Rounded With a Knife

by Christopher Giangiordano

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

He slashed upwards, and she recoiled, loosing her grip. He gasped for air. She left the bed, and he sensed her making for the door. Now he could hear raised voices from the corridor outside. His vision was still shrouded in black fog as he lunged after her, snatching at her robe and dragging her to the tiles. They writhed there briefly, and he swiftly raised the knife that seemed to sing as it clove the air above the couple sprawled on the floor.

The blade plummeted from the height of its parabola. A tiny eternity later, he felt the slight, but unequivocal waver of speed as the point sank home and his fist sank slightly into warm wet flesh and... hair. Oh, my god, I’ve killed her in the crotch. Am I some kind of sick bastard?

The door burst open. The light from the hallway flooded the room like a paparazzo’s lightbulb, catching them in flagrante. He blinked bashfully up at the crowd of men in the doorway. Looked down and saw the little dog.

The blade was buried to the hilt in its furry flank. She was alive beneath the elderly hound, gazing tranquilly up at the ceiling, her hands wrapped around the torso of the animal she had proffered up for sacrifice.

I had nothing against that dog. In fact he’d forgotten that there’d even been one in the apartment with them. It must have been asleep against her side all this time, fast asleep in the blissful heat suffusing its old limbs. Suddenly shaken awake in a blizzard of silk and limbs, skittering to the floor and scrabbling along the smooth tiles to its mistress’s side once more. Then offered up to take the killing blow.

There was a brief jostling among the dumb men in the doorway and from their midst appeared the maid, one leg bloody, hefting a red fire-extinguisher nearly as long as her torso.

“Where’s the fire,” he asked dreamily as the maid stood over him, panting, and she raised the canister behind one ear and struck him dead with a single blow to his temple.

* * *

She opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling fan above the bed for a while. It placidly stirred the heat around the room. The dog by her side moved too, sighing as it dreamed. She pushed the sheets down with her feet. The annihilating heat of this time of day! The air around your naked body blood-temperature, the feeling of your limbs and soul spreading and merging into your surroundings.

The trance you entered; the reveries that followed.. that man from her dreams. She still felt she saw some ghostly trace of him, so vivid had been her imagining. Stumping around the flat, looking for violence. She lazily followed his imagined form with her eyes, crossing to the bureau to find the knife. That got out of hand. What with the maid and the fighting and the killing of —

She remembered what her dreamself had done and reached a hand down to tousle the soft, wiry hair of her pet. The old dog raised his head shakily and opened his eyes for a moment, staring at nothing before subsiding into sleep. I didn’t want for him to do that, but it was me or the dog. An almost overwhelming pity made her heart hammer in her chest and she got up from the bed. She didn’t know if she felt sorrier for the dog or for herself.

But I made my choice. She looked at the large, old framed photograph over the bed. Are some of these my ancestors? she wondered, these men and women in gowns and ponchos sitting outside this cantina for the camera. How often had she thought this, standing here at the foot of the bed, at the same time of the day after her afternoon rest? Months maybe, now. But months bled into years if you weren’t careful. Her long, unruly black hair tickled the base of her spine as she walked to the window.

Her routine here was fixed; her solitude was complete. Sheets and water and breakfast were left outside her door. Her interactions were nil, and the unforgiving heat killed thought and action. Her grand idea, that time ago, in that other place, had been to remove herself from herself and see what was left. Though where she had lived before and what her daily movements looked like then...

She shook her head and opened a bottle of water. She vaguely remembered how she had felt in those days: like something broadly painted, a daubing by a well-meaning kid or a naive artist sketching in the barest outlines of an existence. A gesture at something not completed. She could hardly remember her friends or her family. The only people she saw now were those in the photograph above the bed.

And who was that man in my apartment meant to be, my saviour or my executioner? Funny how thoroughly she had tried to eradicate herself but, still, these thoughts and desires popped into existence like virtual particles in the cosmic blank.

She pictured him again, walking around the room, muttering to himself, shoulders slumped forward. A head full of half-thoughts and moderately competent prose that would never coalesce into art.

That is not the sort of person I would want to nurture, if that was what even what her unconscious had intended. Somehow her idea had soured, in her sleep. He’d been an aggrieved sociopath, after all, and his writing most probably sucked. The world was full of those types, and one of them had invaded her revery. They all needed saving, her dream seemed to be saying, but they wouldn’t ever thank you for it.

She opened the shutters to survey the gloomy garden. A bougainvillea rustled its petals in the soft breeze and insinuated its scent into the room. The dog, still half-asleep, raised its snout to drink in the aroma.

* * *

The little dog lowered its head, making quickly for the cantina door. The half-eaten chop he’d snaffled from the table behind him was making him salivate. He could feel drool oozing from his jaw. He heard the erstwhile chop-owner yelling and he smartly evaded the lazy kick of an amused waiter. The other patrons impassively watched him leave and turned back to the tv above the bar or their newspapers. He was no-one’s animal and everyone had to eat, didn’t they? That was the bottom line.

Around the corner, in the narrow alley between the cantina and a warehouse the dog bolted the chop down, his old jaws still more than strong enough to crush the bone and gristle. He licked the bone for a long time, worrying every last atom of flavour from it.

The dog was alone in the alley except for the corpse, which sat slumped against the outside wall of the bar. No one had spotted her yet from the street. Even these few steps from the hustle of the main drag were as black as night in the shade. She must have tried to get up at least once; her heavy coat was shucked off and lay at her feet. Her fingers circled the hilt of the knife in her belly. There was little blood; perhaps that had been spilt elsewhere.

The dog approached warily, sniffing at the wound, taking a few little licks of blood from the hilt of the knife. Then he lay on the coat and felt its satin lining against his haunches. He basked for a while in her cold gaze.

Some time later, when a sidelight from the cantina had come on and the the alleyway was bathed in a fizzing orange glow, the little dog heard a soft voice behind him. A policeman. To preserve the crime scene, he needed to be gentle with the animal, though he really wanted to kick this goulish creature. The officer knelt and gently touched the dog’s side.

“Vamos,” he said, “Come on, vamos. Move, dog.” He patted and nudged the dog’s flank. The confluence of such sensations! The dog squirmed with pleasure: the silken lining beneath him; the loving touch of the man’s hand; above all the serene stare of the dead woman upon him. He closed his eyes and imagined...

And though his dream was broad and undetailed compared to a human’s, it was vivid. His mistress appeared to him, naked and glowing with the afternoon’s sweat, the tang of it rich in his quivering nostrils. Her dark, long hair swaying as she sat up in bed, rubbing her feet. His belly was full, his body warm and swaddled in silk sheets. She was alone but would not be lonely with him there, and she would be a Good and Faithful Mistress.

Soon the insistent pressure of the officer’s touch bade him move, and he trotted away down the alleyway. The officer shook his head and knelt at the body. He coolly regarded the savage wound in the poor woman’s belly and wondered what the murder weapon had been.

The main street was brightly lit, crowded with hustling pedestrians and full of the sound of laughter, car horns and the buzz of motorbikes. Nobody noticed the small dog, moving slyly along the gutter, gently gripping the hilt of the knife in its mouth. Its mind was blank, hijacked by a stronger, more primitive force.

The knife winked in the street lights, a strange snaggletooth in the dog’s maw. It urged the animal on, this decrepit carrier of its bloody spirit. The dog turned smartly and unthinkingly at the crest of the rise, onto a darkened side street that would lead eventually to a dustier, lonelier dirt track with few houses.

Somewhere beyond the next hill, perhaps, would be another conurbation, where more desperate men lived, and perhaps even now someone was backed into a corner of a boarding house or bar, crouching in anger or fear and thinking, What I really need now is a...

Proceed to Challenge 1122...