Rat Catchers

Bits and Pieces

Everyone had been there. Drinking, toasting to the death of enemies. Rose had sat by the fire with Karl and Charlie, piles and piles of sweets on a platter between them.

"What're you doing?" Karl asked.

Rose didn't know if he was talking to her.

"Stop it." There'd been fear in his voice, panic almost. "Stop it. Mum! Stop it, Rosie. Uncle Tommy-"

Rose noticed a new smell in the room. Smokey and a bit like bacon.

Suddenly her father's hand was on her arm, pulling on it, shouting something over his shoulder. Her aunt Ada had come running with one of the silver buckets they used for the champagne and they'd plunged Rose's arm into it.

She'd pulled it back out and looked at it curiously as soon as her father let go off her. Her sleeve was singed and there were angry blisters all over her wrist and her palm.

"What's that?"

The way they'd looked at her. She still didn't know whether they'd been disgusted or terrified or both. Charlie'd been crying; Karl, too, nearly.

She'd gone upstairs, vaguely aware of her father watching her walk out of the room, certain he wouldn't follow.

#

He'd been off to somewhere, her father, but then he was back.

"You go in and see him," Frances said gently.

Charlie walked cautiously into their father's bedroom, Rose floated in behind him. Her hand was still bandaged and throbbing and when she stuck a finger between the gauze and her skin it came back slick with something like blood...but not blood. It worried her.

Tommy was on the bed, shirtless and with a bandage also.

"Did you hurt yourself?" Charlie asked timidly, sitting on the edge of the bed.

"Just a bit of a scradge. It'll be right in no time."

Rose stood at the foot of the bed, looking. Her father was pale. There was a cigarette dying in the ashtray on the bedside table, next to a bottle and a glass. She angled her head a little and read the label.

"What's eradication?" she asked.

Tommy looked up at her, his eyes glassy enough for her to see herself in them. Two tiny Rose's leaning against the bed, staring.

"It means to make something go away completely," he said.

"Does it work?" she asked. "Does it eradicate sadness?"

"Are you asking 'cause you're sad, Rosie?" Her father sounded almost hopeful.

"No," she said, drifting back to the door. "I'm orright."

Part of her was already upstairs and in bed, or on the rug at the top of the stair if she got too tired. Her father was fine. The doctor had been with bandages. Charlie was there to keep him company.

#

There was too much blood inside her.

Rose woke feeling as though her body was made of lead. It was clear to her in a flash.

The problem was that there was too much blood, weighing her down.

It was a tremendous effort to roll onto her side and slide the bedside drawer open. The straight razor she'd nicked from her father back when she'd thought she could put up a fight, back when she thought the things she did mattered, was in amongst all kinds of debris. Wrappers and coins and gloves and things...toys, she supposed. Spinning tops. Marbles.