Song for the Unraveling of the World by Brian Evenson

Author:Brian Evenson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Coffee House Press
Published: 2019-06-21T04:00:00+00:00

When I awoke, it was broad daylight. I rubbed my face. I would be wise, I told myself, to wait until dark before starting off. It would minimize my chance of being caught.

I got off the cot, stretched, and went from the garage into the house proper. He was still there, lying facedown on the floor, in his own blood. It was a mercy, I told myself. Flies were there now, buzzing all around him, and when I wasn’t careful I began to hear a kind of susurrus in their buzzing, as if something was being whispered. It’s just a body, I told myself, but in the end I retreated back to the garage.

Sitting on the edge of the cot, I thought about her. She had come to me, telling me that she and Gerard were going to the seaside. She told me I should come too, secretly, that she would find a way to slip out to see me. Is that wise? I asked her. But wisdom, of course, had nothing to do with it. And, of course, I went.

We had several good days together there, moments when she claimed to Gerard she was going to town or elsewhere and then instead trekked a kilometer up the beach to spend a few hours at my cottage. A moment even when she sneaked out in the middle of the night. Did Gerard suspect anything? I didn’t think so, although that was of course one of the things I’d been wondering ever since she had vanished.

But no, I didn’t think he knew, and it was clear from the way he finally posed the question, in the small stone house right outside of Goroke, right before I killed him, that if the thought of myself and his wife having an affair had crossed his mind, it had only recently done so, here, in Goroke, while he was alone with his thoughts. Or he had been good, at least, at presenting the matter at that moment as if this had been the case.

The question he asked me was, “Were you having an affair with my wife?” He asked in a way that made me think that the idea had only then occurred to him. The answer, of course, was yes, and I, of course, claimed no. And with indignation: how could he even think such a thing? But after that question, I knew other questions would follow, and before long he would figure out that not only had his wife vanished; she had vanished because I had murdered her.

It was the fourth day at the seaside, I think, our fourth encounter anyway, when she admitted to me that the reason she and Gerard had come to the seaside was because they were leaving the city, moving away.

“Moving,” I repeated.

Yes, she said, to the country, a small house, to work on their marriage. They had recommitted to one another and were planning to start anew.

“This,” I said, gesturing at the sheets crumpled around us, “is a funny way to recommit.

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