Let Me Die a Woman

by Alan Kelly

  ‘Lila and this is my daughter Jessica. Nice to meet you.’

  Jessica had never seen her mother come over all girlish. It was sickening.

  ‘He knows my name Mother,’ Jessica told her.

  They sat watching the old farmers in battered tractors hauling hay bails back to the harvested fields. Children played with water guns, people ate candy floss and hotdogs and bought cut-price clothes from market stalls. Her mother was like the Spanish Inquisition with Benjamin, firing question after question at him. If Jessica hadn’t been so pleasantly numb from the vodka she’d have felt embarrassed. She turned to Benjamin and asked if there was accommodation anywhere in Roundwood.

  ‘Ah yeah, The Coach House does it, though it could be fully booked with the festival,’ he said.

  ‘Yes but there is an Tocher House on the main street too,’ Lila interrupted.

  Jessica caught something in the corner of her eye but when she turned around all she saw was a pebble dashed wall. She thought she caught a glimpse of someone, or something peering around a corner at her. It was only brief and could have been her imagination but she swore to herself that she saw a pair of cold, button eyes being fixed on her.

  ‘Did you see something just now,’ asked Jessica, pointing at the wall.

  Her mother and Benjamin were engrossed in a discussion on matters horticultural and both stopped to stare at her with almost identical expressions of bemusement.

  ‘No, we didn’t’ Benjamin shrugged, and her mother gave her another one of those patronising stares that seemed to say ‘haven’t you drank enough for one day young lady?’

  ‘Fine, I’m gonna go walk the vodka off, see you later’.

  Benjamin offered to join her but Jessica waved him away, making some excuse about wanting space.

  From the main street she could see the Vartry Lakes glisten in the heat. The village was extremely remote, surrounded by hills and forests. There was a camping site nearby called Glenmalure, a place Jessica had gone when she was younger, with her father. She walked out of the village. Everywhere her eyes wandered there was a Godforsaken scarecrow. She stopped in front of one. It wore a bright orange hat and an oily crombie. Its mouth was stitched into a smile on a threadbare sack. The very idea of scarecrows gave her the jitters; being stuck in a field all day, completely alone, never having anybody to talk to, only vicious taunting birds for company.

  Jessica leaned over and planted a light kiss on the scarecrows cheek. When she did, she hurled. The stench emanating from it was that of rotting meat; a corpse left too long in the sun. She doubled over on the path and threw her guts up. Leaning against the wall with one arm, she dry heaved until there was nothing left inside her. When she eventually got herself together she looked up to see the spires of The Church of Lawrence of Toole; a jagged black line cutting into the orange sun.

  She bought some water and sipped it as she made her way back to the pub. Why would anyone put rotting meat inside a scarecrow anyway? Unless it was to do with the cow slaughter. Even though she was drunk and fucked off at everything, this was something she couldn’t quite get a grip on. She could throttle her mother for bringing her all the way out here. She’d stick it out for the time being though. It wouldn’t be much longer until she was on a plane and away from her mother and all this.

  Jessica turned a corner to see Red and her cronies waiting for her. Red had a swollen nose and two black eyes. Jessica folded her arms and smirked. When would people learn she was nobody’s victim, least of all a fat ugly ginger minger like Red? If Jessica had to, she was more than prepared to mash Red’s face down the nearest drain and had no qualms about cracking her cronies’ ankles.

  ‘I’ve no time for this shit,’ Jessica said slowly, barely veiling the menace in her voice.

  ‘We’re gonna kick the shit out of ya,’ shouted Red, brandishing a rolling pin. Her weasels laughed behind her.

  Jessica made an attempt to pass but her way was blocked. Red lifted her arm in the air and was about to bring the rolling pin down on Jessica’s head when a scream cut through the air. Red and Jessica turned to see that a scarecrow had hold of one of the cronies and was very slowly peeling back her scalp. The girl was making similar noises to a small animal being slowly eaten by a cat.

  Red dropped her rolling pin and looked at her friend. Jessica picked it up and, when Red got distracted by another one of her crony’s pathetic screams, Jessica took a swing and smashed the rolling pin into her kneecap. Red screamed in agony and Jessica could soon see hot tears and bloody snot running down her face.

  Jessica moved carefully past the scarecrow, which had now gripped the girls tongue and was in the process of tearing it from her head. Jessica ran along the main street. Everywhere scarecrows were animated and there was no prejudice in the choice of people they attacked. A husband and wife were being slowly flayed alive by two miniature scarecrows while others were gouging out eyeballs and stringing up children, only to disembowel them with scythes. It wasn’t long before a few of them locked eyes on Jessica.

  Jessica looked around for some sort of weapon and, seeing a pickaxe, grabbed hold of it. A scarecrow was moving at her with surprising speed. She swung the pick, decapitating the creature. A shower of maggots and slimy meat rained down on her. She ran back to the pub in search of her mother and Benjamin and went inside, grateful for the coolness from the heat. Everyone seemed so still, until it dawned on her that everyone was dead or, at the very least, getting there. She saw an entire family with their mouths stitched shut, buttons where their eyes should be and vicious fatal wounds from their groins to their gullets. Where the hell were her mother and Benjamin? She took the back door into the beer garden and was greeted by even more carnage. Jessica held her hand over her mouth and began to cry.

  ‘Mother,’ she called quietly. ‘It’s Jess, mother.’

  She sat down on a chair that was covered in blood and hugged the pickaxe to her. She could still feel all those cold eyes fixed on her and she held her hand to her chest to prevent herself from being sucked down into a whirlpool of paranoia. She sat for almost an hour among the dead, pretending not to hear the footsteps slowly stealing up on her.

  Jessica waited until the last second, until a hand touched her shoulder, then swung around with a ferocity she didn’t know she was capable of and buried the pickaxe into the scarecrows head. Blood momentarily blinded her, but once she had wiped her vision back into focus she saw it hadn’t been a scarecrow, but Lila. She had killed her own mother. She killed her mother. Lila lay thrashing about at her feet and Jessica wept.

  She heard a crash inside the pub and Benjamin came out, unharmed. He looked at Jessica and then at the body at her feet.

  ‘What has happened?’ he asked, his voice oddly calm with no underscore of the panic that this situation should invariably cause.

  ‘I killed my mother,’ replied Jessica. ‘It was an accident.’

  Benjamin approached her, his arms held out in front of him. Jessica was covered in gore, maggots and her mother’s blood. Benjamin was getting closer; Jessica leaned down quickly and pulled the pickaxe out of her mother’s face.

  ‘Don’t come any closer fucker.’ Said Jessica, holding the pickaxe in front of her.

  Benjamin stopped a few feet short of where Jessica stood.

  ‘Calm down Jess. This is only a game the village plays every year. It’s all a charade. Really. Trust me.’

  Jessica wondered what he meant by charade. Scarecrows were a charade but the slaughter wasn’t.

  ‘Interesting choice of words Benji.’

  She took a few steps back and nearly slipped in her mother’s blood. Benjamin took some careful steps towards her; his movements looked mechanical as if something was controlling him.

  ‘Us, we, the ‘scarecrows’ grow weary of being made to stand all day in fields. Do you know what it’s like to be stuck Jessica?’

  His words struck a chord with her but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of letting him know that
.

  ‘Of course, doesn’t everybody?’ she shouted, swinging the pickaxe at him.

  She missed, but at least it gave her some time. She turned and jumped onto a table that was set right by the wall that encircled the pub. She threw the pickaxe over and managed to crawl over after it. When she landed on the grass pain shot up through her leg and she stumbled onto the ground. Jessica pushed herself up onto all fours. When she smelt the rot she turned quickly and a bag was thrown over her head. The smell was unbearable and she soon lost consciousness.

  Peering over walls, their eyes follow you around corners…

  The pain in her wrists burned and her tongue felt like it had been left out in the sun and had begun to sprout hair. When she opened her eyes, her hands and legs were tied tightly to a wheel. She was in a barn and surrounded by scarecrows. They looked down on her with their button eyes. She struggled but there was no point; she was caught and at their mercy. Every time she moved the ropes burned into her wrists. She tried screaming but it came out as a muffled croak.

  ‘You’re stuck Jessica,’ said a voice from somewhere.

  She recognised it as Benjamin’s. The scarecrows parted and he stood at her feet. He was naked and smiling and his skin had black thread running through it. Beneath it looked like the meat had been stacked haphazardly in there.

  ‘What are you?’ asked Jessica.

  Slowly Benjamin pulled the pieces of chords from his stomach and began to part the flesh. Jessica felt sick rising in her throat. A goat and a lambs head were pushed together where his lungs should be. Jessica screamed when she looked closer and saw that the animals’ mouths and eyes still moved around frantically.

  ‘There is no point screaming Jessica. No point at all. We’ve been using animal parts so far…’ he let his voice trail off, so Jessica could fill in the blanks.

  No, they couldn’t use her? She looked back at him. In the centre of his chest she could make out a small reptilian creature moving through the dead meat. She thought it looked over at her.

  ‘We weren’t strong so we used the animals, but people will be better. We can use the whole of them, to live,’ Benjamin whispered.

  ‘And what about us? What happens to us?’ replied Jessica.

  ‘You’ll still be in there. There is no point in destroying you,’ he said.

  ‘Why did you kill everybody then?’ Jessica screamed at him.

  ‘My scarecrows got carried away. Those people are just meat now, but we have you Jessica,’ he smiled.

  ‘Me?’ mumbled Jessica.

  ‘We want you to join us, travel the world, find others and indoctrinate them,’ said Benjamin.

  Jessica tried to digest what he was telling her. She wanted to scream again, and kick and thrash but that would be pointless.

  ‘I agree,’ gasped Jessica, finally.

  ‘Oh Jessica, first things first,’ Benjamin laughed over his shoulder as he left the barn.

  Four scarecrows stood on either side of the wheel; one of them was holding a large black jar. Carefully it removed the lid and reached inside. Jessica gasped when she saw the thing it lifted out. It looked like a long purple catfish with razor spikes lining its back and a human baby face. Jessica screamed as a scarecrow, which looked like a huge corn dolly, came in dressed as a midwife. It opened and held her knees apart. Then she could feel something crawl up inside. Jessica screamed and screamed until blackness like she’d never known before pulled her under.

  *

  Three years later Jessica sat staring from a third floor coffee shop window on Grafton Street. It hadn’t been so bad, these past few years. She’d left the festival and didn’t ever return home; it was never really home anyway. She had seen Japan, Australia, India, and America and left her mark everywhere she went. She was reading that a clown festival was taking place in Phoenix Park and it was estimated that almost 5000 people were expected to show up in fancy dress. She closed the paper, smiled and stared down at the street below. This was only the beginning.

  ‘It’s harvest time…’

  2

  Kill Fee

  This is a discipline and I am only hiding the fact that I am no celebrity journalist thought Bunny Flask, gritting her teeth and tapping her fingernails on the ostentatious oval shaped marble desk across from the most sexist cunt in the publishing world: Mick Jones. It had started a month ago when he’d bought out Blood Rag magazine and demoted her from Deputy Editor to secretary. The problems began the moment he arrived, innocently enough. First he’d introduced error into her copy and, after that, it was all down-hill. When he hired a mediocre fanzine writer he was screwing to do her job she’d decided that this was about as much as she was prepared to take. She’s asked the day before if he’d hold counsel with her and the motherfucker had hop, skipped and jumped at the chance.

  The two years she’d worked there she’d worked hard, been relentlessly fucking cheery; sub-editing every other article, polishing copy for the amateur writers. She had taken this magazine out of the underground and put it on the top shelf. He’d already found her replacement. Some woman by the name of Alice Fiend who’d only returned to Ireland having travelled the world and was now apparently ‘very big’ in advertising, sales and radio. Alice Fiend had developed a proposal for a new ‘Blood Rag Radio’ show and both men and women were lining up around the block to get a free demo.

  Bunny needed to leave Blood Rag after she realised the editor was mad. A few days ago he had locked her in a room and wouldn’t allow her to come out until she had written one hundred good reasons why she was lucky to have the job. She kicked and screamed but he refused to open the door. While she was at work writing her reasons and cursing the lardy bastard, the publisher rang her boyfriend and told him that his girlfriend had a secret smack habit. Her boyfriend tried to finish their relationship the following day by text message.

  So, Bunny sat there in Jones’s office in her rah-rah skirt, skin tight PVC trousers and Jean Paul Gaultier top, her pitch black hair teased high on her head. It took all of Bunny’s strength to not say something to Fatboy, but she wanted to deal with this with grace; a first for her. His piggy eyes looked her up and down and she wished she’d worn a bra under the semi-transparent top; his face looked like a block of grotesque cheese left baking on a curb in Ballyfermot. Bunny’s eyes strayed to a ballpoint pen and she contemplated for a moment doing a Nikita and driving it into his stubby little hand but stabbing the ugly fucker once wouldn’t be enough for her.

  ‘Well, Ms Flask. Having looked over your one hundred reasons, I’ve decided there is no longer a place for you at Blood Rag,’ Piggy began.

  ‘You asshole. You’re getting rid, just like you destroyed my relationship, ‘cos I wouldn’t suck your squirrel’s dick’ she spat, that ballpoint pen beginning to look more appealing with every passing second.

  He’d locked her in a room against her will. She’d consult a tribunal, but then, there was her drug use. He could use that against her. This fat motherfucker had every bastard in the city in his pockets and she’d never be hired again. She decided the best option was to leave and request a kill fee later.

  Bunny stormed out of the office furious, clacking down Grafton Street in her black cha cha heels. She felt anger flushing through her when she realised that this was one of those moments she would look back on and cry about which, if Piggy fat prick had his way, was going to be the highlight of her life when she looked back from her deathbed in a crappy one-bedroom shithole apartment in Ranleigh. She hadn’t met her yet but she would confront this Alice Fiend and tell her exactly what she was getting herself into. Yes, she decided, she’d do exactly that. That was, once she’d had a stiff drink to calm herself down. She turned right and went into Bruxxels.

  At the bar she ordered a shot of scotch without the rocks. She threw it back and ordered another. The bartender raised a bushy eyebrow and stared at her nipples.

  ‘Anytime now would be a bonus cock,’ said Bunny.

  Mick Jones had fucked her o
ver gradually; taken away all the power she had at Blood Rag so that she had ended up photocopying for the administrative staff. Part of the ‘breaking down process’ was to ask her into his office, where he would throw all her features on the floor, saying how shit they were (features by Eli Roth, Debbie Rochon and Kiffany Boston-Gifford, amongst others).

  Other days the fat daughter-fucker would routinely walk around an editorial meeting menacingly. The great big sweaty ball of sour horse-shit would waddle around the table telling each person individually they were pieces of shit and expendable, obviously seeking to cut their wages. These were damn good workers, earning 20,000 a year less than Fatboy spent annually having the crap sucked out of his ass or on Feng Shui. The final straw for Bunny was when he took her Bauhaus CDs out of the player and chucked them out the window.

  Dwelling on it all was driving her around the bend. Oh yes, she’d get him and his new bitch Alice Fiend too. Bunny wanted that asshole dead. She wondered if that was wrong then smiled, ordered another scotch without the rocks and realised that, after all, there is nothing interesting about a healthy mind.

  3

  I’d Never Turn Down a Friend;

  Hey I’d Never Turn Down a Stranger

  Mick Jones watched the flame haired woman he’d come to know as Alice Fiend look out over the dusty, dirty city with a contempt that burned so furiously it nearly gave him the shits. She hated the ‘little creatures’ and he knew exactly why. She had originally approached him on the pretext that there weren’t enough women writing for Blood Rag. He assigned her a cover story on the independent film producer and exploitation guru Doris Wishman and she came back to him with a pretty impressive article, which he published verbatim. She’d come to him after that with the proposal to launch Blood Rag Radio. It would be advertised on the back pages of the magazine and she said it would ‘infiltrate the heads of the little creatures’ which he liked.