Lilith by Eric Rickstad

Author:Eric Rickstad [Rickstad, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-03-02T03:43:05+00:00

In the bathroom I shut the door and sag against it.

When I can breathe again, I strip and examine my neck and body in the mirror.

I don’t see any more blood. It seems it was just that one flake. But just because I don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

Or in the car.

On the seat or the steering wheel. Blood I cannot even see. Invisible blood.

I scrub my neck with a soaped washcloth. Scrub and scrub.

I thought Lydan must have imagined the woman. That no one was here. No one could get in. No one knew I was gone. And the place was locked.

But the note is gone.

Someone was here because someone took it.

In the shower, I scrub harder. Stupid.

Stupid.

I scrub and scour my flesh beneath a hard stream of scalding water.

What other nooses have I knotted for myself without my knowing?

What did I think? I could get away with it?

I have jeopardized everything. Jeopardized my son.

I examine my hands, scrub them. I work a soaped fingernail brush under and around my nails and between my fingers until my fingers are pink and raw.

I wash my entire body over and over again, shampoo my hair three times, until I can’t stand it any longer.

I must destroy my clothes. Burn them or get rid of them somehow.

Dressed, I sneak the gun case and ammo box down to the cellar and crawl under the workbench and pull away the paneling.

A floorboard squeaks above me.

Lydan.

The thump of his crutches in the hallway.

“Mama?” he cries out. “Someone’s here!”

I shove the case and box behind the wall. I feel for the .45 behind my back. I keep it there.

I push the paneling in place, tap it back in as best I can with a hammer, and dash up the stairs.

Lydan is in the entryway, staring at the door.

“She’s out on the lawn,” he says. “I got up to pee and saw her.”

“Go to your room,” I say to him.

“Why were you downstairs?” he says.

The drubbing continues.

“Doing laundry. Go to your room.”

“Why are you holding a hammer?”

I’m not just holding the hammer; I am clutching it so hard my fingers ache. “I was going to hang a picture up,” I say. “Now. Go to your room.” I nudge Lydan along and watch him hobble down the hall, glancing back over his shoulder at me and at the hammer, before he shuts his bedroom door behind him.

I go into the kitchen and peek out the window. A dark-blue van is parked out on the street, askew against the curb. I can only make out the rear quarter of it from my angle.

I set the hammer on the counter and go to the door, my hand on the cold .45 at my back.

I peel back the curtain at the door’s window.

A woman and a man stand outside my door, their expectant faces inches away, only the thin pane of glass separating them from me. I know the woman. It’s the reporter from outside the hospital. She’s latched onto my survivor story, staked her budding career on it.

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