Death in Her Hands

by Ottessa Moshfegh

  I turned the kitchen light off again and looked out at the pine woods, into the dark. Something was out there. Somebody was watching me. I could feel it. I was sure. “Don’t be silly, Vesta. You’re imagining things,” I tried to tell myself, but this was Walter’s voice in my head.

  I shook my head, blurring my vision, to get the voice out of my head, and to see what, if anything, might appear to me if I looked at things a different way. I couldn’t see anything, but the feeling of being watched persisted. I stared out, and spoke to Walter in my head. “I was half your age when we met, Walter. How could you think that was appropriate?”

  “You were very willing, Vesta. I didn’t pressure you at all.”

  “Did you think I didn’t know about your dirty magazines?”

  “Oh, please, Vesta. Men are men. We are wild animals. We have primal desires. If you weren’t so frigid yourself, you’d have them, too. It’s nothing to be ashamed about.”

  “I’m only ashamed that I ever let you touch me.”

  “I’m sorry, Vesta, that you aren’t as beautiful as you like, but there is nothing to be ashamed of. You had a very attractive figure. And your mind, as well. You could have been a teacher if you’d wanted. Let me see your face,” Walter demanded, a reflection in the dark window as his hand came to cup my chin, smelling of cigar smoke and aftershave. “Still lovely, Vesta. But let me see your eyes. You say you have no shame? Let me see that. Show me how big and brave you are.”

  I stared hard into the darkness. What would it take to prove that I was fearless, that I was strong, just as capable and smart and deserving as anybody? I felt the hair rise on my neck, as though someone were creeping up behind me, a ghost, an open hand, fingers outstretched to reach around my throat, grip, and strangle. Charlie growled, and I turned suddenly, gasping at the sight of him on four legs, head lowered, lips quivering, fangs showing, his eyes in the light glowing yellow like a sorcerer’s skull, an evil lantern.

  “Charlie?” I said, my voice smaller than ever. He heaved, staring up at me like a beast facing some interloper in his secret den, his archnemesis. I was some ignorant little creep whose very existence triggered furious violence. Drool dripped from his fangs, darkening the rug in tiny circles as his lip sputtered, his head trembling with rage. “Charlie, what is it?” He approached, his back muscles strained and tense, moving so slowly, the slow creep of a wolf hunting a stupid animal. I understood that there’d been nobody in the woods, no outside threat at all. The thing that had been watching me all along was Charlie.

  I can’t say what went through my mind in the moment he leapt up, his mouth stretching toward my neck, and my hand moved crosswise and down, away from me, a high-pitched squeak coming from my lips or Charlie’s, but afterward, he scuttled backward, yelping loudly, and disappeared, leaving me in the kitchen standing covered in blood and Magda’s knife gripped in my fist. It was the life in me that rose up, the desire to survive that made me do it, a gut reaction to kill the thing that would kill me. And in that, I was proud of my swift instincts. I saved my own life that night. Nobody else could have done it. I was alone, and so I was a hero. But now my poor Charlie had been stabbed. In my brilliant maneuver, I had slashed him not quite at the throat but somewhere along the chest bone. Perhaps my instincts had aimed the blade at his heart. The blood on my hands smelled bitter, like dirt. I tasted it, unthinkingly, after dropping the knife in the sink. Then I went to Charlie. It wasn’t hard to find him, since he was crying the way he’d cried as a baby. Hysterical but rhythmical, as though the sound he made was work being done inside him. As I approached him under the table again, blood soaking the shreds of his paper nest, he startled and looked up, glared, shook his head, growled, and showed me his fangs like before. There would be no touching him, I realized. He would bleed to death under that table before he allowed me to come near. And even if I could reach him, hold him in my arms, examine the wounds I’d made—in self-defense, I knew this—what could I do for him? I wasn’t a doctor. I had no way to stitch him up. I couldn’t save him. I didn’t even have a phone to call for help, or a car to take us to an animal hospital. I didn’t even know where one was. I could walk back to Henry’s store, I considered, call the police there, have them come and take him. But wouldn’t they just “put him down”? No, I would have to make do alone. And as I bent to watch Charlie shake and rattle under the table, he seemed to breathe more slowly, to quiet himself, and then he closed his eyes. He curled up, shielding his chest from me. I could see his body rise and fall with each breath. The blood was creeping out from under him.

  I cried solemnly, respectfully. “Good-bye, my sweet boy,” I said. I felt no guilt or anger. It wasn’t like when Walter left, holding my breath, desperate for time to stop, waiting for the lights to come on so I could see the way out. Charlie’s death wasn’t like that at all. It was soft. It was peaceful. “You were such a good dog,” I told him, and finally reached out my hand to caress his silky head. Sometimes this happens to animals, I told myself. They turn mad on you.

  * * *

  • • •

  I head into the pine woods in the darkness suit, concealing me between the darkening trees. Just try to find me, God, I whisper. In my hands, I clutch a note I have written. Her name was Vesta. That was what I meant to write all along—my story, my last lines. My name was Vesta. I lived and died. Nobody will ever know me, just the way I’ve always liked it. As God approaches, I hold the note out. “Will you take this ticket and deliver me from evil?” I ask this with my teeth bared, a sarcastic grin. God takes the note from my hands and crumples it like it’s nothing, like a receipt for a soda from a highway rest stop. “Don’t be silly, Vesta,” God says. “My little dove.”

  I run as fast as I can now. I feel the wind on my face. God follows but I get lost in the darkness. Maybe I can stay in these woods forever, I think. Already I can feel the poison air creeping in, clamping my throat shut, or perhaps this is the strength of my emotion. I can’t breathe, but I run. Yes, yes, I will die out here. I’ll do it my way. I’ll have my say in how I return to the earth. The wind skittering between the thick boughs sways like a woman in a many-layered gown, moonlight glittering on her sequined lapels. She dances gently, but resolutely, in each passing breeze. When I feel myself slowing, I lie down in a soft bed of sodden leaves and watch the dance. The pines sway. My spirit lifts.

  It is peaceful here, moving through the mindspace. Now I am a part of the darkness. I blend in perfectly.

  About the Author

  Ottessa Moshfegh is the author of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, a New York Times bestseller; Homesick for Another World, a New York Times Book Review notable book of the year; Eileen, which was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction; and McGlue, which won the Fence Modern Prize in Prose and the Believer Book Award. Her stories have earned her a Pushcart Prize, an O. Henry Award, the Plimpton Prize, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

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