Cursed

A short story about desire, rejection and retribution

In October, whilst checking something for work, I discovered that short story magazines were still a thing, and I decided to write my own story. A few days later, I submitted my first attempt to ‘Elegant Literature’ magazine for their December issue, entitled ‘Talking in Tongues’. To my absolute delight, it got a place on the Honourable Mentions list, and I also got paid for it: $20 - my first paycheck as a fiction writer! Now, I’d like to share it with you.

CONTENT WARNING: Contains descriptions of sexual assault

Mr Jones is a good cat. He doesn’t caterwaul in the early hours or bring home dead offerings from his nightly sorties. He doesn’t pick fights with the other neighbourhood moggies, and he keeps his tabby coat silky and clean. Sometimes, he barely remembers being a man at all.

Photo credit: Rhian Sousa on pexels.com

On a cold December night, it is long after midnight when he slinks in through the cat flap. He inspects his bowl - it is empty. He pads through to the living room; there’s a light on in there. She’s awake - of course she is. It’s the witching hour, isn’t it?

She doesn’t appear to be doing anything particularly sinister. She’s just curled up in an armchair, cradling a cup of something warm and steaming, and reading. It isn’t even a grimoire or a bestiary. As far as Mr Jones knows, she doesn’t even own any of those, just shelves and shelves of fiction and a few books about the sacred feminine. He tries to make out the title of the book she is reading - if he concentrates hard, he can still make letters into words, but it is getting harder with the passing of time. Love in the Time of … something. Her thumb is covering the final word, but it rings a bell, somewhere deep in his memory. Some disease - malaria? His wife had read it once, on holiday in Majorca.

Yes, he’d a wife - still did, he supposed - but she was dried up and cold by the time he’d met the witch-woman. Not that he knew her for what she was then, that spring afternoon when he’d walked into the little bookshop she worked in. She’d been kneeling on the floor, unpacking a box of brand-new Maggie O’Farrells. She’d looked up at him from the ground, flashing that incredible smile. Good morning! I haven’t seen you here before. Her skin was smooth, perfect. We’re not so easy to find down this little back alley. Her T-shirt had slipped off her shoulder - or maybe it was meant to be like that? - and he could see the curve of her breasts at the neckline. She was curvy and soft all over, not like his skin-and-bones wife, not like those scrawny actresses on Netflix. Can I help you with anything? Oh, God, yes.

What had he bought? He couldn’t remember now. Couldn’t remember why he’d even gone in there, what he’d been doing on that small out-of-the-way street that day. He didn’t read - never had. But he started buying books. From that day on, he bought a book every Friday, and he read them too, so he would have something to talk to her about. He’d told her he wasn’t much of a reader, but he wanted to be (honesty was always the best policy) and she’d taken him on like some lost soul - like a stray cat. She wanted to help him, take his hand and guide him away from his hum-drum life into her realm - the dim aisles of brand-new and pre-loved books that could take a reader anywhere, anywhere at all.

He’d read everything she recommended: mystery, horror, comic fiction, even high fantasy. He preferred non-fiction and biographies, but he would read anything she put into his hands. Sometimes her skin brushed against his when she passed him a book or gave him his change - that’s why he always paid in cash, even though he had to make a trip to the damn ATM - and he’d think about it afterwards, letting his imagination carry him away: her hands on him, his hands on her.

She told him what she liked too - her favourite authors, the ones that let her down, which characters she was in love with. “Oh, don’t tell me you’ve never had a crush on a fictional character!” she laughed. God, he loved that laugh, and when he made it happen, when he was the cause of her laughter, he felt like he was, finally, somebody. She told him, too, about her childhood favourite. “Whistle Down the Wind,” she said. “They made it into a movie, but I never liked it. They changed the ending! Don’t you hate it when they do that?” Yes, he said, he did. Hated it. (Maybe honesty wasn’t always the best policy.) She didn’t have a copy, though - out of print, you see. She checked eBay all the time, and Amazon for the pre-used, but they never had any - not even in bad condition.

But he’d found it. He’d spent hours looking for that damn book, and it was worth every second when he held it out to her. Her face lit up when she read the title.

“Oh wow!” she’d said. “Oh, wow! Where did you find this? Oh, this is amazing!” And she’d flung her arms around him, then giggled and blushed and told him she was so sorry, she was just so excited. She never thought she’d get her hands on her own copy of this - it was her own copy, right? She could keep it, couldn’t she? Oh, man - he was the best.

The best.

Her chatter, her spontaneity, her softly curving body were fresh air blowing through the stuffy, abandoned rooms of his life. He was a grey businessman in a grey suit with a grey life and she - she was a kaleidoscope of colour. She had pink streaks in her hair, and tattoos on her wrists (did she have them anywhere else?) He exchanged his shiny black shoes for slippers when he got home, but she kicked her trainers off behind the counter when there weren’t any customers in the store. Her favourite books were about Faerie, his about geopolitics.

That’s what he’d taken up to the counter the day he’d asked her out for coffee. Prisoners of Geography. She had smiled when he asked her, lowered her eyes, said it was nice, but her boyfriend wouldn’t like it if she went out with another guy, even for a coffee.

Liar.

She didn’t have a boyfriend. He knew, because he had already started following her by then. That moment - when she told that lie, so easily, right to his face - that’s when he started hating her. He still wanted her, but now it wasn’t a spreading warmth in his body when he saw her through the window of that dingy bookshop - it was a fire that burned inside him. Bitch, he thought. Leading him on. Thinking she was too good for him. He’d make her sorry. He’d make her say she was sorry. He’d make her want him too.

He didn’t do anything right away. He kept going to the bookshop every Friday, kept buying books, but he didn’t read them anymore - just let them pile up on his bedside table: a monument to his injured pride. A shrine - to her.

He kept watching her too. He saw when her tops were too low-cut, when she wore that short denim skirt, the slut. Sure, she’d put it out there for other guys to see, but not for him. Well, he was a man. What she didn’t give him, he could take.

He waited, though, bided his time. He let his hatred and lust fester for a while. He let the nights draw in. She usually walked home alone, and there was never anyone down that dark side-street she used to access her ground-floor flat. No CCTV, either. So he just waited there, one cold December night.

When she came down the path, holding her phone pointing at the floor, illuminating the pavement, she didn’t see him in the shadows. He knocked the phone out of her hand and pushed her up against the wall. He said her name, over and over again, and he scrabbled at her clothes - so many zips and buckles. She pushed him, shouting for help, and he tried to cover her mouth with his hand, but she wouldn’t keep still, wouldn’t stop kicking him. He grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled it in frustration - he wanted her to be quiet, wanted her to let him finish this. Then, she screamed - not a shriek of fear or pain, but words. Words in a language he couldn’t understand - words that didn’t even sound like words, but primeval sounds, guttural and strange.

And then, he was looking up at her. Like the first time they met, but now their roles were reversed. And she was not doe-eyed and smiling. She was leaning against the wall, her eyes darting this way and that, wild and staring. Suddenly her face crumpled and she sank down, crouched against the wall, sobbing.

After a long time, she looked up, her cheeks streaked with mascara. She looked at him, still sitting there, not knowing what else to do.

“Hey, Kitty,” she said, her voice unsteady after all her racking sobs.

Did she know it was him? Did she understand what she had done? He didn’t know, couldn’t explain why she suddenly scooped him up - none too gently - and took him inside. She didn’t check for a collar, didn’t put up any posters to see if anyone had lost him. But, surely, she couldn’t know it was him.

Surely.

She turns a page of her book, shifting the position of her hand. Cholera, he reads. So that was it.

He mews. He is hungry.

She places her book face-down on the arm of the chair and gets to her feet. She is barefoot now, even in winter. She wraps her body in blankets and shawls, but her feet never seem to feel the cold. He follows her as she walks across the thin carpet of the living room and onto the icy tiles of the kitchen. She pulls open a cupboard, grabs a can of cheap cat food and empties it into his bowl. She fills up his water too. Then, she crouches down on the floor, looking into his face.

“Happy birthday, Kitty,” she says.