Share

Chapter Six

last update Last Updated: 2021-09-06 16:19:08
CHAPTER SIX

They held a funeral for the bits and pieces of Aleta they could find. It wasn’t much. Marie chose to have her cremated and then there was even less.

She kept her in a jar in the living room. She had always believed in burial, but had dreams of wolves digging Aleta’s bones up at night, gnawing on them and taking them away off to some dark magical forest. Night after night. So in the jar she went, and the jar was placed high, and when her mother died she cremated her as well and set them side-by-side.

“Hello, family,” she greeted them once, and then she was unable to get out of bed for three days straight.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” she said again, once she was standing in front of the jars again. “You died because I wanted the selfish luxury of a bath.”

She was in bed for six days after that, unable to move or speak or sit, and when the young second officer couldn’t get a hold of her, he managed to break down her door.

“We don’t need all of you lined up in a neat little row on that shelf,” he told her. He patted her hands gently, a man used to holding the hand of a woman, and she looked at him with eyes that were already dead.

“Why not?” she asked, but then the sirens were heard and the ambulance was there to take her to a place that pumped her full of liquid food and questions and synthetic hope.

The nice officer brought her a bouquet of flowers that his daughter had picked out (although he certainly wouldn’t tell her that) and told her that he sat up at night, trying to find this man who slaughtered small children.

Then Christmas came and she was released, but the officer and his beautiful and kind wife came by on Christmas Eve with a small tree and some decorations and gifts and an eye for anything out of place, like a pair of too-sharp scissors or a knife with the serrated blade turned toward a mourning woman’s throat.

“May I use your bathroom?” the officer’s wife asked, and The Grimmest of Maries told her of course, that she was more than welcome. The officer’s wife took a discreet peek in the medicine cabinet to make sure the razor blades were all properly blunt. Then she returned and hugged Marie.

“There’s nothing I can say that will make this any better,” she said, but the fact that she was saying it really did make it better. “But we think of you all of the time. Will here is working tirelessly on the case. And even though I haven’t met you before this, I feel as though I know you. You really are loved."

“Do you believe in angels?” Marie asked, and the officer’s wife smiled at her.

“Of course I do. I have to.”

“Do you think my daughter is looking down on me as an angel, or as a headless corpse? If I burned away the knife marks and sexual abuse, do you think it will help her in the afterlife? If I find this man, this Wolf and spill his blood, will that cleanse her like the blood of Christ is supposed to have done for all of us? Because,” she said, and her eyes glittered in a way that should have made Will’s wife step back, only it didn’t, “I think the Wolf’s blood on my hands would erase any infraction I ever made. Do you?”

The officer’s wife didn’t blink or wrinkle her nose or any of these things. She simply looked Marie dead in the eye and said solemnly, “Darling, you are going through something no mother should ever have to go through. I see my husband pouring over papers and pictures and chasing after every scrap of information and evidence he can. He’s done things that keep him awake at night. But he’s a good man, and I love him.” Her eyes glittered in a way that reminded Marie of sharpened cutlery. It was the soft, sexy, slow slide of blade against skin. “If such things could absolve a person, then I would advise him, or her, to do as much as possible to make sure that tainted blood flows. Make it flow, dear one.”

There were kisses on cheeks and Marie spent that evening staring at the tinsel star on top of her new Christmas tree. The star, like Marie’s heart and that silent blade wedged within in, glittered, flashed and spun.

Continue to read this book for free
Scan code to download App

Latest chapter

  • Little Dead Red   Chapter Eighteen

    CHAPTER EIGHTEENOfficer Will took the call with sorrow. Grim Marie had taken her own life. She was found in the bath with expensive-smelling bubbles and a candle. She had used a razor.He wished this hadn’t surprised him.His heart felt heavy, but he tried to convince himself that at least she was at peace now, enfolded in the arms of her mother and her daughter. A third little urn lined up on the shelf, perhaps. At least the pain and misery of her hunt for The Wolf was over.He sighed.“I’m responsible,” he said aloud, and the words pierced. They twisted up inside of him like a jangle of knives and sharpened bones and Dead Marie’s razor blades.He had sent her after the man she believed to be her daughter’s killer. Told her to keep an eye out for any DNA he might drop. He hadn’t believed this man was The Wolf, but it didn’t matter. It gave her something to do. Gave her something to throw her heart and soul into, since she had little heart and no soul left. Picking up a littered

  • Little Dead Red   Chapter Seventeen

    CHAPTER SEVENTEENThe test results came back. This wasn’t The Wolf. Neither the DNA nor the bite marks were a match.She had done it, but it wasn’t worth it. Not at all.

  • Little Dead Red   Chapter Sixteen

    CHAPTER SIXTEENOfficer Will’s wife met her at the hospital.“Thank you for coming,” Marie sobbed. “Thank you so much.”“Of course I’d come,” Winnie said. She sat in the corner of the room while the nurses scrubbed and swabbed and collected everything they could. It was like being violated all over again, except with soft voices and lighter touches.The worst, Marie thought, was when she exposed her breasts. Bite marks everywhere. On her nipple and ribs and on her stomach.“I hope it helps,” she whispered to nobody in particular. “I hope it helps my baby.”They didn’t understand and she didn’t bother to explain, but pictures were taken. Bites were measured. Details were taken and carefully written down.It seemed to last for hours. At last they said she could go home.“I’ll drive you,” Winnie offered, and Marie nodded wearily.The car ride was silent for a long time. Marie leaned her head back against the seat and stared at the dark sky.“Thank you for coming today,” she sa

  • Little Dead Red   Chapter Fifteen

    CHAPTER FIFTEENShe walked into the police station. Officer Will took one look at her and leapt up from his desk.“Marie!”“Don’t touch me. I have DNA. Lot of it.”“Marie, what did you do?”He reached out to touch her but she pulled back.“Please. Could you take me to the hospital? Is that what I need to do?”The officer’s face changed. Anger and concern, yes. A little bit of hope. Something that looked like sorrow, but she couldn’t be certain. But underneath, something primordial and snake-like roiled to the surface. Hatred and revenge.“He assaulted you?” he asked. “I can’t believe he would be so stupid. Where is he?”“It wasn’t like that at all. He didn’t do anything that I didn’t ask him to do.”Marie didn’t realize another person could look so stricken. His concern was making her lose her nerve.“Please,” she said. “The hospital. Because after this is done, I really want to take a shower more than anything else on earth.”“Marie.”He reached into his desk for his ke

  • Little Dead Red   Chapter Fourteen

    CHAPTER FOURTEENShe left him while he was sleeping, sprawled naked and stinking on top of the hotel sheets.She vomited quietly into the toilet. Once. Twice. Then she slipped her clothes on and crept out of the door.Marie held her body far too carefully. She was tired, and sore, and disgusted, and so, so jubilant. When she stepped into the lobby that she had only been in a few hours before, the man behind the desk raised one eye at her.GLENN, his nametag read.“Hello, Glenn. Would you call a cab for me? Please?”“Certainly.”Glenn the Polite spoke quickly and quietly on the phone. Marie leaned against the desk, aware that her eyes were starting to blacken and her face was swollen. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Miss?” Glenn asked her. His words were professional, but his tone said so much more. Sweet, kind Glenn. A lamb working at the desk, unknowingly serving a wolf.She looked him deeper in the eyes, then, and realized that he knew. That there was a weariness

  • Little Dead Red   Chapter Thirteen

    CHAPTER THIRTEENShe wondered where he lived. She bet it was a disgusting hole underneath a rock. A dirt cave he decorated in children’s bones and chicken legs, like Baba Yaga.He led her to a motel. Not cheap. Not nice. Just a thing. A place. An anonymous hidey hole squirreled away in an odd corner of the city.“This is where you live?” she asked, trying to keep her nose from crinkling.“No,” he said simply.And her heart dropped. How was she to lead police triumphantly to his home if they weren’t going there? She had worked hard on memorizing the way, the street numbers, but they were just In The Middle Of Nowhere, USA.“Do you . . . stay here often?”He stopped and dropped her wrist abruptly. The look in his eyes made her swallow. Hard.“I don’t bring people to my home and I don’t answer questions. Do you understand?”She nodded. He was suspicious. She was losing him. She knit her fingers together and bit her lower lip.“I’m sorry. I just . . . I’m nervous. This isn’t . .

More Chapters
Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on GoodNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
SCAN CODE TO READ ON APP
DMCA.com Protection Status