“I love you,” she said again. “With all my heart.”
She pulled back from him, and looked him in the face, sizing him up, as she had that first time they’d met. She gave him a salute.
He giggled at that, he tried to raise his own arm to salute back, but it wouldn’t do it, he was so very silly.
There was a blur of something brown at the foot of the bed; something just out of the corner of his eye, and the blur seemed to still, and the brown looked like a jacket maybe, trousers, a uniform. He tried to cry out — in fear, or at least in surprise? — but there was no air left in him. There was the smell of mud, so much mud. Who’d known mud could smell? And a voice to the blur, a voice in spite of all. “Is it time?”
He didn’t see his wife’s reaction, nor hear her reply. His head jerked, and he was looking at the doll again, and she was the queen doll, the best doll, so pretty in her wedding dress. She was his queen. And he thought she was smiling even wider, and that she was pleased he was offering her such sweet tribute.
BONES OF CROW
Ray Cluley
Maggie tapped her cigarette twice on the pack before putting the filter to her mouth, an affectation she’d picked up years ago when she first started smoking. She’d seen it in a movie; it packed the tobacco tighter or something. Whatever the reason, it was as much a part of her habit now as sneaking up to the roof to enjoy it. Her lighter was a cheap throwaway but it did the job. She cupped the flame, brought it to her cigarette, and sucked in the day’s first glorious breath of nicotine. Pocketing the lighter, she took the cigarette from her lips and exhaled the smoke with a sigh.
The block of flats she lived in was fifteen floors high with a view of urban sprawl and a sky that was early morning grey. Not that she came up for the view. She did like the air, though, away from the traffic and the fast food smells. Up here, the only pollution was of her own making, clinging to her clothes and making her father tut and grumble. “Your health,” he’d say, meaning his. He’d say it the same way he said, “There’s no need, I’ll do it” and “You should get out and find a husband.” He didn’t mean it.
The roof had a low wall running around it. It wasn’t the greatest safety precaution, coming up only as far as Maggie’s thighs, but she supposed it stopped someone simply stepping off the edge. If you wanted to do that you at least had to make some effort. In her younger years she’d considered it, but only in the absent way she supposed most teenagers did. Now her suicide of choice came one drag at a time. With every breath, she died a little.
There were two small buildings on the roof. One housed the stairwell. The other was some kind of storage facility, its door chained shut. Maybe there was a generator in there or tools or something. Otherwise the roof was nothing but scattered puddles and low walls.
Maggie went to the wall and glanced down at the people on their way to work. Or, more likely, on their way to look for work. Once upon a time she’d wanted that too, hoping to make something of herself like her sisters, but with her father’s pension and disability benefit, and the benefits they were claiming for her, there was little need. It used to bother her how rarely she went out, but the television showed her all that she was missing and it wasn’t much. And as for marriage, children … well, there was still time. In theory. Until then there was always plenty to do around the flat. Cleaning. Cooking. Plus she had her smoking.
Maggie turned from the street and leant back against the wall in a sort of half sit, half lean, posture. She braced herself with her hands on either side, smoke curling up from the cigarette between her fingers, and looked out across the roof. The opposite wall blocked her view of the city so all she saw was grey sky, but she knew that beyond it was the park, a grand term for what was little more than a pathetic triangle of grass with a solitary climbing frame and a circle of asphalt where the roundabout used to be. It had been taken away because kids were using the wheels of their mopeds to turn it faster than it was designed for. A girl had been flung from it, flying briefly before cracking her head open. Maggie remembered seeing it on the local news. The family petitioned the council to get rid of what they called a death trap, though their daughter hadn’t died and it had been her own fault anyway.
She smoked her cigarette down then checked her watch, knowing the time she’d see. Time to wake father. Time for his breakfast and time for his pills. Time for hers. A final drag and she twisted out what was left on the bricks behind her, dropping the butt into a pile gathered in the corner between roof and wall.
“Okay.”
She pushed herself away from the wall and hoped the momentum would help carry her to the door, to the stairs, and back down to the flat.
Maggie’s father had developed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease almost immediately after Maggie’s mother left him. In his more romantic moments, he claimed it was because he couldn’t breathe without her, but of course it was because he’d smoked most of his life. Now his puffs came from an oxygen canister. His lungs were weak and his natural defence mechanisms were so reduced that he required various medications to fight infections. Maggie looked after him though. She’d effectively raised her two sisters as well but they’d flown the nest as soon as they were able. She didn’t hate them for that. She tried not to hate them for that. Just as she didn’t hate her father for needing her so much.
Maggie lit one cigarette from another, stubbing one out and drawing breath from the next. The view from the roof hadn’t changed much since morning. It was still overcast, low cloud giving the late afternoon a premature evening light. Instead of time flying, though, it seemed to barely pass at all.
Day in, day out, her routine was the same. Her father couldn’t perform even the simplest of tasks without suffering a shortness of breath, but really all he needed was her company. Someone to watch television with. It was as much her duty as checking his oxygen and feeding him his pills. He had a plastic organiser for his medication, which Maggie sorted for him because he couldn’t get the lids off the bottles. All he had to do was tip the day’s cocktail into his palm and then into his mouth and drink a glass of water, but when the time came, he either spilled the pills onto the floor or made such a pathetic attempt to hook them from the container that inevitably Maggie would end up feeding them to him one by one. Pop one in his mouth, raise the water, tip it to swallow, and repeat, wiping away what spilled between repetitions.
Maggie sighed, glanced at her watch, and took another pull on her cigarette. Today he’d coughed one of the pills back up. It had slipped down his chin on a thin line of saliva. He’d wiped his mouth but the pill fell into the fibres of his dressing gown.
“I’ve got it, Dad.” She plucked it from his sleeve, pressed it between his lips, and helped him with the water.
“You’re a good girl. Why haven’t you been snapped up yet?”
Maggie stared across the roof as if she might find the answer in the grey sky, the bricks and stone. She thought of all she could do to improve her life. It didn’t take long. She took in a lungful of smoke and examined the burning end of her cigarette, tapping away its ash. There was less of it left than she’d thought.
She flicked the butt away across the roof, a tiny flare for no one to see. It sparked as it bounced and skittered out of sight behind the small storage building. Whatever was in there she didn’t much care, but she did worry there might be litter behind it. Newspapers or magazines, somehow dry, or a puddle of something flammable.