Feathers in the Dust [On Hold]

(III) We should give it a bath

Chapter III (We should give it a bath)

Sometimes, when you step into a house, you just know it's empty. Without waiting for the angel's approval, I stepped out the meat suit, allowing it to sliver wetly to the ground.

Lissa gave me a look but the pain on my face must have been apparent as, with a sigh, she stooped down, slinging a corpse's arm around her neck. I followed suit.

Three stories, two flights of a stairs and a considerable amount of suspicious scuffs and stains later, we made it to the top floor. I exhaled my relief, trying not to trip over dragging feet as we made our laboured way to my door.

We had made it so far, we were so close to complete success. I pushed my door open and stepped in. Lissa made to follow but her foot caught on something on the floor. She tripped. We fell. The whole thing went to pieces.

I turned as my body fell. But it was too late. The weak point of my concave skull landed on the corner of the bed and subsided further. I did not know what I was more sickened by; the fact that I was going to have to do another load of washing or that the cadaver's eyes now bulged with the intensity of an inbred dog.

I crawled forward and poked them back into their normal positions, thankful that, from the front, no lasting damage had been sustained.

Wiping my ghostly fingers on my shirt. I looked into the late Flora's hollow eyes.

"Why you are a beautiful thing." I muttered, studying my misty reflection. I patted a blood stained cheek patronisingly and stood.

Lissa was spewing profanities.

"What the fuck is this!"

She waved a box in my face. I took it gently but decisively from her hand.

"That's a carton of cat's milk." I said.

"Cat's milk!"

"Yeah." I cradled the cardboard container to my chest for a moment and returned it lovingly to the spot on the floor directly outside my door.

Lissa crouched down at my side, the body and our fate forgotten.

"What is all this stuff?" She breathed, her eyes roaming over the little treasure trove that blocked my entry.

"That's a nut cracker." I said, pointing. "And that's an opened pot of jelly. That's a novelty sized pencil. This is lube, those are novelty milk chocolate breasts. That's a dented tin of tomato puree next to the packet of celebrity endorsed condoms..."

This list continued for a while. The objects were as varied and useless as they sounded. Every element, bar the condoms and the lube, was tied to its fellows by a only single banner of inclusion: the bright yellow reduced sticker of the local supermarket brand.

Lissa's eyes were wide by the time I had finished. She crouched down, fondling my keepsakes. With a quizzical expression, she held up a little note with the words: 'I 3 Flora, she's my one + only 3' scrawled in messy felt tip pen.

"I know what they are." She said. "But what are they? Why do you have a mountain of useless crap piled outside your door?"

I shrugged.

"They're my gifts." I said.

"Your gifts?"

I pointed to the bedroom door opposite mine.

"Cloé gives them to me." I said. "It's kind of a tradition."

"And you just leave them here? To go rotten and trip you up?"