‘Why?’
The window makes a strange sound as it finally gives in to the body weight of the clerk and more glass scatters across the room. I grab at the shards and force them into David’s mouth, holding my palm over his gaping mouth. I try to ignore the sound as his teeth shatter.
‘God.’
He’s too strong. I focus on controlling my voice, my breath. My arms become my entire being, my heart the centre of my competing will, and I am realized solely in their struggle. I am going to fail. I am going to fail. I am not even aware I have closed my eyes until Casey screams.
She screams again. A submerged tone which sounds like a single angry word. My eyes snap open, and I quickly shield my face as she swings the axe. She screams as the blade bounces off David’s scalp, screams in surprise as the axe slips from her hand.
The blow is weak, but it is enough. It is enough. David’s grip relaxes and I push him from me. I grab Casey, scooping as she leaps, and carry from her father. I try to keep the strength in my voice.
‘Close your eyes, Casey. Don’t look in the kitchen, don’t look in the living room. Try to stay quiet.’
I walk back to her father. I clench my hands tight. I raise the axe above my head.
The walls shake each time I bring down the axe. I take it as evidence of my further detachment from the world, as one would back away from a stage and so better see the frame shake, see the rattle of the backdrop behind the agonies of the players, and I try to ignore the shake and think of it as only one more illusion that has forever slipped from the earth.
Are they dead? I wrench the axe inside David’s skull from side to side and watch the vacant spirit fade from his face. This fade seems more like death, the sudden limpness of the body a return to normalcy. The rigid thing that puppets them flees with the brain, and the resigned curl of what remains is undeniably human. I stand over what can be reasonably called David and I watch the flex leave his fingers.
Are they dead? They can’t be alive. The clerk pulled himself halfway through the window before catching his abdomen on the broken glass left in the frame and now lies impaled, disemboweled, and writhing about in his muck. He makes a low moan as he reaches as far as he can and waves his hands in slow and useless circles. This motion is not life. There is no humanity in what the body does. It is sad motion, stripped of everything but intent. For a moment I feel a lurch of uncertainty as I hear him speak, but the voice stammers with too much fear and I wonder if it does not sound more like my own.
‘Keep your eyes closed, Casey, don’t open them.’
Is he dead? The axe cuts deeply into the back of the clerk’s neck but still he reels, claws at me when I get close, and I feel pain shoot up my leg when I stagger out of reach. I take a breath and watch him attempt to pull the axe from his neck. He grasps at the handle and pulls, wrenches his head further from his body.
‘This is a dead thing,’ I say aloud. I watch the manic gnawing of his jaw, the roll of his angry blind eyes. This is a dead thing wrongly used. Held up unnaturally. This is not a person anymore. This is not a person. Not until they sag once more with the weight of time.
‘This is a dead thing,’ I say as I reach for the axe.
‘This is a dead thing.’ The axe feels lighter as I lift, the weight easier.
The walls still shake, all the same.
On Quiet Earth is available from Amazon here!
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Keepers of the Flame Page 29