Women of the Mean Streets: Lesbian Noir by J. M. Redmann & Greg Herren

Author:J. M. Redmann & Greg Herren [Redmann, J. M. & Herren, Greg]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Lesbian, Anthologies (Multiple Authors)
ISBN: 9781602825383
Google: DM-GBwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B0062E23N0
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books Inc
Published: 2011-06-30T12:00:00+00:00

The Darkest Night of the Year

Victoria A. Brownworth

for I.D., memento mori

The duct tape is wound tight, like a bandage, mummifying the head from the hairline to just below the jaw. The body lies flat within the recesses of the dark, loamy pit, the delineation of arms, legs, torso all indistinct in the pre-dawn half-light. Clothing flows into the dirt—the sweater, trousers, scarf trailing like leaf matter or another set of veiny roots in the hole dug methodically, carefully, as if by a gardener.

In this light, little can be deciphered, little is distinct about the woman lying, now suffocated, in the neatly dug flower bed mimicking others at the edge of the small park. Closer examination later will reveal a ring—a gold band with a finely cut sapphire embedded in the center—on the left hand as well as a gold wristwatch, circa 1950, left wrist, a small Miraculous Medal, also gold, inscribed in Latin, hanging from a fine gold chain around the neck beneath the sweater, and a pair of simple round gold posts in each ear. The clothes will be found to be tailored; well-worn, but of good quality wool, with fine weaving. Dark crusts run circularly, where the now-dried blood had soaked all along the cuffs of the trousers and under the right arm of the sweater.

There are no shoes. The feet are bare and the soles have a series of round, red marks, some seeming to suppurate, even after death. The circular marks are paler at the outer ring, darker in the center; lividity intensifies this effect. Cigarette burns. About thirty in all. And around the ankles, small cuts, like razor marks, and traces of adhesive—more duct tape.

The duct tape around the head begins to unwind. Slowly at first, with the head rising, so that the effect—reddish brown hair flowing back and the tape unwinding—reminds Muriel of a painting by the French surrealist Magritte. The tape continues to unravel in a languorous swirl. Muriel looks closer and closer, waiting for the face to be revealed, but as the last bit of tape sweeps off and blows away into the intensifying wind around the floating body, Muriel sees that there is no face, that the face has come off onto the tape, skin flayed away from the bone, leaving nothing but a swollen pit of gore where the face—her mother’s face—once was.

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