by Andy Monk
Had he gone off to die?
“Molly? You ok you-”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” she shrugged and found a thin smile, “men, being assholes. Should be used to it by now.”
“He told me… everything. That he saw… the… demons?”
“I know. That’s why I trust you to look after Amelia. Amos trusted you.”
Past tense.
“You really want to go see the Mayor? On your own?”
“You seen any of the others lately?”
“Others?”
“The Choral Society. Amos has gone. I can’t find John, Ash or Cece and even Mr Wizzle hasn’t shown his face for a while either.”
“No,” he pursed his lips, “can’t say I have…”
“Promise me, if I don’t come back, find someone decent to look after Amelia.”
The Sheriff started to say something, but she’d already turned her back on him.
The Lawyer
When Amy noticed he was watching her she looked over her shoulder, smiled and obligingly wiggled her ass, which made him feel better. She put down her duster and came over to kiss him, which was better still.
“I have to go to the shops and get stuff,” she said, eventually pulling away.
“Do you have to?”
“I know you like having me around, but you have to eat sometime.”
Of course, he did, but it wasn’t so much her company he missed when she was out of the house. It wasn’t even her firm young body or the fact that she enthusiastically let him do anything he liked to it.
It was because his dead wife didn’t appear so much when his young lover was around.
Amy had become not so much a receptacle for his lust as a magic charm to ward off evil.
“I suppose,” he smiled and let his arms fall to his side as she stepped away.
“You need to keep your strength up,” she winked at him in a manner he would have considered very un-Amy like until recently, “you’ll be needing it.”
She was right, he did need to eat. And sleep. He’d been doing little of either and it had nothing to do with having a sex life after decades of celibacy.
She smiled and gave a little wave before heading out of the door.
Kill the bitch!
He gave a strangled little cry and whirled around, expecting to see a spectral figure behind him. The room was empty.
“Did you call?” Amy popped her head around the door.
“What? Er… no… no…”
“I thought I heard you?”
He shook his head quickly, several times.
Choke the conniving whore…
“Are you feeling unwell again?” She took a tentative step back into the room.
“No… just… tired…”
She’s only after your fucking money, y’know that, don’t you Guy?
“Right,” Amy painted a smile over her frown and blew him a kiss.
Why else do you think she plays with your maggoty little cock?
He caught the kiss and held it in his fist before raising it to his lips.
Amy giggled, “I want more of those later.”
Rooted to the spot he listened to her feet thudding on the floorboards down the hall before the front door slammed after her. Hand still pressed against his lips he screwed his eyes shut and willed himself to stop shaking.
It was all in his head. Nothing more. It was just his conscience. Ghosts were not real.
Lorna was dead, Lorna was in her grave, Lorna was gone.
After a minute or two he peeled his eyes open a fraction to check.
He was alone.
He hurried over to an armchair and fell into it.
The house was silent and so was his mind.
He could understand, after a fashion, why he was conjuring Lorna’s shade, why he saw her, why she accused him, why he heard noises, especially at night and especially from her bedroom, where all manner of strange sounds emanated from behind the door he now kept permanently locked. But this? This was something new. Amy had done nothing wrong, she had done nothing but serve Lorna faithfully, so why had his imaginary ghost started urging him to kill her?
He tried to empty his mind, but that was easier said than done. He needed to go back to work. Perhaps that would be the ticket. The tickety ticket.
He giggled. Was he going mad? It seemed the most plausible answer. Perhaps he should go and see Doc Rudi? In all likelihood, if he told the old quack his dead wife had started appearing and urging him to kill young Amy, he’d end up locked in one of the Sheriff’s cells till they figured out what to do with him.
No, definitely not. Work was the answer. He didn’t want to face the world, he was frightened if people didn’t see the guilt in his eyes they’d spot the madness instead. But he had to. Tomorrow he would go to the office. He was confident Miss Dewsnap would scare the bejesus out of any ghost, even Lorna’s. Miss Dewsnap did not stand for any nonsense after all.
He giggled some more.
Until he heard the cackling start again upstairs anyway.
*
Amy was dozing next to him. For a healthy young woman, she seemed to sleep an awful lot. Though, to be fair, she seemed to have plenty of energy at other times
The noises from Lorna’s room had stopped as soon as Amy got back and thankfully the voice in his head urging him to kill her had not reappeared while she packed the food away, made dinner or when they’d eaten together. Later when they’d gone to bed the only voice he’d heard had been Amy’s, whispering how wonderful he was between her gasps and sighs and occasional cries.
It was the one time Lorna, and everything else, was banished completely from his mind.
Now he lay on his back staring at the ceiling. The lamps were still burning and they would stay on. He told Amy it was because he liked to look at her, which was entirely true. She was far easier on the eye than the ghost of his demented wife, which was what would be skulking in the corners of the room if he did turn the lamps off.
Amy stirred next to him, mumbled something unintelligible and threw an arm out over his chest.
She’d said she couldn’t stay the night. Her father would become suspicious if she started sleeping over. He was a man of high morals and low temper from what little he knew of him. He also had an excess of muscle.
Amy was starting to wake, she mumbled something again and caressed his chest with slow languid strokes. He felt himself stiffen and rolled expectantly onto his side.
Time to forget Lorna again for a little while.
Amy opened her eyes and smiled. Honey coloured stands of hair hung across her face and he gently pushed them aside so he could kiss her.
“Kill me…” she whispered.
He jerked away.
“Do it…” she insisted, biting her bottom lip, “…I deserve it. Put your hands around my throat and kill me.”
“Amy!”
“I’m just a conniving whore, no one will miss me,” her eyes were fixed on his and a smile dusted her lips, but her voice, he suddenly realised, had become the deep rasp of a woman who had smoked far too much.
“I can’t…” he pleaded, “…I don’t want to…”
“Do it Guy… you can fuck me while you kill me if you want… just choke the life out of me and make the world better.”
“No!!” He sat up and pulled himself away from her.
“Guy? What’s the matter?”
He couldn’t say anything, his lips were moving, but nothing was coming out.
“It’s alright… if you can’t make love again it’s alright…” she reached out and put her hand on his arm, but he flinched away from her and Amy’s concerned expression melted into hurt and annoyance.
“Well, I guess I should be going,” she snapped, jumping out of bed and grabbing her dress from the floor.
His heart was hammering and he gripped his hands to stop them shaking.
“Amy…”
She shot him a cold look
“Please don’t go…”
> “Want me now, do you?” She pulled her dress over her head and wriggled into it.
“I’m sorry, I must have been half asleep… I thought… I thought…”
“Yes?” She paused, looking up from grabbing a shoe.
He didn’t know what to say. Not the truth, obviously, but nothing else would come.
She snorted and snatched her other shoe.
“I don’t want you to go!”
Her face softened and she flicked back her hair, “It’s late… I should be going. Pa will…worry.”
“I’m sorry. I do want you.”
She came over and pecked him on the top of his head, then picked his spectacles up and slipped them on.
“Sorry, I… I didn’t like being rejected. You looked like… I was something horrible!”
“No, no! I was having a nightmare, that’s all.”
“That’s a relief,” she smiled and straightened up, “best you get some sleep and be fresh for me in the morning.”
He wanted to beg her to stay, but, besides begging being very unbecoming for a man of his standing in the community, he knew she couldn’t.
“I’ll do that.”
Amy hurried to the door, then hesitated and looked over her shoulder, “I love you, Guy. Funny, huh? All the time I worked for Mrs Furnedge I didn’t… think of you like that at all. Then all of a sudden, I did. Like someone opened the curtains and you realise you’re looking at something beautiful,” she blushed, giggled and hurried out before he could say anything in reply.
It was the first time in his life anyone had told him they loved him.
His parents hadn’t, the few women he’d had relations with before he got married hadn’t, Lorna certainly never had.
He felt such a rush of joy and happiness he wanted to cry, but he didn’t. Instead, he screamed as a withered voice rasped in his ears.
You fool! The little bitch is only after my money. Kill her before she gets her fucking hands on it!
The Fortune-Teller
The hours passed torturously slow.
She kept waiting for news of the Scourge, but Hawker’s Drift and its nest of little monkeys continued about their business in blissful ignorance. She didn’t know when Hope’s friends would arrive, it might be a day or it might be a month. Maybe it’d be a year. But she was sure they would.
The promise of endless shiny, glittery gold was such a great motivator for the simple little monkeys after all. However, even she would admit, patience was not one of her virtues and the movement of force was a far less precise business in this wretched place.
The Mayor didn’t give her anything to do, which was his way of punishing her, showing her the real work was off with Thomas Rum and his infernal carney. She wanted to get out to the ranch, but she wasn’t going to press the point. Best not make him suspicious.
So she’d kicked her heels around the Residence with nothing but Symmons’ sour, scowling face to provide relief from the witless concubines who did nothing bar float around looking vacant while waiting for their master to snap his fingers for their services.
They made poor company. Frankly, the flea-bitten nags pulling her wagon had a better line in conversation and at least did something useful. The girls looked at her with their dull flat eyes and, if they could drag what passed for thoughts in their empty heads away from how their hair looked or which dress showed off their tits the best, they tried to work out if she was a threat to them. A new piece of flesh to challenge their established position in the Mayor’s pecking order of affection.
She had the distinct impression Symmons was keeping an eye on her. He’d never liked her. Actually, he’d never liked anyone much. Anyone who came between his tongue and his master’s ass even less so. She suspected his antipathy stretched into hatred. It didn’t matter, he was only marginally higher up the evolutionary tree than the little monkeys anyway. It was just a little joke that he’d been sent into exile with them. One pitiful retainer to bow and scrape at his master’s feet. A cruel little reminder of what they’d once had. Of what they’d once been. The fact none of her slaves or pets had been permitted to come to make her existence marginally less appalling was another rankle to add to all the others.
She found herself in one of the Residence’s reception rooms, decorated in what was probably considered a fabulously opulent style in this world and like a half-blind geriatric peasant’s hovel on a civilised one. She paced from one window to the next to burn off some of the nervous excitement coursing through her flesh.
She was staring out onto Pioneer Square trying not to be annoyed grovelling worshippers weren’t carpeting it when one of his whores floated in. She thought the creature was named Felicity. For reasons far beyond her comprehension the candy-addled skin bag appeared to be the Mayor’s favourite. It was a position no one tended to hold for long, as she knew from her own bitter experience.
“It’s a lovely day,” the girl offered unbidden and Giselle decided once she’d taken care of the Mayor she’d see the concubine’s infernal tongue was cut out so she wouldn’t ever be able to pollute her ears with inane chattering again.
“The sun is shining. I believe it does most days here.”
“Only in the summer. The winters can be veeery cold.”
Perhaps she’d have a knife specially blunted for the task…
The girl came and stood by the window, though she kept a few paces away as she fiddled with her long blonde hair.
“Will you be staying with us long?” If she wasn’t so peanut-brained Giselle might have thought there was a hint of wariness in her voice.
“For a little while.”
“That’s nice. Are you his friend?”
She turned her dark eyes on the girl, “We were lovers, once.”
“Oh… I suppose that was a long time ago?”
“An eternity.”
“That sounds like a long time…”
Felicity kept staring, some attempt at a thought swirling stillborn behind her empty liquid eyes.
“Don’t worry, I’m not interested in him. I won’t usurp your position.”
“Usurp…” she said the word carefully, like it was an exotic delicacy she’d never tasted before. Clearly, she liked it, as she giggled and tossed her long hair.
Giselle sighed.
“Do you still love him?”
“What makes you think, if that isn’t too strong a word, I ever did?”
“But everybody loves him! He’s a dream.”
Would he really mind if I pulled her head off?
Sadly, she suspected he would and she needed to keep him sweet for a little longer.
“Yes, an absolute dream.”
She couldn’t fathom what he saw in these stupid little creatures. Admittedly, like them all, he was in thrall to the cravings of the flesh they had to inhabit in order to survive here, but even so. No doubt he’d say the same about Hope, but at least that brute had some qualities, even if those qualities were anger, greed and violence. Felicity had nothing, she was just a shell of skin and hair and holes configured in a way deemed attractive by the little monkeys.
She concluded you could tell a lot about a man on this world from the women he fucked.
“Ah, I’m so glad you two are getting to know each other!” the Mayor boomed, sauntering into the room, “talking about me, I hope?”
“Oh, you know how we girls are?” She forced a smile and tried not to grind her teeth as he slipped an arm around Felicity’s absurdly small waist.
“We were saying what a dream you are,” Felicity giggled, leaning in and turning her big doe eyes on him.
“You’re a lucky girl.”
“I am!” Felicity squealed.
Giselle wasn’t sure whether it was her squeaky voice, slack vacant face or the way she poured herself over the Mayor that made her want to vomit the most.
“Now run along to my room and drape yourself over something, I’ll be with you shortly.
”Lucky, lucky, lucky…” Fel
icity slapped her palms together, her voice somewhere between a purr and a slur. Her hand trailed across his chest before she floated off towards the door.
“What the fuck do you get out of that?” she demanded, not waiting till Felicity was out of the room, though the girl’s only response was another giggle.
“I would have thought it was rather obvious,” the Mayor replied, glancing over his shoulder to watch Felicity’s ass jiggle out of sight.
“Trust me, it isn’t.”
“Jealousy is so unbecoming of you.”
“Jealousy!” she snorted, turning her face to the window to hide her anger.
The Mayor offered a shrug, “We all need an amusement or two.”
“There are better things to do than amusing our flesh.”
“Really? Such as?”
She bit her tongue, she was supposed to be here to adore him, she reminded herself.
“I was everything to you, once…” the words burned her lips, but their sorrowful tone sounded convincing enough.
“You were something to me once… and you still are.”
She felt her eyes pulled back towards him, “What am I to you now?”
The Mayor smiled, “A challenge.”
“I just… want things to be as they were.”
The smile faded, “Things can never be what they were.”
“But when we escape from here?”
“We will be fugitives, we will be weak. Our work will only have begun once we break our bonds.”
She stared at him. She couldn’t pluck thoughts from his mind the way she could from the little monkeys, but the words sounded hollow, just a mantra to appease the faithful.
“And how long will it be before we can return? Truly?”
“A long time,” the Mayor conceded, “a very long time, as you know the resources here are limited. There is a lot that needs to be done.”
“And you still think you can do them?”
“Of course. I will break our bonds, I will breed enough conduits to draw the required power from the Greater, I will build a city that will stand for a million years, I will save humanity. I will do it all.”
“I can’t help but think this will all end in tears.”
“Of course it will, one way or another…” a faint smile teased his lips and he looked down on his squalid little town squatting in the dust, “…a god has many duties Giselle, one of which is to cry for the world that he created.”