The Grotesque by McGrath Patrick

Author:McGrath, Patrick [McGrath, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction.Horror, Fiction.Literature.Modern, Acclaimed.Horror Another 100
ISBN: 9780679776215
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 1989-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

I was still pondering it when, the next day, as I sat in a bathful of tepid water, I shouted for Fledge to come and scrub my back. I was not yet aware that part of his campaign to usurp me involved the seduction of Harriet, though in retrospect, piecing it all together from my wheelchair, I would guess that by this time— we were now in late January—Harriet had already been to see her priest. And I’ve no doubt he proscribed the thing on pain of hellfire and damnation. Clearly it wasn’t enough. “But I am a woman!” cried Harriet. “You are God’s child,” the priest replied. “My marriage has been a travesty!” she wailed. “Then you must offer it up as a sacrifice,” he said. She came away unconvinced, though perhaps she did not admit this to herself. Something was awakened in her that would not be easily stifled. When Fledge next touched her, she repulsed him, but weakly. He knew she would soon succumb.

Yes, I knew my Harriet, and I knew she would require a period of soul-searching before she abandoned herself to the affair. When, I wonder, did that actually occur? Perhaps it had already happened, and I, preoccupied with my work and, when in the house, with Fledge, failed to notice a change in her. Or perhaps—and this I think more likely—it didn’t happen until later, while I was in hospital. “Harder, Fledge,” I said—he was scrubbing my back with a piece of coral, and I liked to get the skin red and tingling with the friction, makes one feel marvelously alive. “That’s better,” I said, as he started to put some muscle into it. Was this not foolhardy, you say, making myself so vulnerable to a man who had killed once already? No, it would have been foolhardy if I had suddenly forbidden him entry to my bathroom; then he would have guessed that I knew, and that would have been dangerous. Fledge felt secure, he felt that no one suspected him; and this was the way I wanted him to feel.

I climbed out of the bath and stood dripping and shivering on the mat as he rubbed me down with a towel. I wonder, now, what he thought as he performed this service. Did he realize, for instance, just how pleasant it is to be scrubbed and toweled by one’s manservant? Was he seething inwardly with resentment that it was I, and not he, who was in a position to order such a toweling? No, I’m more inclined to think that he was filled with a sort of cold certainty that within a few months it would all be different, that he would be the master of Crook, and that I would be—dead. Nor was this the first time that I’d contemplated the fact that Fledge undoubtedly intended to murder me; and knowing this, but knowing also that he himself did not know that I knew it, I experienced that inimitable tingle, that frisson, that a brave man feels in the presence of real danger.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.