ironing board and sent a strimmer clattering to the concrete floor.

  "What are you looking for?" Matilda said.

  Her voice was noticeably stronger than it had been seconds ago.

  "Never mind," Lara said. "I'm not here to disturb you. I'm going to get what I'm looking for and then go."

  "You're not disturbing me," Matilda said.

  Lara thought that it was a witch's voice. It was all broom and no handle, just the brush and everything caught up in it.

  "I know what you're looking for," Matilda said.

  "Oh yeah?" said Lara, attempting to keep her voice light, as though this were just a routine trip to the tool shed. She planned to give it a few more seconds and then she would run out of here as fast as she could, even if that meant facing the others having failed.

  "Yes," said Matilda. "And it's not over there."

  "That's the only place I've not looked," Lara said. "Where do you think it is?"

  "Come closer," Matilda said. "I can barely hear you and I can't feel you at all."

  "I'm not insane," Lara thought, "but you must be if you think I'm coming any closer."

  "I've been in here for ... for a long while," Matilda continued. "I don't expect you to touch my chest, but I just want to feel a presence. Something other than spiders and beetles and mice! I want to feel you. I want to remember what it was like to be part of something."

  "You made your choice," Lara said uncharitably, but that was the fear talking and she felt ridiculous, because she was doing the same thing that Matilda had and she could still end up like Matilda if things didn't go her way, if she didn't find the axe, for example, and the others decided they had nothing to fear from her after all.

  "Lara ..." Matilda whispered hoarsely.

  "Stop it!"

  Lara considered how she would feel if she had been locked in here for years with no company and no contact, physical or otherwise.

  She moved closer.

  "Is this enough?" Lara said.

  "Yes!" Matilda said. "Yessss."

  "How do you feel?" Lara asked, feeling ridiculous, but not knowing what else to say.

  "I always liked you," Matilda said. "You and Isla. You never hurt anybody. You never laughed at anyone. You respected us, and yourselves."

  "Isla's in the hallway now," Lara said. "She rehung herself to get away from the others. Their chattering can drive you ... well, they talked too much for her liking."

  "The others are not like you and Isla," Matilda agreed. "What's going on?"

  "Same as usual," Lara said.

  "But what's happening now?" Matilda persisted. "You must be in trouble if you're in here with me."

  "I told you," Lara said, half-turning to look casual. "I need something."

  "And I told you I know where it is."

  "You don't know what I'm looking for," Lara said.

  "Yes, I do," said Matilda.

  "Then where is it? Lara said.

  "It's in my bottom drawer," Matilda said.

  Lara's shoulder's slumped. Of course. There was no safer place for a weapon that could do so much damage. Again, it would have fit Imelda's self-satisfied sense of humour to remove the axe from Matilda and then place it inside her drawer.

  "I suppose it would fit in there," said Lara, eyeing up the drawers.

  "Of course it fits," said Matilda. "It will fit in your pocket."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The passport," Matilda said. "Isn't that what you came in for?"

  "N-yes," Lara said. "You have the passport? May I have it?"

  "I don't know what's going on," Matilda said, "but I know what it's like to feel alone against the others and to need to get away in a hurry. I always liked you. The others can rot in hell. All except Isla. You and her were very much alike."

  "We're still friends," Lara said, although she was distracted now. She was thinking ahead to returning to the master bedroom not with the axe, but with the passport. Of course, she could have ordered a new passport at any time, but the moment Imelda's saw it she would know that she had not only shared a room with Matilda, but had been brave enough to reach inside Matilda's drawers. She'd have to respect her then and might perhaps even fear her, the way people respected, envied and feared those he did what they said they were going to do.

  "I would have liked to have been friends with you and Isla," Ma
tilda said, "but I'm not that way inclined. Hence my incarceration. I know you might not forgive me for trying to leave you all for good, and I have no excuses for that behaviour, but perhaps I can make it up to you, by giving you the passport now in your moment of need, because I suspect the others have turned on you."

  "We have to do what we have to do," Lara said.

  "I'm glad you understand. Use the passport to get far away from here. Get so far away that they can never tempt you back to them."

  Lara decided not to share that she'd been planning to smash them to pieces before leaving and she was glad that Matilda had lost the knack of reading thoughts, because for a second Lara wondered what she was going to do with her too. She couldn't just leave her here in the shed to deteriorate further, could she?

  "Thank you, Matilda."

  "You have to open my drawer," Matilda said. "I can't do it myself."

  Lara eyed the chest warily.

  "I'm too weak," Matilda said. "You have to pull it open by hand. Go on."

  "Which drawer?" Lara asked.

  "The bottom one."

  Lara crouched nearby and took a deep breath before gingerly using her sleeve to brush the webs away from one brass handle and then the other, more as a trial to see if anything would happen than to clean them.

  "They're not wired to the mains, Lara."

  Lara put both hands on the drawer and pulled. It was stiff. She yanked hard and jiggled them.

  "Sorry," she said.

  "Do what you have to do," Matilda said. And then she added, sadly: "We all do."

  The drawer came out about half an inch but no further, wedged along the edges somehow, perhaps simply from lack of use. There was hardly any gap at all, so there was no question of reaching in. Instead, she shunted the drawer back into place and then pulled again, hoping to loosen whatever was causing the friction. This time the drawer opened almost a foot.

  "Great," she grasped.

  She shined her torch into the blackness.

  "At the back," Matilda said.

  Lara gave the drawer another tug. It shrieked at her this time, but also scraped open further and she could see the red booklet lying at the back, just as Matilda had said. It wasn't the axe, no, but it was perhaps even better. She'd got what she'd said she wanted, despite them all. Her heart, already hammering, sped up another notch.

  "Take it," Matilda said. "Take it and go and never look back."

  Lara reached in, but the very second she did so, the drawer slammed shut against her arm, trapping it painfully at the elbow. She yelped with both shock and pain.

  She struggled to free herself, more confused than afraid.

  "I'm glad it was you that came," Matilda said, "but I'm sorry it was you too. On both counts, it's because I liked you."

  The top drawer flew from its mooring and collided forcibly with Lara's head. The wood made a thunking sound against her forehead and her entire head felt very big all of a sudden. It started to sound as though someone had rung a bell in her skull and she felt dizzy. With her arm trapped, there was nothing she could do but scream for help, but she'd been taken entirely by surprise, without even the opportunity to draw breath, and the pathetic noise that came out of her in place of a scream was short-lived.

  Silently, and so much sooner than she'd expected, her world faded to black.

  MATILDA

  Matilda stumbled outside and held her face up to the night sky so the rain could pelt her face and body.

  She laughed until she was gasping, until she was crying, and then she was laughing through her tears, as if she'd heard the saddest and funniest joke in the world and it threatened to suffocate the life from her body, even though she'd only moments ago stolen it back.

  It was wonderful to feel again. She endured an agony of cold throughout her body, her clothes soaked through and clinging to her gooseflesh, her head pounding so hard that she had to squint against the pain and worried that she might topple over and lose consciousness and run the risk of losing everything she'd been waiting for. She had to hold out a little longer and move further away from the shed. Every icy raindrop against her felt like a miracle.

  She took not a single pain or discomfort for granted.

  Breathed deeply through her nose and exhaling through her mouth, she revelled in the thrill of the act of breathing, feeling the air burn her nostrils, throat and lungs. She wiggled her fingers and toes and cried and laughed some more with the joy of it.

  "At last!" she cried out.

  Sensations.

  How she had missed her ability to feel.

  To feel everything.

  Dropping to her knees, she sank her fingers deep into the muddy earth so that it squelched dirty bubbles over each digit and then she noticed the ring on her finger.

  It was a big fucking rock.

  She wiped some mud from it and held it up to the moonlight to see it glint. It was on the wedding finger.

  She looked toward the house then, wondering what on earth had been going on in there while she'd been away. She wondered if she shouldn't go back for the axe, because if Lara had needed it then perhaps she would need it too.

  She'd known all along that Lara was seeking the axe. It had been obvious from that shimmering, fearful yet enraged look in her eyes. Now, however, Matilda was also getting an inkling into why Lara had wanted the axe. Self-defense probably, of a sort.

  Who would have thought that Lara would get married? Lara who would hardly have said a word to anyone, male or female.

  She squeezed her hand into a fist and let mud drip to the floor. She was tempted to lie down and put her face to the grass for a while, but a window was opening up and a man was leaning out, calling to her.

  "Sarah?" he was saying. "What on earth are you doing out there?"

  What was anyone, let alone a man, doing in the house?

  She attempted to place him, but it was impossible. He was no delivery man or meter reader. It was dark. The moon was on its descent so it was very late. And he was bare-chested.

  She wondered if this man had a ring that matched hers. Of course, he would. Of course, he would!

  Despite his eyes on her, she couldn't help chuckling silently to herself about the situation she'd found herself in. Her shoulders and belly moved, but she was otherwise silent. She supposed that she might have looked to him like she were crying. Perhaps she could use that to her advantage in explaining this situation. Then again, she wasn't really in the mood to explain anything to anyone, but there were a few things that needed explaining to her.

  "Sarah," he called. "It's raining!"

  "And you're stating the obvious," she thought. "You're going to be little use to me, aren't you?"

  "I'm coming," Matilda called up. "I just need something from the shed. And I fell."

  It felt strange to hear this voice coming from her vicinity. Sarah's voice. Her voice again now. It felt strange to form words with a tongue and lips and to have them projected into the world on invisible waves. It was a sort of magic.

  "Can't it wait until morning? Come inside!"

  "I'll be a minute," Matilda said.

  "Hurry up," Roger demanded. "I'm getting dressed and then I'm coming down to see what on earth's going on."

  "Stay there," Matilda said.

  He looked perplexed as he moved away from the window, most likely to seek his clothes and come downstairs.

  This was the husband alright, in the bedroom in the middle of the night, half-naked. Poor Lara. Maybe she'd been onto a good thing, but it would be over soon once he realised that the woman he'd married was gone.

  Matilda returned to the shed and swatted the plant pots, swiping to the floor them and everything else that had been dumped on top of her chest. It was greyish green and she wiped the top now with her T-shirt, quickly ruining it and saturating it with grime, but she continued, wiping down the drawers too and then the sides to get rid of the top layer cobwebs, dust and mould. When this was done to the best of her ability for now, she clambe
red over fallen boxes and tools to reach the axe. It was where Imelda had left it, in the far corner of the room, knowing that anyone who wanted it in a hurry during a fit of rage would have to squeeze past Matilda's chest in the process, something that was likely to make any of the women think again about their plans. Matilda didn't doubt that every one of the women had had the desire to use it on one or another of them, whether they would admit it or no.

  The axe felt heavy in her hand, but not at all reassuring, a consequence of the fact that the last time she'd seen it used it had been wielded by Imelda, who had threatened to send it crashing down on the wooden top of her chest. That Imelda had left the axe nearby throughout her incarceration was a typical Imelda taunt, a reminder of her strength and of what she was prepared to do to get what she wanted.

  With the contested axe in her hand, however, Matilda felt herself regaining a feeling of control. The blade was still sharp.

  Before leaving, she used one hand to slide open the bottom drawer of her chest. It came open as easily as if it had been greased. There was bloody skin stuck to the inside lip of the drawer, which corresponded to a deep red line on her arm that only became particularly sore now that she'd noticed it. Despite the pain, she reached into the drawer and retrieved the passport that she'd promised to Lara, tucking it into the waistband of her jogging bottoms, which were heavy with rainwater.

  Tramping outside, unsteady, still getting used to having legs and arms again, she was assailed by the fullness of the world around her. She heard an owl and turned her head toward it. So many times she had heard an owl and had felt that it was speaking directly to her, mournfully, wanting her to be free.

  "Okay," she said, her voice breaking, and then more loudly: "I'm out now. I'm out!"

  Her head was hurting where she had smashed it with her drawer. She squinted against the ache with a smile on her face, delighted at regaining her senses, even if that meant pain. She loved every ache, every throb, every itch.

  *

  Inside the kitchen, with the door shut behind her, the house was still and quiet. She sensed Lara - conscious but trapped in the stool in a frenzy of panic and confusion. The stool in which she now resided was sitting on the floor by the sink. More than any of the other items from the master bedroom, it appeared to be just a simple item of furniture, unassuming, even bland. It was the item most likely to be discarded in a house clearance. It didn't look like it would support someone's weight and it was too ugly even to put your feet on.