Olivia

Olivia

It’s not your body, Lauren.I am crying now. It’s his. We live in Ted.

‘Yes,’ she says with a sigh. ‘But not for much longer. Thank God.’

Why, why?I am rowing like a kit. You made me kill us. All of us.

‘I needed your help to end it. I couldn’t do it on my own.’

I thought I was so smart – but Lauren led me so easily down this path, to this moment, to our death.

You lied, I say. All that stuff you said, about the vinegar and the freezer …

‘That was all true,’ she says. ‘Though it happened to him and me both. You don’t know what we have been through. Life is a long tunnel, Olivia. The light only comes at the end.’

I can see her in my mind, now. Lauren is slight with big brown eyes. Everything she said about her body is true. Murderer, I say to her.

Somewhere, Ted is panting. There is a really bad sound in it, a wet red whistle. He raises our hand, where it has been clutched against the wound in his abdomen. We all watch as our blood runs down our palm, hot and stinking slick. It drips to the ground and the earth drinks it. Ted’s body, our body, is failing.

Oh, Ted, I say, trying to reach him. I am sorry, so sorry. Please forgive me, I didn’t mean to hurt you …

‘You can’t hurt him,’ Lauren says, voice both a whisper and a scream. ‘We take his pain. You take it from his heart, I take it from the body.’

Be quiet, I say. You’ve done enough talking. Ted, I call. Ted? How do I fix it?

He is bleeding from the mouth, a thin line of red. The words are slurred but I know him well so I understand. ‘Listen to them,’ he says. All around, in the dawn, the birds are singing in the trees.

The cord is white and soft, glowing. It connects the three of us, heart to heart. Then the white light grows, spreads over the earth, and I see at last that actually the cord runs not only through us, but also through the trees, the birds, the grass and everything, out across the world. Somewhere, a big dog bays.

The sun has risen. The air turns warm and golden. The lord is here, before me, a burning flame. He has four delicate paws. His voice is soft. Cat, He says. You were supposed to protect. I cannot bring myself to look up into the lord’s face. I know that, today, it will be my own.