Oz Oz Alice

Wednesday, 18 May 2016

It's OK John Joe

Holding the knife once again behind his back, he shook the girl's shoulder. Her features seemed to blur before she turned over and dug her face into the pillow. He grasped her shoulder again and felt the long thin bone, the prominent wing jutting out from her back. "Go 'way," she muttered into the pillow.
"No. We're going to talk."
"It's too late."
He shook her, and when she did not respond, tried to roll her over by force. Thin and small as she was, she was strong enough to resist. He could not make her face him.
Then she turned over by herself, as if in contempt. Lack of sleep showed in her face, but beneath the puffiness she looked adult.
"What's your name?"

"Okay, let's try again," he said. "What are you?"
For the first time since he had taken her into the car, she really smiled. It was a transformation, but not of a kind to make him feel easier: she did not look any less adult. "You know," she said.
He insisted. "What are you?"
She smiled all through her amazing response. "I am you."
"No. I am me. You are you."
"I am you."
"What are you?" It came out in despair, and it did not mean what he had meant the first time he asked it.
Then just for a second he was back on the street in New York, and the person before him was not the stylish suntanned anonymous woman, but his brother David, his face crumbled and his body dressed in the torn and rotting clothing of the grave.
... the most dreadful thing ...