Ice Diaries by Jean McNeil

Author:Jean McNeil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO007000
ISBN: 9781770908765
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2015-12-18T05:00:00+00:00

By December it is too cold to flee his rages and hide in the bat-infested cabin in the woods. Deep snow pockets the spaces between the trees; it will be more difficult to outrun him, panting behind us, rifle in hand. He is fit, still, but the drink and the prescription medicine take their toll. He sits down in a heap and puts his head in his hands, the rifle leaning against a tree beside him.

One night, close to the end, he comes home and hits her. He threatens to get the chainsaw, which he keeps in the bathtub. “I’ll tear the place down,” he yells.

I go to the kitchen drawer, take out a knife, jump on his back and shove it in his shoulder, hard. Blood spurts over my nightgown.

He doesn’t know what has hit him. Then my grandmother is peeling me off him, even though I cling to his back. I almost have the knife lined up with his throat.

“Get! Off!” My grandmother’s hand. She pulls me away by the scruff of my neck, like an animal.

Why is she trying to stop me from killing the madman? “The chainsaw,” I say. “He’ll kill us all.”

He collapses that night, more from drink than blood loss. But my grandmother is a practised backwoods medic, and soon she has made a poultice. She puts my nightgown in the sink and burns it. “He won’t remember anything tomorrow.”

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