Anthology 6 - The Time of the Dark Moon

Dan came in from outside blowing hard into his hands, he glanced guiltily up into Kate's face.  

 

"You haven't done it have you?" she asked, already knowing the answer, sensing an advantage.
"I couldn't." he was unused to such horror.
"Oh come now," she mocked "the deeds half done half undone and you with it, is your mettle melted by such a little heat?"  

 

She studied him smiling playfully, like a cat. The sense of power strengthened her so she pushed him shoving him back out into the garden, surprised at her own strength and resolve. When they returned Dan had still not recovered.

 

 "So stiff and heavy..." he paused taking gulps of air.
"What have we done?" he looked into Kate's eyes. She looked back without a flicker. His mind raced back, video-like, on rewind, his head full of horrible pictures which he tried to push away. The sickening sounds of crunching bone and searing flesh, the way the fingers had clawed so desperately, all swam in and out of his mind. He shuddered involuntarily, supporting himself, arms thrust out on the large dining room table.  

 

"It's what you wanted" Kate said "It was how we planned it, just how did you imagine it would be?"
"Easier" he mumbled, his mind still struggling with the pictures. "Easier... cleaner…"  

 

Kate laughed horribly, Dan looked up quickly and for the first time saw the panic in her eyes.  

 

"It was easy and clean, like the opening and closing of a door, give yourself a shake Dan." Angry contempt crept into the edge of her voice, she pulled back momentarily but then plunged on. "Who is this lame sick child?" she demanded walking round to look him in the face. Where is your manhood? Where is that masculine power? Hmm?"  

 

Her voice took on a mocking tone as she pushed her hand gently into the long hair at the back of his head. She knew it aroused him. Her other hand ran quickly and lightly across his buttocks running between his legs. She felt him respond.  

 

"Has your manhood completely deserted you?" She breathed in his ear. "You bragged of the deed before tonight, where is that courage now lover? Is the act so very different from the wishing of it?"  

 

"All right all right!" he shouted stung by her words, he found some strength and waved his blood smeared hands in her face "This is his... he faltered. "Who'd have thought there'd be so much blood in him."  

 

Dan's head sank to his chest he was breathing deeply as if in a sleep. Kate watched archly. He was struggling to find something he had lost and when at last he looked up his smile had returned.  

 

"There's my boy" She pulled him to her, pressing her breasts into his chest kissing him hungrily as if she'd suck the soul out of him, he kissed back. She pulled away biting at his neck, his anger welled up and he tried to bite back but she rocked away rubbing herself against him, as she arched back he bit her hard, she felt at her neck, the purple welt quickly rising to the surface. She looked up at him he looked down at her half empowered half enthralled.

 

 "Ouch! she said. The mocking tone still in her voice such big teeth Grandma".

 

 She drew him closer still breathing in his ear.
"Come on hard man I know your hard already, let me eat you"

 

Her hands reached down to his crotch quickly releasing the swelling flesh of his erection. He tried to bite her again but he was distracted. His breath quickened as he hardened in spite of himself. She worked the prepuce back, licking the tip, one hand cupping the balls the other moving rhythmically up and down the shaft. He tried to grab her head but the sensation was too great, she swallowed him sucking and pulling, he began to thrust but she twisted away pulling more quickly as he began to quiver, shuddering and jolting to a climax, shooting in two or three quick spurts into her already waiting hands. She caught it all and as he finished exultantly she smeared him with it across his face and down his shirt.  

 

"You bitch" he spluttered swinging at her, but she knew it was coming and sat back on the floor her head flopping girlishly to the side, she was laughing, scared of him and of herself.
"Didn't you enjoy that darling ?"  

 

He stared down at her not knowing what to do or say, he wanted to mash her face in the heel of his hand, but the enervation of his release calmed him.

 

 "Yes I did" He heard himself say his old composure returning, he half smiled one corner of his mouth lifting. "I'll get cleaned up" he said walking to the bathroom. Kate watched him go still sitting on the floor. Her mind swam back and forth across the recent past, struggling to understand, to find her old sense of balance, she had changed she was certain of that, but it was her only certainty. She had since meeting Daniel experienced a passion she could not contain. As she filtered through the memories her life had become like that of a woman she didn't know save that she knew it was her; like a terrible twin who'd emerged from a dark past, an uncontrolled and dangerous twin who was reckless and powerful, a power that exhilarated and frightened her. She felt compelled to continue the white knuckle ride that was her love for Daniel.  

 

She was very edgy when he returned, she moved towards him but he pushed her aside and began to walk out of the room, she grabbed his arm.  

 

"Tell me how it will be?" she asked her voice soft and pleading.
"We've done all that"

 

Daniel said his mouth twisting sourly. "What do you want to hear all that again for? I’ve said it too many times"
"I know you have but please?"  Daniel looked straight through her before turning and walking out into the lobby, pulling on his long overcoat and quietly closing the door on her frightened face. He grinned broadly as he walked to the car.  "Daniel" she called to the closing door her voice swallowed by the darkness on the stairs, she looked round and the shadows seemed unfamiliar larger, darker.
"Daniel" she shouted her voice drowned by the sound of the engine, she reached for the door but paused as she heard the gravel crunching and spitting from under the angry wheels. She wanted to run and scream after him but she just stood helplessly by the open door, glimpsing the sharp profile as he gunned the car out onto the road.  

 

Neither of them gave a thought to the grim body at the bottom of the garden, neither of them knew of the heavy clay lying just beneath the luxuriant top soil, neither was aware of just how much blood one body contained, nor how the clay and the alignment of the body meant that the only place for the blood to run was to the surface.  

 

Kate washed her hands in the bathroom, decided on a shower and finally fell exhausted into bed just after 2.00 a.m. Her dream drenched sleep saw Daniel falling under the wheels of her car as she drove without mercy across his throat, his arms clutched at her as she writhed unknowingly in the bed, the face turning bloodily into that of her husband. She sprang awake again as she had done three times already, to the imagined sound of him coming late into the house, as he'd always done, only to realise in some half unconscious way that she was probably dreaming. She fell more deeply back into sleep knowing with a chilled finality the reality of what she'd done, her vivid dreams convulsing her across the bed, the darkness the only witness to her silent struggles.  

 

She awoke in the dread of a cold shivering sweat, the quilt lay on the floor and she shook, as she looked with raw heavy eyes at the sun streaking purple welts across the grey dawn. She pulled the quilt up about her and balled up child-like but no matter how hard she tried she couldn't get warm. She finally wrenched herself heavily out and moved in a disconnected way down to breakfast. As she ate she tasted nothing her dry mouth unaffected by the amount she drank. She checked the clock and noticed that she'd managed a few hours. She looked through the kitchen window as a startling black wing swept across the frame, she got up quickly perplexed and disturbed by what she thought she'd seen, she pushed away the image but moments later there was another black wing and a raucous cawing started, just one strident cry initially becoming a persistent chorus rising insistently from the bottom of the garden. She felt suddenly sick and pushed her food aside. The cries increased in number and volume as Kate pressed her hands into her ears to block out the noise but she only heard it more clearly. She stumbled out into the garden and to her utter despair fifteen or twenty Ravens as black as death itself were hanging in the trees above the spot where her husbands body lay. They wrenched up their cries wheeling jaggedly across the sky. Kate was struck dumb, the blood drained from her face as she watched the bizarre scene unfolding. She scanned the skyline for any other clue as to what had drawn the monstrous birds to the garden. At first she could do nothing but watch mesmerised by the strangeness of their behaviour trying to find some other reason for their presence and their loud heralding of her black and bloody deed.  

 

"Murder! Murder! Murder!" they seemed to screech out into the now bright blue morning, into Kate's head, into her heart. She looked down for something to throw and it was then that she saw the blood oozing, an ebony beak digging and lost control completely.  

 

Dan arrived to the strange sounds, letting himself in he knew that the sounds were coming from the garden he paused and listened as the sounds doubled in their strangeness as Kate's voice wailed nightmarishly with them. He burst through the house in a panic clattering through the kitchen and out into the garden to see Kate still in her night-dress, screaming back and forth, her naked feet blackened by the lawn, as she ran arms waving crazily, scratching at the sky and at the Ravens.  

 

"Murder! Murder! "The sound cracked the sky and echoed off the adjoining houses as Kate scrabbled up earth and stones flinging them into the trees adding to the confusion.  

 

"Kate!" Daniel called hopelessly "Kaaate!" he strained his throat but all she could hear was the Ravens. He strode to the shed and opened the door, his untutored hands lifting down the shotgun he knew was there. He fumbled in some shells and clicking shut the twin barrels he stepped back out into the garden.  

 

He did not expect to stumble on the now familiar path, but he did, he did not expect to have to grab at the shotgun as it twisted awkwardly in his hands but he did. His fingers touched the trigger unknowingly and he did not expect the recoil as the gun shook terribly in his hands. The shell ricocheted, wildly cannoning off the concrete path. He could not have expected; as Kate turned hearing the noise, that the shell would careen into her lovely face, but it did. The left eye and forehead were ripped away as if by invisible fingers, flesh flying, brains spilling. She slumped to the floor her head lolling to the side as she fell heavily backwards.  

 

The Ravens were silenced. They lifted their black arms and flapped silently away as the noise from the shotgun echoed eerily. Dan's thin grasp of what was left of his composure deserted him. How? How could the trigger have been so sensitive? He whirled round looking for some other cause, some other explanation, some witness. His mind scrambled for an escape. "But I loved her! " he wailed silently. He spun the gun around to check the number of shells but the smell confirmed what he already knew, this gun had been discharged. Still he doubted "But how? how?" He touched the trigger and in the split second that was his last he knew.