Devotional

by Jonathan Wood

Another new writer debuts today here at the cabal. Mr. Jonathan Wood, farragonist and exile of Albion, presents a story that’s finely balanced on the edge of darkness…

The girl, all grief and acne, slit her palm with the piece of flint. Blood like petals fell onto the grave stone of her love. She swore never to speak again. A year later, her therapists richer but bewildered, her mother asked, what do think you’re achieving? The girl was struck by the futility of her actions. She once more spoke, requesting books on occultism, spirituality. Her overjoyed mother complied unquestioning. The girl knew what she wanted to achieve. Him. Him back.

The girl turned woman pressed the flint to flesh once more. This time it was a lamb beneath her blade. It’s was warm on her cold, aching limbs. Her fingers hurt from grubbing herbs. She was older, but none the wiser. Her love was still gone.

From time to time she took lovers. One would not leave, even when she turned him from her bed. She did not understand his devotion. She had nothing to give him. Yet he was helpful, useful, he propped up her hope when it sagged with her skin, recessed into her wrinkles.

As years passed she remembered her mother, long gone back to the earth. She remembered waiting until her mother was asleep, until the pebbles struck her windows. She remembered the taste of her love’s lips… And had his lips tasted of strawberries? No. That was another, some gypsy boy she’d once had.

Finally she found the final spell fragment she needed. She and her disciple went to the hills, to the high sacred places. But her bones were old and she struggled. Her apprentice too now knew the touch of the years, but he used spells he’d learned, and his strength flowed into her. They came to the reflecting pool at the hilltop and he lay down, closed his eyes, said he would rest a while.

She stripped, stood and saw her body’s reflection in the moonlight. Was that hers, truly? It was some old worn-up thing. And what would some teenage boy do with a body like that? What boy would not flinch back? She looked at her disciple at her feet, his breath fled from his body, the last of his strength ebbed away, and she cast her spell.

When he sat up, she leant him her strength, and he stood. Slowly they made their way back down the hill, leaning upon each other for support.

Things Best Left Alone

by Angela Slatter

I made her swallow it, just before she died. Her blue eyes washed pale with fear.

‘So you’ll come back,’ I said.

She was frail, so light she made no dent on the mattress. Her hair was bleached by the surf, from the days when she would ride the swell, thinking of ways to leave me. It fell out in clumps on her pillow when she tried to move, to relieve the ache wading through her bones.

When finally her eyes rolled back, I picked her up. She was bird-light.

Four years together. We were perfect. She’d loved me for so long without my knowing; when she declared, I was amazed, grateful, bewildered, ecstatic. Eventually I believed in only us. I had not truly seen her before. Everything became peripheral to my obsession: her taste, her touch, her voice, she became breath to me.

Then she decided to leave. Said I smothered her, that she no longer recognised the woman she had loved. That, in being so immersed in her, I had become less than I had been. She thought I didn’t hear the furtive phone calls, didn’t see the flirty emails.

She stopped noticing me. I tried to speak of the clever things I once knew and embraced, but I’d forgotten them; or they had forgotten me and were not forgiving. And I had cast aside my friends long ago.

I carved it from wood, hollowed out the small oval, stuffed in clippings of my hair, dripped in menstrual blood, sealed it up with bees wax and whispered over it. I cooked all her favourite dishes. When she started to get sick, she needed me again.

Six months ago I laid her in the ground. I’ve bided my time, letting the need build until tonight. I whispered her name, spoke the words to the earth so they’d seep into her bed of dirt.

It’s a moonless night. I hear the door creak, familiar and sad. The bed moves. I smell decay and things best left alone. The bitter taste in my throat may be regret, may be fear. I thought the arsenic would have preserved her better. She slithers across the sheets and settles her rotting flesh against mine, her fetid mouth pressed to my ear and whispers, ‘I’m home, my love. I came when you called and I’ll never leave you.’