1.
Joseph found Kurt the day he shut the door on Alice.
She’d been in the apartment when he came home, sat on the corner of the bed crying. She looked up and for a heartbeat he wanted to sit with her, say nothing had changed. Life could go on as before, Ikea trips, friends for dinner, holidays in Western Australia and that distant maybe of children and a mortgage but a rush of teeth and bloody foam bought everything back and Joseph felt his lips pull away from his teeth.
“…the fuck are you doing here?” he hissed.
“I just wanted to…” she wept and Joseph swore deliberately loudly.
“You didn’t think I’d be home did you? That’ll be on your fucking gravestone. She never thought he would be home.” His tone was mocking.
She had a bag on the floor and Joseph caught sight of a few paperbacks and pictures from their six years together.
“Joe, please…” Joseph flinched at how like his mother she sounded.
Then the image sank its teeth in again.
His best friend, the empty bottle, cigarette stubs, and discarded clothing. No one noticing as he came home a day early. The three times she cried Yes as he stood watching them coil and sweat in front of the gas heater.
Then came Oh Shit and Oh God Joseph and the embarrassed naked separation and the police arriving shortly after the window and a nose had been broken.
“It was a stupid mistake,” Alice said again. “It was alcohol and stupid conversation, it was nothing. It was…oh Joseph please can’t we…?”
She moved towards him.
“You can’t afford this place on your own. What are you going to do? Please Joseph let me be a part of...”
His fist slammed into the bathroom door, breaking skin and denting wood. He saw blood and felt the pain explode in his hand. Alice screamed and they heard the thunder of footsteps from the unit above along with the muffled cry of “I can call the police at any moment you know.”
“There’s no problem Jan” Joseph shouted back, “Alice is leaving.”
Alice stared at her feet, one hand on her stomach, inhaling slowly. She flinched and then stepped forward, kissing Joseph once on the cheek.
“Goodbye” she said walking out as Joseph looked at the blood on his hand.
*
Later he was reeling.
He’d sat on the headland with a bottle of wine smoking cigarettes, music screaming in his ears. He stood and scooped fifteen butts from the grass and carried them to the bin before upending the bottle and swallowing three long pulls. He considered throwing the bottle over the cliff top but instead stumbled to the recycle bin and tossed it in.
He crossed the road without looking and stopped thirty metres from his house. A pile of discarded furniture and boxes of belongings lay at the side of the road. A tenant must have skipped on their rent leaving their cheap sofa and mattress. Joseph pushed a cushion aside and looked into a box of books, seeing the usual airport novels. He saw a wooden dish rack, chipped mugs, plastic forks and a dented saucepan thick with grime. Leant against a tree, he saw a large picture in a frame. It was turned away so all he could see was the back, a number scrawled in marker pen and the wire and bent from where the picture had hung.
He turned the picture around and saw Kurt Cobain, straddling a speaker, eyes screwed closed as he howled into a microphone. It was black, white and beautiful. The picture was taken from within the crowd, heads filled the bottom of the image before the edge of the stage one third of the way up and then the speakers with Kurt perched at the top. A film of dust covered the glass and Joseph swiped at it, expecting to find a crack in the glass or mould eating the image. Instead he found the silhouette of Krist Novoselic in the background savaging his bass and a red smear of felt pen on the glass where someone had started writing something that looked like a name –Don t… with the rest unintelligible. Don the what? he wondered. He rubbed at the lettering and it faded immediately.
“Wow” Joseph pulled the picture up, holding it in two hands. The energy of the image was immediate and he could smell the sweat of the concert and feel the pulse of the song.
“Lithium” he whispered and was certain that that was the song that had been forever frozen.
He turned his head and saw no one else on the street.
“Mine now” he said and walked the thirty metres home with the picture under one arm. In the lounge he pulled down an old picture of a samurai Alice had bought years before and hung Kurt. He admired the image and then swaggered to the kitchen, mumbling the lyrics to Lithium under his breath, and returned with the last third of a bottle of vodka.
Slumping, he swigged from the bottle, flicked on his iPad, and passed out.
*
He woke and waited for pain.
He stretched out his thoughts into his legs and arms and sought bruises. He sucked air in tentatively expecting his lungs to wince. Slowly he opened his eyes, prepared to cry out at the Saturday morning light, but instead of pain he blinked at the golden morning outside and heard the chirp of birds outside. He heard laughter from his neighbours and the happy bark of a dog. Joseph stretched and sat upright, his back fine despite the fact he had slept all night sat upright on the sofa. He stood and felt no pins and needles in his toes. He looked up and saw Kurt on the wall forever screaming out, eyes closed, and smiled.
“Guess you took the hangover” Joseph said and walked to the bathroom, pulling off his t-shirt before showering for twenty minutes and emerging from the steam believing that every trace of Alice had just sluiced away in burst bubbles.
Joseph walked opening windows and blinds. Sunlight flooded the rooms and he finally stood before the back window watching the rugby being played on the field in the centre of town and it was only when he heard a gasp that he realised he was standing naked.
He smiled at the girls standing at their kitchen window gaping and walked away from the window scratching his backside. Joseph returned to the shower and spent another half an hour under the water.
*
He felt fantastic.
He started running and was surprised how far he managed each day. He did press ups on the headland and sit-ups in his hallway and even after only seven days he felt firmness across his stomach and an ache in his thighs. He had his hair clipped short and stared at himself in the mirror through his glasses, resolving to try contact lenses.
Half an hour later he was sat in an opticians flirting with the optometrist as she ran up a prescription for lenses for him.
That night he bought a girl home who looked faintly like Alice and lost himself in scattered limbs and sighs. He made breakfast and bought it to her in bed and she asked if they would see each other again.
“I’m getting over someone at the moment” he said as he put the cup of tea on Alice’s bedside table.
“Really?” Faux-Alice asked, “So this was just a one nighter?”
Joseph nodded. “Is that ok? Sorry I don’t mean to have been…”
She sipped her tea. “First time I’ve ever had breakfast in bed after a one night stand.” She smiled at Joseph and five minutes later joined him in the shower.
He never thought to ask her name, though she said his often.
*
He had another one-night stand with a Japanese girl and was pleased to note she looked nothing like Alice. She gave him her number in the morning as he dressed in her bedroom and he took it, leaning forward to kiss her.
“You’re not giving me your number,” she said and Joseph smiled, feeling how he imagined a rock star felt.
“I’m on the road baby,” he said and she laughed.
“You're a fool,” she said, kicking out one leg as Joseph picked up the condoms from the floor and dropped them in the bin. Then he pulled the covers up on the side of the bed he’d slept on and fluffed the pillow. Before he left he filled her water glass in her bathroom and placed it on the table beside her bed.
“I’m a fool,” he said, lifting the cover and looking down at the most beautiful body he had ever shared a bed with.
“You are,” she pulled him in for a kiss, “because I would like to see you again.”
“Sorry,” he smiled and liked the way it felt, “it’s time to get back on the road.”
He spotted a book of Raymond Carver short stories on the bookcase by the door and pulled it out. He took a pen from the top of the case and wrote quickly inside the cover. She was watching him from the bed and he walked back, handing it to her and kissing softly.
“Bye” he said
She watched him go and only when the door closed did she look in the book.
“You’re the most beautiful woman I have ever kissed. You made me feel like a rock star.”
He’d signed it Kurt.
2.
Joseph was alone.
It was three weeks since Alice had gone and Kurt arrived. He’d deleted every e-mail Alice had sent him and blocked her number on his phone. He was watching Vanishing Point and he looked at Kurt, raising his wine in a toast.
“I don’t think I have ever felt this good.”
Joseph looked around the lounge. The L shaped sofa was far better with two people on it and the bookcase looked starved now half the novels were gone. He mentally strolled through the apartment, acknowledging that the spare room was pointless now Alice’s snoring no longer woke him.
“Maybe I need a roommate,” he thought as he pushed aside nostalgia for Alice’s laughter as they watched Modern Family and ate Brie. He glanced at Kurt, feeling an emptiness that had not been there mere minutes before.
“Is this it? Am I over her? I dunno but wow, man I wish I had some company. I’m a lonesome man.”
The room shimmied and Joseph wondered if it was the wine. He counted four glasses in the last two hours and put the glass down beside the lamp. As he did so he saw a man crouching, staring back at him.
The image made no sense for a few moments and Joseph turned back to the television and adjusted the volume. Then he turned and saw the man moving to stand. He was big and wearing a black jacket half unzipped. His knuckles were thick and his face stained with stubble.
“Shit” Joseph cried, jumping to his feet.
The man looked Joseph up and down.
“I don’t want trouble.”
The man shrugged.
“I have fifty in my wallet, it’s yours. There’s not much else here of any value. My girlfriend just moved out so it’s just wine and take out.”
Joseph could feel himself babbling, wanting to be liked by the man standing in his lounge, to appear as a human rather than a victim.
“Actually I think there might be another hundred in my wallet, I can’t remember mate. Can I just get it for you?”
The man smiled and shook his head.
“What is it you want?” Josephs voice cracked and he felt adrenaline rush through his veins. His chin was shaking as the man glanced down at Josephs clenched fists. He smiled at Joseph and held up three fingers, folding them down one by one before rushing forward.
*
There was blood inside his mouth.
One tooth moved when he probed it. His ribs were strobing with pain. He fought to remember what had happened, recalling only a deluge of fists and the hope that Jan was calling the police. She must have. She’d called them before for so much less and Joseph knew he’d been screaming. He blinked, wondering what was gone, how much had been taken.
He struggled to focus as he sat up, wincing. His lounge looked normal, his wine glass was still in one piece, the TV still playing, Kurt still screaming. Everything was as it had been.
Then he saw him, sat on the sofa eating crackers. He smiled at Joseph and held up three fingers again, dropping them one by one.
“No” Joseph pleaded as the fingers ticked down.
“Please” he repeated as the man strode towards him and swung back a booted foot.
*
This time Joseph daren’t open his eyes.
His stomach sparked with pain and he needed the bathroom. His fingers were shouting pain at him and he briefly remembered them being stamped on. The loose tooth was no longer in his mouth. One eye was weeping. The television was on and Joseph was certain the man was still there. He could hear an infomercial playing with the promise that this product would change his life in just twenty-five days.
He opened one eye and rolled it towards the sofa. He saw no boots. He tried to open his other eye but it was stuck fast. Slowly he straightened and gasped as his ribs clamped down. His knees popped and he expected footsteps thunder up the hallway. He hard the dog barking outside and realised it must be daylight. Then he heard a phone ringing in the hall.
His phone? It hadn’t been taken?
He pulled himself up and walked nervously. The phone was where he had left it, on charge next to his keys and his wallet.
His wallet!
He saw the money still in there. He snatched at the phone and mumbled into it, hearing his colleague at work.
“You not coming in today man?” he heard and Joseph started to sob. “You ok mate? Sick?”
All Joseph could do was weep and after a while his colleague rang off. Bleeding and retching Joseph staggered to the shower and ran the water as hot as he could stand.
*
The damage was severe.
His ribs were badly bruised and three fingernails were missing, the tips of his fingers puffy and split. An incisor was gone from his mouth and he found it later in a sticky pool of blood. One eye was swollen closed and both ears were ringing and puffy. He shivered under the hot water and cried out when someone knocked at the door.
“Post man” a voice called and Joseph ignored it, crouching in the shower.
“Hello” the voice called and Joseph was certain it was the man, back for a third attack.
He heard something being left on his doormat and eventually turned off the taps and pulled a towel off the rail.
Nothing had been taken. The man had broken in to beat Joseph, to hammer blows into him until he was unconscious and then wait patiently for him to awake before doing it again.
Why?
There was no sign of forced entry. No broken windows or splintered doors. Joseph sobbed and it was only hours later as night came that he wondered if he should call the police. He almost called Alice as the sounds of televisions played outside and normal life continued for his neighbours. Instead he placed chairs in front of the doors and checked the windows were locked before turning the television on quietly and digging out some codeine tablets he had had after root canal when life was different. He swallowed them with wine and sat under a duvet on the sofa shaking trying desperately not to make any sound. For half an hour he shook and took two more tablets and another glass of wine and fetched another duvet, unable to chase the cold away from his body. Then, as the drugs and wine slowly settled he noticed that Kurt’s eyes were no longer shut. They were open, just slightly, staring into the crowd. His mouth was no longer a triumphant wail but seemed to be the beginnings of a terrified scream.
*
Joseph put himself back together.
He was asked about the bruises and if he’d called the police but he explained it away as a random attack on the way home from the pizza shop. Two guys, stamping, punching and intoxicated. The police knew.
“I’m ok really. Just embarrassed and angry” he said.
“Did they take much?” was the question he hated the most and the one he answered with a brittle “a few hundred bucks” that he hoped somehow paid for the damage to his face.
*
At home he stared at Kurt.
His eyes were open. Just a crack, enough to see the pupils and the whites. They were staring at the crowd, at an area in the bottom left of the picture. Joseph looked and saw the backs of heads and raised hands. He saw the side of one face, the white blur of a nose, the line of an eyebrow perhaps. Nothing more. He looked back at Kurt and stared into the eyes.
Were they really afraid?
The phone rang and Joseph jumped, turning his back on the picture as he walked to retrieve his phone and he only briefly saw black smudges around his doorframe that he wrote off as mould.
*
“Mum, I can’t.”
Joseph walked as he talked to his mother. He muted the television and slumped, wincing as his ribs flashed again.
“Joseph we haven’t seen you in over a year and Skype does not count. You always look desperate to get away when we talk on Skyoe. We’re in Brisbane, not Britain. It’s your fathers birthday and I do not see why you cannot fly in.”
Joseph sighed. Part of him wanted to tell his mother about the attack, to hear her sympathise and offer to rush to his side, to nurse him back to health.
“Is something wrong Joseph?” her voice was warmly concerned. “Are you struggling since you and Alice…”
He heard his father shout out in the background. His dad never spoke on the phone and hated Skype even more than Joseph did.
“Joe unless you come to this phone and speak yourself I’ll say whatever I wish to my son. Here, do you want the phone? Do you?” Joseph heard his father decline and smiled again. “I thought not, so Joseph, is it Alice? Are there problems since the break up?”
“No mum, I just can’t make it up for Dads birthday. I’m sorry.”
His mother changed her tone again.
“Why Joseph? Give me a reason. Not an excuse, a solid reason that I can understand.”
He could see here there, apron on, rolling pin in one hand and phone in the other.
“Mum I…” Lying was pointless and in a relieved rush Joseph told her. “Mum, I was atta…mugged the other day and I’m…I’m a bit of a mess.”
His mother screamed and he heard his father snatch the phone.
“Joseph, what the hell did you just say to your mother?”
Joseph was blushing. “Dad, I…I was mugged. I’m bruised and I don’t want to fly to Brisbane and be fussed over. I feel…”
“Ashamed?”
Joseph nodded. “Yes, yeah I guess so.”
“Bullshit. It’s not your fault. Your mum is going to snatch the phone from me in about five seconds but I want you to know it is not your fault. Come here, have beer and lets watch shit on TV while your mum shouts from the kitchen.” He paused and coughed. “I love you son.”
Joseph’s eyes ran with relief. “OK Dad, I’ll be there.”
“Thank you. Now your mother is snatching at the phone so I’ll say goodbye. I’ll see you real soon then.”
Joseph added “I wish I could see you sooner” and the room shimmied once again and Joseph felt a surge of seasicknesses.
Then his mother was on the phone, talking a mile a minute and in the torrent of her concern Joseph missed the sound of his father falling but heard the clatter of crockery as he knocked it from the table.
Then he heard his mother screaming and shouting Joe, Joe, Joe and Joseph hung up, calling an ambulance knowing his father had just died.
*
Joseph stood at the funeral home.
He handed over the suit his mother had picked out and a framed photo of the family. His brother, dead four years since a drunk driver had run him down, his sister in England who couldn’t make it over and himself. In the picture they were kids, a summer holiday at Wilson’s Promontory years before. In the photo his father was a younger version of the old that Joseph had always considered him to be.
“Would you like to see your father?” the funeral director asked and Joseph nodded. He was lead to a room down the hall and the door clicked shut behind him. Soft music hummed and a thick smell of flowers hung. He stood over his fathers’ body and touched the cold forehead.
“I love you dad,” he said and looking down at the hollow shell that was left of his father he knew that in Sydney that Kurt eyes were wide open.
*
3.
Joseph had only one intention as he arrived him, tear down the picture and throw it out into the streets.
He slammed the door and stalked into the lounge. Kurt’s eyes were wide as but it was a jolt to realise that the head in the crowd was now turned almost all the way around. Joseph could see the hooked nose and the deep recess of the right eye. The mouth was wide open and Joseph saw cracked teeth and the tip of a tongue poking out.
“What the fuck are you?” Joseph gasped, suddenly unwilling to approach the picture. “Is this some monkeys paw shit? I get three wishes and each one turns worse than the last one? Well…” Joseph steeled his resolve and lunged at the picture. “Fuck you” he shouted and grabbed the frame.
It was stuck fast to the wall. He tried to prise it away with his fingertips but gained no purchase. He saw a plate with a knife and fork on the sofa and he snatched the knife, stabbing at the edges of the picture frame before spinning the blade around and using the handle to hammer blows on the glass.
Jan upstairs banged on the floor and Joseph snapped back “Fuck off you old cunt” and resumed hammering at the image. Each blow caused the glass to dent but as he pulled his arm back the damage restored.
“I’ll get a fucking hammer then” he screamed but as he turned to go he saw something change. Kurt’s head snapped suddenly to the right and Joseph saw he was no longer staring into the crowd; he was staring at something behind Joseph.
*
Joseph saw the darkness of the hallway cloaking a short and hunched shape that seemed to vibrate.
“What the fuck are you?” Joseph heard the begging note in his voice again and saw the mouth of the creature open as it licked its lips.
It lurched forward and Joseph saw the broken nose turned slightly to the left, the darkness of the eye sockets with two eyes staring at him. The mouth was a slash filled with an impossible amount of needle teeth. The figure was dressed in a robe with black boots jutting from the bottom.
“Get the fuck out” Joseph shouted and the figure replied with a snarl.
*
Joseph ran past the shape and heard it clatter behind him with the sound of bones and teeth. He ran for the door, snatching at the handle and twisting it, fumbling at the lock as he tugged. The door opened but was suddenly yanked closed and Joseph heard a drumming sound on the wood.
He slapped at the light switch and saw dozens of thin black fingers growing from the frame all pressing the door closed. Each had a long nail drumming the wood except one near the top that dangled out in front of Josephs face wagging from side to side.
He turned to the bathroom door, intent on throwing himself through the window as he heard a whining sob rushing from his mouth. The light flicked on and he saw the window crisscrossed with impossible digits, dozens of knuckles twisting and writhing across the glass similarly tapping on the glass.
Joseph turned to see the black figure behind him vibrating still as its tongue lolled. In the light Joseph could see blisters popping and dripping from the tip of the tongue.
Joseph charged, swiping madly with his fists. He battered the side of its head and kicked at its legs before slamming his fist into the face of the creature. He felt something wet and hot and saw his hand now buried in the hood. Above his hand two eyes stared at him, tiny pupils surrounded by sickly egg yolk and rivulets of blood. He tugged and saw his fist was buried to the wrist in the creatures’ impossibly wide mouth.
It held up one gnarled hand and ticked three fingers down and understanding what was coming Joseph flailed desperately and screamed, wrenching uselessly at his hand. As the final finger dropped the creatures eyes became black and unreflective and the muscles around its mouth tensed. Joseph saw the lips writhe snakelike around his hand.
The pain shrank his world to nothing more than what lay beyond his wrist. Millions of fine needle teeth pierced his skin and shattered his bones as the creature shook its head from side to side. Joseph felt his hand burst and he fell to his knees begging and after an eternity the creature released its hold and Joseph’s hand fell free.
The skin was tattered, bones jutted like porcupine quills with fragments of nail embedded in raw flesh. Blood rained on the carpet as Joseph held his damaged hand out in entreaty.
“Please” he begged, “enough.” The creature vibrated before him and Joseph understood what it wanted.
“You want me to wish? You want me to make some final demand so you can….” the pain overwhelmed him and he grew dizzy, “so you can fuck me over once and for all.”
The creature spat what could only be the tip of one of Joseph’s fingers onto the floor.
His mind raced with wishes but he immediately saw every one twisted into a nightmare. I wish I wasn’t here would result in him suddenly being ten thousand feet in the air plummeting towards the earth. I wish this would stop would lead to his heart being ripped from his chest. I wish you didn’t exist would lead to his life snapping back to the moment he now did not find the picture and an undoubted suicide or murder shortly thereafter.
The creature surged forward and Joseph stumbled back onto his backside beneath the picture. The creature crouched on his knees and placed its crooked nose directly at the tip of Josephs. It placed its mouth over Josephs left eye and began to violently suck, beating Josephs’ arms back with its large spidery hands.
He jammed his eyelid down but felt the obscenity of the creatures tongue probing. The pressure grew and he felt his eyeball pulled forward as he screamed.
“Jan, call the fucking police please, call the fucking police.”
Wishes tumbled through his mind. What could be worse than this? What wish could he make that would result in a moment more horrific as this?
The eyelid was pulled open and the lips pressed harder and in a lurch the eyeball popped out and Joseph screamed.
The mouth opened and he saw the spilt image of the creature before him and the inside of its mouth. It held up its hand before his remaining eye and counted down from three. Joseph hoped desperately that he would faint before the final finger fell.
Instead he heard a pop as the teeth closed and despite his screams he remained conscious as the creature swallowed.
*
“I’m fucked,” he panted.
His hand was raw, spilling across the carpet and he could feel the spatter of veins and blood on his cheek. The creature watched him move, shivering in the air. Blood was splashed across its face and it wiped lazily with one hand, licking drops from its fingertips.
Then it held up its hand again and started counting down.
“No” Joseph said as the first finger fell.
Wish for something. Wish, close the circle, end this. It won’t end until you make a third wish.
I wish I was whole again would lead to the torture starting all over again. I wish you would stop would lead to a lifetime of agony under the gaze of this creature as it waited for Joseph to finally die. I wish this was happening to someone else would drag Alice here as Joseph watched her tortured and was forced to join in.
Suddenly Joseph threw his head back and bellowed from the frayed end of his sanity.
“I wish I could fucking kill you.”
The creature instantly froze and held up its hand, fingers starting again at three again and as he watched that Joseph realised he had phrased it wrong.
*
He was standing with a crowd, one of many, arms raised, cheering. He felt the blood from his hand drip onto his face and he saw Kurt Cobain on the stage.
Singing Lithium.
He turned, pushing against the crowd. Behind him he saw a woman with her face missing from beneath the nose, tongue flapping along with the song. To her right was an old man with his chest torn open and a shattered egg timer where his heart had been.
Behind through smoke Joseph saw his lounge. He saw the creature standing beside what was left of himself.
“I wish I could kill you” Joseph thought and shook his head. “I wish I was killing you.”
Joseph realised it was about to show him how he could have killed it. How he could have won. Whatever it would take to destroy it would be done to his body and Joseph turned away and looked back to the stage from a crowd of thousands of shattered tormented bodies.
He focussed on Kurt singing and knew Lithium would be sung forever, that this moment would be all he would know. He would stand, arms waving, perpetually dying as his final wish was granted.
He felt the warm spray of his own blood hit the crowd in the picture and he screamed the words as he saw Kurt screw his eyes shut.
*
4.
Alice dropped the last box on the street. Josephs mother stood beside her.
“Thank you for helping me Alice I…” Josephs mother started to sob again and Alice held her.
“Where is he?” she gasped. “It’s been two months. Where is my son?”
Alice pushed the last box with her foot and it bumped against the picture that was leant against the tree. The picture slid and landed face down on the grass.
“I don’t know Myra, but I am sure he is alive.” The words were hollow she knew, and she didn’t believe them.
Myra fell to her knees, knocking the picture further across the grass. She looked up at the frame and reached out for it. It felt so light to her touch and she turned it over.
“Frank.” Myra stared at the picture and frowned. “Did Joseph like Frank Sinatra?”
Alice shook her head uncertainly. “He must have gotten this after we…”
Myra nodded. “Doesn’t he look wonderful?” she asked and Alice saw Myra had stopped crying.
Alice frowned as she saw something red on the left hand side of the glass.
It looked to be a stick figure divided into pieces, a round body, four straight lines arranged beside it in a square with the heart inside and the head above. There were dashes above that made Alice think of a child’s drawing of fire. A body divided and burnt with the heart at its centre.
She crouched and rubbed her thumb on the markings, wiping them away. She looked at her thumb and for a moment thought it was blood but one wipe on the grass and it was gone.
Myra smiled. “This was Josephs then?”
She lifted the picture and held it in both arms, embracing it.
“I guess” Alice said and pulled her jacket as she felt suddenly chilled.
“Well then I say it is mine now.”
Alice smiled at Myra but the smile she received back was unsettling. Myra’s lips pulled too far back and Alice could only think of a skull grinning at her.
Myra walked to her car and slid the picture into the back seat.
“You know, I am sure Joseph is fine. I’m sure he is somewhere on a beach maybe, or in love. Yes, in love.”
Myra swayed as she spoke and looked almost like she was dancing. Alice felt something cold slide down her spine.
Myra opened her door and stopped, pulling her lips even further back until it was all Alice could do not to scream.
“You know,” Myra said as Alice saw someone in a black coat that reached down to the pavement walk by, “I really wish you and Joseph had a baby.”