The tape tore away in Arthur’s fingers and the can popped open. A coil of 35mm negative came loose, like guts spilling from a wound. Arthur tried to grasp it, but the edges scored his palms.
He saw the reverse image of her naked in the shower — a thin black body bleeding white — repeated over and over.
He smiled and she saw Hitch’s slobbering leer imposed briefly over the fat boy’s face.
M-m-m-murder!
She grabbed the film and looped it around and around his fat neck.
Arthur yelped.
She wound it tighter. The edges bit into his soft throat. There was blood, which made the film slick, tough to hold.
Jayne didn’t say anything. She just tried to kill a man. Any Hitch with a cock would have done.
The murder weapon was a murder. A negative murder.
“Good eeeev-ning, Jay-y-ne … do you swallow? Do you, do you?”
Shootable? Poisonable? Throttlable? Bludgeonable?
Dump-da-dumpity-dump-da-dump…
Stabbable? Slashable? Beheadable? Deadable?
She made a noise in the back of her throat. More a croak than a screech.
Scree! Scree! Scree!
His fat hands flapped against the sleeves of her bathrobe. His sausage fingers couldn’t get a grip on the flannel.
Dump-da-dumpity-dump-da-dump…
It was like wrestling a marionette, strangling it with its own strings.
Doo-doo-doo … Doo-doo-doo…
The door opened again and Birdie came in — wig gone, showing a mummy-like scalp, scaled with the last wisps of white hair — an umbrella raised like a dagger.
“Get your hands off my boy,” she screamed. “My precious, precious boy …”
“Mummy,” Arthur gargled, tears flowing freely, “mummy! She’s hurting me.”
The umbrella blows were feeble, hurt less than a prop knife, but the words — the panic, the love, the desperation! — cut through Jayne’s hot fury, dashed cold water over her homicidal impulse.
She let go of the film. She let go of her rage.
The old woman hugged her son and stroked his wounds. The fat young man shoved his face against his mother’s shrunken breast. They held each other, locked together in an embrace tighter than death. They rocked together, crone and baby, crying away the pain, all the pain …
“I didn’t mean any harm,” Jayne said.
… she wouldn’t kill, after all … she wouldn’t hurt a fly.
This was it, she realized, looking at mother and son, monsters both, bound by a ferocious love that seemed so much like murderous hate it was hard to recognize until the last moment.
This was it. The only ending they had.
THE DOG’S PAW
Derek Künsken
Francis Perry shifted in the chair in front of Mr. Lewis’s antique desk. Lewis scanned the proposal, motionless pen poised between tan fingers. Lewis’s office was almost as big as the ambassador’s. The equatorial sun burned slanting lines through the curtains, bleaching the hardwood floor. Rows of diplomatic commissions from Lewis’s postings hung on one walclass="underline" Harare, Sanaa, Dongola, Lagos, Dhaka, Freetown, Kinshasa, and now Sayhad. The Democratic Republic of Hadhramaut was Perry’s first posting.
Another wall displayed framed magazine articles about development projects Lewis had led. It didn’t include articles about Lewis himself. The absent six-page National Geographic feature on Lewis’s career had inspired Perry to join the Development Service and to seek out the most difficult posting on the planet to learn directly from him.
On the last wall was a black-and-white photograph of a Bedouin man sitting in the gravel beside a road, looking up at the camera in surprise. One foot emerging from his robes wore a black dress shoe. The other leg ended in a goat’s foot. His expression was haunted. In the background, farther down the road, a woman in a niqab looked back.
Lewis grimaced. Perry shifted.
“Perry, honour killings are down 7 percent and prosecutions are up 4. We’ve got to think bigger. I would have expected a young development officer to be ready to handle this.” Lewis set down his pen. “This afternoon, I’ll bring you along again to show you what a strategic intervention looks like.”
“Thank you, Mr. Lewis.”
“Not everyone can handle the suffering we see in the Service, Perry. In the beginning, I didn’t know if I could. You have a lot of potential, Perry.”
Lewis handed him the stillborn proposal.
An armoured Bronco four-by-four took Lewis and Perry from the capital at Sayhad to Parim, a farming town. The driver rattled them over corrugated roads. Lewis reviewed the newspaper like he was still in his office waiting for tea. Perry gripped the worn door handle, scanning the cracked countryside through the fishbowl of the bulletproof glass. Hard yellow grass defied the sun. Low cinderblock houses punctuated the road. Everything was so exotic. It was exciting to be in the middle of nowhere, riding to the rescue like knights. Perry had a digital camera in his pocket, but didn’t want Lewis or the driver to see him taking pictures.
Lewis laid the newspaper between them. Perry wondered what might go through the mind of a genius like Lewis. Perry had read the newspaper three times. Had he seen what Lewis had seen?
The front page of the Hadhramaut People’s Voice chronicled Akram Abdullah, a farmer and father to fifteen-year-old Amirra. About a month ago, Abdullah had woken to find his right arm, from the elbow down, turned into a dog’s paw. He’d hidden the paw. Weeks later, he’d gotten his son to chop it off, so that he could claim he’d lost it in an accident. He’d barely survived the amateur amputation. The next day, he’d woken in the hospital. His left arm, from the elbow down, had become a dog’s paw.
They slowed. Rude houses of cement and dirty stucco squatted over broken pavement, wind-scoured cars and quick, flinching dogs with dangling teats. Perry affected Lewis’ calm. At the end of a dirt laneway, they settled in front of a one-storey cinderblock house with a cement roof. Perry sprung into the hot air. The driver hopped out to open the door for Lewis. He smoothed his shirt, walked to the door, and rapped sharply on the metal. It cracked open, revealing a sad, middle-aged face nestled in a slate-grey hijab. Lewis held up his embassy identification. It dangled between them, rotating. Lewis spoke in Arabic.
“I’ve come from the embassy in Sayhad to speak with your husband, ma’am. May we come in?”
A stricken look darkened her expression. She’d likely spent the last days turning away journalists and had probably never expected her husband’s shame to attract diplomats. Lewis’ stance and expression softened. His posture curved, descending from authority and status to empathy. Brilliant.
“I’m here to help, ma’am,” Lewis said. “This has been a hard time for you. I’m a friend.”
Tears ran suddenly down her rough, rounded cheeks. She wiped them in embarrassment. Her retreat left the doorway free. Lewis stepped in gently. Perry followed. The darkened home smelled of cumin. The door creaked shut, sealing out the day.
Ochre cushions were set on the floor. An unvarnished table bent under a black television. A newscaster spoke silently while Arabic script ran across a bright red line at the bottom of the screen. Closed red curtains soaked the sunlight with a bloody tinge. Mr. Abdullah sat on one of the cushions, staring at the television. His bandaged stump rested on a blanket that covered his knees. His other arm hid beneath the cover. A brass ashtray sat beside him.