SHORT STORIES vol ii
Copyright 2014 Natacha Cutler
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
DAYS LIKE LOST DOGS
BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA
About the author
Connect with the author
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Cammy and Raquel, who loved and supported a super early draft of BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA and made me feel it was worth finishing.
To my major, and last, crush for serving as inspiration for Satan and for, two years later, showing up with the right ending.
And a huge thank you to Carina, who created an amazing cover in no time at all. You are the most talented angel.
Days like lost dogs
Allison’s clothes were delivered to my house in card boxes by a couple of heavy built men in white tank tops. I opened one at random and found an envelope inside from Allison’s father; it said, “I don’t know what to do with these. Wear them, burn them, do as you please. They are yours now.”
I took the boxes one by one up the stairs to my bedroom and called Isaac. We weren’t close, Isaac and I, at least not when Allison was alive. He stood at the door trembling, always trembling, all long limbs and titan eyes. We would usually lock ourselves in my house and roll joint after joint until we were passed out and fucking very, very slowly, like we were afraid we might crack and find nothing inside. He told me he didn’t want to be around those boxes and I said fine, let’s go someplace else. I didn’t even know where he was living at the time but he didn't seem to want to be there either. We ended up driving to the beach in his beat up car, that had belonged to his older brother, and the only tape he had was Roman Candle. “Well, this is fucking depressing.” I told him. He looked at me sideways and I could hear him thinking, “Like you letting me call you her name while we fuck isn’t.” His hands shook against the steering wheel. There was barely any wind, my throat ached like I was breathing dirt. Isaac took me to a secluded and scenic place I knew through Allison; Allison laughing, all dimples, splashing me with water.
"Isaac," I said getting out of the car "How is this better than staying inside."
He shrugged one shoulder.
When we sat down the earth seemed to sink beneath us. Isaac took a small joint out of his shirt pocket and handed it to me. We passed it back and forth until the image in front of us was jarring disjointed, the sand and our feet being gradually eaten away by distorted waves. I saw the Atlantic fill my lungs and it felt like Allison's ghostly fingers dancing through my chest, down my ribs, gripping my thighs. Isaac cupped my face with his trembling hands and parted my lips with his tongue. I licked the top of his mouth. We wanted to taste her, to find some trace of her left in us. Those were our days, days like lost love dogs digging for bones. Days like xerox copies of copies of days we had with Allison. Days filled with dead air.
Isaac curled at my side like a scared infant. I thought of the night Allison came back from her summer abroad and we went for an aimless drive through our ghost town, how she kissed my neck every time we stopped at a red light. She had this prophet quality to her where evil could not take root. Around Allison I seemed to become weightless and would, as she held me by the wrists, follow her blindly. Still, knowing this, she pulled me behind her through the years. Our only years. I knew of Isaac and I knew of the others, like McBeth, who I had last seen after the funeral breaking bottles of whisky with his bare hands and licking the blood as the skin healed, and I knew Allison couldn't belong to any of us and I wasn't jealous.
You can't be jealous of a God.
Isaac shook like a volcano. Allison, in the morning brushing my hair, braiding it like a crown. She liked my red lipstick but would never borrow it. She didn't ask for things for they were given to her. Instead she would kiss me softly, precisely, like a war oath, until it was painted on her lips. Allison, giving me a stick and poke tattoo of some mythical constellation, and whispering jamais aimer une chose sauvage.
Isaac's skin turned purple around his eyes and mouth, I said, Isaac stop it. We didn't speak of death for death wouldn't bring us closer to her. I often pictured Allison in some sort of sinless limbo, waiting for the right time to come back. We had to be here, had to be alive. Allison's body is being eaten away by bugs, he said. Isaac often talked about “stealing her” and it didn't scare me.
“She's decomposing from the inside out.” We had discussed this a million times but still I explained it to him. I felt like it soothe him, somehow. Like it was her choice. “The bacteria on her skin, mouth, lungs, feet. That will eat her away.”
“Not worms,” Isaac repeated with a sad smile.
I lit a menthol cigarette. Isaac's belly rumbled, empty. Days reliving our own hell of a world without desires. We will feed on rapture, I told him, like the radiant Gods. Allison, summer-salting out of my bedroom window and landing with impossible grace on the freshly cut grass.
“In hours of bitterness, I imagine balls of sapphire, of metal.” He whispered against my pulse.
“In french.” I asked of him, unbuttoning his jeans.
“Aux heures d'amertune je m'imagine des boules de saphir, de métal.”
Allison, reciting poetry, with her head resting on my naked chest, eyes still half closed from sleep.
“C’est elle, la petite morte, derrière les rosiers.”
Allison, coming to me after spending hours picking wild flowers, hands a rash bleeding red. My teeth pulling the tiniest thorns and spines from her skin.
Allison.
Allison.
Between the devil and the deep blue sea
[ORIGIN: alluding to two equally dangerous alternatives.]
Deep blue sea, darling
Dig his grave, darling, with a silver spade
Drag him down, darling, with a golden chain
— Grizzly Bear's “Deep Blue Sea”